Author: VD

The United States Yankee Corps

I was raised to revere the Marine Corps my entire life. I have always harbored the greatest respect for the many Marines I have met through the years. But I have absolutely no doubt that my grandfather, who fought in WWII and Korea and was declared a Marine’s Marine by the Commandant of the Corps himself, would be bewildered by the rejection of the American South by what should apparently be renamed the United States Yankee Corps:

Straight out of high school, one 18-year-old Tennessee man was determined to serve his country as a Marine. His friend said he passed the pre-enlistment tests and physical exams and looked forward with excitement to the day he would ship out to boot camp. But there would be no shouting drill instructors, no rigorous physical training and no action-packed stories for the aspiring Marine to share with his family. Shortly before he was scheduled to leave Nashville for boot camp, the Marine Corps rejected him…. When the young recruit didn’t go to boot camp, Andrews learned of his rejection based on his tattoo of the Confederate battle flag on his shoulder.

It would be educational to see what would happen if Southerners refused to enlist and re-enlist until ludicrous ban on Southern heritage and Southron pride is rescinded. Without the South, the Marine Corps would find itself transformed into a mercenary force largely populated by gangsters looking to acquire combat training and Mexicans seeking citizenship. Of course, if that’s the ultimate objective of the policy, then we can expect that the ban on the Confederate Battle flag will only be the first step and it won’t be long before other patriotic symbols such as the Gadsden Flag and the Betsy Ross Flag are banned as well. Does anyone believe a UN or Mexican flag would be cause for similar rejection?

Speaking of Mexico, it is already on the verge of civil war violent revolt in the north. This makes me wonder, how long will it be until Round Two?

Burning the banks

There are flames in Athens now. How long will they take to reach Wall Street and the City?

Three people died when an Athens bank went up in flames Wednesday as tens of thousands of Greeks took to the streets to protest harsh spending cuts aimed at saving the country from bankruptcy. Tear gas drifted across the city’s center as hundreds of rioters hurled paving stones and Molotov cocktails at police, who responded with heavy use of tear gas. At least two buildings were on fire. The fire brigade said the bodies were found in the wreckage of a Marfin Bank branch, on the route of the march in the city center.

Demonstrators chanting “thieves, thieves” attempted to break through a riot police cordon guarding Parliament and chased the ceremonial guards away from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front of the building.

Now, what is the point of “saving the country” from bankruptcy? Will Greece simply cease to exist if it goes bankrupt? Does a junkie die when he is no longer permitted to keep purchasing narcotics from his pusher? The molotov-throwing rioters chanting “thieves” appear to have a more accurate perspective on the global financial system than the hand-wringing editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal. Not a correct one, mind you, but one that is nevertheless more accurate. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking forward to the chaos since it isn’t going to be fun for anyone who isn’t young, male, unprincipled, and heavily armed. But it certainly isn’t going to be averted or ameliorated by stealing more money from the public and handing it over to bankers.

I just want to know one thing. Where is the techno remix? And as for Max Keiser, well, you can’t help but think of Chuck D listening to him lay down that heavy rap.

An interesting note relating to the connection of today’s Greek riots to the historical Cinco de Mayo from Wikipedia: “In late 1861 Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, under the Treaty of London (1861) sent troops to Mexico, alongside Spanish and English forces, to collect debts owed by a previous Mexican government. President Benito Juárez had announced the annulment of these debts, and vowed to pay nothing to European powers. Napoleon’s troops occupied the port city of Veracruz on December 8, 1861…. The Battle of Puebla, May 5, 1862, was a single, important victory for the Mexican people over the occupying French Army.”

Given the general European disarmament, I can only conclude that bin Laden will soon be spotted in Athens, thereby requiring an immediate invasion and occupation.

Attacking the metric

School choice advocate Charles Murray attacks standardized testing:

The evaluation by the School Choice Demonstration Project, a national research group that matched more than 3,000 students from the choice program and from regular public schools, found that pupils in the choice program generally had “achievement growth rates that are comparable” to similar Milwaukee public-school students. This is just one of several evaluations of school choice programs that have failed to show major improvements in test scores, but the size and age of the Milwaukee program, combined with the rigor of the study, make these results hard to explain away.

So let’s not try to explain them away. Why not instead finally acknowledge that standardized test scores are a terrible way to decide whether one school is better than another?

This is tremendously amusing to me, as a longtime opponent of school vouchers and the various permutations of the conservative goal to fix the public schools. But you cannot fix that which is working precisely as designed! Murray simply doesn’t understand that group schooling doesn’t work any better than group reading or group training does.

Imagine if the only way you could read was to get together in a group of 30 and have a professional reader read out loud to you. How often would you read? How fast would you read? How much would you read? The excellence of the reader, the mellifluousness of his voice, would be largely irrelevant. The primary problem with education is the group fetish that has pervaded it ever since the Prussians pioneered the one-size-fits-all approach.

The failure of school choice to provide results was bound to end up in an attack on the standard, just as the many failures of various teacher-based programs always have. As Rothbard explained, empiricists always abandon their empiricism in favor of ex post facto rationalizations whenever they don’t get the results they expected.

Tragedy and irony

Darwin Dynasty Cursed By Inbreeding:

Charles Darwin’s family suffered from the deleterious effects of inbreeding, suggests a new study that serves as ironic punctuation to the evolutionary theorist’s life work. Pioneer of the theory that genetic traits affect survival of both individual organisms and species, Darwin wondered in his own lifetime if his marriage to first cousin Emma Wedgwood was having “the evil effects of close interbreeding” that he had observed in plants and animals.

Three of their children died before age 10, two from infectious diseases. The survivors were often ill, and out of the six long-term marriages that resulted, only half produced any children. According to researchers at Ohio State University and Spain’s Universidad de Santiago de Compestela, that alone is a “suspicious” sign that the Darwins suffered from reproductive problems.

Setting aside the fact that Darwin was by no means a pioneer of genetics, as that would be Mendel some years later, it is more than a little ironic that the evolutionist’s loss of his Christian faith after the tragic loss of his children may have been at least partially the result of his family’s habitual inbreeding. How often we blame God for the inevitable consequences of our own actions.

There goes the “angry white man” angle

Ah well. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again:

Police have arrested Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen from Pakistan, in connection with the attempted Times Square bombing. Shahzad is believed to be the purchaser of the SUV used in the plot, and was apprehended at about 11:00 P.M. Monday while already on-board a flight to Dubai from JFK International Airport:

I know I’m astonished. How about you? Let’s face it, about the only way a bomb would ever be planted in Times Square by a white guy is if he’s a Federal agent acting on orders.

Hate no more

Engadget still doesn’t quite grok the fullness of the mouse, but they don’t actually hate it any longer. In fact, they even went so far to describe it as “the most advanced mouse we’ve ever seen.” Despite the caveats and minor misconceptions, I’m quite pleased with the review. And the review unit is a prototype, btw, so the plastic on the production units is completely different.

Dealing with the police

A cop with the intriguingly titled group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition sent me this video clip today. It’s targeted at blacks, but these days it is relevant for everyone. There’s not necessarily a whole lot new there, but it is still a helpful reminder of the way to deal with those carrying guns and badges in order to reduce the risk of suboptimal outcomes.

I don’t know what the rest of the rules are, but certainly staying calm, cool, and civil is excellent advice.

Republican Party liars

At least with Obama, you know perfectly well that he wants to turn USA into a quasi-socialist third-world hellhole for the benefit of Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street:

Dobson pulls Grayson endorsement, backs Paul

Just a week after backing Trey Grayson in the Kentucky Senate race, evangelical leader Dr. James Dobson pulled the endorsement, backed Rand Paul and blamed GOP leaders for providing him misleading information about Paul’s record.

“Senior members of the GOP told me Dr. Paul is pro-choice and that he opposes many conservative perspectives, so I endorsed his opponent,” Dobson said. “But now I’ve received further information from OB/GYNs in Kentucky whom I trust, and from interviewing the candidate himself.”

Now, history demonstrates that the Republican Party leadership will happily choose a Democrat over a principled Republican every single time. And often, when a Party “moderate” like Crist or Specter is beaten in a primary, he will run as an independent in order to keep the conservative out. Intelligent observers of these practices may wish to ask themselves if this behavior is keeping with the idea that the party officials always want the party to win.

Never listen to female advice about women

This would be why. Dr. Helen linked to a woman who maintains a site called “How to Train Your Man”. Here’s her perspective on what women want:

You can’t blame guys for feeling exasperated. We expect them to be psychic and to know what we’re thinking. As in the Dodge commercial, many men think that if they “behave,” their woman will be happy. If they disappoint us, we are unreasonable, intolerant, unpredictable, moody, PMS-ing or nagging. Sometimes it seems that it’s never enough. It’s really not men’s fault for not knowing what women really want. So here it is, simply. Women want three things from men: someone who cares about them, someone who will listen and respond honestly, and someone they can share a laugh with. In other words, a good friend. Everything else falls under one of these categories.

Interesting. And hypothetically useful information, although it sounds an awful lot like what the patient deltas and whiteknighting gammas believe. For an alternative perspective, here’s what the Dark Lord of Intersexual Relations says women want:

The strongest woman and the most strident feminist wants to be led by, and to submit to, a more powerful man. Polarity is the core of a healthy loving relationship. She does not want the prerogative to walk all over you with her capricious demands and mercurial moods. Her emotions are a hurricane, her soul a saboteur. Think of yourself as a bulwark against her tempest. When she grasps for a pillar to steady herself against the whipping winds or yearns for an authority figure to foil her worst instincts, it is you who has to be there… strong, solid, unshakable and immovable.

Now, based on everything you know about women, based on everything that has been discussed here about women, which perspective do you think is more reflective of observable reality? And don’t you find it just a little bit suspicious that the three things the self-appointed Man Trainer declares women want happen to be three things that can be just as easily provided by other women?

If you’re undecided, consider why Dr. Helen was linking to the Man Trainer in the first place. It was because of this statement to her husband:

Thank you for going shopping. However, you didn’t get the sausage in the casing because you resent having to go to the grocery store. It’s passive aggressive and uncool. And now, you will have to pay the price.

In just three sentences, the Man Trainer reveals four of the worst common female attributes. Ingratitude, logical incoherence, motive imputation, and assuming the simultaneous roles of plaintiff, prosecutor, judge, and executioner. Needless to say, if one was going to lay odds, they would heavily favor the probability that this woman will be bitter, angry and divorced while Roissy is still feeding on the attractive 20-something she-lawyers that pass through Washington DC.

In summary, the correct way for a man to respond to a Man Trainer is in much the same fashion that Montecore responded to Roy Horn.

WND column

Bigging up failure

The president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, told Forbes that global governance is extremely necessary if we want to prevent another financial crisis. … It is his belief that through global governance, the resiliency of the global financial system can be assured, noting that ultimately it was governments’ use of taxpayer’s money, equivalent to around 25 percent of GDP on both sides of the Atlantic, that prevented another catastrophic great depression from occurring.
– “ECB president favors global governance,” Forbes, April 29, 2010

It should come as no surprise to the informed observer that the central bankers of the world are now beginning to openly push for global governance. The current plight of the euro has amply demonstrated the untenability of monetary union without political union. Without the power to enforce government policy on Greece, the most the Franco-Germanic mandarins of the European Union can do is threaten to withhold bailout money from the International Monetary Fund and the EU member states. This impresses the Greek political and financial elite, but no one else in Greece, and violent protests are already erupting across the country at the mere mention of IMF-imposed financial austerity measures.

For, as one young Greek man correctly asked, why should the youth of Greece be forced to pay for the financial misdeeds of their parents and grandparents?