Author: VD

A good start

I have to admit, Rick Perry’s “mistake” is the first thing he’s done that makes me want to think he might not be a complete disaster as president. (Of course, this posturing is merely for the Tea Party, in private he’s kowtowing before the Fed like all the other candidates not named Ron Paul.) But the neocons and neoclassicals were quick to leap to the defense of Ben Shalom:

On Monday, 24 hours before the Rasmussen poll would show him up 13 points on Mitt Romney after only three days in the GOP presidential race, Rick Perry made a mistake. He answered a question in an Iowa field about the Federal Reserve with a waspish threat to Ben Bernanke — something about how in Texas the Fed chairman would be “treated ugly” if he printed more money.

“Horrifying,” shrieked Binyamin Appelbaum, The New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent. The economist Nouriel Roubini raged that Perry belonged in a mental institution — after he compared the Texas governor to the Norwegian mass murderer…. Yesterday, in refusing to apologize for what he said, Perry didn’t even suggest he’d been speaking lightly. He said instead that this — Fed policy, presumably — was something about which he’s passionate.

Actually, Perry’s comment about Bernanke’s near-treason is a little careless. The man’s policies aren’t “almost” treasonous as they have without question been to the severe material detriment of the USA and given his expert PhD credentials, there can be little question that his decision to enact those policies was intentional. He has done far more harm to America and Americans than 100 bin Ladens could have ever done, and worse, he telegraphed his intention to do so before he was appointed to his present office.

I am not arrogant

John Scalzi argues the case:

As there already exists a “McKean’s Law” with respect to words (“Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error”), allow me instead to suggest what I will henceforth label “McKean’s Inversion,” to wit:

The adjective a person says they are is frequently the thing they are not.

To put it in writing terms, it’s a fine example of “show, don’t tell.” Classy people don’t need to assert they’re classy, they do classy things. Funny people don’t have to assure you they’re funny, they simply make you laugh. Kind people don’t need to verbally advertise their kindness, because it’s evident in their lives. All of which is to say the way to be seen as funny, or kind, or humble, or classy, is to be that thing. And if you are, chances are pretty good other people will note it.

My take? McKean’s Inversion applies to idiots, the deceitful, and the insecure. The idea that every cocky chick magnet is a loser with a hard drive full of Japanese schoolgirl porn, that every strutting All-Star is a bench-warming fraud, and every salty ex-Ranger is really a blustering coward is a bizarre mix of Churchianity and middle class fear of failure. The flaw in the logic is that while X people don’t need to assert X, this does not in any way justify the conclusion that they cannot assert it or that asserting it – a few highly specific cases aside – necessarily implies its negation.

Who were three of the most infamous trash talkers in the history of the NBA? Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Gary Payton. Shall we therefore conclude that they were inferior basketball players? What was the most famous of Babe Ruth’s 714 home runs? The one he hit in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, otherwise known as his “called shot”. Any high-performance competitor knows there is nothing more demoralizing to an opponent than telling him exactly what you’re going to do to him and then doing precisely that, because it drives home the fact that he hasn’t been tricked or outmaneuvered somehow, he has been beaten by someone who is completely out of his league.

The fact that the mediocre often overrate themselves doesn’t mean that the superlative are unaware of their own superiority or are unwilling to admit it. I have never seen false modesty among the genuinely superior; it is, however, quite commonly seen among the merely competent who utilize it in an attempt to be perceived as better than they genuinely are.

The nonsensical aspect of McKean’s Inversion can be seen in the way that my assertion of my own superior intelligence and breathtaking arrogance is a) sometimes interpreted as evidence that I am really not all that intelligent while b) never being taken as evidence that I am not arrogant. In other words, it is applied in precisely the same uneven manner as the references to my family by critics who like to stress my relationship to one nationally-known individual, (usually apropos of nothing), while never, ever, mentioning my equally close relationship to another, internationally-known, individual.

The proof is always and only in the pudding. “The adjective a person says they are” carries no intrinsic meaning in and of itself, but merely offers a useful means of ascertaining that person’s integrity and capacity for self-judgment when the adjective is compared with independent observation. I happen to consider people who overrate themselves to be self-deluded and a little pathetic, but I believe people who habitually underrate themselves to be dishonest, manipulative, and intrinsically untrustworthy. And I am much more wary of the latter than the former.

There is nothing humble about telling lies to make yourself look better in others’ eyes.

In defense of the differently attracted

The American Psychological Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1975. Now, as many sane observers warned at the time, it appears to be looking to do the same for pedophilia:

Researchers from several prominent U.S. universities will participate tomorrow in a Baltimore conference reportedly aiming to normalize pedophilia. According to the sponsoring organization’s website, the event will examine ways in which “minor-attracted persons” can be involved in a revision of the American Psychological Association (APA) classification of pedophilia.

B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile activists and mental health professionals, is behind the August 17 conference, which will include panelists from Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Illinois.

B4U-ACT science director Howard Kline has criticized the definition of pedophilia by the American Psychological Association, describing its treatment of “minor-attracted persons” as “inaccurate” and “misleading”…. On their website B4U-ACT classifies pedophilia as simply another sexual orientation and decries the “stigma” attached to pedophilia, observing: “No one chooses to be emotionally and sexually attracted to children or adolescents. The cause is unknown; in fact, the development of attraction to adults is not understood.” The group says that it does not advocate treatment to change feelings of attraction to children or adolescents.

The chickenhawks have a valid point. If society accepts the redefinition of homosexuality as “normal” on the basis of its practitioners being “born that way”, then it has absolutely no reason to condemn pedophiles who are also “born that way”.

For a society to accept open homosexual identification as a normal is a strong indication that it has entered its death spiral. This doesn’t mean it is necessary to drop brick walls on people as soon as they evince interest getting a Pete Rose haircut or watching the Oscars. Just as a society can survive a small percentage of immigrants, it can thrive and prosper so long as homosexuality remains aberrant and circumspect behavior.

This ceases to be the case once what was decentralized and aberrant behavior is transformed into an open and celebrated interest group with a monomaniacal interest in continually expanding its “rights” to the detriment of the traditional societal norms. If this isn’t apparent to you yet, perhaps it will once the law, in its infinite wisdom, determines that a middle-aged pedophile has a constitutional right to marry a collection of boys under the age of ten.

The Slippery Slope is not a logical fallacy. It is, rather, a correct use of logic to provide a reasonable guide to choose between possible future events. Advocates of normalizing homosexuality and homogamy argued that their reasoning would not be used to attempt to normalize pedophilia and polygamy. It is worth noting that subsequent events have proven them to be totally incorrect.

PPPS – A virus scan, two reboots, and everything is accessible again.

VPFL 2011

If you want to join the White Buffalo, Nate, defending champion Clay, and me in the upcoming VPFL season, let me know now….

Lest you think we jest

I’ve noticed that there is considerably more public discussion of how WWII, and not the New Deal, brought the USA out of the Great Depression. However, there is still some confusion as it wasn’t the war spending itself that did the trick, but rather the breaking of the windows of the rest of the planet’s industrial infrastructure. See RGD and Vox’s Broken Window Theory, Revised, which states that Bastiat’s Broken Window is no fallacy, so long as you break all the windows in the next town over as well as the legs of its glaziers.

So, barring any flattening of an alien planet and the subsequent development of interstellar trade, Paul Krugman’s fantasy of preparing for an alien space war is unlikely to lead to economic recovery:

PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: Think about World War II, right? That was actually negative social product spending, and yet it brought us out.

I mean, probably because you want to put these things together, if we say, “Look, we could use some inflation.” Ken and I are both saying that, which is, of course, anathema to a lot of people in Washington but is, in fact, what fhe basic logic says.

It’s very hard to get inflation in a depressed economy. But if you had a program of government spending plus an expansionary policy by the Fed, you could get that. So, if you think about using all of these things together, you could accomplish, you know, a great deal.

If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren’t any aliens, we’d be better –

ROGOFF: And we need Orson Welles, is what you’re saying.

KRUGMAN: No, there was a “Twilight Zone” episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace. Well, this time, we don’t need it, we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus.

The amazing thing isn’t the fluid way Paul Krugman moves from one fantasy to the next – remember, his inspiration for becoming an economist was Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels – but that he does so while remaining convinced that he is the only serious economic realist in the debate. The guy is seriously strange, and at this point, I’m not entirely sure he’s even sane.

Unless, of course, that stealthy Death Star is coming our way!

But I thought they were people!

The mortgage banks are doing their best to escape liability for their large-scale mortgage fraud:

They’ve trotted out Kathryn Wylde, the President of the Partnership for New York City, to attack Eric Schneiderman for his intervention in the Bank of America settlement with investors over mortgage backed securities. Wylde is going to bat for BofA as well as the Bank of New York Mellon, the trustee for the MBS in the settlement. And she is actually arguing that Schneiderman, by defending the rights of investors and seeking the truth on out and out securitization fraud, is threatening the existence of the financial sector in New York City. No, really.

Tanks in the streets and cats living with dogs if the state governments don’t look the other way when the banks commit fraud. That’s certainly a new one. Interesting to see that they’re having to pull it out on a regular basis, isn’t it?

Mailvox: a report from Iowa

Farmer Tom attended the straw poll and managed to upset a presidential candidate in the process:

On the candidates. Had a short, rather contentious visit, with Rick Santourum in the parking lot on the way into the event. True story. He asked for my vote, I told him only when he got down on his knees and apologized for supporting Arlyn Spinchter. He refused, and tried to defend his actions by claiming that Spinchter allowed Bush to put two “conservative” justices on the SCOTUS. I countered with, “Do you really believe that Toomey would have lost?” To which he suggested only Spinchter could have gotten Roberts and Alito confirmed. I told him that I didn’t consider Bush a conservative, and I do not think helping a flaming liberal, baby killer lover, to be reelected to to the US Senate was a benefit to the cause of “life” which he claims to support. I walked away irritated, and he was visibly aggravated. He asked, I gave him my opinion. And I’m quite sure he did not appreciate it.

Saw a bunch of my Ron Paul supporting friends. I was there in 2007 when all of us supporting Ron Paul fit in a tent that would hold a couple of hundred people. He got 1305 votes that year, out of 14,302 votes cast. This year there were Paulistia’s everywhere. After being there about an hour, it was clear that either Paul or Bachmunn would win the vote. Both of them overwhelmed the rest of the candidates there with their supporters. Visually, it was a toss up who had the most supporters.

It would appear the Dread Ilk are prone to causing disturbances in the Force no matter where they go. And that is a downright laudable response to a mainstream politician. Be polite, but forthright. In a republic, politician’s posteriors are for kicking, not kissing.

It also sounds as if Ron Paul’s supporters should relax a little and be pleased with his second-place finish. Bachmann clearly made a strong showing and any potential shenanigans must have been minimal. Politics have always been dirty and you have to win big to prevent the establishment from cheating. I also tend to doubt that the Republican establishment was inclined to cheat in favor of Bachmann; they don’t like her much better than they like Paul, albeit for different reasons.

WND column

Corporations are not people

“Corporations are people, my friend. Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”
– Mitt Romney

It is no wonder that Mitt Romney thinks corporations are wonderful. Corporations have provided him with most of the $18.4 million he has raised for his 2012 campaign for president, which is more than the nine other Republican candidates combined. Seventy percent of the contributions to the Romney campaign are the maximum $2,500, 10 times more than the seven percent of the maximum contributions to his chief rival for the party nomination, Michele Bachmann.

To Mitt Romney, corporations are not only people, they are his best friends.

Um, that’s no planet….

First economists, then biologists. Do I really have to explain the obvious to astrophysicists too?

An alien world blacker than coal, the darkest planet known, has been discovered in the galaxy. The world in question is a giant the size of Jupiter known as TrES-2b. NASA’s Kepler spacecraft detected it lurking around the yellow sun-like star GSC 03549-02811 some 750 light years away in the direction of the constellation Draco. The researchers found this gas giant reflects less than 1 percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it darker than any planet or moon seen up to now.

“It’s just ridiculous how dark this planet is, how alien it is compared to anything we have in our solar system,” study lead-author David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told SPACE.com. “It’s darker than the blackest lump of coal, than dark acrylic paint you might paint with. It’s bizarre how this huge planet became so absorbent of all the light that hits it.”

It’s not ridiculous or bizarre, it’s absorbing light BECAUSE IT’S A GIANT ALIEN SPACE STATION WITH GALACTIC STEALTH TECHNOLOGY, you overeducated morons! Now, hurry up and figure out the only thing about it that really matters… is it heading this way?