Tag: trainwreck

AIPAC vs 1st Amendment

In case you didn’t believe that immigrants have never, ever, understood literally the first goddamn thing about the Rights of Englishmen or the U.S. Constitution. Note that limiting the 1st Amendment rights of Americans is AIPAC’s top legislative priority for 2017. Everything below is straight from Congress.gov.


S.720 – Israel Anti-Boycott Act
115th Congress (2017-2018)

Sponsor: Sen. Cardin, Benjamin L. [D-MD] (Introduced 03/23/2017)
Committees: Senate – Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Latest Action: 03/23/2017 Read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

This bill declares that Congress: (1) opposes the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution of March 24, 2016, which urges countries to pressure companies to divest from, or break contracts with, Israel; and (2) encourages full implementation of the United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014 through enhanced, governmentwide, coordinated U.S.-Israel scientific and technological cooperation in civilian areas.

The bill amends the Export Administration Act of 1979 to declare that it shall be U.S. policy to oppose:

  • requests by foreign countries to impose restrictive practices or boycotts against other countries friendly to the United States or against U.S. persons; and
  • restrictive trade practices or boycotts fostered or imposed by an international governmental organization, or requests to impose such practices or boycotts, against Israel.

The bill prohibits U.S. persons engaged in interstate or foreign commerce from:

  • requesting the imposition of any boycott by a foreign country against a country which is friendly to the United States; or 
  • supporting any boycott fostered or imposed by an international organization, or requesting imposition of any such boycott, against Israel.

The bill amends the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945 to include as a reason for the Export-Import Bank to deny credit applications for the export of goods and services between the United States and foreign countries, opposition to policies and actions that are politically motivated and are intended to penalize or otherwise limit commercial relations specifically with citizens or residents of Israel, entities organized under the laws of Israel, or the Government of Israel.

Cosponsor and Date Cosponsored
Sen. Portman, Rob [R-OH]* 03/23/2017
Sen. Nelson, Bill [D-FL] 03/27/2017
Sen. Rubio, Marco [R-FL] 03/27/2017
Sen. Menendez, Robert [D-NJ] 03/27/2017
Sen. Collins, Susan M. [R-ME] 03/27/2017
Sen. Blumenthal, Richard [D-CT] 03/27/2017
Sen. Graham, Lindsey [R-SC] 03/28/2017
Sen. Young, Todd C. [R-IN] 03/28/2017
Sen. Boozman, John [R-AR] 03/28/2017
Sen. Isakson, Johnny [R-GA] 03/28/2017
Sen. Peters, Gary C. [D-MI] 03/28/2017
Sen. Hatch, Orrin G. [R-UT] 03/30/2017
Sen. Perdue, David [R-GA] 03/30/2017
Sen. Roberts, Pat [R-KS] 03/30/2017
Sen. Wicker, Roger F. [R-MS] 03/30/2017
Sen. Hoeven, John [R-ND] 04/04/2017
Sen. Cornyn, John [R-TX] 04/04/2017
Sen. Fischer, Deb [R-NE] 04/04/2017
Sen. Heller, Dean [R-NV] 04/24/2017
Sen. Moran, Jerry [R-KS] 04/24/2017
Sen. Crapo, Mike [R-ID] 04/24/2017
Sen. Cantwell, Maria [D-WA] 04/24/2017
Sen. Grassley, Chuck [R-IA] 04/25/2017
Sen. Capito, Shelley Moore [R-WV] 04/26/2017
Sen. Schumer, Charles E. [D-NY] 05/01/2017
Sen. Ernst, Joni [R-IA] 05/01/2017
Sen. Hassan, Margaret Wood [D-NH] 05/08/2017
Sen. Gillibrand, Kirsten E. [D-NY] 05/09/2017
Sen. Lankford, James [R-OK] 05/16/2017
Sen. Burr, Richard [R-NC] 05/17/2017
Sen. Donnelly, Joe [D-IN] 05/23/2017
Sen. Scott, Tim [R-SC] 05/25/2017
Sen. Cruz, Ted [R-TX] 06/05/2017
Sen. Manchin, Joe, III [D-WV] 06/05/2017
Sen. Strange, Luther [R-AL] 06/05/2017
Sen. McCaskill, Claire [D-MO] 06/06/2017
Sen. Thune, John [R-SD] 06/12/2017
Sen. Wyden, Ron [D-OR] 06/12/2017
Sen. Sasse, Ben [R-NE] 06/15/2017
Sen. Coons, Christopher A. [D-DE] 06/26/2017
Sen. Bennet, Michael F. [D-CO] 07/12/2017
Sen. Sullivan, Dan [R-AK] 07/12/2017
Sen. Cassidy, Bill [R-LA] 07/18/2017
Sen. Tillis, Thom [R-NC] 07/19/2017
Sen. Cotton, Tom [R-AR] 07/19/2017

Criminalizing non-trade

This is, quite possibly, the most insane proposed federal law I have ever heard about. And it has bipartisan support from Republicans and Democrats alike.

THE CRIMINALIZATION OF political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the West. In France, activists have been arrested and prosecuted for wearing T-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel. The U.K. has enacted a series of measures designed to outlaw such activism. In the U.S., governors compete with one another over who can implement the most extreme regulations to bar businesses from participating in any boycotts aimed even at Israeli settlements, which the world regards as illegal. On U.S. campuses, punishment of pro-Palestinian students for expressing criticisms of Israel is so commonplace that the Center for Constitutional Rights refers to it as “the Palestine Exception” to free speech.

But now, a group of 43 senators — 29 Republicans and 14 Democrats — wants to implement a law that would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, which was launched in protest of that country’s decades-old occupation of Palestine. The two primary sponsors of the bill are Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio. Perhaps the most shocking aspect is the punishment: Anyone guilty of violating the prohibitions will face a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.

The proposed measure, called the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S. 720), was introduced by Cardin on March 23. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the bill “was drafted with the assistance of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.” Indeed, AIPAC, in its 2017 lobbying agenda, identified passage of this bill as one of its top lobbying priorities for the year….

The bill’s co-sponsors include the senior Democrat in Washington, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, his New York colleague Kirsten Gillibrand, and several of the Senate’s more liberal members, such as Ron Wyden of Oregon, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Maria Cantwell of Washington. Illustrating the bipartisanship that AIPAC typically summons, it also includes several of the most right-wing senators such as Ted Cruz of Texas, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Marco Rubio of Florida.

A similar measure was introduced in the House on the same date by two Republicans and one Democrat. It has already amassed 234 co-sponsors: 63 Democrats and 174 Republicans. As in the Senate, AIPAC has assembled an impressive ideological diversity among supporters, predictably including many of the most right-wing House members — Jason Chaffetz, Liz Cheney, Peter King — along with the second-ranking Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer.

It is becoming abundantly clear that it is not boycotts of Israel – or anything else – that should be outlawed, but rather, AIPAC. Those corrupters of the already corrupt seem to believe that forcibly preventing criticism is going to somehow magically make the badthink go away. But it doesn’t work like that; quite to the contrary, it intensifies existing hostilities and creates new enemies out of those who were previously neutral.

I don’t boycott Israel myself; one of our best authors is Israeli. But everyone, in every country, should be absolutely free to do business or not do business with Israeli organizations and individuals as they see fit. And every U.S. Senator or Representative who has endorsed this bill should be hounded out of the offices for which they are clearly unfit.

The ever-inept Republicans can’t repeal Obamacare but they have time for this idiocy? And even if you are the most philosemitic Christian Zionist who ever declared his willingness to shed the very last drop of American blood for Israel, you must be able to see that this proposed legislation is not just absolutely and utterly wrong, but completely un-American.

This is further evidence that direct democracy is not merely preferable to representative democracy, but a moral imperative.

Meanwhile, some co-sponsors seemed not to have any idea what they co-sponsored — almost as though they reflexively sign whatever comes from AIPAC without having any idea what’s in it. Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, for instance, seemed genuinely bewildered when told of the ACLU’s letter, saying, “What’s the Act? You’ll have to get back to me on that.”

Regression to the mean

This is the statistical reality that will always confound the civic nationalists and their ideals of uplift. Iron Spartan comments concerning a couple with whom he is acquainted.

There are a pair of black doctors married to each other at a local hospital. They have two sons and a daughter. With every advantage normally associated with whites, one son failed out of high school, (which is an achievement on its own in the current education environment) went to prison for stealing cars and breaking into houses shortly after his 18th birthday, the other son made it into college and failed out by midterms, and the daughter has two kids by different daddies before she turned 18.

It doesn’t matter how well you train the cat to fetch or teach the dog to use the litter box. Their kittens and puppies are naturally going to revert to what is normal behavior for their kind if they are not subjected to exactly the same training by external forces that their parents were. It is one of the great ironies of the Civil Rights movement that racism, segregation, and the continuous repression of the black minority may have been the primary contributor to keeping the black family together in the USA.

Conservatives always like to blame the Great Society for the demise of the black family, but the reality is that the influence of its perverse incentives were relatively limited. It appears that the most destructive aspect of the Great Society, in this particular regard, is that it permitted African-Americans to return to the dyscivilizational social arrangments historically preferred in African culture.

Every race has its exceptional individuals. Every race has statistical aberrations who should not be judged by the general stereotypes and averages. But societal policies that are made on the basis of exceptions and aberrations are almost guaranteed to be disastrous, whether the outliers are to the right or the left side of the Bell Curve.

Megan McArdle is astonishingly stupid

I’ve never had any respect for her; as someone who understands economics considerably better than she does, reading her articles have always been painful. But this is a new nadir for the woman:

On Monday, the New York Times published a jaw-dropping story, alleging that a 2016 meeting between a Russian attorney and Donald Trump’s son and son-in-law had been arranged to discuss dirt on Hillary Clinton that a Kremlin-connected lawyer might be willing to provide to the Trump campaign. Donald Trump Jr. had been informed via email that this compromising information was part of a Russian government operation to help his father win the presidency.

Facing an accusation like that, Donald Trump Jr. obviously didn’t want to sit around while the Times dribbled out information bolstering the speculation that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia. He rushed to confirm it himself, tweeting out the email chain. His response to being informed that Russia was trying to engineer the outcome of an American election, with efforts that included providing damaging information about Clinton? “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” Son-in-law Jared Kushner was cc’d on the email.

Is this illegal? Does getting oppo research from a foreign power count as an in-kind campaign contribution from a foreign national, one that might leave Jr. and Kushner vulnerable to criminal prosecution? I have no idea, because as we say on the interwebs, I am not a lawyer. Regardless of whether these actions turn out to be legal, it hardly ceases to be a problem if this somehow manages to squeak through some hole in our federal election laws. What they did is so obviously wrong that a 10-year-old child would know better.

Social media indicates that there are some people out there still trying to defend the Trump camp’s relationship with Russia, so it bears spelling out why this is, as the ethicists and public relations pros say, “not OK.”

Donald Trump is an American. He is an American who ran for office under a slogan of patriotic pride and love of country. People who love their country do not help rival powers intervene in their country’s elections, even if that intervention might have the lovely side effect of getting them elected. Countries gonna country, and spies gonna spy. But Americans running for American office must pick sides: the will of American voters or the influence of a foreign power. Hint: You choose your fellow Americans.

What happened at the meeting could ultimately be irrelevant. The sin to which Donald Trump Jr. has already confessed is egregious enough. A decent person would not give an audience to a foreign power promising to help tear down the opposition. A decent person certainly would not contemplate and suggest timing of any document release — which moves this revelation beyond merely “taking a meeting you shouldn’t have” and into the territory of “a presidential campaign actively coordinating with foreign agents.”

Even Trump supporters seem to be having trouble mustering much of a defense. There was a lot of irrelevant sputtering on social media this morning. One Trump apologist asked me: What about Aipac? (Unfortunately, Twitter offered no way to transmit my response: an astonished, incomprehending stare.) Others mounted standard complaints about leaks and sly implication. We are now past the point of anonymous sources and innuendo. Donald Trump Jr. showed us the primary sources, pleading guilty in the court of public opinion.

The president’s supporters have already retreated to what now looks to be their last rhetorical stand: to say that this isn’t collusion, but just politics. They get creative and postulate that this isn’t unlike what Clinton’s campaign would have done.

Here’s the reality: Once you are given the details of a Russian attempt to change the outcome of an American election, there is only one patriotic thing you can do, and that is to get on the phone to the FBI and say “I have some very disturbing news.” End of story.

Translation: Donald Trump Jr. is not a politician, did not do anything illegal, and did nothing more than what is generally known as “opposition research”. The source is totally irrelevant, as should be obvious considering the large number of US-Israeli dual nationals who would otherwise be entirely barred from any involvement in the U.S. political process.

And to claim that “Trump’s Defeated Defenders Can Only Whimper” is even more ridiculously stupid than the illogical argument she is making in the article itself. We’re not whimpering, we’re laughing at the desperation of the Never-Trumpers. Besides, we all know where tracking down the origins of this story is going to lead.

On a not-entirely-unrelated note, the Daily Meme Wars is now 1,500 strong. If you want to help force-multiply the memes, sign up here.

Here we go again

The pollsters are making a few “honest mistakes of their own. Again.

Most national pollsters are back churning out biased and misleading poll numbers after recovering from their shock over President Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory, according to The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group analysis.

“I do know inherently there is a Democratic bias in the polls. And most of them will deny it” says Raghavan Mayur, an independent pollster who is president of TechnoMetrica, which leads the polling operations at Investor’s Business Daily.

A national financial news organization, IBD was one of the few polling organizations to predict a Trump victory, and it has accurately called the last four presidential elections.

“Typically, the mainstream media and the major polling companies will never admit their bias to you,” Mayur said. “This is like an alcoholic not admitting to using alcohol. They are in denial.”

Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell agreed with Mayur, saying “there was a couple of days of shock. And then they moved on because what they could not do is to get to the bottom of their own polling bias.”

In other words, they’re undercounting likely Trump supporters by 6 to 9 percent. Keep this in mind when the 2018 election cycle begins.

The IQ communications gap

This is what it looks like in action. Although I expect we’re dealing with more than the usual 2SD chasm. Sadly, I am reliably informed that it resulted in my total destruction on Periscope.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
The irony of July 4th that most US citizens today are not actually Americans. What is worse, most of them reject the Rights of Englishmen.

Jenny‏ @Jen_the_Texan
This is the stupidest tweet you have ever made …beg you delete

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
I suggest you look up the meaning of the word “Posterity” instead.

Jenny‏ @Jen_the_Texan  30m30 minutes ago
 Given the context posterity is irrelevant.I suggest you look up ” There is no fate but the one we make ‘ ..it’s relevant

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
Congratulations. You just threw out the U.S. Constitution and its purpose… on July 4th no less. You’re right there with Moammar Gaddafi.

Jenny‏ @Jen_the_Texan
How drunk/high are you on a scale of 1-10 ?? I have never seen you make such an ass/tard of yourself .

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
The fact that you are ignorant and fail to understand something does not make me incorrect. See: Vox’s First Law.

Jenny‏ @Jen_the_Texan  18m18 minutes ago
You don’t have a first law you moron you are irrelevant .I have 500k more followers than you on periscope it means nothing you’re incoherent

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
Vox’s First Law: Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity. Kim Kardashian has more followers too. So what?

Jenny‏ @Jen_the_Texan
You just validated my point you idiot .

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
This is what is referred to as the IQ communication gap. You literally cannot understand what I am writing. So you think it is idiotic.

Jenny‏ @Jen_the_Texan
Are you liberal or conservative because you fail at Economics , history and politics you are a liberal funded by soros and that’s it

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
You may be the first person to ever call me a liberal.

Jenny‏ @Jen_the_Texan  10m10 minutes ago
Let me ask you this supreme liberal lord .Who is the better President …Trump or Obama …be honest

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
 Donald Trump. He actually shows signs of being a better president than Reagan was. He’s already better than either Bush, Clinton, or Obama.

Jenny‏ @Jen_the_Texan
Your tweets say other wise …keep supporting soros

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
Jenny, you have completely misconstrued who, and what, I am. I am Alt-Right, not liberal or conservative. Read this: https://voxday.blogspot.it/2016/08/what-alt-right-is.html …

Jenny‏ @Jen_the_Texan
I am not reading anything you have to say . Your replies real time show everything I need to know ..I have zero respect for you

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
I shall endeavor to soldier on under the burden of that knowledge.

Jenny‏ @Jen_the_Texan
Soldier on with your stupid tweets and i’ll destroy you on periscope ;…btw so many laughing at you so far

I have to admit, I did laugh when she accused me of being “a liberal funded by Soros”. I was half expecting the old dinosaur himself to leap in and deny it. You can’t possibly get upset over this sort of thing; it’s like watching a child throw a tantrum over a piece of candy having a different filling than he expected.

Some may find this coda to be mildly amusing.

Hugh Myron‏ @Hugh__Myron
Vox, I was going to suggest shes retarded, but then I remembered she has 500k more followers than you, so that cant possibly be the case.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxda
Good point. Argumentum ad sectatorum is conclusive.

UPDATE: I thought she might be a bot, but then she blocked me.

I hate midwits

I really do.

Suzan Zaner‏ @szaner15
Ad hominem attacks are not an argument

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
They literally are. That’s why it is called argumentum ad hominem. It is also a logical fallacy, but that’s beside the point.

That smug, self-satisfied air they all manage to blithely convey while erroneously “correcting” people never ceases to make me want to erect vast pyramids comprised entirely of average-sized skulls across the landscape.

UPDATE: the exchange above was apparently insufficient warning to midwits here on the blog.

No they’re not. Logical fallacies are NOT arguments.

You’re flat-out wrong. Argumentum ad hominem is both an argument and a logical fallacy.

You shouldn’t make them because they don’t address the argument made by the other person, and VD, with your self-professed superior intelligence, you should know that.

Whether you should or should not make a form of argument is irrelevant to whether it is an argument or not. Furthermore, thanks to my well-established superior intelligence, what you are referring to is a debate, not an argument. A debate usually requires a reference to an argument made by another, an argument does not.


One shouldn’t have to insult someone, pointing out the flaws in someone else’s arguments is all that is needed to show them and anyone watching that they stupid.

Aristotle said you were wrong 2,500 years ago. Your position is not merely wrong, it is outdated by millennia.

3 = 17

The Associated Press is Fake News:

In stories published April 6, June 2, June 26 and June 29, The Associated Press reported that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies have agreed that Russia tried to influence the 2016 election to benefit Donald Trump. That assessment was based on information collected by three agencies – the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency – and published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which represents all U.S. intelligence agencies. Not all 17 intelligence agencies were involved in reaching the assessment.

Well, someone ELSE said the other 14 agencies agreed, right? And the media wonders why they are held in such contempt.

Libertarianism is dead

The Cato Institute embraces equalitarianism:

It is not enough to be passively “not racist.” We must be actively anti-racism.

Libertarians tend to think of freedom as either a means to an end of maximum utility—e.g., free markets produce the most wealth—or, in a more philosophical sense, in opposition to arbitrary authority—e.g., “Who are you to tell me what to do?” Both views fuel good arguments for less government and more personal autonomy. Yet neither separately, nor both taken together, address the impediments to freedom that have plagued the United States since its founding. Many of the oppressions America has foisted upon its citizens, particularly its black citizens, indeed came from government actors and agents. But a large number of offenses, from petty indignities to incidents of unspeakable violence, have been perpetrated by private individuals, or by government with full approval of its white citizens. I would venture that many, if not most libertarians—like the general American public—haven’t come to terms with the widespread, systemic subversion of markets and democracy American racism wreaked on its most marginalized citizens. Consequently, libertarians have concentrated rather myopically on government reform as the sole function of libertarian social critique without taking full reckoning of what markets have failed to correct throughout American history.

Take, for example, the common libertarian/conservative trope: “We believe in equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.” Most people, outside of the few and most ardent socialists, should believe that is a fair statement. But to say such a thing as a general defense of the status quo assumes that the current American system offers roughly equal opportunity just because Jim Crow is dead. Yet, that cannot possibly be true.

I left libertarianism because I concluded that it is a hopelessly utopian ideal that is practically impossible in a fallen world of real human beings, libertarianism did not leave me. But this is not libertarianism, this is the convergence of libertarianism and its cooption by equalitarians.

At this point, it’s safe to say that libertarianism is as intellectually dead as communism. That doesn’t mean it won’t retain any number of dogmatic adherents, but at this point, it can no longer be considered conceptually viable. And this new Cato-endorsed variant is little more than a farcical parody.

Oh, the irony

In case you didn’t believe my observation that Americans simply do not grasp the concept of distinct European nations.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
White Nationalist fantasies notwithstanding, Europeans no more identify as Europeans than white Americans identify as European-Americans.

ItalianaforTrump‏@LifeLuvr1205
European American here. ????

Sometimes… communication gap… I can’t… what… it… no… WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU MORONS?

Now I recall why I was so relieved to leave Twitter. It’s not just the combination of stupidity and ignorance that I find unnerving, so much as the gloss of gleeful smugness that coats it.