• The IRS aggressively scrutinizing conservative 501(c)(4) applicants merely because they had “Tea Party” or “Patriots” in the name.
• DOJ seized all the private records of AP journalists for who knows what reason.
• The EPA waives FOIA fees for liberal groups, but hounds conservative/libertarian groups for their money, a clear declaration of bias.
• “Most transparent administration in history” releases document that is completely, 100%, redacted.
• Whatever the heck happened in Benghazi.
• Fast and Furious, which, while old, is still a travesty.
• The NDAA allowing for indefinite detention.
• Drones.
• And the most outrageous comment ever, when President Obama got up in front of a commencement crowd and told students to “reject those voices” calling out “tyranny.”

Of course, there are a number of liberals who are trying to defend the president and his administration (such as Jeffrey Toobin from the New Yorker), but for once it seems that the cloak has come off and the emperor has no clothes. Everywhere people are outraged over this.

What will happen? I don’t know. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that this is a fairly tyrannical administration. I wasn’t alive during Nixon so I can’t compare. But it seems awful. And it’s about the same as George W. Bush.

I hope this finally leads to some improvement. The dark times we’re facing now may be a forge through which we will tempered into something much greater. I can hope, at any rate. Even if all it does is make the American public more skeptical of the government, more distrustful of it, that will be a fantastic first step.

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/05/07/jeremy-kolassa/unequal-treaty

Read it, and all the others!

Who's tweeting about Benghazi? Rich, middle-aged men and Chick-fil-A lovers http://t.co/voXoD4lsWY

Wednesday, May 8, 2013 12:42 pm via SocialFlowReplyRetweetFavorite

@washingtonpost

Washington Post

That’s just wrong, and WaPo knows it. Saying that only “Rich, middle-aged men” and people who eat at Chick-Fil-A care about four dead foreign service officers is just disgraceful. There are tons of Americans out there who care that the government let four diplomats die for what seem to be purely political reasons…and instead of honing in on that, the Washington Post is disgracefully putting up flak.

That’s not to say there isn’t BS on both sides of the aisle:

60 embassy officials were killed during Bush administration and not one of these GOP fools even issued a statement.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013 1:40 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@MJayRosenberg

MJ Rosenberg

But holy crap, WaPo, was that a BS tweet.

And folks wonder why the Washington Post Company is losing money hand over fist. Gee, it couldn’t be that you’re a bunch of morons giving cover to government evil, could it?

The topic of this month is fusionism, specifically between libertarians and conservatives. My good friend and America’s Iron Lady, Jacque Otto (@jacque_otto) is kicking off with a lead essay, followed by yours truly on Wednesday, to then be followed by Students for Liberty Vice President Clark Ruper (@clark_ruper) on Friday and Acton Institute Research Fellow Jordan Ballor (@JordanBallor) on Monday.

This is the big leagues, folks, and I am very proud to be here. While six years ago I wanted to just do sci-fi writing, this is still extremely exciting. And I’m sure I can work it into my science fiction–after all, a great many science fiction writers were and are passionate libertarians. For that reason, HUGE thanks are in order to Cato Unbound editor @JasonKuznicki, to whom I now owe a keg of scotch. Or something.

Please read the lead essay up here, and feel free to join in the discussion!

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/05/06/jacqueline-otto/state-debate

Ah, well. If we’re going to hell in a handbasket, might as well do with some style, right? Hey, you there, pass the rye.

What all this means is that I haven’t really had time to work on any of my fiction. I partially blame this on playing too many computer games, though I deleted Steam and thereby uninstalled all my computer games for now. I hope that will have a positive effect on my productivity…at least, once I get a couple of major political essays out of the way.

Speaking of which, I’ve been published now at the DailyCaller, FITSNews, and TheBlaze. This is getting to be serious. I’m getting put on a national stage. This isn’t really where I wanted to go with my life ten years ago, but I’ll enjoy it as much as I can while I’m here.

I have been trying to try out Scrivener lately, but I haven’t had the opportunity to really put my butt in the chair on write. I am a fan of the corkboard layout, and arranging scenes as cards. That’s pretty durn cool. Really helps with the plotting, which I always have trouble with. (Great characters, great settings…always a tad weak when it comes to organizing my plot.) I just need to actually use it for an extended period of time to see if it’s worth the price. Thankfully, though, Scrivener’s trial only takes up time if you actually use it; if you don’t, the 30 days don’t count down. This is most excellent, and a great model for other software developers to use. All I wish is that the Scrivener add-ons and the other programs made by the company–at this point, really just Aeon Timeline and Scrapple–were available for Windows. What is this crap with making creative programs only for Macs? Have you ever heard of the phrase “starving artists”? Jeez.

But that’s enough about me. How is your day?

It is 882 words long. 41 of those words are the F-bomb. (According to one comment, that is. I’m not going to waste my time counting the figures myself.) It is full of ENTIRELY CAPITALIZED SENTENCES. It is a brazen, unmitigated attack at sorority members, an attack that has no decency and even threatens violence in the form of “cunt punts” against other members.

What shocks me more than this, though, are the comments from the Gawker article. Here are a few:

“This girl will be the president of a company some day. We are kidding ourselves if we think this letter didn’t bring RESULTS.”

“Me too–she’s a great writer.”

“Mistake? That email is going to launch her career.”

Really? If she is seriously going to become the CEO of a major corporation because of this email, then I don’t want to be on this planet anymore.

I do not–repeat, DO NOT–understand people who think that being an asshole to others is somehow worthy of praise, emulation, or promotion. To me, anyone who thinks that way is a psychopath or a politician–but I repeat myself. And maybe that’s where the problem is with our current culture: we have psychopaths running both our major corporations and the federal/state government.

But I digress. The thing is, if you would “laugh” at this, I think really think you need your head examined. Being downright mean to other people like this is acceptable in an emergency situation, when time is of the essence and no one can be coddled, but not otherwise. You can make your point without entirely relying upon vulgarity, attacks, and threats of violence. And I would like to think that such writing would be utterly unacceptable in a business situation, as it would be completely and totally unprofessional.

Not sure about that, though. Some places might do that. They might even find it fine. In which case, those places are hellholes.

I also wonder why this comment is buried so low. Maybe the truth stings?

Nice they are talking about my old shitty frat. Honestly after reading it I can’t blame those girls, in all seriousness they should want to hang out with other better frats. Sigma Nu sucks. I remember the social would always plan evens with the worst sororities because nobody else wanted to. DG, Zeta, and sig kap…. it was like a rotation. most people dropped out after they could get into the bars. It was mostly full of rapists, dealers, or social ackward vigins. I was neither just a frisbee playing hippie:) I dropped out after the exec bored wouldn’t investigate the rape of an unconcius girl in the house, even tho it was video taped. It makes that stubenville ohio rape case look not so bad. There is literally or atleast was a rape room set up in the basement of that frat house. I know of 3 or 4 rapes that were swept under the rug. I really can’t fault those girls for not wanted to talk to that frat definately safer to hang out with other frats. Anyhow man I love social media

 

And when you read the email, especially about the part about the other sorority girls being “FUCKING boring,” it seems to me the whole thing is a complaint about sorority girls not putting out for a bunch of guys. And to me, that is just gross and even barbaric.

Fortunately, the sorority took the right action and recently accepted the young woman’s resignation. That was the smart, professional thing to do. Already, though, some are wondering “I hope this woman’s life isn’t ruined because of this email.”

Oh, FFS, this woman got kicked out of a sorority. As @stressnstrain noted, “Have some perspective.” It is hardly the end of the world. Many productive people are not members of a fraternity or a sorority, and you know what? That’s a good thing. Everything I saw from my college career was that frats & sororities were nothing more than extended exercises in binge drinking, sex, and following utterly ridiculous rules meant to destroy your life and your individuality. In fact, leaving the sorority may be a good thing.

Another commenter on the FB page says:

I understand that this young lady made a mistake and did not uphold the ideals that we all expect as a Delta Gamma. But I also feel compassion for her and would have hoped that Delta Gamma could have reached out to her with some sort of guidance and counseling rather than just accepting her resignation. I’m sure she feels alone and humiliated at this moment. I hope that she has others to turn to because it appears Delta Gamma has abandoned her and I don’t believe that was the correct course of action.

PLEASE. She “feels alone and humiliated”? That’s the point. She should feel humiliated over this. Boohoo–this sort of whining is the same sort of thing as when adults start “feeling bad” for the bully on the playground when he’s told off for being a bully. It’s sick and makes me want to throw up all over my shoes. That commenter should be utterly ashamed of herself.

The basic thing to take away from this is that all these people are horribly, horribly sick. They’re messed up. And while I previously laid the blame for most of our problems on the baby boomer generation, I think it might just be all these folks who somehow want to coddle bullies and jerks. Maybe they’re the problem. I don’t know. But what they’re saying goes against all norms of behavior and is completely unnatural.

I will say one thing, though, and that is I kind of agree with this PolicyMic article posted by Laura Donovan. Donovan writes:

I’m the first to admit the email was horrendous, not to mention further confirmation that I made the right move to opt out of Greek life in college despite the fact that practically everyone in my immediate family was in a frat or sorority, but it’s my hope that Martinson’s whole life isn’t destroyed by this single email.

For those of you who are out of college, think about this: did you ever do anything stupid during your undergrad days? Something shameful that you’re not proud of? At the beginning of my junior year, I found myself in a grouchy mood and wrote an article for my college publication that offended so many people, some called for my resignation. I received email threats and was harassed and publicly shamed even by fellow staff members. It was tough, worst of all because I didn’t feel everything I said I felt in my column. I remember thinking I was going to be punished forever for an article I wasn’t particularly proud of, and that no one wanted to see me other than the girl who’d upset some folks with my 600-word article. None of the good work or highly lauded columns I’d produced mattered to anyone. A single article made them want to demonize me forever and be their punching bag anytime they needed someone to direct their anger at.

That was almost five years ago, but earlier this month, a colleague brought up the article I spent my final years of college trying to forget, as he’d heard about it from a mutual friend who’d been joking that I’ve been a huge firebrand since college. My demeanor immediately changed. I reacted with hostility and began to cry. Why did this single thing I did as a 20-year-old continue to follow me? I’d worked so hard to put it behind me, and others were still mocking me for it.

Part of that is, unfortunately, the price for writing stupid stuff in the Internet age. To deal with it, you grow a thick skin and get over it. You may also say, “Yes, what I wrote back then was wrong, and I know it.” Admitting it is the first step to fixing your problem, and I think once you do that, it should be like a reputational bankruptcy case–you lose a lot of credibility for the original stupidity, but you wipe your slate clean and start over again. It should not be allowed to dog her life forever. A year or two, maybe, but people do need to recognize that people change and must drop the subject sooner or later–preferably sooner. If I was hiring her 10-15 years from now, we might joke about it, but I wouldn’t let it guide my actions. Nobody is defined by a single moment, no matter how hard authors and politicians try to make it so. That isn’t fair or just.

However, Donovan also writes (emphasis added):

What I wrote was nothing like Martinson’s email, which is most certainly unacceptable to send to anyone, let alone sorority sisters you supposedly love like family. Martinson should have known better than to talk like that and use slurs, but I don’t think it was right of the internet to shame her in the way that it did, and I don’t want her to think the rest of her life has to be defined by this single email. If anything, she knows to be more careful with the way she presents herself on social media and online, and hopefully she realizes there’s more to life than a poorly executed Greek event.

She left the sorority, and she’s doing the right thing by going dark. Once the dust settles, she should release a statement of apology, and hopefully she will be able to rebuild from there. You may not like her (she doesn’t sound like someone I’d want to hang out with, and I’m certain I’m too “f-cking AWKWARD and boring” for her), but I don’t think she should be punished forever for this, at least if she shows some remorse once the interwebs is finished chucking stones at her.

Au contraire.

It is absolutely right for the Internet to mock her and shame her for what she did. And contra commenter Michelle Adams, we should condemn her for her actions. Again, how else does one learn what is right and what is wrong? It’s a corrective mechanism, and it works pretty damn well. Sure, not all mocking and shaming and condemnation is right–I mean, if a Nazi guy tried to “mock” me for being friends with Jews, for example–but for the most part, when someone goes really out of line, it is absolutely correct for other individuals to mock them for it. Would you not punish your children if they did something wrong? (If you genuinely say “I wouldn’t” to that question, then tell me how are they going to become good, upstanding adults instead of degenerate assholes who use everyone else as tools to meet their own inner desires?)

This lauding and coddling of bullies makes me want to vomit, as I’ve said before. And as I’ve said before, this is unnatural. This is not how things are supposed to work. Or at least, not in the past. I guess the new standard now is for people who are mean assholes who use others will be praised and supported, while those who are nice, hard-working people will be denigrated and left in the cold.

If that’s the vision of the world these people want, then I want no part of it.

We can’t seem to get anywhere with our many modern crises. Everywhere we turn there is fear, danger, and financial ruin. Many have stepped up to lay the blame of these catastrophes on the feet of many different things. Some blame capitalism. Others blame government intervention and crony socialism. Still more blame the media for distorting the facts of incidents. Others blame foreigners, particularly the Chinese and the Russians (and Mexicans, and Middle Easterners, and Greeks, and Europeans, and the Japanese, and the Koreans, and the Indians….) In the spirit of blaming and finger-pointing, I would like to offer my idea of who is to blame for all of our problems today.

I blame the Baby Boomers.

Yes, I lay our problems squarely at the feet of those who, as defined by the US Census Bureau, were born between 1946 and 1964. For my purposes, I will also extend that into the early 70s, because most people born around that time sort of act the same way. To me, the birth year is less important; it’s mostly about people in their forties to mid-sixties who behave in the ways I’m about to criticize.  It’s mainly those folks born after World War II, who were in the right place at the right time to reap amazing rewards both in terms of economics and other societal gains. Unfortunately, that’s made life hell for the rest of us who came after, who now have to pay the price of these old guys not letting go.

What are the problems with baby boomers today? Well, I already had a rant of sorts on this topic on Twitter, but I should probably go through some examples. We can start with the horrendous conversation that set that earlier rant off. As you can see, we’re dealing with a middle-aged woman, probably in her forties or fifties, who acts like a complete ass in an online “debate,” degrading the other side (i.e., me) with condescending little snipes, while completely failing to understand basic English and just being plain rude. It’s the perfect example of what I see is the problem of the modern Baby Boomer: an unbridled and unjustified arrogance that thinly covers an absolute dearth of competence.

Now let me take a moment here to stop and insert a disclaimer: not every Baby Boomer acts this way, or is susceptible to these foibles. I know many Baby Boomers. There is, in fact, a sizeable minority who don’t act this way, who understand what is going on and don’t pretend to know everything. I respect these people, and they respect me. Unfortunately, they are a minority, even as sizeable as they are.

Let me also insert a second disclaimer, and note that this isn’t some whiny little kid complaining about things. I know I’m going to get that response from a lot of Baby Boomers, who are going to say something along the lines of “You’re just a snot-nosed kid who doesn’t have any experience and is just whining because we said you couldn’t do something you wanted to do, and you should probably sit down and calm down and let us handle things.” But that’s not how it is. We’ve been letting you “handle things” for decades now, and you’ve done a pretty atrocious, shitty job. I can say this because your elders are also complaining. They’re worrying about what is going to happen to their grandkids, who will have to pay the debts incurred by you. So if you got your elders and your kids complaining, maybe the problem lies with you, and maybe you should listen.

Because a lot of my work involves writing, the best examples come from writing. The first one is when I was working as a temp, supervising writers for an employee news site. One of these writers was a former high school English teacher. When she gave me the article to put up on the website, I noticed it had a terrible grammatical error smack dab in the middle of it that made a paragraph or so unreadable. When I pointed this out to her and asked her to rewrite it to make sense, she got flustered. She told me it was absolutely fine, and it had to be, because she had been a high school English teacher back in the day and this was how it was, and I was just a youngling (comparatively). But it wasn’t; my supervisor even thought it looked terrible. Eventually, she rewrote it so that it was understandable, but she was clearly bothered by having to do so.

In another example, I disagreed with a supervisor about a particular snippet. I laid out my argument for my side thoroughly and calmly, this supervisor laid out the opposing case. The supervisor not only told me to change it, but then asked me when I was born, and promptly told me that, before I had even been born, he had been yelled at to write things properly. Clearly, I had no clue as to what I’m talking about.

I lost that one. Supposedly, these arguments, because they appeal to age, are supposed to mean something, to show that the other person–in both cases, a baby boomer–is right. But rather, I think they work detrimentally against them.

1. It doesn’t matter if you were doing things a certain way, even if it was so long ago it was before Christ lost his sandals. If something is wrong, it’s wrong. Period. Saying you were doing it before I was born doesn’t change anything. It just means you’re old.

2. Things–especially language–do change. Language especially is a hyperfluid. The English of 2013 is slightly different from the English of 2010, it’s definitely different from the English of 2000, it’s very different from the English of 1900, and it’s nigh-unrecognizable to anyone from the 17th century or earlier. By failing to recognize that things have changed, and by stridently holding to something that just isn’t in force nowadays, what you’re basically saying is “I’m incapable of adapting to changing conditions.” That’s not a good thing.

Yet this is the problem we have today. It’s not just in writing. All over the place–in business, in nonprofits, in society, in government–we have baby boomers who are in leadership positions, and they just. Cannot. Adapt. They are still stuck in twenty or thirty-year old paradigms while the world is moving ahead. Some of them have adapted in some areas but refuse to in others. A great example of this on a wider, macro scale is the TV, movie, and music industries and their collective obstinacy (now there’s an old person term) on intellectual property and piracy. Even though all the evidence points to IP pirates actually paying for most of their content, and only pirating when a content provider acts stupid and makes it difficult to get said content, few of these businesses have changed their business models. Many of these businesses are led by 50-somethings who still think they can get away with their pricing and distribution models from even just ten years ago. Instead of adapting to things like Torrent and the Internet, they just go around suing people. Now, I’m no anti-IP dude, but it’s very clear that businesses have to change their practices. Unfortunately, the old guys at the top won’t let them.

Another great example? Look at government, then specifically look at Lindsay Graham and John McCain. They got all worked up at Rand Paul’s filibuster of Brennan’s nomination as CIA director over the government’s idea they can bomb anyone at anytime over drones. Graham and McCain said he shouldn’t be firing up “impressionable libertarian kids” and gave the image of being two grumpy old men. Now, while Rand Paul is certainly no youngster–he’s a baby boomer himself–Graham and McCain are old guys, and because government lags behind everything else in the world, it’s only fitting that they be the old baby boomers to the young and adaptable Rand Paul.

Or look to the economy, and all the complaints about outsourcing. Outsourcing isn’t really the problem; the problem is that American labor just isn’t competitive with labor for manufactured goods overseas, and we’re moving from a manufacturing economy to a service-oriented economy. But yet again, all those factory workers just refuse to adapt. They refuse to retrain and want to have the same thing they had years ago. They don’t want anything to change. They don’t want to even entertain the notion that things may change.

Why is this so? Why do baby boomers act this way? I believe it is because they are a literal product of history. They were born and lived through an amazing time, a unique time, I think, in world history.

Think about it. As World War II ended, the world was in shambles. Factories had been flattened all across Europe, in Japan, and in China (what few factories were there at the time.) There was only one nation on Earth that had an industrial capacity: the United States of America. It also had fields full of crops, not bomb craters and spent ammunition. For decades, there was really only one place to go, a virtual monopoly on industrial goods.

This led to the greatest prosperity in the known world. For baby boomers, lives were uncomplicated, at least economically. Because there was no competition, their dads made good money, and there wasn’t any real need for government intervention to change anything. It was a party, and it at least until the 70s, it seemed to go on forever.

There was also the factor of the baby boomers being, well, boomers. There were more of them then there were of their parents and their grandparents. There was no competition in the cultural realm either. Sure, their parents complained about rock n roll music and the drugs, but they were outnumbered and outgunned. The baby boomers helped sweep in the sexual and cultural revolutions of the 1960s, and took positions of power early on in the 70s and 80s simply because there were a lot more of them. The Reagan Administration of the 1980s helped to partially erase the sting of the 1970s, and kept the party rolling. It wasn’t until the rise of outsourcing in the 90s, the dotcom bubble at the turn of the millennium, the increasing competition from overseas industry, and the amazing growth in information technology over the past decade that is mostly led by young people under 30 (Zuckerberg, Dorsey, Systrom & Kreiger, Page & Brin), that it finally seemed to catch up to them and the party ended. The problem is, they’re still in power, still spending, still pushing the debt on to us, and as they refuse to recognize this reality, they are utterly adrift.

We could hope that as time rolls on, the baby boomers will simply pass on, and our problems will start correcting themselves as more adaptable, young, thinking individuals take over. Unfortunately, not only have the baby boomers passed on their credit card debt to succeeding generations, they’ve also infected a great many of their children and the youth with their demanding entitlement mentality. How many young people were part of Occupy Wall Street, demanding free stuff and student loan forgiveness?  How many of them picked that up from their Baby Boomer parents? Parents who usually sheltered their children from any sort of criticism, while simultaneously clamping down on their independence and autonomy? Great, so now we have a bunch of people who can’t take criticism and think they deserve everything in the world because they’re their parents special child. That’s going to work out well.

Worse, as a friend of mine pointed out, many of them still have assets despite the recession, and are going to retire despite the recession, giving us a horrible thought: they’re going to have a lot of free time and a lot of money. And what are they going to do? They’re going to put that to lobbying and political causes, especially AARP. They’re going to put into place policies that are great for them but lousy for the rest of us, only they’re never going to have to live with the consequences. This is a recipe for a unmitigated, catastrophic disaster if we don’t right the ship today.

Because the baby boomer generation reared the next generation (or two), they passed a lot of their problems on. It leaves me wondering how long the pain will last in this country? Will we (particularly Millennials born in the 80s) grow up and get over this, and realize we have to just cut things and do without? Or are we going to hold onto our insane demands and whine about not getting what we want and let this country slip even further into decline?

I don’t know. But what I do know is that a lot of these problems come from the baby boomers. They created the messes we’re in today. They sure as hell are not making a path to get out of said messes.

I can respect people’s opinions. But I cannot respect people who fail to give respect to others, use their age as a bludgeon against others in a discussion, and who just refuse to recognize that the world is changing around them. If you’re not going to fix the problems we have, and stubbornly hold on to a past that no longer exists, then please do everybody a favor and get out of the way. Our country’s future depends on it.

Note: This long overdue post was originally scheduled to publish earlier this week; however, due to real life events, I decided to push it back to today.

All I can do is say the following: we don’t really know what happened, so be careful what you see and retweet. Be very skeptical of what you hear or read.

Secondly, no politics. Do not politicize this. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.

Third, if you even THINK about declaring this a “false flag” operation, you should be ashamed of yourself. As terrible as our government is, as bad as Obama and his administration are, they would not bomb American citizens. Nobody in our government is that depraved. While things have been getting worse, we are nowhere near the Middle East or third world countries.

So stop. Just effing STOP.

That’s all I got for today.

I know everyone loves Guinness, but really, this is far better. Still stout, but not as harsh, creamy, with more of the flavor actually getting to your taste buds.

Anyways, after this discussion and a couple of others on diet, I found this hilarious story from BuzzFeed with the picture above.

Let it be known I will never, EVER, give up my milk. I love it far too much. Yes, I drink 2%, and I think I will switch to 1%. But I will never, ever give it up.

I’ve explained how much I love milk before. Here’s my lengthy, indepth treatise on the subject. Suffice to say, I love it quite a lot, and consider it indispensable. I drank a gallon of milk every two days as a child, and while I don’t hit quite that stratospheric number, I have never given it up.

And I never will.

In other news, I am contemplating trying Volumetrics.