Democracy ritualizes violence

From Jim Butcher's latest, h/t Instapundit.
...   "We're a civilized society, are we not?"
... "Since when, miss?  We are a democracy.. The heart of democracy is violence. In order to decide what to do, we take a count of everyone for and against it, and then do whatever the larger side wishes to do. We’re having a symbolic battle, its outcome decided by simple numbers. It saves us time and no end of trouble counting actual bodies — but don’t mistake it for anything but ritualized violence."

Battlefield by the numbers
The strategists and generals are in parties
We are the voter fodder.

Democracy lets more viewpoints be represented on the battlefield.  When a more violent group prevails, it suspends elections or lets presidents run extra terms, and fewer viewpoints are represented.   When the election rules are followed, the market for power is more efficient.

I confess having read only one of Butcher's, but just downloaded Cinder Spires, first in a new series.
Added: Read part of the book and abandoned it. A lot of text goes to developing pretend scenarios without advancing the characters.

Good news from Canada for Jeb and Hillary

A society in decline puts family members in public posts.
Viewed by American cartoonist, Bok.

<


And a bonus of Halloween humour, hat tip to Powerline.
Our little snowflakes are not particularly nice people.

 

Running against the media: NBC Temporarily Loses February Debate. Reibus shows It was worse than you thought.

The media beat Harper but in the States, maybe the balance just shifted.  Reibus' letter this morning firing NBC is posted on-line.  Besides the gotcha questions we saw, Last week, CNBC broke hidden promises.  The first question was to give each candidate an opener economics question but didn't.  (Trump got the clown campaign jibe).   Equal speaking time was promised but not delivered.  (Trace candidate Kasich, the only guy who liked the panel, had more time than Carson, Trump and Bush)  The evening's theme was promised "job growth, taxes, technology, retirement and the health of our national economy" and it wasn't.  Reibus goes on to enumerate the other failings which we already knew about, the ones the audience booed.

This is neither too little nor too late.  Reibus holds out the olive branch at the end of the first paragraph, "We simply cannot continue with NBC without full consultation with our campaigns.". Note he is saying that if the candidates, not the NRC, can be persuaded, the debate is back on track.  I expect it will.

The other network bosses are busy reading this letter with their morning jo.   Milton Friedman explained how it is with politicians and it's the same for the Journolist crowd:  "Make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing." (50 second video clip).

RNC leverage over NBC group:  "14 million people watched, easily making the much-derided debate the most-watched program in CNBC's 30-year history. Because advertisers paid $250,000 apiece, it was "also the most profitable night in the network's history,"

Added: It's unfair of me to blame the media for the whole mess since Harper's team neglected to update itself and to do so warmly.

Update:  Riebus was pushed:   "Republican presidential campaigns are planning to gather in Washington, D.C., on Sunday evening to plot how to alter their party’s messy debate process — and how to remove power from the hands of the Republican National Committee".

Not Halloween Hocus Pocus. Wrap your mind around this.

While we're making sense of October 19th, Syrian refugees booking in, and and F35's being booked out,  physicists this week removed almost the last spooky scintilla of doubt that something can be in two or more places at once until seen. "Spooky entanglement" is mainstream science, not Halloween hocus pocus.  Keep it in mind while speaking up for a better Canada. What matters today in politics isn't the big picture.

"Particles do not take on formal properties until they are measured or observed in some way. Until then, they can exist simultaneously in two or more places. Once measured, however, they snap into a more classical reality, existing in only one place."

No Lefty War Protestors showed up. Hypocrisy is not a bug, it's the game plan.

From brilliant David Burge:

We got Obama Lite

Analyst, David Solway, writes painfully about the "spectacularly unqualified" Trudeau and our path to the Socialist Republic of Canada. The only thing he left out is the lacklustre Conservative campaign.  We didn't all vote to favour the ideas of Trudeau fils,  Some were just fed up.

 Read the rest here. citing a dozen portents.

"A nonentity whose CV would in any sane society have generated howls of laughter. ..  He is, in short, Canada's Obama, and the nation, like the U.S., will rue the day it put so reckless and inept a driver behind the wheel of national policy".

He's actually quite a nice family guy, but shallow.
Perhaps, as this old picture suggests,
he can be led about by handlers.

The Solar KO's of AD 775 and 994 would disable the modern world.

The solar explosion in 2012 missed us and the Carrington Event in 1859 that started fires in telegraph offices was tiny compared to the solar storms now confirmed from AD 775 and AD 994.  Ice cores from Greenland to Antarctica show those solar storms "far exceeded any known events observed by instrumental measurements on Earth".

Forget about carbon dioxide (which is plant food, after all) and worry about this.  No tax money can be diverted to make the sun behave although money should go to hardening our com lines, data bases, and power grids.

Carrington event won't be benign in 2016

Gatekeepers Are Losing Control

The cost of reaching for the levers of power has come down by an order of magnitude.  Carson and Trump are cruising on earned media and Trump doesn't have to cuddle up to money bags.  Canada would have more choice in leaders if voters weighed in on who gets to be PM as well as who represents the riding.   The LPC, CPC and NDP party gate keepers have more control on who gets to be boss here than under a presidential CEO system.

Digitally-powered emails, blogs, facebook, twitter, texts and a proliferation of channels and websites have multiplied the doors into the public eye and brought the cost of contact to pennies-per-thousand-people.  Blogging Tories is part of this revolution.

Carson has been a neurosurgeon and manager but never part of inner circle politics but here he is leading in recent Iowa polls.

Money Bags Or Small Donors: Who Backs Whom And The Outlook For 2016

Last time the candidate with the most small donors won. Obama beat Romney.  The three who fit that bill this time around are Carson, Cruz and Trump and, oddly, they are the front runners.  The trend is to favour thousands of small over dozens of large.

Three data troves show it:  The ratios October 16th for all Republican candidates, the historic ratio of big donors to small ones for the last five presidential contests, and the ratios for all congressmen in 2012.

In the second chart, Romney had seven times more fat than lean donors while his opponent, Obama, had three times more lean than fat.  Obama won.  So far this cycle in the first chart, only Carson, Cruz and Trump raised more money from little guys and Trump is asking his to be ended.  Oddly, they are the front runners.

"Small donor" means $200 in the first chart, $2000 in the second chart, and increments of not more than $200 in the third.
It's worth noting that money bags played a bigger role in past presidential elections than they do now, thanks to digital media and on-line funding. (2nd chart)
It's sad to note that the congressmen chart  (the 3rd one) shows that fat money plays an outsize role in who gets elected, only 1/6th of the candidates being more popular with the common citizen than with the insiders.  The big givers are 1% of the 1% in America.

Story at Huffington Post October 16th

Posted at scout.com

Posted by The Sunlight Foundation

"Arctic waters unpolluted". 31 Bits of Plastic.

Partisan headline:  "Plastic Litter Taints The Sea Surface, Even In The Arctic"
Alternate headline:  "Arctic waters unpolluted"

The sky is falling.
One plastic floater every 180 miles

Researchers found what they looked for after peering from the bridge while covering 5600 km by boat in the arctic.  They concede "the number sounds low".  The people from the Wegener Institute spotted 31 bits of plastic debris, less than one old Javex bottle or fishing float every 180 kilometers. That is so low, a better report would say, "Arctic waters unpolluted".  They point out plastic can break into smaller pieces too small to see from a boat.  They remind us that there is more on the bottom than on the surface and there are six known clumps of garbage on the world's oceans.  But give me a break and stop pushing the alarm button to get attention and research money.

First Past the Post in 2020

Three things are equal in influence:  A leader who thinks he is right, a majority of the governing board, and a majority of the voters. We got two out of three this time around: Trudeau has the big hat and Liberals hold 184 out of 338 seats in the House of Commons. The voters will have no great influence on Canada's next five years unless they rally to a flag. 

The scales are tipped to favour the majority in Justin's head and the other one in the House of Commons.  As Wikipedia posts on the election: Harper won last time with 39.62% of the popular vote (An outrage that 60% of Canada was opposed to) and Trudeau won this time with 39.47%  (A sigh of relief for all of Canada and a repudiation of Harper).  [These numbers were posted at smalldeadanimals but the post has disappeared]

The leader was picked in a 50% plus one convention.  The MP's were picked in a first-past-the-post ballot.   Despite Trudeau's boast, the next federal election will be decided the same way as the last one because the Liberals would have won 49 fewer seats in a proportional system. 


June 17th headline at the National Post: TRUDEAU ANNOUNCES PLAN TO KILL FIRST-PAST-THE-POST BY THE NEXT ELECTION.   This promise just passed it's Best-Before date.
October 19th results re-cast proportionally, as published in the Vancouver Sun:

"Whatever you do to my daughter"

From PJ Media, "Whatever you do to my daughter, I'll do to you".

"Harper - The Accidental PM". and "Empty Suit worse than Mulcair". An American View.

From Dillian's investment newsletter :

"Harper, in some ways, had an accidental 10-year reign. Canada is about 60% left-wing and 40% right-wing, but has two left-wing parties (the Liberals, who are center-left, and the NDP, who are allegedly far left) that have been splitting their votes in every election.

Canada is slipping into recession, and Harper, sort of a Canadian Sean Hannity, has worn out his welcome over time with his hawkishness/paranoia.

Trudeau, I think, is a little further left than people give him credit for, with a clear authoritarian streak.

Canada’s budget—which is basically balanced—will, in a few years, reach a deficit of 10% of GDP.  That’s not good for the Canadian dollar, which has been in a two-plus-year bear market. And I am aggressively shorting it.

Trudeau has a reputation of being somewhat of an empty suit, a know-nothing—and these are the sorts of things that his own supporters acknowledge. Canadian investors have told me privately that they believe this outcome to be even worse than if Mulcair had been elected, which is really saying something."

Jared Dillian's newsletter is an occasional top up to the free weekly newsletter from John Mauldin.

Defeat the Media Party before the next election, never mind Trudeau fils.

We always have LIV's but who steers their vote?  Low Information Voters are swayed by the same Media Party that registered to campaign against Harper in the election, the Media Party that slants news and opinion every day of every year, not just 78 days every fourth year. ( The journalists reporting our election belong to a union registered to lobby for the other side.)

The premier equalizer is the speed-of-light internet with blogs, twitters and facebook posts that creep every day past the gatekeepers of the news.  Videos of what politicians actually said today and in the past are accessible.  Blogging Tories is one tool that weaponizes conservative citizens to be heard widely despite having no war chest filled with lucre.

The late journalist, Liebling, came up with
the freedom of the press quote.

Scarcely ten years have passed since the smartphone revolution and politics-as-usual will be shaken to its core for at least two more decades. The government scene must yet bend to accommodate some millions of new voices.

 Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one" is the old truth.  The new truth is that any citizen with a will to be heard can publish freely and cheaply. The market price of political influence is dropping as competition is added.

Cheers for Blogging Tories and behind the scenes to Stephen Taylor and Craig Smith.

Modern man gets less sleep? UNTRUE.

I was convinced we sleep less at night than pre-industrial man ..... that the electric light, phones, tvs, and busy schedules shaved hours off every day's rest. It appears to be untrue.  Sleep time is a species characteristic more than a cultural one. 

Jerome Siegel of the University of California (Los Angeles) decided to measure sleep time in three hunter gatherer tribes, two in Africa and one in the Bolivian jungle. The lean men pictured from the San tribe in Namibia don't look like world wide web people.  Sleep averaged out six to seven hours!  People didn't go to bed until several hours after sunset and generally got up a little ahead of dawn.

Conrad Black: Time for a Time Out.

He co-founded the National Post to help Conservatives win but says Conservatives failed to renew themselves and deserve time out Tuesday.  

After making the best summary I've seen of the great good done by Stephen Harper at home and away, he follows with a harsh take-down.  The consolation prize is that Justin Trudeau may grow in office. The prize is small.

Politicians need a new incentive to leave money in your pocket.

Bureaucrats are penalized if they don't spend their budget every year.  Politicians are one step up the food chain and are rewarded for spending all the money they can collect from you.  Why would they stop before you squawk when they are praised for spending money in the riding?  Tax collection is a rigged lottery.  Everyone buys a ticket but not everyone gets a prize.  Winning tickets go to the fixers, not to the lucky girl and boy.

Friction is a bug in a motor, reducing efficiency.  Friction is a feature in government because it feeds those who make a living doing government stuff.  How can you expect those civil servants and MP's and lobbyists to ask for less to live on? Sadly, the more friction there is, the more you need a fixer to tweak the tax code or cut a cheque, to get by the obstacles of government.   Greater spending is rewarded and inefficiency keeps people employed.  Better incentives are needed.

I'm viewing lawmaking separately from redistributing money  to make this argument.  (It's worth remembering that some countries with lots of oil don't rely on taxes.) We have a wonderful job in our country, "The Receiver General", defined by his ability to receive any given amount of our money.  He should be rated the same as charities: What percentage of funds raised goes to administration?  In some programs, administration is the main benefactor.  In others that mail a redistributed cheque to every parent or every pensioner, the "pay to the order of" party is efficiently favoured.

Ask for more taxpayers to participate in the government market

The starting point for reform is to increase the influence of taxpayers on spending and to simplify the redistribution of the take.   The layers of management needed to get a job done has shrunk in business, not so much in governments.   Remember when you needed a bank but now just need a bank app in your pocket?

The incentive to leave money in our pocket is competition from the taxpayers.
The fall-back is to bribe politicians with rewards into the millions of dollars when Canadians prosper and unemployment plunges.
In short,
open the market to more tax-payiing customers
or create a legal market in kickbacks for pols.

ISIS warriors get a haircut

Jihadis have been shaving off their beards and running from Aleppo for the Turkey border. See striking photos.  Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are changing the rules with force and can prevail in much of Syria.  The Saudis will then have to defend their role as Keeper of the Holy Places.  

Trumpaholic II

I think I'll have another drink.  

Exhibit 1   Does he negotiate well?
Trump called his top rival Carson and they co-signed an ultimatum to CBS to limit debate to two hours and include opening and closing statements. The other Republicans were grumbling that they hadn't been consulted, the debate was too long and there were no statements.  Trump recruited an ally and leveraged his advantage (eyeballs watching CBS for advertising revenue) while the rest wimped out. The Art of the Deal.  CBS blinked.

Exhibit 2  Did he treat past winners well on his Apprentice show?

"When Fortune surveyed most of the winners from the original, pre-celebrity series, they praised his loyalty, attention to detail, and willingness to share practical advice once they came to work for him. One described Trump as “a guy who held up his end of the bargain,” adding, “he truly took me under his wing.”

Exhibit 3   Will he be hard to bribe?

"One odd thing about the Republican presidential race is that the strong front-runner, Donald Trump, isn't fundraising. Soliciting contributions takes a huge amount of the time for most candidates, and the quarterly reports of how much they have raised and how much cash they have on hand become carefully-watched measures of their campaigns' viability. None of that applies to Trump".

    (He has received a little over $5,000,000 unsollicited.  His biggest expense is T-shirts & hats with use of his own airplane coming second.   He phones, he tweets, people come to his apartment and he earns a lot of free media.)

Signing his income tax return, posted on Twitter by himself.

Dem debate snapshot

The popular vote by a landslide goes to Sanders with Webb 2nd and Clinton a distant 3rd. (400,000 voted at Drudge). Sanders raised a ton of money immediately after and gained 35,000 twitter followers..   Despite this, Bernie Sanders "went face first into the tank for Hillary on her emails" and you know he'll drop out before the finish line if he won't attack her sneaky character and judgement error.  This fetched an unfeigned smile from Hillary.  As Trump (who tweeted and was bored by the whole thing but picked up 70,000 twitter followers) said, "she did what she had to do". It was a good night for her. Then she made herself a target by saying she was proud of making Republicans her enemies.  That looks after half the country. When Sanders said we should stop talking about Clinton's emails, the press cheered.  Most also stayed in their seats when the national anthem was sung, confirming why Instapundit calls them "Democratic operatives with bylines."   In evidence, CNN is deleting critical comments by Sanders supporters from its post debate site.

Fifteen million watched compared to twenty four for the GOP.  This is being mocked on line but is a Dem record.