The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Krugman Arsemageddon

Posted on | April 8, 2014 | 32 Comments

by Smitty

We had one of “those” incidents that you don’t document in detail, but can trigger a neologism, the other night at Schloss Smitty:


This tweet came to mind while reading Krugman’s “even if it’s true, it’s not ‘true’ true” rejection of Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government, which was the opening feature on Ezra Klein’s U2 tribute site, Vox.

Having read the original research paper in some detail, I’ll venture that the general issues to which it points are that

  • people aren’t going back to first principles when analyzing an issue, and
  • confirmation bias, which the paper essentially elaborates upon.

Summarizing, the authors say that everyone has their ideology, either collectivist for Krugman and ilk, or individualist for the rest of us adults. Presented with research, people either make it fit their ideology, or try to rationalize some way that the research has been corrupted.

Krugman attempts to have it both ways, accepting the Holy Research as stated, and then attempting to worm his way out of it:

Krugman Smitty
But here’s the thing: the lived experience is that this effect is not, in fact, symmetric between liberals and conservatives. Yes, liberals are sometimes subject to bouts of wishful thinking. I’m a Nobel Lariat: watch me tie myself in knots!
But can anyone point to a liberal equivalent of conservative denial of climate change, I’ll go with:
(a) Nobody argues “constant climate”, and
(b) a great example is the liberal argument that life begins when some pencil-neck, e.g. Krugman, or a jackwagon in a judicial robe, says it begins.
or the “unskewing” mania late in the 2012 campaign, Krugman may have half a point here; I know I didn’t want to believe America was stupid enough to re-elect #OccupyResoluteDesk. Forgive my irrational optimism, please.
or the frantic efforts to deny that Obamacare is in fact covering a lot of previously uninsured Americans? Oh, ObamaCare is covering all Americans in ruin, both insured and uninsured. Only somebody like a Krugman figure would deny this. What a poopy-head.
I don’t mean liberals taking positions you personally disagree with — I mean examples of overwhelming rejection of something that shouldn’t even be in dispute. For example, the Bill of Rights in general, and the Second Amendment in particular, on which Progressives continue to gnaw with a termite-like frenzy.

Krugman’s self-blindness leads him to write later, emphasis mine:

At this point I could castigate Ezra for his both-sides-do-it article — but instead, let me pose this as a question: why are the two sides so asymmetric? People want to believe what suits their preconceptions, so why the big difference between left and right on the extent to which this desire trumps facts?
One possible answer would be that liberals and conservatives are very different kinds of people — that liberalism goes along with a skeptical, doubting — even self-doubting — frame of mind; “a liberal is someone who won’t take his own side in an argument.”

The reason for the asymmetry, Krugman, is that you’re a collectivist crapflooder drawing on a colostomy bag as vast as the national debt. Conservatives are wholly incapable of competing with the combination of hubris and humus you bring. It is with a certain amount of awe that I extend my definition:

arsemageddon, (n) 2: The collective wisdom of Paul Krugman.

If anyone can name a bigger idiot, I’ll cheerfully change this. Granted, Krugman has rivals, but I defy you to name a bigger one.

via RBPundit

Category: Economics

New Report Debunks IRS Claims

Posted on | April 8, 2014 | 13 Comments

John D. McKinnon of the Wall Street Journal reports:

A new report from House Republicans sheds more light on the early stages of tea-party targeting by the Internal Revenue Service, identifying the first three cases sent to Washington for special review in 2010.
The report also underscores the difficulties the targeted groups faced. Two of the three dropped their applications in the face of IRS questioning, the report shows. A third is waiting for a resolution of its case, a spokesman said.
The GOP report, the latest salvo in a protracted political battle in Washington, is aimed at refuting Democrats’ argument that liberal groups also were targeted by the IRS over recent years. The report by aides to Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, emphasizes that the targeting began as an IRS inquiry solely into tea-party groups. It also contends that subsequent efforts by IRS officials to make the review more neutral were little more than cosmetic changes, and the basic focus on conservative grassroots groups remained.
Although IRS documents showed the agency also was on the lookout for applications by some liberal-leaning groups, “only Tea Party applicants received systematic scrutiny because of their political beliefs,” the new report says. In addition, “public and nonpublic analyses of IRS data show that the IRS routinely approved liberal applications while holding and scrutinizing conservative applications.”

The entire report by the House Oversight Committee’s Republican staff is online (PDF) and the Executive Summary says:

  • IRS’s three “test” cases were all conservative organizations: Prescott Tea Party, American Junto, the Albuquerque Tea Party. (pp. 14-18)
  • Congressional Democrats made misleading claims about the targeting. Democratic Members of Congress, including Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, Ranking Member Sander Levin, and Representative Gerry Connolly, made misleading claims that the IRS targeted liberal-oriented groups based on documents selectively produced by the IRS. (pp. 7-13)
  • IRS selectively released documents supporting the misleading claims. The IRS cited 6103 protections for taxpayer information to withhold details about the targeting from the American public, but reversed its decision in August 2013 to release information helpful to its cause. (pp. 11)
  • MYTH: Progressive groups were also targeted.Only seven applications in the IRS backlog contained the word “progressive,” all of which were then approved by the IRS, while Tea Party groups received unprecedented review and experienced years-long delays. While some liberal-oriented groups were singled out for scrutiny, evidence shows it was due to non-political reasons. (pp. 32-35)
  • MYTHS:  False Democratic claims of political targeting about specific groups exposed: Where the IRS identified liberal-oriented groups for scrutiny, evidence shows that it did so for objective, non-political reasons and not because of the groups’ political beliefs. (p.32)
  • ACORN groups – IRS employees testified that former ACORN affiliates were scrutinized out of concern that they were old organizations improperly applying as new ones and not because of their political beliefs. (pp. 40–42)
  • Emerge America – IRS employees testified that Emerge Groups were scrutinized after some had already been approved and the IRS became concerned about improper private benefit – not because of their political beliefs. (pp. 42–44)
  • Occupy Wall Street – The Committee has found no evidence that the IRS subjected Occupy applicants to burdensome and intrusive information requests or even seen evidence that “Occupy Wall Street” or an affiliate organization applied to the IRS for non-profit status. (pp. 44–45)

Again, you can read the full report (PDF). My interpretation is that Democrats who have repeated claims that there was no political bias in the IRS are essentially part of a cover-up effort. And make no mistake: There was (and still is) a cover-up. You can read more background on that in my 2,500-word report, “The IRS Outrage,” from the March issue of The American Spectator.

 

Category: Scandal, Taxes

Shut Up and Resign Already

Posted on | April 7, 2014 | 19 Comments

Few things I hate worse than a Republican politician who screws around like a Democrat politician:

Rep. Vance McAllister (R-La.) asked for forgiveness Monday afternoon after a video purporting to show the congressman kissing a female staffer in his congressional office in Louisiana surfaced.
McAllister, who was just elected in a November special election, has been married for 16 years and has five children.
“There’s no doubt I’ve fallen short and I’m asking for forgiveness. I’m asking for forgiveness from God, my wife, my kids, my staff, and my constituents who elected me to serve,” he said in a statement issued from his office. “Trust is something I know has to be earned whether you’re a husband, a father, or a congressman. I promise to do everything I can to earn back the trust of everyone I’ve disappointed.”

(Shut up with the promises and apologies. Resign.)

The video, published by The Ouachita Citizen, shows grainy security camera footage of a man and a woman appearing to embrace in a dark office before walking out of a building together.
The news outlet identified the two people in the video as McAllister and his district scheduler, Melissa A. Peacock, on Dec. 23, 2013 — a month after the congressman was first sworn into office. The newspaper said it obtained the video from an anonymous source.
Records show Peacock was a part-time staffer at the time.

A part-time district scheduler? Dude, if a congressman is making out with a part-time district scheduler, you know he’s gotta be banging Hill staffers two at a time. It’s probably just a. matter of time before we start getting more headlines: “Vance McAllister dirty texting,” “Vance McAllister nude selfies” and “Vance McAllister sex video.”

It’s time for Rep. Cheater McHorndog to pack it in, go back to Louisiana and “spend more time with his family.” Good-bye.

 

Category: Republicans, Scandal, Sex

HuffPo Women: Advice for Losers

Posted on | April 7, 2014 | 40 Comments

Am I the only person who reads the Huffington Post’s “Women” category? Because I’ve got a feeling that if any feminists paid attention to it, they’d be outraged at this pink-collar ghetto of insipid journalistic dreck. Some recent HuffPo Women headlines:

  • 8 Things America Gets Wrong About Sex — Barnard College alumna Amanda Duberman says Americans are not having sex “as freely, safely and enjoyably as other parts of the world.” So, apparently, folks in Bolivia, Belgium and Botswana have much better sex than us — or at least better sex than Barnard College girls have.
  • ‘Love Hormone’ Oxytocin May Intensify Orgasms — Dyslexics beware! Oxytocin is not the same as Oxycontin, which won’t do anything for your orgasms, and will only “intensify” your lethargy, slurred speech and impaired coordination.
  • I Fell in Love With a Man Who Refused to Text Me — She loves the Luddite guy with a “cute Australian accent” she married 12 years ago. He probably never dated any Barnard College girls.
  • The Problem With ‘Waiting For Marriage’ — Mandy Velez was a virgin attending the University of Pittsburgh until she “attended a sex-positive event on campus” featuring “a fun lesbian speaker.” Somehow, this event convinced her to have sex with her boyfriend. They “eventually broke up,” but now she’s been living with another boyfriend for two years, which means . . .? I dunno. There’s no obvious point. Just one of those silly “Vagina! Empowerment!” pseudo-feminist sex columns that get published routinely at HuffPo Women. Velez calls herself “a straight, cisgendered, reasonably privileged woman” and also uses the magic feminist phrase “sexual autonomy.”
  • Shedding Light on the Myths About Women Who Have a Lot of Sex — Marrie Lobel is “irritated” by “persistent half-truths and complete fabrications hyped as fact. It’s time to expose reality by shattering outdated perceptions of women who have a lot of sex.” None of the “myths” Lobel attacks involve Barnard College girls or sex-positive events with “fun lesbian” speakers. However, she does use the magic feminist phrase “patriarchal dogma.”

Anyway, that gives you an idea of what Huffington Post editors think women want to read. If following their advice doesn’t lead you to happiness, you can always check out “Huffington Post Divorce.”

UPDATE: Wow! How did I miss this Huffington Post pictorial of women’s armpit hair? Gotta be some Barnard girls there . . .

 

Category: Huffington Post

The Reverend Snitch

Posted on | April 7, 2014 | 29 Comments

The Smoking Gun has obtained documents showing that the Rev. Al Sharpton was once a confidential informant for a joint FBI/NYPD task force investigating organized crime. He wore a “wire.”

Maybe he hid it in his pompadour.

 

Category: Al Sharpton

#RapeCulture as Propaganda

Posted on | April 7, 2014 | 22 Comments

Wendy McElroy at the Future of Freedom Foundation:

The idea that America is a rape culture is a particularly vicious big lie, because it brands all men as rapists or rape facilitators. This lie has been successful despite reality. The rate of actual rape is declining. The crime is severely punished, and even an accusation can ruin lives; men who rape are reviled; the social messages on rape delivered regularly to young men are the opposite of encouragement.
Nevertheless, in January 2014, the White House Council on Women and Girls issued a report that stated, “1 in 5 women has been sexually assaulted while in college” . . . A key reason for this amazingly high statistic is that the report significantly expands the definition of rape, and it counts every accusation as true. Since then, the “1 in 5” statistic has gained legs in the media and been used as proof that we live in a rape culture. . . .

Read the whole thing. The whole “rape culture” discourse is about demonizing critics of feminism, an ideology that is anti-male and anti-heterosexual. None of those ranting about “rape culture” are interested in discussing sex crimes committed by women or homosexuals. Feminists especially tend to become hysterical if you call their attention to the existence of lesbian sex offenders.

“Rape culture” is about fomenting a sense of grievance which will empower feminists to silence opposition.

 

Category: Feminism

War to the Knife, Knife to the Hilt

Posted on | April 6, 2014 | 44 Comments

Maybe the National Republican Senatorial Committee thought it was a smart move to play the race card against Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel, but the backlash was overwhelming and it comes at exactly the wrong time for the NRSC’s doomed effort to protect septuagenarian Senator Thad Cochran. Glenn Reynolds, William Jacobson and Vinnie the K were among the many who expressed disgust with the GOP Establishment’s desperation tactics.

With just eight weeks left until the primary, momentum has clearly shifted. A fossil remnant of the Nixonian Epoch, Cochran is incapable of taking on McDaniel directly. Matthew Boyle at Breitbart was clearly impressed with McDaniel’s performance at this weekend’s FreePAC event sponsored by FreedomWorks:

“We’re fighting, and so it begins again,” McDaniel opened his ten-minute speech. “One last great stand for liberty. One last great stand for our Constitution. We dare not disappoint. There’s too much at stake. Our country’s too great to lose and I will not tell my children one day about a once-great Republic that we were unable to save. We will not witness the managed decline of this Republic. We will witness its revival. We will witness its resurrection.” . . .
“We stand here today in defense of that early and original American revolution,” McDaniel said. “What they brought us, what they brought you, was something unprecedented in all of American history—or for that matter, all of world history. They simply did not change the leading cast of characters, replacing one king with another for example, or replacing a king with an oligarchy. They changed your role in your government: they work for you, not the other way around. And yet in Washington, D.C., they have created a political aristocracy. They no longer listen. They have forgotten who they work for. We go to remind them again, and we’re going to remind them again, that’s our obligation. That’s our duty of this generation and we will win this fight, I promise you.”

You’re on target. Fire for effect. The road to unseating Lindsay Graham? That road goes straight through Mississippi, my friends.

CHRIS McDANIEL for U.S. SENATE
It’s Time for a Change

 

Category: Election, Mississippi, Senate

If @TaraDublinRocks Didn’t Exist, Would @AmPowerBlog Have to Invent Her?

Posted on | April 6, 2014 | 20 Comments

My friend Donald Douglas may not be the most right-wing professor in California, but he’d certainly be in contention for the prize. In fact, I’m reasonably sure that a majority of university administrators in California would outlaw Professor Douglas’s American Power blog as a “hate crime,” if they could. (“Damn that First Amendment!”)

After Professor Douglas called out the “Tolerance Gestapo” — and some poor fool’s attempt to play ball with the the Gay Mafia shakedown — he found himself in a bizarre Twitter battle with somebody named Tara Dublin. She started out by claiming that Donald was trying to “bait” her, and next thing you know, she went off on a rant that is a classic example of the Last Word Syndrome typical of liberals who presume themselves to be our intellectual and moral superiors.

Of course, I had to throw some gasoline on the burning witch:

 

Check out the whole thing at American Power: “Gay Rights Thought-Enforcer Tara Dublin Can’t Handle the Truth.”

 

Category: American Power, Gays
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