Change!

From Strategypage:

February 18, 2011: Corruption and viral marketing has provided the Chinese government with a powerful tool for controlling public opinion. It all began when Chinese companies realized that they could hurt competitors by planting damaging rumors on the Internet. This, even in China, is illegal. But the corruption in China being what it is, there was little risk of getting the police to hunt down and punish the perpetrators. This was partly because the marketing firms, hired by companies to burnish their image, or defame competitors, was careful to have other small outfits get on the Internet to actually do the work, and be careful to not be traceable.

....

Chinese Internet users know this sort of thing goes on, and have adjusted their use of Internet communications accordingly. It’s become more important to actually know many of the people you communicate with on the Internet. In response, the marketing companies have adapted. The opinion manipulation is now more subtle, and it has become a form of advertising. But for the government, it's a another tool to keep an increasingly irate population under control.

And now... this:

The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage "fake people" on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues.

The contract calls for the development of "Persona Management Software" which would help the user create and manage a variety of distinct fake profiles online.

Do I even need to comment on this?

Meanwhile the White House is trying other Orwellian tactics.

Well, it's not like they've got more important things happening in the world.

And I'll end with something actually funny.

“Listen, Abraham Lincoln helped to build the interstate… intercontinental railroad in the middle of the Civil War”.

Oh wait... no, the President thinking Abraham Lincoln helped build an intercontinental railroad is just... sad (is 10 seconds of wiki research too much for these clowns? or how about knowing what intercontinental means)

Remember, these folks think they can run your life better than you. And they'll use your money to try to convince you it.

Learning computer.

So take a supercomputer, give it a massive trivia database, a list of questions and answers, and add in software that parses out inputs to find the correct "response".

Now have it play many, many rounds of Jeopardy... Eventually it'll beat the best human players out there.

It's impressive in it's implementation, and could bring further developments in interactivity and responsiveness.

Enough Gun?

Here's a compact, low felt recoil 50 bmg

And if that's not enough, also via that first site, here's a 57mm recoilless rifle.

Rule of what Now?

The hundreds of waivers for Obamacare have been galling, as they show
directly that some people are above these new laws and regulations but
Ace looks at a Reason article that states exactly what it means.

Anyway, Reason magazine drops the f-bomb (feudal, I mean) so casually I have to think this is a common criticism. For me it's a bit of a (embarrassed to say) revelation, because I hadn't conceived of the socialist/corporatist model of Obamanomics as being, among other things, essentially feudal in nature, involving a raft of special privileges for baronial elites (and the reciprocal promise of those barons to support their liege in war).


...

This lens of a new feudalism gives me a new understanding of what is going on with Obama's waivers on health care for all his bestest baronial buddies and Obama's very special waiver for very, very powerful baron GE as regards global warming rules.

...

In that context, I'm wondering at what point a system of waivers becomes actually unconstitutional -- because anyone not granted a waiver is being burdened by a restrictive and possibly punitive law that others aren't. Isn't he?

That is, there is no difference, effectively, between saying "All people are subject to 80% taxation rates, but a special category of Friends of Obama shall be waived from this general rule and only pay 35%" or directly making a law of specific persons (all conservatives) who will have to pay taxes at the 80% rate. The latter would be a clearly illegal, punitive law -- but the former would be allowed (or is being allowed now, at least) while accomplishing the exact same goal, penalizing some while privileging others.

A system of waivers from the basic law is no different than a system of legal burdens being legislated against specific named persons.

It's feudal. It's unconstitutional. It's bad law and bad policy, and it's time for the special Friends of Obama star chamber to be dismantled.

Emphasis in the original.
In short: Know your place, serf.

Philip Hamburger writing in the National Review has similar thoughts:

More seriously, it raises questions about whether we live under a government of laws. Congress can pass statutes that apply to some businesses and not others, but once a law has passed — and therefore is binding — how can the executive branch relieve some Americans of their obligation to obey it?

Turns out this has a history one that dates to the Middle Ages.... familiar.

As it happens, waivers have a history. In the Middle Ages, the pope granted waivers, known as dispensations, and English kings soon followed suit. Technically, these grants relied on what were called  “non obstante clauses” — clauses in which the king specified that, notwithstanding a particular law, the recipient of the grant could do  as he pleased. Supplementing this dispensing power was the suspending power. Whereas a dispensation waived compliance with a statute for a particular individual or corporation, a suspension waived compliance for everyone.

Related to the feudal idea of privilege: that is special laws for me but not for thee. “Do government officials and members of the media actually believe that the law is really meant to protect some but not others?”


Via Glen

And speaking of Glen here's more. Citizen Activist presents traffic plan; plan is too good; acitivst annoys government; activist gets hit with “practicing engineering without a license.”

As Glen says: "Stay in your place, proles, and don’t challenge your betters."

Literally, that's what the accusation is:

Cox has not been accused of claiming that he is an engineer. But Lacy says he filed the complaint because the report "appears to be engineering-level work" by someone who is not licensed as a professional engineer.

And on a related note, the White House had decided to ignore yet another court order telling them to stop.

It used to be that there was at least the pretense of a rule of law, that everyone was accountable to the law... but what do you expect when you have a political class that recoils at the mere reading of the Constitution.

A good-old heap-o Snark.

Walter Russell Mead has it on the Greens.

This is just a tiny taste. Read it all:

I can go even farther for the greens: I can collaborate with the media in forgetting the grotesque ethanol scam. This was brought to us by the infallible green wonks who, despite their well known and widely advertised commitment to rigorous scientific testing of all ideas somehow fell for a bunch of cheap lies and shiny illusions propagated by farm lobbyists. Thanks to the great green climate brains, we now have a government-subsidized rip-off that is worsening food shortages and creating political unrest all over the world while also spewing more carbon per unit of energy into the atmosphere than the evil oil companies ever did. I am not only willing to refrain from ever bringing this up in polite company, I am willing and even able to tell myself that the same idiots who fell for this claptrap can safely be trusted with even larger sums of money and power to develop even more complex systems of social engineering. And when I think about the probable consequences and side effects of the vast international carbon and permit trading markets the greens want to set up, I solemnly promise and swear not to think about the pathetic mess they have made with the European carbon market.

It makes perfect sense when you think about it: the greens are just smarter than the rest of us, better able to understand the dynamics of complex systems like the earth’s climate, European financial markets and the ethanol process than the rest of us boobs. I am only puzzled and disappointed that American public opinion seems so inflexibly opposed to the hefty tax increases and regulatory burdens that would, our infallible and wonder-working climate scientists assure us, stop the whole dire process in its tracks.

Emphasis added. And again the refrain is "shut up, know your place."

Our betters are just so much smarter and more deserving to rule.


And what do those stupid Teabaggers know anyway?

It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place.

See that's the anti-government ignorant prattle from... Federal Judge Roger Vinson striking down Obamacare as Unconstitutional. Well, he's just one judge it's not like a majority of the states are suing this law... wait...

But hey, I'm sure our great technocratic elite can run things better, sure it'll require bending a few rules but can't putting a whole bunch of the "best and brightest" together and giving them billions and the power of the state yeild results? Didn't Obama just cite Sputnik as a rallying cry for even more government spending stimulus investment.

Well...

No, the Sputnik analogy is apt in what it says about Obama and his hubristic faith in the wisdom and powers of a technocratic elite. The Apollo program put a man on the moon, creating a shining moment of national pride. It also fed liberalism’s disastrously simplistic view of how progress happens — spend a lot of federal money, put a lot of experts in a room, and wait for the wondrous results.

From Lyndon Johnson on, this has been a central element in liberalism. Obama believes in it deep in his bones. His contribution in the State of the Union was to plug this vision yet again, although decked out in red, white, and blue bunting and accompanied by the joyful cacophony of a John Philip Sousa march. The patriotic rhetorical trappings don’t make it any less arrogant or foolish.

“If we can put a man on the moon, we can . . . ” is one of the more tiresome tropes in American public life. What putting a man on the moon proved is that we can put a man on the moon. It was a feat of engineering. With time, resources, and expertise, it could be done. But it tells us as much about our ability to reform society, cure diseases, or manage markets as building the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam did.

Of course thanks to the same Greens mentioned at the very start of this post, we can't even build Hoover Dams or Golden Gates anymore.

Progress!

Update: And oh so super-duper smart:

“I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that ‘if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,’” Judge Vinson wrote in a footnote toward the end of the 78-page ruling Monday.

Ireland Then and Now.

Then

Now

Well... at least they still have the giant puppets.

More Backup Procedures

Added a new chapter today.

Another chapter will come up on Tues