The Javelineer

An almost unbelievable injustice, that is also very, very common.

Mike, from Washington County, got married and he and his wife had a baby girl.

Years later, he found out that his wife had been cheating on him for the entire length of their marriage.

Mike filed for divorce and demanded a paternity test on the child.

“Got the results back and it was zero percent chance that I am the biological father,” he said.

His wife moved in with her lover and took the daughter with them. Then she sued Mike for child support and in a ruling that shocked Mike, the courts ordered him to pay, declaring Mike to be the lawful father.

“So they’re basically rewarding the adulterous liars for being adulterous and lying and deceiving,” he told KDKA-TV.

Judge David Wecht, who ruled in the case, says his hands were tied by state law – an old law that states when a child is born into an intact marriage, the husband in that marriage is presumed to be the father.

The law was written before paternity tests and Wecht says he couldn’t even consider the scientific evidence.

When men marry, they lose all of their reproductive rights. All of them.

When you think about marrying, stop. Don’t do it. There is no rational reason to marry.

Related: Huge numbers of men are forced to pay child support for children that aren’t theirs.

Last year, the Tennessee Department of Human Services tested more than 7,000 men who had been named as fathers by women seeking child-support or government assistance. Approximately 2,000 of the men — roughly 27 percent — were not the biological father, DHS records show.

The percent is roughly the same in the Davidson County Juvenile Court, which sometimes orders its own DNA testing. In addition, researchers estimate that in the general population about one in 10 Tennessee men named as biological fathers in specific cases are not.

That number, experts say, is true nationally.

Related: A woman must demonstrate sexual self-control and fidelity. Few modern women can do it.

Men do not have to prove their worthiness to anybody. They are the ones who bear the primary costs of marriage. It is a woman’s responsibility to prove she is worthy of the privilege of becoming a man’s helpmeet and bearing his children. It takes a strict upbringing to form a tiny female savage into such a lady. Today, that form of upbringing is mostly a thing of the past: marriageable women are becoming difficult to find, and the costs of searching for them are getting too high.

A man should never base his self-image on what women think of him in any case, because women’s concerns are too materialistic and self-centered.

Uh oh.

The image of banks locking their doors to keep customers from making withdrawals during a bank run is what immediately came to mind when we heard that Citigroup was telling customers it has the right to prevent any withdrawals from checking accounts for seven days.

“Effective April 1, 2010, we reserve the right to require (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking accounts. While we do not currently exercise this right and have not exercised it in the past, we are required by law to notify you of this change,” Citigroup said on statements received by customers all over the country.

Related: FDIC failed bank list.

Related: Only 21% Say U.S. Government Has Consent of the Governed. The bailouts were such obvious thefts, they changed forever how the American people understand their government. Americans now see what our government really is – a massive extortion operation for the economic elites.

This chart is profoundly disturbing.

Many people think that defense spending causes our huge budget deficits. Not so.

Assuming only linear growth, entitlement spending alone will exceed tax revenues by 2052.

Out. Of. Control. Liberals policies will destroy our country.

The Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program says,

Stated another way, even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car.

The government passed laws. They forced banks to loan money to people who couldn’t repay the money. The banks could have refuse to make any real-estate loans, but they did make loans. Why? Because the government said it would back the risky loans.

The government caused this crisis. It’s going to cause another one. Wake up. Get angry. Do something.

Bill Whittle, the adopted champion of common sense. The elites are crypto-dumb-asses.

If you are a citizen worker, your government hates you.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano this week designated 11 new countries as eligible to participate in the H-2A and H-2B nonimmigrant visa programs, which allow U.S. employers to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary or seasonal jobs for which U.S. workers are not available.

The 11 newly designated countries—Croatia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ireland, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Serbia, Slovakia and Uruguay—join 28 countries previously designated as eligible to participate in these programs.

The Cato Institute utterly refutes Obama’s policy proposals and his claims about the state of the Union. It’s thorough and devastating. And true.

(h/t insty)

One video explains why the campaign fiance “reform” laws had to go.

(h/t insty)

Another video explains Obama’s philosophy with visual themes. Really well done.

(h/t RSM)

It’s starting.

More California hotels are being pushed into foreclosure as tourists and businesses alike scale back their travel plans and owners are unable to pay their mortgages.

Statewide, more than 300 hotels were in foreclosure or default on their loans as of Sept. 30 — a nearly fivefold increase since the start of the year, according to an industry report released Tuesday.

The list of troubled properties includes the St. Regis Monarch Beach in Dana Point, the downtown Los Angeles Marriott, the Sheraton Universal and the W hotel in San Diego.

Most struggling hotels remain open, but industry experts believe many properties are likely to be closed down in the months ahead, even if they are not in foreclosure, because they are losing so much money. The owners of the renowned Quail Lodge Resort and Golf Club in Carmel, for example, plan to close the hotel Nov. 16.

“I have never seen so many lenders contemplating mothballing properties,” said Jim Butler, a hotel lawyer and chairman of the global hospitality group for Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro. “It can and it will get worse for the hotel industry.”

I really don’t have to explain how dreadful this policy is. Just watch this.

Here’s the tabulated numbers.

It’s also worth repeating. There are more H-1B foreign, temporary, non-immigrant workers in the US than there are unemployed technology workers.

It ‘aint over, folks.

Consumers may not be able to continue to boost spending without government subsidies — especially the nearly 7 million workers who have lost their jobs since the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression began in December 2007.

Even if the economy were to rebound sharply, the job market would have to create 400,000 jobs a month, every month, for two years to put those people back to work. Economists and government officials, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, warn that the recovery will likely be very weak.

“Even though from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over at this point,” he said last month, “it’s still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time as many people will still find that their job security and their employment status is not what they wish it was.”

Read that bolded part, again.

Take a peek. See why Canadians want private health care.

When the pain in Christina Woodkey’s legs became so severe that she could no long hike or cross-country ski, she went to her local health clinic. The Calgary, Canada, resident was told she’d need to see a hip specialist. Because the problem was not life-threatening, however, she’d have to wait about a year.

So wait she did.

In January, the hip doctor told her that a narrowing of the spine was compressing her nerves and causing the pain. She needed a back specialist. The appointment was set for Sept. 30. “When I was given that date, I asked when could I expect to have surgery,” said Woodkey, 72. “They said it would be a year and a half after I had seen this doctor.”

So this month, she drove across the border into Montana and got the $50,000 surgery done in two days.

“I don’t have insurance. We’re not allowed to have private health insurance in Canada,” Woodkey said. “It’s not going to be easy to come up with the money. But I’m happy to say the pain is almost all gone.”

Whereas U.S. healthcare is predominantly a private system paid for by private insurers, things in Canada tend toward the other end of the spectrum: A universal, government-funded health system is only beginning to flirt with private-sector medicine.

Hoping to capitalize on patients who might otherwise go to the U.S. for speedier care, a network of technically illegal private clinics and surgical centers has sprung up in British Columbia, echoing a trend in Quebec. In October, the courts will be asked to decide whether the budding system should be sanctioned.

Obamacare is hazardous to your health.

Money quote: “Government is responsible for 4% of the drugs on the market, today [...] You want innovation and fast treatment? That often comes from people pursuing profit. In Canada, there is one area where they do offer easy access to cutting edge technology. Patients rarely wait, but you have to bark or meow to get that kind of treatment. Want a CT scan in Canada? Private vet clinics say they can get a dog in the next day. For people, the waiting list is a month.”

Single payer medicine. It’s a dog’s dinner.

Most people do not understand how hard it is to know something, to really know something. Science moves slowly, conservatively, carefully qualifying experiments and evidence. Most people want the easy answer. Qualifications just make everything too complicated, they say.

That’s a grievous mistake. Here’s an example.

Whether someone can actually “free shake” an infant to death remains hotly disputed in the medical community. Where there is consensus, however, is that the triad of symptoms traditionally associated with SBS are not exclusive to it. A number of other things can produce these symptoms, including falls, head impacts, infections, birth defects, reaction to vaccinations, and surgical procedures. That’s a significant departure from what prosecutors have been telling juries for the past 20 years.

In other words, there are almost certainly a significant number of innocent people in prison today who were wrongly convicted of shaking a baby to death. The problem is that there are also likely a number of guilty people who, nevertheless, shouldn’t have been convicted on the basis of science-based testimony we now know to be false. The task will be convincing both the courts and the public to risk freeing actual child killers in order to free the innocent people convicted with flawed medical testimony.

Furthermore, unlike with DNA testing, which came about through rapid scientific breakthroughs, the issue of SBS is tied to a slow shift in the scientific consensus. We simply won’t have the slam-dunk evidence DNA provides when it points to the real culprit. With SBS, the question is usually whether a crime was even committed, or if a child’s symptoms were caused by something other than shaking.

This whole controversy speaks to a fundamental tension between science and law. Science moves along a slow trajectory from inquiry toward certainty. While the courts have been eager to embrace new science—particularly forensic science—at the trial level, they’re reluctant to revisit those cases when the science changes. One example is the now-discredited specialty of identifying bite mark evidence. But while science is mostly interested in testing, revising, and improving existing theories, once the jury has delivered its verdict, our criminal justice system puts a premium on finality. It takes a major upheaval in the scientific community (like DNA technology) to get courts to consider reopening old cases.

But at the very least the courts should stop prosecutors from making the same mistakes in the future. But even that isn’t happening. Tuerkheimer, for example, found literature in current manuals for prosecutors that relies on discredited research from the 1980s and 1990s, still touting the pathognomic nature of SBS symptoms. And the same week Edmunds was given a new trial, an appeals court in Arkansas denied a new trial to a woman convicted under similar circumstances, based on the presence of the same symptoms.

This shouldn’t surprise you.

Finnish boys aged 15 to 16 are more likely to experience violence from their dating partners than girls of the same age. The matter comes out in a study by the National Research Institute on Legal Policy.

An extensive survey on youth crime shows that 22 per cent of boys in a dating relationship had been hit at least once by their girlfriends. Only six per cent of girls had experienced similar events.

The most serious types of violence is striking someone with a fist or a hard object, or kicking. Nine per cent of boys and two per cent of girls had experienced such attacks.

Being grabbed, or prevented from moving was the only type of violence that birls experienced more often than boys. The figures were 19 per cent and 14 per cent respectively

We must begin to hold girls and women to the same legal standards endured by men. Anything else is unjust.

We should remember what Obama said, and what’s really happening. Obama’s policies have failed by his own standards.

Best quote from the founder of Greenpeace,

The environmental movement was hijacked by political and social activists who came in and knew how to use green rhetoric to cloak agendas that have to do with anti-corporatism, anti-globalism, anti-business.

Related:  Obama’s Green Jobs Czar is a Marxist.

The probabilistic nature of quantum physics is strange. In many ways it doesn’t make sense. At least, it has to be incomplete. Big things seem to follow different laws than small things. Many people have tried to find a way to explain that. Maybe someone finally has.

A Nobel Prize-winning physicist has developed a model of the universe as a cellular automaton that allows entanglement to be deterministic.

The universe is cellular automaton in which reality is simply the readout of a giant, fantastically complex computing machine. That’s the conclusion of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft, who says this also means that quantum mechanics is a deterministic theory.

The key new feature of this deterministic model is that it specifically allows for the quantum phenomenon of entanglement.

One of the greatest scientific debates in history was fought over the nature of quantum mechanics and the troubling consequences of a theory that is first probabilistic rather than deterministic (God does not play dice) and second nonlocal, meaning it allows the spooky action at a distance of entanglement [...]

He’s not the first person to create a model of the universe out of a cellular automaton. Independent scientist Stephen Wolfram believes the universe is better modeled by cellular automata than by the conventional laws of physics. Ed Fredkin, a computer scientist at MIT, has put forward a similar idea. And mathematician John Conway famously developed the Game of Life based on a cellular automaton.

Wolfram, in particular, was treated viscously by the AMS. It would be nice, if he gets the last laugh.

Last week, I bought Money, Markets, and Sovereignty, after reading Don Boudreaux’s recommendation. Don quotes a passage.

Most wealth is created de novo in the process of applying ingenuity to comparatively worthless commodities, and the benefits flowing from consumers to providers in a free society bear no relation to any distributive or merit-based calculus.  There can exist no principles of just conduct – which necessarily imply free choice – that would produce a pattern of wealth distribution which could also be called just.  It is logically impossible to have a game in which both the actions of the players and the final score can be subject to rules of fairness.  If it is unfair for one team to outscore another by more than a certain margin, the behavior of the players will have to be directed by the umpires.  But if the players are to be free to act within rules of fair play, the outcome logically cannot be said to be unfair.  Likewise, if citizens following all the rules of just conduct become wealthy, there is no basis on which to condemn the resulting distribution of wealth as “unjust.” If no one actually commits an injustice, then no moral principle can reconcile justice to individuals with social justice after the fact.  Only in centrally directed social systems, such as the military, can social justice even make sense, as there are no rules of just conduct in settings where individuals are instructed what to do.

The bold text describes the most obvious problem with egalitarian philosophies. They equivocate over the words ‘fairness’ and ‘justice.’

Frank Wilson explains the unique American view of human rights.

The impression I have from reading what appears about America in various European publications is that Europeans think that the U.S. Constitution confers certain rights on the nation’s citizens. As it happens, it does not. It simply acknowledges what the Declaration of Independence makes eminently clear, that those citizens “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” and that government exists “to secure these rights.”

Americans regard themselves as citizens, not subjects. They may respect their government, but few feel servile toward it, and most are wary of it.

Bill Whittle on Bill Maher, Barack Obama, and the Truth About American Exceptionalism.

You must see this video.

If you’re shocked, you’re stupid.

And what do they [scholarly articles] show? That high self-esteem doesn’t improve grades, reduce anti-social behavior, deter alcohol drinking or do much of anything good for kids. In fact, telling kids how smart they are can be counterproductive. Many children who are convinced that they are little geniuses tend not to put much effort into their work. Others are troubled by the latent anxiety of adults who feel it necessary to praise them constantly.

The benefits of teaching tolerance and promoting diversity look equally unimpressive in the current research. According to “NurtureShock,” a lot of well-meaning adult nostrums—”we’re all friends,” “we’re all equal”—pass right over the heads of young children. Attempts to increase racial sensitivity in older students can even lead to unintended consequences. One researcher found that “more diversity translates into more divisions between students.” Another warns that too much discussion of past discrimination can make minority children over-reactive to perceived future slights. As for trying to increase emotional intelligence, the education fad of the 1990s, it doesn’t seem to promote “pro-social values” either. It turns out that bullies use their considerable EQ, as it is called, to control their peers.

If you ever needed evidence that Obama is a wacko far-left ideologue, here it is.

Van Jones, special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is an admitted black nationalist and radical communist.

Jones was the leader and founder of a radical group, the communist revolutionary organization Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM [...]

STORM’s official manifesto, titled, “Reclaiming Revolution,” has surfaced on the Internet.

On Wednesday night, Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck drew attention to a section of STORM’s manual that describes Jones’ organization as having a “commitment to the fundamental ideas of Marxism-Leninism.”

“We agreed with Lenin’s analysis of the state and the party,” reads the manifesto. “And we found inspiration in the revolutionary strategies developed by Third World revolutionaries like Mao Tse-tung and Amilcar Cabral.”

Cabral is the late Marxist revolutionary leader of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands.

WND previously reported Jones named his son after Cabral and reportedly concludes every e-mail with a quote from the communist leader.

STORM’s newsletter boasted “we also saw our brand of Marxism as, in some ways, a reclamation.”

The Glenn Beck Interview is here, and here. Watch it. It’s horrifying, but unsurprising.

Environmentalism is just the most recent way to sell a failed social philosophy, socialism.

The only difference I can see between the green movement of the environmentalists and the old red movement of the Communists and socialists is the superficial one of the specific reasons for which they want to violate individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Reds claimed that the individual could not be left free because the result would be such things as “exploitation,” “monopoly,” and depressions. The Greens claim that the individual cannot be left free because the result will be such things as destruction of the ozone layer, acid rain, and global warming. Both claim that centralized government control over economic activity is essential. The Reds wanted it for the alleged sake of achieving human prosperity. The Greens want it for the alleged sake of avoiding environmental damage . . . [And in the end,] [b]oth the Reds and the Greens want someone to suffer and die; the one, the capitalists and the rich, for the alleged sake of the wage earners and the poor; the other, a major portion of all mankind, for the alleged sake of the lower animals and inanimate nature

Environmentalism is based on a Marxist misconception about the nature of economic goods. Here’s what environmentalists fail to grasp.

In his Principles of Economics, Menger develops two aspects of his theory of goods that are highly relevant to the critique of the environmentalists’ two essential claims. The first aspect is his recognition that what makes what would otherwise be mere things into goods is not the intrinsic properties of the things but a man-made relationship between the physical properties of the things and the satisfaction of human needs or wants. Menger describes four prerequisites, all of which must be simultaneously present, in order for a thing to become a good, or, as he often puts it, have “goods-character.”

He writes:

If a thing is to become a good, or in other words, if it is to acquire goods-character, all four of the following prerequisites must be simultaneously present:

1. A human need.
2. Such properties as render the thing capable of being brought into a causal connection with the satisfaction of this need.
3. Human knowledge of this causal connection.
4. Command of the thing sufficient to direct it to the satisfaction of the need (p. 52).

The last two of these prerequisites, it must be stressed, are man made. Human knowledge of the causal connection between external material things and the satisfaction of human needs must be discovered by man. And command over external material things sufficient to direct them to the satisfaction of human needs must be established by man. For the most part, it is established by means of a process of capital accumulation and a rising productivity of labor.

All this has immediate bearing on the subject of natural resources. It implies that the resources provided by nature, such as iron, aluminum, coal, petroleum and so on, are by no means automatically goods. Their goods-character must be created by man, by discovering knowledge of their respective properties that enable them to satisfy human needs and then by establishing command over them sufficient to direct them to the satisfaction of human needs.

For example, iron, which has been present in the earth since the formation of the planet and throughout the entire presence of man on earth, did not become a good until well after the Stone Age had ended. Petroleum, which has been present in the ground for millions of years, did not become a good until the middle of the nineteenth century, when uses for it were discovered. Aluminum, radium, and uranium also became goods only within the last century or century and a half [...]

And this brings me to what I consider to be the revolutionary view of natural resources that is implied in Menger’s theory of goods. Namely, not only does man create the goods- character of natural resources—by obtaining knowledge of their useful properties and then creating their useability and accessibility by virtue of establishing the necessary command over them—but he also has the ability to go on indefinitely increasing the supply of natural resources possessing goods-character. He enlarges the supply of useable, accessible natural resources—that is, natural resources possessing goods-character—as he expands his knowledge of and physical power over nature.

See the video here. It’s probably the best video on the subject, with recent and relevant examples.

Seriously, watch it.

(h/t dicentra)

Related: Trotsky: good, bad, or something else

Political Math kicks Krugman’s ass.

The insane Democratic fiscal plan, compared to WW2.

If you look at the 1945 budget with the single question “How are we going to reduce our debt?” you can identify the major problem. It’s the defense budget, which is almost 90% of the budget. Interestingly, reducing the defense budget is exactly what we did in order to reduce the debt, cutting it over 80% in 3 years (it helped that we won the war).

As a contrast, President Obama’s solution to reducing overall spending is… well, I don’t think he really has a plan. His projected budget in 2016 has reduced the defense budget as a percentage of the overall budget from 20% to 14%, but military spending isn’t what is killing us. The president has no plans to reduce mandatory spending whatsoever. In fact, his only change to entitlement spending is to increase it.

My problem with Mr. Krugman’s “How big is $9 trillion?” is that he is aware of all the problems I pointed out. He didn’t explain how much $9 trillion is; he obfuscated it. By comparing the debt load in the heart of a world-shaking war to a debt load that was accumulated in (relative) peacetime, he has misled his readers to the real significance of the data.

(By the way… if you would like to blame the debt load on the Iraq war, you should know that those costs have raised our debt by 5% of the GDP. Comparing this to WWII, which raised our debt by 70% of the GDP, is a pretty weak argument.)

Read it all. Obama and the Democratic congress are leading us to fiscal disaster. That is not hyperbolic.

It started with ambition and good intent. It ends with hubris and blood .

Pacific Investment Management Co., which runs the world’s biggest bond fund, said the dollar will weaken as its status as a reserve currency is eroded by concerns about the increasing U.S. money supply [...]

“While we have not yet reached the point where a new global reserve currency will arise, we are clearly seeing a loss of status for the U.S. dollar as a store of value even in the absence of a single viable alternative,” Mewbourne wrote.

The greenback is falling this year as U.S. authorities pledged $12.8 trillion to combat a recession that has cost financial companies $1.6 trillion in writedowns and losses, raising concern there is an oversupply of the currency. The stimulus includes Federal Reserve purchases of securities done to thaw frozen credit markets and government spending plans intended to spur economic growth.

The stimulus was inflation. Cheap money for unworthy ventures.

The rest of the world is catching on. The US economy is a sham. Macduff sharpens his blade.