Luke Ford | No sacred cows.

Haaretz’s Owner Proves Paper Has an Anti-Israel Political Agenda

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Luke Ford

Israel’s press is usually far more critical of Israel than America’s press. European news coverage of Israel is more similar to Israel’s news coverage of Israel than it is to America’s news coverage.

Israelis are realists, Americans tend to have utopian notions about democracy, human rights and American exceptionalism. Israelis are more like Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Serbs in their realism and unabashed ethno-nationalism.

Israelis regard Americans as naive and foolish.

You have never had a Gentile country with more than a 5% population of Jews without massive anti-Semitism and disruption. It’s safest for Jews to keep our percentage in a goy country well below 5%. As Jews rise in numbers and power and out-compete goyim for scarce resources, the goyim fight back. It may well be the same in the media. It may be best we keep our numbers small in gentile lands so gentiles can shape their own myths and media. Jews can study Torah.

From Algemeiner Journal:

With a circulation as low as 6% market share of Israeli print media according to recent research, Haaretz is utterly unrepresentative of the Israeli public and political system at large. Yet, Haaretz is still considered by outsiders to be the Israeli equivalent of the New York Times.

To be clear, Haaretz, even with a low circulation, is still a vital part of Israel’s dynamic and democratic free press. But the fraught and often aggressive discourse that characterizes so much of the Israeli debate sounds very different to a foreign audience.

Indeed, Haaretz, through its English-language website, has demonstrated that it is more concerned with its international audience than its domestic Israeli one. Haaretz, unable to exercise any meaningful influence at home, is using its English-language website and print newspaper to encourage external pressure on Israel.

The latest and most prominent example is an opinion piece by the newspaper’s proprietor Amos Schocken, titled “Only International Pressure Will End Israeli Apartheid.”

Schocken’s piece would not be amiss on anti-Israel hate sites such as Electronic Intifada or Mondoweiss. Schocken refers to “nearly 50 years of Israeli apartheid,” and compares Israel to the former South African regime:

The Israeli apartheid regime is also illegitimate, and it is no surprise that the complete identification which the government is creating between Israeli policy and apartheid is causing the world to question not only Israel’s control of Palestinians without rights, but also the legitimacy of the state itself and the whole Zionist idea. If, as in the government’s policy, apartheid is a necessary condition for the fulfillment of Zionism and the existence of Israel, then Zionism and the state are illegitimate.

Schocken is entitled to his opinions, even to the extent of portraying Israel as an illegitimate state. However, he is apparently hell-bent on “weaponizing” his newspaper in order to delegitimize Israel:

Whoever fears Israel’s insistence on maintaining its apartheid regime and understands that there is no chance of eliminating it from within, should view the EU labeling of settlement products, the pressure FIFA has placed on Israel and Brazil’s refusal to accept Dani Dayan as ambassador as encouraging signs. This is a crucial beginning of global action against an illegitimate situation that Israel insists on maintaining, but will be forced to give up. The government will predictably take “appropriate Zionist responses” to this pressure and pass anti-democratic initiatives to suppress and silence Israelis who, understanding that only external pressure will bring change, draw world attention to displays of Israeli apartheid.

Haaretz, for Amos Schocken, is an integral part of this “global action” against “Israeli apartheid.” Where does Schocken draw the line? If labeling settlement products or refusing the credentials of an ambassador are a “crucial beginning,” what exactly is the end game?

For the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign, Israel is also an illegitimate apartheid state that deserves to be destroyed. If Schocken has adopted the narrative and language of BDS, then, presumably, he is content to see Israel as the pariah amongst the nations. Haaretz then becomes the token Jew, much like those small yet very vocal anti-Zionist (and sometimes even antisemitic) Jews who serve as fig leaves for the BDS campaign. After all, if Jews and even a major Israeli newspaper are in favor of boycotting the Israeli “apartheid state,” then this form of assault on Israel’s wellbeing must be legitimate in the eyes of the uninformed observer.

Haaretz is striving not for objective and accurate reporting but for promoting a political agenda. It is incumbent, therefore, that the foreign media see Haaretz as a political entity rather than a primary news source. Using Haaretz as a cover for biased reporting is unacceptable.

While Haaretz is a product of Israel’s vibrant democracy and free press, it also plays a major role in the demonization of Israel. Amos Schocken’s latest opinion piece sadly acknowledges that Haaretz is anything but an unwilling accomplice.

Posted in Israel | Comments Off

CHINA’S SEARCH FOR THE SECRETS OF JEWISH SUCCESS

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Luke Ford

Chinese in the diaspora are known as the Jews of Asia.

I had a Chinese computer tech ask me how Jews are so rich when they take so much time off for the Sabbath and Jewish holidays.

From Tabletmag:

During my first trip to China in the summer of 1985, I visited English Corner in People’s Park in Shanghai one Sunday afternoon. It’s one of the places where young Chinese people used to practice their English with visiting foreigners. Officials from the university where I was teaching in Shanghai escorted me there, and a big crowd quickly gathered to talk with me—a tall, curly-haired foreigner—and pushed closer to shower me with questions.

Some of the questions seemed strange to me (“Do all Americans have AIDS?”) but most were routine, such as, “Where are you from? How do you like China? Are you married? Do you like Chinese girls?” After two months in China, none of this was surprising to me except for one additional question: “What is your religion?”

I was taken aback at first—it’s not a question I often hear when I travel abroad—but after a brief pause I answered, “I am Jewish.” The young questioner gave me a thumbs up and said, “Jews are the best.”

I got a similar question—and similar response—everywhere I traveled in China later that summer: Kunming, Chengdu, Nanjing, Suzhou, and Guangzhou. My unscientific survey suggested that the Chinese liked and admired Jews, although they didn’t seem to know much about them. I knew that there had been Jewish communities in Shanghai and other Chinese cities until shortly after WWII but that there was little evidence of their presence after the Communist takeover in 1949. There were a handful of Jewish tourists and visiting faculty at the time of my first visit. But I was curious about how average Chinese people had developed an image, seemingly a positive one, of Jews.

I visited China several times after that summer, but it wasn’t until 2008, when I was selected as a Fulbright lecturer at Nanjing University, that I had a chance to explore the popular Chinese image of Jews. By then, there were many Jewish visitors and business people from the United States and Israel. And economic reforms were transforming the country. Making and spending money seemed at least as important as Communist ideology.

When I first arrived to teach in Nanjing in the fall of 2008, I was joined by Yan Li, a history graduate student from my home university who had been staying with her family in Beijing. Yan and I visited bookstores throughout the city. We started at a small bookstore that featured books about evangelical Christianity. Yan asked the young woman who worked there if they had books about Jews, but the clerk had trouble answering the question. She didn’t know what Yan meant by “Jew.”

At larger bookstores, we found entire sections devoted to books about Jews. Most of the books focused on finance, such as 16 Reasons for Jews Getting Wealthy by Chu Ke; The Secret of Talmud: The Jewish Code of Wealth by Jiao Yiyang; and Secret of Jewish Success: Ten Commandments of Jewish Success by Li Huizhen. Yan helped me translate the books and we found they were filled with misunderstandings and stereotypes. And books purporting to be based on the Talmud were mostly pithy sayings about wealth with little or no connection to actual Talmudic passages.

Some of the misunderstandings are almost comical. One of the best-selling books is What’s Behind Jewish Success by Tian Zaiwei and Sha Wen. “It is said that Jews are distinguished by their noses,” the authors write. “All Jews have hooknoses. This is not accurate. Despite hook-nosed Jews in cartoons, only Jews in Russia and the Near East have hooknoses in real life.” They also write that “to save time, Jews never beat about the bush in negotiations as Chinese often do.” Jews control the diamond market, the authors also write, since diamonds are “valuable and easy to carry which is ideal for Jews who are always drifting.”

The most prominent author and editor of Chinese books about Jews is He Xiongfei, who identifies himself as a literary critic, orator, Jewish studies expert, and visiting professor at Nankai University. He is director of Xiongfei Limited in Hainan and has edited a number of book series on intellectual, literary, and cultural studies. His most popular series is titled “Revelations on the Jews Superior Intelligence,” launched in 1995. His books include Jewish Wisdom of Family Education: The Cultural Code of the Most Intelligent and Wealthy Nation in the World (2005); Secrets of Jewish Success: The Golden Rule of a Miraculous Nation (2004); and Uncovering the Enigma of Jewish Success in the World (2002). He also has edited Collection of Jewish Strategies (1995); Jewish Life of Money (2002); Jewish Magnates of Ideas (1995); Legend of World Famous Jewish Celebrities (1996): Riddle of Jews (1997); and Jewish Bigwigs’ Skills of Making Money (1996). His most recent publications are cartoon books for children about Jewish wisdom and the Talmud.

In the best-seller The Spirit of Jewish Culture (the English title on the cover is Whats [sic] Behind Jewish Cleverness) by Sai Ni Ya, one of He Xiongfei’s pseudonyms, he writes that Jews “are the most intelligent, mysterious, and the wealthiest people in the world. In a sense, not knowing about Jews equals not knowing the world! When Jews sneeze at home, all the banks in the world would catch a cold one by one. Five Jews together can control the gold market of the humankind; the antagonism between the East and the West, in a sense, can be said to be that between two Jews—Jesus and Marx.”

Posted in China, Jews | Comments Off

Chaim Amalek: What can we as Jews do to add diversity to the cast of these programs so that they mirror the wonderful mosaic that is Mexico?

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comment: I haven’t watched any telenovelas recently, but — at least up until a few years ago — the standard plot-line was:
episode-1) Boy meets girl
episodes 2 – 25) Boy gets distracted by various sulty temptresses with heaving bosoms while girl gets distracted by various ultra-macho caballeros
episode-26) Boy and girl get married by a priest (or maybe even by the Bishop) in a grand colonial church with a lot of white doves fluttering around.
Hard to criticize, really.

Chaim Amalek: Sounds racially healthy to me. Whenever I channel surf through these shows, I see a bunch of white people, albeit of the Ricky Riccardo set. Never any short dusky sorts. Is that real life?

* Christopher Donnellan: You’d think Mexico was a predominantly ‘white nation’ judging from the complexion of most cast members of their Telenovelas.

* Chaim Amalek: One reason home delivery is so popular among the women of New York is that it gives them a reason to meet such men.

Posted in Mexico | Comments Off

Sheffield says Latin players easier to control than blacks

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Luke Ford

ESPN: The percentage of African-Americans playing Major League Baseball is at an all-time low and Gary Sheffield says he has a theory why that’s the case.

In an interview with GQ magazine that’s currently on newsstands, the typically outspoken Tigers designated hitter said Latin players have replaced African-Americans as baseball’s most prevalent minority because they are easier to control.

“I called it years ago. What I called is that you’re going to see more black faces, but there ain’t no English going to be coming out. … [It’s about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do — being able to control them,” he told the magazine.

“Where I’m from, you can’t control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that’s a person that you’re going to talk to with respect, you’re going to talk to like a man.

“These are the things my race demands. So, if you’re equally good as this Latin player, guess who’s going to get sent home? I know a lot of players that are home now can outplay a lot of these guys.”

According to a 2005 report by the University of Central Florida
Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, only 8.5 percent of
major leaguers were African-American — the lowest percentage since
the report was initiated in the mid-1980s. By contrast, whites
comprised 59.5 percent of the majors’ player pool, Latinos 28.7
percent and Asians 2.5.

Posted in Baseball, Blacks, Latino | Comments Off

Are we ready to learn the hard lessons from Cologne?

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Luke Ford

That’s the first question I ask girls on Tinder these days — Hey sweetie, are we ready to learn the hard lessons from Cologne?

By Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman:

Nobody has adequately zeroed in on the underlying triple whammy — government blindness to the problem of Muslim integration, police failure to act and media-government collusion in “seeing no evil” — that underlie this European — not just German — tragedy.
For years, Sweden’s third-largest city, Malmo, led by popular Mayor Ilmar Reepalu, failed to ever hold to account Muslim perpetrators of hate crimes against the city’s tiny Jewish population. Muslim attacks on local Jews were even condoned by city fathers as understandable “payback” for Israeli actions against Palestinians. Reepalu is now retired, but the culture of denial and complicity he helped foster has contributed to inaction and silence in the face of a tremendous surge in rapes by predominately Muslim immigrants in Sweden, with the third-largest number of rapes worldwide.
In France, the culture of denial and inaction against hate crimes targeting Jews set the stage for today’s threat by Islamic radicals to social peace and French ideals. Back in 2000, before then-Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy tried to do something about it, French authorities stood by as Jews were attacked in religiously mixed Parisian neighborhoods. There followed firebombings of synagogues, incited by fiery street-corner imams, with tepid police response. One incident tells all: Two Arab men, one with a gun, commandeered a Jewish school bus, terrorizing the students and smashing the windshield. The police refused to label it as a hate crime, only as an act of vandalism. The most then-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin would do was “pray for harmony.” The escalating hate and violence laid the groundwork for the Muslim terrorist attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012, killing a rabbi and three little children.
Today, France’s struggles with homegrown and imported Islamic terrorism are a direct outgrowth of its years of cynical indifference to anti-Jewish Muslim violence and the no-go zones that emboldened Islamist extremists.
And as the political and social dynamics continue to roil, Jewish leadership wonders aloud whether there is any future for Jews in democratic Germany.
Looking forward, it is clear that while police and intelligence agencies can do more to protect us from the next Cologne or San Bernardino, the key lies within the Muslim world. ISIS and al-Qaida deftly market their extremist agenda on social media. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, our supposed NATO ally, said this during a speech in Cologne in front of a Muslim immigrant audience drawn from as far as Belgium, the Netherlands and France: “I understand very well that you are against assimilation. One cannot expect you to assimilate. … Assimilation is a crime against humanity.”
Belatedly, the White House has announced it will launch a new effort to counter ISIS’ inroads among young Muslims. We urge President Barack Obama to seek the counsel of Americans such as Zuhdi Jasser, the Phoenix cardiologist who helped found the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) and the Center for Islamic Pluralism.
A devout Muslim who believes that “America in fact provides the best atmosphere for Muslims to practice our faith,” Jasser spoke a few weeks ago at the launch of a Muslim Reform Movement at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. He made clear that Erdogan’s anti-assimilation gospel is a dead end, that religious pluralism is indivisible, and that anti-Semitism will lead nowhere good for growing number of Muslim newcomers who want to be benefit from America’s historic “open door.”
Embracing that Muslim-to-Muslim message should be a top priority of a president in search of a legacy. It will make America safer and pave the way for new Muslim immigrants to become a part of the fabric of our democracy.

COMMENTS POSTED ON THE ARTICLE:

* You are dreaming if you think we could take in hundreds of thousands of Muslims without it having a detrimental effect on Jews. If my grandchildren are assaulted by Muslims and if my parents’ tombstones are desecrated will you take responsibility for it, Rabbi Cooper?

I recently saw an article that defines liberals perfectly and pertains especially to Jewish liberals. The definition of a Jewish liberal is a masochist who defends sadists.

* Jews have always acted as the canaries of civilization, when you let them be attacked, the time is very close to when you yourself will be attacked without pity by the same hateful attackers.
The answers to a problem never lie with “the other” here Islam. We need to tell Islam in no uncertain terms that our women and our lives are sacrosant, and this, unfortunately involves violence and intransigency, distrust and discrimination.
Islam needs a good reason to respect the West. So far it has a good reason to disrespect it, taunt it, and a well founded belief it can get away with it.

* This is what happens when you stop listening to your citizens.

Posted in Islam | Comments Off

WATCH: ‘Angela Merkel You Have Killed Germany!’ – 16 Year Old Girl’s Migrant Fears Video That Some Claim Facebook Are ‘Censoring’

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Luke Ford

From Breitbart: “Please help us!… It is… very hard to live day-to-day as a woman” says 16 year old Bibi Wilhailm, a German girl who has uploaded her personal experiences of Arab and Muslim migrants in a new video that some claim is being censored by Facebook under it’s new “hate speech” guidelines.

The 20 minute video, apparently created by the 16 year old Facebook user Miss Wilhailm, starts with her saying that she is, “so scared everywhere, for example if my family and I go out together, or if I see a movie with my friends. Usually I stay out until 6pm in winter, and it is so scary. It is just very hard to live day-to-day as a woman.”

The girl – who some social media users report has now been banned from Facebook, though others say she has removed herself – then goes on to talk about an incident that happened to her at a local supermarket saying, “I ran all the way home. I was frightened for my life. There’s no other way to describe it.”

She talks about her experiences over summer, when a group of Muslims said that her and her friends were “sluts” for walking outside in t-shirts.

“Yes, we were wearing t-shirts. It’s summer!” She adds: “Another day, I was wearing this. My friend and I purchased it while shopping. If we feel like wearing it, we will wear it! And you Muslims have no right to physically assault or rape us for it! God willing, never in my life. You have no right to attack us because we are wearing t-shirts. You also have no right to rape”.

Miss Wilhailm then turns toward what she sees on social media, describing how she has seen, “a 17 year old attacked, a 15 year old attacked, two 12 year olds attacked, so many,” and questions, “why should we, children, have to grow up in such fear?”

“I cannot understand why they do this. But more importantly, I cannot understand why Germany is doing nothing! Why is Germany standing by, watching, and then doing nothing? Please explain, why. Men of Germany, these people are killing your children, they are killing your women. We need your protection,” she goes on to say adding, “The politicians live alone in their villas, drink their cocktails, and do nothing. They do nothing! I do not know what world they live in, but please, people, please help us! Please, do something!”

Continuing, Miss Wilhailm tells of her own personal experiences with Arab and Muslims migrants saying, “One day, my friend and I were walking down the street, and a group of Arabs were protesting and demonstrating. They shouted, ‘Allah! Allah! Allah is the one God! Kill those infidels! Allah Allah!’ What should I do? Should I wear a burka? Why should I have to convert to Islam?”

“It’s fine if you believe in Allah, but why do you want to make everyone else believe in Allah too? I just think it would be better if there were no religion. Stop trying to make everyone else believe in your God when they do not want to”.

According to the her experiences, the police are no help. She alleges, “they say it is a problem and they ignore it. It is unfair. They laugh at us. They say we are dumb,” and that, “they don’t care about our fears.”

This description matches many other cases where police have been afraid to be labeled as racist for taking a hard line on migrant crime and even victims of migrant crime have been accused of racism for speaking up.

Free market liberal group Freiheitliche Aufklaerung or ‘Liberal Education’ posted the video on their Facebook group page and made the following comment when it disappeared from Miss Wilhailm’s page:

“How many have already noticed the video “You make Germany broken!” is no longer there. In this video, the 16-year-old girl said that she now is afraid to go out alone and that they can not understand the insane asylum policy of the German government. Europe and Germany are thus ruined… Unfortunately, we live in a social dictatorship, in what critics of the establishment and its illiberal policies are tackled and accosted in the strongest terms.”

The group claims it doesn’t have evidence, but says it “can not rule out a censorship by Facebook 100%”.

Breitbart London understands from Facebook that while the matter has not been fully investigated yet, the usual reason for videos disappearing are down to the user taking them down themselves.

The censorship fears come after Facebook announced last year that they would help the German government monitor for “hate speech” and as recently as this month Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has demanded Facebook remove posts and videos in the wake of the Cologne sex attacks. The company insists it does not comment on individual incidents.

The video ends with a stark message for German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “Thank you, Angela Merkel, for killing Germany! I have no more respect for you, Merkel. I do not think you know what you have done. You do not see how our lives have changed. Open your eyes! Is this normal? Should I, a 16-year old who is almost 17, be so scared to walk outside my house? No, it is not normal. You have killed Germany!”

She closes: “men please help your women. Help your children. I am so scared. My friends have the same fears. We are shocked that this has happened. I hope this video can convince you, and that these terrible events can stop.”

Social media users are posting the video to as many video sharing sites and blogs as possible in a bid to keep it online.

TRANSCRIPT:
Hello, you can read the newspapers but this video is about the real situation in Germany. I would like to tell everyone about this on Youtube and Facebook. I am almost 16. I would like everyone to know what is going on, what I am authentically feeling at this moment.

And I am so scared everywhere. For example, if my family and I go out together, or if I see a movie with my friends. Usually I stay at home, but sometimes I stay out until 6 pm in winter, and it is so scary. It is just very hard to live day-to-day life as a woman.

I just want to say that I am not a racist. But one day, a terrible thing happened at the supermarket. I ran all the way home. I was so frightened for my life. There’s no other way to describe it.

My aunt and her friend have said you have to grow up. Why should we, children, have to grow up in such fear? It’s not just me, my friends too. You can see on Facebook, a 17 year old attacked, a 15 year old attacked, two 12-year olds attacked, so many. It is really so sad that this is happening … because of YOU PEOPLE. 🙁

I cannot understand why they do this. But more importantly, I cannot understand why Germany is doing nothing! Why is Germany standing by, watching, and then doing nothing? Please explain, why. Men of Germany, these people are killing your children, they are killing your women. We need your protection. We are so scared, we don’t want to be frightened to go to the grocery store alone after sunset. The politicians live alone in their villas, drink their cocktails, and do nothing. They do nothing! I do not know what world they live in, but please, people, please help us! Please, do something! I cannot understand why this is happening. One day, my friend and I were walking down the street, and a group of Arabs were protesting and demonstrating. They shouted, “Allah! Allah! Allah is the one God! Kill those infidels! Allah Allah!” What should I do? Should I wear a burka? Why should I have to convert to Islam?

It’s fine if you believe in Allah, but why do you want to make everyone else believe in Allah too? I just think it would be better if there were no religion. Stop trying to make everyone else believe in your God when they do not want to.

Please, people of Germany. Do something!

When I try to tell the authorities about what has happened, they hold their hand up towards me and they say it is a problem and then ignore it. and they laugh. It is unfair. They laugh at us. They say we are dumb. They think this not only of me, but of the entire state of Germany. They don’t care about our fear. Please help us. This is an emergency! There are more and more of them.

One time in summer, the Muslims said we were sluts for walking outside in a t-shirt.

Yes, we were wearing t-shirts. It’s summer!

Another day, I was wearing this. My friend and I purchased it while shopping hehe. If we feel like wearing it, we will wear it! And you Muslims have no right to physically assault or rape us for it! God willing, never in my life. You have no right to attack us because we are wearing t-shirts. You also have no right to rape.

The life of Germany has changed because these people cannot integrate. We give them so much help. We support them financially and they do not have to work. But they only want more babies and more welfare and more money. Men of Germany, please, patrol the streets and protect us. Do this for your women and your children. If you do that, I believe that we will have a chance.

This sort of action would be wonderful. We would be so grateful and thankful. So many thanks, if steadily, more men would come to protect us. We are so scared.

I am so upset about what Merkel has done.

Thank you, Angela Merkel, for killing Germany! I have no more respect for you, Merkel. I do not think you know what you have done. You do not see how our lives have changed. Open your eyes! Is this normal? Should I, a 16-year old who is almost 17, be so scared to walk outside my house? No, it is not normal. You have killed Germany!

This is the truth. We are no longer allowed to walk outside. We are no longer allowed to wear our clothes. We are no longer allowed to live the German life. This is the sad truth.

I think it’s about time to end this video. I believe I have given a full account from a normal person. I hope others can see this and understand.

I only want to end with one message: Men, please, help your women. Help your children. I am so scared. My friends have the same fear. We are shocked that this has happened. I hope this video can convince you, and that this terrible events can stop.

Posted in Germany, Islam | Comments Off

The War On Noticing

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* That is so funny. The researchers didn’t think that what non-whites think would be of any importance and so didn’t even bother to interview them. They automatically bypassed them as though they were invisible.

* The left/academic label of “racist” is a slur only directed at whites. They would never call South African blacks or Gulf Arabs racist, even though they meet their definition.

* Lots of pushback in the comments. And this is The Atlantic! The cultural winds are definitely shifting. Can anyone envisage what a politically incorrect yet liberal future might look like?

* According to many liberals, it would look like Rwanda. That is the conclusion that many liberals jump to: equality or genocide – there is no middle ground. What does that tell you about them?

* Rawlsian arguments: African Americans didn’t choose to be born with lower median IQs, and they are still our fellow citizens, so they deserve our support and help. A recognition of IQ differences would support segregation by IQ in schools (it wouldn’t be strict segregation by race, since an African American with an IQ of, say, 90, would attend the same schools as a white American with an IQ of 90). Low IQ schools would be focused on basics – the three R’s – using simple rote learning methods, followed by vocational training with a pipeline to skilled trade jobs. This would be combined with a revival of the union movement to support higher wages for blue-collar Americans, as well as a reduction in immigration and targeted increases in tariffs and trade barriers to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. (much as Reagan did with the Japanese car industry in the 1980s to convince them to open American factories).

Meanwhile, we would embark upon a massive, Manhattan-Project-scale campaign to find a method of increasing genetic IQ. This could conceivably be done in a decade or two with enough resources, though you’d still have lower-IQ older people around for a while even afterward. We would also do everything possible to remove any environmental hazards that can lower IQ, such as lead-contaminated soil.

* Study out today showing 42 of the 50 most violent cities in the world are in Latin America, based on murder rate per 100,000.

There are four cities in the US (you know which ones) and four in South Africa on the list.

21 are in Brazil, the site of the 2016 Summer Olympics!! Eight in Venezuela and five in Mexico.

Mexico somehow got lucky and had five cities fall off the list from last year, even though homicides were up in Mexico for 2015 over 2014.

* SJWism is the last respectable refuge of white supremacism.

I’ve had exactly the same thought: that when looking at the spectrum of ideologies, modern liberalism belongs as a sub-set of white racial supremacism.

It’s telling that liberals are obsessed with the Nazis, as political groups often despise the very groups they are politically closest to–the ‘Judean Popular Front syndrome’ if you like, because they are competing for the same support.

In an era when whites are denied any way of understanding their own history, or any kind of racial/historical identity, consciousness, or sense of destiny, is it outlandish to suppose that for some liberals White Guilt offers them the only acceptable way for them to have a racial sense of belonging–albeit and entirely negative one? One in which the Master Race willingly dissolves itself–imagine Angela Merkel as Arnie at the end of Terminator 2, lowering herself into the molten metal–for the sake of creating an Equality of Untermensch at some future date?

* Yeah, you should hear what they say on Spanish language talk radio. One of my favorites (on a San Francisco station) was Hispanics complaining about Philipinos snarfing up Affirmative Action jobs meant for Hispanics (in particular how they’ve established a lock on Postal Service jobs).

* Just flipped the channel to Supergirl … Strong, smart, sexy, competent black man (who apparently is a Martian in disguise) talking about how the WHITE martians brutally slaughtered his people, the green martians back on Mars ….

The good news is, the ratings are starting to drop for this sh*t show.

* Barrons: SAT Integrity Falls Victim to China Cheating Scandal
College Board under fire amid security breaches and calls for the test to be optional in U.S. college admissions.

* “I think it was Vonnegut who pointed out that, for human beings, ideas are more badges of group identity than attempts to understand reality. It is indeed the same thing for both religious believers and leftists.”

I’m with Vonnegut. That’s far more of a human flaw than a quirk of the religious or the left. The right and secularists (and libertarians, wishy-washy middle-roaders, etc…) are certainly not immune.

In fact, that kind of twisting is arguably more dangerous among those who insist that their faction is intrinsically less susceptible to it, but that, too, is a flaw that extends to most all of humanity.

* The Martians come to Earth, and, feeling superior to Earthlings, grant, say, Minnesotans a permanent sense of grievance and a permanent sense of virtue, despite evidence that both grievance and virtue are unearned and undue. Swap Martians for whites, often the offspring of wealthy industrialists, and Minnesotans for blacks.

The left-liberal/SJW mindset has, I think, more complicated antecedents, but respectable white supremacism seems to me at first glance to lie among them. The idea needs more work than I can offer.

* The moderators here should help out by pressing a heavier boot on the anti-Semitism. The simple fact of racial IQ distributions means that no intellectual operation can get moving in the modern world that systematically excludes Jews.

Incidentally, I reported some comments at a popular news website that uses Facebook comments for egregious anti-Semitism. Facebook says such comments are just fine with them. Offend Palestinians and your account is liable to be locked out permanently but that was fine. It’s no wonder we need ADL. And with mass migration from the most anti-Semitic populations of the world into the West, it’s going to get worse.

* The ACT publishes a national report each year showing how people do on that test. Up until 2013 they published separate reports for every minority group. I took these numbers and put them into a spread sheet and backed out the races to leave a white distribution.

Anyway, I think a reasonable standard of someone being “really smart” is to have made a 30 or higher on the ACT. We could use different cutoffs, but this will suffice.

Three-tenths of one percent of blacks score a 30 or higher on the ACT. (Roughly 1,100 in the entire country).
1.46 percent of Hispanics score a 30 or higher.
Eight percent of whites score a 30 or higher (this includes Jews and American Indians; the former I couldn’t back out, the latter I was too lazy to).
Eighteen percent of Asians score a 30 or higher.

So there are roughly 24 times more smart whites than there are smart blacks, and 60 times more smart Asians than there are smart blacks. It’s certainly amazing how those college kids will notice things!

2014 stats.

* The ACT benefits from not being paid as much attention as the SAT. The ACT folks probably want to keep it that way.

* One must also remember that in 2016 Trump is now mainstream.

Or rather, Trump represents opinions that are now mainstream. Alt-right opinion has been building for a long time now. Every year it has been gaining strength, building exponentially. Few people notice that when you lop off the end of the hocky stick curve and zoom in, it’s another hockey stick. The growth rate of the curve is the same, but when it builds from 10% to 50% of the population, it’s a lot more noticeable than the 2 to 10% jump.

Put it this way: If Trump had tried to run for president 4 years ago with the same campaign, would he have had the same success? Maybe, probably not. 8 years ago? Doubtful. 12 years ago? Would have been dismissed as a loon.

* Middle Eastern Muslim cities like Cairo have tended to be relatively safe to walk around, except during political turmoil.

Things change.

Mexico, for example, was fairly low crime in the 1960s-1980s. The mirror on my dad’s rental car got busted while we were playing golf outside Veracruz in 1974. That’s about the only crime I can remember in about 30 days of wandering around Mexico over the decades with my father. My dad was convinced it wasn’t just a minor hit and run accident, that it was done intentionally by the golf club members who didn’t like outsiders at their country club. I didn’t believe him then. Now I don’t know what to think.

* Just as a rampaging idiot like George W Bush made it possible for a culturally Marxist, anti-American black man like Obama to be elected, Obama has made it possible for a nationalistic, non-pc candidate like Trump to have a chance.

* Steve, it looks like Denmark may be picking up on your idea to have immigrants require insurance, or at least a deposit:

Denmark is expected to adopt a law on Tuesday requiring police to seize cash and other valuables from some asylum seekers as they enter the country. The seizures, which would go toward defraying the cost of refugee care, are being widely criticized as a violation of human rights.
Mehran Ziai, a Kurd, …. says if he’d known about the proposed law when he came from northern Iraq five months ago, he might have gone elsewhere. “I had no choice but to come to Europe,” he says, “but maybe I wouldn’t have come to Denmark, because I see now they don’t like refugees here. Maybe I would have gone to Sweden or Norway or another country.”

Bingo.

* This was my problem with the new Star Wars – that every casting choice was so clearly laden with 2015-era political significance. The whole point of sci-fi and fantasy is escapism from our current cultural milieu, but in spite of some good scenes, the movie kept telling me the galaxy far far away was engaged in a titanic battle of Hillary’s Democratic Party versus the Space Nazis.

* Marty Peretz: “Well, I am extremely pessimistic about Mexican-American relations, not because the U.S. had done anything specifically wrong to our southern neighbor but because a (now not quite so) wealthy country has as its abutter a Latin society with all of its characteristic deficiencies: congenital corruption, authoritarian government, anarchic politics, near-tropical work habits, stifling social mores, Catholic dogma with the usual unacknowledged compromises, an anarchic counter-culture and increasingly violent modes of conflict. Then, there is the Mexican diaspora in America, hard-working and patriotic but mired in its untold numbers of illegals, about whom no one can talk with candor.”

The first thing that came to mind was my pet term that shows absolutely no sign of catching on: liberal white supremacy. Not Peretz, obviously, but his detractors at JournoList. I haven’t read the Two-Minute Hate yet, just Lying Eyes’ set-up, and the quote. But I don’t have to. I know what’s coming next; Liberal White Supremacy, which is the only way I can explain the absolute refusal on the part of liberals to take sentiments like Peretz’ seriously. The Great Big White Man can never be harmed by anything the little brown man does, so liberals are secure to play their insipid status games, where they prove they aren’t the kind of white trash threatened by LBMs. Of course, like everything else in liberalism, Liberal White Supremacy is a perversion of an underlying truth.

* By definition, since I only considered Caucasian girls when dating and courting, I must be racist. Good enough for me.

When someone calls me a name that I openly embrace, they’ve lost their little magic power (of incantations), haven’t they?

* Mexico’s recent murder wave is an initiative of the Presidente Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) administration. After years of cooperation with the drug cartels, Calderón — a recovering alcoholic — decided that the Gringo drug war had to be fought in earnest.

Since Gringos spend more on drugs than the entire Mexican military and police budgets by several times, the government forces were heavily outgunned. About half the Gringo drug money eventually makes its way south of the border to pay for smuggling the drugs north and the Gringos are willing to pay whatever it takes to keep the drugs flowing so cartel funds are effectively unlimited. Of course, much of the price of the impossible dream to stopping cartels is paid in blood.

Before Calderón, the anti-drug forces simply took cash from the cartels and distributed it among themselves under the table. Then the cartels set up friendly busts from time to time where the police would put on a big show for the occupying Gringo advisors pretending to collaborate with them by seizure of guns and powders and cash. It was peaceful and safe. Stupid Gringo bureaucrats didn’t know any better.

But Mexico is still safe to walk around in, except for a few northern cities. It would be astonishing if a 30-day visit resulted in any kind of contact with crime at all. Just stay out of places like Ciudad Juárez.

So I don’t know how dangerous many Arab cities are, but I expect a lot of them are dangerous. We simply don’t know much about places like Yemen or Gaza or ISIS. The Sub-Saharan and Afghan Moslem cities seem very violent from stories, but that isn’t data. I expect Sudan, Afghanistan, and the like might dominate a list of really murderous places with enough documentation.

Central America has always been both extremely violent — since Maya times — and good at orderly record keeping. That’s why the numbers there are so extreme. Unlike Mexico, the Mayans were never conquered by a European power and pacified. The Maya’s Guerra De Las Castas was bloody and horrible into the twentieth century and was resolved only by accepting democratic Maya majority rule. Then the Communists brought mass bloodshed again driven by Maya identity disguised as class conflict.

* if Leftists embraced HBD they would try and impose rules to encourage inter-racial mating. IQ is just one aspect of HBD and genetic engineering will first be available to the wealthy and too costly for use among the masses.

Leftists who embrace HBD would actively promote inter-racial mating. Just as the Left today fights against income inequality via taxes and quotas , they would use the same tools to wage battle against genetic inequality…..the government would subsidies a sperm donor program, so black females could get free sperm from East Asian donors….white and Asian females who have mulatto offspring would be given tax incentives , stipends , grants etc…to encourage miscegenation.
Most schools are already segregated, to encourage racial mixing leftists would work even harder to desegregate our schools, to encourage inter-racial mating. Schools which are less than 10% black would lose all government funding and no public school would exceed 20% black.

Posted in America, Blacks, Race | Comments Off

Betting & Sports

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* The only purpose of a point spread is to ensure that a roughly equal amount of money is best on both teams.

Well, usually that’s what a book wants, and sometimes not, and how often a particular book wants that varies from book to book.

The advantage the bettor has over the book is that the bettor doesn’t have to play every game, while the book attracts a large clientele by offering odds on a lot of games in a lot of sports. When Jacksonville State plays Tennessee Tech in college hoops, most or all of the books are simply going to want to split the action. It’s a D-1 game, and they have to put up a number, so they do. They might have 100 college games plus 7 or 8 NBA games and 8 or 9 NHL games on the same Saturday (plus maybe pro tennis and European soccer and who knows what else). They’re unlikely to take a side, as they’re well aware that some people in Jacksonville, Alabama, may have a much better handle on what the line ought to be. However, in other cases, books will take a side.

First, the guys running the show generally like to gamble. I watched the Panthers-Pats Super Bowl with a party that included a former sportsbook director. He had 55 dimes on the side and 33 on the total. At one of the forums I frequent, we have posters who are inhouse at books in Costa Rica and other points south. They have opinions, and they shade lines to get uneven action. Not that long ago, when the Stardust used to put out the first numbers each Sunday during the football season, Roxy was always presumed to be inviting action on the favorite when he would make a team a 2,5-, 6.5-, or 9.5-point favorite or on the dog at +3.5, +7.5, etc.

Second, taking a side maximizes profits where the book is better at determining the true line than the public is. The Kelly Criterion remains applicable when you’re a sportsbook betting at +110 instead of -110, and you’re leaving money on the table if you don’t set the number somewhere between the true line and the split-the-action line. If your competitors do this (successfully) and you don’t, you may “conservative” yourself out of business.

* Kobe Bryant by himself never showed any ability to make his team better during his career. He won three titles with Phil Jackson and Shaq and Shaq was the MVP of all three championships. After having the streak stopped by San Antonio, the Lakers signed Peyton and Malone to push for a fourth one which despite being huge favorites they lost to the Pistons 4-1, largely because Bryant wanted to be “the man” more then in winning the title.

He pouted afterwards and got Shaq traded on unfavorable terms to Miami and de facto got Phil Jackson fired despite his then nine titles. The next three full seasons without a big man ( and with Jackson without a big the last two after being rehired after season one ) Bryant’s team missed the playoffs the first year and then had back to back first round exits. After this he pouted and demanded a trade from the Lakers because they couldn’t win with the team he demanded from Buss.

They were likewise going nowhere the following season when they got former Laker star and GM Jerry West who was know the Grizzlies GM to trade them their best players for gum and comic books and, lo and behold the Lakers became contenders again, winning the Western Conference, but losing to Boston 4-2 largely due again to Bryant’s inability to share the limelight with his teammates including the one that got him a new lease on life.

Now with a legitimate big man with passing skill the Lakers won two more titles the next two seasons after Bryant got Gasol for a full season for the first time. Eventually he got tired the little attention that Gasol got and eventually blew up that team as well, Jackson included, and have done absolutely nothing since. These last two seasons where the Lakers are one of the worst teams in the NBA are fitting end to career marked selfishness and an inability to play well with others.

* It’ll be interesting to see, btw, when the steroids revelations finally come out about the NBA. Clearly many of the players have been on them (check out the physiques in the 1990s!), and I think Lebron was one of them—his physique has been far too muscular compared to forwards of days gone by.

I usually judge physiques of baseball and basketball players by pre-1990s standards, since the late 1980s seems to be when athletes started to, en mass, drop the old superstitions about “weight lifting making you too tight to move”, which was probably due to the introduction of steroids, which offered bulk/strength without the loss of flexibility/agility ascribed to weight lifting. (Jose Conseco admitted being a sort of Typhoid Mary of Steroids in the late 1980s in baseball).

Anyway, Lebron took off his shirt once during an NBA game at the behest of his agent to show off for the crowd, and he was far too bulky and sculpted compared to pre-1990s power forwards/small forwards. Then you remember he was carrying that extra bulk down a hardwood floor 80-100 times a year, and it was clear the only way he could do so and remain that fast and agile was some sort of juice. Compare his body to, say, Tim Duncan, and he looked like Arnold.

Anyway, when the NBA thing hits, it’ll be great. Another circus.

* Both Newton and Russell Wilson were outstanding over the second half of the season, while this year the leading white pocket quarterbacks seemed to get dinged up and their effectiveness diminished as the season dragged on and weather got worse.

Here’s an interesting hypothesis that could easily be tested: white pocket passing quarterbacks tend to be better in the first half of the season before it gets cold and wet, while black running quarterbacks are better over the second half of the season.

I haven’t noticed this before 2015, so it’s probably not true in general, but it seemed to be true in 2015.

Or maybe it’s becoming more true as more rules get enforced to prevent quarterbacks from getting injured?

* They should do more to provide placekickers with opportunities to be heroes as well as goats.

Here’s a vague idea: put a 10 foot tall net between the crossbars between 20 and 30 feet off the ground. Kick it into the net you get two points, below the net one point, over the net zero points. That would encourage low kicks, which would make blocking kicks more feasible.

Blocked kicks are great.

My son’s JV team won their league on last play of the season blocked field goal run back 95 yards for a touchdown: it was the single most exciting play I’ve seen in 50 years of watching football.

Posted in Basketball, Football, Gambling, Steroids | Comments Off

How Did Nate Silver Miss The Rise Of Donald Trump?

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* It’s really very simple! Best forecasting is able to remove most personal biases. Nate knows it very well. Alas, it is very hard to do in practice. There is no defending him on this: he totally blew it. Whether Trump will ultimately be nominated or not, last fall forecast of Trump’s nomination probability at about 2% was very wrong. The true probability, even back in the fall, was always in double digits. For anyone not personally invested in massive media Trumpophobia, that was obvious then, and very certain now.

The particularly damning thing for Nate is that he had such a hard time facing reality and admitting his mistake. Shit happens, everyone makes mistakes but being in active denial for so long is a bad sign for someone who makes a living as a forecaster.

* The prediction models are probably fine, the problem is Nate Silver personally, and the rest of his sycophants at 538.

He desperately loathes Trump and has been talking himself into ever more elaborate rationalizations of why Trump can’t win. He’ll do this for the general election, as well.

Seriously, Trump has been leading since he announced his candidacy, for 7 months now. Any reasonable prediction model would assume his victory a mere formality.

And if it were a pro-immigration candidate, Silver would have already coronated him.

* Every supposed expert was wrong about Trump. Right now the betting odds are not what i would suspect. At 5 Dimes as of January 25th the odds are Trump -125 Rubio +205 and Cruz a distant third at +500. It changes radically week to week. Why the betting books think Rubio is far more likely to win than Cruz is beyond me, but they do. The bookmakers in Vegas are no dummies, I trust their odds far more than I do any “expert.” I think Trump surprised himself.

* It would be tremendously interesting to force Nate Silver to publicly commit to Tetlockian bets on all of his pronouncements, and not just some of them.

I recall that Nate Silver publicly bet hard money on Obama winning in 2012, against Joe Scarborough. But Nate just happened to not repeat that honest, accountable practice with Trump. He happened to make predictions about Trump which didn’t happen to come true. But this time, he didn’t put money on the table. He even sought to crowd source a bet from his readers, so that he wouldn’t have to bet anything himself!

Maybe this isn’t pure coincidence. I’ll just insinuate that there’s a reason why he didn’t bet his own money against Trump this time: like any other pundit, he was using his soapbox dishonestly, to craft a narrative, and cause events to happen. Not to give his Spocky, honest evaluation of the truth.

Next time: be honest, and put money on the table, Nate.

* This Presidential election is the USA’s last chance to resist massive illegal immigration. If Trump turns out to be the only candidate who might resist it, then we should ignore all his faults.

I was supporting Walker, but when Trump posted his position paper about immigration — saying they he opposed even birth-right citizenship! — then I switched from Walker to Trump immediately.

I was appalled by Trump’s rambling rhetoric, his incoherent political philosophy and his gratuitous insults, but I had become a one-issue voter.

Since then, however, Cruz has adopted enough of a hard line on immigration that I have switched from Trump to Cruz.

However, I have come to understand that — whereas Trump intends to build a barrier along the entire USA-Mexico border — Cruz intends to complete merely the 700 miles that Congress has funded. Since 620 miles of the 700 funded miles have been constructed, only 80 funded miles remain. Some interviewer should challenge Cruz publicly about this point. Cruz has created a false impression that he will extend the barrier along the entire border.

Although Trump is much better than Cruz about building a border barrier, Cruz is good enough on immigration for me — considering Trump’s many faults.

Trump is much better than Cruz also about promising to bargain more effectively about international-trade agreements. Trump’s promises might cause all the Rust Belt states to switch from Democrat to Republican in the Presidential election. However, I believe that free trade is more advantageous to the US economy in the long run. If such promises help Trump to win the Presidential election, though, then I will be happy to reconsider my position on that issue as I watch a President Trump bargain.

I think that a huge portion of the electorate has — like me — become single-issue voters on immigration, and that is the reason why this election is so unusual and difficult to predict.

* Silver is at best a second rater promoted as some guru. I was less than impressed by his Excel spreadsheet models — using Excel for things it is not good at — handling lots of complex data — is the mark of a second rater. Had the man used a MySQL database and R, well I would have at least respected his technical ability.

When people use Excel for things beyond simple business analysis, for database replacements or complex statistical modeling for large data sets — its a mark they are not smart and adaptable enough to teach themselves MySQL and R. Its not that hard to learn them, either. O’Reilly has a plethora of how-to books.

Basically Silver with no statistical evidence felt party bosses could squash Trump. Often Party bosses do squash insurgents, but often they don’t: Reagan, Ike, Nixon, and Goldwater all are evidence of failures to do so on the Republican side, and Carter, Obama, and Clinton arguably started as insurgents not blessed by Party bosses there.

Silver wanted Trump to be a non-factor, to keep his comfortable universe of donor class domination and the Managerial Elite in charge of everything. Not grasping that globally in First World Countries, mass Third World immigration meant bringing the Third World in massive quantities including violence, poverty, and awful cultural mores straight into conflict with ordinary First World peoples; like rubbing their noses in dog poop every day. Guaranteed to raise a revolt.

Silver particularly objects to Trumps idea of banning Muslim immigration until we can figure out how to avoid more Tafshin Maliks, Syed Farooks, and Tsarnaev family bombers. He seems to believe as an article of faith that everyone in the world has a right to come to the US and receive preferential treatment to those descended from the people who fought for it over generations.

And that was essentially his analysis.

Silver is evidence sufficient in itself to prove the elites are a bunch of incompetent people who rely on connections and cronyism not ability, courage, and shared sacrifice to lead the West. No wonder they are witnessing a revolt by their people.

* The website Hillary Is 44 has a very good suggestion for Trump.

Trump should use Megyn Kelly is an excuse to refuse to participate in the next Republican debate.

Instead, Trump should debate Sanders on another television channel at the same time as the Republican debate.

Such a competing debate between Trump and Sanders would attract an enormous number of viewers — dwarfing the Republican debate.

* The big story of the week is the National Review Pharisees condemnation of Donald Trump as a heretic. American nationalism lacks the institutions to challenge the rot in the Republican and Democratic parties.

* Anybody who is familiar with the stock market knows full well that the record books are full of guys who are one-hit wonders. They have a marvelous year, and everyone, including themselves, think they are the next coming of Warren Buffett. There aren’t a whole of people like Stanley Druckenmiller who had a winning record with marvelous returns for a 30-year period. Silver got lucky in 2012 and started believing his own press clippings. He is no Stanley Druckenmiller. (I have mentioned several times on this site the remarkable record of Gerald Strine, a sports writer for the Washington Post who covered horse racing. Strine had a weekly column in the Washington Post back in the 70′s in which he picked a handful of winning bets in NFL games against the spread and wound up with a winning record for 10 straight years, thereby winning an undisclosed bet of $1 million from some unidentified person who said he couldn’t do it. Now, if he had done that for just one season, it would have been a nice accomplishment, but to do it for 10 straight years is a memorable achievement.) I was always a bit skeptical about Silver’s pronouncements in 2012 since he was largely aggregating poll results. He wasn’t doing independent polling of his own.

Secondly, there is the indisputable matter than the MSM have clearly attempted to demonize Trump on every occasion and that has to be affecting the poll results, by understating Trump’s actual numbers. Byron York alluded to this unintentionally in his piece yesterday in the Washington Examiner (carried by RCP) describing his visit to New Hampshire and not finding any Republicans who are Trump supporters or “know of any Republicans who are Trump supporters.” Trump has been made so toxic by the MSM people are embarrassed to admit they are voting for Trump:

“An exception: I talked to two party officials, one county and one regional, who said they knew a lot of Trump supporters. “They’re not Republicans,” one told me, explaining at length that the Trump fans she knows are inexplicably devoted to him — unfazed by Trump’s lack of policy specifics or any of his controversial statements. The two officials described having conversations and asking which candidate a voter supports, whereupon the voter quickly glanced left and right, to see if it was OK to talk, and then said, “Trump.” That happens a lot, they told me.”

The dishonest MSM attempted to do the same thing with Romney in 2012 and succeeded. Obviously, Romney does not have the outrageous personality of Donald Trump, and he allowed himself to get steamrolled by the Obama forces and the MSM. (Witness the totally outrageous performance by Candy Crowley at the second Obama-Romney debate where she blatantly injected herself into the debate and pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire on the Benghazi matter.)

Finally, as a number of commenters have touched on, Silver allowed his own biases to affect his pronouncements this campaign season (which have been consistently dreadful). He clearly doesn’t like Trump’s message on immigration and possibly foreign policy. This favorite of the MSM, who was lionized by the MSM in 2012, apparently swallowed the BS of the MSM that was lauding him as a genius because it accorded with his views. By consistently downplaying Trump’s chances, Silver obviously was hoping to affect the outcome, just like the MSM.

* Scott Adams called it way back in August: “Trump brought a flame thrower to a stick fight. Since the beginning of time, every winner of every stick fight was a guy with a stick. So you’d expect that trend to continue. Until someone shows up to the fight with a flame thrower. I’m betting on the guy with the flame thrower.”

* Walker has a reputation as a warrior for the conservative cause, but to me it always seemed pretty clear that the only conservative causes he was willing to go to war on were those – like fighting public sector unions – that the oligarchs were willing to back him on. So far as I’ve seen, he never has gone to battle over illegal immigration, affirmative action, or any other “cultural” issues, and he never planned to.

* The caucus format encourages the most intense and persistent supporters. This ends up being an Achilles heel for insurgent candidates. In 2012, Ron Paul had intense supporters and finished 3rd in Iowa, but his campaigns hope’s for victory were dependent upon getting Democrats to cross over and vote in the R caucus for him.

Since a portion of Trump’s support is from crossover Ds, they are unlikely to vote in a caucus format. They will be more likely to show up in NH, a primary state.

I doubt that Cruz will win Iowa, because of the presence of three socon candidates, Huckabee, Santorum and Carson. But also note that Iowa is a late breaking state, Santorum rose rapidly in the last week.

The narrative will be interesting. A Trump victory ends the hopes of Ted Cruz. A narrow Cruz victory may boost Cruz in NH and torpedo Rubio. Trump would win NH but by a smaller margin. Trump wins SC in any case, unless there is a massive Cruz victory in Iowa. But it would be dismissed as “racists”.

IMO, Trump sweeps the first four contests, and everyone drops out. The D contests become a crazy train of crossover voters, and Sanders is robbed by the superdelegates.

* I know that most Americans here will support Trump on domestic issues of immigration. But for me as a non America there is an even bigger issue that makes Trump appealing compared to everyone else – his foreign policy views. The rest (both Republican and Democrat) are outright warmongers, they openly propose having no fly zones against Russians in Syria, arms races in the South China sea, escalating things in Ukraine, having army bases in every corner of the world, spying on everyone person on the planet etc. Trump is not perfect, but at least he would be more practical regarding dealing with the world, he seems to be more of a “don’t invite the world, don’t invade the world” type.

* As an election pollster, I predict that the polling industry is headed for a crack-up, and that this is the year. The whole industry has been crossing its fingers for 10 years that plummeting response rates, the switch to cell phones, and the further switch to Internet, which destroyed the validity of all its theoretical models, would not introduce systematic biases. The way that polls are all over the map this year is very telling.

Nate Silver did a great job in previous years, but his screwup over Trump is a monumental case of hubris. Even if Trump doesn’t win, he can’t justify his probability estimates. The only possible defense is that until people start actually voting, predictive models can’t be recalibrated to deal with changing factors and trends, but that only excuses erroneous predictions, it does not excuse overconfidence in one’s predictions.

Silver’s insistence on providing probability estimates and not just predicted vote margins was a brilliant advance (I had wanted to do that 10 years ago after completing my own historical meta-analysis of American election polls, but there was no market for it; he went ahead anyway and did it so well that he forced everyone else to accept the validity of his methods). However, he fell into traps he should have seen coming a long way off: he lost his objectivity.

It’s a shame, but the work of modern thinkers like Kahneman, Taleb, Tetlock, Yudkowsky, Chabris, and others on improving human rationality by overcoming cognitive biases and extending Bayesian techniques is a scientific revolution that will survive tragedies like Silver’s.

* Trump has won over a lot over people because of his sane, if not very constructive, foreign policy. But his foreign policy didn’t come from lots of study and thinking. Trump has an unbelievable ability to size up a situation hyper-quickly, make a decision, and hold an almost metaphysical confidence in his correctness. When Trump is up against politicians, you get a glimpse into how much more of a high-level game business is compared to politics. While they say politics ain’t beanbag, you are left thinking that business at Trump’s level is like MMA without taps outs and timed rounds.

* Okay, but what if Trump is that self-confident when he’s wrong?

The one real estate project of Trump’s that I know much about is his oceanside golf course in SoCal. I had lunch with the guy who went broke building it and sold it to Trump, and I wrote a long article about the intersection of environmental regulations and the golf course. I don’t know anything about how it has worked out financially for Trump, but I suspect that it hasn’t been the gold mine he expected for a variety of reasons. The golf downturn went on and on, but also the course didn’t turn out to be very good for tournaments. Trump hosted an LPGA event there once, but it turned out to be a bust because the course is bad for spectators because the EPA made them keep sagebrush between each fairway for the endangered California gnatcatcher. Also, there’s not much room for all the corporate tents that accompany a US Open. And now LA Country Club is inviting back the Open, so it’s unlikely that Trump Los Angeles will ever get the Open. My guess is that if Trump took off his Always Be Closing hat for once, he’d admit that if he knew then what he knows now, he wouldn’t have bought this golf course.

This is not to say that Trump is bad at owning golf courses — he seems to be getting steadily better at it over the last ten years, but that he has a learning curve.

* “The surest way to get rich is to enable white people to feel more intelligent than other white people without making any real effort.”

Once your know this you see it everywhere. Richard Dawkins (before he fell out of grace for being consistent), Daily Show, Neil Degrasse Tyson, TED. TED especially.

Silver fills this niche a little too perfectly. He gives moderately intelligent young white people with a chip on their shoulder about Christianity, Fox News, etc a way to feel superior to unfashionable white people because Science (not to mention History) Is On Their Side. He writes simple enough for anybody to get the gist, and anyway it’s enough to read the headline.

Anybody wiling to think about it for a second could have come up with questions like how “people will just tire of Trump in to months” could ever be based on statistics of any kind, but it’s best not to question Science.

* It’s a little mystifying. Why is Silver — a fairly typical SWPL Democrat — so hostile to Trump in particular? Trump is very close to Hillary in all but a very few issues and probably the most Democrat-friendly Republican candidate with serious chances at nomination since Nixon. On foreign policy Trump is the most Democratic candidate in the field, even recognizing the folly of Iraq and the lunacy of destabilizing Libya and Syria far before Clinton.

And yet Silver is clearly unhinged writing constantly about how Trump is a ‘disaster’ for the Republican Party, for downballot candidates, and for the country.

I understand hating Dubya Bush. I’m a little confused about Obama-hate but I can see why some Republicans don’t like him. But candidates like Trump and competent centrist presidents like Bush pere and Clinton should appeal to every part of the spectrum reasonably well. Reagan went on an anti-Clinton speaking tour in 1993 and accused Clinton of ‘grand larceny’ stealing his ideas; that’s a good thing when the other side apes your ideas. Nevertheless some large group is fanatically angry about something Trump represents.

* Nate can evaluate polling data to predict election outcomes as well as anyone can predict election outcomes using polling data, but he doesn’t seem to have any insight into the underlying social processes that generate the data. Since the political atmosphere of the US in 2016 is fairly unique, without easy historical analogies, his poll-based predictions offer negative knowledge. His models don’t apply. You can’t really blame him.

* In his writings Silver clear that he would use endorsements as an indicator of future success as endorsements were from knowledgeable people and the establishment controls the rules by which delegates are awarded which could make a big difference if there was a dispute. He got that idea from a book he mentions in his article about how elections are won.

Winning is 50% but Trump is stuck at 40%. In France Le Pen had 40% while the 2 establishment candidates had 30% each. The establishment figured out a way to combine the 2 30%s, which is the advantage that the establishment has. I have noticed that after the close call France seems to be doing something about the giant migrant camp in Calais.

Silver also claims that while the establishment wants Hillary, Sanders is minimally acceptable.

Posted in America, Donald Trump, Immigration | Comments Off

Sweden in shock as Somali muslim ‘refugee’ rapes girl to death, then continues after she died

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Luke Ford

(via JewsNews) — A 34 year old immigrant from Somalia was arrested for savagely attacking a woman next to the parking garage of a Sheraton hotel in Sweden.

The woman died while being raped. Police say the perpetrator continued to rape the woman’s corpse well after she had died. The Somalian was apprehended by police while still in the act of raping the murdered woman.

Sweden and Norway are in the middle of a massive epidemic of violent rapes. Crime statistics show that rapes in both countries are overwhelmingly perpetrated by Muslim immigrants.

2013 figures were given in a recent report by Swedish Public Radio. In the first seven months of 2013, over 1,000 Swedish women reported being raped by Muslim immigrants. Over 300 of those were under the age of 15. The number of rapes is up 16% compared to 2012 numbers.

Paul Ciotti: That monologue by that 16 year old German girl is a real eye-opener. She says she is afraid to wear summer dresses, T-shirts or go shopping after dark. She is astonished by the notion (pushed by one government official) that all she had to do to protect herself was hold up her hand and tell Muslim men bent on rape to stay a meter away. Most of (and this is really sad) she wants to know why German men haven’t done anything at all to protect their wives, their daughters and girls like her from Muslim “refugees.”

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