Category Archives: Cultural

Is death funny?

Posted on by
Reply

An interview with John Cleese. So he doesn’t like Trump, but it is still John Cleese.

The comedy legend on Monty Python’s legacy, political correctness, and the funniest joke he ever told.

How can you resist? And as for the interviewer, he is obviously a politically correct nonce which makes his reactions so precious. The first question up: “Is death funny?” All depends on whose death you’re talking about, I suppose, but now find out what Cleese thinks instead. What you do not find out is the funniest joke he thinks he has ever told.

Jerry Pournelle RIP

Posted on by
Reply

From Jerry Pournelle’s last post.

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.

-Robert A. Heinlein

The map is not the territory.

Alfred Korzybski

If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason;

Benjamin Disraeli

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

Between 1965 and 2011, the official poverty rate was essentially flat, while the government spending per person on poverty programs rose by more than 900% after inflation.

Peter Cove

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

We are a nation of assimilated immigrants.

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

We have to start with the premise that the goal is to defeat the enemy.

Jim Woolsey

If you doubt the left is insane then read this

Posted on by
Reply

You know, the left really is insane: Father’s Day now too ‘political’.

A heart-tugging television commercial celebrating Fath­er’s Day by promoting the ­special role of fathers in the lives of their children has been pulled after being deemed too “polit­ical” ahead of the government’s same-sex ­marriage postal ballot.

This year’s commercial — featuring a father singing his baby a lullaby — will not be broadcast after Free TV Australia, representing the free-to-air commercial networks, informed­ not-for-profit group Dads4Kids that its Father’s Day ads “likely contained political matter”.

After being told this week that its ad had been rejected, Dads4Kids released a statement to The Weekend Australian yesterda­y expressing its disappointment, as opponents and suppor­t­ers of same-sex marriage defended the commercial.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott said the development was the latest example of how the “thought police” would operate in the “brave new world of same-sex marriage” while gay marriage advocate and Victorian Liberal MP Tim Wilson slammed the Free TV determin­ation as “ridiculous advice that should be ignored”.

“If you don’t like being bullied by activists, vote no,” Mr Abbott told The Weekend Australian.

“If you don’t like political ­correctness, vote no, because it’s the best way you have to stop it in its tracks.”

In its statement, Dads4Kids said the majority of free-to-air TV networks across Australia had “graciously run these ads for free as a community service ­announcement” for 15 years.

“Unfortunately, what is a simple­ Father’s Day message has now become a ‘political’ statement,” the group said.

“It is extraordinary that this is where we have come to as a country; we can no longer celebrate Father­’s Day without being forced to look at it through the lens of the same-sex marriage debate.

“It’s a tragedy that a political motive is now implied in any mention of fatherhood … Not everything is about same-sex marriage.”

On the left everything is political, but a stable traditional home, mother-father-children, is one of their most sociopathic targets.

A marriage of convenience

Posted on by
Reply

Via Andrew Bolt: Same-sex marriage: Why have Muslims been so quiet in the debate? I find the following both plausible and sensible:

Last night on ABC’s The Drum, Ali Kadri, spokesman for the Islamic Council of Queensland and the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said his community was stuck with the choice of offending allies or siding with critics, and the result had been silence.

“Unfortunately, in the current climate, the right and conservative side has attacked Muslims as terrorists and extremists, and naturally the left side has been allies in defending us for a long period of time,” he said.

“We are afraid if we come out with our opinion then the left may abandon us for going against their view and we can’t be friendly with the conservatives because they have been bashing us for 15, 20 years every chance they get … and that includes some Christian sects as well.”

This, on the other hand I also find plausible, but borderline insanity: ‘Sharia’s no different to Catholicism’: Ex-human rights commissioner Gillian Triggs says Sharia law courts SHOULD be allowed in Australia – just as the Vatican already influences everyday life. You need to read it all but here’s a taste.

Professor Triggs also said Sharia divorce courts should be allowed in Australia, under a system where a Muslim man can leave his wife by saying ‘I divorce you’ three times and a woman’s word is worth less than a man’s.

‘If it’s a matter of private law within the Muslim community and they want to manage their affairs in that way, and they believe in those rules, that’s reasonably acceptable,’ she said.

But whatever you may think about her views, it is why the Muslim community votes Labor. This is how the left wins when it wins. No principle of any kind but a coalition of identity groups with nothing in common other than their wish for political power and public money.

The Mark Steyn Club – join it

Posted on by
Reply

Before I go further, if you are interested in doing your own bit to save as much of our past and history, as well as maintaining as much of our way of life as possible, you must join The Mark Steyn Club. This blog is a tiny tiny part of the global conversation trying to save us. Mark Steyn is a larger part and is read worldwide. You can help him by joining The Mark Steyn Club by going here. I would have thought it’s too late but Donald Trump did get elected so who can know? This is from his latest post, which really did astonish me. He actually went to Rotherham and spoke to the girls who had been sexually abused and worse by Muslim men, and discovered this:

The sexual exploitation of children is still going on in Rotherham. In broad daylight.

Cannot be, you say. Well, apparently it can. Sign up and do your bit.

This should be absolutely illegal

Posted on by
Reply

This previous post of mine was not a bit of whimsy but ought to be taken up as a serious proposition before it is too late: It must be made illegal on “social media” to deny service to people who say things that are not illegal to say. This is from Gateway Pundit and via srr: Joy Villa Given 48 Hours to Delete Her Incredible MAGA Song From YouTube. Someone needs to legislate to make this illegal. It is merely a fetish to say that a private firm can do anything it likes, when no private firm can do anything it likes. If someone puts up a platform for general use, only illegal activity can permit that platform from being withdrawn. Here is the story.

Singer Joy Villa shocked Hollywood after she burst onto the red carpet in February wearing a MAGA dress and a big beautiful smile to the Grammys. She became a star overnight with skyrocketing album sales as Trump supporters raced to purchase her music.

‘Tolerant’ and ‘loving’ liberals on the other hand, called for Joy Villa’s death–over her support for President Trump.

Villa claimed she had written consent from everyone in the video, however; YouTube claimed “we cannot accept or review agreements granting consent before the video was uploaded.”

YouTube is cracking down on conservatives, Christians and Trump supporters by demonetizing videos, deleting videos and suspending accounts altogether.

As TGP previously reported, pro-Trump personalities Diamond and Silk accused Google-owned YouTube of demonetizing 95 percent of their videos. The pair believes YouTube’s decision was driven by their support for President Trump.

YouTube isn’t the only platform targeting conservatives. Twitter and Facebook routinely censor and suspend pro-Trump accounts without any real explanation. Many conservatives receive vague emails claiming ‘terms of service’ was violated for benign posts while liberals and terrorists run wild on the platforms posting gruesome beheading videos, using profanity and calling for the assassination of president Trump without consequences.

No idea who their enemies are

Posted on by
Reply

These are comments found on a thread at Catallaxy following this post titled, Strange days indeed which is itself linked to an article titled, My great uncle was alienated in postwar France. Now Americans know how he felt. The writer is Hadley Freeman implying there is some great irony in Jews having fled European fascism in the 1930s only to find their descendants – her, for example – caught up today in the rebirth of fascism in America. A complete fool, consorting with her deepest enemies and giving them cover, her shameful ignorance identified in the Catallaxy comments thread.

Surprisingly, many Jews have a poor grasp of history and an even poorer grasp of reality. They consistently line up behind those who threaten Israels existence and who would be dispose of them in a heartbeat. Antifa should be all to familiar to them and completely alarming.

The problem with a lot of leftist Jews (and I have some in my family) is that they are leftists first and Jews second – well, quite often Jews in name only. They embrace every liberal cause that comes along, they work against the interests of Israel and their people, they work in favour of violent and antisemitic Palestinian causes, they deny the reality of Islamic violence and Jew hatred and they hate people like Trump simply because he is not one of them (that is, they don’t hate him because he is not a Jew – rather they hate him because he is not a liberal). In fact to them, anyone not to the left of Marx is a Nazi so I would not necessarily place too much faith in their judgment of who is and who is not a Nazi (leftists in general are seldom interested in evidence or facts where these conflict with their narrative). Of course some of the people at Charlottesville were neo-Nazis who do in fact hate Jews, but many were just conservatives. And Trump was right – much of the rise of the extreme right wing is a backlash brought about by the violence and intolerance of the extreme Left which is being supported and protected by many who should know better – including many so called Jews (who incidentally by their own actions are working against the Jewish people – Israel in particular). In this respect, Trump is more of a Jew than many of the lefty, so called “Jews”are). Denis Prager (himself a practicing conservative Jew) hits the nail on the head when he points out the danger this creates not just for Jews but for western civilization as a whole. And in point of fact I see as much if not more anti Jewish behaviour on the Left than the anti Jewish behaviour on the right which is being perpetrated by a vanishingly small number of neo Nazis. The fact that this Leftist anti Jewish behaviour is often disguised as criticism of Israel does not change the fact that it is actually Jew hatred. Though they like to think of it as some kind of superior morality. I also find it passing strange to see this writer doing what the Left so often does – projecting onto the other side their own bad behaviour such as accusing Trump of being anti Israel or of being appeasers (apparently appeasing extremist Islam, which is a far greater threat than a tiny number of neo Nazis is OK however). Sickening.

Objectively, having an ancestor who survived the Holocaust is irrelevant, it doesn’t give her opinions any special authority; that’s the genetic fallacy (also known as the fallacy of origins or fallacy of virtue — Wiki). Conversely descendants of nazis, or descendants of our pioneers for that matter, carry no special guilt. She, they all, use faulty reasoning as in: Trump is supported by neo-nazis (allegedly) therefore he must support neo-nazis or guilt by association in this case ‘reductio ad Hitlerum’.

What part of Islamo-Fascist does she not understand? What part of “some good people” does she not understand? What part of “Antifa” brutal street fascism does she not understand? This blinkered woman does not understand very much.

Liberal???… She’s not a liberal, she’s a Socialist and Fascistic one at that….. But like most fascists she excuses her violence of thought and deed by blaming the victims of her political passions. She exaggerates and lies….. and she does it deliberately for political effect.

Trump supports Israel and went to the wailing wall in a very respectful manner. Obama undermined Israel and sympathises with its enemies. He would never have gone there in the same fashion Trump did. These leftist commentators like her are always off the mark, but this statement is deranged.

The typical modern guardianista liberal with an empty head and an empty life. If Trump is Hitler, then she can pretend to be Ann Frank – it gives her life a tiny bit of meaning.

Tunisia, Iran, Egypt, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen… just a few of the places where J__s are no longer being born. Don’t think it has anything to do with Nazis though.

It is the left that is anti-semitic and pro-muslin. Trump’s own family is part Jewish. The Gramsci-ites know, a la Goebbels, that the propaganda lie, once out there gets disseminated by a fellow-traveller medja, and absorbed by those who fail to reason why and by youth made compliant via leftist k-12 transformational “education”.

Desecrates her uncle’s grave with cheap anti Trump addendum to a story about a man of greatness. But that is so typical of the “cultural left”.

I wish I had any idea of what she means. Can someone explain it. I’ll give it a shot, friend of Israel = nazi, Muslims who want to wipe Israel and every Jew off the face of the Earth = not nazi. And just like in 1930s the beautiful people side with the nazis. It’s instinctive to them as they find ugly art beautiful, ugly literature worthy and ugly movies as entertainment.

You better put some ice on that

Posted on by
Reply

Went to the ballet last night and at half time went out for a coffee to make sure I could keep awake for the second half. And there I chanced upon the daughter of an old old friend who I had known since she was an infant, an extremely bright young woman who had even been dux of her school. And we chatted as we always do as I searched around for the milk, and in the midst of it all she asked me how I thought Donald Trump was going as president. And since we had quite frequently met on the train during the election last year and had chatted amicably about the election, I said what I thought, which was that I found he was going even better than I had expected he would, especially given the opposition he was facing. So I will now relate how the last conversation we will ever have from that moment continued.

Well, she said, he gives me the creeps. This may be a mis-remembrance since this is what Hillary has been quoted as saying in recent days as excerpts from her new book are being released. But if those weren’t her exact words, they were certainly her sentiments. Why, I said? Because he is not respectful of women.

So I said, but we elect presidents to deal with policy. Don’t you care about North Korea, Islamic terrorism, open borders, our economic future and the preservation of Western Civilisation? Don’t you think these are also important and should be put into the balance as well. No, she didn’t think that at all. Walking home at night safely without worrying about molestation is what’s important.

But, I said, if that was the major issue, what about Bill Clinton, and his enabling wife Hillary? With Monica it was consensual. But she was an intern and he was her boss, didn’t that matter [and I forgot to mention Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey if consensual was so important]? No, not in the least. You know, I said, as we stood in the lobby of the Arts Centre at half time at the ballet, you are living in a bubble surrounded by a normality that might come crashing down if we do not get our political environment properly set. You – she said to me – think like that because you are a male. You cannot understand things from the perspective of a woman.

Well, I said, lots of women voted for Trump. Yes, but they were white women. That is not a worthy argument I replied since it basically forecloses on all possibility that we can discuss anything. Once you say that, there is no possibility of coming to any kind of mutual understanding since nothing I can ever possibly say has any possible ability to get past that defence. (And funny enough, a black cab driver in Washington had made the same point when we had had a similar conversation in July, that I could not understand what he was saying because I was not black myself.)

And then we went back to our seats, where I was able to stay awake for the second half without the least bit of trouble. But what annoys me almost as much as anything is her breach of friendship. She knew my attitude to Trump pre-election but assumed, like every other political fool, that I must have seen the light once he became president. So far past her widest intellectual compass was the possibility that having backed him for the eighteen months that led up to his election that I might still find myself very content to see what he has done since he is doing what he said he would, or at least trying. Dragging policy into the conversation was merely trying to sidetrack the only thing that mattered so far as she was concerned, his wrongthought on how to treat women.

But as it happens, every Democrat president, aside from Jimmy Carter, since I became conscious of politics at all – Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton – has been a serial adulterer. Clinton was even worse, an accused rapist, and we have it on good authority that Hillary ‘put up with’ Bill Clinton’s sexual ‘grabbing, groping women’. Trump did not lie about it or deny this incident, but said what I say, that it was highly unacceptable, but that there are bigger issues that matter much more. If you can ignore the Clintons’ far far worse behaviour, and make this one story about Trump your single reason for not supporting Trump as president, then so be it. But if you also think you have any political judgement whatsoever, then you are an even bigger fool than I might ever have thought. Rotherham and Cologne have become one-word reminders of how bad things have become even if we restrict ourselves to sexual assault. If this one story about Trump is all she can think of as the reason not to vote for him, she really is stupid in spite of her undoubtedly high IQ.

AND FOR THE RECORD: And I do think of policy as what matters. Aside from not being Hillary or a Democrat, there is this as well on Trump’s side of the ledger. From Cohenite who has taken the list from somewhere else:

WHAT HAS PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP DONE SINCE HE HAS BEEN IN OFFICE ……

1. Supreme Court Judge Gorsuch
2. 59 missiles dropped in Syria
3. He took us out of TPP
4. Illegal immigration is now down 70%( the lowest in 17 years)
5. Consumer confidence highest since 2000 at index 125.6
6. Mortgage applications for new homes rise to a seven year high
7. Arranged from 7% to 24% Tariff on lumber from Canada
8. Bids for border wall are well underway
9. Pulled out of the lopsided Paris accord
10. Keystone pipeline approved
11. NATO allies boost spending by 4.3%
12. Allowing VA to terminate bad employees
13. Allowing private healthcare choices for veterans
14. More than 600,000. Jobs created
15. Median household income at a 7 year high
16. The Stock Market is at the highest ever in its history
17. China agreed to American import of beef
18. $89 Billion saved in regulation rollbacks
19. Rollback of A Regulation to boost coal mining
20. MOAB for ISIS
21. Travel ban reinstated
22. Executive order for religious freedom
23. Jump started NASA
24. $600 million cut from UN peacekeeping budget
25. Targeting of MS13 gangs
26. Deporting violent illegal immigrants
27. Signed 41 bills to date
28. Created a commission on child trafficking
29. Created a commission on voter fraud
30. Created a commission for opioids addiction
31. Giving power to states to drug test unemployment recipients
32. Unemployment lowest since May 2007
33. Historic Black College University initiative
34. Women In Entrepreneurship Act
35. Created an office for illegal immigrant crime victims
36. Reversed Dodd-Frank
37. Repealed DOT ruling which would have taken power away from local governments for infrastructure planning
38. Order to stop crime against law enforcement
39. End of DAPA program
40. Stopped companies from moving out of America
41. Promoted businesses to create American Jobs
42. Encouraged country to once again – ‘Buy American and hire American’
43. Cutting regulations – 2 for every one created
45. Review of all trade agreements to make sure they areAmerica first
46. Apprentice program
47. Highest manufacturing surge in 3 years
48. $78 Billion promised reinvestment from major businesses like Exxon, Bayer, Apple, SoftBank, Toyota
49. Denied FBI a new building
50. $700 million saved with F-35 renegotiation
51. Saves $22 million by reducing white house payroll
52. Dept of Treasury reports a $182 billion surplus for April 2017 (2nd largest in history)
53. Negotiated the release of 6 US humanitarian workers held captive in Egypt
54. Gas prices lowest in more than 12 years
55. Signed An Executive Order To Promote Energy Independence and Economic Growth
56. Has already accomplished more to stop government interference into people’s lives than any President in the history of America
57. President Trump has worked with Congress to pass more legislation in his first 100 days than any President since Truman
58. Has given head executive of each branches 6 month time frame, dated March 15, 2017, to trim the fat, restructure and improve efficiency of their branch. (Observe the push-back the leaks the lies as entrenched POWER refuses to go silently into that good night!)
59. Last, refused his Presidential pay check. Donated it to Veterans issues

I hope each and every one of you copy and paste this every where, every time you hear some dimwit say Trump hadn’t done a thing! Bob Sr.

Ray Schneider, PhD
Associate Professor Emeritus
Bridgewater College

********

It took 32 years for the 3 prior administrations to totally destroy this nation and her people, and Trump’s first 6 months to begin a major unwind of all the prior traitorous issues.

The Google memo

Posted on by
Reply

I tried finding James Damore’s memo and it is already three quarters of the way down the memory hole so I thought I’d put it up in case anyone else wanted to read what he wrote. Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber. These are the conclusions.

Suggestions

I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology. ​I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another
member of their group (tribalism).

My concrete suggestions are to:

● De-moralize diversity.
○ As soon as we start to ​moralize an issue​, we stop thinking about it in terms of costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish those we see as villains to protect the “victims.”

● Stop ​alienating conservatives​.
○ Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people view things differently.
○ In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to ​stay in the closet to avoid open hostility​. We should empower those with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.
○ Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because ​conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness​, which is required for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.

● Confront Google’s biases.
○ I’ve mostly concentrated on how our biases cloud our thinking about diversity and inclusion, but our moral biases are farther reaching than that.
○ I would start by breaking down Googlegeist scores by political orientation and personality to give a fuller picture into how our biases are affecting our culture.

● Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races.
○ These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined. Have an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity programs.
○ Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.
○ There’s currently very little transparency into the extent of our diversity programs which keeps it immune to criticism from those outside its ideological echo chamber.
○ These programs are highly politicized which further alienates non-progressives.
○ I realize that some of our programs may be precautions against government accusations of discrimination, but that can easily backfire since they incentivize illegal discrimination. Focus on psychological safety, not just race/gender diversity.
○ We should focus on psychological safety, which has shown positive effects and should (hopefully) not lead to unfair discrimination.
○ We need psychological safety and shared values to gain the benefits of diversity.
○ Having representative viewpoints is important for those designing and testing our products, but the benefits are less clear for those more removed from UX. De-emphasize empathy.
○ I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other ​irrational and dangerous biases​. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.

● Prioritize intention.
○ Our focus on microaggressions and other unintentional transgressions increases our sensitivity, which is not universally positive: sensitivity increases both our tendency to take offence and our self censorship, leading to authoritarian policies. Speaking up without the fear of being harshly judged is central to psychological safety, but these practices can remove that safety by judging unintentional transgressions.
○ Microaggression training ​incorrectly and dangerously equates speech with violence​ ​and ​isn’t backed by evidence​. Be open about the science of human nature.
○ Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems. Reconsider making Unconscious Bias training mandatory for promo committees.
○ We haven’t been able to measure any effect of our Unconscious Bias training and it has the potential for overcorrecting or backlash, especially if made mandatory.
○ Some of the suggested methods of the current training (v2.3) are likely useful, but the political bias of the presentation is clear from the factual inaccuracies and the examples shown.
○ Spend more time on the ​many other types of biases​ ​besides stereotypes.
○ Stereotypes are much more ​accurate and responsive to new information​ ​than the training suggests (I’m not advocating for using stereotypes, I just pointing out the factual inaccuracy of what’s said in the training).

And in case that link goes cold, here is another which comes with Google’s reply via its Diversity Officer. And here is another with the diagrams included.

And here’s another interview.

And here is one more link to the memo.