Author: VD

It seems the New Atheism is not on the rise

Contra the assertions of various factually- and logically-challenged individuals, the evangelical efforts of Richard Dawkins and his Scarlet-A campaign would appear to have fizzled:

A national UK survey out Monday found no traces of an “autism epidemic,” despite earlier reports that the developmental disorder has been rising quickly in recent decades. Researchers found nearly one percent of Britons older than 16 years have autism, a rate that is similar to that seen in children. Younger people were no more likely to be affected than older ones, however, which would have been expected if the condition were truly on the increase.

“It was surprising to all of us,” said Dr. Traolach Brugha, a psychiatrist at the University of Leicester, who worked on the study. “If this study is correct, it does put a big question mark over the autism epidemic.”

On a related note, I was more than a little amused to encounter John Keegan’s assertion of the way in which most people naturally “flee the company” of “the compulsively argumentative” while reading The Face of Battle today. But if it is not a mild form of autism that renders so many atheists completely incapable of recognizing it is their behavior that people despise and not their lack of belief, what else may serve to explain this compulsively argumentative truculence?

The ritual Republican self-castration

And so begins the familiar process of manipulating the Republican grass roots and saddling them with a status quo Republican approved by the red faction of the ruling party:

Who does best against Obama? Paul. The congressman from Texas, who also ran as a libertarian candidate for president in 1988 and who is well liked by many in the tea party movement, trails the president by only seven points (52 to 45 percent) in a hypothetical general election showdown. Huckabee trails by eight points, with Romney down 11 points to Obama. The poll indicates the president leading Gingrich by 17 points, Palin by 19, and Trump by 22 points.

As one commenter at National Review noted, “So Pawlenty is the “top-tier” candidate at 5%, and Ron Paul is the “non-major” candidate at 8%. Nope, can’t see where charges of bias might come from.”

It not remarkable how a powerful congressman who performs well in the polls, raises more money than the other candidates, is more intellectually formidable than any of them, and was proven to be correct about both the endless nature of the foreign interventionism of the last decade and the fragility of the banking system is automatically deemed “unelectable” and a “minor candidate”. What is remarkable is the large number of mindless, thoughtless Republicans who, despite their feigned disdain for it, blithely accept the mainstream media’s assertions and obey the stage management of the party elders.

And so we’ll see all the faux conservatives pushing the ludicrous likes of Captain Underoos, Newt Gingrich, and the feckless Tim Pawlenty. For those non-Minnesotans not familiar with Pawlenty, all you need to know is that he is a spineless wet noodle of a politician with the moral principle of a Clinton.

What is worse than federal “help”?

“Help” from the United Nations:

Five thousand dead, 300,000 ill, and a medical emergency that has already lasted six months; now the people of Haiti have someone to blame for the cholera outbreak which has swept through their earthquake-ravaged country: the blue-helmeted peacekeepers of the United Nations.

An official report into the ongoing epidemic, which began last October, has concluded that it was almost certainly caused by a poorly constructed sanitation system installed at a rural camp used by several hundred UN troops from Nepal.

The virulent strain of cholera bacteria began infecting locals after faecal matter from their base seeped from badly designed septic pits into the Meye River, a tributary of the Artibonite River in the country’s central region.

The United Nations is far worse than the joke many people believe it to be. If it ever obtains the genuine global power it seeks, the 5,000 Haitians it killed in the last six months will look like the smallest of rounding errors.

And yet curiouser

Still not smelling even the faintest odor of rat?

White House seeks to scotch bin Laden questions

The White House on Thursday sought to sidestep controversy over the exact circumstances of the raid to kill Osama bin Laden, highlighting instead a “flawlessly” executed and dangerous mission. Officials have declined to give any further details of the raid against the Al-Qaeda leader, after being forced to amend earlier accounts of what exactly happened when Navy SEALS stole deep into Pakistan in a covert action on Sunday.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One that the operation was still being evaluated, but said that after transparently offering details of what happened, Washington was no longer offering public accounts.

Well, that’s one way to convince everyone. Just refuse to answer questions and try to change the subject. Either Obama has the least competent PR staff in the history of the White House or there is something deeply wrong about the Official Story of the heroic bin Laden assassination. It’s fascinating to see how the administration has so rapidly gone from bragging about it to not wanting to talk about it.

Another victim of feminism

One can respect the woman for her honesty, but it’s hard to have a whole lot of pity for those who simply refuse to prioritize pursuing marriage and children:

I never envisaged life without a family. I had three significant relationships in my 20s and 30s, each of which I assumed would lead to marriage and children. My first relationship, with a fellow university student, ended after five years. We were 25, and he wasn’t ready to settle down, so we parted.

At 27, I started seeing the man who was to become my second major boyfriend. We had been together for 18 months when I found out he had been seeing someone else, so I was left with no choice but to end it.

I became involved with a man I was sure would be The One when I was 30. Right partner, right life-stage; what could go wrong? Three years down the line, he announced that he had fallen in love with someone else, and that it was over between us. And so, at the age of 33, I suddenly became single. The years that followed were some of the most difficult of my life, as close friends married and started families….

My regrets will always linger. My life is a poorer place for not having children, and I am less of a woman for not being a mother.

Needless to say, there are far many parents blithely encouraging their daughters to pursue worthless college degrees and dead-end “careers”, and far too few encouraging them to place a priority on meeting and marrying the right kind of man. It’s bizarre how young women are taught to apply to the right colleges, while at the same time waiting for the right man to drop unannounced out of the sky. Does anyone tell high school girls to simply wait and be patient for a university admission office to eventually ask them to show up on campus at the moment they least expect it?

The inevitable return of racism

It is becoming increasingly obvious that there was a legitimate reason underlying the imperialist European’s concept of the White Man’s Burden. Those who harbor a distaste for observable reality can shriek “racism” all they like, but no amount of moral self-preening or politically correct histrionics is going to change the fact that certain groups have repeatedly and reliably demonstrated a complete inability to maintain the societal infrastructure that is required to sustain Western-style civilization. There is no need to delve into potential biological or cultural explanations to simply observe what is not only historically and empirically obvious, but increasingly undeniable.

According to a new report, 47 percent of Detroiters are ”functionally illiterate.” The alarming new statistics were released by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund on Wednesday. WWJ Newsradio 950 spoke with the Fund’s Director, Karen Tyler-Ruiz, who explained exactly what this means.

“Not able to fill out basic forms, for getting a job — those types of basic everyday (things). Reading a prescription; what’s on the bottle, how many you should take… just your basic everyday tasks,” she said. “I don’t really know how they get by, but they do. Are they getting by well? Well, that’s another question,” Tyler-Ruiz said.

Now, perhaps those who believe in racial, cultural, national, and ethnic equality will find this piece of evidence unconvincing too. Perhaps 47 percent isn’t high enough to concern them, or perhaps they’ll put it down to some mysterious cultural change that happens to coincide with the transformation of the racial demographics of Detroit. Or perhaps they will suspect semantic games behind ill-defined terms such as “functionally illiterate”. Such excuses may smack of willful obtuseness, but are not entirely unreasonable.

So, here’s the question. Precisely how bad will things have to get before you abandon your belief in racial, cultural, national, religious, and ethnic equality? 100 percent illiteracy? 80 percent illegitimacy? Cannibalism and necrophilia in the streets? Or will it take the complete abandonment of a once-thriving metropolis before you are willing to admit that there actually might be some real science behind the idea that all human beings are not, in fact, equal in any material manner and that civilization depends upon recognizing those material inequalities and taking them into account?

It’s easy to avoid having a serious discussion on such matters by simply throwing rhetorical bombs. “Do you seriously believe blacks shouldn’t be permitted to vote, you horrible racist?” “Do you seriously believe the citizen children of hard-working, law-abiding undocumented Mexicans should be forcibly deported to a country they have never even seen, you cruel and hateful person?” Gasps and feigned horror all round. But such rhetorical devices are nothing more than cheap appeals to emotion and won’t delay the collapse of Western civilization by so much as a single day. So, here is my question in return. “Do you believe [population] should be permitted [action] if that permission demonstrably bears a high probability of leading to societal collapse?” That is the pertinent question that must precede any rational discussion of the subject.

We don’t permit children to vote. Are they not people? We don’t permit foreigners to vote. Are they, too, not people? We don’t even permit ex-criminals to vote even though they are both adults and citizens. And they’re also people, however much we might like to pretend otherwise. So, it’s clearly not a question of democratic limits being intrinsically illegitimate, but rather what is deemed to be in the interest of the nation.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I would much rather live in a safe, prosperous, and free society where I am not permitted to vote and am not even a fully equal member of society than in a third-world hellhole where I can vote every single day on whether clay or dirt will be distributed for dinner by the elected government. There is far more to human liberty than voting.

The end of the equalitarian era is rapidly approaching due to the same sort of intrinsic contradictions that sank Soviet economic communism. And like it or not, this almost surely means a return to the historical norm of open racism on all sides. As the Christian influence on the law subsides, there simply is no more basis for the idea that all men are created equal.

No photo, no video

Curiouser and curiouser:

Yet another backtrack and change of tune from the White House has emerged over the fact that Obama did NOT watch the raid live and did not see the moment Osama bin Laden was shot dead. In fact the video feed stopped before US special forces stormed bin Laden’s hideaway.

The White House originally said that President Obama and Hillary Clinton watched the raid as it happened and in effect encouraged the world’s media to report that they had watched “the drama unfold”.

But now CIA chief Leon Panetta has admitted that, not only was there a 25 minute delay in the live feed and a blackout as has already been reported, in fact the video being played to the president stopped as troops got to the bin Laden compound. And the president did not see any subsequent action on the ground, including the fatal shooting of Osama bin Laden.

For those who wonder why I distrust everything the government says about anything on principle, note that about half of the information initially released by the government about the raid in Pakistan has already been publicly retracted. And the White House is refusing to release any evidence that would confirm the remaining claims.

A semblance of sanity

IP addresses are not people. And in related news, routers will not be permitted to vote in the 2012 election:

A possible landmark ruling in one of the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the US may spell the end of the ‘pay-up-or-else-schemes’ that have targeted over 100,000 Internet users in the last year. District Court Judge Harold Baker has denied a copyright holder the right to subpoena the ISPs of alleged copyright infringers, because an IP-address does not equal a person.

I’ve never understood the idea that an Internet connection can reasonably be pinned to a single individual. Even if there is only one computer connected to the local area network, who is to say that a different individual was not on the machine? But, given the 40-year war on common sense being waged by the U.S. judicial system, I suppose any semblance of sanity is to be celebrated.

Has Ron Paul flipped on immigration?

From my 2007 interview with him:

VD: Do you believe in open borders? That’s the Libertarian position, after all.

RP: Some libertarians believe in totally open borders. I don’t. Remember, I was the Libertarian Party’s candidate for president in 1988 and I ran as a Right-to-Life Libertarian. I don’t support totally open borders, because although I think the federal government should be small, protecting borders and providing national defense – which excludes occupying other countries – are two of its legitimate functions. I would beef up the borders and not worry about the Korean and Iraqi borders. It’s ironic that we’re taking border guards off our borders and paying them to go and train border guards over there. I do understand the libertarian argument. The more we deal with our neighbors, the better off we are. I like the idea of trade, I like the idea of free travel and friendship. When that happens, you’re less likely to fight. But that doesn’t mean anyone can come in and get easy citizenship.

My biggest argument is different than those who want to shoot anyone crossing the border. When you subsidize things, you get more of it, and we subsidize immigration. We need to stop that. I want to deny the benefits that draw people here. If we had a healthier economy, we could have a generous work program but we don’t need it.

From the Numbers USA’s review of Dr. Paul’s new book:

In his book, Dr. Paul sounds very much like supporters of Comprehensive Amnesty measures by talking about the impossibility of sending back home 11 million illegal aliens. Like most amnesty supporters who say they oppose “amnesty,” Dr. Paul seems to buy the false choice between “legalization” or mass deportation. Since he says mass deportation isn’t possible, he feels he has to choose some kind of legalization.

He fails to support Attrition Through Enforcement, which is the middle way supported by most anti-amnesty Members of Congress.

He would limit the legalization by perhaps not allowing the illegal aliens to ever be citizens or to vote. But they still would get to stay in the U.S. and to keep their U.S. jobs, while millions of Americans who want the jobs would have to stay unemployed.

“It could be argued that (this system) may well allow some immigrants who come here illegally a beneficial status without automatic citizenship or tax-supported benefits — a much better option than deportation,” Rep. Paul writes on page 156.

I completely disagree with this statement. Deportation is absolutely the only option for illegal immigrants. While removing the temptations of automatic citizenship and the elimination of tax-supported benefits are definitely to be preferred to the present system, the political history of American immigration clearly shows that any such technical measures will be rapidly overturned, or as is more likely the case, declared to be unconstitutional and invalid by an immigration-friendly judge.

It seems politicians never learn that tweaks and fine-tuning are totally irrelevant when it comes to the art of governance. It’s like attempting to drive a semi on a particularly convoluted rally course. However, I think it is a bit harsh to give Paul an F for a position that is better than a) the status quo, b) the other Republican candidates, and c) the Democratic candidate. I’d make it at least a D.

Who is in charge of the White House?

Is it Valerie Jarrett or Leon Panetta? Either way, Obama doesn’t sound so much over his head as completely disengaged in this description of the evolution of the attack on the compound in Pakistan:

What happened from there is what was described by me as a “masterful manipulation” by Leon Panetta. Panetta indicated to Obama that leaks regarding knowledge of Osama Bin Laden’s location were certain to get out sooner rather than later, and action must be taken by the administration or the public backlash to the president’s inaction would be “…significant to the point of political debilitation.” It was at that time that Obama stated an on-ground campaign would be far more acceptable to him than a bombing raid. This was intended as a stalling tactic, and it had originated from Jarrett. Such a campaign would take both time, and present a far greater risk of failure. The president had been instructed by Jarrett to inform Mr., Panetta that he would have sole discretion to act against the Osama Bin Laden compound. Jarrett believed this would further delay Panetta from acting, as the responsibility for failure would then fall almost entirely on him. What Valerie Jarrett, and the president, did not know is that Leon Panetta had already initiated a program that reported to him –and only him, involving a covert on the ground attack against the compound….

I have been told by more than one source that Leon Panetta was directing the operation with both his own CIA operatives, as well as direct contacts with military – both entities were reporting to Panetta only at this point, and not the President of the United States. There was not going to be another delay as had happened 24 hour earlier. The operation was at this time effectively unknown to President Barack Obama or Valerie Jarrett and it remained that way until AFTER it had already been initiated. President Obama was literally pulled from a golf outing and escorted back to the White House to be informed of the mission. Upon his arrival there was a briefing held which included Bill Daley, John Brennan, and a high ranking member of the military. When Obama emerged from the briefing, he was described as looking “very confused and uncertain.” The president was then placed in the situation room where several of the players in this event had already been watching the operation unfold. Another interesting tidbit regarding this is that the Vice President was already “up to speed” on the operation. A source indicated they believe Hillary Clinton had personally made certain the Vice President was made aware of that day’s events before the president was. The now famous photo released shows the particulars of that of that room and its occupants. What that photo does not communicate directly is that the military personnel present in that room during the operation unfolding, deferred to either Hillary Clinton or Robert Gates. The president’s role was minimal, including their acknowledging of his presence in the room.

This might offer several alternative explanations to the inexplicable decision to immediately get rid of the body, the dithering over the evidence of the corpse’s identity, as well as the bizarre nature of the compliments that the various White House officials were paying Obama after the operation concluded successfully. They struck me more like an uncertain little boy being patted on the head than as soldiers complimenting their commander; no one who has read the deferentially enthusiastic reactions of the English captains to meeting Admiral Nelson before Trafalgar is likely to mistake the various statements from Washington officials with the admiration of warriors for their victorious commander. Nor, in the picture of the temporary situation room, does Obama look like he’s anything more than a passive observer. That means nothing in itself, but it is certainly in line with the perspective provided in the insider’s account.

Obviously, other than checking on the weather patterns on the night of the aborted mission, we have no ability to ascertain the truth of this supposed insider’s account. It could simply be a complete fiction inspired by the photo. But if it is true, it is further support for my contention that Obama is likely going to be replaced by the Democrats next year.