Sunday Audition: A Volcanic Eruption of Dishonesty

Dedicated to George Will.

Just over a week ago, the Icelandic volcano of Eyjafjallajokull erupted spewing a biblical amount of dust and ash into the sky. Or did it?

It's been over a week since the alleged "eruption" and the liberal-biased media is still tumpeting it like it was the most important story of the year. Indeed, the story has pushed all else off the front page, including news that fellow Iceland's fellow Euro-nation Greece has asked for a bailout of billions of dollars.

It could be a coincidence, but it's an awfully convenient one. The last time Iceland had a massive volcanic eruption was 227 years ago. 227 years of dormancy, and Eyjafjallajokull decides that mere days before Greece is to default on an 8.2 billion dollar debt payment.

Note also the similarities between Iceland and Greece - they are both socialist states that belong to the infamous PIIGS group, they are both famous for their epic mythological (and incidentally non-Christian) poetry, they both have a long history as seafaring nations. Indeed, it is hard to imagine two countries more alike than Iceland and Greece. Neither country even has english as their first language!

And the flight ban? No planes across the entire continent due to one measly volcano? When Mount St. Helens erupted, flights were barely affected. And she erupted again the next day. How likely is it that a volcano would erupt at such an opportune time for liberals, and in such a way so as to damage world-wide economies so badly as to make Greece and the other PIIGS not seem so bad?

What of the proof in the videos and pictures posted around the world? Well if you'll notice, all of those pivtures come from one source - people in Iceland at the time. Who would have a better motive for providing false evidence than Icelanders? Perhaps the Greeks, or maybe Democrats.

Clearly, any reasonable person can see that this is all a made-up fairy tale with the aim of hiding yet another failed experiment by socialist leftists, with lies running through the mainstream media like a pyroclastic cloud of dishonesty.

A Couple of Things

First, this is related to my Dan Blatt bashing earlier.  Actually, I was picking on the commentariat there more than Dan, so this is even more important for me to get out of the way.  Please read this comment from Sonicfrog.

We're all guilty of tribalism and identity politics - even such a fair and balanced individual as myself!  I do make an effort not to lump entire groups of people together into categories so that I don't have to consider them as actual human beings - I hope my behaviour demonstrates that my efforts in that sense are earnest and honest.  Nonetheless, I tarred the entire Gat Patriot commenting community with the North Dallas Thirty brush, which is a stinky and shit-stained brush indeed.  And even though I may disagree with a lot of what Sonicfrog believes in, it was still a dickish thing to do.  So I apologize for implying that all Gay Patriot commenters are blind idiots, I really only meant the handful of vocally homophobic ones.

UPDATE  Because I'm petty.  If you're reading Dan Blatt, told you so. /UPDATE.

P.S. to Sonicfrog, maybe you're experiencing the whole individual gays versus gays as a group thing - sort of like the "how can I be racist if I have friends who are black" thing.  I dunno how that can help you, I suspect that you probably aren't ever going to read this.  Anyways, I just felt that I had to say it, perhaps I'm feeling acutely about this since I just got married last month.

Item the second.  Will be trying out the Scheduled at posting thing - I've actually completed the Sunday Audition THREE HOURS EARLY!  The DW provided the idea for it - something so ridiculous I almost pissed myself trying to type it out.

Stupid Liberals and Their Need to Control Even Our Innermost Thoughts

This one isn't really about Dr. Helen or Insty - even though the joke about therapists "enhancing soft totalitarianism" calls to me like a siren.  A siren of laughing at Insty's erectile dysfunction.

No, this is about the linked ShrinkWrapped post titled, I kid you not, The SovietizIng of American Therapy.  Damned Reds, they're worse than zombies!  Communists are gonna get you in your therapy sessions!

Haha - but Red Menace aside, what's the problem with the post?  I mean the basic idea that psychotherapists and psychoanalysts ought to keep their politics out of their work is a good one.  Uncontroversial, something that conservatives and leftsists should be able to agree on.  People coming to you for professional help in addressing mental health issues - not a good place to be talking politics or evangelizing your political stance.

Here's the thing:

(I am using Homosexuality as an example because it exemplified how our blind spots led us to become agents of social engineering; this was as problematic on the Conservative end of the spectrum as it is now on the Liberal side of the ledger. The advantage of taking a more Libertarian approach in one's Therapy as it doesn't require any particular imperative to impose one's own weltanschauung on one's patients.)

WOW.  So much of FAIL in such a small space.  Maybe too much - maybe if we take it in small bits, it'll be more manageable.

Homosexuality.  Maybe I should have quoted the couple sentences before to give context, but my artistic sense felt that them round brackets constituted a whole.  Here's the context - previously Homosexuality (you have to capitalize it!) was categorized as "a diagnosable, deviant sexual orientation".  To ShrinkWrapped's credit, this is identified as wrong, but then in a feat of contortion so breathtakingly ridiculous he states that psychiatry has over-compensated by identifying homophobia as a disorder.  SRSLY.  Apparently considering folks with an irrational hatred of gays as mentally ill is just as bad as categorizing homosexuality as some sort of disease.

But wait, there's more!  After clearly stating the issue - blind spots leading mental health professionals to engaging in social engineering - he drops the bomb, that Libertarianism is the special case exception to the rule of "no politics in therapy".

Wow.  I think I've made my point about the sheer density of wrong in that excerpt - even if the first bit required additional contextual build-up.

So, we've got EPIC-scale hypocrisy in that politicizing psychiatry is wrong for everyone except for Libertarians.  Because of the megalomaniacal I-can-do-no-wrong-ness of what must be the objective fact that Libertarianism is always good.  It's a good thing that Libertarians are immune to the Narcissist's "unconscious grandiosity".

Then there's the tragically dangerous aspect of a psychoanalyst who appears to honest believe that it's okay for him to let his politics seep into his work.  Wait, that last bit should have gone first, or maybe with a "more importantly" - because, wow.  As much as this dick is a dick that needs to be laughed at, there's real potential for harm for pateints and that's more important than mockery.

Unfortunately, I can't do anything about that - as mockery is pretty much my stock-in-trade (that and yelling PENIS).  So back to the mockery.

Remember that bit about blind spots and social engineering?  Reading that excerpt you get the sense that ShrinkWrapped is suggesting that Libertarianism isn't just non-harmful to psychiatry, but is a good foundation to build therapy on.  Surely no one can be so un-self-aware and so very very dim as to be able to embody the exact thing they are railing against.

OMFG!  It's way worse than that.  You have to read the next paragraph for proof - and there's no way I'm quoting it since I've already messed up my previous "in such a small space" claim.  Suffice to say that ShrinkWrapped doesn't believe that advocating Libertarianism to patients is good for the patients - apparently that's just a delightful side effect of defeating the forces of Totalitarianism.  That's right, using one's position as a psychiatrist to proselytize for the FYIGM lifestyle is an act of immunizing the population from authoritarian take-over.  It's not only what's best for the patient, but more imprtantly it's what's best for society.

Afterall someone has to stop lie-berals from social engineering.

There Are None So Blind As The Folks Who Comment At Gay Patriot

So anyways, I was reading some Sadly, No! and get out of the boat when I clicked on a Gay Patriot (West) link.

JennOfArk took up the gauntlet and did a smashing fine job at provoking Blatt's commentariat into a frothy mass.  Left unaddressed is her plain and simple point that there are no prominent GOPpers who actively promote gay rights.  None.  Anyways, hats off to a mighty fine job of reflecting the sun into that den of weasels and highlighting exactly how bad they are.

There is all sorts of stupid in that thread - the set of the first two comments together is like a case study in lack of self-awareness. Bruce makes an appearance @66 starting with a Heh Indeedy about the lack of proof that conservatives are homophobic bigots (PROTIP for Bruce: read the thread, you're soaking in it) followed by the claim that The most supportive person in America on gay rights is actually Dick Cheney. SRSLY. That to these folks, the reception of GOProud at CPAC shows how much the Right loves them some gays.


That there is some heavy duty stupid shit, but hats off to North Dallas Thirty for blowing them all away in terms of plain offensive ignorance and general wrongness.

And although Jennifer's probably right in that this particularly odious asshole is too stupid to merit a response - sometimes I feel compelled to let idiots drag me down to their level to beat me with experience.  Anyways, sometimes someone has to state the obvious since assuming the general populace is intelligent enough to know why ND30 is full of shit is pretty optimistic, and that's leaving out the fact that we're talking about readers of Gay Patriot.

Anywho, here's the argument - Jennifer asks what practical reason exists to deny gay folks the right to marry.  The answer is that incest, pedophilia, bestiality and polygamy are also not recognized by the state - so there.  Nyah Nyah Nyah, go home lib.

SRSLY.

So to belabour the obvious (since at least a handful of Gay Patriot readers seem to think this is a great argument) those things cited are illegal.  And not illegal in the "your marriage isn't recognized by the state" illegal, but illegal in the "Go To Jail, Do Not Collect $200" sense of the word.  Well, except for bestiality in New Jersey, but that's a twist thats too complicated to address in this post.

More importantly, at least to us crazed leftist lie-berals, there's the issue of consent.  Children and animals can not give consent.  That's not a subtle or nuanced difference.  Marriage between consenting adults who happen to be of the same gender is not the same as institutionalizing rape.  It really isn't.  As for polygamy and incest, they are both laden with power dynamic issues that make consent a difficult thing to address.  And to pre-empt the moronic rebuttal - This doesn't mean that all homosexual relationships are automatically 100% consenting.  Unless you're comparing them to people fucking children and sheep, in which case you are a dickwad asshole shitbag fuckstain.

And there's the thing - these folks hanging out at Gay Patriot are making that comparison.  They see nothing wrong with comparing a gay relationship between two consenting adults to pedophilia...in the midst of an argument about self-hating gays.  For them, the idea of a same-sex couple in a serious and meaningful relationship wanting to be acknowledged by society is as ridiculous as a blind man that wants to drive.

If I were to tell a loving heterosexual couple that they must feel about each other the same way pederastic Catholic priests feel about altar boys - I doubt that it would be received well.  In fact the assumption would be that I held some sort of personal animosity towards that couple.  Would it be an unreasonable assumption?

And yet here we have a bunch of commenters saying that gay relationships are just like the relationship between Robert Melia Jr. and his cows.

So B. Dan Blatt, as to your "challenge" - I haven't used the term self-hating to describe gay conservatives so I'm not in the target group.  In fact, like Jennifer, I'm sure that there are people who are gay, conservative and not anti-gay.  Regardless, you wanted examples self-loathing gay conservatives so allow me to link this nice long thread of anti-gay sentiment in a context of a forum for gay conservatives.

Sunday Audition: Is Our Childrens Learning?

The other day I sat in at a "kegger".  Keggers are social events hosted by college students, where ideas are traded back and forth amongst the attendees, usually accompanied with food and drink.  They are lively events and provide a great window into the lives of the newest members of our adult society.

Polls indicate that this section of the population is the most deranged amongst any demographic with the highest percentages self-reporting as Democrats and with the highest approval levels for Barack Hussein Obama.  This cohort continually polls well to the left of society in general, and so I was expecting the conversation to be dominated by socialists, anarchists and terrorist sympathizers.  Imagine my surprise when I was greeted at the door with a ten dollar "keg fee" - a beautiful example of free market principles as to how the invisible hand will find its way around arcane and convoluted liquor licensing regulations.

Another surprise was that even though I was surrounded by social elites (fully half of the people I spoke with had at least some college education) there wasn't a single sign of the condescending and judgemental pretentious-ness that all coastal ivory tower elites are all saddled with.  There was no organic arugula or Eurpoean mustard, but instead those staples of Western civilization - pizza and chicken wings.  Indeed, the conversations I had with these folks was the opposite of what I was expecting in that they seemed more concerned about the upcoming Iron Man movie or the final season of Lost than the writings of Proust or Shakespeare.

Being confronted with these unexpected twists made me question my assumptions.  Was it possible that highly educated persons other than conservative pundits could be in touch with mainstream concepts and ideals?  Could a supporter of Barack Obama be a genuinely engaging human being? One that I wouldn't want to see suffer from easily treatable health conditions until they worsened into emergency situations? Indeed, as the night wore on I found that I harboured no ill will towards any of the people there, even that one loud guy who sang along with Journey's "Don't Stop Believing".  I felt nothing but love towards all the other kegger participants and informed each of them that.

But as it turns out, all of this does already fit my world-view.  America is a centre-right nation, so it should have been no surprise to encounter centre-right behaviour.  And even though this age demographic is more liberal than any other, it's also very clear that it's the youth that are the future of the conservative movement.  This kegger was clearly an example of the rise of the right and the strong future it has considerng the support of society's youngest voters.  I am now convinced more than ever of the rightness of my views and positions.

Yes, even though my assumptions told me to expect the exact opposite of what I encountered, I can think of no greater supporting justification of those assumptions.

Wy kann Wii Speel So Goud?

First foray into multi-media bloggerating.

Nothing particularly insightful to add - just astounded by the irony at the concept that Internetertrons access could lead to better spelenigs.

Who Would Jesus Tea Party With?

So Molly Ivors linked the Dowd-y one in today's Eschaton morning thread which reminded me of HTML's Friedman shorter from a couple months ago.  Opening lines:

MoDo:  When I was in Saudi Arabia, I had tea and sweets with a group of educated and sophisticated young professional women.

Lil Tommy: I took part in a “qat chew” the other day at the home of a Yemeni official.

While the intended audience of the Sunday Auditions is Fred Hiatt, a Grey Lady job would be awful nice.  So for next week's installment (or maybe the week after that - I did mention the fact that I'm a lazy bum, right?) I'm soliciting your mom suggestions for a cozy intimate setting to head up my bizarre wander into the search for a superior moral justification of selfishness.

Sunday Audition: Nuclear Insanity

President Obama's new position on nuclear weapons is insane.

Gone are the days when everything was on the table.  The new position of not using nuclear weapons except in retalliation to nuclear attack or against rogue states is insane.  Consider the huge numbers of countries that have the operational capacity to attack the US but are not part of the Nuclear Club that are now emboldened.  Canada, for instance.  On April 6, the same day that the Nuclear Posture Review was available to the public, the Canadian Dollar surged past the US dollar for the first time since 2008 - and this time it wasn't on the strength of $120 per barrel oil.

With a single document following-up on a quadrenniel review of defense capabilities, the possibility of surgical nuclear first strikes or nuclear retaliation to unfavourable WTO dispute resolutions are gone.  Clearly Obama's Secretary of Defense is totally insane.  Only the most leftist president of all time could have nominated this communist pinko tree-hugging activist to the position.

And to add injury to even more injury to the once magnificent monument that was US nuclear overpowerment - a new bilateral arms reduction treaty with Russia.  Notice that "outlier states" such as Iran and North Korea aren't part of this treaty - they won't have to reduce their stockpiles of warheads.  Now any country that wishes can simply build and field 1,550 operational nuclear warheads and have a larger arsenal than the US.

Even worse, for the first time in histroy , this treaty provides a means to validate and verify warhead counts.  Including things like site inspections and shared telemetry.  Insanity.  What good is nuclear deterrance if you can't hide secret stockpiles from your rivals?

With Obama's removal of unilateral nuclear aggression from the table, there isn't much left to feast upon.  Sure the United States fields the most advanced an powerful military force in the world, spending as much on defense as the rest of the top 15 nations combined.  And sure the "tactical" uses for nuclear weapons such as bunker busting and overwehlming displays of power can abe met with existing conventional devices in the Massiv Ordnance family, but the sheer destructive power of nukes is not even close to being matched by anything short of sustained fire-bombing of a city - and that it is the height of barbarous inhumanity to defend nuclear weapons on the basis that they are efficient at wiping out major population centres.  Still, giving them up is pure insanity.