The Other McCain

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

Workers 712, Union Thugs 626

Posted on | February 15, 2014 | 19 Comments

Big Labor suffered a “devastating defeat” Friday when workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga voted against joining the UAW. This was a personal defeat for President Obama:

President Barack Obama on Friday waded into a high-stakes union vote at Volkswagen AG’s plant in Tennessee, accusing Republican politicians who oppose unionization of being more concerned about German shareholders than U.S. workers.

But it wasn’t “Republican politicians” who rejected the UAW, it was actual flesh-and-blood wage-earning factory workers:

In a defeat for organized labor in the South, employees at the Volkswagen plant here voted 712 to 626 against joining the United Automobile Workers.
The loss is an especially stinging blow for U.A.W. because Volkswagen did not even oppose the unionization drive. The union’s defeat — in what was one of the most closely watched unionization votes in decades — is expected to slow, perhaps stymie, the union’s long-term plans to organize other auto plants in the South. . . .
Standing outside the Volkswagen plant, Mike Jarvis, a three-year employee who works on the finishing line, said the majority had voted against U.A.W. because they were persuaded the union had hurt Detroit’s automakers.
“Look at what happened to the auto manufacturers in Detroit and how they struggled. They all shared one huge factor: the U.A.W.,” said Mr. Jarvis, who added that he had had bad experiences with other labor unions. “If you look at how the U.A.W’s membership has plunged, that shows they’re doing a lot wrong.”

Oh, nothing is so sweet as the Tears of Unfathomable Sadness!

 

Category: Labor Unions

Narcissism vs. Objectivity

Posted on | February 15, 2014 | 16 Comments

Everything you need to know about the entitled mentality typical of Millennials can be explained by Christopher Lasch’s 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism. Lasch was a man of the Left and enthralled by Freudian categories, so conservative readers must be prepared to endure occasional jabs at “modern industrial capitalism” and references to obsolete psychoanalytic nonsense. With those caveats, however, Lasch’s critique of what became known as the “Me Generation” of the 1980s is an invaluable primer in the causes and effects of a syndrome that has plagued American society for decades.

What the narcissistic personality lacks more than anything else is an objectivity about the relationship between the Self and others. The narcissist is unrealistic about himself because he cannot step outside himself and view his own flaws and failures as they actually are. The gap between who he thinks he is and who he really is, and perhaps more importantly, the gap between how others see him and how he sees himself, creates an existential crisis which he attempts to evade through various rationalizations and psychological defense mechanisms.

The narcissist becomes so obsessed with “image” — that is, the superficial facade he presents to others, in an attempt to elicit their admiration — that his life becomes a sort of performance, reducing others to the role of spectators whose applause is expected.

If the narcissist has sufficient abilities and personal attributes (beauty, charm, wealth, etc.) to “succeed” in this performance, that is often problematic in several ways that we could discuss. However, inevitably, even the most highly capable and personally attractive narcissist must sometimes fail, and it is the inability to cope with failure that leads narcissists into destructive patterns of behavior.

The narcissist’s devotion to self-image — what he thinks of himself, and what he wishes others to think of him — blinds him to his own faults and errors, so that he must always find scapegoats to blame for his failures. The narcissist can never take responsibility for failure, because his damaged ego is so fragile that it is impossible for him to accept that he is the cause of his own problems.

Of course, I use the generic “he” in discussing this, although female narcissists are at least as common as their male counterparts, and what is important to understand is that, as the Culture of Narcissism has become embedded in our society, many people are incapable of seeing how unhealthy and harmful this worldview is. A phenomenon that psychologists recognize as a personality disorder has become so common that it is almost The New Normal. If you’re  not a narcissistic image manipulator, constantly striving to impress others and elicit their admiration, you must be some kind of weirdo.

All of this is preamble to an excellent item published last fall, “Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy.” A brief excerpt:

Paul Harvey, a University of New Hampshire professor . . . has researched this, finding that Gen Y has “unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback,” and “an inflated view of oneself.” He says that “a great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations. They often feel entitled to a level of respect and rewards that aren’t in line with their actual ability and effort levels, and so they might not get the level of respect and rewards they are expecting.”
For those hiring members of Gen Y, Harvey suggests asking the interview question, “Do you feel you are generally superior to your coworkers/classmates/etc., and if so, why?” He says that “if the candidate answers yes to the first part but struggles with the ‘why,’ there may be an entitlement issue. This is because entitlement perceptions are often based on an unfounded sense of superiority and deservingness. They’ve been led to believe, perhaps through overzealous self-esteem building exercises in their youth, that they are somehow special but often lack any real justification for this belief.”

Read the whole thing. Feelings of entitlement and unrealistic expectations based on an inflated sense of superiority — this is classic narcissism. And when narcissists fail, their reaction is always predicably to engage in evasive blame-shifting and scapegoating.

But really, I’m bored with discussing President Obama . . .

 

Category: Culture

Liberals Hate Books They Don’t Read

Posted on | February 15, 2014 | 14 Comments

Eugene Volokh:

Last week, E.J. Dionne Jr. penned a column in the Washington Post that blamed adherence to the tenets of the Austrian school of economics for gridlock in Washington. Well, sort of. He seemed to say that Austrian economics simultaneously was an obscure set of ideas of which no one has heard (except Ron Paul) and is yet powerful enough to provide the rallying cry for the Republican Party in Washington. More important, he says that Austrian economics is troublesome as a practical matter by blocking activist-government Keynesian-style interventions and deficit spending that would spur the economy and bring about greater wealth redistribution, but [also that] Austrian economics is wrong as a theoretical and historical matter.

Volokh observes that Dionne presumes to attack Hayek’s 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, although “it isn’t evident from the column that Dionne has actually read The Road to Serfdom itself, as opposed to just reading commentators on the book who have also fundamentally misunderstood the book.” Margaret Thatcher famously remarked that the problem with socialism is that, “sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money”. However, we might add, liberals never run out of bad arguments for failed policies.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

 

Category: Economics, Intellectuals

One Month After Prison Release, Sex Offender Raped Girl, 13, Police Say

Posted on | February 14, 2014 | 18 Comments

In 2010, when he was 19, Bert McDaniel Jones was convicted of having sex with a 14-year-old girl and put on probation with orders to register as a sex offender. When he failed to comply with terms of his probation, the judge sentenced Jones to prison. He got out of prison Jan. 5, but was arrested today after police say Jones raped a 13-year-old he met online while posing as a teenager:

Police began investigating the 13-year-old’s claims last week. The girl told police that a person she knew as Daniel Jones, 17, held her down and raped her.
Detectives searched every database available to them trying to locate Jones, but came up empty handed. Police said Friday that investigators discovered the person the girl knew as Daniel Jones was actually Bert McDaniel Jones. . . .
Slidell police said Jones was arrested in the forcible rape case Friday without incident. He is being held in the Slidell city jail and eventually will be transported to the St. Tammany Parish jail.
Police believe Jones was preying on young females through social media and through a local youth church group. They are continuing to investigate.

Why isn’t this creep being featured on ABC’s 20/20? Why is Kaitlyn Hunt a celebrity sex offender, but not Bert McDaniel Jones?

 

Category: Crime, Sex

More Arizona Sex Freaks in the News

Posted on | February 14, 2014 | 7 Comments

After we recounted the case of allegedly incestuous Tucson teacher Christine Mazzarella — “Yeesh,” says Dan Riehl — one of our commenters pointed out that there have been several other strange sex-crime cases in Arizona lately. In case you’ve forgotten, sociopath “Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt” (neé Stephen Krol) chose Gilbert, Arizona, as the scene of her final fraud, so it could be that the state is becoming a sort of weirdo-magnet, like Florida. Anyway, here are a couple of recent bizarre stories from Arizona:

Double trouble for Rudy Torres, 24, and Juan Sahagun, 21. Police say the two suspects didn’t know each other, but they had something in common: Both of them were having sex with the same underage girl. They met her via the Internet and apparently the two-timing Tucson teen temptress liked Juan better, because he was charged with seven counts, while Rudy was only charged with four.

While the Latino lotharios were getting lessons in the meaning of the word “jailbait,” a teenage boy was learning the word “cougar”:

Pinal County Sheriff’s officials say 34-year-old Keri Gonzalez was arrested after she jumped out a second-story window when the mother of a 15-year-old boy found Gonzalez naked in her son’s bedroom.

Gonzalez, who broke her ankle in her bid for escape, was arrested on a charge of sexual misconduct with a minor and “also is being held on suspicion of providing false information to a peace officer.” The boy’s mother “told authorities that she had previously warned Gonzalez to stay away from her son.”

Allegedly — did I forget to include the word “allegedly”? Because the alleged boy-banging window-jumper says she is not guilty:

An Arizona woman accused of jumping out of a window naked after having sex with a 15-year-old boy says the allegations are untrue.
“That’s not what I am at all,” Keri Gonzalez, 34, told Fox 10. . . .
Gonzalez told Fox 10 . . .  her own son went to the teen’s home to see a girl who also lived there. Once there, she says:

“We were talking and hanging out and one of the guys that was around 18 was pushing me onto the 15-year-old and continued to do it over 10 times and I was just trying to get my keys from them and leave. I said I had a headache and they gave me something and then I started feeling really weird and dizzy and they were like, you can come lay down and so they showed me up to a room.. woke up to banging and screaming at the door and it was the boy’s mom and when I woke up, I didn’t have pants on and while he was talking to her, I jumped out the two story window because I didn’t even know what was going on in my mind at the time. If I was in my right mind, I wouldn’t have jumped out the window.”

Uh . . . yeah, whatever you say, Keri.

FOX 10 News | myfoxphoenix.com

 

Lots of innocent people just start “hanging out” and then wake up naked in a teenager’s room. Although I am not a lawyer, my advice would be, if the prosecutor offers a plea bargain, take the deal.

 

Category: Arizona, Crime, Sex

Police: Arizona Teacher Had Sex on ‘Multiple Occasions’ With Her Son, 13

Posted on | February 14, 2014 | 26 Comments

A Tucson TV station has now edited its story to remove references to the fact that Christine Mazzarella’s alleged 13-year-old victim is her own son, but other news outlets have been less discreet:

A Tucson, Ariz., special education teacher faces sexual misconduct charges after police said she had a relationship with her own son.
Christine Mazzarella, 47, was booked this week in Pima County jail on four counts related to having sex with minor. Police told Tucson News Now that Mazzarella had sexual relations with her son on multiple occasions last July.
Mazzarella teaches at Lineweaver Elementary school in Tucson. Investigators do not believe she had inappropriate conduct with students at the school, according to the Arizona Daily Star.

We are therefore to believe that Christine Mazzarella, to whom school administrators have entrusted the care of children for years, never once breached that professional trust by any inappropriate act. However, we are told, shortly after her own son reached puberty, Mazzarella found him sexually irresistible?

Such a tale strains credulity, but weirder things have happened — pagan lesbian child brides and such — so if the allegations are true, the explanation should be mind-boggling. Maybe we will be told that Mazzarella has an alcohol problem and mental health issues, so being an incestuous pervert isn’t so bad, because she’s a crazy drunk.

And also, a trained professional educator.

EAG News: Teacher arrested for alleged sex with a minor, who also happens to be her teenage son


 

Category: Crime, Education, Sex

And I’m a Russian Wolfhound

Posted on | February 14, 2014 | 34 Comments

Just call me Borzoi. And I know what you’re thinking: “Borzoi? But you don’t look anything like a Russian wolfhound! As a matter of fact, on closer inspection, you seem to be a golden retriever.”

Haters.

Yes, I am aware that those documents from the American Kennel Club — a notorious group of hatemongering breedists —  identify me as a so-called “pure bred” golden retriever, but in my heart, ever since I was a little puppy, I always knew I was different.

Finally, after years of struggle against oppression, I found the courage to be the dog I really was, and “came out” as a Russian wolfhound.

My brave struggle has continued and, while I know how much you admire my courageous trans-breed activism, it’s important that you not offend me like Piers Morgan offended Janet Mock:

There were several problems with the language Morgan used. For starters, he repeatedly asserted that Mock had formerly been a boy. He also said that Mock had surgery to become a woman. Mock was a woman long before she had the surgery she felt she needed to reflect that. Part of the fight for transgender rights and justice is a fight for self-determination: to be able to proclaim who you are without anyone else adding caveats.

Sure, I know what you’re thinking: “What’s wrong with stating a simple fact? Janet Mock was, indeed, born as a boy named Charles with XY chromosomes and Charles did, in fact, undergo surgery to remove his testicles and rearrange his genitalia to create a simulacrum of a vagina. Actually, the whole point of Janet Mock’s celebrity activism — the book contract, the TV interviews — is the experience of having undergone this transition process. Why, then, is Piers Morgan a transphobic bigot for making reference to these facts?”

You don’t understand. You’ll never understand our struggle for acceptance, our fight against discrimination and bigotry. While you can’t possibly understand, you are permitted to admire us for our heroic courage — but only in language we approve.

Janet Mock is a woman. And I’m a Russian wolfhound.

Get over it, haters.

 

Category: CNN, Gays

Why Keep Feeding the Gay-Rights Tiger, Hoping to Be Eaten Last?

Posted on | February 14, 2014 | 47 Comments

One of the things we must understand about the Left is the essentially totalitarian nature of their ambitions. There is no logical stopping point on the progressive road to the Utopia of Equality that they insist is always ahead of us, a destination never reached.

Grant all their demands today, and they will return tomorrow with a new list of demands. What do they want? More, always more.

Yesterday, a federal judge struck down Virginia’s state constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage, because obviously (a) the Fourteenth Amendment was intended for such a purpose, and (b) never mind the will of voters expressed in a referendum.

The ruling cites memorable Supreme  Court travesties — Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Lawrence v. Texas and Windsor v. U.S. — like so many mileposts on the Highway to Hell, and who can argue with such sophistry when it’s dressed up in costumes of legal precedent, bejeweled with a lot of emotional chatter about “loving, intimate and lasting relationships” and “sacred, personal choices”?

Translation: “Damn the Constitution, we’re not in Utopia yet.”

Meanwhile, in Kansas, the state House of Representatives approved a bill intended to impede the March Toward Utopia in the name of “religious liberty,” inspiring  an eruption of hyperbole about “vicious discrimination” and “anti-gay segregation.”

“Willkommen, Herr Chamberlain. Welcome to Munich. Today you will cede the Sudetenland. Tomorrow, we’ll demand the world.”

 

Category: Constitution, Gays, Marriage
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