Author: VD

Mailvox: general incoherence and the Tea Party

SS defends Wall Street and blames government:

Yes I agree with both have wrong opposing ideas but, the Tea Party really had a broad based beginning and the Occupy folks are the orchestrated result of Big Union and (y)our “friends” at the Globalist Communist Party that is stirring up strife worldwide to bring down Capitalism and the West.

You know that Wall Street needed bailed out because of political pressure on the banking system to make loans to low income people that had no chance of paying them back. The resulting trading in bundled toxic securities was just a way for Bankers to spread the risk with Our government winking at the practice.

The social architects are the problem not Wall Street. The spending spree of social engineering has brought us to ruin. The government has borrowed and printed money and pushed for more of it into the economy to hide the fact that we no longer manufacture anything, we have exported all the good paying jobs.

What we are left with is a hollow shell of a service economy that is propped up by government spending and borrowing from a country that has taken all the jobs. The Tea Party has it right… it is a over-reaching Federal Bureaucracy that needs to be reigned in to it’s Constitutional boundaries and not what the anarchists Occupiers wanting to punish the successful want us to believe.

The problem is “Big” Government and the social engineering globalists that run amuck in positions of power in media and political parties!…………..

Marty denies that the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are two sides of the same coin:

Two sides of the same coin? Are you nuts? I have been reading you columns mostly with great frustrations for 10 years now but this one takes the cake. You have either stopped reading or stopped thinking one of the two. I know of no tea partier that is for the wars ALL 6 of them! I know they all support our troops and will not denigrate them in times of war. But they are just as anxious to be home as anyone. The WS protesters want full blown communism and the tea party seeks a very limited and constitutional form of government. Is that two sides of the same coin? How about the tea party seeks limited and more fair taxes on everyone and not the confiscation of wealth from the wealthy. Is that same coin? The tea party wants no form whatsoever of socialized medicine and privatization of Medicare and social security. Is that two sides of the same coin? That fact of the matter is you refuse to admit the libertarian party and their philosophy is simply nutty to put it mildly. Very little of your political philosophy on how government should run would work and most of the folks know it which is why we reject your nutty libertarian junk. You are deliberately running a disinformation campaign against the tea party by linking them with Washington republicans. I will grant you one thing, the republican party is a natural home for the Tea Party; there is however no friendship between the Washington Republican establishment and the tea party. Each wishes the other gone. You know this and yet you link them like a two headed beast. If you wrote an article and said the republican Washington establishment and the WS protesters were two sides of the same coin, I would have said you were correct. In fact all the things you ascribe to tea partiers can rightly be ascribed to moderate RINO’s in Washington. The tea party did not support the extra spending. Politics is a game of wills and the simple truth is there are some battles you are going to win and some you will lose. The question in the end is what has been achieved and if the tea party gains prominence the county will be much better off. Your stupid party can’t figure out whether drugs should be legal, what’s wrong with abortion, the correct role of government and on and on. The fact of the matter is libertarianism leads to anarchy. That’s is the other side of your coin!!

Meanwhile, David isn’t inclined to let the Tea Party off the hook:

And don’t forget the Tea Party probably passed the three new job killing Free Trade pacts, too. Nobody gives a damn about saving our Middle Class factory jobs.

I responded to Marty thusly: You’re factually wrong. Not all, but most of the Tea Party-endorsed Republicans voted for the $1.299 budget deficit as well as for raising the debt ceiling. It’s also telling that you don’t give OWS the same benefit of the detail that you give the Tea Party. Both activist groups are rather stupid and incoherent… and both activist groups are correct at the deepest level. This is natural, since both are popular movements, which generally are not known for their intellectual precision. And they are two sides of the same coin, as both groups have correctly identified one-half of the problem. Unfortunately, both groups are also inclined to defend the other half of the problem.

Which is why as long as you subscribe to the Tea Party Good, Occupy Wall Street Bad mentality, you will be serving the purposes of the Washington-Wall Street axis.

Marty responded as follows:

You’re correct to link Wall Street and Washington. You’re the first and only person I have seen make this connection. But you are completely incorrect about the Tea Party and its connection to Wall Street. The tea party is the production of moderate republicans voting for Wall Street bail-out. That and health care reform. The Tea party was 100% against the bailout hence its existence. We wanted the companies to go bankrupt. And you cannot even begin to say that McCain’s running back to Washington to vote for the bailout didn’t hurt him big time. We cannot stand the republicans running this country in to the ground via WS albeit at a slower rate than the democrats via wealth confiscation.

There were 100 new Republicans voted in to congress in 2009. 54 voted against the current budget. That’s the majority of tea party Republicans the way I see it. Had you made that point in your article, you would have severely weakened your argument to the reader. You said “most” making it sound like 60% or more when in fact it was in the 40’s percent. I admit I am not always right but on this you are trying to paint a picture out of what you wish was true but it’s not.

To which I responded: You’re not counting correctly. Not all of the new Republicans were Tea Party-endorsed and not all the incumbents were not Tea Party-endorsed. Again, you are factually incorrect.

Of course, even if only 40% of the Tea Party-endorsed Congressman had been successfully corrupted within 12 months of their election, it would suffice to prove that the Tea Party strategy will not succeed.

Another childhood legend demolished

To be fair, I was always extremely dubious about this one:

First published in 1973, “Sybil” remains in print after selling over 6 million copies in the U.S. alone. A work of high Midwestern gothic trash, “Sybil” might have been purpose-built to enthrall 14-year-old girls of morbid temperament (which is probably the majority of 14-year-old girls, come to think of it). I would not be surprised to learn that it is circulated as avidly on middle-school playgrounds today as it was in my own youth. My sisters, my friends and I all devoured it, discussing its heroine’s baroque sufferings in shocked whispers before promptly forgetting all about it until the TV movie starring Sally Field came along.

That should have been the end of “Sybil,” another flash-in-the-pan “true life” paperback shocker that people sorta believe but mostly not — rather like “The Amityville Horror.” Instead, the book, written by journalist Flora Rheta Schreiber, became the catalyst for a psychotherapeutic movement that ruined many lives, beginning with the woman whose story it claims to tell.

If I recall correctly, there was a whole Christian sub-genre constructed around the principle that multiple personalities were demonic. However, I didn’t buy into that either, mostly because I found it rather difficult to believe that demons could possibly be so mundane and uninteresting. To paraphrase the immortal words of Bob Newhart, I find it hard to believe that the Prince of Darkness has spent the last twenty years as a frumpy suburban housewife.

And no, I’m not calling your dog a liar!

America or North Mexico?

The Mexication of the American Southwest proceeds apace:

Students in a Texas public high school were made to stand up and recite the Mexican national anthem and Mexican pledge of allegiance as part of a Spanish class assignment, but the school district maintains there was nothing wrong with the lesson.

If you don’t see any problem with this, imagine if the Texas students were forced to sing Deutschland Uber Alles and learn the Nazi salute as part of a German class assignment. Perhaps for an encore, they can learn the geography of Mexico and which cartels control which regions.

WND column

Occupy Washington and Wall Street

Seeing the so-called “conservative” media wax indignant about the Occupy Wall Street protesters is almost exactly like watching the mainstream media attack the Tea Party three years ago. In the process of purportedly criticizing the protesters they reveal both their ignorance and their ideological bias, and they completely manage to miss the point of the very justifiable protests.

It is true that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are incoherent and advocate inherently contradictory policies. For example, they wish to turn to Washington to limit the havoc that Wall Street has wreaked, and continues to wreak, on the American economy and the American people, little realizing that Washington has been knowingly enabling Wall Street’s capacity to do so from the start.

But it is equally true that the Tea Party activists are incoherent and advocate inherently contradictory policies.

VPFL Week 5

85 Greenfield Grizzlies (4-1-0)
54 Bane Sidhe (1-4-0)

72 Green Reverends (3-1-1)
48 GroverBeach Quixotes (2-3-0)

70 MS Swamp Spartans (3-2-0)
60 RR Redbeards (2-2-1)

53 Bailout Banksters (2-2-1)
43 Moundsview Meerkats (3-2-0)

65 Macau Marauders (2-2-1)
57 Cranberry Rhyneauxs (1-4-0)

This is your weekly NFL open post.

Soporific plasmaphages and the guide to genre

After reading the entire Southern Vampire series and watching an episode of The Vampire Diaries, I have reached the conclusion that John O’Neill is entirely correct to cast a deeply skeptical eye upon the entire genre of the vampire story. As strange as it may seem to assert this, it appears that vampires simply aren’t very interesting in and of themselves. They appear to exist primarily as a means of expanding the appeal of the traditional romance novel to audiences that would find themselves embarrassed to be reading a traditional bodice-ripper or watching a soap opera. For example, if one considers the structure of the Charlaine Harris novels and compares them to other urban fantasies, it becomes readily apparent that this genre is little more than a hybrid of the traditional romance novel with the mystery novel, colored by a dash of fantasy that is exotic only to young readers and older readers coming from the romance and mystery markets. This also explains why the novels hold relatively little appeal to traditional SF/F readers and their irritation at the otherwise reasonable classification of urban fantasy in the fantasy genre.

Read the rest at the Black Gate

Check on three

From my 2011 economic predictions: The 2011 federal deficit will exceed the projected $1.27 trillion despite the Republican House majority. This will likely be the result of emergency spending required for an economic or military crisis.

Treasury announces 2011 deficit is second highest in history. The U.S budget deficit for fiscal year 2011 is $1.299 trillion, the second largest shortfall in history.

I’m only surprised that they exceeded it by so little. Imagine how big the deficit would be if the new military crisis was war with China instead of Uganda.

Incompetence and the art of war

The Obama administration offers a lesson in how not to do it. First, we have the strategic incompetence with the new invasion of Uganda, which marks the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s sixth war in three years. At this rate, if he somehow manages to win reelection, the USA will be fighting 16 wars by the end of his second term.

Offhand, what do you think the dumbest damn place in the world to deploy US troops would be? Why guess? Just watch Obama. Our modern Clausewitz has picked the absolute craziest, most futile, most counterproductive place in the world, central Africa…. Whenever we invade some godforsaken place, we always end up with thousands of new immigrants from that place. Check out Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, for example. So I suppose this idiotic invasion will, sort of, benefit these new refugee-immigrants which the welfare establishment is already smacking its lips over. So if you think that what this country needs is some more immigrants from central Africa, cheer Obama on!

But it’s not enough that the Commander-in-Chief is strategically challenged, the forces he has at his disposal are tactically given to literally shooting themselves in the foot.

A Marine and a Navy medic killed by a U.S. drone airstrike were targeted when Marine commanders in Afghanistan mistook them for Taliban fighters, even though analysts watching the Predator’s video feed were uncertain whether the men were part of an enemy force.

Now, if one considers how much collateral damage has taken place thanks to no-knock raids in the War on Drugs, imagine how badly awry things are likely to go once Hellfire-equipped Predators are ordered to patrol American skies. I wonder how long it will be before these trends come together and the first Ugandan “refugee” is accidentally killed by a Predator intending to attack domestic terrorists in the United States.

Surviving la dolce vita

Speaking of culture, I had a rather exquisite lunch today. Pata Negra squared. Which is to say, Barcelona’s finest jambon and slices of bufalo parmigiano, (technically impossible and yet it exists all the same), washed down with an excellent Spanish red named after the delectable king of all pork. Spacebunny made pizza for dinner and I resorted to a jar of homemade hot oil made by the Dutch Girl which is just ever so slightly cooler than napalm. This, naturally, required the accompaniment of a nicely drinkable red, the aforementioned Spanish bottle being lamentably empty.

Ender had to be picked up from his martial arts training, but I was early, so the head of the dojo, being a hospitable sort, poured us both a glass of local white. And then another.

At this point, I am entirely certain that my arteries are as clean as a newly scoured aqueduct. I can’t say I’m quite as confident about the old liver, however. The great thing about the Southern European approach to wine is that you’re never the least bit drunk. You’re just sort of sporting a vaguely happy buzz from noon until midnight.

When sheep stampede

The retarded groupthink of the female left never ceases to provide amusement at their expense:

You may have heard about Andrew Meyer earlier this week from The Stranger, Jezebel, or Facebook. Meyer’s name was tweeted thousands of times on Monday and Tuesday, often with links leading to articles about him. Jezebel’s story on Meyer got almost 100,000 views, while one of the hundreds of people who weighed in on him on Twitter dubbed him the grand “tool of the week.” For those who haven’t heard about Meyer, his instant fame can be explained thusly: On Friday night, Meyer and a female friend went into Seattle’s Bimbo’s Cantina for food and drinks. Their server that evening was Victoria Liss. According to Liss, after the couple had behaved like jerks—mocking the food, dipping their hands into the tip jar—Meyer paid without leaving Liss any gratuity. He then took his rudeness a step further, by writing at the bottom of his bill, “P.S. You could stand to loose [sic] a few pounds.”

Understandably hurt, Liss did what anyone would do in this day and age: She took her anger to her computer. She posted a photo of Meyer’s receipt onto her Facebook page and wrote underneath it, “[T]he best part is he was dressed like that gay kid on Glee. Yuppie scum!” From there, it was off to the blog races.

Jezebel filed its post on Meyer under “Assholes.” Dan Savage, one of the most widely read alt-weekly columnists in America, also jumped on him, writing, “[Y]ou probably weren’t the only person to stiff a bartender in Seattle this weekend. But you were the only person dumb/hateful/angry enough to write this on your credit card slip.” Crushable picked up the Meyer story and published his full name, where he works, the name of his college, what fraternity he was in, and his full signature, all under the title, “Seattle Area Douchebag Gains Internet Notoriety For Stiffing And Insulting His Server.” The article even included a passage of search terms at the end to up the likelihood it would come up if someone—employers, dates, friends—Googles Meyer’s name.

Like with the lynch mobs of old, things move fast in the age of internet justice. Within about 72 hours from the moment Liss got stiffed, hundreds of people, united and galvanized by blogs, jumped into action and attempted to ruin a stranger’s reputation because he said something mean to another stranger. There was just one problem: They got the wrong guy.

So, in the barely self-aware minds of these ungulates, failing to tip a fat waitress justifies a mass attempt to ruin an individual’s reputation. But it is obvious in light of her subsequent behavior that the waitress probably provided unsatisfactory service and thus merited her lack of compensation, though perhaps not the editorial on her lack of personal fitness.

Surely all of these third-wits merit the very same behavior they dished out to the wrong individual. If I owned Bimbo’s Cantina, I would immediately fire Victoria Liss. And if I owned Jezebel, I would fire the responsible editors. The customer may not always be right, but in no case does he merit a public sheep stampede, especially over what amounts to absolutely nothing.