Net Neutrality and The Fairness Doctrine

My blood is still boiling over the FCC's Net Neutrality Vote. I haven't felt this grifted since Obamacare was voted into law. At least Obamacare was an act of Congress. Obama's royal court believes they only need Congress for the power of the purse. Everything else can be done by royal decree.

They still haven't released the contents of the new regulations. That this fact annoys me, makes me some kind of paranoid conspiracy theorist, according to the Washington Post. Blogger Brian Fung said yesterday that conservatives ought to calm down, because it's "been less than 24 hours" since the vote. Fung felt it necessary to put the word "secrecy" in scare quotes, and called demands for transparency "nonsense."

I might be able to defer to the judgement of a career bureaucrat like FCC spokesperson Kim Hart, who said, "the final document is not available until staff makes final edits." I refuse to grant deference to a rule-making process born in secrecy and opacity.

So Net Neutrality will remain a tabula rasa for awhile longer. That allows everyone to project their own desires upon the regulations. The motivations for the architects of Net Neutrality could not be clearer.

Many organizations are gloating over the FCC vote. Like Fight for the Future, who believes that "copyright and patent laws are outdated." I don't disagree, but don't think that justifies piracy.

Demand Progress is also exulting in its "victory." Demand Progress is an organization that opposes mass surveillance. Giving the federal government complete regulatory control over the internet is going to end mass surveillance how, exactly?

The incongruously named organization Free Press also did a victory lap. They flew a banner towed behind a plane around Comcast's Philadelphia headquarters Thursday. The banner's message "Comcast: Don’t Mess With the Internet. #SorryNotSorry."

Free Press was founded by an avowed Marxist named Robert McChesney, who has said that the ultimate goal of Net Neutrality is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.

This is why I have come to the conclusion that many of the supporters of Net Neutrality believe that the rules will enable a sort of backdoor Fairness Doctrine over internet content. Free Press advocates that "diverse voices" are represented in the media. That is Progressive signalling for stifling of conservative opinions.

The Fairness Doctrine was FCC policy from 1949 to 1987. It required licensed broadcasters who presented controversial public matters to do so in a way that was equitable and balanced. It is no small coincidence that Rush Limbaugh's radio show began national syndication a year after the FCC rescinded the Fairness Doctrine. Progressives have never given up the fight, one that ultimately stifles free speech.

Jihadi Jake And Elwood

Just riffing on news that Al-Shabab has urged its fanatical homicidal maniacal followers to attack shopping malls in North America. I have no idea whether this is punching up or punching down. It is intended to be satire. I will probably blog on something real later.

Dancing With The Stars Fumbles

ABC's hit show Dancing With The Stars has announced their celebrity contestants for the season beginning March 16th. There are some intriguing selections and couple head-scratchers.

Willow Shields, who played Primrose Everdeen in The Hunger Games is going to be dancing with Mark Ballas. Shields is easy on the eyes but from what I've seen of her acting work, her oeuvre is to look as helpless and vulnerable as possible, while speaking as little as possible.

Noah Galloway will be dancing with Sharna Burgess. Noah is an Iraq war veteran and double amputee. All respect for a man who volunteered to serve and sacrificed so much.

Robert Herjavec from ABC's television show Shark Tank will be dancing with Kym Johnson. Shameless cross-promotion.

Riker Lynch will be partnered with Allison Holker. Lynch was a cast member of Glee, and is cousins with Julianne and Derek Hough. And he was named after a notorious prison. Talk about appropriation of gangster culture. No, his brother is not named, "Attica."

Charlotte McKinney, the topless girl in the Carl's Jr. commercial, will be dancing with Keo Motsepe. She is the dank. Her name is evocative of radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon, whom I'm sure would not approve of McKinney's objectification.

An artist known as Redfoo will dance with Emma Slater. Redfoo's real name is Stefan Kendal Gordy. Apparently he is a rapper, singer and DJ. I never heard of him. I'm old.

Suzanne Somers will be dancing with Tony Dovolani. Gross. Are we going to hear about her daily vaginal hormone injections? All I'm going to hear while I'm watching the show with my wife will be, "she looks great. I wonder how old she is?" She's sixty-eight.

Michael Sam will be dancing with Peta Murgatroyd. Heavens to Murgatroyd! Why didn't the show's producers partner him with a man? Sam is repelled by women; how are they going to sell subliminal sexual tension? By repackaging his misogyny?

Yes I said misogyny. Misogyny was practically invented by homosexual men. In the same way misandry is the home province of lesbians.

The show will package Michael Sam as the first gay NFL player. He isn't in the NFL. He was cut by the Rams before the season began. He claimed to be totally focused on football, yet he secretly signed a contract with Oprah Winfrey to film a reality show during training camp. He was picked up by Dallas and placed on the practice squad, but was waived on October 21.

He never caught on because he's a "tweener." His position was linebacker, but he's too slow for an NFL linebacker. At 261, he is too light to move to the defensive line. Nevertheless, he contends that the reason he isn't playing in the NFL is because he is gay.

He told TMZ "I was the SEC Defensive Player of the Year last year ... so I don't think it had to do with talent." That was in college. If winning awards for college performance was a predictor of NFL ability, then Heisman Trophy winners Tim Tebow, Troy Smith, Matt Leinart and Jason White would all have Super Bowl rings by now. None of them are even on NFL rosters.

Everybody interested in social justice was rooting for Sam. His jersey became one of the biggest sellers. The only thing worse than his weak play was his behavior. Not his homosexual behavior. His being an ass.

So thank you, Dancing With The Stars, for ruining one of the few shows that my wife and I could enjoy together. If you guys needed a football player, why not Ray Rice? That guy will create some interesting chemistry with his dance partner! Here he is, demonstrating a dance routine he calls, "knocking the bitch out."

Patty Sacheen Littlefeather Arquette

The Academy Awards show has become unwatchable. They need four hours to recognize the best sound mixing, costume design and documentary short subject? I think not. And there were constant references to social justice themes. Neil Patrick Harris, from what I saw, added nothing entertaining. He was just visual reference to the gay rights movement.

What passes for the civil rights movement was a dominant theme. John Legend made a reference to Ferguson and told the crowd, "there are more black men incarcerated in this country now than there were under slavery in 1850." I won't even fact-check this one. It's a false equivalence. Those incarcerated men were subject to due process of law.

Patricia Arquette stole the show by delivering an acceptance speech in the finest tradition of Vanessa Redgrave ("Zionist hooligans") and Sacheen Littlefeather. Unfortunately this year, there was no Paddy Chayefsky to give a rebuttal. Chayefsky once rebutted Redgrave by saying, "I'm sick and tired of people exploiting the occasion of the Academy Awards for the propagation of their own personal political propaganda."

"To Miss Redgrave," he continued, "her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation, and a simple 'thank you' would have sufficed."

Arquette's missive at this year's ceremony was about economic justice, saying "It is our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America!"

I can't help but think of the irony of this demand coming so close to the heart of Hollywood, which experiences sex discrimination several orders of magnitude worse than the real world. Prediction: Patricia Arquette will spend years in the wilderness, hoping her phone will ring, but it won't.

This is all just battlespace preparation for the Hillary 2016 campaign. The New York Times is advancing the concept of the so-called motherhood gap. Juliet Lapidos used Arquette's speech as justification for an article entitled Patricia Arquette and the Motherhood Gap.

Lapidos used cherry-picked statistics offered up by Third Way. Third Way is a think tank that describes themselves as moderate and centrist but is actually made of of former Clinton staffers, former Obama staffers, and Democratic lawmakers. The statistics purport to show that "women with children are paid less, on average, relative to men than women without children."

This is a statistic that should surprise no one.

One flaw in this statistic is that it measures the total aggregate income of women with children, and compares it to the total aggregate income of men with children. Women with children are likely to form households with a male wage-earner. Why not compare relative household incomes?

Another thing these statistics ignore is the prevalence of choice and opportunity costs. Women by and large choose careers that offer flexibility, in fields that interest them. Let me know when there are more women plumbers than male, and when male social workers outnumber female.

Opportunity Cost acknowledges that resources are limited and finite. A person going to college and majoring in Gender Studies is paying a hidden cost in future earnings that will never be realized had they majored in Chemical Engineering. And a woman choosing to have children and bond with them is also paying this hidden cost. The time she spends raising her child is time that she may not be able to use to further her career. That's how gender roles work; that's how we evolved.

Do Not Let Your Kid Near This Woman

When I was growing up, my father would always tell me that he "wanted me to be happy." I always assumed that most parents want their kid to be happy.

I think of happy as being glad for what you have. If you like what you have, then you will be happy.

Sally Kohn thinks that her child's happiness is "some variation on our own lives." And because Sally Kohn is a lesbian, that is what she wants for her daughter.

"I want my kid to be gay," she writes. Does your daughter know that she will disappoint you if she isn't gay?

Kohn believes in putting her lesbian imprint upon her daughter right away. Her daughter is six. When her daughter "plays house with her stuffed koala bears as the mom and dad, we gently remind her that they could be a dad and dad." I find it hard to believe her "gentle" "reminders" aren't in the form of "they could be a mom and a mom."

Kohn has "bought every picture book featuring gay families" and has "most of the nontraditional- gender- role books as well — about the princess who likes to fight dragons and the boy who likes to wear dresses."

There is a term for adults who practice behavioral conditioning on children so that the children may fit the needs of the adult. It's known as grooming.

Kohn's core belief is vividly illustrated when she says, "It’s more widely acceptable to be gay in America today, but that’s not the same as being desirable." This is the crux of the whole gay-rights movement. They want to raise their kids without their kids being stigmatized. So homosexual marriage cannot be seen as "just as good." It has to be thought of as "better."

I hope Kohn gets to a place in her heart where whatever her daughter decides, it will be perfectly acceptable. I hope that her daughter fulfills all her natural potential, whatever that is. And I almost think she will be better off as a lesbian. She lives in a world where there are no desirable heterosexual behaviors being modeled.

Yes, I hope she becomes a lesbian. The kind who likes to fly Apache helicopters in close-air support missions for the Army. I think we already have enough activists, gender-studies professors and Title IX coordinators.

Chicago Jesus Thrice Denied

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker got a taste of what life as Republican front-runner will be like. In lieu of journalistic ethics, fairness or objectivity, mainstream outlets play a constant game of "gotcha."

If and when someone makes a statement critical of President Obama, or any protected class (but I repeat myself), the media swarms every Republican and demands they refute the statement. The person uttering the offending statement is made out to be the leader of the Republican Party. Rush Limbaugh, the leader of the Republican Party. Rudy Giuliani, leader of the Republican Party.

The behavior of the media reminds me of the way white blood cells attack foreign invaders. Protect the host! Form pus and ooze! It is noteworthy that an elevated white blood cell count is a possible sign of cancer. I will say it: The mainstream media is a cancer on the body politic.

The latest media swarm occurred in the wake of Rudy Giuliani's remarks about President Obama, saying "I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the President loves America." Rudy, may I quote a line from Glengarry Glen Ross? You're supposed to help us, not to fuck us up.

CNN called the remarks "ugly, thoughtless and divisive." In other words, just what they need! Now they can roll out their most dependable fallacy: The Fallacy of Composition. They will convince Americans that what is true of Rudy Giuliani is true of every single Republican.

Scott Walker has been tarred with the same brush. A typical headline reads Scott Walker insists he has no idea whether Obama is a Christian or not just hours after saying he doesn't know if Obama loves his country. ABC's George Stephanopoulos couldn't wipe the smirk off his face when he reported that Walker "said he doesn't know if Obama is a Christian."

The phrasing of these remarks is purposeful. "Doesn't know" equals "doubts." Walker's remarks were totally taken out of context.

Walker was repeatedly asked by the media to affirm or deny Giuliani's remarks. After laying siege for days, the most damning statement the media got from Walker was "You should ask the president what he thinks about America. I've never asked him so I don't know." Walker should have answered that he wouldn't comment on an irrelevant question. He left an opening. He'll get better.

The media legions also pestered Walker to answer whether he thought Obama was a Christian. Walker said, "You've asked me to make statements about people that I haven't had a conversation with about that. How [could] I say if I know either of you are a Christian?" Thus, "how would I know?" straw can be spun into "doubts President is a Christian" gold.

Meanwhile mainstream outlets have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to report on Clinton Global Initiative accepting millions of dollars in donations from foreign governments. The body politic appears immune to conflicts of interest, and allows Clinton to defend the contributions on the grounds that she hasn't openly declared whether she's running. "Should Secretary Clinton decide to run for office, we will continue to ensure the Foundation's policies and practices regarding support from international partners are appropriate."

Border Evaporates

The Friday afternoon news dump included an item from the New York Times. There was a ruling by Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. He ordered the Obama Administration to stop detaining women and children who were caught crossing the border illegally.

The Times frames this decision as "finding that the administration has been too hard on border enforcement." That's a good one. That's like calling Obama the Deporter-In-Chief, because Obama doesn't deport anyone. His administration counts turn-backs at the border as "deportations." I wonder if the Times is aware that Obama wants to give every illegal immigrant a work permit, social security card, and Earned Income Tax Credits (welfare).

The reason we had a surge of Central American immigrants last year is because they found a way to game the system. Just show up at the border, claim you are a refugee seeking asylum, and you are in. And it doesn't need to be for political persecution anymore. You can claim that you are a victim of domestic violence. You can claim that your gangster son's friends are after you.

Judge Boasberg waved his hand and determined that none of the 66,000 "family units" (single mothers with minor children) nor any of the 57,000 unaccompanied minors (many of them members of M13 gangs) posed any flight risk or national security risk. He ruled that anyone showing up to the border and claiming "credible fear" could be waved through with nothing more than a court date.

Judge Boasberg was the same judge who in 2012 denied the public's right to view government photos of a deceased Osama Bin Laden on national security grounds. Photos of a dead Bin Laden might harm our national security, but importing Honduran gang members won't? Boasberg was appointed by President Obama in 2011. This lawsuit by the ACLU is nothing more than jurisdiction-shopping.

The reason Boasberg gave for the order was that, in his opinion, the detentions were being done solely "for the purpose of deterring future immigration." He justified this decision based on Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson's remarks that the detention policy was devised to send a clear message to migrants, that "If you come, it is likely you will be detained and sent back."

Boasberg wants immigration authorities to consider each asylum case to determine if the migrants would present risks to public safety if they were released while their cases moved through the courts. That is impossible. Asylum requests from Central America doubled last year, and the year before that. The system is overwhelmed, and they are going to be turned loose, and we have only the hope that they don't skip their court dates.

And if a hard-core terrorist or two can pass as a minor, they'll have to be let in and released.

The people this really hurts are those who are really fleeing religious or political persecution, like foreign born CIA contractors helping the United States destroy radical Islam. No asylum for you! We have a well-coached Guatemalan woman who knew the secret phrase "credible fear" and "drug violence."

Countering Violent Extremism

The Obama Administration wrapped up its three day White House Summit On Countering Violent Extremism with remarks by the President yesterday. It was Barack Obama at his best: He has the uncanny ability to see every facet of a problem and appeal to the emotion of everyone's interest. It's just too bad that this is the best he has to offer. When situations require leadership, he offers ambiguity. When people desire resolve, he offers equivocation.

Everything about this summit invoked ambiguity and evasion. Can any two people agree on exactly what "violent extremism" means? Glenn Katon, legal director for Muslim Advocates, was on NPR yesterday, and said the whole summit played into a fallacy of "referring to specific incidents of violence committed by Muslims," because, he said, that "only about 6 percent of acts of violent extremism in this country are carried out by Muslims."

I understand why the President avoids the use of the phrase "radical Islam" in favor of "violent extremism." He said that, "Muslim communities have a responsibility" to police the behavior of its worst actors. Very true, but he never once uses the word "reform" in his speech.

Islam is a religion that is badly in need of reform. Jordan is one of our allies in the war against the Islamic State. According to Pew, seventy-one percent of Jordanians believe that Sharia law should be the law of the land. Of those, eighty-two percent believe the punishment for leaving Islam should be the death penalty.

These are the type of people who believe thieves should have a hand cut off, or adulterers stoned, or in giving religious judges jurisdiction over family or property disputes. These are societies that do not believe in Western jurisprudence and due process. Obama is deceiving himself and his listeners when he says that "the essential ingredient to real and lasting stability and progress is not less democracy; it’s more democracy."

Democracy requires the involvement of an informed electorate. How can the electorate become informed when more books are translated into Spanish every year than have been translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years?

While Obama avoids using the word "reform," he does use the word "grievance" seven times. According to Obama, there are political, economic and historical injustices being borne by Muslims. Obama said "that there’s a strain of thought that... the Muslim world has suffered historical grievances, sometimes that's accurate, that so many of the ills in the Middle East flow from a history of colonialism or conspiracy."

If colonialism alone explained violent extremism, then India and the Philippines should be major sponsors of terrorism. It seems as though Obama will never stop apologizing for colonialism, and this wording comes close to providing justification of violence that flows from a history of colonialism.

I think this is edging closer to the root source of Obama's equivocation. I'm not one of those people who thinks Obama is a secret Muslim. I don't think he's a secret anything, including Christian. I think he will drag the family to church for the cameras during election season, but that's about it. Instead I believe Obama is more informed by a fear of racism.

I see a lot of comments on Twitter and social media that equate Islamophobia with racism. It is pointless to mention to these commentators that practitioners of Islam come from all races. There is a strain of recent historical scholarship that points to World War Two propaganda as inherently racist, and implies that American prosecution of the war against the Japanese was driven by racial hatred.

They point to posters that deployed racist stereotypes to help instill fear of the Japanese and rally American popular will in the war effort against them. When Tom Hanks was being interviewed about his HBO miniseries The Pacific, he was quoted as saying "back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods.

This is Hanks' way of apologizing for American conduct during the war, a war not fought by competing ideologies, but by emphasizing racial fears. Obama also wanted to apologize for American conduct during World War Two. He wanted to visit Hiroshima and apologize for the United States use of the atomic bomb, but was dissuaded by the Japanese government. And today, our Commander in Chief says that it is a "misconception" that there we are engaged in "some sort of clash of civilizations." Then stop sending our troops into harm's way.

Everyday Sexism

I follow a Twitter account named @EverydaySexism. The account description reads, "Documenting experiences of sexism, harassment and assault to show how bad the problem is & create solidarity." NARAL, Media Matters and Amanda Marcotte also follow.

They retweeted a message from the account @sportswomenIRL that read, "today the Sunday times sports section had 84 male pictures and 4 female in its 17 pages." There are a couple of reasons why this may be obvious. I hesitate to respond on Twitter because feminists are known to be touchy and would rather block or ignore than debate.

One reason is that men's professional sports bring in virtually all the revenue. Collegiate sports have to subsidize money-losing women's sports teams with money-making men's teams. The school I attended wouldn't even field a men's football team because of Title IX.

Another reason is that a lot of female athletes are kind of gnarly. Seems like lesbians dominate most sports. And if an attractive woman is featured in a publication, it will be said she got her picture in because of her looks and not her talent. The cry of SEXISM would issue forth from aggrieved radical feminists.

@EverydaySexism also has a lot of tweets that I would describe as unwanted sexual attention. Twitter user @Imogennatalie used the hashtag to tweet that "More good news - the van driver on my walk to work approved of my outfit! Imagine my relief!" This is a moral gray area for me.

I completely empathize with this woman, and I understand that comments like this are usually unwelcome. Some women are afraid that they will be followed and sexually attacked. That is one reason I limit my attention to appreciative glances. And for me, there was always a chance that the woman would go get her big brother or male friend to beat me up.

Perhaps she would feel safer if she were carrying a concealed weapon.

Because what are the alternatives? The account @EverydaySexism and the Change.org petition they are promoting will help bring attention to the subject, and make people aware of the issue. I'm okay with that. The day when radical feminists control all aspects of society are a long way off. Until then, employing brain scans and visual stimuli to screen potential rapists out of society is just a pipe dream.

I'm not okay with criminalizing speech. There are already speech codes on campus and sexual harassment codes for the workplace. There shouldn't be in the street. If the speech crosses the line and becomes menacing, there are criminal codes for that.

What's important to remember is that human females present themselves as ready for sex every day of the year, even when post-menopausal. Human females are the only mammals capable of projecting capability for sex while not in estrus.

Radical feminism has pretty much subtracted men out of the family. It would be considered slut-shaming to point out that women's clothing choices affect how they are perceived and interacted with. It would be considered regressive to point out that a woman travelling with a male companion would cut down on unwanted sexual attention. The solution is to ask women to accept responsibility for their hard-won agency.

Voice In The Wilderness

There is a contrarian streak in me. Shades of oppositional defiant. I was going to say disorder, but that is a song by Joy Division. I don't think of myself as having a disorder, just as having an eccentric order. Something about moving independently from the herd appeals to me.

This instinct is part of what fuels my antagonism toward Net Neutrality. The Federal Communications Commission is going to hold a vote on new regulations on February 26. They have prepared a 322 page report detailing the new regulations, and they are TOP SECRET.

Every major technical publication and mainstream news operation have been enthusiastic about the regulations.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai has been a voice in the wilderness on this issue. He has read the proposed rule changes, but says the details are being kept secret. Only Chairman Wheeler can release the contents of the Net Neutrality rules.

Pai did say that "the details of the plan itself are very intrusive. It’s a massive shift in favor of government control of the Internet." Obama himself said he wanted the "strongest possible" regulations imposed on the internet. He sent Jeff Zients, his Economic Advisor, over to the FCC. Valerie Jarrett also has her fingerprints on this. Tom Power, former deputy chief technology officer for telecommunications, and Senior Advisor R. David Edelman are other partisan hacks running this operation.

Everything this administration touches turns to shit. It is alarming to hear Pai say that "White House aides have been running a parallel FCC, and they’ve persuaded the president to pick this issue as one where he would make a pronouncement." Net Neutrality is Obama's initiative. One reason they want to regulate internet service providers as common carriers is that would enable them to add FCC fees to end users' monthly bills. These fees will be used to subsidize low-income phone and internet users.

Another consequence of Net Neutrality rules is the stifling of innovation. Anyone who used a telephone before 1982 will remember the glacial pace of innovation that AT&T operated under. The government allowed AT&T to operate as a monopoly and the government set the prices. If the government decides what price an ISP can charge, they will not risk capital on new capacity.

Peter Thiel is another voice in the wilderness. "The state is not being run by scientists and engineers, it’s run by lawyers. I always wonder whether there’s some point at which there’s a regulatory arbitrage," he said. Perhaps he's referring to companies like Netflix, which stands to gain the most from Net Neutrality. Netflix consumes a third of internet bandwidth during peak hours. They would love it if no ISP can charge them more.

Forbes ran an article declaring "Net Neutrality is common sense that doesn’t really deserve or require debate." This is the same appeal to popularity that characterizes the climate change debate. Contributor Tony Bradley uses the word "greedy" to describe internet service providers three times in his article; apparently he believes an appeal to emotion will be more effective than a decent argument.

If the internet service providers like Comcast show signs of monopolistic pricing power, that is a matter for the Federal Trade Commission. Google Fiber is entering new markets and is going to disrupt a few ISP's.

Scientists Believe

The search string "scientists believe fracking causes earthquakes" returns nearly four hundred thousand Google results. The definition of the word "belief" is trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.

A synonym for the word belief is the word "faith." Whenever I hear that scientists believe something, I know that the next thing is going to be an appeal to authority. A logical fallacy. Scientists hypothesize, theorize, test and prove or disprove. What a scientist believes is besides the point.

What brought on this two-minute hate was a story on NBC News. The same network that employs Brian Williams and Al Sharpton. NBC News reports that a geophysicist thinks small earthquakes linked to fracking "are dramatically increasing the chance of bigger and dangerous quakes."

William Ellsworth of the U.S. Geological Survey puts the risk of a major quake at about a "1 in 2,500 years' chance." Ellsworth is going to publish a paper summarizing these risks, the article says. NBC news embellished the story to frighten readers into thinking Ellsworth is blaming fracking for this looming earthquake of unimaginable magnitude. He isn't quoted saying anything about fracking. He's only quoted saying that he thinks the smaller quakes are increasing the risk for a larger one.

Radical environmentalists have completely internalized the belief that fracking causes earthquakes. NBC describes Ellsworth's presentation as a summary of "human-induced earthquakes." These quakes, the article says, "are mostly in areas with energy drilling, often hydraulic fracturing, a process known as fracking." Mostly? What about the earthquake swarms in areas where fracking is forbidden?

I wonder how the radical environmentalists would respond to the news that the anti-fracking propaganda tools they are using are paid for by OPEC countries that want to destroy America's oil industry.

In January, Connecticut experienced an earthquake swarm. Dr. Alan Kafka reported that he has "not found any answer to the question why this particular spot had these earthquakes." Fracking is banned in Connecticut. Maybe the little swarms migrated from Pennsylvania?

Hydraulic fracturing has been in use since 1949. Has every earthquake since 1949 been a result of fracking? What about the quakes that didn't occur in fracking zones, like the ones in Connecticut? It's possible we don't have all the answers, and it's possible the culprit isn't fracking. I believe.

War On Campus Greeks

The Grey Lady tweeted a link to an article today, entitled, "Yale Restricts a Fraternity After Sexual Misconduct." Sexual misconduct? Oooh, salacious.

The term 'sexual misconduct' conjures images of a doctor having sex with a patient. Or an employer with an employee. Or a sitting U.S. President having sexual relations with an intern. The term implies that a person in a position of authority has had sexual activity with a subordinate.

The article states that a "fraternity has been banned from conducting on-campus activities until August 2016 as punishment for violating the university’s sexual misconduct policy at an initiation ceremony last year." Sexual misconduct at an initiation ceremoney? How obscene!

The fraternity in question is the Yale chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. The article notes that Yale's decision "comes less than a year after a University of Connecticut chapter of the same fraternity was banned from that campus for five years over hazing allegations." This is guilt-by-association, an example of the fallacy of composition. Come on, New York Times, tell us what they did! Get to the smut!

Yale will not say specifically how members violated the school's sexual misconduct policy. The fraternity admitted that "two members made inappropriate comments about a female student in the presence of other members."

That's it? "Inappropriate comments?" A college aged male said something about a female student's breasts? It seems the Greeks are still being ruled by Draco, the "Greek statesman who laid down a code of laws for Athens 621 B.C.E. that mandated death as punishment for minor crimes." It is from Draco that the term "Draconian" is derived from. It means in a general sense, a severe punishment for a minor crime.

I hate that term, "inappropriate." It's like how the word "toxic" is being used in argumentative essays. It is just an appeal to emotion.

Yale publishes a semi-annual report on sexual misconduct. In its most recent report, it said it "punished a student organization for two years after investigating complaints of sexual harassment and retaliation." Members of the group, "which is not named, 'created a hostile environment.'" More guilt-by association and composition fallacy. Besides, life itself is a "hostile environment."

The article further indicts the Greek system, stating that "in 2011, a different Yale fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, received a five-year ban after members shouted sexually charged chants, including “No means yes,” on a residential quadrangle."

Five year ban. For speech. On a college campus. If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then we're doomed.

Moral March Madness

The hashtag #MoralMarch is trending right now on Twitter. I noticed the hashtag because I follow Cecile Richards, the President of Planned Parenthood. She has been tweeting all morning, like the following: "No better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than marching for #LoveAndJustice at the #MoralMarch in Raleigh! @PPSATNC"

We are truly through the looking glass when the nation's largest abortion provider is marching under the banner of morality.

It's also a case of defining deviancy down. Former Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote that "we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the "normal" level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard."

Daniel Patrick Moynihan would not be welcome in today's Democratic Party. This is the same party that voted any references to God out of the party platform at the 2012 National Convention.

Moynihan also wrote about the disintegration of the black nuclear family. He repeatedly said, "about a quarter of Negro families are headed by women. The divorce rate is about 2 1/2 times what it is [compared with whites]. The number of fatherless children keeps growing." And it's a lot worse now. Nearly three quarters of black children are born into fatherless households.

That's some Great Society you built there.

The impetus behind #MoralMarch is the head of the North Carolina NAACP, Reverend William Barber II, who started #Moral Mondays. The American Prospect notes that he quotes Isaiah 10, saying, "Woe unto those who legislate evil." Then why bring Planned Parenthood to the party? Has the good Reverend never heard of the biblical injunction against murder?

#MoralMarch is just today's incarnation of the Occupy Movement, and PPUSA brings the cash and organizing muscle. This is the new Democrat coalition. #MoralMarch is moving "beyond its NAACP base and garnering support from labor, immigrant, environmental, LGBT, and women’s organizations." By "environmental," they really mean Malthusians who want to depopulate the earth. And by "women's organizations," they mean abortion absolutists who are helping them get there. In 2012, there were more black babies aborted than born in New York City.

Featured prominently in The American Prospect's article is a woman named Crystal Price, who is participating with one of the sponsors, Raise Up. Raise Up is an organization that wants to raise the minimum wage. Price is involved because she is a fast-food worker with two children and cervical cancer. "I don’t have Medicaid," she wept. Considering the Medicaid income cutoff without the Obamacare expansion is more than $23,500 for a family of four, I find it hard to believe she wouldn't qualify.

Even if she doesn't have a husband, which is likely, the income cutoff is still more than $19,000. Even if her two children are no longer dependents, which is possible since she is 38, she would have to work 40 hour weeks every week of the year, and she would be over the cutoff by four hundred dollars. You know what, Crystal, you could always move to Virginia. States being the laboratories of democracy and all that.

She might want to take the Medicaid expansion up with President Obama. States don't want to expand Medicaid because while the initial 100% federal match rate for the expansion population is very tempting, the match rate starts to decline in three years and falls to 90% by 2020. The first three years of one hundred percent matching funds is the carrot; the stick was the threat of the state losing all federal Medicaid funds. Thankfully, the Roberts court struck that down.

Besides, Crystal, I wouldn't wish Medicaid on my worst enemy. Study after study shows that Medicaid outcomes are worse than having no insurance coverage at all.

Am I Crazy?

Am I crazy, or is Lloyd Braun selling Hartford Insurance for AARP?

I just saw an advertisement for Hartford Insurance on television. They are using Matt McCoy as their spokesman. The actor that portrayed Seinfeld's crazy friend Lloyd Braun. He is in his late fifties now.

I know that Lloyd Braun is an imaginary character, and Matt McCoy is a real person, but I just cannot separate them in my mind. It is a little delusional for Hartford to not know that nearly every viewer will make the same unconscious connection. That's the power of popular culture for you. That's why nearly everybody thinks Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house. It wasn't Palin; it was Tina Fey.

AARP as a brand has mostly avoided fallout from their political activities. Any senior who is a member is just bananas.

AARP was one of the biggest advocates for the passage of Obamacare. Seniors should have been burning their AARP cards in the street, because Obamacare cut $716 billion from Medicare to help pay for $1.9 trillion worth of coverage expansion for low-income Americans. That's nutty.

AARP has always been a stakeholder in Obamacare. The crony capitalism part is that Obamacare forces seniors out of Medicare Advantage, and onto traditional Medicare. To cover gaps in coverage, these seniors will have to supplement Medicare with Medigap insurance. If you guessed that AARP receives royalties from Medigap insurance, then you are not a kook.

Obamacare is like the old pantomime horse of vaudeville. The pantomime horse is a horse costume in which one actor wears the head and shoulders, and the other actor wears the rear end. Obamacare is the ass-end of the private system (insurance) stitched to the ass-end of the public system (Medicare). As Mark Steyn wrote, "Obamacare stitches together the rear ends of two pantomime horses and attempts to ride it to the sunlit uplands."

I look forward to viewing the lost episode of Seinfeld, where Lloyd Braun and George Costanza compete to see who can sell more insurance policies mandating pregnancy coverage to men. Serenity Now!

Obama Derangement Syndrome

I admit it. I've got it bad. Everything the President does irritates me. The latest gimmick of his is a promotional video at Buzzfeed, entitled Things Everybody Does But Doesn't Talk About, Featuring President Obama. The video is an attempt to get young people to sign up for Obamacare.

He checks himself out in the mirror... He has time for this, but can only manage to attend daily intelligence briefings when he feels like it?

And makes funny faces... Is there anybody out there who hasn't scraped the Obama bumper sticker off their Prius in disgust yet?

He tries out new looks... Obama wearing sunglasses, draws an imaginary peacemaker on the reflection. This is going to get young people to sign up for Obamacare? Why not try the honest approach. Hey kid, sign up for insurance with mandated coverage you don't need. Then we can keep grandma alive, instead of pulling the plug. We'll make sure she gets the kidney surgery instead of being left to die in a hospital corridor.

Maybe just tell them that the IRS will confiscate their income tax refund if they don't sign up. No Beats for you. Or do millennials prefer being patronized? If a millennial wants an unpaid internship at Huffington Post, they have to submit their college transcripts. But Obama's are under seal, a state secret. These same millennials will be told that Scott Walker is unqualified to be chief executive, because he is a semester short of a college degree.

He busts out a selfie stick to get the perfect angle... President Selfie. The range of expressions he goes through before getting to his smile reveals a face that is actually alarming. This is a man who is completely non-functional as head of government. He would fit better in a head of state role, a ceremonial role. That way he can give interviews to the Froot Loops Lady without constantly sullying the dignity of the office.

Today I thought a lot about why the President is asking Congress for Authorization of Military Force against ISIS. It doesn't compute. The President is given broad latitude for unilateral military action to defend the country. We have been conducting airstrikes in the region for six months.

This President has granted himself the power to unconstitutionally make and enforce laws of his choosing, such as deferring deportations of people in the country illegally. He wants to use the FCC to seize control of the internet under the guise of "net neutrality." He wants to use the EPA to regulate carbon out of existence. He will try to use the FEC to regulate political speech on the internet.

But he wants Congress to authorize powers he already has? Because Kayla Mueller got killed?

This is the time to step back and ask ourselves if we belong there in the first place. When Obama took office, we could have dictated whatever Status of Forces Agreement we wanted with the government of Iraq. But no, he wanted to be the one to bring the troops home. Now they are going back to the Levant, our soldiers, for what, exactly? Forward observers for Iranian warplanes?

Martyr Made To Order

As I drove to work this morning, a news reader delivered words written by Kayla Mueller to her family. Her words made me sad, as they seemed to convey surrender to God's will, having flowed from a graceful state of belonging to God. It read, in part, "I have surrendered myself to our creator. I have learned that even in prison, one can be free."

The world is seemingly pouring out with grief in the wake of her death. President Obama issued a statement that read, in part, "Michelle and I convey our deepest condolences to Kayla’s family... the country shares in their grief. Kayla represents what is best about America."

Sometime during the day, the name Rachel Corrie popped into my head, and I thought of similarities between her and Kayla. Rachel Corrie was also in her mid-twenties when she died, in a land far away from home. I thought that was the only similarity. I was wrong.

Both Rachel and Kayla were both, at one time, members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). ISM is portrayed as a peace movement on behalf of the Palestinian people, and believers in non-violence. Their website lists goals including the principle of being "non-violent in our actions that affect others." But ISM founder Adam Shapiro has been quoted saying of suicide bombers, "This is no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation. And we are certain that if these men were killed during such an action, they would be considered shaheed Allah(martyrs)." He has also written that "we accept that Palestinians have a right to resist with arms."

Thus I have to laugh when I see Rachel Corrie being referred to as a "peace activist." She threw herself in front of an Israeli bulldozer to martyr herself, after getting tired of burning American flags in Gaza. For this her parents were presented a framed picture of her, by Yassar Arafat, engineer of the second intifada.

Kayla Mueller has been described in similar glowing terms. She has been called an "aid worker." For her efforts, she has been honored by ISM, describing her volunteer time with Palestinians as an effort "against the confiscation of their lands due to Israel’s illegal annexation wall and settlements."

Many people abandon mis-guided ideals of their youth when adulthood comes. And Kayla was highly idealistic, volunteering with, among others, Big Brothers and Sisters, at an AIDS clinic, on behalf of African refugees to Israel, and finally, the organization Support To Life.

So it's hard to hate Kayla, and I don't. Perhaps had she advanced in years she would have come to see both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I do feel that she was used by people for their own aims at certain times in her life. People who would think nothing of asking her to step in front of a bulldozer. And her story is now being appropriated by those with their own agenda. Those who would murder her and stage her death as a result of a "Jordanian airstrike."

The American people are in the process of beatifying her. Maybe some in the media industrial complex will take some interest in the blogs she wrote while in "occupied" East Jerusalem. President Obama today is asking Congress for an Authorization of Military Force against ISIS. If we are building edifices that are to represent us, the least we can do is make sure they can stand up to scrutiny.

Obamanomics

There is plenty of evidence indicative of President Obama's socialist disposition. All one has to do at look at his policy preferences. One such policy is his plan to "encourage" American companies to repatriate their foreign profits.

Memo to Bloomberg editors: "encouragement" is certainly a creative way to phrase it. The repatriation the President wants is not voluntary. It's mandatory.

It's also confiscatory, in the true, Marxist sense of the word. The repatriation plan betrays the core belief of committed socialists. It isn't really your money. It's the government's money, that in their munificence, have deigned to let you keep.

These profits represent returns on investment in foreign countries. As capital, it should be reinvested where it most maximizes future profits. Maybe the corporation will decide that it is best to leave it in the jurisdiction in which it originated, and invest it there. Obama's plan removes that freedom of choice from the company, imposing a one-time 14 percent tax on current profits outside the U.S.

To help sell this confiscation, the President claims the revenues will be used for infrastructure projects.

Bloomberg's article estimates that General Electric is the American corporation with the largest pile of foreign profits. My bullshit detector leads me to believe that a crony capitalist like G.E. would only support this plan if they are first in line for no-bid "shovel-ready" projects.

Foreign profits of American companies should be taxed at no more than five percent, and it should be conditional on repatriation. There are those who believe that even Obama's plan is too generous. They claim it "benefits the worst tax dodgers."

Their arguments against such a "lenient" repatriation is that this money will be used for stock buy-backs, and end up "hiking the bonuses of the executive suite." That might certainly be true, and executives might get bonuses. That doesn't make me envious, though. My mind doesn't really work that way.

Stock buy-backs are a perfectly justifiable use of repatriated profits. A buy-back would probably increase the price per share. Any foreign profits "lost" by the government will be claimed eventually, in the form of taxes on capital gains and dividends.

And the money is put to more productive uses than the government would. When the equity of a company increases, it increases the amount of debt that company can assume to fund expansion. This risk-taking has positive economic multipliers. Repairing a bridge is important, but it doesn't create an economic multiplier.

Patriarchy In The Automobile Aftermarket

Editor's Note: From time to time, this blog will feature the well-known feminist scholar, Katrina De Las Hondas, as guest contributor. De Las Hondas is a transitioning (we're not sure in which direction) mixed-race individual living in the greater Los Angeles area. She deleted her Twitter account after being forced to flee her home. Her contributions will be called Snatches of Feminist Discourse.

Katrina De Las Hondas is a pseudonym -ed.

Today's Snatches of Feminist Discourse subject is the distressing Patriarchy at work in the automobile aftermarket. This Patriarchy often takes the form of unconscious bias.

I am always hyper-vigilant for signs of the Patriarchy. Today I saw an advertisement for Safelite Auto Glass Repair Service on television. The advertisement uses the narrative device of the damsel in distress to sell their service. A hypothetical woman is on her way to work, but first she has to drop her child off at day-care. She notices a crack in her windshield. This is the crisis that propels the narrative forward.

The woman telephones the Safelite Corporation, and the technician appears, seeminingly out of nowhere, to rescue our helpless damsel. And this technician is a male. Straight out of Patriarchy central casting, too, I might add. He drives up in a car, which represents his gallant steed. He doesn't have a suit of shining armor, but he does have facial hair, all the way down to his neck. I'm just surprised that this neckbeard wasn't wearing a fedora.

I would have liked this commercial to have a different narrative, one in which the woman fixes the broken windshield herself. Short of that, why not have, for example, a transitioning woman of color be the service technician. Isn't Safelite merely reinforcing the harmful stereotype that women aren't good at fixing cars?

This bias begins in high school, where the focus seems to be more on indulging those with mechanical ability rather than nurturing potential talent. The image of the stereotypical automobile technician hasn't changed in the last one hundred years. It's always a male, and usually a white male. There is a glass ceiling to break when it comes to being considered exceptional, especially for minorities. These are people who do not have access to a car.

This bias is acted out thousands of times every day in automobile repair shops. Technicians routinely tack on unnecessary services to the bill of those who are not genius-level automobile experts. These people are usually women.

I reached out to the Safelite Corporation by clicking on their website, and looking at employment opportunities. The cultural bias is right out in the open. They require the "ability to operate various hand and power tools and equipment." Patriarchy. Women are systematically excluded from shop class. They also require the "ability to lift and carry large, heavy (up to 75 lbs.) objects." This requirement blatantly favors men over women.

Diversity benefits everyone. Safelite, think how that woman feels when the technician rolls up to her home, possibly wearing a fedora? As he assaults her with his eyes, how can the woman feel safe in her own driveway, knowing that the guy is raping her in his imagination? If Safelite wants to be an inclusive corporation that respects female empowerment, they must begin a diversity program at once.

Abolish The I.R.S.

According to a Gallup poll taken in 2014, forty-one percent of people feel that the Internal Revenue Service is doing an "excellent" or "good" job. Another 29% believe the agency is doing a "fair" job. Only 27% believe they are doing a "poor" job. Maybe they are mostly saying nice things because they are afraid of the agency's SWAT team.

I will grant that the I.R.S. does a good job, in the sense that they do the best with what they've got. Anyone with real talent works for the private sector.

Or increasingly, in the underground economy. It is estimated that there is as much as two trillion dollars in off-the-books economic activity every year. That is because taxes are too high, and too complicated to figure out. The estimated loss of tax by the shadow economy is in the neighborhood of $500 billion a year.

I do my own taxes, because I take the standard deduction. I usually use TurboTax, and I am always done with state and federal in about an hour. I just hope that somebody hasn't already fraudulently claimed my state tax refund. The longer you wait to file, the greater the chance.

Perhaps the fraud rate would be reduced if filers of fraudulent returns weren't able to have their "refunds" sent to untraceable pre-paid debit cards.

Fraudulent state returns are actually the least of the documented problems plaguing the agency, and its mission to fairly enforce the tax code. One of the biggest scams now going is the abuse of the Earned Income Tax Credit. The Treasury Department estimates 22 to 26 percent of EITC payments were issued improperly in Fiscal Year 2013. The dollar value of these improper payments was estimated to be between $13.3 billion and $15.6 billion. I have never read a news story of anyone facing prosecution for this crime.

E.I.T.C. fraud will only get bigger, because, thanks to President Obama, you don't even have to be a United States citizen. Obama's deferred action on illegal immigrants means that they get social security cards and can use them to file for E.I.T.C. refunds. They can even file amended returns for three previous years. This is the President's amnesty bonus.

Perhaps the fraud would decrease if we simplified the tax code. Most taxpayers receive their health insurance through their employer. This is a relic of World War Two wage and price controls. Employers couldn't lure new employees with a higher wage, so they were forced to offer health packages. This vestigal benefit is what allowed a law like Obamacare to be wrought upon us. This tax exclusion costs over $200 billion a year.

Another $100 billion a year goes for the mortgage interest deduction. Abolish it. Grandfather in existing mortgages and abolish it going forward. I don't believe any tax deductions are sacred cows, even the deduction for charitable giving. Too often, the tax code is used to sanction politically favored groups.

The I.R.S. overwhelmingly favors Democratic causes and candidates. Nearly two-thirds of campaign contributions from I.R.S. employees go to Democrats. And I.R.S. employees are represented by The National Treasury Employees Union. The N.T.E.U. operates a political action committee that allocates ninety-six percent of its donations to help elect Democrats.

The collusion between public sector employee unions and the lawmakers they elect is nothing short of a criminal enterprise. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt opposed public employee unions, saying, "The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."

The Obama Doctrine

President Obama has released his 2015 National Security Strategy. Helpfully, National Security Adviser Susan Rice informed Administration critics that the United States does not face any existential threats. She "argued that al Qaeda's core has been decimated." That means that their core has been reduced by ten percent. Susan Rice is proof that in this Administration, people fail up.

Some highlights of the report:

"We are currently testing whether it is possible to achieve a comprehensive resolution to assure the international community that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful." We are using advanced marketing theory, and focus groups, to determine which lie will be most convincing.

"...pursuing a diplomatic effort that has already stopped the progress of Iran’s nuclear program and rolled it back in key respects." Which respects, exactly? Iran has produced an ICBM. The only reason Iran wants an ICBM is to put a nuclear payload on top of it.

"We have made clear Iran must meet its international obligations and demonstrate its nuclear program is entirely peaceful." Iran is sitting on top of one of the world's largest proven oil reserves. They don't need to build nuclear reactors to boil water. And there is no reason other than weapons production for the enrichment of uranium past three percent. Iran has stockpiles of 20 percent enriched uranium.

"Our preference is to achieve a comprehensive and verifiable deal that assures Iran’s nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes." How are we going to achieve this "verification?" U.S. inspectors? Or will Rouhani and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pinky-swear with Susan Rice?

Other than wishful thinking about Iran, the report is fanciful, self-congratulatory, and absurd.

"We will be a champion for communities that are too frequently vulnerable to violence, abuse, and neglect—such as ethnic and religious minorities; people with disabilities; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender." Bruce, excuse me, Belinda Jenner will be our worldwide ambassador to facilitate transitioning teens.

"As part of our effort to promote a fully democratic hemisphere, we will advance our new opening to Cuba in a way that most effectively promotes the ability of the Cuban people to determine their future freely." By turning Guantanamo prison over to the Cuban government, so they can confine journalists, political dissidents, and other troublemakers there.

"Equally, we stand by the citizens of countries where the full exercise of democracy is at risk, such as
Venezuela." Venezuela is not "at risk," it is a completely failed state. Their foreign currency reserves are nearing zero because of low oil prices. For two years citizens have been lucky to wipe their asses with real toilet paper, because of price controls and subsequent shortages. Now, even basic medical supplies are running low, and people are dying.

"We... have prohibited so-called enhanced interrogation techniques that were contrary to American values." Your values. Not mine, and I'm not alone. More than half of Americans believe enhanced interrogation was justified.

The only time Islam is mentioned is in the phrase, "We reject the lie that America and its allies are at war with Islam." Strawman. We are not sending soldiers off to fight a religion. We are at war with radical Islam, or Islamism, or Islamic supremacy, or equivalent terminology. We are sending soldiers to fight those who wage war in the name of Islam.

"Climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security." There is a superstorm lurking off the coast, gathering strength, and unless we tax carbon and use the EPA to regulate coal fired power plants out of existence, it will kill us all.

"As the world’s two largest emitters, the United States and China reached a landmark agreement to take
significant action to reduce carbon pollution." The United States will voluntarily lower emissions to twenty five percent below 2005 levels. China will do nothing until 2030. This is their landmark agreement.

Is Motherhood A Disability?

An article by Rebecca Traister in the New Republic caught my eye. As an aside from the forthcoming analysis, I do enjoy her writing style and I am charmed by the fact that she is a young mother. I revere motherhood and believe everybody should be really nice and indulgent of pregnant women and young mothers.

Traister cites a study by "University of Massachusetts sociologist Michelle Budig [who] has found that, on average, an American woman’s earnings decrease by 4 percent for every child that she bears." Easy solution: require that all American women become sociologists.

Her problem with the Family and Medical Leave Act is that it "merely protects her job for twelve weeks of unpaid leave, and then, only if she has worked at her company for at least a year." One year is the "baseline period." A one-year baseline period is also required to qualify for unemployment benefits. And that only covers employees who are unemployed through "no fault of their own." Becoming pregnant is often volitional.

She says she finds herself "cringing at the use of 'disability insurance' by some companies in some states as a means to patch together paid time off." This represents a type of feminism, "protectionist feminism," that she claims to usually views with aversion. Her very next example is of UPS worker Peggy Young, who became pregnant, was advised by her doctor to only accept light duties, and was placed on unpaid leave.

I don't feel that Peggy Young was treated with perfect fairness. But to afford her protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act is not right, either. Traister seems to think ADA protection is warranted, though, writing that "Young’s co-workers who had been injured on the job were protected from this kind of treatment by the Americans with Disabilities Act. She was not."

Traister laments the difficulty of waiting tables "when suddenly you’re hit by a wave of fatigue so intense that it feels as if your bones may have melted." Remind me to ask the captain of my next flight whether she is pregnant.

Traister comments that we live "in a country that venerates motherhood but in practice accords it zero economic value." Wrong. The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Additional Child Tax Credit cost taxpayers almost $90 billion in 2013. That doesn't count untaxed benefits like TANF, WIC, and Medicaid.

She's suspicious about companies like Google, Apple, Reddit, and Facebook, who have instituted "paid leave for mothers and fathers, but also baby bonuses, child care credits, subsidized fertility treatments, and egg-freezing." What, no sperm freezing? She claims many Americans are anxious about this because "incentives [may be] part of a plan to lure workers into becoming capitalist tech drones?" How many times can Rebecca Traister change her mind - sexist trigger warning missing - in a single article?

"The United States and its corporate structures were built with one kind of worker—frankly, with one kind of citizen—in mind. That citizen wage-earner was a white man." Inevitably invoking white male supremacy in a feminist argument must be some kind of Progressive "Godwin's Law."

"This weakness, she writes, is being addressed by employers faster than it is being addressed by Congress, [and] contributes to the widening of the class chasm." Opinion disguised as fact, and appeal to authority. The very last thing we need is more regulation of the workplace. Our workers must compete with workers all over our interconnected world. Why hamstring employers by making it yet more expensive to add a female labor input?

Speaking of competition, Traister includes a graph that helps visualize disparities in the way different countries compensate pregnant women. Entitled, How Does The U.S. Compare To Other Countries In Guaranteed Paid Maternity Leave? I was very surprised that the usual 'social democratic' nations of Western Europe were not included. When a Progressive argues that the U.S. is behind another country, in infant mortality or universal health care, they always compare us to Denmark or Finland or Sweden.

But this list is topped by Russia, followed by Lithuania, and not far behind them, Japan. There is a very good reason these countries are subsidizing pregnancy. They are all in demographic death spirals. They all face the inverted pyramid, in which the benefits of the elderly are being shouldered by fewer and fewer young workers. Their birthrate has fallen so far below replacement level, that they would put female libido compounds in the water supply if they thought it would work.

Right below Lithuania are Greece and Turkey. I wouldn't want to be a citizen of either country right now. Greece is in an economic death spiral, and will be defaulting within two years. Turkey is turning away from secularism, and turning toward sharia law. I don't think Rebecca would want her daughter to grow up in Turkey.

Brian Williams Remembers

I had a lot of laughs yesterday following the #BrianWilliamsMisremembers Twitter hashtag. One of my favorite comments was from el Sooper (@SooperMexican) who tweeted, "And as I died I said to Matt Damon, 'EARN THIS!!'"

It is entertaining to make fun of Williams, who, in my opinion, is a mendacious Democrat meme-bot masquerading as a trusted news anchor. The bias is never explicit, and thus never has to be defended as opinion. It does take an ear attuned to subtle bigotry, such as when he said, in 2012, "Who woke up in the Republican Party one day recently and said, ‘I know what, let’s go after, let’s go after reproductive rights in the United States’? What was that about?"

When Williams talks like this, I see it as in-group signaling. The group he wants to belong to are all elite, East-coast, progressive, believers in the role of the state as protectors against ourselves. Plus he works at NBC, well known for doctinaire social justice. The network that employs known tax cheat Al Sharpton.

NBC's Today Show once ran an edited version of George Zimmerman's 911 call, so that viewers would believe he told dispatchers, "This guy looks like he's up to no good... he looks black." Zimmerman actually told the dispatcher, "This guy looks like he's up to no good. Or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about." The next comment in the sequence is by the dispatcher, who asks, "OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?"

Somebody tell NBC that the narrative should match the record. If it doesn't, it's a lie.

Now Williams has been caught in a lie, the lie of stolen valor. In 2013, he went on the Late Show with David Letterman, and repeated the lie. It was a big thing in 2003 for a reporter to "embed" with infantry soldiers. The embedded journalist got the vicarious thrill of being in combat, without being in any danger. They probably had a squad assigned to Williams to ensure he wouldn't experience the slightest discomfort. But that's not the way Brian Williams remembers.

He told Letterman, "I like to go out on patrol." For what, a juice bar that serves arugula and wheat grass?

"We were north of the invasion. We were the northern-most Americans in Iraq. Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire, including the one I was in. We were stuck, four birds in the middle of the desert." The situation was grim, we were surrounded, and we were out of ammunition. At dawn, the commander instructed us to fix bayonets and prepare to charge the enemy fortifications.

"Our late friend Richard Bloom was travelling in a tank across the countryside." Williams was envious of Bloom, who suffered an aneurysm, because he got to embed with a tank crew.

Williams' apology is really a non-apology. An I'm-sorry-you-were-offended non-apology. "I made a mistake in recalling the events of twelve years ago." It was a really, really, really long time ago.

"I want to apologize. I said I was travelling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG fire, I was instead in a following aircraft." The following aircraft was one hour and a hundred klicks behind the stricken warbird.

"It was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran." My intentions were pure, therefore, I am blameless.

The unearned virtue of good intentions. Brian Williams Remembers.

Net Neutrality

It's easy for me to decide how I regard the FCC's proposed net neutrality regulations. All I need to do is see who is in favor of them. Beyond the fact that the term "net neutrality" is an appropriation of language for political reasons, much like "marriage equality."

Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted that she was "optimistic about strong new rules to protect a free & open Internet, but nothing is official until the FCC votes." The FCC is made up of three Democrats and two Republicans. We know how they are going to vote.

Mozilla Corp tweeted, "Big news on #NetNeutrality today. 21 days left to speak out and guarantee victory." Mozilla is a social justice organization masquerading as a tech company.

So is Wired Magazine. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler made his announcement in an op-ed in today's Wired. It reads like a petulant missive from a jilted former lover. "I personally learned the importance of open networks the hard way," he writes. "NABU was delivering service at the then-blazing speed of 1.5 megabits per second...but NABU went broke while AOL became very successful."

Ars Technica is another publication that cloaks its social justice activism with a nerdy gloss. They tweeted today that "Verizon is mad that its huge net neutrality gamble backfired." In other words, a taunting, "You mad, bro?"

I'm no fan of my cable company, or my cell phone carrier. But I'm not under the mistaken impression that there is no competition. I can take my television to AT&T and there are several wireless carriers to choose from. Why shouldn't a carrier be able to charge Netflix more for traffic prioritization? They have to build out capacity.

The Daily Beast published an article last year about Net Neutrality. Entitled, "Killing Net Neutrality Kills The Dreams of Young Entrepreneurs." Not much nuance there. Columnist Joshua Dubois tells the imaginary story of "a young, Black, (yes black was capitalized) male 6th grader... from the far west side of Detroit." His dream of starting a "radical new video service," would be stillborn because "he'll have to pay Comcast or Verizon an exorbitant fee."

The key word there is "service." What the young techie is engineering is a web service. No different from Wikipedia. If Wikipedia added a widget that offered a "radical new video service," it would still not be considered a utility.

The reason NABU failed was that they didn't have a way to get their users that last mile. Under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, any common carrier would have been compelled to allow NABU access to their network. All they would have needed was a NABU-compliant modem. NABU's failure tells us nothing about traffic prioritization.

All Title II common carrier regulation will ensure is lower investment in carrier infrastructure, and the heavy hand of government involved in regulating the internet. Seems to be a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Yes, Senator Cruz, Net Neutrality is the "Obamacare For The Internet."

Frozen Eggs and Feet of Clay

New York Magazine published an article by Jillian Dunham entitled, The Real Reason Women Freeze Their Eggs. Dunham is a childless, thirty-seven-year old, successful New York professional woman. This is a woman who should have children preparing to leave the nest. Instead she is meeting with doctors, trying to harvest whatever wisps of fertility she may have left.

In short, this woman is a failure at being a woman.

In the most telling exchange in the article, her doctor tells her, "It isn’t you. All day long, I see patients like you. You’re smart, beautiful, accomplished, nice. It makes no sense. I go home to my wife and I say, "There’s something wrong with the men in this generation. They won’t grow up.'"

She has already come to this conclusion. Her doctor is just confirming her bias. Earlier, she writes of a beautiful, sardonic friend who got dumped, and realizes that "none of us were responsible for the fact that so many men see relationships as a giant albatross."

Interesting that she uses the analogy of the albatross. In Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the albatross follows the ship and is considered a good omen. When the captain kills the albatross with a bow, the bird becomes an omen of misfortune and is hung around his neck.

Dunham had her man in the bag, and she blew it. "Matt asked me to marry him..." but "the ring stayed in my jewelry box." That is the anecdote that symbolizes her albatross.

Men can sense desperation, and in her case it clings like fog clings to the moors. It emanates a fragrance of shame and fear, and gives men a reason to be "cagey," a word she uses twice. I'm going to infer that Dunham is the one who is a "commitment-phobe." She mentions the death of her mother, but doesn't mention her father once in the article. This is a very important developmental relationship, and it isn't mentioned. The omission is glaring.

Perhaps her mother divorced when she was very young. The freedoms secured by her feminist forebears, like abortion and no-fault divorce, were once seen as good omens. These desiccated birds are now hung about her neck and everyone can see her humiliation.

Perhaps her mother divorced, and was given full custody of her. Her father could only visit on weekends, but he was compelled by the court to pay child support every two weeks to the mother. Her mother, knowing this, traded this convenience for the relative inconvenience of having a man around to tend to. This feminist freedom was once seen to be a good omen. Now her daughter is the one carrying around this mangy menage of beak and feathers.

Well done, sister suffragette!

It strikes me that when a woman is in her twenties, she has a financial incentive to sell her eggs. It's a seller's market. A woman in her late thirties is buying time for her own eggs. For what? In ten years, when she finally settles for someone, and they go to the doctor to hopefully inject an embryo, what kind of embryo will it be? Eggs with freezer burn married to semen from an old guy with the world's biggest U-Porn collection?

I hope she likes cats.