Saturday, June 18, 2016

But Isn't Being a SJW Supposed to Get Oppressed Females Interested in You and (Thereby) Get You Laid?!


Through the pen of Scott Adams, a Social Justice Warrior in Dilbert's office wishes to show an attractive co-worker (Alice) to what extent he makes common cause with women…

Friday, June 17, 2016

Who Are the True Authoritarians? People on the Right or People on the Left?


Listen to their words and watch their actions
writes a shocked Benny Huang. It turns out that
there's nothing liberal about "liberals."

In what is being called “the mother of all corrections,” the American Journal of Political Science has  admitted that the results of a study it published were unintentionally misrepresented. The study, “Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies,” purported to show that conservatives are marked by an authoritarian streak. After the study had garnered much scholarly attention, Steven Ludeke and Stig H. R. Rasmussen of the University of Southern Denmark noticed that the data did not support the published results. The correct conclusion is that liberals, particularly economic liberals, lean toward authoritarianism.

This study, which was found worthy enough to be cited 45 times before the correction, will probably disappear down the old memory hole. It doesn’t fit the narrative—and for that it must die.

Not that I put much stock in the study; not now and not before the erroneous conclusion was noticed and corrected. …

Study or no study, people on the Left clearly exhibit symptoms of authoritarianism. Did we really need the American Journal of Political Science to tell us that? I certainly didn’t. To know the Left’s true nature just listen to their words and, more importantly, watch their actions. As columnist George Will once wrote:
“[S]ince the 1960s, liberalism has been concerned with who thinks what, who acts when, who lives where and who feels how.” 
Brilliant!

If you want to observe authoritarian liberals in their natural habitat just visit New York City. The government there has tried, and in many cases succeeded, in clamping down on everything from Big Gulps to baby formula. Exercising your Second Amendment right is laborious and expensive. It’s illegal to donate prepared food to homeless shelters because the city government can’t determine the salt, fat, and fiber content. Smoking is illegal almost everywhere, cigarettes cost more than $13 a pack, and e-cigarettes, which have no harmful externalities, are also banned in many public places. You can be slapped with a $250,000 fine for “misgendering” someone. It’s illegal to refuse to serve alcohol to a pregnant woman. Urinating in public, on the other hand, has been decriminalized because laws against it are, you guessed it, racist.

Now do you believe the results of the study?

The question remains of how the study’s conclusions could have been so badly blundered. The answer, I believe, is confirmation bias. The authors admitted that they expected “P” scores (measuring psychoticism) to be associated with “conservative political attitudes, particularly for militarism and social conservatism.” Seek and ye shall find!

 … “liberal” [is] an ill-fitting adjective, one that I stopped using for a little while because the thugs who claim it don’t deserve it. I dropped my boycott of the word “liberal” after realizing that, in order to communicate effectively, I had to use words as they are commonly understood. It’s just another example of how our lexicon has been perverted to portray people on the Left in a positive light.
How about referring to them as drama queens?
Language is often deliberately altered to avoid associating authoritarianism with the Left. Ever wonder why the Nazis are so rarely referred to by their full name—the National Socialist German Workers’ Party? Whether or not the Nazis were a left-wing party is a debate for another day but the fact remains that that was their name.

People on the Left avoid using it because they wouldn’t want any of the Nazis’ hard-earned toxicity to rub off on two of their most beloved words—socialist and worker. They dismiss the party’s name with the help of the No True Scotsman fallacy—it’s literally impossible for authoritarians to be on the Left, you see, because people on the Left can’t be authoritarian. Authoritarians are always and everywhere right-wingers.

The notion (or misconception, really) that conservatives are little Gestapo agents at heart emerged not long after the end of World War II. …
See also: Every Republican Presidential Candidate Is Hitler (How to Prevent America from Becoming a Totalitarian State)
and: Mitt Hitler and Double Standards
(Godwin's Law Applies to Thee, But Not to Me)
… How it must disconcert some people to have a new study conclude that liberals are the real authoritarians. Anyone who thought the study had value before is now stuck with the revised conclusion. It’s science!

The study tells us, for example, that economic liberals—those most obsessed with banishing economic inequality—tend to exhibit authoritarian tendencies. That doesn’t surprise me at all. Class warriors like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders aren’t heroic. Their policies are wrong-headed and they don’t care how many eggs they have to crack to make their elusive omelet.

What’s so wrong with economic equality? Besides the fact that it not nearly as fair as it sounds, it also has an adversarial relationship to freedom. …

 … The brutal and endless process of economic leveling cannot be achieved without the heavy hand of the state to act as its enforcement mechanism. Economic equality requires a perpetual policing of people’s decisions, mandating nearly as much as it prohibits. This person must hire that person and must pay her this hourly wage. This person must pay for that person’s birth control pills. That person must lend this person this much money at this interest rate. This person must not earn more than this sum of money in a given year or else pay exorbitant taxes. This person must pay for his own college education but also that person’s college education because that person can’t afford it.

 … This is what authoritarianism looks like. It’s petty, it’s suffocating, and it’s done by people who consider themselves to be a force for good.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Displaying His Cleverness, Smarter-Than-Thou SJW Character Finds Racism in the Scott Adams Dilbert Office


Thanks to Scott Adams, Dilbert's office welcomes a Social Justice Warrior

Disney is sharing the keys to its new Magic Kingdom in Shanghai with China's Communist Party


On Thursday,
the Walt Disney Company … opened its $5.5 billion Shanghai Disney Resort, a theme park and hotel complex that represents a hard-fought victory in China for the singularly American entertainment conglomerate
reports Brooks Barnes in the New York Times.
The park — Disney’s first on the Chinese mainland — was held up as nothing less than a historic symbol of United States-China relations. … So far, the park here has suffered none of the cultural missteps that marred Disney openings in France and Hong Kong over the decades.
In a previous lengthy report (slideshow) written by Barnes with David Barboza, it turns out that several rides were left out.
Disney substantially dialed back its demands. In addition to handing over a large piece of the profit, the control-obsessed company would give the government a role in running the park. Disney was also prepared to drop its longstanding insistence on a television channel.

 … But Disney is sharing the keys to the Magic Kingdom with the Communist Party. While that partnership has made it easier to get things done in China, it has also given the government influence over everything from the price of admission to the types of rides at the park.

 … Worried that importing classic rides would reek of cultural imperialism, Disney left out stalwarts such as Space Mountain, the Jungle Cruise and It’s a Small World. Instead, 80 percent of the Shanghai rides, like the “Tron” lightcycle roller coaster, are unique, a move that pleased executives at the company’s Chinese partner, the state-owned Shanghai Shendi Group, who made multiple trips to Disney headquarters in California to hash out blueprint details.

Disney then ran with the idea, infusing the park with Chinese elements. The Shanghai resort’s signature restaurant, the Wandering Moon Teahouse has rooms designed to represent different areas of the country. The restaurant is billed as honoring the “restless, creative spirit” of Chinese poets.

From a more general viewpoint,
the Chinese government is growing more assertive and nationalistic. Emboldened by the size and breadth of its economy, China is stepping up its demands, pressuring companies to lower their prices, hand over proprietary technology and help advance the country’s development goals, even if that means financing the growth of local rivals.IBM has promised to share technology with China. 

LinkedIn has agreed to censor content inside the country. Even Google has been scrounging for a way back into China, after withdrawing in 2010 in the face of accusations of government censorship and intrusions by state-backed hackers

 … In October 1998, Mr. Eisner met Zhu Rongji, who had just been named prime minister, at China’s leadership compound in Beijing. [Disney’s chief executive at the time, Michael D. Eisner,] apologized for “Kundun,” calling it a “stupid mistake,” according to a transcript of the meeting.

This film was a form of insult to our friends, but other than journalists, very few people in the world ever saw it,” Mr. Eisner said during the meeting. (“Kundun” bombed, taking in just $5.7 million against a production budget of about $30 million.)

Mr. Eisner said the company had learned a lesson. And he introduced Mr. Iger, then Disney’s international president, as the person who would carry on negotiations for a theme park. The Chinese prime minister responded favorably. Land in Shanghai, he said, had already been set aside.
… Disney needs to avoid getting lost in translation, an especially difficult proposition in China. It is a deeply American brand trying to break into a country where the government wants to suppress Western ideals.

 … Disney is going to extraordinary lengths to prove its commitment to China and the Communist Party. During a 2010 meeting with China’s propaganda minister, Mr. Iger pledged to use the company’s global platform to “introduce more about China to the world.” And he has done just that.

 … “When global brands ask me what they need to do to improve their chances in China, I often paraphrase John F. Kennedy: Ask not what China can do for your business, but what your business can do for China,” said John A. Quelch, who teaches at Harvard Business School and has extensive experience in China. “They need to demonstrate that they are willing to promote things the government is interested in.”

Mr. Iger is trying especially to give Shanghai Disney some Chinese flair. He instructed park designers to infuse as many Chinese elements as possible.

 … Mr. Iger even came up with a new slogan for the Shanghai resort, calling it “authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese.” He repeats the phrase constantly when talking about the site, and Disney executives in Shanghai have posted it around their offices. It is supposed to be a sign of respect for China and its people.
Apologizing for a(n allegedly) Chinese-unfriendly film?! That is life in Hollywood for ya. (While continuing the unending line of movies bashing American conservatives, naturally…)

You can read all about it in Hollywood's Offerings Promise Only to Get More Anti-American.
"It's fascinating to listen to people’s interpretations of your story" [Steven Soderbergh] — except when they are conservative Americans!

And especially when they are members of the communist bureaucracy's élite.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

The easiest thing for MSM reporters to check and know for sure—that this was another attack in a gun free zone—is mentioned nowhere in the media

Friday singer Christina Grimmie’s was murdered in a gun-free zone in Orlando
writes the Crime Prevention Research Center.
Early [Sunday] morning, at least 50 people were fatally shot at an Orlando night club — also a gun-free zone.  In both cases the media has yet to report that these attacks occurred where general citizens couldn’t defend themselves.

Since at least 1950, only slightly over 1 percent of mass public shootings have occurred where general citizens have been able to defend themselves. Police are extremely important in stopping crime, but even if they had been present at the time of the nightclub shooting, they may have had a very difficult time stopping the attack. Attackers will generally shoot first at any uniformed guards or officers who are present (the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris last year illustrates that point). Alternatively, they will move on to another place without uniformed officers.

In this particular case the police only arrived on the scene after the attack occurred. That illustrates another point: it is simply impossible for the police to protect all possible targets.

It is hard to ignore how these mass public shooters consciously pick targets where they know victims won’t be able to defend themselves (herehere, and here).

 … Media discussions today on assault weapons, background checks, but not relevant to the case here.  But the easiest thing for these reporters to check and know for sure, that this was another attack in a gun free zone, is never mentioned once anywhere in the media.  Hillary Clinton and President Obama both used the attack to call for more gun control. 
Related: my dispassionate in-depth examination of the history of gun control —
What Is to Blame for the Shootings? Does the Blame Lie with
the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere?

Monday, June 13, 2016

Doesn't the Number of 50 Dead at the Orlando Nightclub Turn Out to Be Misleading?


Are you (somewhat) surprised about the round number of exactly 50 dead from the Orlando nightclub?

So am I.

A coincidence like that is not unheard of, of course, but it turns out that the number is (slightly) misleading.

A day after the massacre, it turns out the number of dead was actually 49.

Not much of a change, agreed, but still: Why the number 50, then?

The media seem to have decided again to include the mass murderer among the "victims."

(Which is technically true, insofar as you are counting the "dead" per se.)

Now why would I use the word "again"?

Don't you remember United Airlines Flight 93? It took forever to design a memorial for the 40 heroes aboard the plane who fought back against the hijackers on September 11, 2001, making it crash in a Pennsylvania field instead of on its intended target.

And when a design was finally chosen, not only did it seem to resemble, deliberately or not, a red crescent, it seems like the number chosen to honor the victims was 44.

Why? Because among the dead were the four terrorists, naturally…

Apart form that, Dalrock points out on his website that When seconds counted, the police were only three hours away:
… so far it looks to me that whoever was in charge failed in a major way.  My guess is that he or she became fixated on the idea that this was just another hostage scenario, and ignored all evidence that this was a terror attack for a full three hours. … Something doesn’t make sense here, and I strongly suspect we are going to learn in the coming days that the police response was terribly botched.  

In the meantime, let us get back to the Apologizer-in-Chief. In the wake numerous instances of political correctness (shookhran to Ed Driscoll and Stephen Green of Instapundit), the New York Post's John Podhoretz laments that
Here again, and horribly, we have an unmistakable indication that Obama finds it astonishingly easy to divorce himself from a reality he doesn’t like — the reality of the Islamist terror war against the United States and how it is moving to our shores in the form of lone-wolf attacks.

He called it “terror,” which it is. But using the word “terror” without a limiting and defining adjective is like a doctor calling a disease “cancer” without making note of the affected area of the body — because if he doesn’t know where the cancer is and what form it takes, he cannot attack it effectively and seek to extirpate it.

So determined is the president to avoid the subject of Islamist, ISIS-inspired or ISIS-directed terrorism that he concluded his remarks with an astonishing insistence that “we need the strength and courage to change” our attitudes toward the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

That’s just disgusting. There’s no other word for it.

America’s national attitude toward LGBT people didn’t shoot up the Pulse nightclub. This country’s national attitude has undergone a sea change in the past 20 years, by the way, in case the president hasn’t noticed.

An Islamist terrorist waging war against the United States killed and injured 103 people on our soil. We Americans do not bear collective responsibility for this attack. Quite the opposite.

The attack on the Pulse nightclub was an attack on us all, no less than the World Trade Center attack.

To suggest we must look inward to explain this is not only unseemly but practically an act of conscious misdirection on the president’ s part to direct out attention away from Omar Mateen’s phone call [in which he called the cops to pledge his fealty to ISIS].

True to form, the president spoke more words about the scourge of guns than about the threat of terror. In doing so, he actually retards rather than advances the cause of gun control he so passionately advocates.
Related: my dispassionate in-depth examination of the history of gun control —
What Is to Blame for the Shootings? Does the Blame Lie with
the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere?

Ted Cruz: "The next few days will be sadly predictable; Democrats will try to use this attack to change the subject"


“Enough is enough. What we need is for every American – Democrat and Republican – to come together, abandon political correctness, and unite in defeating radical Islamic terrorism.”
Polistick's Matthew K. Burke shows how Ted Cruz (who in November introduced a bill that would prohibit refugees from any country which is controlled in part by a terror group from entering the United States) gets straight to the point:
Ted Cruz issued a statement on Sunday in response to the Islamic terrorist attack against attendees at a homosexual nightclub in Orlando over the weekend, declaring that “our nation is at war” and that Democrats and Republicans should unite around the common goal of defeating radical Islamic terrorism.

Ted Cruz predicted in his statement that “The next few days will be sadly predictable,” that Democrats Obama and Hillary Clinton will continue to be unwilling to mouth the words “radical Islamic terrorism” and that they will use the terrorist attack in Orlando, like they have others before it, towards their goal of eventually eliminating rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The next few days will be sadly predictable. Democrats will try to use this attack to change the subject. As a matter of rigid ideology, far too many Democrats – from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton – will refuse to utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ They will claim this attack, like they claimed every previous attack, was isolated and had nothing to do with the vicious Islamist theology that is daily waging war on us across the globe. And they will try to exploit this terror attack to undermine the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms of law-abiding Americans.
Even though Cruz’s prediction was delivered in a timely manner on Sunday, his prophecy was already fulfilled after Democrat after Democrat, as well as the Democrat Media Complex, repeatedly blamed “the gun” for the terrorist attack — or anything other than radical Islam.

After offering his condolences to the victims and their families, Cruz called for a “time of action” and proclaimed that “all of America stands in solidarity with the people of Orlando.”
Cruz also pushed for passage of the Expatriate Terrorist Act, “so that ISIS terrorists cannot use U.S. passports to return to America and wage jihad.”

 Progressive leftist news and commentary websites were licking their chops on Sunday, salivating over another opportunity push for the obliteration of Second Amendment rights, after…

Read Ted Cruz’s entire statement below: 
It is a time for action. We need a Commander in Chief who will speak the truth, and who will unleash the full force and fury of the American military to utterly destroy ISIS and its affiliates. We need to pass the Expatriate Terrorist Act, so that known ISIS terrorists cannot use U.S. passports to return to America and wage jihad. We need a President who is serious – who will identify the enemy by name and do everything necessary to defeat it.

The next few days will be sadly predictable. Democrats will try to use this attack to change the subject. As a matter of rigid ideology, far too many Democrats – from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton – will refuse to utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ They will claim this attack, like they claimed every previous attack, was isolated and had nothing to do with the vicious Islamist theology that is daily waging war on us across the globe. And they will try to exploit this terror attack to undermine the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms of law-abiding Americans.

Enough is enough. What we need is for every American – Democrat and Republican – to come together, abandon political correctness, and unite in defeating radical Islamic terrorism.
ISIS doesn’t just target soldiers. They don’t just target Republicans. Or Jews. They also target Christians and fellow Muslims. They target each and every one of us. As we saw this morning, they target the gay and lesbian community. Their objective, which they broadcast worldwide, is to murder or forcibly convert every single American.

For all the Democrats who are loud champions of the gay and lesbian community whenever there is a culture battle waging, now is the opportunity to speak out against an ideology that calls for the murder of gays and lesbians. ISIS and the theocracy in Iran (supported with American taxpayer dollars) regularly murder homosexuals, throwing them from buildings and burying them under rocks. This is wrong, it is evil, and we must all stand against it. Every human being has a right to live according to his or her faith and conscience, and nobody has a right to murder someone who doesn’t share their faith or sexual orientation. If you’re a Democratic politician and you really want to stand for LGBT, show real courage and stand up against the vicious ideology that has targeted our fellow Americans for murder.

Today, all of America stands in solidarity with the people of Orlando. All of us should lift them up in prayer, demand action, and if you have any information about the Orlando shooter or potential radical Islamic terror plots, please act to keep us safe by using the FBI tips website: https://tips.fbi.gov.
Meanwhile, Red State's Susan Wright notes that
Saturday night’s mass shooting at the Pulse Orlando nightclub in Florida has created a sticky predicament for social justice warriors …

Abandon political correctness.

That one had to go down hard for liberals. …

Texas senator has voiced the position Democrats and social justice warriors are faced with: Do they stand up for one special interest group – LGBT individuals – and condemn the ideology that calls for their murder, or do they stand for the Muslim community and the religious system that drove Omar Mateen to commit this heinous crime against the LGBT community?

I’m envisioning fevered, secret meetings in someone’s safe space, as they decide which group they’re more willing to hang out to dry.

Either way, as they wring their hands and desperately try to find some way to blame this on Christians, ISIS are likely planning their next attack.
Related: my dispassionate in-depth examination of the history of gun control —
What Is to Blame for the Shootings? Does the Blame Lie with
the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere?

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Build more luscious public toilets, recommends a Danish Sexologist, so more people will feel comfortable using them to masturbate


Think about this the next time liberals call you a hater or a reactionary for not giving into the craze of allowing transgenders (i.e., men) into public bathrooms.
WARNING while scrolling (sloooowly) down: 
Photo from Danish newspaper below (at end of text) NSFW!!!
According to a Danish poll, reports Metro Express, 11% of Danish men have masturbated in public bathrooms, as have 9% of their female counterparts. Meanwhile, one Danish man in 8 and 9% of Danish women have had sex with a partner in a public toilet.

And just when you didn't think you could get a more "open" society, a Danish sexologist says it's a shame we don't build our public bathrooms accordingly:
We should build some luscious public toilets, which could act as aphrodisiac booths or masturbation-loos, so women too would feel comfortable masturbating inside. Indeed, more women than men feel stressed out, and when we get orgasms we secrete brain substances that work in an anti stressful manner. 
Brave new world…
Det er en skam mener sexologen:
Man burde lave nogle lækre offentlige toiletter, som kunne fungere som elskovsbokse eller onani-lokummer, så kvinder også gad onanere på de offentlige toiletter. Der er nemlig flere kvinder end mænd, der stresser, og når vi får orgasme udskiller hjernen stoffer, der virker antistressende.
Det siger Jakob Olrik.