Only racists will criticize this law

I am entirely confident that anti-racist activists will be quick to cry raciss of anyone who speaks out against this African law. And since it is progress, who can possible question this evidence of the way morality is evolving in Uganda.

Ugandan lawmakers on Friday passed an anti-gay bill that calls for
life imprisonment for certain homosexual acts, drawing criticism from
rights campaigners who called it “the worst in the world.” The legislations sets life imprisonment as the
penalty for gay sex involving an HIV-infected person, acts with minors
and the disabled, as well as repeated sex offenses among consenting
adults, according to the office of a spokeswoman for Uganda’s
parliament. The bill also prescribes a seven-year jail term for a person who “conducts a marriage ceremony” for same-sex couples.

Since we are often informed that wise Africans who take a village are our moral superiors, it would be a terrible moral failure were the US Congress to fail to pass a similar law.  After all, homosexuality activity is already criminal in 70 percent of African countries.

Rights roundup

An Approaching Earthquake in Economics

Recently, two fascinating admissions were made by two of America’s
most well-known economists. The first was made by Paul Krugman, the New
York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winner, who has, as a good
Neo-Keynesian, resolutely denied any possible link between the amount of
debt in the economy and the level of demand for goods and services. As
recently as March 2012, he was following Paul Samuelson’s literally
textbook lead concerning the economically innocuous nature of debt and
admitting “I guess I don’t get that at all.” But two weeks ago, he suddenly began singing a completely different tune.

Desperate Measures and the National Debt

In the fall of 2002, I observed the housing bubble and noted its
likely consequences for the future. In the spring of 2008, I warned my
readers that the consequences of that bubble were about to erupt, which
duly happened six months later, in October. What was it that concerned
me about the situation? And how was I able to see the problem coming
when so many mainstream economists did not?
The reason is simple. Mainstream economists, whether of the neo-Keynesian or the Monetarist variety, believe that debt is, in their words, “exogenous to the system”.

So, the gay thing backfired

They’ll just have to cry raciss instead:

“Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson made headlines this week for his anti-gay sentiments in a GQ interview. Now another statement from the interview — this time about the black community during the pre-civil rights era — is stirring more controversy.

GQ’s Drew Magary sat down with the “Duck Dynasty” patriarch for a candid interview about his road to fame. The 67-year-old journeyed from substance abuse to devotion to God to small-screen celebrity, all in the backwoods of Louisiana. According to Robertson, growing up in those Louisiana backwoods in the pre-civil rights era was not bad for black people.

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person,” Robertson is quoted in GQ. “Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field…. They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

Presumably the next accusations will be:

  1. anti-semitism
  2. anti-science
  3. evolution denier
  4. not a true Christian

Oh, wait, they already tried number four, didn’t they. I think this episode is actually a potentially positive one for American society, as it is making two things abundantly clear. First, give them an inch and they will not only take a mile, but will insult you in the process. Second, there is absolutely no reasoning with these people. They are an implacable enemy and no quarter should be shown to them even when they wave the white flag and start talking about negotiating a settled peace.

As Churchill once said of the Hun, he is either at your feet or at your throat. We can’t leave them alone because they won’t leave us alone. We can’t tolerate them because they will not tolerate us. So, root them out of your lives, stop supporting them, stop enabling them, and stop funding their assault on your beliefs, your family, and your faith. There are no fences upon which moderates can safely sit in a cultural war.

One of the few voices of reason on the Left grasps this and laments the totalitarianism of her own side. Camille Paglia writes:

“To express yourself in a magazine in an interview — this is the
level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my
liberal colleagues in the Democratic Party and on college campuses have
supported and promoted over the last several decades,” Paglia said.
“This is the whole legacy of free speech 1960’s that have been lost by
my own party.

“I think that this intolerance by gay activists toward the full
spectrum of human beliefs is a sign of immaturity, juvenility,” Paglia
said. “This is not the mark of a true intellectual life. This is why
there is no cultural life now in the U.S. Why nothing is of interest
coming from the major media in terms of cultural criticism. Why the
graduates of the Ivy League with their A, A, A+ grades are complete
cultural illiterates, etc. is because they are not being educated in any
way to give respect to opposing view points.”

One cannot reason with totalitarians. One can only refuse to submit to them. And sooner or later, one must fight them.

UPDATE: The Robertson family stands fast:

“We are disappointed that Phil has been placed on hiatus for expressing
his faith, which is his constitutionally protected right.We have had a
successful working relationship with A&E but, as a family, we cannot
imagine the show going forward without our patriarch at the helm.  We
are in discussions with A&E to see what that means for the future of
Duck Dynasty.   Again, thank you for your continued support of our
family.”

Mailvox: Talk Scalzi

Rocean appears to have forgotten that I am far from the only critic of McRapey:

Scazli has a new response to VD up. In essence, he’s smart, he’s honest, and gosh-darn it people like him. Or more accurately, just more adolescent snark and word games.

I checked it out and I don’t believe the post to be a response to anything I wrote. I suspect his cryptic meandering may have been intended as a response to Heartiste, given the references to a “stupidsphere”. I don’t question for a moment that an effete young lad, abandoned by his father and desperately seeking both attention and approval from the women upon whom his path to a better life depends, would genuinely subscribe to the equalitarian claptrap he has espoused in public for years. That doing so would tend to put him in good odor with the gatekeepers and shambling shoggoths of Pink SF/F is mostly a matter of positive happenstance.

UPDATE: Or perhaps he is addressing Ed Trimnell, who recently wrote:

John Scalzi is a pure, coldly calculating opportunist who knows exactly what he’s doing when he writes blogs posts like “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is”. I suspect that Scalzi believes only a fraction of what he writes. 

Regardless, I found this admission from December 19th to be of more interest:

[T]his year, by blog readership looks like it end up lower than it was last year — about 7.5 million recorded visits for the year, as opposed to 8.1 million in 2012. I attribute this to a couple of month-long “semi-hiatuses,” during which I posted less while I was writing books or on tour, a theory borne out by looking at the monthly numbers (November, which was one of those months, had the lowest visitorship of any month in two years). However, this year I also added 15,000 Twitter followers, most of whom (so far as I can tell) are actual real live people and not Twitter bots, and my Facebook and Google Plus public pages also saw growth. (I should note 7.5 million visits still means 2013 is Whatever’s second best year ever, so I’m not exactly panicking over here in that regard. But again, the fact that my other online presences showed substantial growth works as an offset in any event.) 

Those of you who previously doubted me concerning my observations about Whatever’s declining traffic may recall the following statement, which I made here on December 10th. 

McRapey is unlikely to even hit 7.5 million Google pageviews this year; imagine how much more his readership would have declined if “those two sites” hadn’t mentioned him 145 times, to say nothing of the copious references on Heartiste and other sites.

As before, Scalzi is using “recorded visits” when a more accurate term would be “WordPress pageviews”. Translating the numbers into Google pageviews, he had 7.897 million pageviews in 2012 and he’s anticipating about 7.155 million in 2013. You knew he’d have an excuse for the decline and I was pretty sure “other online presences” would be one of them. But it’s not merely an excuse, it is a legitimate reason as well. Keep in mind that I’ve never once claimed that Mr. Scalzi is not influential in SF/F circles; he was able to arrange my expulsion from SFWA by threatening to quit, after all. My contentions have been limited to pointing out that McRapey is nowhere nearly as “huge” as he would have his fans believe, that Whatever averages less than one-twelfth of the claimed 50,000 DAILY READERS, and that his blog is in fact is considerably less popular than most of us thought until the end of last year.

Those who have mastered division will surely note that 7.155 million divided by 365 is 19,603, which would be considerably short of 50,000 even if Whatever had a 1/1 pageview/reader ratio. Which it obviously doesn’t.

That being said, I’m not surprised that Scalzi has done well on Twitter. Whatever will likely continue to decline in large part because Twitter is a medium much better suited to an approval-seeking narcissist with snarky little thoughts who is more interest in talking than listening, and whose primary interest in dialogue is receiving praise.

Technologies change. And one no longer requires a blog to post pictures of cats and repeatedly be told how awesome one is.

UPDATE: Sometimes, Johnny just can’t wait for the next back-pat and has to do it himself.  “I’m pretty smart”, he declares. Sure, not National Merit smart. Or even Mensa smart. But pretty smart. So he’s got that going for him, which is nice. Cocoa?

Pajamaboy!

Little known fact: Pajamaboy served in the IDF. You do NOT want to mess with him. He may look harmless, effete, and completely uninterested in women, but the heart of a true desert warrior beats inside.

Of course, this ad for Obamacare might look astonishingly asinine, but don’t be fooled. In truth, it is just one more brilliant meisterspiel by the greatest genius in the history of American politics and that is exactly what he wants you to think!

Loyalty

Dogs are the best:

A blind man who nearly died after falling onto subway train tracks
will get to keep the loyal dog who tried to save him — thanks to New
Yorkers who whipped out their checkbooks to help the duo stay together. Cecil Williams, 61 — whose 11-year-old pooch, Orlando, leaped onto
the tracks after his master fainted on Tuesday — said the lovable lab
will retire as a seeing-eye dog and become a pet with the help of
donation money.

Williams fell on to the tracks after he grew faint and lost footing
on the platform of the 125th Street station at 9:30 am on Wednesday.
Orlando jumped onto the tracks after him and began licking his face. A quick-thinking subway conductor then hit brakes of the train, which passed over both of them. Transit officials pulled Orlando out from under the train and
Williams was rushed to St. Luke’s Hospital while wearing a neck brace.

I tend to doubt my viszla would have had the courage to leap on the tracks in a similar situation. His usual method of confronting other dogs that represented a potential threat was to run behind me, peek out around one leg and growl. But if curling up in a blanket in front of a roaring fire would have saved me, he’d have been all over it.

Correcting the NYT

The New York Times has Europe precisely backwards as falsely equates fascism with populism. In Europe, it is the anti-immigrant populist parties that are pro-democracy and anti-fascism; some of them are openly left-wing. Fascism is not returning to Europe, it is already there in the form of the openly anti-democratic and corporatist European Union.

Across the Atlantic, however, populism is resurgent. Indeed, many fear that the European Parliament may be at risk of a right-wing populist takeover following elections in May 2014. In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front has, for the first time in that country’s history, pulled ahead in polls for the European Union election. Ahead of the elections to the European Parliament, Ms. Le Pen recently announced her intention to form a “Eurosceptic” alliance with the Dutch politician Geert Wilders , whose right-wing Party for Freedom demonizes Islam and attacks immigration.

In Italy, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who controlled politics in that country for decades, peppered his Thatcherite free-market nationalism with spectacular doses of scandal, shady dealings and corruption. In his wake, “populism from above” has given way to a staunchly anti-political populism from below. Beppe Grillo, a comedian turned activist, sent shock waves through the establishment in February when his Five Star Movement won 25 percent of the vote. Mr. Grillo, who in the run-up to the election called for a referendum on whether to keep Italy in the euro zone, stressed the need to wrest power from the oligarchic elite and return it to the people. Prime Minister Enrico Letta, who took office in April, recently warned that populism posed a threat to European Union stability.

While they may seek the breakup of the European Union, most of these new European populist movements don’t aim to eliminate democracy altogether. In Greece, however, the emergence of a strand of populism deeply rooted in the fascist past is particularly troubling. The country’s crippling financial ills, and Brussels’ insistence on austerity measures, have generated populist responses that evoke the worst of interwar European fascism. The neo-fascist Golden Dawn party, which won 7 percent of the vote in Greece’s 2012 parliamentary elections, openly uses a logo resembling a swastika. Its supporters have perpetrated violent physical attacks on immigrants and political opponents (including murder); its party line includes anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Similar sentiments are also on the rise in Hungary, where the nationalistic, anti-immigration, anti-Semitic Jobbik party is in line to become the second-largest in Parliament.

With their radical stance against pluralism and minority rights, Greece’s right-wing populists and their Hungarian counterparts — along with dozens of anti-European Union parties poised to win seats in next year’s parliamentary elections — make today’s burgeoning European brands of populism much more frightening than their Latin American counterparts.

There is nothing at all frightening about the much-needed resurgence of nationalism in Europe. The European people have turned aggressively against multiculturalism and mass immigration, and because the European media is dominated by social democrats rather than the rabid immigrationists that run the US media, the reporting is considerably more even-handed there. The article fails to note that there are twice as many Golden Dawn members murdered by its political opponents than there are Golden Dawn-affiliated murders or to point out that its anti-democratic political opponents have actually tried outlaw the party.

Europe isn’t religious in the same sense that America is, but on the other hand, their sense of belonging to an identifiably Christian nationalist culture tends to runs more deeply and is firmly entrenched in many of the most secular Europeans. They have seen the consequences of multiculturalism and most of them hate it. And unlike Americans, even the most famously tolerant Europeans, the Swiss, have a history of practicing rigid ethnic, religious, and linguistic cleansing.

In a comment on a previous post that is relevant here, Steve notes that
everything we used to believe concerning the positive aspects of both the European Union and American
left-liberalism were based on lies: “The same people who used to skate by on “commitment to scientific
truth, democracy, and tolerance” are increasingly discarding the velvet
glove in favor of the iron fist now that science is strongly suggesting
they are wrong, the popular will is moving against democracy, and their
“tolerance” is now proven to go only one way –  towards tolerating
sexual perversion,anti-Christian religious persecution, and anti-white
racism.”

Media bias: the conclusive proof

Many people have argued over the years, in the face of the obvious evidence, that the media cannot be systematically biased to the Left because it would not make business sense to spurn more than half the population as customers. However, the recent decision by A&E to fire its biggest and most lucrative TV star because it is more concerned about catering to homosexuals than making money vividly demonstrates that politics and propaganda are more important to the media companies than making a profit:

A&E has placed Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson on indefinite hiatus following anti-gay remarks he made in a recent profile in GQ. “We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson’s comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty,” A&E said in a statement. “His personal views in no way reflect those of A+E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. The network has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely.”

These are companies that never fire anyone for anti-Christian or anti-Republican remarks, but they’ll act with alacrity against anyone who says anything critical of the sexually abnormal. Notice that Alec Baldwin didn’t get fired for his many and various rants until he offended homosexuals one too many times.

And if you watch A+E, why are you supporting “strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community”?

As for the statement by the spokesman of GLAAD, I shall await with interest his next statement on Muslim theology. “Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil’s lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe,” GLAAD spokesperson Wilson Cruz said.

The fact is that a queer propagandist like Wilson Cruz obviously no more knows what “true Christians believe” than he knows what “true Martians believe”. The true and Biblically-based Christian belief is that self-identified homosexuals are unrepentant sinners whom God regards as abomination because they identify themselves with their sin. It is absolutely impossible to be a Christian and an unrepentant homosexual for the obvious reason that Christianity requires repentance for one’s sins.

Everyone on the planet is fallen. And no one chooses their particular flavor of temptation. But we are all responsible for our own actions, we all choose whether to give into our temptations or not, and we all choose whether to repent of those moral failures, those sins, or not.

Well, the “science” is settled, after all

The great hallmark of science is silencing all dissenting voices, right?

A content editor on Reddit’s science forum wrote Monday that the site has banned climate-change skeptics, and asks why more news outlets haven’t done the same.

“About a year ago, we moderators became increasingly stringent with deniers,” Reddit content editor Nathan Allen wrote in grist. “When a potentially controversial submission was posted, a warning would be issued stating the rules for comments (most importantly that your comment isn’t a conspiracy theory) and advising that further violations of the rules could result in the commenter being banned from the forum.”

Allen explains that climate change became an ironically heated topic among commenters on Reddit’s science forum, /r/science, which he described as “a window into the Ivory Tower” for “non-scientists” to connect with experts like himself.

Climate-change believers accused skeptics of being bought out by “big oil,” while the skeptics accused believers of being on the take from “big green.”

Despite the provocative comments on both sides described by Allen, and Reddit’s reputation as “passionately dedicated to free speech,” the self-described “PhD chemist” decided it was time for the skeptics to go.

“After some time interacting with the regular denier posters, it became clear that they could not or would not improve their demeanor,” Allen said. “As a scientist myself, it became clear to me that the contrarians were not capable of providing the science to support their ‘skepticism’ on climate change.”

Do these global warming idiots ever go outside? When record lows are being set all over the world and every climate model they’ve ever cited has been spectacularly wrong, you would think that they would at least consider the possibility that their assumptions are incorrect.

By the time the global warming charade finally gives up the ghost, scientists are going to be considered about as credible as used car salesmen. Global warming, or climate change, or whatever you want to call it is less scientific than “scientific socialism” and is even more easily seen to be obvious nonsense by the layman.

What’s amazing is that half the people who applaud this sort of thing will also tell you that the Catholic Church forcing Galileo to recant was the worst crime in human history. Which would seem puzzling until one recalls MPAI. At this point, I suspect a new Ice Age is probably more likely than genuine global warming.

Pets.com redux

Anyone else scenting a familiar odor? That rancid aroma of greed, fraud, cigarettes, and overpriced cologne? It smells like 1999 to me:

Pinterest is a lovely website. It provides something the internet has never had before (virtual window shopping and muffin JPEG fetishism) in a snappy, tidy package. It’s very popular, particularly within the inscrutable Midwestern Mystery Zone, which baffles most tech companies, small and large alike. It’s aspirational picture-collecting at its most refined, and certainly could end up being the way people plan future purchases. Maybe. Someday. There’s no way to be sure.

And then there’s Snapchat, the pubescent pic-sharing app du jour, enough of a phenomenon to tilt teens away from Facebook, and a cultural spike unto itself. It’s fun! It’s a very fun, very smart, very simple toy—and there’s nothing wrong with that. The world needs things that are amusing and little else, lest we all be crushed beneath cloud services and spreadsheets. Fun is fine, and it’s certainly proven popular for Snapchat’s founders.

But these are both massive maybes bridging chasms of financial uncertainty. Maybe Pinterest will drive sales, and be able to keep a cut for itself. Maybe Snapchat will be able to turn its huge demographic reach among vulnerable young minds into revenue, and hold on to its trend status. Maybe. But that’s almost $8 billion (estimated) dollars pinned on a maybe, the sort of breathless, thoughtless speculation bubble dreams are made of. It’s $8 billion in maybe snapped against two companies that haven’t even tried to make money.

In the immortal words of Public Enemy’s Chuck D: “Here we go again….”