One of the interesting things about 18th century America is the way government sold favors to private interests. Ben Franklin got government printing contracts through bribery. It was not considered bribery at the time, but it would be today. Buttering up local officials to grease the skids was just the way things were done. But, in a land with a tiny amount of government and a tiny number of laws, you’re getting a tiny amount of public corruption. Corruption, like government, does not scale up well.

Today we have vast and complex state apparatus. So vast and complex no one knows the limits. In fact, you break the law every day.

It is this vast and complex web of laws that provides cover for the colonizing pod people to rob us blind. This post at ZeroHedge is a good example.

It was back in April 2013, when the WSJ reported of a peculiar surge in various health insurance stocks that came moments after a report from Height Securities, a Washington-based investment-research firm that ferrets out policy news and analysis for investors, correctly predicted the Obama administration would reverse course on big spending cuts that would have hit health insurers. The note was released about 15 minutes before markets closed on Monday, April 1, leading to the following surge in the biggest Obamacare beneficiaries.

Needless to say, it is quite clear that non-public info was leaked by US legislators to a “expert network” consulting company, which in turn further propagated the information to its own clients, making them profits of up to 8.6% in milliseconds. As the WSJ summarized at the time, “The resulting stock surge is one of the most dramatic examples in recent years of how tips and insights from Washington’s burgeoning political-intelligence business can drive trading on Wall Street, potentially leading to big profits for those in the know.”

It took the SEC 14 months to finally figure out there may have been something illegal with this setup and as the WSJ followed up three weeks ago, “prosecutors are gathering evidence for a grand-jury probe into whether congressional staff helped tip Wall Street traders to a change in health-care policy, an indication the long-running investigation has entered a more serious phase.”

Trading on inside information has become so common in Washington, no one bothers to hide it. It was not always this way. In the olden thymes, officials relied on foreign junkets to cash in on their position. I worked for Clarence Long, who decorated his house with goods “gifted to him” by foreign potentates. His big fancy house was probably paid for by donors. It was all legal and mostly small potatoes.

Today, public criminals like Harry Reid become millionaires making shady land deals with organized crime. John Kerry went to DC penniless. He is now worth over $100 million. A lot of it came from marrying two rich widows, but that was levered into a fortune using inside information. With the parasitic financial system, politicians can now grab millions for themselves trading their knowledge of new rules, new investigations and new taxes.

As we see with this story, they think it is their right and privilege. Where have we heard that before?

What is unknown – and perhaps unknowable – is how much of the legislative tsunami is strictly for privateering purposes. Those million word bills are not only packed full of favors; they are packed full of gimmicks the pols can use to grow their portfolios. Since no one reads these things in their entirety, no one knows where to look for the deals tied to specific pols. In fact, as Kevin Williamson explained in this story on the demise of Patton Boggs, the laws are now written by slick law firms working on behalf of monied interests.

The outrageous part of this is not the corruption. Men are not angels. Washington controls trillions of dollars and that will attract the worst sort, determined to skim some for themselves. The outrage is the lack of outrage. In the 18th century you could shrug at Franklin buying off a local official for a printing contract. It was small money and the printing needed to be done. Today’s pols are like highway bandits, robbing for the sake of robbing. Yet, no one seems to care.

I saw this on American Digest. This is when you see that the people running this country are not of this country. Homosexuals make up about 2% of the population. If BK monopolizes the homo demographic, it is a rounding error on their financial statement. It’s a rounding error on the store level financial. Pretending that homosexuals are a super-valuable market segment was never meant to be taken seriously. It was always agit-prop intended to justify normalization.

Now, throw in the lunatic population, which makes up a consistent 20% of the population. Lunatics like waving the rainbow flag because they think it offends Christians. I’ll just note that Evangelical Christians are 26% of the population. Lunatics are not all enthusiastic for homos. Male lunatics, for the most part, keep their head down and avoid saying anything. The reason is men, even lunatic men, find homosexuality mildly repulsive. Even extreme fanaticism cannot overcome biology.

The point being is that a  few minutes considering the numbers shows that Burger King (Queen?) is not gaining anything from this. They will most likely piss off a portion of the customer base. Throw in the fact that homos don’t eat fast food and BK’s known as the McDonalds to black America and you have a recipe for disaster. Blacks and downscale whites loath this rainbow stuff.

The people running BK, on the other hand, live in their ruling class echo chamber. In that weird world of pod people, everyone loves homosexuals and thinks their cause is on par with the Civil Rights Movement. You can be sure that the marketing geniuses that came up with this “don’t know anyone who opposes gay marriage.” The reason for that is they are an alien class of people wholly unfamiliar with the people over whom they rule.

As I’m fond of saying, American has been colonized by aliens.

I saw this posted somewhere. I came back from my ride feeling pretty good. I bested a guy half my age sprinting some hills. I’m rewarding myself with a brat and then I read this:

On April 19, 1775, British forces were returning to Boston from the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the opening engagements of the war. On their march, they were continually shot at by colonial militiamen.

Whittemore was in his fields when he spotted an approaching British relief brigade under Earl Percy, sent to assist the retreat. Whittemore loaded his musket and ambushed the British Grenadiers of the 47th Regiment of Foot from behind a nearby stone wall, killing one soldier. He then drew his dueling pistols and killed a grenadier and mortally wounded a second.

By the time Whittemore had fired his third shot, a British detachment reached his position; Whittemore drew his sword and attacked. He was shot in the face, bayoneted numerous times, and left for dead in a pool of blood. He was found by colonial forces, alive, trying to load his musket to fight again. He was taken to Dr. Cotton Tufts of Medford, who perceived no hope for his survival. However, Whittemore lived another 18 years until dying of natural causes at the age of 96.

I think I’ll take a nap.

Bored yesterday I was trolling around Al Gore’s Contrivance looking for something interesting. I saw this posted on NRO by Jonah Goldberg. He was taking the lunatic writer to task for her foaming at the mouth rantings. It is a favorite of both Left and Right to pick out a ranting from the other side and then rant about its alleged shortcomings. Lunatics pretend that deviations from orthodox liberalism are violations of the laws of physics. That allows them to be excessively smug, in addition to condescending.

Here’s the opening to the linked column:

The sheer volume of really terrible and inaccurate responses to the Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. has been kind of astonishing. Every few hours, a new piece of conservative flotsam washes up and demands to be taken seriously. They all go something like, “This is a victory for religious freedom. You can’t make your boss foot the bill for your choices. Contraception is ‘recreational,’ not medical. Cave man mad grumble sexual intercourse grumble procreation grumble.” It seems that nothing gets the right riled up quite like a victory for corporate personhood and the tantalizing prospect of punishing and humiliating women.

Katie McDonough is listed as “Salon’s politics writer, focusing on gender, sexuality and reproductive justice.” According to her resume, Katie is a 30-something woman from an upper middle-class family. Rather than finding a husband, she has been living off her parents while pretending to be a writer in NYC. She also appears to have developed an unhealthy obsession with her crotch.

I have nothing to say about her column. It is full of the abracadabra words hive minded lunatics like Ms. McDonough find appealing. Hers is a life full of signaling. Like all herd animals, she is obsessed with the borders between her group and those outside her group, the folks we call normal people. Scanning her writing, I see repetitive chanting, defining the line between her gang and an array of bogeymen she imagines are threatening to seal up her underused vagina.

You can be sure she will be banging the pots and pans for Fake Indian in 2016. The crotch-obsessed pseudo-feminists types are all over Fake Indian.

Anyway, reading along for a bit, I noticed down at the bottom right a little block suggesting other stories on the site I may like. There was this one, written by another moonbat womyn, about how she has closed the doors and windows of her life to avoid anything that contradicts the tenets of her cult. Looking into her bio, I discovered she is just another type of spoiled crazy person rich countries have elected to indulge. That being the bobo womyn with Munhchausen Syndrome. Her ailments may be real, but her melodramatics are pure theater.

Then I see this story pop up. It is now featured on Drudge, who enjoys showcasing the hard thumping crazies of the Left when it is a slow news cycle. The writer is one of those old pseudo-radicals that grows increasingly deranged as they hit their dotage. He sat out the fun stuff in college like storming Dean Wormer’s office or banging the radical hippy girls. He tried to make up for it by carrying the radical flag from the comfort of his university office.

Having missed the last revolution, he is forever predicting the next one is around the corner. I recall reading similar rants to this one in the 1980′s, during the Reagan years. Here we were in the midst of a great economic boom and a period of cultural peace and these aging hippies were talking about the brewing revolt. Given the current times, it is just as funny to hear a lefty talk about the coming revolt, given that the Left is full control of the nation.

The lack of self-awareness with these people is stunning.

Anyway, I realized I was reading Salon and recalled how it was one of the first webzines. Slate was another, backed by Bill Gates. Salon was emblematic of the late 90′s in that it was a business with no revenues, but a sky high stock price. They were convinced that hits would translate into dollars, which never happened. In the 90′s, it was typical of the Left during the Clinton era. They published boutique liberalism aimed at the sort of people who wrote max checks to the local Democrat.

Today, it is emblematic of the Left of today. The articles are written mostly by people who used to populate local cable access. That is obsessives and crazies ranting about minor deviations from their sub-cult’s orthodoxy. I’m betting the editorial meetings at Salon look something like this scene from Life of Brian.

I saw this posted on Drudge. I’m not a fan of Opie & Anthony having never listened to their program. I’ve seen Anthony Cumia on television, but I have no opinion of him. He could be a horrible person for all I know.

Warning: This article contains graphic language.

Anthony Cumia, of Opie & Anthony radio fame, launched a misogynistic, racially charged rant after he was allegedly roughed up by a woman in Times Square.

The 53-year-old shock jock said he was repeatedly punched by the woman early Tuesday while innocently snapping pictures and she accidentally got into a frame.

“So I’m taking pix in NYC & a black girl who was in frame punched me in the face. I called her a f–king “&$;;-:” cause that’s what she WAS!” the always articulate radio personality tweeted on Wednesday.

The first thing that jumps out is the warning. My goodness. Have we become such dainty flowers that we can’t take a few dirty words? Then we have the totally insane idea that accurately mentioning the race of someone is racist. Thinking maybe the Post left out the really bad stuff, a highly unlikely possibility, I went to the twitter account and read the tweets. Crude and stupid maybe, but pretty much the stuff you see on twitter. It is, after all, the preferred communication method of the two-digit IQ community.

We are headed to a place where basic parts of reality are now off limits. News accounts avoid mentioning the race of criminals, for example. A new genre of commenting has arisen in response to this habit. The commenters make sport of the weird absence of basic information in crime stories involving non-whites. In most cases, the comments are the best part. Its like a weird game of charades, where everyone looks for clues to fill in the important bits of the news story.

I’ve written elsewhere that we are becoming a different version of Iran. There, a small group of lunatics is in charge and they force everyone to go along with the weird religious rules. The typical Iranian knows the eggplants are nuts, but the eggplants have the guns. It is simply easier to pretend that you believe in flying carpets and invisible imams. In modern America, we are increasing faced with the same choice. You either go along with some reality warping nonsense like trans-genderism or face trouble from the lunatics. Cumia made the great error of noticing the race of his attacker and now he is out of work.

I’ve been sent this story a few times by friends who know my thoughts on gluten intolerance.  I never thought it was real. Food allergies are real, but rare. When all of sudden half the population suddenly becomes allergic to bread, you should know it is hysterical bullshit. I know exactly one person with celiac disease. I know dozens of people claiming to be gluten intolerant. The fact that all of these people were eating bread with no problem until this fad came along is what the empirically minded call a clue.

That’s according to an academic study that effectively overturned the results of a previous one in 2011, which had served as evidence that non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) is a real condition, Real Clear Science reports.

Peter Gibson, a gastroenterology professor at Monash University in Australia, conducted the original study, but was not satisfied with its results.

So he and a group of researchers carried out a new one, giving 37 people with a declared gluten sensitivity and irritable bowel syndrome four separate diets. Participants were first fed a baseline diet that was low in FODMAPs (fermentable, poorly absorbed short-chain carbohydrates) for two weeks.

The subjects then were blindly assigned one of three diets for a week: a high-gluten diet, which had 16 grams per day of added gluten; a low-gluten diet, which had two grams of gluten and 14 grams of whey protein per day; and a control diet, which had 16 grams of whey protein isolate per day, according to the study.

Subjects reported worsening gastrointestinal symptoms no matter which diet they consumed. Data from the study suggested a “nocebo” effect, similar to when people feel symptoms from Wi-Fi and wind turbines, Real Clear Science reported.

It should also be noted subjects reported feeling fewer gastrointestinal symptoms after eating the baseline diet, low-FODMAP diet, which includes many foods from which people abstain when taking on a gluten-free diet, such as breads, beer and pasta.

This reminds me of the peanut allergy hoax popular last decade. All of a sudden. 20% of the nation’s youth was allergic to nuts. Basic science said this could not be true, but parents convinced themselves their little snowflake was allergic. Then the kids got to the age where they could pick their own food and magically they were no longer allergic. I knew a woman who swore her kid was allergic until one day he came home munching a peanut candy of some sort. He did not die and she realized the nut problem was between her ears.

Of course, all of this is an off-shoot of the victim culture. Everyone is looking for a clever way to prove they are up against it. The greatest displays of public piety are those that involve the suffering of the pious. Instead of nailing themselves to the cross, bourgeois bohemian mothers pretend their otherwise mediocre offspring have an exotic disorder.  That’s run its course, so now, in middle age, those same moms claim cupcakes give them the runs.

Steve Sailer has a post up on a topic that interests me. How to improve baseball. He makes two excellent points, one I’ve made myself and one I never considered. The former is the role of steroids and its impact on the development of players. The latter is the playing surface. Lots of people have talked about the shrinking parks for aesthetics, but no one ever talks about the turf. The baseball field has become softer and slower over the last few decades.

First a word on PED’s. Steroids did not just make for more homeruns. It warped the game and we’re still suffering the effects. A pitcher is not just throwing a ball or even working a hitter. A pitcher works the lineup. Even at the highest level, there are batters in the lineup a pitcher knows he can master. A top of the rotation pitcher usually can dominate the bottom of the order. He may also own a guy or two in the top of the order.

Let’s say I’m looking at a lineup where I have to be careful with the #1, #3,#4 and #5 hitters. The rest are guys I know I can go after. Two things are true. One is I will usually be able to work around these guys because I know I will have quick outs before or after them. Like the first inning, there will be at least one other inning where I face the meat of the order, but otherwise I can use their weak hitters against their better hitters. Anyone who played the game knows how this works.

The other thing that is true is the pitcher will have innings where he can attack the strike zone and get quick outs. Those weak hitters will have to swing and swing at pitches of his choosing, Pile up a few quick innings and all of a sudden your starter can get into the late innings. Quick innings also mean the pitcher is fresh when the top of the lineup comes around the second and third time. Pitchers are vulnerable in their first ten and last ten pitches. It’s why they warm-up so much.

Steroids altered this dynamic. It turned the bottom of the order guys into threats. The guys with warning track power suddenly became home run hitters. Guys who we’re low average guys because they could not handle certain parts of the strike zone were suddenly able to get around on everything. Stacking more power in the lineup also afforded more protection to the better hitters. All of a sudden the #5 hitter has a big bat behind him.

The pitcher is now faced with a meat of the order scenario in every inning. He has fewer breaks in the lineup so he has to finesse every hitter in the lineup. The hitters are not dumb so they start working the pitch count too. It should be noted that this skill developed in the steroid era. All of a sudden guys not juiced up found value in working every at bat to a dozen pitches. Johnny Gomes is in the bigs primarily because he is a dozen pitch at-bat.

Once pitch counts soared, the use of the bullpen soared. In the 70′s and 80′s you had middle relief and closers. A closer was often a two inning guy. Today we have specialists for the sixth, seventh and eighth innings, along with a closer. Steroids warped the very structure of the game and we are still feeling the effects. It does appear to be healing as testing beats back the drug dealers. The culture of the sport appears to be changing as there is a real shame attached to using. Shame costs money – big money.

Now, the idea in Steve’s post that is most striking is the playing surface. Those old concrete and turf stadiums were like playing on a parking lot. Fly balls would bounce off the turf into the stands on a regular basis. Slap-hitting speedsters would practice putting the ball in the gaps. What is today a single could be a triple in some of the old parks. The reason is the ball would shoot through the gap to the warning track. Of course, those infield chops could also scoot through into the outfield, while today they are just groundouts.

Speed used to be a much bigger part of the game when the surface was fast. The trade-off for the pitchers was that the parks were enormous compared to what we see today. Yankee Stadium had a 460 foot centerfield wall. Today it is 410 feet. Tiger Stadium had a 467 foot centerfield. These were grass parks. The turf parks had similar dimensions and they had those rock hard surfaces. You could not play outfield in Kansas City or Cincinnati unless you could cover a lot of ground and you had a capable arm.

Was the game better back then? That’s debatable. Steve tends to think his childhood was the peak of western civilization so he naturally calls the 70′s the best baseball in history. The lack of fans in the seats suggest otherwise. Fans like the new parks and they like seeing humans play on grass. it’s why the new football fields use revolutionary turf that is so much like grass, fans barely notice it. Anyone who has walked a modern NFL field will tell you the new turf is better than grass.

I do think he is onto something. The turf has taken speed out of the game or at least reduced its value too much. Making the outfields a little faster would go a long way toward bringing speed back into the game. The concern is the health of the players. Those rock hard surfaces were murder on the knees. As a teen I played some ball on those surfaces and it was brutal. You hurt all over the next day. Major leaguers who played back then would talk about how it shortened careers.

That said, modern grounds keeping techniques can make the surface fast, without making it hard. As Steve points out, they do it with golf courses and in cricket. You could also use FieldTurf, which is super fast for runners, but very generous on the joints. Changing the composition of the outfields to make them faster and maybe pushing the walls back in places would open up the game to speed again.

The big area for improvement is in the pace of the game. In the modern world four hours is too much to ask of fans. Three hours is the upper limit. It is why football is focused on that number for their game times. No sport is better at maximizing the television audience than the NFL. They know three hours is the most you can ask from the fan. Baseball is right around three hours now, but that’s at a 19^th century pace.

I think baseball needs to set 2.5 hours as the target. Basketball is at two hours and twenty minutes these days. Hockey is coming in at 2.5 hours for an NHL game. These are action sports so there is plenty to keep the fan interested. Baseball is intentionally slow paced and that is a big part of its appeal. It is why baseball radio broadcasts are so profitable for teams. Baseball makes for great background to a cookout. Still, the games need to be shorter to appeal to the modern fan.

The way to do that is to knock off the kabuki dance between hitters and pitchers. Pitchers generally want to work quickly, but hitters are trained to slow them down. The pitchers then play around with their pace to mess with the hitter. Instead, I’d like to see the umps call the hitter into the box and he remains there until the ump says otherwise. If he steps out, the pitcher is free to pitch. Big Papi can wander around scratching his balls, if he likes, but the pitcher is then free to groove as many pitches over the plate while Papi is busy.

The other thing that would speed up the game is calling the high strike again. When the strike zone was letter high, hard throwers had an edge. Frank Tanana and Nolan Ryan knew they could work that part of the strike zone. That meant more strikes and more swings. Faster at-bats meant faster innings and faster games. Jim Palmer built a hall of fame career on throwing strikes. His best pitch was a 90-mph fastball up in the strike zone. Today, that’s a ball.

Speed up the game and bring speed back into the game and you probably adjust baseball to the times without altering the game in a big way. Fewer homeruns would be replaced with more extra base hits and more stolen bases. Fans want action and there’s not much more tension than when a speedster is on first or rounding third trying to score. Packing it into 2.5 hours makes it work for TV.

The other day I posted something on the new rackets popping up from Conservative Inc to re-brand conservatism. My view is that Conservative Inc and the Republican Party are struggling to come to terms with the neo-con years, particularly the Bush years. The “new” conservatism was supposed to do all the things Reagan failed to do by appealing to a broad audience on liberal terms. Instead, it turned the GOP into the Democratic Part circa 1975 and ripped the lungs out of the conservative movement. The latter was the result of purging the Old Right, for the most part.

Anyway, The American Conservative is featuring a long essay from Brain Patrick Mitchell. His “new” contribution to the hyphen party is ethical-conservatism. It actually starts out on an interesting footing.

The modern age is an age of anarchy, an era of habitual rebellion against old ways and existing order in the name of liberty, equality, enlightenment, and progress. It began as a rebellion against religious hierarchy, burgeoned into a rebellion against political monarchy, and finally boiled over in a rebellion against social patriarchy, leaving in its wake a new civilization endlessly at war with civilization itself.

Raised to rebel, the modern, anarchistic, progressive personality is always impatient with the world as it is and ever insistent that it change to suit him. Believing himself innocent, he blames others for the suffering he sees, indicting Society, Civilization, the Church, the State, the Establishment, the System, the Corporations, or the Man for crimes against the People and the Planet. Consistent with the age’s Luciferian culture of grievance justifying rebellion, the progressive lives passionately and impulsively as the hero of his own personal revolution, in which anything that stands in his way—that limits his autonomy, inhibits his self-expression, frustrates his ambitions, convicts his conscience, offends his sensibilities, or denies him satisfaction—can be condemned as unfair, unjust, intolerant, and therefore intolerable.

That’s some fine writing and a rare attempt to take an honest look at the Rousseauist cult running America since WW2. I don’t agree with his analysis, but I don’t think he is too far from the truth. It is rare to see an attempt to understand the Left on its own terms so that’s encouraging, even if it misses the mark.

This is the spirit riling the two competing passions of our age, libertine individualism and envious egalitarianism. Both deny the moral relevance of the objective other to the subjective self. Both insist on the self as the point of origin and reference for all definitions of goodness, truth, and justice, in effect replacing the First Person of the Holy Trinity with the selfish first person—the singular “I” in the case of individualism, the plural “we” in the case of egalitarianism.

This is where this type of analysis falls down the stairs. The writer sets up a false dichotomy and then uses it as a launching pad for his own opinions that he thinks are unique and different from whatever else is kicking around today. It has always struck me as a get out of jail free card. If you can dismiss current reality, you’re free to indulge in whatever you like. Libertarians tend to do this by pretending Left and Right are two sides of the same coin.

That said, I’m all in favor of rejecting the left-right model of describing political thought. That is nothing more than a tarted up version of the Left’s us-versus-them world view. It is how you end up with Hitler on the Right, alongside Burke and Reagan. Somehow we are to believe that the polar opposites are Hitler on one end and Marx on the other. The truth is that all of these sects are the sons and daughters of the marriage of Rousseau and Hobbes.

The one thing I think he needs to explore more deeply is the Left’s impulse to destroy. He gets into it a little, but can’t seem to bring himself to accept that it is destruction for its own sake. The old 1960′s rallying cry of “burn, baby burn!” is instructive. There are no rallying cries from the Left that bring images of anything other than destruction. Whatever Utopian fantasies are at the start of the movement, the end is always about pulling the roof down.

It’s what makes all of these attempt to slap a new coat of paint on the Baby Boomer Conservatism pointless. White Americans are throwing in the towel on their race and culture. People who stop having children are saying it is better to have never been born than to carry on the traditions of their age. You’re not turning the tide with ten point plans and clever tax reform proposals. At least this brand of hyphen philosophy gets a little closer to the truth.

Way back in the olden thymes I lived near a Hari Kirsihna center. Despite their reputation for extreme weirdness, they were excellent neighbors. You only saw members when they were headed out to annoy people in a public place. That is one of their primary methods of spreading their faith. They make a big fuss in a public area.

Otherwise, they kept to themselves and avoided all contact with neighbors. A key characteristic of cults is the adherent’s “us” versus “them” view of the world. Everyone and everything is either inside or outside the group. In the case of groups like the Krishnas, that results in complete isolation from outsiders.

We tend to think of cults as having a charismatic leader with a messiah complex. That leader has some grand vision of the future. Maybe it involves space aliens or God. Maybe he thinks he is God. Of course, the cult of popular imagination always follows the same arc. The leader acquires some followers and it all seems innocent and wonderful. The thing grows as the leader becomes increasingly deranged. At some point he either leads them into mass suicide or into some crazy act that brings the wrath of society down upon them.

As we see with the Krishnas and Scientology, obliteration is not the outcome in all cases or even most cases. The guy who started the Hari Krishnas has been dead for years and his movement keeps going. Scientology thrived after the death of L. Ron Hubbard. As far as I know, neither is plotting mass suicide or trying to launch a revolution.

The famous UFO cult, The Seekers, fell apart, reformed a few times until Dorothy Martin died. The point being that cults and religious movements don’t always end in obliteration. In fact, most either stabilize into a viable ongoing concern or they fall apart and the followers find a new movement. Those that survive their founders tend to get good at drawing bright lines between themselves and everyone else.

I was reminded of all that when I saw this posted on MR the other day. On a regular basis, a gaggle of social scientists release a study telling us why liberals are good and conservatives are bad. Sometimes it is just a focus on why conservatives are bad and other times it is a study on some essential goodness of liberals.

The gold standard for this, oddly enough, led to the Goldwater Rule. In 1964 a bunch of liberal psychiatrist, during the 1964 presidential campaign, declared that Barry Goldwater was clinically insane. After all, only a crazy person would deny the essential goodness of the Progressive movement. Some version of this pops up every few years, masked as social science.

An obsession with the moral differences between “us” and “them” is a hallmark of mass movements. It is fair to say they are fanatical about it. Oddly and maybe even counter intuitively, members of mass movements are not very good at understanding the differences between the array of groups not in their group.

A good example is the Amish. As far as they’re concerned, everyone else is English. They could no more tell a Catholic from a Jew and they don’t care. Muslims see nothing but infidels outside the world of Islam. Scientology, from what I understand, has similar labels for people outside their faith. Jews call non-Jews gentiles and, oddly, Mormons call non-Mormons gentiles too.

Anyway, these are the things that come to mind when I see something like this.

Progressives are by any reasonable definition, a political cult. Like Islam, it is aggressive and intolerant, particularly of Christianity. Not unreasonably, it sees Christianity as its chief threat. Not that Christians are automatically a bunch of freedom loving Burkeans. The Pope, after all, is a Marxist. That does not matter to the Left. They have a long hatred for Christians.

The mandates in ObamaCare were not put in for health reasons or cost reasons. Their intent was to make life miserable for those Christians who oppose contraception and abortion. That’s why progressives have gone berserk over the Hobby lobby case. If you imagine yourself in a life and death struggle with your chief rival, even tiny set backs seem like the end of the world.

I’ll wrap this rambling post up with a short story about an Iranian I once knew. This was back in the Iran – Iraq War days. He had been drafted into the Ayatollah’s army and sent to fight the Iraqis. A commander called for volunteers to clear a minefield. Immediately a bunch of young fanatics volunteered. They were sent out into the minefield, finding the mines the old fashioned way. Behind them the infantry, followed the now clear path through the field.

Shortly thereafter my Iranian friend went AWOL, got a fake student Visa and found his way to Belgium. He hooked up with other Iranian ex-pats, mostly Christians and Jews. They helped him get his paperwork in order. Because of the chaos in Iran at the time, his parents were able to claim he was missing in action so they could avoid trouble from the fanatics.

That’s life in a land where a cult takes over.

It appears Mensa and Match.com are teaming up to build a genius dating site. My first instict is to assume it is just a publicity stunt for both. Match gets some discussion in the news cycles and Mensa gets some applicants.

Online dating site Match.com is teaming up with Mensa, a high-IQ membership organization, to connect really, really smart people.

Only users who fulfill Mensa requirements by testing in the 98th percentile on an IQ test can sign up for the exclusive dating website launched this week.

Mensa Match members will be linked up with other Mensa members, as well as with other Match members, said John McGill, national marketing director for American Mensa.

And it looks like I was correct. The geniuses will also get matched with the lunkheads and, of course, the lunkheads will get a crack at the geniuses. That is, after all, the only way such an arrangement could work. Otherwise, you have to exclude the geniuses from the lunkheads and vice versa. Male geniuses will want to have a shot with the dumb hotties for obvious reasons. The dumb hotties will want to see the nerd boys, because they most likely have good jobs and make a good salary.

More interesting to me is the assumption that smart people want to mate with other smart people.

“Meeting people at a higher intellectual level can really enhance your relationships,” McGill said.

American Mensa has more than 57,000 members and an estimated 6 million Americans are eligible for membership, according to the organization’s website.

Scott Porter, who has signed up for Mensa Match, said he joined the organization to meet people, and Mensa Match seems like a natural extension of that.

“I’ve hit walls in relationships where I got to the point of, What are we going to talk about next?” said Scott Porter, who has signed up for Mensa Match.

He said he’s noticed that intelligent people are generally curious. “If you get someone who’s curious, you can probably always find something to talk about.”

Brainpower is important to most, according to Match, which reports 80% of singles said dating someone of the same intelligence is a “must have” or “very important.”

I don’t think there’s much in the way of science to support any of this. Males want women who will be good mothers. If they are older and no longer having children, then they are primarily interested in women who have not let themselves fall to pieces. In general, men want women who will bear and raise their children and help elevate their status. Take away the kids and you’re left with women who elevate status. Dating a fat granny is not doing that for you.

On the other hand, women are wired to seek out high status males. In this age, high IQ is going to correlate to higher status and higher income. My bet is more women use dating sites than men so it would explain why Match is doing this. That said, most middle-aged women will take a good looking lawyer over a dumpy genius. Women are far more pragmatic in their mating habits than men.

Then there’s the other side of the equation. Adults who are into Mensa are probably unpleasant to be around for normal people. When I was a kid, I joined Mensa because the adults around me thought it would help me get into college one day. One meeting and I was pretty sure I did not want to turn out like those weirdos. Maybe things have changed, but I would not be surprised if the members are even more annoying and weird in this age of the fake nerd. Giving them a place to meet and find mates is probably a potential money maker for Mensa.