Tag: trainwreck

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.

The permanent opposition

Even when they’re in power. Jerry Pournelle excoriates the Senate Republicans:

The Senate is busily proving that Republicans can’t rule; they’re not even a Party. They’re a collection of losers whose jobs were safer when they were in the opposition and they could blame national misrule on someone else. They could say “We don’t control the House”. When they got that, they could say “We don’t have a majority in the Senate.” When that resulted in nothing much about slowing the train to national disaster, they could say “We don’t have the President.” When they nominated and elected a President, they could say “We don’t have enough of the Senate.” Clearly that is fudge, because the rumor is they can’t even muster a majority vote to obliterate Obamacare, a provable national disaster.

What more do they want? But we have had this problem since Lyndon Johnson and even before. Country club Republicans were satisfied to be the loyal opposition. The Democrats slyly gave them perks for being a permanent minority, and many took the bait. The only thing likely to keep these “we can’t quite do it” scoundrels in office is the – admittedly terrifying prospect – of Nanny Pelosi returning as Speaker; they’re willing to do without most of the perks of a “majority party” – which they are not – for permanent jobs on Capitol Hill. And God help us, it works: I sure don’t want to see Speaker Nancy Pelosi ever night – or even every week – on my nightly news. (I don’t want enhanced Obamacare either, or any of the other deficit enhancing free stuff entitlements the Democrats will bring“ in to assure their majority status if they ever take control. So we are obliged to work to keep this bumbling inept crew in charge.

So here we have it: the Democrats hold fewer national and state offices than ever before, but they continue to rule. And bringing them back will make things far worse; and a bloc of country club Republicans really want to become “loyal opposition with benefits” and be rid of the burden of ruling. And a business oriented unsophisticated but very rich President can’t even get confirmation of his own team with a House and Senate majority.

I hope that when I reach Jerry’s age, I’ll be as observant and perspicacious as he is. Truly a remarkable man.

Free speech defenders

It is massively amusing to observe that the self-appointed defenders of free speech, the Oathcuckers, are now deleting most of the comments on their site because NavyCuck’s feckless attack on the Alt-Right is being so brutally mocked.

The Oathkeepers are intellectual, moral, and physical cowards, frightened little bitches who can’t even stand up to debate and criticism, much less open derision. And these cowardly losers are going to stand up to the might of the U.S. government when it orders them around? Right….

I condemn the violence and politics of the Antifa. I equally condemn those who promote racism and identity politics as a means to segregate the people of our nation, including NPI, Identity Evropa, Vanguard America, La Raza, The Muslim Brotherhood, The New Black Panther Party and Black Lives Matter Movement. I also condemn those in the media who refuse to reject the racists and white nationalists that have infected the “alt-right” movement.

Please do not even consider arguing with me about this. I will never change my position. If you chose to align yourself with the ideologies or organizations listed above, feel free to take me off your Christmas list. I will have nothing whatsoever to do with you. I will never share a foxhole with you. I will not entertain the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” arguments that so many in the patriot movement like to make. If forced to fight the hateful ideologies of the left, I will never consider the hateful ideologies of “white nationalists” and racists as an ally, so help me God.

Take note. Oathcuckers like NavyCuck have made it clear that they will never ally with the American posterity, the European nations, or Western civilization. They will never change their position because they will always be terrified by the possibility that someone, somewhere, somehow, will call them racist.

That is probably how the federal government will force them to forswear themselves. The cowards will do anything, including rounding-up and disarming the American people, if the alternative is being called racist.

We don’t need allies like that.

“A massive, massive fuckup”

CNN learns the hard way that relying upon Never-Trumpers as sources is a very bad idea:

CNN late Friday deleted a story from its website that claimed Senate investigators were looking into a Russian investment fund whose chief executive met with a member of President Trump’s transition team, later issuing a retraction in the story’s place.

The now-deleted story, by investigative reporter Thomas Frank, was published Thursday and cited a single, unnamed source who claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into a “$10-billion Russian investment fund whose chief executive met with a member of President Donald Trump’s transition team four days before Trump’s inauguration.”

But by Friday evening, the story had vanished from CNN’s website. It was not immediately clear when the story was removed, but a tweet linking to the story, from CNN’s Politics account, was also deleted sometime Friday evening.

After noticing the story’s disappearance, BuzzFeed News contacted CNN. More than an hour later, an editor’s note appeared on CNN’s website. A company representative sent BuzzFeed News a link to the note, but did not answer other questions about why the story was removed.

“The story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted,” the editor’s note said. It did not say which parts of the story failed to meet the company’s standards. The note also apologized to Anthony Scaramucci, a member of Trump’s transition team and an adviser to his presidential campaign, who was named in the report.

A source close to the network, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter, told BuzzFeed News the story was a “massive, massive fuck up and people will be disciplined.” The person said CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker and the head of the company’s human resources department are “directly involved” in an internal investigation examining how the story was handled.

The lesson, as always: CNN is Fake News.

Is MSNBC doing comedy now?

One can only hope that they were simply trolled. But this should underline, once and for all, the intrinsic unreliability of the mainstream media. I mean, how can you see this and then think that anything they say about the God-Emperor, Russia, or even Gross Domestic Product has any relation to reality?

Not that CNN is any better:

CNN has corrected a Tuesday report after the release of former FBI Director James Comey’s opening statement for his Thursday testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee contradicted the reports’ sources.

The CNN report said Comey was expected to dispute President Trump’s claims that Comey said he was not under investigation on multiple occasions.

The report, titled “Comey expected to refute Trump,” was based on unnamed sources and said Comey’s conversations with the president “were much more nuanced,” and that Trump drew the wrong conclusion. The story was complied by four CNN journalists, including Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper and Brian Rokus.

CNN published a correction to its story Wednesday afternoon with the revised headline: “Comey unlikely to judge on obstruction.”

“CORRECTION AND UPDATE: This article was published before Comey released his prepared opening statement,” it reads above the original Tuesday story. “The article and headline have been corrected to reflect that Comey does not directly dispute that Trump was told multiple times he was not under investigation in his prepared testimony released after this story was published.

Mike Cernovich is right. The mainstream media is Fake News.

Thanks, NSA

Who would have ever thought that a government bureaucracy would fail to adequately take safeguards against its tech-weaponry proliferating?

More than 100 countries across the world have been affected by the ‘unprecedented’ cyber attack using a computer virus ‘superweapon’ dubbed the ‘atom bomb of malware’. It is believed more than 130,000 IT systems are affected around the world, including hospitals in the UK, telecoms and gas firms in Spain, schools in China, railways in Germany and the FedEx delivery company.

The European Union’s police agency, Europol, says it is working with countries hit by the ransomware scam to rein in the threat, help victims and track down the criminals. In a statement, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, known as EC3, said the attack ‘is at an unprecedented level and will require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits.’

Security experts say the malicious software behind the onslaught appeared to exploit a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that was identified by the US National Security Agency for its own intelligence-gathering purposes.

The NSA documents were stolen and then released to the world last month by a mysterious group known as the Shadow Brokers. The hackers, who have not come forward to claim responsibility, likely made it a ‘worm’, or self spread malware, by exploiting a piece of NSA code known as Eternal Blue, according to several security experts.

The idea that a government can adequately safeguard anything should have been exploded when the USA was unable to preserve its monopoly on nuclear weapons. If they can’t keep something as uniquely advantageous and powerful as that to themselves, what can they protect? Area 51?

MMA vs Tai Chi

This is hilarious. As a former mixed martial arts man myself, I’ve always been mystified by the idea that tai chi can even be described as a martial art. It’s about as “martial” as yoga or haiku.

For weeks, the mixed martial arts fighter Xu Xiaodong had been taunting masters of the traditional Chinese martial arts, dismissing them as overly commercialized frauds, and challenging them to put up or shut up. After one of them — Wei Lei, a practitioner of the “thunder style” of tai chi — accepted the challenge, Mr. Xu flattened him in about 10 seconds. Mr. Xu may have proved his point, but he was unprepared for the ensuing outrage.

When video of the drubbing went viral, many Chinese were deeply offended by what they saw as an insult to a cornerstone of traditional Chinese culture. The state-run Chinese Wushu Association posted a statement on its website saying the fight “violates the morals of martial arts.” The Chinese Boxing Association issued similar criticism.

The video is both short and informative. Tai chi simply doesn’t have anything to do with fighting. The tai chi master had quite clearly never sparred at speed before. And that guard… ye cats! I’m only surprised the MMA guy didn’t open with a sidekick given such an invitation.

Responsible governing means failure

Rush Limbaugh quite reasonably asks why anyone should vote for Republicans if the result is simply more of the same old swamp:

Why is anybody voting Republican, if this is what happens when we win?

We won the House, we won the Senate, we won the White House, and the Democrats thwarted everything we supposedly said we were going to do with our victory. Well, I don’t want to use the word “we,” ’cause I’ve got nothing to do with this. This is another reason why I do not get close to these people. I do not… I would not relish having to have you call here today and make me justify what all happened here, had I been out there promoting and ballyhooing. That’s why I keep my distance from these people, ’cause I don’t have any control over what they’re gonna do or say, what their policies are going to be.

But I think this illustrates a much larger problem that we are going to have to recognize, and it’s the real reason Donald Trump was elected. It’s the real thing that he has got to do, and he’s got to start doing it. And it is not going to happen if he continues to work with Republicans, because it is obvious, for whatever reasons — and we can get into them — the Republican Party has no intention of defunding Planned Parenthood, no intention of defunding sanctuary cities. They don’t want to pay for a wall. Who knows what they really want in Obamacare. But then again, is it really the Republicans? I think there’s something much larger going on.

There’s no reason to keep electing Republicans if this is what we’re gonna get with this budget deal, which pays — continually pays — for sanctuary cities, funds Obamacare, funds the EPA, gives money to Planned Parenthood and no money for the wall. If you’re asking, “What am I voting for Republicans for?” you have a legitimate question. This is one of the reasons Donald Trump was elected. This is the swamp. This is what needs to be drained: The way the budget happens, the way legislation happens, who’s responsible for it. I’ll tell you where I’m going with this. I want to go back and play a sound bite from me on Friday’s program. This is the direction that I’m thinking this has to go…

Where’s Trump on this? For crying out loud, Trump’s elected president! Trump’s got a mandate. This was clearly part of it. Like building the wall, like any number of other things, repealing and place Obamacare was mentioned at every rally, so why doesn’t the president go in there and tell them what-for?

Let me try to explain this as best I can. When I saw this headline, it brought some things into focus for me, because this is gnawing at the edges here of irritation. The impression that I’ve had — you’ve had it, too — that something’s out of whack, something’s not right. We won the election. I’ve described it, I don’t see the glow of victory on Republican faces. I don’t see optimism. I don’t see happiness. I don’t see confidence. I don’t see an attitude that says, “Man, what an opportunity we have.” And as I say it’s just been eating away at me.

It seems to me that this is precisely what the presidential veto is for. Trump needs to be willing to call the bi-factional ruling party’s bluff. Let them shut down government. Let them show the entire country how unnecessary it is.

And build the damn wall. It’s pretty simple. No big beautiful wall, no second term. The wall is Trump’s “no new taxes”. If he doesn’t build it, for any reason, he loses his base. All the other stuff, being presidential and responsible and exhibiting gravitas and sportsmanship is irrelevant.

The God-Emperor should begin each day by looking at his schedule and telling himself two things.

  1. Does this help me build the wall? 
  2. Does this help me drain the swamp?
If anything on his schedule does not fit into those two categories, he should cancel it and replace it with something that does.

Rape Rape can’t finish

In light of new rumors concerning the completion of The Winds of Winter, a number of people have been reminding me that I have been predicting that George Martin would not be able to finish A Song of Ice and Fire for several years now.


I generally enjoy the Fire and Ice series, but I thought the last book, divided into two, bordered on the tedious and didn’t advance the story much. Like pitchers, writers tend to lose their fastball abruptly, and often without any warning. I suspect Martin’s inability to finish the book in a reasonable time frame after turning in a relatively mediocre, (in comparison with the standard he’d previously set, you understand) prior novel doesn’t bode well for A Dance with Dragons, but I will be pleased to be proved wrong in July.
– March 4, 2011

At this point, our best hope for ever seeing the series resolved may be for him to kick off sometime after the next book is released, somehow leading to me being asked to finish the series by Harper Collins.  I’ll have to think about how I’d go about fixing all the unnecessary loose ends he created in tying the Mereen Knot, but I think the first thing I would do is kill off Reek and the Bastard of Bolton in an unfortunate accident involving chicken bones, a rich cheese sauce, and a sadistic feast-orgy.
– May 6, 2013

Of course, now that many readers are comparing Arts of Dark and Light favorably with A Song of Ice and Fire, I’d much rather finish my own series than clean up after the gargantuan hash Martin has made of his own books, but apparently someone else is willing to attempt to clean out the fat man’s stables:

George R.R. Martin’s “The Winds of Winter” is one of the highly-anticipated novels and fans are hoping to get their hands on it this year. It is the sixth novel in the fantasy series “A Song of Ice and Fire” and HBO has previously hinted that it’s one of the priorities as a wild card. Recent reports say that the author has been busy finishing a charity work as well as a film studio in Santa Fe, Mexico. However, a new report is claiming that “American Gods” author, Neil Gaiman is now the one writing the novel on Martin’s behalf.

Earlier reports from Celebeat suggest that “The Winds of Winter” might be out in June, which is at least a month before “Game of Thrones” season 7 premieres on July 16. It is said that Martin is just finishing a charity work and then he will focus on writing the novel. Now, it is said that Gaiman has been spotted at Martin’s hometown many times, leading fans to believe that he has been writing the novel.

There are also reports suggesting that Gaiman might be Martin’s editor for “The Winds of Winter” and this could be the reason of his visits at Martin’s hometown. However, these claims are yet to be confirmed and the fans should content themselves for now that the novel should be out within this year. Apparently, Martin is busy at the moment with his film studio in Mexico, which will be available to Hollywood production as well as film entrepreneurs.

The Albuquerque Journal reports that “The Winds of Winter” author’s film studio is housed in a 30,000 square-foot non-profit building in Santa Fe, Mexico. Martin has previously indicated in his blog that he is still focused on a different project, but has made progress in the novel. He also said that he will announce the completion and delivery of the novel.

I have to admit, I laughed at the idea that Martin has been reduced to resorting to a ghostwriter in order to simply complete his own series. How pathetic is that? At least Robert Jordan had the excuse of being dead. The American Tolkien indeed….