Tag: trainwreck

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 Your position is not merely wrong, it is outdated by millennia.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.

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.