Tag: trainwreck

Better they stock up on bullets

It’s remarkable what Germany will do to avoid grasping the nettle:

 For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the German government plans to tell citizens to stockpile food and water in case of an attack or catastrophe, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper reported on Sunday.

Germany is currently on high alert after two Islamist attacks and a shooting rampage by a mentally unstable teenager last month. Berlin announced measures earlier this month to spend considerably more on its police and security forces and to create a special unit to counter cyber crime and terrorism.

“The population will be obliged to hold an individual supply of food for ten days,” the newspaper quoted the government’s “Concept for Civil Defence” – which has been prepared by the Interior Ministry – as saying.

The paper said a parliamentary committee had originally commissioned the civil defense strategy in 2012.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said the plan would be discussed by the cabinet on Wednesday and presented by the minister that afternoon. He declined to give any details on the content.

People will be required to stockpile enough drinking water to last for five days, according to the plan, the paper said.

By this time next year, more and more Germans will be gratefully supporting anyone who promises a permanent solution to the invasion. And I don’t want to hear one word from those who are upset at any of the measures that are subsequently adopted, no matter how harsh they might be.

All of this was totally unnecessary. All of this is on the hands of the tolerant, the equalitarians, the multicultis, and the diversicrats.

That seems likely

I’m sure the good people of Calais, who can’t even drive on the highways near their homes, will be happy to have a few of the people smashing up their cars move in with them:

There are currently 147 reception centres across France, but these are in massive demand as desperate refugees continue to flee the Middle East.

Housing minister Emmanuelle Cosse has pledged to built a further 50 centres before the end of next month in a desperate bid to ease the crisis.

But she has also called on French people to open up their homes to migrants in need. Several organisations have already promised to help.

The group Singa has helped 300 migrants find a temporary home since it launched its ‘Calm’ scheme last June.

Singa co-director Alice Barbe said: “We match people according to where they live, their job, their hobbies, and the languages they speak.

“If things work out, the migrant will remain in the person’s home for a minimum of two weeks, and for up to nine months.”

How much do you want to bet that neither Cosse nor Barbe has any migrants living with them?

The conservative void

Conservatism, by definition, is unprincipled, anti-ideological pose that relies on rhetoric rather than dialectic. It was literally defined that way by the man who articulated American conservatism, Russell Kirk:

Being neither a religion nor an ideology, the body of opinion termed conservatism possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogmata. So far as it is possible to determine what conservatives believe, the first principles of the conservative persuasion are derived from what leading conservative writers and public men have professed during the past two centuries. After some introductory remarks on this general theme, I will proceed to list ten such conservative principles.

Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word “conservative” as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.

The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed.

Translation: Conservatism is FEELZ.

Doesn’t that explain a great deal about both the conservative failure of the last 60 years as well as their inept, rhetorical, fainting-couch responses to the rise of the Alt-Right?

The amusing thing is that they consider themselves “the hard-headed realists”, but they don’t even have an ideological foundation. Their intellectual movement isn’t even built on sand! It’s built on “a state of mind”, something that is intrinsically malleable and subject to emotional manipulation.

Say what you will about National Socialism, but at least it was an ethos! Conservatism is intellectual nihilism, it is an ideological void.

If you are of the Right, stop calling yourself a conservative. It’s absurd. Not only has conservatism failed to conserve anything, it was as doomed from the start as the atheists attempting to fight a religious war without a religion.

One can’t win a gunfight without a gun, and one can’t win a cultural war without an ideology.

Jerry Pournelle, for one, understands this.

Conservatism isn’t an ideology; Russell Kirk called his book “The Conservative Mind”, and when specifics were demanded he wrote a book for his times, A Program For Conservatives; not an ideology.

Ben Shapiro is glad you hate him

Or at least he would like you to think so. After all, he must maintain his pose as a brave conservative culture warrior, or people might figure out that he’s a fraud.

Supreme Dark Lord@voxday
My readers really hate @benshapiro.

“Chickenhawk does not even BEGIN to describe this supercilious neo-con asshole.”


Ben Shapiro ‏@benshapiro
Good.

Supreme Dark Lord@voxday
You’ve always been a fraud, Ben. I still have your emails to me when you were full of self-doubt about being a little parrot.

Supreme Dark Lord@voxday
I told you to strike out and become your own man. Instead, you chickenhawked and went media whore. It was a foolish call.

Supreme Dark Lord@voxday
Your problem is that you’re a puppet and you know it. Here’s the thing. So do we.

What many of you probably don’t know is that Ben and I used to be colleagues of a sort at WND. My columns were much more popular, as I was reliably the number three most-read, behind Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan. Ben’s readership was never more than about one-tenth of mine, but he was a smart little kid and did a good job of parroting the usual Republican boilerplate.

We corresponded a few times and were on friendly, if distant, terms. I mean, what do you talk about with a little kid whose idea of a good time is launching obvious rhetorical attacks at liberals? As he matured, he gradually began to question the ideas he was parroting, and reached the point where he considered quitting the media game.

I’ll have to dig out the emails to figure out exactly what I told him, but if I recall correctly, I encouraged him to resist the temptation to become a media whore. I understood the allure, as it was a poisoned apple that was also offered to me, but perhaps it was easier for me to turn it down since I was living in Europe and already established in the game development world.

Ben, unfortunately, couldn’t resist the apple, or the easy way forward, writing whatever his backers told him to write. I haven’t read him much since he wrote those dreadful, chickenshit columns in 2005, so I don’t know how much of what he writes he genuinely believes now and how much he is still parroting. Of course, the human mind being the incredible rationalizing machine that it is, it’s entirely possible that he has come to believe what he’s been told to say.

What I found most amusing is the way that the Littlest Chickenhawk’s supporters alternate between crowing about what a formidable debater he is, and trying to excuse the way he ran away from a proposed debate on free trade with me.

Gone Fishing
LOL! All these Ben haters. You guys wouldn’t stand a chance in hell vs him in a debate on social issues. #CryMeAriver

Gone Fishing ‏@jgfleet661
Shapiro kicks the ass of real decision makers in this country in debates. He does with facts not feelings.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
I will debate Ben on any topic. He’s already run away from me on a proposed free trade debate.

Gone Fishing ‏@jgfleet661
 ????! Yeah, he totally ran away from you. I mean, you’re the SUPREME DARK LORD! There’s no way he could beat you, right?

 Valerie ‏@vpak77
yes, you two are definitely not in the same league. That is true.

ryedog™
Totally, it’d be a complete waste of Ben’s time.

Gone Fishing ‏@jgfleet661
He has to run. He’s busy debating important people on major news networks all over the country. #PuttingInWork

Some things never change.

The intellectually fearsome atheist

For some reason, Google occasionally emails me comments that people are making about Stefan Molyneux’s videos in which I’ve appeared. This one, by ismelljello, was particularly amusing.

Read the reviews of his book. It honestly compelled me to make a video series where i debunk his tired old arguments. If you’re going to peddle other peoples ideas, at least make sure they haven’t already been trounced.

He made a video series to debunk the tired old arguments of a book he hasn’t read. That’s… an interesting approach.

I have the distinct impression that he has absolutely no idea that The Irrational Atheist cannot possibly contain “tired old arguments” because they are new critiques of the arguments put forth by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Michel Onfray, among others.

It should certainly be interesting to discover how he proves that religion causes war and is worse than child molestation.

This is the danger of intellectual posturing. Sooner or later, you’re going to strike a pose that will catch the attention of those who actually possess the information you’re pretending to have. Never pretend to know what you don’t.

Another Democratic hack

It is looking increasingly apparent that national security will not be in good hands with Hillary:

A computer network used by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign was hacked as part of a broad cyber attack on Democratic political organizations, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The latest attack, which was disclosed to Reuters on Friday, follows two other hacks on the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, and the party’s fundraising committee for candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives.

A Clinton campaign spokesman said in a statement late on Friday that an analytics data program maintained by the DNC and used by the campaign and a number of other entities “was accessed as part of the DNC hack.”

“Our campaign computer system has been under review by outside cyber security experts. To date, they have found no evidence that our internal systems have been compromised,” said Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill.

Later, a campaign official said hackers had access to the analytics program’s server for approximately five days. The analytics data program is one of many systems the campaign accesses to conduct voter analysis, and does not include social security numbers or credit card numbers, the official said.

The U.S. Department of Justice national security division is investigating whether cyber attacks on Democratic political organizations threatened U.S. security, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The involvement of the Justice Department’s national security division is a sign that the Obama administration has concluded that the hacking was sponsored by a state, people with knowledge of the investigation said.

While it is unclear exactly what material the hackers may have gained access to, the third such attack on sensitive Democratic targets disclosed in the last six weeks has caused alarm in the party and beyond, just over three months before the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election.

On the one hand, you would think Hillary would have learned her lesson by now. On the other hand, the sort of person who puts server belonging to the Department of State in her closet and insists on using Gmail as Secretary of State probably isn’t capable of learning that particular lesson.

Anyhow, the US government is in no position to complain about other people electronically spying on its officials, agents, and agencies, as it is the worst offender on the planet.

John Scalzi, political pundit

McRapey analyzes the Republican National Convention. Incompetence ensues.

The convention, generally, was the worst-run major political convention in a generation, and that should scare you. How is Trump going to manage an entire country when he can’t even put on a four-day show? (The answer, as we found out this week, is that he has no intention of managing the country at all; he plans to foist the actual work onto his poor VP while he struts about as bloviating figurehead.) Trump lost control of his convention and his message twice, once with Melania Trump’s clumsy plagiarism of Michelle Obama, which ate up two days of news cycles before Trump’s people found someone to be their chump for it, and then second with Ted Cruz, that oleaginous lump of hungering self-interest, who rather breathtakingly took to the stage of a nominating convention in order not to endorse Trump, in the most public way possible. That bit of low-rent Machiavellianism ate up another day of news cycles.

In the end, all the GOP convention has coming out of it are two massive failures of message control and Trump’s cataclysmic nomination speech.

And Nate Silver of 538 observing that Trump’s chances of winning the election have rising 40 points from a month ago. And Mr. Trump taking the lead in several national polls, including those from CNN and the LA Times. But while we’re on the subject of badly-run conventions, have we ever seen a national party chairman resign the day before the start of the convention?

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Scalzi?

But that’s the Trump shtick: He doesn’t have policies or positions or plans

No, no positions at all. And who could possibly know what his policies on tax reform, healthcare reform, immigration, foreign policy, and trade could be? Of course, one should keep in mind that John Scalzi is an SJW, and what is it that SJWs always do? I seem to recall someone wrote a book about that.

Trump is still not likely to win — after everything, he’s still trailing Clinton.

Only in the polls taken a month ago. He’s doing rather well in the new ones, so much so that the media is now attempting to discount the very sort of “convention bounce” that we were previously told doesn’t exist anymore.

However, the best dismissal of John Scalzi’s worst attempt to engage in political punditry since his famous “I’m a rapist” post is from a Hillary Clinton supporter, who notes a certain irony about McRapey’s attack on the Republican candidate for President.

In a post about how Donald Trump’s modus operandi is to scare people into voting for him, I count *ten* instances where you tell us that Trump (and the Republican party more broadly) should scare/terrify us, that they’re dangerous, that they’ll bring disaster/tragedy to the country, and so forth.
– Brian Greenberg

Ted Cruz 2020

Even Apollo 1 had a better launch than Ted Cruz’s 2020 presidential campaign last night.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz was denied entry into billionaire GOP donor Sheldon Adleson’s suite following his speech at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night, Independent Journal Review has confirmed.

A former U.S. Senator inside the Adelson’s luxury box at the Quicken Loans arena told Independent Journal Review that Cruz approached the suite after he finished his speech that fell short of endorsing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Cruz was not welcome in the suite “because he’s a piece of sh*t,” the Senator said.

Cruz was stopped at the door because several attendees inside the suite were furious with his decision to not endorse Trump. An aide to Adelson then confirmed that Cruz was turned away. 

UPDATE: “Ted Cruz’s campaign chair Richard Black says that it’s doubtful he’d ever support Cruz again.”

UPDATE 2: Hear Ted Cruz attempting to rationalize his self-immolation on the national stage. Video at the link:

A delegate was upset that Ted Cruz didn’t honor his pledge and support Trump, telling Cruz that his word is his bond and that he should have honored his pledge.

Here’s how Cruz responded and it was awesome!

Cruz explained to the person why the pledge he made supporting the nominee was abrogated, pointing out that happened when Trump attacked his wife and his father and made this personal.

The delegate responded that this is politics and he needed to get over it.

But Cruz hit back hard, saying this is NOT politics and it’s not a game, that there is right and wrong and we must stand for what is right!

So noble! Of course, Cruz didn’t make this clear to the public at any time before standing at the podium, in fact, he didn’t even make it clear during his speech, which is why some of his foolish defenders are trying to claim that he did not, in fact, do what he obviously did. That’s what happens when you side with a snake.

Mailvox: stop posturing, morons

The ironically named General Noitall has no idea how clueless he is, but that doesn’t stop him from making confidently authoritative statements that are complete nonsense:

Flynn, under Trump, is set to be Sec. of Defense or, more likely, Chairman of the Join Chiefs. And as we know, Flynn “has no idea how to defeat ISIS”. Yet Trump has promised to take out the IS. What’s absolutely clear about Trump is that his understanding of the geopolitical nature of the world amounts to zero. His understanding of force deployment and use is zero. His experience with the military and dealing with the worlds leaders is zero. But, he does have Flynn.

We certainly know that General Noitall’s experience with the military is zero. How, pray tell, is a retired lieutenant general whose background is in intelligence ever going to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

For those who don’t know how it works, while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is appointed by the President, he is usually selected from among the chiefs of staff – the four highest-ranking generals and admirals- from one of the four armed services. One seldom becomes CJCS without first being Army Chief of Staff, USMC Commandant, Chief of Naval Operations, or Air Force Chief of Staff, and more often than not, Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well. These top officers almost invariably have a strong background of field commands, they don’t come from intelligence or logistics.

A three-star officer such as a lieutenant general or a vice-admiral is simply not in the running, particularly one who is not even in the service anymore.

That doesn’t mean Michael Flynn couldn’t be named Secretary of Defense, but then, if elected, Trump could just as easily name the science fiction author Michael Flynn too. Regardless, Michael T. Flynn won’t be commanding any military operations, much less all of them. He’s a civilian.

Look, you’re not fooling anyone when you strike knowledgeable poses concerning things you know nothing about, and make stupid pronouncements that only suffice to demonstrate your ignorance. So stop trying!

None of us know what Donald Trump is going to do when he’s elected. Possibly Trump himself doesn’t know. But I think we can be quite confident that he’s not going to follow Michael Ledeen’s idiotic lead and declare war on radical Islam, Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, and whoever else Ledeen suspects might be in his imaginary Global Alliance of Evil.