Monthly Archives: November 2014

Enough With The Queers

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For my generation, I’m rather tolerant of homosexuals. For instance, thirty years ago I hired a flaming homosexual, over the objections of others. I was not making a point. He was simply the best qualified by a long shot and that trumped whatever squealing and hissing that would surely follow. He turned out to be an able worker and fit right in with everyone, even though they were hostile at first. By the standards of today, however, I’m an intolerant bigot because I don’t want to worship homosexual males.

Still, even by the standards of the today, our culture is over-queered. The queer goblet runneth over. I’m so sick and tired of having homos placed front and center, with demands that I worship their heroic efforts to find happiness. This story is a good example. I’m not a fan of country music. The old stuff was good, but the new stuff is just bad rock music. It’s not my thing but the normal people living in the cultural valley like it. But, the Cult can’t let them have it. Nope, they have to bring the gays into it.

Church, pickup trucks and dive bars — the imagery of classic country songs evokes “traditional” small-town American life. Now a rising number of openly gay crooners are testing just how inclusive that vision can be.

Two prominent singers came out of the closet within hours of each other on Thursday. Ty Herndon, who rose to stardom in the 1990s with both love ballads and Christian songs, declared himself to be an “out, proud and happy gay man.”

Herndon, who at 52 has been married twice to women, said that he had struggled since his childhood to come to terms with his sexuality.

Well, “Ty” I have been struggling for years with my intolerance of homosexuals. I’m now out and proud as a normal man who has had enough of the queers. Time for you guys to go back to the rest stops and public rest rooms and leave the rest of us alone. Enough.

 

The End of Citizenship

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Reading Maggie’s Farm I see a link to a religious site’s article on marriage. My first thought was that it still amazes me how fanatics see only that which confirms their fanaticism. I have a lunatic acquaintance who will be out in the streets waving around the latest global warming report. He will not bother to notice that it is 30 degrees below normal or that most of the country is setting records for cold. That’s just weather. The Reason crowd does the same thing with weed and buggery.

My second thought was just how effective mass movements are at winning culture fights. The singular focus on ridding the nation of the white middle class has resulted in some very clever tactics. Homosexual marriage is a good example. By redefining marriage to something like a casual roommate agreement, marriage ceases to exist. Normal marriage is one of the foundation stones of an independent middle class. Get rid of it and you further weaken opposition to the Cult of Modern Liberalism’s jihad on the American middle.

When something means everything, it means nothing.

This post at Sailer’s shop is another example, but from another angle. The point of mass immigration is to get rid of citizenship. Citizenship is the foundation stone of nationalism. We take nationalism for granted, but it is relatively new in human affairs. Most historians place the birth of nationalism with the Hundred Years War. At the start, armies composed of soldiers from all over fought one another in what we now call France. By the end, the armies were ethnically pure, English on one side and French on the other. Both sides fought for God and country, not loot.

The Europeans intellectuals, particularly Jews, blame nationalism for World War II. That’s the main lesson European Jews took from the Holocaust. It’s why American Jews have a lukewarm relationship with Israel. To American and European Jews, Zionism looks uncomfortably like the sort of blood and soil nationalism that gave the world Hitler and National Socialism.

The European Union is a direct response to nationalism. The reason the continental intellectual elite seem berserk about obliterating national borders is because they are berserk about obliterating national borders. It is the sole objective of their efforts. Everything else plays a supporting role to the main project. If the Greeks have to live in squalor or Italians lose the right to vote for their leaders, so be it. The elimination of nationalism and everything that comes with it is all that matters.

As is always the case, American intellectuals look over the sea and try to ape what’s going on in Europe. That means we get a defective form of the whatever trends are popular there. In America, where nationalism has always been mild and directed toward bland ends, the intellectual class is feverishly working to make US citizenship worthless. By flinging open the borders and bestowing special privileges on non-citizens, being an American suddenly becomes a sucker’s play.

Consider what the Emperor has decreed the other day. Foreigners who break American laws get treated different from Americans who break American law. An American who lies on a government form faces jail time. Foreigners now get to lie on those forms without consequence. As Michelle Malkin points out, this is not exactly new. Special rights for foreigners have been going on for decades. Why would anyone want to be an American when that means abiding by a whole bunch of laws?

This is not just the immigration rackets. At the local level, illegal aliens get to drive drunk, assault citizens and commit theft through identity fraud. The states cannot deport these people and the Feds refuse to deport them. So why arrest them? If you are a local cop why would you invite all of these troubles into your life? You’re better off just letting the guy walk and never reporting it.

What’s going on here is what we see from the Cult and marriage. By scrambling the definition, they are rendering the concept of citizenship meaningless. Once something loses its meaning it ceases to exist. In a world without nations there’s no longer a need for national government. You still have men with guns enforcing the rules for the rulers, but they no longer have any loyalty to the people at whom they are pointing those guns. Like the soldiers in the early years of the Hundred Years War, their loyalty is to themselves and the plunder to be gained by membership in their war band.

For the rest of us, you just have to hope you never come to the attention of whatever warlord is running your area.

Unter

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Way back when the phrase “new economy” caused economists to swoon, cynics made sport of them and the idiocy of the dot-net boom. I recall a conversation with a friend who was involved with a dot-com back in the 1990’s. I kept asking him how they made money and he kept talking about hits and stickiness and other nonsense. I kept trying to get an answer and he finally got frustrated with me and said I did not get the new economy. The company burned through all of its cash in about six months and went bust.

The tech boom was driven, in part, by free money from the credit boom. It is not an accident that the tech boom quickly followed the Louvre Accords, which codified the floating exchange rate currency system we enjoy so much today. All of a sudden there was cheap money for all sorts of crackpot ideas. Some turned out to be revolutionary, while others turned out to be insane. The information grid is an example of the former. The financial services industry is an example of the latter.

This post at Marginal Revolution and many others like it at various other places make me laugh. The new buzz phrase is “sharing economy” which is as devoid of meaning and value as the people who like to use it. The vapid hipsters love prattling on about Uber and how it is “disruptive” as if that is always a good thing. Earthquakes are disruptive. The Black Plague was disruptive. Like everything else today, Uber is about signaling. You are a beautiful person if you think Uber is the best. You are a loser if you think it sounds like a handful of sharpies convincing hipsters to be gypsy cab drivers at below market rates.

That is the thing about the “sharing economy.” It is not new. Ross Perot got rich doing much the same thing in the 70’s and 80’s. In the old days, computers were expensive. Companies would sell their idle time to guys like Perot who would find customers in need or processing power but lacking the money to buy their own mainframe. It was the technological equivalent of the oxpecker bird and rhino. The bird picks ticks and parasites from the hide of the rhino and functions as a warning system. The rhino can live without the bird but lives better with him.

Perot and others could make a business out of renting processing capacity because it was very expensive in the old days. When processing costs plummeted in the 80’s and 90’s that “sharing economy” went away. In other words, the “sharing economy” was just a transitional phase, not a desirable economic arrangement. The companies renting their mainframes rented them out to defray the cost of ownership. The renters wanted their own mainframe, but they could not afford it. The solution was a temporary one until the preferred solution was available.

Ride sharing “works” now in the same way. In most cities, taxi service is regulated by the municipality. That means lots of costs on the taxi company. They are real companies so that means they have to abide by labor laws, zoning laws, OSHA regs, insurance regs, etc. Of course, it is not cheap to maintain a cab. The cabs take a lot of abuse and they need a lot of service. The end result is a price for cab service the hipsters in these cities think is too high, so they are searching out alternatives. In steps Uber.

Unlike the old sharing economy, the new sharing economy borrows from the new new economy or economy 2.0 or whatever. That is, the money is made in shifting the cost onto unsuspecting third parties and/or by not complying with the laws that govern everyone else. Amazon avoided sales tax. Google and Netflix shifted costs to non-customers. Media companies taxed people through their cable bill. In the case of Uber, they are not abiding by the municipal laws that govern the livery business. Instead of having cabs, licenses, insurance, and employees driving the vehicles, they shift those costs onto their customers.

If you look at the Uber website, they make the claim that you can drive for them without incurring the wrath of your local government or your insurance company. Neither is true. My insurance specifically says it does not cover me as a hired driver. They will not cover my car if it is used for hire. Similarly, my state does not permit me to rent my car without a permit and a special license plate. But that’s not Uber’s concern. They will not be paying the fines or the insurance premiums.

That is what gets missed in the gushing over companies like Uber. If your wife gets raped by the Yellow Cab driver, the company pays the price. Not only does their reputation suffer, but they also get investigated by the authorities and they get sued by the victim. Therefore, they have a strong incentive to keep their cabbies from raping their fares. If the Uber guy rapes your wife, that is your problem. Uber is not accountable. That is an extreme example, but that is the point. We have these laws because of extreme examples in the past. No law sprung from nothing. Every one of them is there for a reason.

To wrap this up, let us circle back to the old days of renting our mainframe time. Back then, the companies renting the time had an expensive asset they want to maximize. The renter was looking for a lower cost alternative to the million dollar mainframe. Cabs are cheap. No one gets rich driving a cab. How desperate do you have to be to be an Uber driver? How hard up are you if you want to take a ride from some hard up weirdo you met on-line?

Forty years ago, a symbiotic relationship between mainframe users was a temporary solution to bridge the gap between the now and better future. Uber represents a desperate attempt to squeeze the remaining juice from the lemon of the modern economy. It is the equivalent of a widow taking in laundry and borders in order to pay rent. It is not something signaling a better future. It is a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable decline. Maybe they should have named the company “Unter.”

Men Without Countries

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I was talking with someone today who is a part of that class of people we rarely see, but they play a big part in the lives of ordinary people. These are the folks who populate the global international class. They shuttle back and forth between NGO’s, international organizations like the World Bank and their home government. Some go the earthy route and work in various aid organizations that are sort of private and sort of government. Because of their work and travel, they lack the provincial attachments the rest of us find comforting.

I have an old friend who lives in this world. He has had various jobs that defy description, but always involve travel to exotic locales. He has a few degrees and knows how to write grant applications that result in living at an Ivy League campus or foreign outpost. He has a long list of friends and acquaintances spread all over the globe. Whenever I talk to him he is somewhere visiting friends, even in places where the white man is scarce.

This is a different thing from the defense class and global business class. A business guy is posted to assignments by others. His travel and adventure is not about self-actualization. He is sent to the UAE as a project manager for a logistics firm and it is only about doing a job for money. It is not a lot different than being sent to the Wichita office to work as a branch manager. He is just a cog in the machine doing his part for a salary. The guy taking a post for UNESCO in Gambia to teach English at a bush school is about his own thing. Money is not a consideration.

The funny thing I’ve noticed about these folks is they are not just rootless in the physical sense. Emotionally they have very little attachment to people and place. What makes them tick is the adventure and the spiritual high they get from experiencing weird stuff in faraway places. Part of that high is the moving on. They are like memory collectors. Once they got what they want from someone or somewhere, they move on. It’s not cold blooded or sociopathic. They are just not setting down roots so they squeeze everything out of every stop knowing they will be moving on soon.

Anyway, the guy I was chatting with had just returned from Alaska. He had a grant to do something and the grant had run out so he was now starting at a Federal agency. He was on contract from an NGO that I did not recognize. The funny thing about DC these days is the lines between government, NGO, consultancy and private business are close to non-existent. I know someone who has worked at a famous contractor for 15 years, but has been on contract to the same government agency the entire time. He even has an office with his name on it – at the government agency.

The small talk led to a strange question. I said something about the recent election and my new acquaintance asked me if I bothered voting. I said I did and explained why. He listened politely, but it was clear he thought I was being foolishly sentimental. My take away from the exchange was that whether we like it or not, all of us are going to be like my acquaintance. From the point of view of these people, loyalty to a country or government is nonsensical. There’s nothing they can get from pledging loyalty to a country so they have no interest in it. They are not joining the army or terribly worried about which side of the ruling class is currently ascendant, so they don’t bother about it.

This reality is settling on the rest of us, some more than others. For instance, the government types waving the flag around whipping up support for dealing with the provinces does nothing for me. If Obama wants to do something about ISIS, let him fly over there and deal with them. I suspect many Americans have thrown in the towel on the whole democracy project. It’s hard to find anyone enthusiastic for staying in Afghanistan or returning to Iraq.

Now that Obama plans to unilaterally extend citizenship to the world, it will dawn on ordinary Americans (as currently defined) that there’s really nothing of value in American citizenship. After all, if a goatherd on the Eurasian steppe can get all the benefits of citizenship, just by winning the visa lottery, what’s the point in being a citizen of America? More important, why would anyone sacrifice anything for a country that treats its citizens so shabbily?

Of course most people will respond that there’s a difference between the government and the country. Bob Novak used to say, “I love my country, but hate my government.” That sounds good, but there’s no reason to think we will be getting a new government anytime soon. Americans will never revolt and the ruling class will not be deterred. The only logical alternative is to adopt the attitude of my interlocutor. We are men without countries, citizens of nowhere, loyalty to only ourselves.

Lunatic on Lunatic Violence

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It appears a civil war is breaking out on the Left. The blacks are mad at the SWPL’s and SJW’s for letting them down. The SWPL’s are mad at the SJW’s for expecting them to practice what they preach. Everyone is mad at the Hispanics for not showing up and playing their part in the narrative. Of course, the war on white people is coming home as the SJW’s attach the robber barons of Silicon Valley for not singing along with the vagina monologue. It looks like it may get very nasty.

An Uber executive’s suggestion that the company should investigate the private lives of journalists has sparked a backlash against the popular car service, offering a potent reminder that tech companies are amassing detailed — and potentially embarrassing — records of users’ communications, Internet traffic and even physical movements.

The controversy stemmed from remarks by Uber Senior Vice President Emil Michael on Friday night as he spoke of his desire to spend $1 million to dig up information on “your personal lives, your families,” referring to journalists who write critically about the company, according to a report published Monday night by Buzzfeed. The same story said a different Uber executive once had examined the private travel records of a Buzzfeed reporter during an e-mail exchange about an article without seeking permission to access the data.

That combination of vindictiveness and willingness to tap into user information provoked outrage Tuesday on social-media sites, spawning the hashtag “#ubergate” on Twitter. Critics recounted a series of Uber privacy missteps, including a 2012 blog post in which a company official analyzed anonymous ridership data in Washington and several other cities in an attempt to determine the frequency of overnight sexual liaisons by customers — which Uber dubbed “Rides of Glory.”

I’ll just note that “outrage on social media” now resembles something like the scene from Life of Brian where Brian meets the People’s Front of Judea.

This week’s incident was the latest reminder about the potential for abuse as intimate information accumulates on the servers of tech companies that have widely varying approaches to user privacy and face few legal barriers in how they use personal data.

“We have never in history been at a point where we were more extortable,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in online privacy. “We have to think about how the service provider itself can be a threat.”

Uber officials have sought to distance themselves from Michael’s comments. Chief executive Travis Kalanick tweeted that they were “terrible,” and Michael issued an apologetic statement calling the remarks “wrong” and expressing regret.

On Tuesday, the company said in a blog post: “Uber has a strict policy prohibiting all employees at every level from accessing a rider or driver’s data. The only exception to this policy is for a limited set of legitimate business purposes.”

I think we begin to see much more of this sort of lunatic on lunatic violence. Powerful people don’t like it when people say bad things about them. For its part, the Left is “all in” on the war on the white people. It has no choice. If they drop that the who thing falls apart and modern liberalism begins to resemble a UFO cult. That means they have to press forward with their war on tech companies who refuse to hire unqualified women and minorities just to make the brochure look good to the Left.

http://youtu.be/tRJlo2WRDbw

The Cult’s War on Football

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The Left has it in for the NFL because it is a sport enjoyed by normal America. They are now taking it to the next level by having their government get in on the act.

Federal drug agents conducted surprise inspections of National Football League team medical staffs on Sunday as part of an ongoing investigation into prescription drug abuse in the league. The inspections, which entailed bag searches and questioning of team doctors by Drug Enforcement Administration agents, were based on the suspicion that NFL teams dispense drugs illegally to keep players on the field in violation of the Controlled Substances Act, according to a senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation.

The medical staffs were part of travel parties whose teams were playing at stadiums across the country. The law enforcement official said DEA agents, working in cooperation with the Transportation Security Administration, inspected multiple teams but would not specify which ones were inspected or where.

The San Francisco 49ers confirmed they were inspected by federal agents following their game against the New York Giants in New Jersey but did not provide any details. “The San Francisco 49ers organization was asked to participate in a random inspection with representatives from the DEA Sunday night at MetLife Stadium,” team spokesman Bob Lange said in an e-mailed statement. “The 49ers medical staff complied and the team departed the stadium as scheduled.”

The Seattle Seahawks were subject to an inspection following their game in Kansas City, and the DEA met with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Baltimore-Washington International airport following their win over the Washington Redskins at FedEx Field. It didn’t appear a full inspection took place, however.

“Authorities checked in w/our travel party @ BWI & after a 5 min. delay, we proceeded onto our plane w/o incident,” a tweet by the team’s media relations staff said.

An NFL official said multiple teams met with federal authorities on Sunday. “Our teams cooperated with the DEA today and we have no information to indicate that irregularities were found,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy said in a statement.

The DEA had reason to look at the teams inspected Sunday in particular, but the investigation is not restricted to them, according to the law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe is ongoing. The official said the investigation focuses on practices across the 32-team league, including possible distribution of drugs without prescriptions or labels and the dispensing of drugs by trainers rather than physicians.

They could go into any NBA locker room and arrest most of the players for weed, but that’s never going to happen. They could bust up professional wrestling and body building. That’s the lowest of long hanging fruit in the steroid game. Every Gold’s Gym in the country has at least one guy supplying steroids to the muscle-heads. Instead they go after NFL teams, because that’s what the Left wants.

Thomas Cranmore is Spinning in His Grave

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I have a close friend who is an Episcopal minister. He has many stories about the schism within the Anglican Communion. He also has many stories from his time at Yale Divinity, where there is no shortages of weirdos. This is a truth of modern divinity schools that gets missed. The selection process for clergy has been captured by multicultural cranks and despots.

He described one woman as an atheist lesbian studying the role of Christianity in the male domination of women. From what I gather, most of the students at divinity school these days are non-conforming Catholics,  progressive Episcopalians and a sprinkling of bespoke lunatics. The whole scene is a riot of nonsense, with the exception of the Muslims, who stick to their studies and avoid mingling with the infidels. You can’t fault them for their ambition. It certainly looks like they are winning.

In a corner of Washington National Cathedral, several hundred Muslim worshipers and other invited guests gathered Friday afternoon for a first-ever recitation of weekly Muslim prayers at the iconic Christian sanctuary and to hear leaders of both faiths call for religious unity in the face of extremist violence and hate.

The Arabic call to prayer echoed among the vaulted stone arches and faded away, followed by an impassioned sermon from Ebrahim Rasool, a Muslim scholar who is South Africa’s ambassador to the United States. Rasool called on Muslims, Christians and others to come together and make “common cause” in the fight against extremists who appropriate Islam.

“We come to this cathedral with sensitivity and humility but keenly aware that it is not a time for platitudes, because mischief is threatening the world,” Rasool said. “The challenge for us today is to reconstitute a middle ground of good people . . . whose very existence threatens extremism.”

The event was closed to the public, and there was heavy security, with police checking every name and bag. Organizers from several area Muslim institutions said there had been concerns about security and threats after the event was publicized and that they and cathedral officials wanted to limit it to a small and selected group.

Nevertheless, the carefully scripted ceremony was marred once when one well-dressed, middle-age woman in the audience suddenly rose and began shouting that “America was founded on Christian principles. . . . Leave our church alone!” She was swiftly ushered out by security aides, and the service continued.

Numerous speakers, including cathedral officials and local Muslim leaders, echoed Rasool’s message about the urgent need for religious understanding and collaboration. Most made pointed references to the symbolism of the majestic Christian building, where rugs had been laid for prayer.

The Very Rev. Gary Hall, dean of the cathedral, spoke of Saint Benedict, who he said believed equally in the importance of prayer and hospitality. Marveling at the sounds of Arabic prayers, which he called “a beautiful sacred language in a beautiful sacred space,” Hall said he hoped the service would serve as the start of more efforts to work together for good.

Other speakers said they hoped the service would help correct some Americans’ misperceptions of Muslims as extremists and reinforce tolerance among faiths.

The people peddling the nonsense about “correct[ing] some Americans’ misperceptions of Muslims as extremists and reinforce tolerance among faiths” should be shipped off to Iran or Iraq so they can learn about tolerance from the Mohammedan. If they survive it, maybe they will not be so quick to inflict it on innocent Americans. There are over 50 Muslim countries. There’s no reason for these people to be here. No one in America is walking around thinking, “Man, we really need some Muslims.”

Of course, this is typical of the Episcopal faith these days. It’s barely a coherent religion and it will probably be but a memory in another generation. A religion that no longer believes it should exist is not going to exist for every long. Letting the savages overrun the premiere Episcopal church in America is perfectly symbolic of what’s happening with that religion. When the Archbishop of Canterbury wants to adopt sharia law, it’s all over but the shouting. Thomas Cranmore is spinning in his grave.

Law Abuse

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We have a police problem in the country. We have kitted out every Podunk PD with mil-spec gear and turned them into game keepers. Only rich white people have faith in the cops because they have no choice. Everyone else ranges from total contempt to general distrust. A lot of crime goes unreported these days because dealing with the cops is more hassle than it is worth. The cops will go to the mat to catch you speeding, but can’t be bothered to find your car when it is stolen.

It is easy to pick on the cops as they are the part of the iceberg we see. Below the water line is the vast law enforcement industrial complex that supports it. The following insane story is a good example. Allegedly, it is against the law to teach people to lie and the Feds are now making a Federal case of it.

The owner of a website that instructs people how to beat polygraph tests was indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday for allegedly doing just that — “training customers to lie and conceal crimes during polygraph examinations,” the FBI announced.

Doug Williams, a former Oklahoma City police officer and owner of Polygraph.com, who’s been teaching people how to pass polygraph tests since 1979, was indicted on obstruction of justice and mail fraud charges related to his work. The Department of Justice’s public affairs office announced the news in a press release. It reads, in part:

Douglas Williams, 69, of Norman, Oklahoma, was charged in a five-count indictment in the Western District of Oklahoma with mail fraud and obstruction. According to allegations in the indictment, Williams, the owner and operator of Polygraph.com, marketed his training services to people appearing for polygraph examinations before federal law enforcement agencies, federal intelligence agencies, and state and local law enforcement agencies, as well as people required to take polygraph examinations under the terms of their parole or probation.

The indictment further alleges that Williams trained an individual posing as a federal law enforcement officer to lie and conceal involvement in criminal activity from an internal agency investigation. Williams also allegedly trained a second individual posing as an applicant seeking federal employment to lie and conceal crimes in a pre-employment polygraph examination. Williams, who was paid for both training sessions, is alleged to have instructed the individuals to deny having received his polygraph training.

Williams is an outspoken critic of polygraph tests. On his website, he says polygraph tests are neither reliable nor accurate, calling them “insidious Orwellian instruments of torture,” a “scam” and a “sick joke.” He says he’s administered thousands of tests with the Oklahoma City Police Department, the FBI and the Secret Service and claims to have testified before Congress and advised two presidents.

The polygraph is pure nonsense. That’s why even our messed up criminal justice system has rejected them. The whole shtick is an act to fool dumb people into admitting things they would prefer not to admit. The mark is strapped into a gizmo that looks serious and is run by a guy who looks even more serious. The whole point is to convince the mark that the contraption and the the technician can tell if he is lying.

If the DOJ was charging him with fraud, then maybe they have something. The above paragraph is about all anyone can train you on regarding the polygraph. Promising more would be dishonest, but that’s not what’s going on here. This is not a consumer protection case. Weirdly, they are admitting that you can “beat” a polygraph. Otherwise, why bother indicting this guy? That alone should drop the use of the polygraph.

Regardless, this is a great example of anarcho-tyranny. The DOJ has allowed the IRS to run wild harassing citizens. They have done nothing about the systematic looting of the nation by the bankers. These are things the people want from their government. Instead, they get the Feds chasing after old men peddling DVD’s on-line.

Now That He Is No Longer Useful

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For a long time, Bill Cosby was the Left’s most celebrated ornament. He checked all the boxes for the Left in the 80’s and 90’s. His TV show was supposed to be the new model family for America. Cosby was the strong, sensible father married to a a smart and independent woman. Bill Cosby was Barak Obama when Barak was still Barry the African guy who sold weed. In fairness, the show was funny and entertaining without being preachy. Cosby made his money as a PG comic courting middle-class Americans and his sitcom was more of the same.

Then in the 2000’s Cosby went off the reservation and started saying bad things about black people. I would assume Cosby’s politics are to the left, but he is clearly from the other side of the culture divide. Cosby comes from the Booker T. Washington tradition in black America. That’s the belief that blacks get their place at the table by being so good whites have no choice but to acknowledge them. Cosby never played the victim card and often railed against those who did play that card. That made the Cult very uncomfortable in the 2000’s and Cosby fell out of favor.

That I think is why they have decided it is time to run the rape stories about him. Cosby is old and mostly retired now. He has become particularly ornery about his politics, which makes him a bigger problem. I have no idea if any of it is true. I’m naturally skeptical about this stuff. But, the story as presented suggests there’s something to it.

Bill Cosby, in the midst of a serious PR crisis as accusations about him sexually assaulting women make headlines around the world, has decided to stay silent.

In an interview on NPR’s “Weekend Edition” that aired Saturday (where Cosby and his wife appeared to talk about loaning works to the National Museum of African Art), Cosby, 77, didn’t say a word when host Scott Simon asked him about the allegations. In the past, Cosby has repeatedly denied these claims.

“This question gives me no pleasure, Mr. Cosby, but there have been serious allegations raised about you in recent days,” Simon said, without specifically saying what the allegations in question were.

There’s a long a pause. “You’re shaking your head no. I’m in the news business, I have to ask the question: Do you have any response to those charges?” Simon said.

Another long pause. “Shaking your head no,” Simon continued, and said again: “There are people who love you who might like to hear from you about this — I want to give you the chance.” And again, no response. (Listen to the audio here.)

The interview comes a couple days after Cosby’s name quietly disappeared from the “Late Show With David Letterman” guest line-up for next week. Cosby was supposed to appear on the show on Wednesday. Then, late this week, his name was gone and replaced with talk show host Regis Philbin.

There’s no word on whether the cancellation was Cosby’s idea or the show’s. Letterman’s publicist told the Associated Press that “We can’t comment on the guest booking process.”

Letterman remains in good standing with the Left, despite his own habit of assaulting female interns and coming retirement. It’s perfectly plausible that word is out that Cosby is on the proscribed list. The degree of cooperation within the Left across media companies is well documented so this is probably a coordinated attack on the Cos.

It’s why I’m skeptical about Cankles running for president. The Left never forgets and they never forgive. Like Nixon she may outmaneuver them to win the primary, but like Nixon she will learn that there is no beating the Left in the log run. If they are willing to take out a revered figure like Bill Cosby, they will have no qualms about taking down a bitter old hag at the end of her career.

Rambling About The Eloi

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When I was a young man my grandfather would tease us about how soft we were compared to his generation. His line was, “In my day it was wooden ships and iron men. Now it is iron ships and wooden men.” Of course, he did not live in the age of sail so it was not to be taken literally. He was always joking about it so it was just the good natured ribbing old men give to young men as a part of their admission into manhood. On job sites as a teenager, the men would give the young guys crap about being soft and stupid. As I got older I realized they were right, particularly about the stupid part.

In my grandfather’s day, Americans still died from the flu and bad food. Infant mortality was a major part of life. Most men worked in jobs that required brute strength and a fair degree of risk. Men getting killed on the job was not unusual in many fields like construction. Working in a factory in the first half of the 20th century was not clean rooms and robots. It was dirty, hot and dangerous. Both men and women had to be tough to make a go of life. Today most people call in sick with the sniffles. My grandfather never missed a day of work in his life, even when his kids were born.

My first blush with the other side of this experience was a few years back. I had an intern for the summer and he was as soft as a sneaker. I was amazed at his cluelessness and this was a kid studying to be an attorney. He was not stupid, but he was shockingly naïve about the world. He also lacked any sense of curiosity. Having had my eyes opened to it, I started noticing it with other young people. This is a generalization, but the generation coming along seems to wait for life to come to them. When it does, they are easily vexed by it.

My inclination was to assume it would fade with time. The period from the early 90’s through the late 2000’s was a wild run on the credit card. America charged a five star lifestyle and that meant the kids lived uncommonly soft lives in those years. The crash and the stagnant economy were probably going to beat those nutty ideas out of them. Thirty percent unemployment for college grads seems like a good way to pound some sense into them. That was my view for while, but I’m starting to reconsider it. Maybe my grandfather was right and we are getting softer.

Back in the summer, I was with some friends and a couple of them brought their teenage sons. We were having beers and shooting the breeze when one of us said something off-color. I want to say it was a crack about the gays, but it is not important. One of the boys gasped. He did not faint or throw his dress over his head, but he was clearly shocked to hear it. The look on his face was of someone hearing something for the first time.

This happened a few times as we got drunk and it occurred to me that these kids were probably quite typical. They spend half their awake time in Massachusetts public schools. Throw in organized activities and they have little time not marinating in the PC culture. Popular culture has banned just about anything anyone can possibly find upsetting. When kids are not in school, they are plugged into pop culture so the colleges fretting over micro-aggressions may not be fringe. They may be mainstream in youth culture.

I bumped into another example tonight. Tonight is a lift and run night. Once it gets cold I put away the bike, hit the weights and switch to running for my cardio. I’ve gotten into the habit of listening to the British History podcast while I workout or run. It’s a great podcast if you like history told in an offbeat sort of way. The guy who does it mixes in a lot of pop culture stuff to spice it up. I’m guessing he is in his 20’s, maybe early 30’s. He sounds young and talks like a young person.

Anyway, I downloaded some episodes on the Vikings – the series – he did for members. When the issue of rape came up in one episode, I thought he was going to faint. He was terribly upset that the writers put a rape scene in the show. It was a very strange reaction, given the amount of sex and violence on TV these days. The weird thing is it felt a little contrived, like a public act of piety, rather than true feelings.

Later in the episode, he and his co-host for the segment spent a lot of time complaining about the “gender roles” in the show. They were upset that the writers had the female characters acting like females. I thought it was a joke at first, but they were really upset that the writers had the women acting womanly and the men acting manly, at least as far as the Viking age.

I’m an old man and I’ll be dead soon so no one gives a crap about my opinions. The people who will shape the culture, are shaping the culture, are the 20 and 30 year olds. The men of this generation are not soft in the conventional sense. It appears they detest and reject the traditional concept of masculinity and femininity. The reaction by the host of the podcast is the same sort of visceral response Americans have when offered dog as an entree. They are revolted.

The future, at least it seems, will belong to a class of eloi nothing like those who came before them. We’ve reached some sort of inflexion point where the gradual change takes a sudden turn in another direction. Each generation of Americans got softer and more comfortable through the last century. Then all of a sudden, one generation has taken a big leap into the head winds of biology and declared 50,000 years of human evolution over. They are going in a new direction.