Monthly Archives: July 2014

All Fagged Out

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Way back in the olden thymes, I hired a homosexual. Of course, this was the olden thymes so there was no mention of it. If anyone discovered a homosexual, they were required to report them to the authorities. The homosexual was then shipped off to one of the rehabilitation centers run by Pat Robertson. If that did not “take” then they were shipped to the lavender plantations in the South, operated by Oral Roberts, ironically enough. As a result no one ever spoke of homosexuals.

That’s nonsense, but not too far from the official narrative being developed by the usual suspects. The airbrushing of history with regards to this topic is not going to end until the past fits the fantasy. In my case the guy was flaming, so it was obvious he preferred the company of men. That and he mentioned it in his interview. He wanted to make sure it was not going to be an issue. I told him he’d have to figure that out for himself, but as long as he did his job I did not care.

That was the last time I had any reason to discuss the matter with him. Some of the guys gave him grief, but he was used to it and handled it well. As is always the case, he fell into a role that suited him and everyone else. The point being that in the olden thymes, homosexuals had to put up with some mild inconveniences, but nothing significant. More important, normal people did not go crazy around them. Other than some mild discomfort, normal people got along just fine with homosexuals because we were indifferent towards them.

Today, people all over the world are going insane over homosexuals. Throughout the Middle East and Africa, otherwise normal people are going berserk and attacking homosexuals. Uganda just passed harsh laws against homosexuality. They did it despite stern warnings from Obama. Of course, we all know how countries in the Middle East have gone bonkers over this. Iran was driven to such madness as to bring back stoning.

OK, I’m kidding around again.

Sort of.

I wanted to check in on the sports world and I see this on ESPN. David Tyree is against gay marriage, like most everyone. Big deal. Who cares? Every damned week the sporting press is running with a homosexual story. You just know they will make a fetish of Michael Sam this fall. They made fools of themselves hounding the gay basketball player last summer so you know they will go crazy over this. ESPN is the worst offender, but even sports radio can’t stop obsessing over gays. There’s nowhere to hide from the constant chatter about homosexuals.

I’m all fagged out.

I want “the love that dared not speak its name” to go back to the time honored tradition of not speaking its name. Instead, it is the love that won’t shut the hell up and leave the rest of alone. You can’t escape it. If you watch TV, every show now must feature a homosexual, despite the fact only 3.4% of the population claim to be homosexual. There are more “little people” in this world than “trans” people, yet every newspaper in the country is running at least one tranny tale a week. If I were a midget, I’d feel like I was getting the short end…well…nevermind.

It is getting to the point where it is impossible to engage with popular culture. The preaching is unbearable. Preaching about homosexuals is even worse, given that no one, including most homosexuals, cares about homosexuals. Circling back (or reaching around if you prefer) to my story at the top, I remember a time when no one cared about the topic and they were generally decent enough to keep their feelings about it to themselves. Let’s go back to that.

But, that’s not how cultural genocide works. The lunatics give you two choices. One is you embrace their insane, ever shifting set of codes, or, else. ISIS is telling Iraqi Christians they must convert or die. The Greater American Lunatic is telling normals they must embrace and exult homosexuality or else. Well, nuts to that, as it were. I’ve had enough of the gays. I’m all fagged out and I don’t want to hear any more about  the gays.

Denmark is full of Danes

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Imagine a group of people that deeply believe in the Great Pumpkin. So much so, they have not only developed a religion and culture around it, everything that defines them is based in the existence of the Great Pumpkin. Their culture and social structures would collapse if they discovered the Great Pumpkin was myth. The news is full of people who would die for their religion so this should not be a terribly difficult thought experiment.

Now, flip around the other way. Imagine a group of people that have based everything about their existence on the belief that the Great Pumpkin does not exist. Unlike atheists, these people have actually managed to build a viable culture and institutions around the absolute faith in the Great Pumpkin being a myth. Everything they are is based on it. Tolerance for any Great Pumpkin-ism is impossible because it is essentially a denial of their essence.

Now, let’s assume these people know of one another and are within travel distance of one another. The former group, let’s call them the Positives, are going to be hell bent on converting the latter group, that we’ll call the Negatives. On the other hand, the Negatives are not interested in converting the Positives. The mere fact that these people are able to tolerate Great Pumpkin belief means they are capable of denying everything that makes up the very being of a Negative. Therefore, part of the Negative belief set is they want to destroy the Positives.

Now, replace the Great Pumpkin with race.

That’s where things stand in America when it comes to race. Most people accept that race is a real thing and different people come from different parts of the world. For most people, it is a casual awareness that does not animate their life. They think about it when they see a sign for Martin Luther King Boulevard or a bunch of a Spanish guys hanging out on the corner. Others take it more seriously as an academic or intellectual pursuit, while others take it too far and become bigots.

The other side of the fence we find the race deniers. Everything they believe, their sense of self and their world view, is based on race being a myth. The trouble is they are facing a mountain of scientific evidence that contradicts their belief. The mountain is not only growing, it is growing rapidly. Studies like this one seem benign to normal people, but they are a stake through the heart of a race denier.

Economists at the University’s Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) have looked at why certain countries top the world happiness rankings. In particular they have found the closer a nation is to the genetic makeup of Denmark, the happier that country is. The research could help to solve the puzzle of why a country like Denmark so regularly tops the world happiness rankings.

Dr Eugenio Proto and Professor Andrew Oswald, based in the Department of Economics, found three forms of evidence for a link between genetic makeup and a nation’s happiness.

Firstly they used data on 131 countries from a number of international surveys including the Gallup World Poll, World Value Survey and the European Quality of Life Surveys. The researchers linked cross-national data on genetic distance and well-being.

Dr Proto said: “The results were surprising, we found that the greater a nation’s genetic distance from Denmark, the lower the reported wellbeing of that nation. Our research adjusts for many other influences including Gross Domestic Product, culture, religion and the strength of the welfare state and geography.

The second form of evidence looked at existing research suggesting an association between mental wellbeing and a mutation of the gene that influences the reuptake of serotonin, which is believed to be linked to human mood.

Dr Proto added: “We looked at existing research which suggested that the long and short variants of this gene are correlated with different probabilities of clinical depression, although this link is still highly debated. The short version has been associated with higher scores on neuroticism and lower life satisfaction. Intriguingly, among the 30 nations included in the study, it is Denmark and the Netherlands that appear to have the lowest percentage of people with this short version.”

The final form of evidence looked at whether the link between genetics and happiness also held true across generations, continents and the Atlantic Ocean.

Professor Oswald said: “We used data on the reported wellbeing of Americans and then looked at which part of the world their ancestors had come from. The evidence revealed that there is an unexplained positive correlation between the happiness today of some nations and the observed happiness of Americans whose ancestors came from these nations, even after controlling for personal income and religion.”

For the race deniers, this is like seeing the Great Pumpkin walking down the strete in full view of everyone. This study is not abstract correlations. This is hard genetic science. More important, if a small localized population of humans in the heart of Europe can have some weird genetics that manifest in personality and culture, groups walled off from Europe by oceans and mountains are going to have even more unusual mutations that distinguish them from the rest.

The race deniers will be undone by the fact Denmark is full of Danes.

National Suicide, American Style

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This was posted on National Review Online, but they seem to be the only people making an issue of it. A quick Google search and there are more comprehensive stories about the event. This one is representative.

Dueling protests between hundreds of supporters of Israel and the Palestinians briefly snarled downtown traffic Tuesday afternoon, while diplomats wrangled over the conflict in Gaza thousands of miles away.

A crowd of pro-Israel demonstrators, many toting the blue-and-white flag of the Jewish state, gathered in front of Chicago’s Israeli consulate on Madison Street for what organizers billed as a call for peace. A large group of supporters of Palestinians, with a public-address system and flags of their own, gathered on the next block just days after thousands marched downtown to protest Israeli military action.

The tense scene was observed by a phalanx of police personnel — uniformed and plainclothes, federal and local — who segregated the two sides with steel gates, bicycle-mounted officers and cruisers.

Officers searched the bags of pro-Israel demonstrators who entered that rally zone, while a string of equine patrol officers ringed part of the pro-Palestinian side. Police K-9 units moved through the protesters, amid the blare of sirens, chanting and hovering helicopters.

“I’m Israeli. I support my country, and I want to stop any aggression from Hamas,” said Chicago resident Alex Paz, who was among the many demonstrators calling for an end to the conflict.

“If I knew how to stop it, I would probably be prime minister,” Paz said. “My opinion is it should be stopped, instead of being scared of missiles at night.”

Alex Paz is probably a fine fellow, but what is he doing in Chicago? Why are we permitting a foreign national to make a nuisance of himself in one of our cities?

Meanwhile, across the street, suburban resident Qais Salah, 17, said much of his father’s family is trying to avoid airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.

“My grandfather got sick because of how many times he’s got to run outside the house, because Israel calls him and tells him they’re about to bomb the house and he’s got three minutes to leave,” Salah said. “But where can they run? Gaza’s small, they’ve got nowhere to go and everywhere’s being bombed.”

Qais Salah is probably a wonderful young man too, but why is he here? Can anyone find a single citizen of Chicago who was demanding we import young men from Gaza, Israel and wherever? What possible reason could there be for our State Department to issue travel documents to a young man from Gaza? It’s not as if the region is know for its tranquility. Why are we importing these problems?

Look, you can be partial to Israel and wish her the best. of all the countries in that region, Israel is the most Western. Next would be the Lebanese and then maybe the Turks or possibly the Jordanians. Still, they are not Western and their issues are not our problem to solve. I the government wants to sell them guns so they can fight one another, that’s fine, but importing these people into this country is nothing more than national suicide. There’s no reason for it.

Kristen Gwynne Is A Very Stupid Person

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I saw this on the Fox News Channel this week.. I thought it was a joke at first, but it is real post that is intended to be serious. It is remarkable how people this stupid get hired to write for well funded publications. It’s deliberate lying, but having a dimwitted fanatic do it adds plausible deniability. Still, it is incredible how much agit-prop produced by idiots we have beamed at every day.

Contrary to what those who defend the right to own high-powered assault rifles believe, not all guns are created equal. Due to a combination of availability, portability and criminal usage the following five types of guns are the country’s most dangerous.

As a defender of self-defense weapons, I’m offended. Seriously, how many words for “bad” do these nuts have in their language? The hilarity that follows makes this statement even more ridiculous for the simple reason Kristen Gwynne is a dingbat, who knows nothing about firearms. On the other hand, 2A defenders are almost always very knowledgeable about firearms. Yet, the stupid woman is going to lecture us about guns in a way that is absurdly funny.

Using firearm trace data from the ATF, as well as FBI homicide records, we determined the types of guns most often recovered from crime scenes and/or used in murders. The numbers are stark: According to the FBI’s 2012 Crime in the US data, nearly 70 percent of homicides for which the FBI received weapons data involved the use of a firearm and handguns alone accounted for about 72 percent of firearms used in murders and non-negligent manslaughter. While the FBI does not elaborate on the type of handguns used in these incidents, the ATF’s analysis of weapons confiscated from crime scenes provides a more specific look at the weapons criminals prefer, which we’ve shared with you here.

Wackos always love to let you know they are super serious and relying only on maths and stuff. Anyway, here’s the first “gun” on the list:

Popular among handgun-owners, pistols are defined by their built-in barrel and short stock. They are the most commonly recovered firearm type reported by the ATF. With more than 119,000 pistols found at crime scenes in 2012, this handgun model holds an unfortunately solid first place in criminal weaponry.

One of the most popular pistols is the Glock, a short-recoil operated, semi-automatic pistol produced by Glock Ges.m.b.H. in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria. Glocks comprise 65 percent of the market share of handguns for United States law enforcement agencies and are also frequently used by international law-enforcement.

This is rather amazing as it coincides with some of my own research. I’ve noticed that cars account for most of the accidents on the nation’s highways. In fact, cars are the most dangerous vehicle on the roads!

OK, drum roll. Here comes number two on the list.

Revolvers, named for their rotating chambered cylinder, placed second in the ATF’s ranking of guns found at crime scenes more than 46,000 recovered in 2012, the most recent year for which statistics were kept.

Some grenade launchers, shotguns, and rifles also have rotating barrels, but the term “revolver” is generally used to describe handguns. Revolver types include single and double-action firing mechanisms, the latter of which does not require a cocking action separate from the trigger pull.

I own a lot of guns and I’ve never seen a shotgun with rotating barrels. Other than a Gatling Gun, I don’t think there has ever been a mass produced rifle with rotating barrels. I think the idiot who wrote this just wanted to use some scare words like “grenade Launcher” even though they have no idea what they mean. Now, I know you wondering what is number three on the list so here we go.

Rifles. Law enforcement agencies pulled more than 39,000 from crime scenes in 2012, firmly establishing this weapon — designed to be fired from the shoulder — in third place on the ATF’s trace list. Pulling the trigger of a rifle fires one projectile at the intended target, as opposed to the shotgun’s ability to spray. According to FBI latest publicly available homicide records, in 2012 rifles were used to murder more than 320 people.

Rifles were created to improve the accuracy of smoothbore muskets, for which the musket ball was often an bad fit due to manufacturing complications. Accurate and easy-to-aim, rifles are now the most common hunting weapon.

At this point, I’m starting to wonder if the person who wrote this is a poorly designed AI robot or maybe a robot designed to be stupid. Anyway, let’s move onto number four.

Like rifles, shotguns are fired from the shoulder and may release a single projectile. Unlike rifles, however, one pull of a shotgun’s trigger may also spray the target with round pellets, or shot. Additionally, the explosive that creates the energy to fire the gun occurs in the fixed shell of a shotgun rather than the metallic cartridge of a rifle.

Per the FBI, shotguns were used in 303 murders in 2012. With 27,000 shotgun recoveries reported to the ATF in 2012, they are the fourth most common type of firearm confiscated at crime scenes.

Now, I know what you’re thinking punk. You’re thinking “did he list five guns or did he only list four?” Now, to tell you the truth I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this is…OK, OK. This idiot is allegedly listing the five most popular guns used in crimes, but has listed the four main categories of firearms sold on the planet. What could be left? Well, here you go.

Derringers, small pocket or palm-sized pistols with one or two barrels, have no strict legal definition, but are included in the ATF’s trace form as a category of firearm. With just more than 2,000 recoveries in 2012 — a small number compared to the other firearm types listed above, largely because it is a subset of the highly-popular pistol — derringers are the fifth most-cited firearm in crime scene recoveries.

While high-capacity-magazine assault weapons have bee linked to large number of mass shootings over the past 30 years, varying definitions of “assault” rifles make comprehensive information difficult to access. We do know, however, that assault weapons — loosely categorized as semi-automatic, rapid-fire weapons designed for combat use — are used in a small minority of homicides and other gun crimes.

I’m thinking the last time a derringer was used to kill was in a bawdy house in San Francisco after the railroad was completed. It calls into question whether this women really did look at FBI data. If the FBI is really listing derringers as a weapon used in a crime, then you have to wonder about their data.

Then you have the stupid woman’s description of a derringer. Gun grabbers know little about guns, crime, 2A and gun culture. That’s something all 2A people know. What’s surprising is just how deep the ignorance goes with some of these people. Kirsten is an example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. She is simply too stupid to comprehend her own ignorance, but she tries to make up for it with confidence..

The World’s Luckiest Man

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His name is Maarten de Jonge:

A Dutch cyclist has revealed how he twice cheated death after changing his plans to fly on both the Malaysia Airlines passenger jets involved in international aviation disasters over the past four months.

Maarten de Jonge, 29, has to travel around the world to compete for Malaysia’s Terengganu cycling team – and in doing so has now had two extraordinary near misses.

Speaking to the Dutch public broadcaster RTV Oost, De Jonge said he had been due to travel on flight MH17, the Boeing 777 that was shot down over Ukraine on Thursday killing all of the almost 300 passengers on board.

The cyclist said that he only decided to swap flights at the last minute, after discovering that travelling via Frankfurt today would prove cheaper.

Once again, being flinty proves to be the prudent course.

During his interview with the local broadcaster, the cyclist revealed something even more remarkable – that he had also been planning to travel on flight MH370, the Malaysia jet which vanished on 8 March and which remains missing somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

De Jonge had been due to compete in a race in Taiwan, Marca reported, and decided to take a different flight an hour earlier that did not include a stopover in Beijing.

He told RTV Oost that having changed his flight plans at the last minute he actually spoke to a number of passengers who were waiting to board MH370 – and who have not been seen since.

“I could have taken that one just as easily,” De Jonge said in an interview with RTV Oost. “It’s inconceivable. I am very sorry for the passengers and their families, yet I am very pleased I’m unharmed.”

Since hinting at his close calls on Twitter, the cyclist said he had been “overwhelmed” by the international response to his story.

I suspect the main reason is no one will want to be at the same airport with him, much less scheduled to be on his flight.

 

The Immigration Bomb

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Somewhere in the Bush years, I threw in the towel on the Republicans. It was not the endless and largely pointless wars that did it for me. Iraq and Afghanistan were understandable blunders. Maybe not excusable, but certainly understandable. When you have a big powerful military, you want to use it, so when the neocons cooked up these schemes, they found willing buyers.

No, what did it for me was the domestic side. They did not do a damn thing to roll back the welfare state, despite having control of both houses and the executive. Not only did they not cut a single penny, they went on a spending spree. Worse yet, they expanded the portfolio of every domestic agency. They left no doubt that Pat Buchanan was right along about so-called conservatives and the Republican Party.

Given the state of the other party a sober minded person was left with no choices on election day. The election of 2010 did not offer much hope. One look at Boehner made it clear he was a timid, unimaginative man with no spine. The nomination of Romney for the 2012 election was comical, in many respects. Romney is everything that is wrong with the Republican Party. You cannot be a credible alternative to the Left if you’re just offering more of the same.

The upcoming midterms promised to be uneventful. A president’s second midterm is always rough as his own base has run out of steam while the other party’s base is motivated to send a message. Given the state of the GOP, but adjusting for the endless list of scandals and buffoonery from Obama, it was looking like the GOP adds to their margin in the House and maybe wins the Senate by a seat or two at most.

John Derbyshire points out that Americans are talking about immigration. That’s something no one thought possible a year ago. Not only are they talking about it, they consider it the top issue. There’s also a big majority now in favor of decreasing legal immigration. Given the way we romanticize immigration, that’s mind boggling. What’s even more stunning is our rulers are now clutching their skirts over it. That’s when you know things have turned. Even usual suspects are running for cover now.

Potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidates are showing divisions over how to handle the surge of illegal immigrant children, underscoring how quickly the immigration issue has gone from what they thought was a guaranteed political winner to an electoral headache.

Some Democratic governors considering presidential bids also are having to grapple personally with the surge as they decide whether to fight or accept the Obama administration’s requests to house the children in facilities within their borders.

Those within Congress, meanwhile, will have to take tough votes on boosting spending and changing the law to allow for faster deportations — all under the close scrutiny of Hispanic groups that are prepared to punish those they deem to be working against immigrant rights.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley sparked a feud with the Obama administration in recent days when he publicly called on President Obama not to send children back to their countries of origin but privately urged a White House official not to house them at a site in Maryland, either.

“What I said was that would not be the most inviting site in Maryland,” Mr. O’Malley told CNN on Wednesday. “There are already hundreds of kids already located throughout Maryland.”

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken a more enforcement-centered approach. She told a CNN-sponsored town hall last month that the children “should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults in their families are.”

She said some children might have valid humanitarian reasons to stay but the key was to send a signal of tough enforcement.

“We have to send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay,” she said. “So we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”

The thing to keep in mind is Obama is the leader of the radical wing of the Liberal Democrats. The Clintons are the leaders of the establishment wing. The two wings despise one another with the intensity of a thousand suns. People like Martin O’Malley are in the Clinton wing. Warren has the support of the Obama’s. If Clinton chooses not to run, she will throw her weight behind O’Malley in the primary. Immigration therefore becomes the dividing issue in the Democrat primary battle.

The disaster on the border is what’s driving the the news cycle. The administration has decided to take the Tony Blair approach to immigration. That is, they want to flood the nation with immigrants thus changing the debate from whether we should let them all in to how we should treat them now that they are here. That means the issue could very well be with us for a lot longer than the current news cycle.

Faced with a tailor made issue to use against the other party, the GOP will be tempted to screw it up by preemptively surrendering on the issue. The defeat of Eric Cantor, however, seems to have removed that knife from their hands. Now they have to fear being their Right in this election. That means groveling to the Left on immigration is not the obvious choice for them.

It’s way too soon to get hopeful, but the immigration bomb has gone off. Unlike most issues, this one is lethal for the Democrats. Blacks are strongly against any sort of immigration, but especially Hispanic immigration. Latinos are strongly against illegal immigration. On the other hand, the plutocrats at the top of the party want open borders and upscale whites are divided on the issue. Those in STEM fields are fine with low skill immigration, but against the H1B1 rackets.

The GOP is not shielded from this explosion. Boehner and Ryan and Cantor were ready to do the bidding of the Chamber of Commerce and pass amnesty this fall. That’s suddenly out the window. The people who vote for them and provide the boots on the ground are against amnesty. The shearing effect on the party will not tear it apart, but it does give the good guys a shot to force changes. Even Conservative Inc. is jumping on the bandwagon.

More important, 2016 may open the door for an outsider candidate to run on the issue.

National Suicide, French Style

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A recurring theme of the ongoing war on society by the Left is how the Left is trying to pull the roof down on Western Civilization. All of the ideas about building a Utopian future have fallen away and what’s left is nothing but an urge to destroy. They are like spoiled children, unhappy with not getting their way, so they  are determined to make the rest of us carry their misery. Immigration is a great example. Let’s take a look at France today.

Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters marched in French cities on Saturday to condemn violence in Gaza, defying a ban imposed after demonstrators marched on two synagogues in Paris last weekend and clashed with riot police.

A Reuters photographer said demonstrators in northern Paris launched projectiles at riot police, who responded by firing teargas canisters and stun grenades.

Demonstrators also climbed on top of a building and burned an Israeli flag. At least one car was set on fire.

A police spokesman said that 38 demonstrators had been arrested by early evening and that the clashes were dying down.

In a sane world, the French people would not care all that much about what was happening between natives in a foreign land. If it were one of her colonies, maybe it would make the news. Otherwise, the French would not be terribly vexed about what was happening between Arabs and Jews. Of course, these riots are not caused by French people. They are caused by Arabs imported into France for no reason.

French President Francois Hollande said he understood emotional responses to the killing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in a flare-up of hostilities with Israel but would not allow violence to spill over into France.

“That’s why I asked the interior minister, after an investigation, to ensure that such protests would not take place,” he told journalists during a visit to Chad.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve justified bans in Paris, the Sarcelles suburb and the Mediterranean city of Nice by saying the security risk was too great, prompting outrage from left-wing and pro-Palestinian groups.

So there you are. Left-wing groups pushed to have Arabs imported into France and now they are helping them burn down French cities and attack French Jews. What possible reason, other than national suicide, could there be for importing these savages and then letting them run wild in French cities?

Make no mistake, these “pro-Palestinian groups” are nothing more than low-IQ savages. The reason they are in France is they made their lands in the Levant unlivable. Their fellow Arabs despise them and refuse to let them into their lands. The Jews, of course, want them off the land, so they conspire to ship them north.

That’s the other part of it. Every open borders group on earth is financed by and organized by Jews. That means the Jews in France are being assaulted by Arabs, because Jewish immigration groups in Europe conspired with Israel to ship the Arabs into France, where they set about attacking Jews. Israel hopes to get the Ashkenazim fleeing Europe and the immigration groups weaken France.

When The Bad Guys Lose

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Normal people like it when the good guys win. Our progressive overlords and their toadies root for the bad guys, so of course it is always good when the bad guys lose as that harms the people in charge. it is one of the rare examples of where the friend of your enemy is you enemy working out to be right. What’s bad for our rulers is good for the rest of us.  Here’s a case where the bad guy really lost.

A Florida dad who told police he walked in on a man sexually abusing his child, left the suspect motionless and bleeding Friday morning on the living room floor, police said.

The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that the suspect was found at the Daytona Beach home at about 1 a.m. Friday. The paper, citing the arrest report, said Raymond Frolander was found with several knots on his face and bleeding from the mouth.

The 35-year-old father and his son were not identified, but the father reportedly walked in on Frolander sexually battering his son.

The paper obtained the 911 call and reported that the dad told the dispatcher, “I just walked in a grown man molesting…and I got him in a bloody puddle for you, officer.”

He told police that he didn’t use any weapons in the beating, nor did he ask the suspect any questions.

“He is nice and knocked out on the floor for you,” the dad reportedly told police.

 

Fake Science

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The documenting of junk science is hardly new. I recall reading skeptics taking on nonsense studies back in the 1980’s. I’m old and my mind is slipping, but I think the term “junk science” was in use back then, but I may be misremembering. Alar is probably the first example I recall reading about, where the “science” turned out to be complete nonsense. DDT is the most famous example.

Still, the debunking of pseudo-science has a long history. It is generally tangled up in some cause, claiming to be about fending off an emergency. Anthropomorphic Global Warming is looking like the Godzilla of all junk science. Everything about it is fanciful, even the labels. The shadow of Rachel Carson will be with us forever.

The rise of the fake nerd has only made it worse. Fake nerds, as I have written about before, are all around us these days. Pretending to be “tech savvy” or really into technology is one part of it. Another is the use and abuse of statistics. The sporting press is being over run by guys with a couple of stat classes, carrying on like they are Bill James. Nate Silver is making a career out of it.

The mistake all of these guys make is in thinking statistics are science. Science uses statistics, but it also uses hammers and blow torches too. No one calls a carpenter a scientist or a geek, yet the typical carpenter is more empirically minded than most of these nerds. He understands cause and effect. He also understands that correlations can be misleading, so they must be treated with care.

Anyway, fake science has become the religion of the fake nerd cult. Take any amount of wishful thinking, slap on some statistics, scientific jargon and you have catnip for the fake nerds. This story is a great example.

The human race is really starting to feel the consequences of their actions. One area we are waking up to is the massive amount of pesticides we spray (especially in North America) on our food that has not only been linked to human disease, but a massive die off in the global bee population within the past few years.

A new study out of Harvard University, published in the June edition of the Bulletin of Insectology puts the nail in the coffin, neonicotinoids are killing bees at an exponential rate, they are the direct cause of the phenomenon labeled as colony collapse disorder (CCD). Neonicotinoid’s are the world’s most widely used insecticides.

Right away you see one of the hallmarks of fake science. That’s the apocalyptic warnings about humans living better than they deserve. In this case, it is the use of chemicals to ward off horrible plagues and produce more food.  Then you have the “case is closed” assertion that tells you the case is anything but closed. The fact that science is an ongoing debate is lost on the fake nerds.

For this study, researchers examined 18 bee colonies at three different apiaries in central Massachusetts over the course of a year. Four colonies at each apiary were regularly treated with realistic doses of neonicotinoid pesticides, while a total of six hives were left untreated. Of the 12 hives treated with the pesticides, six were completely wiped out.

This is an example of the classic logical fallacy they used to teach kids back in the olden times. It goes like this. If A then B, therefore if B then A. This is the error of affirming the consequent. In this case, overuse of this pesticide results in fragile bee colonies. There may be many reasons for fragile bee colonies. At best, this study suggest there may be a relationship between pesticides and fragile bee colonies.

Real scientists, like this guy, understand that there can be many causes to a single observed phenomenon. Those causes can interact with one another to mask and amplify their effects. Teasing out the true causal relationships is difficult. Correlations can help locate causes, but they often lead us down a blind alley. That’s the plight of the fake nerd. They believe they are empirically minded, but fall for this sort of nonsense all the time. The result is a flood of junk science.

A Post With No Title

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Looks like the Man is going to throw FedEx in jail.

FedEx Corp. (FDX:US) was accused in a federal indictment of delivering prescription pain pills, sedatives, anti-anxiety drugs and other controlled substances for illegal Internet pharmacies. A conviction could be “material,” the company said today in a regulatory filing.

The operator of the world’s largest (FDX:US) cargo airline was indicted on 15 counts of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and misbranded drugs and drug trafficking that carry a potential fine of twice the gains from the illegal conduct, alleged to be at least $820 million for it and co-conspirators. FedEx delivered drugs to Internet pharmacies that supplied pills to customers who filled out online questionnaires and were never examined by doctors, knowing these practices violated federal and state drug laws, according to the federal indictment.

The company vowed to fight the charges, saying it can’t be responsible for the contents of the 10 million packages it transports daily and that policing customers would violate their privacy.

“FedEx is innocent of the charges,” Patrick Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the Memphis, Tennessee-based company, said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. “We will plead not guilty. We will defend against this attack on the integrity and good name of FedEx and its employees.”

Well, FedEx is not getting a free pass because they tried to protect the privacy of criminals engaged in criminal behavior. That’s called aiding and abetting. That said, it is unreasonable to hold a shipping company responsible for the packages. Unless there’s proof FedEx knew about it or should have known about it, the Feds are spinning their wheels.

FedEx said yesterday it repeatedly asked the government for a list of illegal pharmacies so it would know which ones not to do business with. The U.S. never gave it such a list, it said.

The company knew it was delivering drugs to dealers and addicts, with couriers in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia expressing concerns circulated to senior managers that FedEx trucks were stopped on the road by online pharmacy customers demanding packages of pills, according to the indictment. Some delivery addresses were parking lots or vacant homes, prosecutors said.

“This indictment highlights the importance of holding corporations that knowingly enable illegal activity responsible for their role in aiding criminal behavior,” U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag in San Francisco said in a statement.

The illegal deliveries began in 2000, Haag said, and FedEx continued to do business with one Internet pharmacy whose manager had been arrested for violating drug laws. She said the company also served a fulfillment pharmacy that supplied Internet pharmacies that were shut by law enforcement, with their owners and doctors convicted of illegally distributing drugs.

OK, that sounds bad. If the Feds can back it up with proof, then it is clear the company engaged in illegal conduct that they knew to be illegal. But, there’s a problem. The “company” did not do anything. People working for the company made these decisions. Why are the Feds going after the share holders? Surely, they could press the employees to dime out the people who made the decision to commit these crimes. Conspiracy to distribute class A narcotics is a big crime carrying big time.

It is the fundamental problem we face as a country. We no longer arrest and prosecute rich people. In the 80’s, the S&L crooks went to the can in big numbers. Even Michael Milken did time. In the Clinton years that stopped and the law no longer applies to the ruling class. Exactly one guy from the Enron scandal went to jail. No one from the dot-com scam went to jail. No one from the mortgage meltdown went to jail.

If we get back to sending rich people to the can when they screw up, a lot of what ails us will fix itself. Want to see the ruling class get religion? Send a few of them to Angola State Prison. They get serious about the law in a hurry.