WC Varones

A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight.
-- Proverbs 11:1

And what of a society whose entire economy is based on a false-balance fiat currency whose value is tied to no just weight but decreed by modern Pharisees?

Last December, CNBC asked eight of its smartest on-air smarty-pants to play a stock-picking game for 2014.

Here are their initial picks (they were allowed to trade during the year; some did and some didn't).

Here's where they stand as of Dec 29: four ahead of the S&P's approximate 15% gain by 7% - 11% each, and three behind the S&P by 18% - 29% each. Oh, and Simon Baker of Baker Asset Management dropped out midway through the year after two of his three picks were absolutely destroyed in the first half. The totals for his picks for the year? -17%, or 32% behind the S&P 500.

The average return of the eight stock-pickers? 6%, or less than half the return of the S&P 500.

Moral of the story: don't get your stock-picking advice from CNBC.

And don't even get me started on Jim Cramer.

"Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past" - headline, The Independent, March 20, 2000.

"Boxing Day weather: Up to 15cm of snow, gale force winds and severe cold predicted" - headline, The Independent, December 26, 2014.

Beavers boost emissions with 800 million kg of methane every year

... or maybe it's more like South Park:

The CIA force-fed detainees through their rectums, and called it a “well acknowledged medical technique.” One detainee suffered from an anal fissure and “symptomatic rectal prolapse”—when parts of the rectum protrude from the anus and are visible outside the body.

UPDATE: James Taranto settles it. South Park:

“Cartman has a ‘brilliant’ idea, reasoning . . . it could be possible that eating food through the rectum can cause defecation through the mouth. The other boys (especially Kyle) think it is stupid and disgusting, and Cartman bets him $20 it will work.”—Wikipedia.org summary of “Red Hot Catholic Love,” aired July 3, 2002

French jihadis find life in a medieval theocracy difficult, cry for their mommies.

Reposted from 2010.  More relevant now, obviously. Long before Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren were "fundamentally transforming" America, the first settlers had their own little experiment with socialism.

From Karl Denninger:

The first winter was disasterous - nearly half of the Pilgrims died of starvation, pneumonia and tuberculosis. Many claim that Bradford's first wife perished that first winter, but that is not quite true - she actually fell off the Mayflower quite close to land and drowned, never making it to Plymouth (he later remarried.)

During the first two years the colony lived under what could only be called Communism, enshrined in the Mayflower Compact. Each person was accorded a "share" of the totality of what was produced at the colony, and each person was expected to do their part in working toward the common good. The land, and that upon it, was owned by the colony as a collective.

It not only did not work out, it nearly killed them all.

William Bradford wrote in his diary "For in this instance, community of property (so far as it went) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment which would have been to the general benefit and comfort. For the young men who were most able and fit for service objected to being forced to spend their time and strength in working for other men’s wives and children, without any recompense. The strong man or the resourceful man had no more share of food, clothes, etc., than the weak man who was not able to do a quarter the other could. This was thought injustice.”

After the second winter, realizing that the colony had survived only through the friendship and largesse of the native Americans, and would soon perish if changes were not made, Bradford tore up the Mayflower Compact. He instead assigned each family a plot of land to be their property, to be worked as the family saw fit, and with the fruits of that land to be their own. It was the beginning of private property rights in the New World.

The result? Again, from his diary: "It made all hands very industrious, so that much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could devise, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better satisfaction.”

From the very day that Bradford tore up the Mayflower Compact, Plymouth began to prosper. Within a year the colonists found themselves with more food than they could eat. Flush with a bountiful harvest far in excess of their need for food and having bartered for all the goods they needed to get through the winter, they had a feast of thanks with their Indian trading partners.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the leftist teachers unions to teach this lesson to your children. Better show them this video from Reason:

Original footage courtesy of BBC: Seals raping penguins.

CNN's Matt Hoye is an idiot, mindlessly regurgitating White House talking points.

At the end of the APEC trade summit in China, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a climate change agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping that would cut both countries' greenhouse gas emissions by close to a third over the next two decades.


Under the deal, the United States would cut its carbon emissions between 26-28% -- from levels established in 2005 -- by 2025. China would peak its carbon emissions no later than 2030 and would also increase the use of non-fossil fuels to 20% by 2030.


[...]


A senior administration official calls the goals both "ambitious and achievable," but also acknowledged that U.S. domestic politics could put a damper on the announcement. Saying "leading climate deniers" in the GOP might try to stop the initiative, the official hinted the President may act alone if necessary.

China promising to do something 16 years from now in exchange for Obama issuing executive orders today is bad enough (and of extremely dubious enforceability), but Hoye's opening two paragraphs flatly contradict each other. How does China continually increasing emissions through 2030 "cut both countries' greenhouse gas emissions by close to a third over the next two decades?"

China is already a much larger greenhouse gas producer than the U.S., so any hypothetical cuts in the U.S. will be dwarfed by the increases that Obama negotiated for China.

P.S. China is dumping thick, black smog into its cities which causes serious health problems and causes public discontentment with leadership. Then when they don't meet smog reduction goals, they just hide the data. Do you really think China gives a rat's ass about a little clean, naturally occurring CO₂?

First it was bubble-blower extraordinaire and progenitor of his own prolific Body Count, Alan Greenspan.

TETT: Do you think that gold is currently a good investment?

GREENSPAN: Yes... Remember what we're looking at. Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency. No fiat currency, including the dollar, can match it.

Now it's Greenspan's fellow mass murderers ISIS (or ISIL, or IS, or Islamic State, take your pick):

ISIS wants to introduce its own currency and plans to bring back solid gold and silver dinar coins, it has emerged.

The Middle East terror group apparently wants to introduce its own Islamic currency as part of its attempts to solidify its makeshift caliphate.

Militants are said to want to bring back the original dinar, which is an ancient currency from early Islam, and religious figures in Mosul and Iraq’s Nineveh province have apparently announced its return in mosques.

The currency known as the dinar, which once consisted purely of gold and silver coins, is today used by a variety of countries, but the coins are created from different materials to the originals.

However, the jihadi group is understood to be planning to return to the original gold and silver coins, which were first introduced during the Caliphate of Uthman in 634 CE.

Peters beats DeMaio.