Quotulatiousness

April 4, 2012

New study estimates US Civil War deaths were 20% higher than previously believed

Filed under: History, Military, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:14

Guy Gugliotta summarizes the research of J. David Hacker on the actual death toll for both side during the American Civil War:

For 110 years, the numbers stood as gospel: 618,222 men died in the Civil War, 360,222 from the North and 258,000 from the South — by far the greatest toll of any war in American history.

But new research shows that the numbers were far too low.

By combing through newly digitized census data from the 19th century, J. David Hacker, a demographic historian from Binghamton University in New York, has recalculated the death toll and increased it by more than 20 percent — to 750,000.

[. . .]

The old figure dates back well over a century, the work of two Union Army veterans who were passionate amateur historians: William F. Fox and Thomas Leonard Livermore.

Fox, who had fought at Antietam, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, knew well the horrors of the Civil War. He did his research the hard way, reading every muster list, battlefield report and pension record he could find.

QotD: Mike Riggs refutes Van Jones on “so-called Libertarians”

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:04

I’m going to have to mic check you there, Mr. Jones. You’re not talking about so-called libertarians, but your former boss and current president. See, it’s Barack Obama who supports “traditional marriage”; Barack Obama who supports a drug war that sends an alarming number of black men to prison and destroys their employment prospects; Barack Obama who supports a foreign policy that kills children; Barack Obama who supports regulatory barriers that require the poorest of the poor to borrow their way into the workforce; Barack Obama who supports an immigration strategy that rips apart families and sees the children of undocumented workers put up for adoption.

Whether Obama’s support for those policies means he hates gays or brown folk is not for me to say. As the scriptures tell us, “For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?”

Libertarians, on the other hand, love brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings, and immigrants. Many of us, after all, fit rather neatly into those categories, and we show our affection for ourselves and our neighbors by supporting the right of all peoples to live free of state-sponsored violence, discrimination, undue imprisonment, and theft; as well as the entirely predictable consequences of both left-wing and right-wing social engineering.

Mike Riggs, “Van Jones on ‘so-called Libertarians’: ‘They say they love America but they hate the people, the brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings'”, Hit & Run, 2012-04-03

April 3, 2012

Popehat tells Arizona “Come Get Me, Coppers!”

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:44

Arizona has a law on the books that should replace the old chestnut about King Canute and the tide: they’ve criminalized annoying and offending people on the internet:

Dear Members of the Arizona State Legislature,

By this post, it is my specific intent to use this digital device — a computer — to annoy and offend you.

I do so because you have passed Arizona H.B. 2549, which provides in relevant part as follows:

    It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use a telephone ANY ELECTRONIC OR DIGITAL DEVICE and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.

OK. I certainly don’t intend to convey any physical threat. And I can’t terrify or intimidate you, even with the prospect of revealing you for a pack of morons who ought to be voted out of office — after all, you’re in Arizona, where prolonged lawlessness, venality and idiocy seem to be sure paths to electoral victory.

I certainly do mean to annoy and offend you, though. You’ve been swept up in the moronic and thoughtless anti-bullying craze and consequently passed a bill that is ridiculous on its face, a bill that criminalizes annoying and offending people on the internet. That’s like criminalizing driving on the road. By so clearly violating the First Amendment, you’ve violated your oaths of office. You should be ashamed of yourselves. What kind of example are you setting for the children of Arizona by ignoring the law to pass fashionable rubbish? It is no excuse that you are merely modifying an archaic law to apply it to the internet — you’re still enacting patently unconstitutional legislation.

That’s Ken at Popehat, inviting the Arizona state legislature to “snort my taint, go to Hell, and go fuck yourselves”.

A “routine” traffic stop in Collinsville, Illinois

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:17

Radley Balko tells the full story of a traffic stop in Illinois that demonstrates how eager some police departments are to use “asset forfeiture” to get their hands on the property of innocent people:

Last December, filmmaker Terrance Huff and his friend Jon Seaton were returning to Ohio after attending a “Star Trek” convention in St. Louis. As they passed through a small town in Illinois, a police officer, Michael Reichert, pulled Huff’s red PT Cruiser over to the side of the road, allegedly for an unsafe lane change. Over the next hour, Reichert interrogated the two men, employing a variety of police tactics civil rights attorneys say were aimed at tricking them into giving up their Fourth Amendment rights. Reichert conducted a sweep of Huff’s car with a K-9 dog, then searched Huff’s car by hand. Ultimately, he sent Huff and Seaton on their way with a warning.

Earlier this month, Huff posted to YouTube audio and video footage of the stop taken from Reichert’s dashboard camera. No shots were fired in the incident. No one was beaten, arrested or even handcuffed. Reichert found no measurable amount of contraband in Huff’s car. But Huff’s 17-and-a-half minute video raises important questions about law enforcement and the criminal justice system, including the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the drug war, profiling and why it’s so difficult to take problematic cops out of the police force.

[. . .]

“When we saw the Huff video in our office, we just laughed,” Rekowski says. “Not because it wasn’t outrageous. But because it’s the kind of thing we see all the time. The stop for a so-called ‘inappropriate lane change,’ the games they play in the questioning, the claims about nervousness or inappropriate behavior that can’t really be contradicted. It’s all routine.”

According to Koester, the defense attorney in private practice, “The dog alert that happens off-camera isn’t unusual either. You see that all the time.”

Koester and Rekowski say the Huff stop has all the markings of a forfeiture fishing expedition. “You see where he asks if [Huff] is carrying large amounts of U.S. currency,” Rekowski says. “It’s pretty clear what they’re after. These kinds of cases put my kids through college.” He laughs, then adds, “I’m only half joking.”

H/T again to Jon, my former virtual landlord.

At the “School of American Declinism”, the NYT is head cheerleader

Filed under: China, Economics, Media, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:01

Jon, my former virtual landlord, sent me this link to an article on the inevitable rise of China and matching inevitable decline of the United States:

The senior leadership of the Chinese government increasingly views the competition between the United States and China as a zero-sum game, with China the likely long-range winner if the American economy and domestic political system continue to stumble, according to an influential Chinese policy analyst.

China views the United States as a declining power, but at the same time believes that Washington is trying to fight back to undermine, and even disrupt, the economic and military growth that point to China’s becoming the world’s most powerful country, according to the analyst, Wang Jisi, the co-author of “Addressing U.S.-China Strategic Distrust,” a monograph published this week by the Brookings Institution in Washington and the Institute for International and Strategic Studies at Peking University.

[. . .]

The United States is no longer seen as “that awesome, nor is it trustworthy, and its example to the world and admonitions to China should therefore be much discounted,” Mr. Wang writes of the general view of China’s leadership.

In contrast, China has mounting self-confidence in its own economic and military strides, particularly the closing power gap since the start of the Iraq war. In 2003, he argues, America’s gross domestic product was eight times as large as China’s, but today it is less than three times larger.

[. . .]

Mr. Wang writes that the Chinese leadership, backed by the domestic news media and the education system, believes that China’s turn in the world has arrived, and that it is the United States that is “on the wrong side of history.” The period of “keeping a low profile,” a dictum coined by the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1989, and continued until now by the departing president, Hu Jintao, is over, Mr. Wang warns.

“It is now a question of how many years, rather than how many decades, before China replaces the United States as the largest economy in the world,” he adds.

March 30, 2012

The mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread) finally solved

Filed under: Europe, France, History, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:01

In a twist that will delight conspiracy theorists everywhere, it really was a CIA plot:

In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.

For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind control experiment at the height of the Cold War.

The mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread) still haunts the inhabitants of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard, southeast France.

Reason.tv: Remy explains health care mandates

Filed under: Economics, Government, Health, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:06

March 27, 2012

Reason.tv: Obamacare goes to the Supreme Court

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:33

Does the fate of a federal government with limited powers rest in the hands of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia? And if so, will he rule against broad federal powers (as he did in the Gonzales case) or in favor of the feds’ right to regulate just about anything (as he did in the Raich case)?

The Supreme Court case over The Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, “is certainly the most important case on the reach of federal power in 50 years” says attorney and legal scholar Timothy Sandefur of the Pacific Legal Foundation. “The constitutional principle of where is the line drawn on federal power — that’s a matter that our children and grandchildren will have to live with.”

The ruling will come sometime in early June, predicts Sandefur, who tells Reason.tv that the Affordable Care Act raises multiple constitutional issues: Can part of the law be struck down and other upheld? Is the “individual mandate,” which forces all Americans to purchase insurance as a condition of simply being alive, legal? Does the law’s massive expansion of Medicaid shred the right of states to govern their own finances?

March 25, 2012

Reason.tv: 3 Reasons to End Obamacare Before it Begins!

Filed under: Economics, Government, Health, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:36

March 23, 2012

Millennial generation not following the script

Filed under: Economics, History, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:57

They’ve been subjected to more “sharing/caring” and “we are the world” propaganda than any group of youngsters since the Young Pioneers and the Hitler Youth, yet they appear to be shrugging off the programming in double-quick time:

Young Amer­i­cans care less and less about the the en­vi­ron­ment, pol­i­tics, and the world around them in gen­er­al, a study has found; even the idea of seek­ing a mean­ing­ful life is out of fash­ion.

In­stead, mon­ey, im­age and fame are the idols of our time.

“Pop­u­lar views of the mil­len­ni­al genera­t­ion, born in the 1980s and 1990s, as more car­ing, com­mun­ity-oriented and pol­i­tic­ally en­gaged than pre­vi­ous genera­t­ions are largely in­cor­rect, par­tic­u­larly when com­pared to ba­by boomers and Genera­t­ion X at the same age,” said the stu­dy’s lead au­thor, Jean Twenge, a psy­chol­o­gist at San Die­go State Uni­vers­ity and au­thor of the book Genera­t­ion Me. “These da­ta show that re­cent genera­t­ions are less likely to em­brace com­mun­ity mind­ed­ness and are fo­cus­ing more on mon­ey, im­age and fame.”

[. . .]

The wish to save the en­vi­ron­ment, an ar­ea of par­tic­u­lar con­cern to mil­len­ni­als, showed some of the larg­est de­clines, with three times as many mil­len­ni­als as ba­by boomers at the same age say­ing they made no per­son­al ef­fort to help the en­vi­ron­ment. Fif­ty-one per­cent of mil­len­ni­als said they made an ef­fort to cut down on elec­tri­city use to save en­er­gy, com­pared to 68 per­cent of boomers in the 1970s.

[. . .]

In the Amer­i­can Fresh­man sur­vey, the pro­por­tion of stu­dents who said be­ing wealthy was very im­por­tant to them rose from 45 per­cent for ba­by boomers (sur­veyed be­tween 1966 and 1978) to 70 per­cent for Genera­t­ion Xers (sur­veyed be­tween 1979 and 1999) and 75 per­cent for mil­len­ni­als (sur­veyed be­tween 2000 and 2009).

The frac­tion who said it was im­por­tant to keep up to date with pol­i­tics dropped, from 50 per­cent for boomers to 39 per­cent for Genera­t­ion Xers and 35 per­cent for mil­len­ni­als. “Be­com­ing in­volved in pro­grams to clean up the en­vi­ron­ment” fell from 33 per­cent for boomers to 20 per­cent for mil­len­ni­als. “De­vel­op­ing a mean­ing­ful phi­los­o­phy of life” de­creased the most across genera­t­ions, from 73 per­cent for boomers to 45 per­cent for mil­len­ni­als.

Facebook seen as harmful … to deployed troops

Filed under: Asia, Middle East, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:17

Strategy Page explains how increasing sophistication on the part of the al Qaeda/Taliban forces has been allowing them to select targets of opportunity through things like Facebook posts and cell phone traffic:

The U.S. Army is warning its troops to be careful what they post to on social networking sites (like Facebook). When they post photos of themselves they often reveal militarily useful information. This was discovered in Iraq, where a lot of tech savvy people working with terrorists were able to compile information from what troops posted. This sometimes led to attacks, and this was discovered from interrogating captured terrorists and captured documents and computer data. The background of pictures often indicated targets for the terrorists, or details of base defenses and American tactics. Islamic terrorists have been quick to use the Internet and other modern technology to plan and carry out their attacks.

Some of this technology can be very dangerous, like the geo-locating capability of many smart phones (which include GPS receivers and location data that hackers can obtain.) Troops in combat zones are ordered to turn geo-locating off while in areas where the enemy could use it. Even without geo-locating turned on, cell phone use can provide militarily useful information. This goes back to a century old practice called traffic analysis. This has been used with great success against terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, but it can be used against the troops.

[. . .]

Al Qaeda was long suspected of knowing how to manipulate message traffic in order to deceive our traffic analysis methods. This was rarely the case, but this form of deception has been used in the past with success. For example, when the June 6, 1944 D-Day invasion of France was being planned, a fake army group headquarters was set up in England. Actually, this “army group” consisted largely of a lot of radio and telegraph operators sending a large number of messages that would be normal if the “army group” were preparing for an invasion of France, in an area other than where the actual invasion was going to take place. The deception worked. German traffic analysis experts were fooled and the Germans believed the actual invasion at Normandy was just a feint, a move to get the Germans to send their reinforcements to Normandy rather than were the fake “army group” was going to invade.

Intelligence agencies have to be constantly on the guard for al Qaeda, or any other terrorist group, using this kind of deception. It has happened in a few instances, so a larger-scale attempt is not out of the question.

March 22, 2012

US Marine Corps facing 9% cut in troop strength and aviation

Filed under: Military, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:18

Strategy Page has the details:

Because of budget cuts, the U.S. Marine Corps is losing four (of 27) infantry battalions and twelve (of 70) aircraft squadrons over the next five years. About half the marine aviation squadrons operate transport helicopters. Most of the fixed wing squadrons are bombers and fighters.

These cuts will result in jobs for 20,000 marines being eliminated, shrinking the marines to 182,000 personnel. Most of the units lost are from marine bases on the east coast. The Pacific, and China, is seen as the focus of Marine Corps attention in the future.

In effect the marines will lose nine percent of their personnel strength by the end of the decade. The marines want to do that without losing their most experienced and effective people. The idea is to keep officers and NCOs best able to expand the corps in the event of a national emergency, while at the same time maintaining, for as long as possible, a force that has lots of combat experience.

Reason.tv: Jim the Realtor

Filed under: Economics, Humour, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:01

“When I come into a house with buyers, I start picking it apart,” says San Diego’s Jim Klinge, known on the internet as ‘Jim the Realtor,’ a wise-cracking real estate agent who posts his honest, painful, and sometimes hilarious assessment of bank-owned properties on his Youtube channel: youtube.com/jimtherealtor.

While both the Bush and Obama administration have advocated programs aimed at keeping people in their homes, Klinge argues that this is the exact wrong approach and is only prolonging the agony in the housing market.

March 21, 2012

This is why Paul Ryan’s budget proposals will go nowhere

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:40

It’s because he’s not only requiring the middle classes to take a hit for the team, but he’s also trying to get rid of all the custom-crafted deductions, loopholes, shelters, and special favours in the tax code. Middle class voters have been sending their elected representatives to Washington to add to the special tax “tweaks” that disproportionally benefit the middle class. That’s how politicians ensure their re-election chances.

Unveiling his new budget proposal, Paul Ryan once again reminds us that he is one of the few men in Washington with guts and brains operating in harmony. His budget asks the big question in American politics: What is the middle class willing to give up in order to save the country?

I am afraid that the answer will be: Not very much.

[. . .]

The reaction to Ryan’s tax plan will be the truly telling thing. He proposes to create two relatively low tax brackets but to do so in a way that achieves revenue neutrality by eliminating most deductions and exclusions. Almost certainly this will mean reducing or eliminating the mortgage-interest deduction, deductions for state and local taxes, and deductions for charitable giving. (Ramesh’s beloved child tax credit probably will survive, unfortunately.) The Committee to Reinflate the Bubble will fight tooth and talon to defend the mortgage-interest deduction, and they’ll have a great many middle-class homeowners behind them.

H/T to Kathy Shaidle for the link.

Update: Nick Gillespie thinks that the Ryan budget proposal is merely an echo of Obama’s plan, not a serious attempt to get the government’s finances in order:

In brief, the Ryan plan is not as bad as [President Obama’s] budget, which wants to spend $3.8 trillion in FY2013 and envisions spending $5.8 trillion in FY2022. Over the next 10 years, Obama assumes that federal spending would amount to 22.5 percent of GDP while revenues would average just 19.2 percent of GDP. That ain’t no way to run a country.

In this sense, Ryan’s plan is slightly better but still doesn’t pass the laugh test. He would spend $3.5 trillion in 2013 and $4.9 trillion in 2022 (all figures in the post are in current dollars unless otherwise noted). Spending as an average of GDP would average 20 percent of GDP and revenue would amount to just 18.3 percent.

[. . .]

Yet Ryan’s plan is weak tea. Here we are, years into a governmental deficit situation that shows no sign of ending. How is it that Ryan and the Republican leadership cannot even dream of balancing a budget over 10 years’ time? All of the discussion of reforming entitlements and the tax code and everything else is really great and necessary — I mean that sincerely — but when you cannot envision a way of reducing government spending after a decade-plus of an unrestrained spending binge, then you are not serious about cutting government. If Milton Friedman was right that spending is the proper measure of the government’s size and scope in everybody’s life, then the establishment GOP is signaling what we knew all along: They are simply an echo of the Democratic Party.

March 20, 2012

Kathy Shaidle on the SPLC’s most recently discovered threat to national security

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

In her column at Taki’s Magazine, Kathy examines the Southern Poverty Law Center’s most recent revelation:

The armchair Freedom Riders at the weirdly named Southern Poverty Law Center (or “$PLC” as one of its dogged critics prefers) have been courageously, er, browsing the Internet and have uncovered a potentially devastating threat to not only America’s females, but its national security:

Dudes trading tips on getting laid.

Yep. The biggest threat since David Duke and the rabid Klansmen are … pick-up artists.

Woodland white supremacists? Old and tired. New hotness? According to the SPLC’s most recent “Intelligence Report,” the latest “hate group” plaguing the United States is the online “pickup artist” “community,” AKA the “manosphere.”

[. . .]

“Roissy” — he took his nom de poon from a character in the S&M classic The Story of O — is the Tolkien of pickup artist Middle Earth, having invented or refined the manosphere’s glossary: alpha male, game, wingman, the “anti-slut defense” (“I don’t usually do this sort of thing…”), and negging (offering attractive women teasing insults instead of compliments: “You have really big ears. Don’t worry, I think it’s cute, kind of like a bunny.”).

Speaking of “Roissy” (who now uses the name “Heartiste” for his online activities), here is his take on Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of a Politically Acceptable Bell Curve:

I don’t have an argument with his economic numbers, although I think he probably understates the role automation, immigration and skill prerequisite inflation have had in the gutting of working class men’s job prospects and ability to merge seamlessly into functional family formation.

Murray is closer to the truth than a lot of his critics are when he blames cultural factors and bad policy for the dysfunction of the left side of the bell curve.

[. . .]

How absolutely brave… brave, I say! …of Murray to apportion most of the blame for the current state of affairs to men. Or, in this case, white men. This will surely win him lots of enemies amongst the feminists and social elites whose cocktail party invitations he haughtily throws in the trash in righteous, principled fury.

Look, I have no problem with shaming men who don’t want to work, or who can’t muster the motivation to at least try to find work. It’s not like the existence of self-destructive male bums is unheard of. But Murray DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS his proposed shaming solution with his explanation for the bleak male employment scenario just a few paragraphs above in the very same article! Once more:

    Simplifying somewhat, here’s my reading of the relevant causes: Whether because of support from the state or earned income, women became much better able to support a child without a husband over the period of 1960 to 2010. As women needed men less, the social status that working-class men enjoyed if they supported families began to disappear.

Where, pray tell, in that explanation does it follow that men are primarily to blame for their poor employment numbers? Doesn’t the exact opposite conclusion — that women’s mate choices are to blame for men dropping out — seem more obvious? Shouldn’t it be the case then, that single working women on the fast track to single motherhood and alpha cock carouseling are the ones deserving of shame?

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