Month: September 2016

Clemson University Bans Students from Making Harambe Jokes, Because Racism and Rape Culture

HarambeHarambe has been killed again. This time the perpetrator is Clemson University, which informed residential advisers on Friday that all public displays involving Harambe are strictly prohibited.

RAs were instructed to inform students that visual representations of Harambe—the gorilla who was killed by Cincinnati Zoo officials after a kid wandered into its enclosure—”are no longer allowed within our community.”

When pressed for an explanation, a Clemson official insisted that Harambe’s death has been “used to add to the rape culture as well as being a form of racism.”

Harambe just can’t catch a break, huh? First, people killed him. Now, he’s being blamed for rape culture and racism.

Note that Clemson isn’t just banning specific Harambe jokes it considers to be in bad taste—such as “dicks out for Harambe,” which is a racist microaggression and possibly a Title IX violation at UMass-Amherst. It’s banning all Harambe-related displays.

Students are still allowed to say the word “Harambe,” but if they draw Harambe on their whiteboards, “the individual/individuals will get in some trouble!” Campus Reform reports.

So it would seem that Harambe has achieved the same status as the Prophet Muhammad.

Of course, students who just talk about Harambe could also get in trouble, Campus Reform notes. Clemson Graduate Community Director Brooks Artis said in an email that that he hopes students are being “inclusive” in their choice of words, and reminds them that if they say anything that anyone finds offensive for any reason, they could be investigated on suspicion of violating Title IX.

As a reminder, the most recent racial incident at Clemson was a complete hoax.

Clemson is a public university, and it clearly needs a stern reminder that it may not prohibit students from celebrating the life of Harambe in accordance with their own spiritual beliefs. I propose that students wear Harambe T-shirts in the Clemson dormitories until the administration relents.

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Which Interventionist Quagmires Will Be Ignored at Tonight’s Debate?

It’s hard to tell what exactly is going to be discussed at tonight’s presidential debate between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump. The topics were announced as “America’s Direction,” “Achieving Prosperity” and “Securing America.” Those aren’t exactly topics as much as themes you might see at a convention or on a campaign website. Given that the debate commission is a collaboration of the Democratic and Republican parties, that should not come as a surprise. The “topics” do a good job revealing how shallow much of American politics is despite the pretensions some have about their candidate being the “serious” one.

That’s unfortunate. There are a plethora of substantive issues the next president will have to address that have been largely ignored in the general election cycle so far, not least of which are the United States’ many foreign entanglements and interventions. Such interventions say a lot about “America’s direction,” are often launched under the pretext of “securing America” but actually prevent it from “achieving prosperity.” Despite that, I would be surprised if a significant amount of time was spent on issues of foreign affairs, particularly in the absence of candidates like Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson or Green party nominee Jill Stein who at least offer critiques of U.S. military intervention abroad.

Syria – Syria has gotten more play in the general election cycle than some of the other countries the U.S. is involved in, via the issue of refugees (which until last year the Obama administration accepted virtually none of) as well as military action against ISIS. Trump’s success in the Republican party was due in part on a strong anti-immigration anti-refugee stance, which he’s only reinforced since winning the nomination. He’s proposed suspending immigration from countries compromised by terrorism but hasn’t specified which countries that would apply to. Depending on the definition you use, it’s not just countries like Syria that have been compromised by terrorism but countries like France as well. Hillary Clinton says she supports admitting more Syrian refugees into the United States, though she did not work toward that when she served as Secretary of State, the latter part of which coincided with the first few years of the Syrian civil war.

When it comes to military action against ISIS in Syria, however, the differences between Trump and Clinton are largely rhetorical. While Trump is likely to call Obama weak (an old Republican talking point about the Obama administration’s foreign policy) and say the U.S. needs to do more to combat ISIS in Syria, Clinton is likely to say Obama has done the right thing, and say the U.S. needs to do more to combat ISIS in Syria. Neither has offered many details on what exactly “more” entails outside of boilerplate pronouncements about increased cooperation with regional allies.

Libya – Libya has also gotten play in the election cycle so far. Since the U.S.-backed and Clinton-advocated 2011 intervention in the civil war, the security situation in Libya has only deteriorated. U.S. ground troops are now in Libya because of the rise of ISIS there since the intervention. Even President Obama has admitted failure to plan for the aftermath in Libya was the biggest mistake of his presidency, yet Clinton has insisted it was “too soon to tell” what the effect of the U.S. intervention has been. Trump may claim he was against the intervention in Libya from the beginning, but is unlikely to be able to articulate the principles that led to that opposition or that would lead to opposition to interventions in the future. Clinton may play “traffic cop” and insist Trump did not oppose the Libya intervention from the beginning. But she, too, is unlikely to articulate any kind of principles that might keep the U.S. out of future interventions that invite ISIS into countries in which it is not yet operating.

Iraq – During the Republican primary, Donald Trump got a lot of mileage out of his early opposition to Iraq war. In South Carolina, he called President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq possibly one of the “worst decisions” in the history of the American presidency. He won that primary despite many observers believing the critique of Bush would not go over well among South Carolina Republican voters, who are considered heavily “pro-military.” Hillary Clinton voted for the authorization to use military force in Iraq in 2002, but by the time of her first presidential campaign, in the 2008 cycle, she announced she had regretted that decision, yet interventionism has been a consistent position for her. She may insist Donald Trump was also supportive of the Iraq war in its run up, but neither nominee has a substantive critique of the decision to go to war that would inform them in a non-interventionist direction in the future.

Both Clinton and Trump have accepted the premise that the U.S. ought to do something about ISIS, which operates in Iraq as well as Syria, called for more U.S. action in that regard but declined to define that intervention in a specific way. Additionally, despite claiming to be an opponent of the Iraq war and claiming to support the withdrawal, Trump has also parroted the conservative critique that the withdrawal from Iraq enabled ISIS, even insisting he wasn’t being hyperbolic when he called President Obama a “founder” of ISIS.

Afghanistan – The war in Afghanistan, in its 15th year, barely got any attention in the last cycle and neither candidate has addressed it substantively this time. The U.S. helped local forces oust the Taliban government in Kabul relatively quickly but has been dealing with a Taliban insurgency ever since, one local forces seem unwilling or unable to fight against themselves. And in recent years, ISIS has set up shop in an unstable Afghanistan as well. Neither candidate has offered anything substantive about the war. As secretary of state, Clinton was responsible for a “diplomatic surge” in Afghanistan that came along with the troop surge. In fact, Clinton was among a number of high-level officials whose personal quibbles with each other thwarted any possibility of the surge actually having some kind of positive effect toward ending the war.

Yemen – Saudia Arabia has been waging a war in Yemen for the last year and a half that has been a sort of proxy war between the U.S., which funds Saudi efforts, and Iran, which allegedly backs rebels that overthrew the U.S. backed government. This war has gotten virtually no attention from the major party nominees and very little attention from the mainstream media. Barring Lester Holt bringing it up, it will almost certainly not be a topic tonight, even though it encapsulates many of the problems of U.S. intervention. An extended counterterrorism campaign by the U.S. that relied on information from the authoritarian government used to be touted by the White House as an example of a successful counterterrorism strategy has, since the collapse of the government and outbreak of war, been largely memory holed.

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Everything You Need to Know About The Debate – Event Details, Rules, Scandals…

The highly-anticipated first presidential debate of 2016 is finally upon us.  The event is expected to draw a record TV audience of 100mm likely making it the most-watched presidential debate of all time.  The candidates are expected to come out swinging as Politico points out that debates are typically won or lost in the first 30 minutes:

That’s when Al Gore first sighed, Mitt Romney knocked President Obama on his heels, and Marco Rubio, earlier this year, glitched in repeating the same talking point — over and over and over. It’s when Gore tried, unsuccessfully, to invade George W. Bush’s space, Richard Nixon was first caught wiping away sweat with a handkerchief (during the moderators’ introductions!) and Gerald Ford in 1976 made the ill-advised declaration that, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.”

With that, here are all the things that you need to know but are likely too lazy or simply not interested enough to track down on your own. 

THE DETAILS

Start Time:  9PM EST

 

TV Coverage:  Debate will be aired on all the major broadcast and cable news networks

 

Event Location:  Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

 

Moderator:  Lester Holt of NBC

 

THE RULES

Topics:  Debate will cover 3 topics including: “Securing America,” “America’s Direction” and “Achieving Prosperity“

 

Length:  Debate set to run 90-minutes straight with no commercial breaks (So if a coughing fit breaks out we’ll get to enjoy every second of it.)

 

Other:  Debate moderator Lester Holt does not have the authority to cut away from the stage during the epic 90-minute showdown and Microphone audio for either of the candidates is not to be manipulated.

 

THE SCANDALS

Gennifer Flowers:  The first scandal of the debate erupted over the weekend as the candidates traded tweets over who they would invite to watch the debate live in New York.  Hillary first announced plans to invite Mark Cuban, who has been critical of Trump, to which Trump responded with a threat to invite former Bill Clinton mistress Gennifer Flowers (see our post here).

Podium-gate:  The next point of contention proves that “size does matter”, at least to Hillary Clinton.  Last week, Hillary’s team demanded a step stool for their candidate so that the 5’4″ Hillary wouldn’t look small and frail beside the larger 6’2″ Trump.  While the debate commission denied the step stool they did allow a “custom-made” podium which was presumably scaled down by exactly 14% to match Hillary’s relative stature…this is the status of American politics folks.  Here’s a look at the podiums to be used tonight:

Podium

 

Moderator “Fact Checking”:  Of course, one of the biggest points of contention is whether the moderator, Lester Holt, will “fact check” candidates during the debate.  The Trump campaign has already stated that it does not believe Holt’s purpose as moderator is to police each candidate citing issues that arose in a 2012 debate in which CNN’s Candy Crowley “fact checked” Mitt Romney on the fly even though her “facts” were entirely wrong…oops.  Per the Daily Mail, the Clinton campaign, on the other hand, is already crying foul with manager Robbie Mook saying that “it’s unfair to ask that Hillary Clinton both play traffic cop with Trump, make sure that his lies are corrected, and also to present her vision for what she wants to do for the American people.”

Ear Mics:  The next scandal arose out of the last Commander in Chief forum hosted by Matt Lauer in which Hillary was accused of wearing an ear piece so as to receive guidance from advisers during the discussion.  According to the World Tribune, the issue prompted one Maryland voter to write a letter to the Federal Elections Commissioner, Matthew Petersen, seeking assurances that ear pieces would not be allowed though no such assurances were provided.  That said, Carlos Greer, of the Commission on Presidential Debates, sent out a message to news organizations on Sept. 9 banning devices that would allow presidential debate moderators get directions from their news teams.

Hillary

 

THE WALL STREET VIEW

Meanwhile, per Bloomberg, here’s what some wall street analysts think of the event that Goldman Sachs Group Chief U.S. Equity Strategist David Kostin dubbed “the biggest match-up since the Mayweather/Pacquiao bout.“

Athanasios Vamvakidis, head of G10 FX strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch:

“Having been in the driver’s seat for most of the year, central banks can now take a break and wait for the U.S. elections. We have been arguing that markets are underpricing the risks involved. As the polls now suggest a much narrower gap between the two candidates, we feel even stronger about our concerns…We see several clear fault lines where the outcome of the U.S. elections will likely matter for EM FX, namely: U.S. fiscal policy, trade policy and associated concerns over rising protectionism, U.S. corporate tax policy and repatriation of overseas earnings and finally geopolitics.”

Andres Jaime Martinez, FX and rates strategist at Barclays Capital Inc.:

“The single most important event in the U.S. will be the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump which is set to take place from 9pm to 10:30pm ET. It takes particular relevance as the share of undecided voters is somewhat higher compared to four years ago. Since the presidential race has been tightening, it seems that swing states will have increasing relevance as well as undecided voters in shaping the outcome.

 

As the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has tightened and we approach November 8, we expect a tighter correlation between the financial asset prices and the subjective assessment of the outcome of the elections. The higher percentage of undecided voters (around 20 percent) compared to four years ago (12 percent) increases the relevance of the debates as they could shift the odds in either direction. High yield and high beta assets should perform well except for those tightly linked to the outcome of the U.S. election as volatility has receded from its temporary spike.”

David Kostin, chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.:

“The first U.S. Presidential debate will take place on Monday, September 26 and viewership may approach Super Bowl proportions with an audience of perhaps 100 million…Regardless of victor, the most likely policy outcome of the election is increased fiscal spending. We recommend clients vote with their wallets and focus on the likely beneficiaries.

 

Health Care appears to be the sector most at risk from the election. Sec. Clinton’s criticism of drug pricing and Mr. Trump’s opposition to the Affordable Care Act have drawn investor focus to the sector as the election approaches. Health care providers are among the few industries that have demonstrated a statistical relationship with election odds in recent months.”

Martin Enlund, chief currency strategist at Nordea Markets:

“Most market participants are however greatly concerned that the U.S. could see a Republican in the White House. It is generally perceived that a Donald Trump presidency would be consistent with greater global economic-political uncertainty (troublesome for investment activity and manufacturing growth), and that Trump poses a risk to world trade, and so on.

 

As a consequence, similar to the wide-spread Brexit fears this summer, it might make sense for various accounts to not sell EUR/SEK if they fear that a Trump presidency could impact upon the global economy negatively.”

And, of course, the debate comes as the national polls reflect a very tight race…

Polls

 

As we’ve said before, grab your popcorn, this is going to be fun…

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Germany “Other” Bank: Commerzbank To Fire 9,000, 18% Of Its Entire Workforce

While the market’s attention has been transfixed by the latest crash in the stock of Europe’s biggest bank, now that concerns about Deutsche Bank’s $2 trillion balance sheet have violently resurfaced, it is worth recalling that Germany’s “other” mega bank, DB’s smaller rival, Commerzbank, whose balance sheet is hardly looking much healthier, is planning to cut around 9,000 jobs over the coming years as Germany’s second biggest lender pushes ahead with a restructuring plan, Handelsblatt reported earlier today, citing unnamed sources in the finance industry.

The round of layoffs would eliminate a massive 18% of the bank’s entire workforce.

Like in the case of Deutsche Bank, squeezed by negative European Central Bank interest rates, Commerzbank has been seeking ways to boost revenue by passing on costs to corporate customers and increasing fees for retail depositors, but profit margins remain thin. That leaves cost cutting high on the agenda.

Handelsblatt said it’s not clear yet whether Commerzbank will resort to outright dismissals. The bank’s restructuring will run through 2020 with costs of up to 1 billion euros ($1.13 billion), according to the newspaper.

In addition to the massive layoffs, the bank will scrap its dividend payments for 2016 as part of the strategy revamp due to be published by Chief Executive Martin Zielke on Friday, Handelsblatt reported.

All the soon to be laid off workers can send their thank you notes to Mario Draghi: no need to even pony up for international postage – the ECB is conveniently located in Frankfurt.

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Nate Silver: 51.1% Chance Of Trump Winning If Election Held Today

Nate Silver’s website “538” – best known for its (sometimes jarringly) inaccurate statistical forecasts – has adjusted its projections ahead of Monday’s debate, and as of this moment has tipped the odds in the favor of Republican nominee Donald Trump.

In the latest scenario, if the election were held today, the website gives Trump a 51.1% chance of winning the election, with a fractional advantage of 269.7 to 268 electoral votes, even as Trump loses the popular vote by less than 1%.

The win projection stems from Trump winning the key battleground states of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Nevada. The same projection shows Clinton winning Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Virginia.


The last time that Trump won the “now-cast” was July 29, after the Republican National Convention, and before Clinton’s “convention bump” that lasted through all of August and most of September.

One reason to discount Silver’s model is that a little over a month ago, the website said Clinton had a 92% chance of winning in the first week of August, and has been in a steady decline ever since.

As noted last night, Trump gained the national lead in the latest Morning Consult and Bloomberg head to head polls, and took the lead in Colorado, reducing Clinton’s chances of winning that state, although moments ago NBC/Survey Monkey announced that in its latest poll, Hillary has maintained her lead, as has been the custom for that particular poll.

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Low Oil Prices Are Not The Reason Oil Companies Are Going Bankrupt

Submitted by Dave Forest via OilPrice.com,

The reason oil companies have gone bankrupt over the past few years is not due to “historically low oil and natural gas prices”.

Here is a long term inflation adjusted price chart:

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x(Click to enlarge)

Does the current price look historically low on an inflation adjusted basis?

Here is the chart not adjusted for inflation.

 

Natural Gas prices are closer to the lower end of the price range. Below is the inflation adjusted long term natural gas price.

 

However, for as far back as the above data goes the price of natural gas is regularly between $2-4/mcf. This is the natural range. The higher prices have all been “spikes” due to hurricanes, La Nina events or other short term phenomenon.

Here is the non-adjusted price chart. As you can see these are not historically low prices.

 

It appears the 2006-2011 period for oil and natural gas were HISTORICALLY HIGH prices.

*  *  *

The real reason energy companies are going bankrupt is more technical.

Reserve base lending for unconventional reservoir projects became a ponzi scheme. This is how it works.

Step 1) An oil company borrows money or issues equity to drill a well.

 

Step 2) The well “discovers” oil. The reason I put discover in quotations is that the resource (not reserve, there is a difference) potential of shale source rocks has been known for decades.

 

Step 3) Estimate the resource and reserve potential.

 

NB: Resource is properly defined as uneconomic at the current price. Reserve is properly defined as economic at the current price.

 

Step 4) Book the reserve as an asset on the balance sheet as per SEC legislation.

 

Step 5) Borrow money against the reserve.

 

Step 6) Drill more wells and book more reserves and borrow more money.

 

Step 7) Repeat until you cannot repeat again.

This process was not always a Ponzi scheme. Before the mantra of peak oil and the fear the world as running out of oil this practice was done conservatively. But when the idea that world was short of crude supply the thinking became that oil was a one way trade. This gave Wall Street the confidence that lending money against high cost reserves to develop more high cost reserves was a sound practice. On the other side of the transaction little thought by producers was given to the scenarios that would cause these reserves revert to resources and be treated differently on their balance sheet.

Furthering the Ponzi scheme was Central Bank policies of zero percent interest rates. This cheap source of funds decreased the discount rates for cash flow streams, increasing the net present value and distorting the time value of money calculation for these type of projects.

Under this strategy developing more reserves meant more debt. When prices reverted to the mean, reserves became resources and these companies became insolvent as resources are not the same quality asset as reserves and are treated differently under SEC legislation.

Exacerbating the problem was now these producers have to maximize cash flow to cover the interest cost which creates more excess supply and more downward pressure on prices turning more reserves back into resources impairing more balance sheets and strengthening the negative feedback loop.

The bankruptcies happening today are the result of historically high oil prices, and this time it is a different type of thinking and central bank distortions, but not low prices.

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US Navy Sailor Threatened With Jail After Breaking Regulation By Refusing To Stand For National Anthem

Late last week, Navy Reserve Forces Command published guidance warning troops that they can be punished or prosecuted for refusing to stand when the Star Spangled Banner is played. This was in response to two sailors going public with their decision to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. It appears the warning did not work as Fox News reports that Intelligence Specialist 2nd Class Janaye Ervin, a reservist stationed at Pearl Harbor, lost her security clearance and was threatened with jail by the Navy after refusing to stand for the national anthem.

The Navy published guidance last week…

A message directed at active-duty sailors and reserve personnel on active duty cites Navy Regulation 1205, which mandates that personnel in uniform must stand at attention and face the flag when the national anthem is played.

 

It also notes that a Navy administrative message published in 2009 requires Navy active-duty personnel in civilian clothes to face the flag, stand at attention, and place their right hand over their heart.

 

"Additionally, Sailors receive training on the appropriate usage of social media, and must not use it to discredit the Naval Service, and should be reminded it could potentially be used as evidence against them," the guidance continues, a message apparently directed at the two sailors who published posts on Facebook about their protests.

 

Failure to comply with these regulations, the message said, is punishable under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and constitutes commission of a serious offense — grounds for administrative separation from the service.

 

"While military personnel are not excluded from the protections granted by the First Amendment, the US Supreme Court has stated that the different character of our community and of the military mission requires a different application of those protections," the guidance states.

And despite these warnings, Janaye Ervin went ahead and refused to stand during the national anthem.

Her explanation…

My fellow Americans,

 

I have been proudly serving in the US Navy Reserve Force since November 2008.

 

I have pledged to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and to spread freedom and democracy around the world

 

I will never waver from that pledge.

 

On September 19,2016, while in uniform, I made the conscious decision to not stand for the Star Spangled Banner because I feel like a hypocrite, singing about "land of the free" when, I know that only applies to some Americans.

 

I will gladly stand again, when ALL AMERICANS are afforded the same freedom.

 

The Navy has decided to punish me for defending the Constitution and has taken away my equipment I need to do my Naval job.

 

It was my pleasure serving my country, I love it dearly, that is why I must do this for you. I will keep you all posted on what happens next!

Which she posted on Facebook…

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Trauma Programming: “Up To Our Eyeballs In Manufactured Strife”

Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

As the nation awaits the gruesome spectacle of the so-called debate between Trump and Clinton in an election campaign beneath the dignity of a third-world shit-hole, we are once again up to our eyeballs in manufactured racial strife led by the deliberately prevaricating New York Times. Read today’s front-page story: What We Know About the Details of the Police Shooting in Charlotte, insinuating that the police acted recklessly in the incident.

The facts in the Charlotte, NC, shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott are these: he was shot after refusing repeated loud verbal commands to drop a gun. A gun was found on the scene with his fingerprints on it, along with an ankle holster. Video recordings provide a clear audible record of these commands. Yet the Times story says: “Body and dashboard camera footage released on Saturday provided no clear evidence that Mr. Scott had a gun. In the video, Mr. Scott’s arms were at his sides and he was backing away from his vehicle when he was shot.

It happened that the various vehicles parked on the scene interfered with the all the video footage of the critical moment: dashboard cam, officer’s body cam, and the cell phone cam of Mr. Scott’s wife. But the insinuation seems to be that because the video doesn’t show a gun, perhaps there wasn’t one.

The police insist that Mr. Scott was holding a gun. Why is The New York Times bent on ambiguating this story? The officer who shot Mr. Scott was black. The Charlotte police chief is black. Does the Times mean to say that they are incompetent, dishonest, and reckless? Does the Times seek to reinforce a popular notion that police in general, including black police and their supervisors, are determined to oppress black Americans generally? Does the Times wish to sow even more distrust and animosity between black America and the police?

It sure seems that way. And what is The New York Times’s interest in dragging out the supposed ambiguity of the Scott case? I shall tell you why: because yielding to the obvious truth in the matter would not support the election campaign meme that Black America requires the protection of the Democratic Party against genocidal police forces across the nation.

One result so far is several nights of “protest marches” in Charlotte that led to the shooting death of another person, a black man, by another black man in the crowd, for reasons as yet unknown, plus a lot of property damage due to looting and mayhem on the part of the mob.

Why is it so important to political progressives to keep feeding the story that great numbers of black people are being unjustly murdered by police? The facts, of course, suggest that this is not true. Earlier this summer, The Washington Post could not ignore the study published by black Harvard economist Roland Fryer, Jr. How a controversial study found that police are more likely to shoot whites, not blacks. And why in the long-running issue is it such a low priority to ask the truly salient question in all of these fatal confrontations: how are the suspects actually behaving during the incidents in question?

As a blog-writer, I correspond with some interesting people. One of them is a middle-aged black man who has worked for a long time in the Baltimore black ghetto. He is one of those rare Americans these days not susceptible to pre-cooked ideas about what is actually going on in this country. He would prefer to remain anonymous for reasons that ought to be self-evident, but I want you to see his interesting theory about what is going on in the black community vis-à-vis the police shooting meme. The subject line in his email to me was “Trauma programming.”

Its a type of narcissism designed to compensate for [the] fact nobody (of any value) really wants to deal/interact with them; therefore, they gladly adopt this false narrative that “somebody is after us and wants to kill us…”

See how that raises their value by claiming somebody “wants us?”

Its like the ugly fat girls obsessed with getting raped/sexually assaulted.

Truth be told, because so many black people are not useful to each other and/or other people… they end up only a liability. Therefore, most people spend a significant amount of time trying to dodge them. (but the police can’t do this)

This increases their sense of worthlessness, which forces them to cling ever so tighter to this false narrative of  “the police are after us and want to kill us…”

(nobody wants you and we wish you would just go away)

But wait,

it gets worse.

At this point, some black people decide, “try as you might, I’m NOT going to allow you to ignore me, because I’m going to act like a belligerent a-hole until I force you to deal/interact with me…”

NOW you gotta call the police.

And when the police show up, the black person says:

“see, here come the police; they are always after us because they want to kill us…”

But at the end of the day, the key is; the “Long Emergency” is generating increasing numbers of superfluous people; black people are only the most visible, vocal element of this phenomenon.

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Hooray for Factory Farming!

HarvestingOrientalyDreamstimeThe Union of Concerned Scientists dismisses “industrial farming” as “the outdated, unsustainable system that dominates U.S. food production.” Greenpeace urges people to “say no to industrial agriculture” while denouncing “our broken and unsustainable food system.” They typically recommend a switch to small-scale organic farming as a supposedly sustainable form of food production. Considering, for example, that organic wheat yields are anywhere from 64 percent to just half of those produced by conventional farming, it’s a very interesting definition of “sustainable.”

In the Sunday New York Times, Jayson Lusk, a professor of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University shows in a wonderful op-ed what unsustainable nonsense is being peddled to a credulous public by clueless activists about the alleged unsustainability of conventional farming. Lusk explains how the dramatic increase in productivity in modern farming since 1950 has prevented the plowing down of hundreds of millions of acres of additional land and the production of more milk and meat growing fewer animals. Lusk notes:

Before “factory farming” became a pejorative, agricultural scholars of the mid-20th century were calling for farmers to do just that — become more factorylike and businesslike. From that time, farm sizes have risen significantly. It is precisely this large size that is often criticized today in the belief that large farms put profit ahead of soil and animal health.

FarmingNYTimesBut increased size has advantages, especially better opportunities to invest in new technologies and to benefit from economies of scale. Buying a $400,000 combine that gives farmers detailed information on the variations in crop yield in different parts of the field would never pay on just five acres of land; at 5,000 acres, it is a different story.

These technologies reduce the use of water and fertilizer and harm to the environment. Modern seed varieties, some of which were brought about by biotechnology, have allowed farmers to convert to low- and no-till cropping systems, and can encourage the adoption of nitrogen-fixing cover crops such as clover or alfalfa to promote soil health.

Herbicide-resistant crops let farmers control weeds without plowing, and the same technology allows growers to kill off cover crops if they interfere with the planting of cash crops. The herbicide-resistant crops have some downsides: They can lead to farmers’ using more herbicide (though the type of herbicide is important, and the new crops have often led to the use of safer, less toxic ones).

But in most cases, it’s a trade-off worth making, because they enable no-till farming methods, which help prevent soil erosion.

These practices are one reason soil erosion has declined more than 40 percent since the 1980s.

Improvements in agricultural technologies and production practices have significantly lowered the use of energy and water, and greenhouse-gas emissions of food production per unit of output over time. United States crop production now is twice what it was in 1970.

There is one continent where organic agriculture is the dominant form of farming – Africa. Cereal yields in Nigeria average 1,594 kilograms per hectare (kph); in Niger 436 kph; and Kenya 1,628 kph. In the U.S. cereal yield is 7,637 kilograms per hectare – yields are about five times higher. Due to ever more productive factory farming, humanity has very likely reached peak farmland and more land will be returned to nature as more food is grown on less land. What’s outdated and unsustainable are environmentalist demands to abandon modern farming technologies.

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Hooray for Factory Farming!

HarvestingOrientalyDreamstimeThe Union of Concerned Scientists dismisses “industrial farming” as “the outdated, unsustainable system that dominates U.S. food production.” Greenpeace urges people to “say no to industrial agriculture” while denouncing “our broken and unsustainable food system.” They typically recommend a switch to small-scale organic farming as a supposedly sustainable form of food production. Considering, for example, that organic wheat yields are anywhere from 64 percent to just half of those produced by conventional farming, it’s a very interesting definition of “sustainable.”

In the Sunday New York Times, Jayson Lusk, a professor of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University shows in a wonderful op-ed what unsustainable nonsense is being peddled to a credulous public by clueless activists about the alleged unsustainability of conventional farming. Lusk explains how the dramatic increase in productivity in modern farming since 1950 has prevented the plowing down of hundreds of millions of acres of additional land and the production of more milk and meat growing fewer animals. Lusk notes:

Before “factory farming” became a pejorative, agricultural scholars of the mid-20th century were calling for farmers to do just that — become more factorylike and businesslike. From that time, farm sizes have risen significantly. It is precisely this large size that is often criticized today in the belief that large farms put profit ahead of soil and animal health.

FarmingNYTimesBut increased size has advantages, especially better opportunities to invest in new technologies and to benefit from economies of scale. Buying a $400,000 combine that gives farmers detailed information on the variations in crop yield in different parts of the field would never pay on just five acres of land; at 5,000 acres, it is a different story.

These technologies reduce the use of water and fertilizer and harm to the environment. Modern seed varieties, some of which were brought about by biotechnology, have allowed farmers to convert to low- and no-till cropping systems, and can encourage the adoption of nitrogen-fixing cover crops such as clover or alfalfa to promote soil health.

Herbicide-resistant crops let farmers control weeds without plowing, and the same technology allows growers to kill off cover crops if they interfere with the planting of cash crops. The herbicide-resistant crops have some downsides: They can lead to farmers’ using more herbicide (though the type of herbicide is important, and the new crops have often led to the use of safer, less toxic ones).

But in most cases, it’s a trade-off worth making, because they enable no-till farming methods, which help prevent soil erosion.

These practices are one reason soil erosion has declined more than 40 percent since the 1980s.

Improvements in agricultural technologies and production practices have significantly lowered the use of energy and water, and greenhouse-gas emissions of food production per unit of output over time. United States crop production now is twice what it was in 1970.

There is one continent where organic agriculture is the dominant form of farming – Africa. Cereal yields in Nigeria average 1,594 kilograms per hectare (kph); in Niger 436 kph; and Kenya 1,628 kph. In the U.S. cereal yield is 7,637 kilograms per hectare – yields are about five times higher. Due to ever more productive factory farming, humanity has very likely reached peak farmland and more land will be returned to nature as more food is grown on less land. What’s outdated and unsustainable are environmentalist demands to abandon modern farming technologies.

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