Category Archives: Reason

UPDATED (May 7, 2021): GOP Tit-For-Tat Twits

Argument, Barack Obama, Democrats, Feminism, Gender, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Reason, Republicans

No, the president does not have to weigh in on sexual scandals. Why should he? (Besides, Obama seems a bit of a prude. That’s good.) If you objected to Obama’s sermon on Trayvon (I did), but think he should weigh in on Weiner, on what grounds do you deny him his Trayvon intervention? I like it when the president puts a lid on it.

The empaneled bimbos on Fox News—where do they find such dumb women? CNN?—have been outshouting each other to protest the president’s silence on the sexual transgressions of The Weiner and the possible criminal misconduct of The Filner.

The arguments the Democratic and Republican factions advance exist on a continuum. There is no qualitative difference between them. Right now, both Republican and Democratic women seem to agree that everyone, including the president, has to be in full-throated protest mode about those who violate the “isms” in the manual of political correctness.

True individualists would never even dignify the category of “sexual harassment.” Touching someone as Filner did without consent is an assault. It doesn’t matter if the assaulted is man, woman, or someone in-between.

But Republicans are as dazed and confused as the rival gang, reducing wrong-doing to these PC “isms,” and partaking in the silly tit-for-tat: “No, you’re a sexist, I’m not. No, Democrats are racists; we’re the party of Lincoln.” Blah-blah. Pathetic.

Republicans have now turned around and are using the “sexism” and war on women bugbear to try and gain a political advantage. Ridiculous. How ridiculous? Silly enough to make JAY CARNEY that broken clock that is right twice a day:

I understand the allure of issues like this in the media, but it is not what — and I do understand it, and I’m not being critical of it. But I’m saying that the President believes his job is not to comment on those issues, …

UPDATE (8/3/013): Huge concession to Fred Cummins, on Facebook: OK, Fred, most, not all, the women on Fox are terribly dense, loud bimbos. I’ve documented that extensively. Exceptions? Gretta on Fox and EMac on Fox Biz, as well as Gerri Willis and Melissa Francis. I’m not far off.

Our Parallel Economic Universe

Crime, Economy, Objectivism, Political Economy, Politics, Propaganda, Reason

Financier Peter Schiff’s findings of fact in Florida V. George Zimmerman are much like mine in “The Colosseum of Courtroom Cretins,” where it was noted that “Idiocracy elite lacks the ability to separate the political constructs to which it is wedded (racism) from the facts of a case brought in a court of law.”

Or, as Mr. Schiff puts it in “Print the Legend”: “preconceived emotional commitments to a narrative [consistently trumped] demonstrable facts.”

Schiff goes on to compare the parallel reality constructed in the response to the Zimmerman acquittal and the fiction of our economic indices:

“The vast majority of observers continue to subscribe to the dominant narrative that our economy is improving, the Fed’s Quantitative Easing programs are responsible, and that the debt we are currently accumulating is not a long-term problem.”

“The current administration, the media, Wall Street, and the Fed itself, are particularly committed to this narrative. After all, we have been pursuing these policies for more than five years, and many of these parties have a particular emotional and pecuniary investment in a positive outcome. It would be difficult for them now to admit that their preferred cures have not only been ineffective, but harmful. As a result, they will continue to advocate for the current policies until they get the answers they expect.”

“Not only do their underlying assumptions defy economic law and objective rationality, but they are also at odds with the evidence that continues to arrive. The data makes it clear that while asset prices (stocks, bonds, and real estate), are currently being inflated by an activist monetary policy, the real economy continues to stagnate. What supports do exist are based solely on government intervention. Yet they nevertheless discuss a potential Fed exit strategy as if the economy were in a position to make such a transition without bringing on an even more severe recession than the last. In this light, the failure of QEI to produce a real recovery led directly to QEII, and so on to QE Infinity. We are unwilling to challenge our initial assumptions about what is really wrong with our economy and how to fix it.”

“To get a sense of justice and emotional clarity over the death of Trayvon Martin, many cling to the image of a saintly youth and ignore the more difficult reality of a troubled teen picking a fight with an inept neighborhood watchman. Accepting this reality does not lead to a conclusion that Trayvon deserved to die, but it denies the self-justifying conclusions that keep race relations dysfunctional. It also allows us to ignore more troubling and far more common tragedies like the one that befell 18 year old Jett Higham, another African American youth who lost his life in a nighttime run to a local convenience store. The media decided that this tragedy was a non-story, as his killers were also African Americans teens.” [Emphasis added.]

The Zimmerman Zoo

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Race, Reason, The Courts

B37 is a Zimmerman juror who is known to have said that “the best use for newspapers was lining her parrot’s cage.” A wise woman, both in her choice of companion and cage-liner. In “The Evergreen State’s Profligate Oink Sector,” I marveled at the pabulum published by my local press. How did I know? “I line my parrot’s cage with its pages.”

Parrot lady aside, poor George’s trial is a zoo. Some of the most telling coverage came courtesy of CNN, where a male lawyer—clearly focused on the law and the facts of the case—argued with a slew of females. These included Anderson Cooper and attendant attorneys and judges to whom the concept of applying the law to the facts was foreign. Instead, these agitators and activists, all (except AC) having officiated in the legal system, had convicted Mr. Zimmerman because of a political narrative concerning racism that had been woven into the case by a prosecution answering to special interests, and not the law.

For example, the “Instructions read to jury by The Honorable Debra S. Nelson, Circuit Judge” laid out the law quite clearly. On CNN, Sunny Hostin, a former (very scary) prosecutor turned CNN commentator, doesn’t like the law, so she declared these clear instructions confusing, and tried to suggest that the letter of the law is bound to be ignored by reasonable jurors.

Hostin, like other tele-lawyers, is oriented towards a desired outcome.

If they follow the Judge’s instructions, the jurors should exonerate Zimmerman.

Beware The Country Of ‘Absurdistan’

Constitution, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, History, Liberty, Natural Law, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, Reason, Republicans, States' Rights, War

My good friend professor Thomas DiLorenzo is on fire today, at LRC.Com, decrying the actions of the “Biggest Bully in the World.” The strictly anti-bullying US government—its overweening, unconstitutional reach extends to educating kids about bullying, or, as Tom puts it, “putting YOUR money where THEIR mouths are by funding all kinds of anti-bullying programs in schools”—is intercepting airplanes not its own, and bullying sovereign governments, all in an attempt to corner a heroic, powerless young man called Edward Snowden.

Then, “National Neocon Review” has been working overtime to justify the crimes of mass murderer Abe Lincoln. But Tom DiLorenzo will have none of it. He smacks that lot down good and proper with foolproof arguments from natural law and logic:

… Studying and writing about Lincoln and the “Civil War” is not, as National Neocon Review implies, the same as attending a football game where one roots for one team or the other. It is about discovering the truth. Criticizing Lincoln does not make one a supporter of the Confederate government any more than criticizing FDR makes one a supporter of the Nazi government. We are supposed to believe that because the Confederate government suspended habeas corpus it is simply irrelevant that the Lincoln regime was a constitutional nightmare. We are supposed to believe the cartoonish Harry Jaffa, says National Neocon Review, when he says that Lincoln never did a single thing that was unconstitutional, contrary to reality and the writings of several generations of scholars who preceded Jaffa. This is reminiscent of the canned response to Lincoln critics by the last generation of Lincoln cultists: Lincoln wasn’t as bad as Hitler or Stalin, they frequently pointed out. So shut up.

MORE.