Category: Uncategorized

Why the Tea Party is female

RT notices something:

Is it just my imagination, or is the Tea party dominated by women? I have always regarded the Republican party as the masculine side of the equation, and the Democrat Party as the feminine. The Tea party, which threatens to supplant the Republican party seems to be dominated by rough, opinionated, conservative women. It certainly is where I live, and even in my state, and I get the impression that’s the case nationally. The impetus seems to be coming from women who hold the limelight and get all the work done. Is that because men are abandoning politics, or is it because they have become feminized?

The Tea Party is mostly female because it is a mass entry into politics by a portion of the electorate that has historically been politically ignorant and inert. It is mostly middle class and female because it is made up of people who have the time and resources to get involved with political activism; these are the wives of the middle class men whose economic interests have suffered and are less likely to be able to put in the time and effort involved.

Since it is a female-driven movement, we can be confident that it will quickly lose its focus and be seduced away from its nominal purpose by callous and cold-hearted men, as Karl Denninger has already noted. This assumption is supported by the fact that Sarah Palin is the current darling of the Tea Party, the very woman who suspended her campaign for vice-president in order to permit John McCain to rush back to Washington and help the Bush administration and the Congressional Democrats hold down the American taxpayer for their financial raping by the banking industry. The idea that a woman who supported TARP and the bank bailouts and believes that government inaction is not an option during times of economic difficulty will not turn around and betray a movement of political neophytes at the first opportunity defies belief.

The other reason, of course, is that men are much more skeptical than women. I have said from the beginning that the Tea Party will prove ineffectual and have seen no evidence to alter my thinking in the least. (Remember, I predicted that the Republicans would regain the House and Senate months ago; the Tea Party is a consequential factor, not a causal one.) While many women are finally cognizant of the cancerous state of America, they are still ignorant enough to believe that politics can be the cure. But while it’s not impossible, it is highly improbable.

The fact that many, if not most, Tea Partiers still support The Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism after nine years of near-total futility tells you all you need to know about their eventual effectiveness. Hell, half of them are probably concerned about defending the banks from Obama.

In conclusion, I quote Britain’s finest politician, Daniel Hannan: “[T]he reason there is a Tea Party here is not because of some perverse American characteristic of being anti-tax. It’s that people think that they can do something about it through the ballot box.”

It sounds inspiring. It is inspiring. But the key word there is “think”.

Beating down the doubters

Bill Black explains how the mortgage fraud was actually worse than I’d previously described. While I have explained how the foreclosure fraud was the inevitable consequence of the mortgage transfer fraud, there is growing evidence that the banks knew that 100 percent of certain loan categories would default at the time they were making those loans and yet still utilized them as backing for the securities they were selling:

Our call for closing down control frauds and stopping the foreclosure frauds typically meets with three objections. First, it is claimed that while there were some bad apple lenders, much of the fraud was committed by borrowers. Our proposal would let fraudulent borrowers remain in homes to which they are not entitled, punishing the banks that were duped. Second, the biggest banks are too important to foreclose. And third, it is not possible to resolve a “too big to fail” institution.

Let us deal with the “borrower fraud” argument first because it is the area containing the most erroneous assumptions. There was fraud at every step in the home finance food chain: the appraisers were paid to overvalue real estate; mortgage brokers were paid to induce borrowers to accept loan terms they could not possibly afford; loan applications overstated the borrowers’ incomes; speculators lied when they claimed that six different homes were their principal dwelling; mortgage securitizers made false reps and warranties about the quality of the packaged loans; credit ratings agencies were overpaid to overrate the securities sold on to investors; and investment banks stuffed collateralized debt obligations with toxic securities that were handpicked by hedge fund managers to ensure they would self destruct.

That homeowners would default on the nonprime mortgages was a foregone conclusion throughout the industry — indeed, it was the desired outcome. This was something the lending side knew, but which few on the borrowing side could have realized.

Notice that the Federal Reserve has now seen fit to comment upon “reported irregularities in foreclosure practices at a number of large financial institutions” and Helicopter Ben is hewing very closely to the line that contains the most erroneous assumptions. This is to be expected; both national parties and the Fed are going to do everything they can to point fingers at everyone but the responsible parties as long as they can. But they’re not going to be able to get away with it for four reasons.

1) The fraud is too blatant and widespread.
2) The political downside to backing the banks is too severe. Note that even Obama, who has yet to meet an ex-Goldmanite he doesn’t want in his cabinet, didn’t dare to let HR 3808 pass.
3) They ripped off many powerful institutions, both foreign and domestic. As events have shown, they can’t buy off every judge, county clerk, pension fund manager, and attorney general in the country.
4) It’s not a matter of merely federal law. Land title issues are a State matter, not a federal one. Therefore, the power of the pro-bank politicians and government agencies, which is centralized at the national level, is less effective than usual.

UPDATE: But, but, it’s all about the deadbeats! Zerohedge summarizes FDIC head Sheila Bair’s recent comments:

1. LITIGATION FROM SERVICER ISSUES COULD BE `VERY DAMAGING’
2. FORECLOSURE PROBLEMS WILL REQUIRE `GLOBAL SOLUTION’
3. MORE PROBLEMS’ WILL ARISE IN MORTGAGE SERVICING

Now, why would a global solution be required, he asked innocently? Why would litigation be very damaging and to whom? And how can Ms Bair be so certain that more problems will arise?

Fly, little bird

Fly! Beezle is all growed up now:

Well, you knew the day would come. The good news is that from here on I’ll probably blight your blog no more (or at least less). The bad news is that I’ve devoted another entire blog to you, and I’m planning to aim a little higher on the leg than your ankles. It’s going to be fun, and productive, and entertaining, and most likely will last no more than a month before I lose interest in it entirely and delete the whole thing. But we will see.

Needless to say, bets will be placed on the over/under for his next deleted comment here. I’ll take the under.

WND column

Doubt and Verify

While it’s true that Juan Williams was unfairly and unreasonably fired from National Public Radio for the crime of showing insufficient enthusiasm for burqa-clad airline passengers, conservatives should think twice before making the mistake of concluding that Williams is a fair and balanced commentator himself, his new contract with Fox notwithstanding. The reason is that in both his first public statement after his firing as well as in the statement that inspired it, Williams committed a much more significant calumny that somehow managed to escape the conservative media’s attention.

“Yesterday NPR fired me for telling the truth. The truth is that I worry when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims. This is not a bigoted statement. It is a statement of my feelings, my fears after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by radical Muslims. In a debate with Bill O’Reilly I revealed my fears to set up the case for not making rash judgments about people of any faith. I pointed out that the Atlanta Olympic bomber – as well as Timothy McVeigh and the people who protest against gay rights at military funerals – are Christians but we journalists don’t identify them by their religion.”
– “I was fired for telling the truth,” Fox News, Oct. 21, 2010

Shutting them down

A county in Kentucky takes the law seriously:

The order requires all foreclosure complaints in Kenton County to be accompanied by an affidavit certifying that the plaintiff is the owner and holder of the note and mortgage and identifying the plaintiff as the original holder or an assignee, trustee, or successor in interest of the original holder. Kenton County foreclosure complaints must also be accompanied by a copy of the note and recorded mortgage with copies of all allonges, endorsements, and assignments necessary to document the chain of title to both the note and the mortgage. The complaint must also include documents establishing the plaintiff as the successor in interest if any merger, change of trustee, or other transfer issue has taken place.

The order is effective for all matters filed in Kenton County on or after November 15.

Naturally, this should present no problem at all for any mortgage banks wishing to foreclose in Kenton County. After all, they are law-abiding institutions who would never conspire to break any state or local laws regarding loan documentation. This is an excellent example of a jurisdiction where the Rule of Law still applies, rather than the Reign of Men who allow certain parties to circumvent the law.

No fast talk, no technological excuses, no judges to look the other way and declare the paperwork unnecessary. Either you have everything in order or you don’t. End of story. That’s exactly the way it should be… and almost never is.

VPFL Week 6

67 Winston Reverends (4-2)
44 Moundsview Meerkats (1-5)

63 Judean Rhyneauxs (4-2)
52 RR Redbeards (2-4)

65 Blackmouth Banksters (4-2)
50 Meigs Marauders (3-3)

69 Valders Quixotes (4-2)
68 Bane Sidhe (4-2)

77 MS Swamp Spartans (3-3)
61 Greenfield Grizzlies (1-5)

This is your weekly NFL discussion thread. I picked up Lance Moore, so naturally Hakeem Nicks is Questionable on the same week that Arian Foster sits. It appears unlikely to be my year… but at least I should be able to beat the woeful Grizzlies, LdT notwithstanding.

Hearts and minds of hate

Nicholas Kristof underlines the intrinsic absurdity of the current line of neocon justification for the Afghan Occupation:

[I]t seems to me a historic mistake to justify our huge military presence in Afghanistan as a bulwark to protect the women. In fact, most women I interviewed favored making a deal with the Taliban — simply because it would bring peace. For them, the Taliban regime was awful, but a perpetual war may be worse. Take Pari Gol, a woman from Helmand Province whom I met here in Kabul. She despises the Taliban and told me on this trip that back in 2001, “I prayed that the Taliban would be defeated, and God listened to my prayers.”

Yet in the fighting since then, she said, her home was destroyed and her husband and daughter were both killed by American airstrikes. She is now living in a mud hut here — fuming at the Taliban, the Americans and the Afghan government. “I hate all of them,” she told me.

It is a huge mistake. The occupation of Afghanistan cannot be justified under any reasonable measure anymore. It should be obvious that the neocons are not going to win many of the required hearts and minds when their “liberation” of Afghan women comes via the deaths of their husbands and children. No doubt there are a few pro-abortion, anti-marriage feminists who would see this as a perfectly viable strategy, but should come as no surprise to sane observers that the violent military occupation of a country very seldom causes the occupiers to be loved.

Given that the latest Wikileaks documents prove that America’s occupation of Iraq has killed nearly three times more innocent and uninvolved civilians than all enemy “insurgents”, “terrorists”, or “violent extremists” combined, it is eminently clear that the Bush-Rumsfeld strategery has completely failed. And the Obama administration has been making a classic strategic mistake in stubbornly reinforcing failure; we are fortunate that it has not been successful in expanding the war to include Iran and Pakistan as well.

“The Iraq War Logs released by WikiLeaks on 23 October 2010, contain 54,910 records compiled by the United States military whose numerical fields register 109,032 violent deaths between January 2004 and December 2009. These casualty records contain four categories of casualties, ‘Civilian’ (66,081 deaths), ‘Host Nation’ (15,196 deaths), ‘Enemy’ (23,984 deaths), and ‘Friendly’ (3,771 deaths).”

Perceptive observers will note the way in which the views of the Afghan women are consistent with the theory of Game. The relative security of the Taliban are preferred to the risks of war and the nominal “freedom” it promises. The fact that they are almost certainly right in this case does not alter the fact that the inherent female preference exists.

New NFL policy

I have absolutely no problem with the idea of the NFL attempting to protect players from serious harm and permanent injury. I remember the outcry when helmet-spearing was banned, but that didn’t harm the sport in the least much less turn it into a girl’s game. And no Vikings fan who remembers Duane Rudd playing linebacker is going to confuse hard hits for good tackling; hitting someone hard and then celebrating the hit as the ball-carrier keeps his feet and runs past you is not what football is all about.

But, as the Vikings’ locker room has noted, there is a tremendous amount of hypocrisy in the league’s current posturing. It is ludicrous to claim that the concerns are primarily driven by player safety when chop-blocks at the knees of offensive linemen are still permitted. (Note that this was the pet cause of noted NFL softie Dr. Z; a rule requiring blockers to face what they hit above the knees was his perfectly reasonable solution.) It’s hard to argue that quarterbacks don’t require some protection when few starters manage to make it through a season anymore, but over the years I’ve noticed that it’s usually the special teams players, not the stars, who wind up with the most serious injuries.

Mailvox: Hollywood history

Hitler was not the German National Socialist Workers Party. Nor was the converse true. Imprecision in language often leads to needless confusion, which is why DJ felt it necessary to ask for clarification regarding an apparent historical contradiction:

In your book The Irrational Atheist, you mentioned that Hitler received 95% of the vote at one time. On Bill Maher’s show Mr Reiner mentioned that he never received 33% of the vote, which is correct?

In general, if there is a discrepancy between something I have written and something that a Hollywood figure assserts on Bill Maher’s show, I suggest it is entirely safe to assume that the Hollywood figure is incorrect. It never hurts to check, of course, but seriously…. In this particular case, Mr. Reiner happens to be wrong, and wrong on no less than three levels. The Weimar Republic was a parliamentary system, not a presidential one, so the German electorate was not voting for Hitler in the national elections to which Mr. Reiner is clearly referring; they were voting for National Socialist parliamentarians. That’s a mere technicality and would not normally justify comment except that Mr. Reiner’s statement is more than a little misleading given the American context of his remarks; keep in mind that Margaret Thatcher, (or more precisely, the parliamentarians of the Conservative Party, a group which included Mrs. Thatcher), only won 35.8% of the vote in the 1979 UK election.

Moreover, the statement also happens to be factually wrong. The National Socialists won 43.9% of the popular vote in the March 5, 1933 election, taking 288 of the 647 seats (44.5%) in the Reichstag. And that 1933 election was actually the third straight one in which the National Socialists won more than 33% of the popular vote, as they had won 37.3% and 33.1% in the previous two national elections. There was nothing democratically illegitimate about the National Socialists; the hitherto dominant Social Democrats (SDP) never controlled more than the 39% of the parliamentary seats that they won at the peak of their electoral strength in 1919.

As for my statement, I was not referring to the general elections, but rather to the four post-1933 national plebiscites that retroactively combined the offices of Reich Chancellor and Reich President and transferred the joint authority of the combined office to Adolf Hitler, approved the Austrian Anschluss, undsoweiter.

“What’s staggering about Hitler’s democratic appeal is not that he managed to win an average of 95.9 percent of the vote in the four plebiscites, but that he did so with 95.5 percent of the registered voters showing up to vote. That’s a serious democratic mandate!”
– The Irrational Atheist, p. 188

Mailvox: the student exhibits mastery

A sends in an after-action report of an encounter with a self-styled champion of evolutionary psychology:

Evolutionary Psychology has always been a thorn in my side, and while I agree with the fundamentals of Game, I’ve never thought of it as any proof positive that EP as a whole was viable. I’m admittedly not an expert on the subject — both my degrees are in the field of humanities — so I always find myself drawn to your blog when EP (or any evolutionary field for that matter) is the topic of conversation.

I typically don’t post to forums, including Vox Popoli, as I see my time quickly get sucked away by the activity, but recently at another forum I found myself compelled to post because I so strongly disagreed with the statements of another poster who is an adamant supporter of both TENS and EP. When it came to EP, rather than get sucked into an assumptive argument, I took a page out the VP book and just flat-out questioned the science behind evo-psych, including its ability to make measurable predictions, etc. His response managed to simultaneously be laughably predictable and surprising to me. As to my challenges to EP, this is all he could muster:

“I didn’t expect you to be credulous towards my claims, and unfortunately I don’t have carefully compiled case studies to present…Psychology is enormously complex, and it would be unrealistic to expect the sort of definite predictions that can be made of simple systems…this comment of yours is analogous to saying that because a meteorologist’s predictions are only accurate 50% of the time, meteorology is not science. You have a right to such an opinion, but while holding such an opinion, it would be unlikely that you would develop much understanding of the science of meteorology.”

This retreat was of course entirely expected, but the part that threw me for a loop is what he continually fell back on as his defense — a claim that my discourse with him was entirely predicted by him based on evo-psych:

“However, I have discussed the pattern of events occurring in our dialog on this forum in the past, and anyone who paid attention can observe for themselves whether things play out as I’ve described. My response to you was more for the purpose of illustrating the pattern to long time readers here, than for the purpose of persuading you that I’m correct.”

In summation, his attempted defense was that our discourse was not one of simple and genuine disagreement, but rather a challenge for pack dominance. That he could not back up these assumptive claims or his ex post facto prediction seems typical of the dogged defenders of EP. Previously, I would have engaged in a discussion of the minutiae of social behaviors, but this time I went directly to the foundation of these pet theories and happily watched as he engaged in foolish hand-waving. I just wanted to drop you this email to say thanks to you and the Ilk for providing me with a vital technique for taking guys like this to the woodshed.

I was greatly pleased to be apprised of this fine example of foundational sapping put into action. While I am often disappointed by the poor quality of argumentation exhibited by commenters on this blog who, despite literal years of examples having been set before them, still a) rely upon emotional rhetoric, b) attempt illegitimate logical shortcuts, c) fail to comprehend the argument they are criticizing, and d) inappropriately apply otherwise effective techniques, so it is a real pleasure to read a correct and competent application of one of my favorite techniques.

Foundational sapping is extremely effective because it simultaneously attacks both the argument and the individual presenting it without utilizing any unfair ad hominem or committing any other logical fallacies. And because it is based on the sound principle of MPAI, it is applicable in most circumstances. Not all, but most. Very few individuals actually know anywhere nearly as much as they pretend to know, and intelligent, educated people are far more prone to engage in intellectual bluffing than most because a) they have a larger knowledge base from which to bluff, and b) they are often quick enough to latch on to a hint and use it to conceal their lack of relevant knowledge. But despite their pretensions, they usually provide indications that they don’t have a firm grasp on their subject; in the first quote, for example, note the ungrammatical use of the word “credulous”. Lofty language used improperly is a strong sign of an intellectual charlatan.

This is why I constantly stress the importance of asking questions in debate. (Granted, I don’t do it often in the comments, but that’s because I have set the stage with my post and will usually recognize when a predictable counter-argument is being made. Most of my questions are intended to confirm that someone is making an expected counter-argument.) While the conventional Socratic method is less effective than most people seem to imagine, mostly due to its common use of false constructions to which the interlocutor is required to agree, its focus on the use of questions to pin down the interlocutor’s precise position renders it an important part of one’s intellectual arsenal.

Some readers will have noticed that those who consider themselves to be defenders of “science and reason” not only dislike asking questions, but in some cases even claim they have no need to know, let alone understand, what their interlocutor is saying. (Look up the borderline retarded Courtier’s Reply, by way of example.) This is why they either avoid debates or get repeatedly trounced by every half-competent opponent; an unwillingness to understand the argument made by the other side is almost perfectly synonymous with making a commitment to lose the debate.

Foundational sapping requires not only understanding the argument being made, but more importantly, understanding the basic assumptions that support it. As A discovered with the would-be champion of evolutionary psychology, very few individuals possess even a rudimentary comprehension of the basic assumptions that provide the foundations of their argument, so the easiest and most reasonable way to defeat the argument as well as incidentally destroy the credibility of the individual presenting it is to ask questions that concern those foundations. And when the interlocutor rapidly retreats into hand-waving and strange self-laudatory pronouncements, you will know that not only have you won the encounter, but that the interlocutor knows it as well. As does everyone witnessing it.

Of course, the converse side of utilizing this method of debate is the awareness of how easily it can be turned against you if you are foolish enough to take untenable positions with the notion of bluffing your way through. I don’t recommend doing so; the ability to say “I don’t know” is not an admission of weakness or stupidity, but rather an important sign of intellectual integrity and intelligence. On a tangential note, argumentative bluffers always suspect everyone else is bluffing too; they invariably interpret a failure or refusal to initially provide supporting evidence is certain proof of an inability to do so. Baiting and trapping this sort of individual is so easy that a child could do it.

The best thing is that on those rare occasions when you find yourself in a discussion with someone who actually knows what they are talking about, you will usually learn something that is either interesting or useful. Even if you end up getting your head metaphorically handed to you, the experience will allow you to make more effective arguments in the future. One should not enter into argumentative discussions with a “win or lose’ mentality, but rather a “win or learn” one. There is no shame in being bested by someone of superior intelligence or information, the only shame is in the inability to either admit that one has been bested or learn from the experience.