I remember back in college, thirty-odd years ago, reading some rather dogmatic radical-feminist claiming that technology would soon make it possible for women to live lives, up to and including reproduction, completely without the need for men.
It’d seem that technology may be close to evening the playing field for men.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
There’s an internet video telling people they must “accept the deed” in order to perfect title to their homes. Until you accept the deed, you’re merely a tenant at sufferance with no rights. But once you accept the deed, then you become the assignee of the prior owner’s title, and his prior owner’s title, all the way back to the United States government land grant. That’s important, because original land grants give “allodial title” which is title free from all encumbrances.
And that means the bank can’t foreclose your mortgage. It’s not an encumbrance on the land. You might owe the money on the note, but they can’t use the mortgage to take away your home.
It’s ridiculous, of course. Yes, the original land grant was allodial in the sense that it was free of any claims from the federal government. But once you acquire the land, there’s nothing saying you can’t encumber it yourself by, for example, giving a mortgage to pledge the land as security for a loan. You gave up the allodial character of the land when you signed the mortgage.
During the foreclosure crisis, we had people showing up at the County Recorder’s office wanting to “accept their deed” so they could stop the foreclosure. Desperate people grasp at straws, they believe there’s got to be a way to save the house, got to be a form they can file, some legal trickery that will allow them to hang on just a little bit longer and maybe even turn this thing around.
Joe Doakes
She’s like “Elmer Gantry” without the style.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Senator Franken sent me his newsletter, which included the announcement that he would vote against President Trump’s nominee for Supreme Court. The reason: the nominee’s ideology favors big business over ordinary Americans.
The press release explains: “One of Sen. Franken’s main concerns that he said came out of the confirmation hearings is that Judge Gorsuch has a pattern of putting powerful interests, big business, and giant corporations over the safety and rights of average Americans. In one noteworthy ruling, Judge Gorsuch sided with a trucking business over an imperiled driver. In that case, the driver was stuck in below zero weather with frozen brakes and no heat. Forced to choose between freezing to death or driving an unsafe vehicle and risking public safety, he unhitched his trailer and left it behind in order to get warm. And as a result, his company fired him. When Judge Gorsuch ruled on that case, he sided with the trucking company.”
This quote either displays a shocking depth of ignorance about the American legal system, or a disgusting level of contempt for the intellectual abilities of his constituents. I’m not sure which is worse.
The point of an impartial judiciary is that it does NOT base rulings on the people involved in the case, but on the law as written by the legislative branch of government. To do it the other way throws us back to feudal times, when people weren’t treated equally under the law because certain favored groups had special privileges. When the Declaration says “all men are created equal” it doesn’t mean literally equal – obviously we’re not all the same height or wear the same shoe size – it means they’ll be treated as equals for all legal purposes. We don’t have a nobility that is exempt from the rules.
If the law says “it’s okay to fire someone who disobeys a lawful order,” and the company gave him a lawful order to stay with the truck, then his decision to abandon the truck was a firing offense and the company was in the right. What Senator Franken wants the court to do is re-write the law to add a section that the legislature did not include. He wants the judge to add a section saying “unless the employee has a good reason not to obey the lawful order.”
That is NOT the judge’s job. The judge’s job is to say “Based on these facts and this law, this is the result.” It might be a stupid law and therefore renders a stupid result, but that’s the legislature’s problem to fix. The judiciary is not a super-legislature.
I will give him this: adopting Franken’s idea would cut down on a lot of litigation. When the facts and law don’t matter, only the identity of the parties, there’s no need for a trial and witnesses. If a property management company brought an eviction action against a single mother based on non-payment of rent, the court could immediately dismiss the case and allow her to live there for free, forever, because in Franken’s world, ordinary American trumps business. If anybody filed a claim against an insurance company for any reason whatsoever, the claimant automatically would win because in Franken’s world, ordinary American trumps business. Things would get trickier if a Black lesbian single mother sued a left-handed transgendered illegal immigrant because the victim ranking is constantly shifting: who is the more victimized person and therefore the more worthy winner?
True, there would be an economic impact as businesses went bankrupt from meritless lawsuits. But a lot of lawyers would be freed up from litigation to engage in other worthy efforts, perhaps lobbying for stricter environmental regulations to take farmland out of production or stop the importation of oil and natural gas, things that would help save the planet so future generations of Americans could starve in the dark.
Joe Doakes
It’s good to have goals…
Remember when excessive concern about the Russians was a sign you were a simple-minded Cold Warrior?
The good news: There is so far zero evidence of direct Russian “hacking” of the election. Influence, sure – but then, Obama was nobody to gripe about people influencing foreign elections.
The bad news? They were certainly trying to sow chaos and misinformation.
The worse news? Americans are ripe for political manipulation, and American politics is a fertile field for a seasoned chaos-monger, and our media is the problem, not the defense.
After a year of slowed activity due to Obama’s caving in to the Saudis, the rig count in North Dakota is up 40 percent since the approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Analysts predict the count will rise another ten percent.
Not every oil company operating in the state is going to use the Dakota Access Pipeline, but they will benefit from the pipeline’s capacity anyway. It will create more capacity on existing pipelines, not to mention rail, and drive down the cost of getting Bakken oil to market overall.
The article notes that both Whiting Petroleum and Continental Resources are projecting a 20 percent increase in output this year. Neither are contracted to use DAPL, but both will benefit from it none the less.
Isn’t it amazing what the free market can do?
North Dakota’s unemployment rate, even after the “crash” caused by the slowdown in exploration (but not production), hovered a solid point below that of Minnesota’s. That discrepancy will broaden in coming months.
…whether roads in America actually collapse.
PS: It’s Tim Pawlenty’s fault!
Illinois enacts harsh sanctions against trafficking stolen and straw-purchased guns:
Gov. Bruce Rauner has signed legislation to dramatically increase the penalties for those caught illegally transporting guns into Illinois.
First-time offenders could face up to 20 years in prison, and repeat offenders could face up to 30 years under the new gun trafficking law, which takes effect immediately.
The governor was joined by top Republican lawmakers as he signed the measure at the Illinois State Police crime lab on the Near West Side. He said the goal is to reduce the growing epidemic of gun violence in Chicago. There already have been at least 460 homicides and more than 2,700 shootings in 2016; during all of last year, there were approximately 490 homicides, and just shy of 3,000 shootings in Chicago.
Illinois is basically doing what Obama’s useless USA Attorney for Northern Illinois was too lazy and politically-focused to do; the USA trumpeted to Chicago’s criminal underclass that sending your mom or girlfriend to Indiana to buy a Glock wasn’t worth his time.
And you have to ask yourself – why is it that “Protect” Minnesota or Everytown for “Gun Safety” never, ever suggest measures like this, and focus exclusively on attacking, defaming and bullying the law-abiding gun owner?
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The purpose of advertising is to influence behavior, we all know that. And the more people who see the advertisement, the more potential customers whose behavior is available to be influenced. That’s why advertisers pay millions of dollars for a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl: they know they’ll be influencing millions of potential customers with their ads.
Which brings up the question: how long must I stare at an advertisement for it to influence me? Does it take the full 30-seconds for the magic to work? Could it happen more quickly? Perhaps even unconsciously? Does subliminal advertising work? Lots of researchers think so.
If they’re right, I wish they’d explain it to web designers. I click on links because I want to read the article. But when the web page takes forever to load, then refuses to let me click through the ad, and auto-plays videos I don’t want to see . . . I click away, having never read the article at all. My behavior is influenced negatively.
If they’d bring up the article right away, the ads could appear in my peripheral vision while I read. I’d actually see them, they could do their magic, my behavior would be influenced positively. If the blog author’s article got mentioned on Instapundit, the resulting Insta-lanche would put millions of potential customers in position available to be influenced by the peripheral ads.
Joe Doakes
Don’t look at me. I moved my ads to the sidebar.
Purdue hires a social justice warrior to head its engineering program.
While overt sexism and homophobia are less common than historically, they still play out in ways that are subtle and, therefore, insidious and hard to combat. How do you see this happening in the sciences, and how do you deal with it?
One of the biggest sources of sexism and homophobia is lodged in the epistemology of science. How we think, and what we think, matter in determining what we know and don’t know, and affects our workplace interactions in very negative ways. We think that we eliminate bias by keeping our “personal lives” – some aspects of ourselves – out of the lab, classroom, or office. But actually this is how we allow implicit bias to seep in and saturate everything we do, because that which is male, straight, white, able-bodied, monied, is not left behind in the practice of science and engineering – it is just so normative that lots of us don’t notice.
The story came out on Saturday. I can only hope it’s an April Fool prank – perhaps the most insanely brillaint one o al time.
I’m not very hopeful.
The DFL wants you to know that Senator Ron “I went to Harvard. Did you know that? Did you go to Harvard” Latz is all about protecting your online privacy.
Unmentioned: Unless you’re a gun owner. Then, he wants you to be on lists that are available to any reporter, activist, creepy stalker or burglar who wants ’em.
Latz: supporting the right kind of privacy.
Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air!
Today on the show:
Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.
So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:
Join us!
Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is normally heard on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.
So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:
Join us!
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