Half Sigma

Washington Post coming around on Honduras?

The Washington Post, to its credit, has published two letters from English-speaking Hondurans supporting the removal of Zelaya.

All English-speaking Hondurans should be trying to get the message out to the international mainstream media as their patriotic duty. President Roberto Micheletti should be telling everyone to do just that.

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The latest news is that Zelaya plans to return to Honduras on Sunday, along with presidents of other Latin and South American countries. He has called for his supporters to show up at the airport.

There is a warrant out for Zelaya’s arrest, so I hope that the Honduran security forces will be able to arrest him and put him safely in prison, and then have a proper trial for his crimes. The security forces need to clear the mobs away from the airport in order to do this. Only people who have a need to be at the airport should be allowed anywhere near it. This very same thing happened today in New York City. The police were not allowing anyone to walk down various streets in order to keep crowds away from the fireworks. Unfortunately for Honduras, they have less active military personal than New York City has cops. Hopefully they're trained in crowd control.

Did Palin just find the job too boring?

There are various professional journalists who are still saying that Sarah Palin’s resignation is some sort of unconventional move to help her in the 2012 presidential campaign. Some people are incredibly dense.

But one idea I got from the ADN article is that maybe she quit because she found the job of governor really boring, and she didn’t need the job anymore because she got paid $2 million to let someone ghostwrite a book for her, and she can probably make more money per year giving speeches than she can as a governor.

Her only qualification for being Vice President was that she was the governor of Alaska, and she couldn’t even stick it out there for a full four-year term—it doesn’t say much about her qualifications or the wisdom of McCain selecting her.

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Thomas DeFrank from the NY Daily News gets it, with the help of his access to Republican insiders:

"If you aspire to the highest office in the land, then suddenly think your lieutenant governor can do a better job - not exactly a profile in courage," one [Republican] party pro told the Daily News.

. . .

"She proved she couldn't play in the big leagues last fall and now she's proven it again," one of the party's most prominent kingmakers said. "If you can't even handle a governorship, there's no way you can handle the White House.

"She couldn't win - but now she can't even run," added the official, who once was among her most fervent boosters.

"She has an incredibly thin résumé, a serious lack of gravitas, no coherent philosophy and the people around her are amateurs," another top Republican pol argued. "She's finished."

Why did Sarah Palin resign?

For starters, she did not leave in order to run for President in 2012. Resigning in the middle of one’s elected term for no good reason is how a politician permanently retires from public office. If she wanted to run for president, she’d stay on the job until the end of her term in December 2010, and when she announced that she was not running for a second term, she’d do it on a weekday, with a better written speech, and explain that she plans to run for president.

I also don’t buy into her other weird explanations. One weird explanation is that she’s leaving in order to benefit the state of Alaska. What politician places the needs of the people she represents over her own career? It’s hilarious. And Sarah isn’t the type of person to willingly admit that the state is better off with someone else as governor.

Neither is she resigning to be with her children. Sarah has made it clear that she places her political ambitions ahead of having a lot of time to spend with her children.

The most likely reason she is leaving is because of a scandal. I hope the scandal has something to do with her fake pregnancy. More likely, it’s something like what Max Blumenthal suggests, receiving kickbacks from the construction company which built the sports complex in Wasilla.

The only other possible reason is that she wants to cash in on her fame by making more money in the private sector. How much money do talk show hosts on CNN make? I’m sure a lot more than governors do. She can’t just say “I’m resigning because I want to make more money,” so she has to make it look like she’s resigning for other reasons. I think this is less likely than the scandal scenario. Her resignation speech seemed hastily written, as if she didn’t have much time to have someone write a better speech for her.

If some news station does hire her, they will be very disappointed, because she’s just too stupid to be a political talking head or talk show host. Does anyone remember Susan Molinari? She had some minor fame as the youngest Republican woman in Congress and she delivered the keynote address to the 1996 Republican convention. But she was stupid, and it became painfully apparent when she tried to do talk shows on cable news channels. Sarah Palin is even stupider than Susan Molinari.

Sarah Palin resigns!!!!

Washingon Post article. On a holiday Friday when everyone is on vacation and not around to discuss it.

I had to check the calendar to make sure it's not April 1st.

"We've seen a lot of nutty behavior from governors and Republican leaders in the last three months, but this one is at the top of that," said John Weaver, a longtime friend and confidant of Sen. John McCain.

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Here's a video clip. I have no idea what she's babbling about. Something about how it's bad for the state to have a lame duck as governor. Huh?

There must be some hidden reason here--does she know of some dirt that's going to come out about her soon? The truth about Trig perhaps?

NYC Prep preview clip: PC in Cancun

Here is an interesting NYC Prep preview video. PC goes to Cancun, Mexico with his friend JP during winter break. This is the first time Bravo has shown us obvious teenage drinking take place. But it’s legal teenage drinking because PC is 18 and that’s the legal drinking age in Mexico.

In the clip, he meets some hot college-aged girls from Texas at a bar in Cancun. He explains to the camera that the state of Texas is beneath him. Walking out of the bar with JP, he tells JP about how he asked the girls to leave. “They were soooo annoying.”

I think that the more typical 18-year-old male would have a big hard-on in the presence of these girls, regardless of their state of origin, and would not comprehend the idea of telling them to leave. Hmmmm. Is this a difference between upper-class 18-year-olds and regular 18-year-olds, or is it something unique to PC? Maybe his one true love is Jessie. (See the other preview clip where Jessie discusses the sexual tension between PC and herself.)

It’s interesting to note that JP is from Mexico city, and PC knew him from boarding school. Among the elites in Latin and South America, it’s considered very prestigious to send your children to school in the United States.

Anyone listening to English-speaking Hondurans?

Steve Sailer has a theory that the American media is biased in favor of English-speaking foreigners (who make up the upper classes of non-English nations).

There is some truth here, but it doesn’t seem to hold up with Honduras. The overwhelming majority of English-speaking Hondurans support the recent change in government, but the mainstream media is siding with the leftist Zelaya who was kicked out for trying to make himself president-for-life.

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Someone who claims to be a woman from Honduras posted the following comment (to another blog post):

We are happy with what happened with Mel Zelaya, the majority of Hondurans don't want him back. It was obvious as to what he wanted to do. His relationship with Chavez, the ballots being printed in Venezuela are enough to know what his real intentions are. We are not Venezuela and we are not Cuba and that is thanks to the people that defended our Constitution. Mel is the problem in Honduras, not the solution.

I just hope the world respects what we have done, good or bad we are defending what we believe in and we just have to hold for 5 months till the next elections.

Ron Paul and Odinism

In response to my post about whether or not Jesus is white, in which I mention that some white supremacists are converting to Odinism and Asatru in order to avoid the inherent contradiction of worshiping Jesus who was most surely a Middle Eastern Jew, TinyNetbook writes:

You are slacking. You need to mention Ron Paul when talking about white supremacists.

To remedy this, I give you a link to a recorded message from Casper Crowell, the spiritual leader of the Holy Nation of Odin, endorsing Ron Paul for president.

Was Jesus white?

This is question that only white supremacist/Stormfront types could care about, but they like to read my blog, so this should be of interest to them.

Mary was undoubtedly a Sephardic Jew. (Some might say Mizrahi Jew, but usually the two types of non-Ashkenazi Jews are just lumped together and called Sephardic.) Sephardic Jews are Middle Eastern and therefore less white than European Ashkenazi Jews and the Stormfronters don’t even consider Ashkenazi Jews to be white. Therefore, Jesus could be at most half white, assuming that his Father was white. But if God were a white European, why was he so involved with freeing the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery? Why wasn’t he doing his miracles up in Norway? I conclude that God is most likely also a Sephardic Jew.

Most Stromfronters are also into Christianity. Don’t they realize the contradiction in their beliefs? But there are some white supremacists who get it, and they’ve converted to Odinism, also called Asatru. That’s the religion of northwest Europe which predates Christianity. Asatru has become especially popular in prisons. In Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709 (2005), Justice Ginsburg writing for a unanimous Court ruled that prisons must accommodate the religious belief of followers of Asatru and other nonmainstream religions. Note that it's a federal statute and not the Constitution which requires that.

Too many student loans to be a lawyer?

People are talking about the NY Times story about the guy who finally passed the NY bar exam on his fourth attempt, but appellate court rejected him on character and fitness grounds because they said he had too much student loan debt: $480,000.

It started out as approximately $317,000 after he finished his second law program, but then penalties and fees for nonpayment caused it to mushroom to $480,000 (see here, the article says something different). How is he supposed to get a job that will allow him to repay that if he isn't allowed to practice law? Of course, even if he were admitted, a 47-year-old with his dubious record isn't going to find a law job in this economy anyway.

It seems to me that at some point on his journey, he figured out that he had little chance of ever making enough money to make payments on his loans, so he figured that he might as well borrow more money to spend a year in London (where he obtained the second law degree).

I support doing away with student loans (as a special category of loan exempt from bankruptcy protection) entirely. It would be harsh in some cases, but it would prevent people from getting hopelessly in debt for useless education, it would force colleges to do something about rising costs, and maybe it would even get employers to look beyond degrees and instead just determine whether the person applying for the job is a smart person.

Don't mess with the Supreme Court

A reader asked me to comment on Steve Sailer’s blog post on reforming the Supreme Court.

I don’t mean to be critical of Sailer, but my immediate response to his idea that Justices be limited to 18-year terms was that you don’t want to mess with the U.S. Constitution, and Article III guarantees life tenure for all federal judges.

The primary flaw in our Constitution is that it doesn’t set the number of Supreme Court justices, which means that the Supreme Court can be packed. Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the U.S. Supreme Court; luckily Congress refused his request, but less talked about is the fact that in his four terms of office, FDR appointed eight justices and essentially remade the court. Every single justice he appointed agreed with his take on the powers of the federal government.

Packing the courts seems to be a standard tactic of leftists. Hugo Chavez packed the Venezuelan supreme court as a key part of his plan to subvert the Venezuelan constitution and make himself dictator-for-life. As you know, it disgusts me that Obama is not on the side of the current government of Honduras which should be praised for defending the Honduran constitution.

Leftists have no respect for the rule of law. Concepts like the separation of powers, limited government, an independent judiciary, and respect for constitutions are of no concern to leftists. Obama appoints Justices like Sonia Sotomayor who he knows will ignore the text of the Constitution when it gets in the way of leftist political goals, and he demands that a leftist autocrat who abused his office and ignored the laws of his own country be returned to power.

After FDR finally died in office, the Constitution was changed so that a President could only serve two terms, in the tradition set by George Washington, but the court-packing problem was not addressed. Therefore, the one Constitutional reform I would suggest it that the number of Supreme Court justices be set permanently at nine in order to prevent future court-packing schemes.

New York Times confuses NYU Law with NYLS

As pointed out in Above the Law, a New York Times article wrongly stated that a cupcake entrepreneur was a graduate of "New York University Law School" when in fact he graduated from New York Law School.

Why the hell would a graduate of the NYU School of Law be selling cupcakes out of a truck when he could be working at BIGLAW? (At least that applies to a JD graduate; NYU Law also gives out some crappy useless degrees.)

Email from a new reader

Thank you, I am so glad to see an independent view on the Honduras situation. I think of myself as a progressive, but I am at odds with how the liberal media made assumptions about the ousting of Zelaya. One of my closest friends is Honduran and she is there right now. She has shown me a side of Honduras that I simply can't find in the media. I've encouraged my friend to ask a Honduran lawyer to write about the legalities (as you have) and put together a press release to major media outlets. I don't know what else I can do. Thanks again,

It's clear that the vast majority of English-speaking Hondurans support the change in government.

I'm not so sure that a real "progressive" would use the term "liberal media," unless this incident suddenly opened her eyes.

Obama and Honduras

Selwyn Duke has some good thoughts about Honduras and Obama

Obama’s position is striking. More than almost anything else — almost anything — this dance with the Devil reveals his true colors. Sure, he was criticized over his handling of Iran, but even I will say there are two sides to that story. After all, you could make the case that overt support for the protesters would provide the clerics and President Ahmadinejad with invaluable propaganda material. And Obama looked foolish when he paraded about the world issuing mea culpas on behalf of big bad America, but, hey, that’s a reflection of the standard liberal America-as-villain narrative. I don’t think it surprised too many people. But, as bad as Obama has been, his position on Honduras occupies a different realm all together. And I think most fail to appreciate the gravity of what I will not even call a policy, but an offense.

Obama has sided with a thug, a man who — for completely self-serving reasons — sought to subvert his nation’s constitution. Obama has sided with a man who — like Pancho Villa on a cross-border raid — led a mob in an effort to execute this illegal scheme. And Obama does this while paying lip service to democracy, even as he imperils it; he claims to stand for freedom, even while supporting those who would extinguish it. It is un-American. It is ugly. It is, in a word, evil.

Yet it doesn’t surprise me. Some may think the issue is simply that, although Obama despises Zelaya’s tactics, he is driven to support a fellow traveler. Others may think that Obama wants to support a fellow traveler and is indifferent about the tactics. Neither analysis is entirely correct. Rather, Zelaya has certain tactics. Obama has certain tactics.

And they are largely the same.

In fact, they are shared by virtually all leftists.

Ignoring the rule of law, manipulating the Constitution, acting as if the end justifies the means . . . . Sound familiar? This is standard liberal doctrine.

Examining this further, let’s look at two comments Obama and H. Clinton made about Honduras. Obama said that the U.S. would “stand on the side of democracy” and Clinton said, “we have a lot of work to do to try to help the Hondurans get back on the democratic path . . . .” These comments reflect a common theme. There is gratuitous emphasis on democracy, but what of the rule of law? What of recognition that, technically, Honduras and the U.S. are not democracies but constitutional republics? We don’t hear much talk about these things from liberals, and I have a theory as to why.

This is very close to what I’ve been thinking the past few days. (I even think pretty much the same thing about Iran, that there are two sides to that story and not much that the United States can do without a military intervention, and I no longer favor military interventions in order to bring democracy to countries that aren't ready for it. See Iraq.)

Leftists don’t respect the rule of law. In the Ricci dissent, Ginsburg doesn’t care about what the statute says, or whether the fire department in New Haven had fair procedures. Obama and his ilk are similarly disinterested in trying to understand the Honduran constitution, and don’t care if the election that Zelaya was trying to hold was illegal according to an obvious reading of the Honduran Constitution, and they don’t care about the principle of separation of powers.

Sarah Palin in Vanity Fair

Read the Vanity Fair Article on the disaster that is Sarah Palin. Here’s an excerpt:

As Palin has piled misstep on top of misstep, the senior members of McCain’s campaign team have undergone a painful odyssey of their own. In recent rounds of long conversations, most made it clear that they suffer a kind of survivor’s guilt: they can’t quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, caught in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be. They quietly ponder the nightmare they lived through. Do they ever ask, What were we thinking? “Oh, yeah, oh, yeah,” one longtime McCain friend told me with a rueful chuckle. “You nailed it.” Another key McCain aide summed up his attitude this way: “I guess it’s sort of shifted,” he said. “I always wanted to tell myself the best-case story about her.” Even now, he said, “I don’t want to get too negative.” Then he added, “I think, as I’ve evaluated it, I think some of my worst fears … the after-election events have confirmed that her more negative aspects may have been there … ” His voice trailed off. “I saw her as a raw talent. Raw, but a talent. I hoped she could become better.”

I predicted she would be a disaster from day one. People should listen to me.

teageegeepea agrees with Half Sigma

Blogger teageegeepea analyzed some GSS questions and concluded that Half Sigma is right and Kevin MacDonald is wrong. “Half Sigma wins hands down.”

What am I right about? The anti-Semitic Kevin MacDonald thinks that Jews are at war with whites (ignoring the fact that American Jews consider themselves to be white), but it has been my point that Jews stick around the Democratic party because they seek protection from Christianity (as teageegeepea points out, the holidays are a lot more fun, the food is a lot better, and you get to go to Heaven--what's there to prefer about Judaism?), and in fact Jews are more conservative on non-religious issues than white Democrats, and the majority of Jews strongly oppose affirmative action.