Archive for May, 2017

Adieu Et Bon Débarras

Posted in Politics, The Environment on May 31st, 2017

Adieu Et Bon Débarras, Paris!

Adieu Et Bon Débarras, Paris!

Goodby and good riddance, Paris – specifically the The Paris Agreement which was brokered in France during the COP 21 talks. All the signs are present that President Trump will remove America from this Climate Change Agreement. Once again proving he’s a political outsider, strongly looks as if Trump will keep yet another campaign promise.

I’m happy with this and our domestic enemies are livid over it – weeping, wailing, gnashing their teeth, and promising retribution. I will, however give these Liberals and Progressives a small measure of credit this time. This isn’t just another episode of their derangement. President Trump pulling America out of Paris Agreement is apocalyptic for their hopes and dreams of a “greener,” weaker America.

And yes! I’m big enough to admit that I’m petty and mean enough so that a significant part of my happiness with leaving the Paris Agreement is that the Left is so butt-hurt over doing so.

Here, however, is one important point, though not the key point for me: This Paris Agreement isn’t actually that horrific from my point of view. It is and was largely meaningless and without any provisions – or even delusions thereof – of any of its various articles being actually binding or enforceable upon the the 196 signatories. In this it is a lot like NATO.

Is It A Treaty Or Not?

No. My primary reason for being happy about leaving the Paris Agreement is that it really wasn’t legally enacted in the first place or, at least, it was easily arguable that it wasn’t. This is because it’s a treaty or, at least it certainly seems to meet the legal requirement for being one, and Obama just signed it as if he were king without ever sending it to the Senate for ratification, which is constitutionally required. So, if it is a treaty, it is not one that America ever entered into and President Trump would just be correcting an illegal act by Obama.

Then again, some legal experts argue that the Paris Agreement isn’t a treaty, despite it easily meeting the prima facie standard of such under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which states “an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law” (VCLT art. 2.1(a)) is a treaty. It was, after all, specially and specifically crafted to not be a treaty so that it didn’t need to undergo the required scrutiny by the various states that such things entail. In other words, it was written in a manner that Obama could sign it unilaterally under the auspices of the UNFCCC, instead of sending to the Senate for approval. So it could be argued that this was just an Executive Agreement under the law.

If the latter is held to be true, this is ironic in the extreme since Obama’s signing the Paris Agreement violated the 1992 Executive Agreement with the Senate to submit for their review and ratification any future agreements which contained “targets and timetables” for emissions reductions by the US.

So, there it is. Either it’s a treaty; in which case, it’s null and void due to its unconstitutional and illegal enactment; or it’s simply an Executive Agreement by Obama; in which case, it ceased being binding on January 20th, 2017 and President Trump is well and completely within his rights to either formally rescind our nation’s participation or simply ignore it in whole or in part and to do so for any or no reason whatsoever.

Either way, President Trump would be doing the right thing in my opinion. Whether it was executive overreach on Obama’s part or his simply violating the agreement under which the Senate ratified the UNFCCC in the first place, putting an end to it would the right thing.

Walls Need Gates

Posted in Humor, Politics, Society on May 31st, 2017
Walls Need Gates

Despite the nonsensical and oikophobic rantings of the Liberals and Progressives and the ungrateful and disloyal screams of many of the Hispanics already inside America’s borders, our country does need dramatically increased border security and most definitely needs a border wall between us and Mexico. But walls need gates and we also do need immigration reform as well.

After all – again, despite and in despite of the nonsensical and oikophobic rantings of the Liberals and Progressives – there isn’t and has never been any reason that compassion and enlightened self-interest cannot be paired. Hence, we shouldn’t be keeping beautiful, nubile Latinas from entering America in search of a better life.

So, Hell yes! Vet them properly and let them in. Let’s turn the Left’s desired genocide on its ear and make into a good thing for America. Really! Just over four out of every 100 marriages (4.3%) in the US is already between a non-Hispanic and a Hispanic – the most common interracial marriage in fact, accounting for 43% of them – and one out of ever four Hispanic marriages in the US are already with non-Hispanics. We might as well work with these facts rather than against them.

If life and politics are going to give America lemons, we should smile and make limonada. 😉

Hoist On Their Own Petard

Posted in Humor, Society on May 29th, 2017

AkrasiaWe, the People of the United States of America are well-known for not abiding by the dictates of- nor granting the largess of respect to the clerisy of academia, especially those of the pseudo-intellectual fields of gender studies and sociology. And because of this we are ridiculed, lampooned, and dismissed by the Liberal and Progressive “elites’ for rejecting their magisterium.

That is what’s makes it so enjoyable and so hilarious when the quasi- or pseudo-akratic idiots are hoist on their own petard of confirmation bias and dogmatism. Having it blow up in their own faces if frankly and unashamedly hilarious.

Yes! Peter Boghossian, EdD and James Lindsay, PhD, writing under the pseudonyms of Peter Boyle, EdD and Kamie Lindsay, PhD, successfully committed a Sokal-style hoax by penning a fake research paper entitled “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct,” which was actually published in a peer-review journal, Cogent Social Sciences.

Abstract: Anatomical penises may exist, but as pre-operative transgendered women also have anatomical penises, the penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct. We argue that the conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a social construct isomorphic to performative toxic masculinity. Through detailed poststructuralist discursive criticism and the example of climate change, this paper will challenge the prevailing and damaging social trope that penises are best understood as the male sexual organ and reassign it a more fitting role as a type of masculine performance.

By their own “admission,” the paper wasn’t even well written enough to be published even if it hadn’t been total bullshit from beginning to end.

We didn’t try to make the paper coherent; instead, we stuffed it full of jargon (like “discursive” and “isomorphism”), nonsense (like arguing that hypermasculine men are both inside and outside of certain discourses at the same time), red-flag phrases (like “pre-post-patriarchal society”), lewd references to slang terms for the penis, insulting phrasing regarding men (including referring to some men who choose not to have children as being “unable to coerce a mate”), and allusions to rape (we stated that “manspreading,” a complaint levied against men for sitting with their legs spread wide, is “akin to raping the empty space around him”). After completing the paper, we read it carefully to ensure it didn’t say anything meaningful, and as neither one of us could determine what it is actually about, we deemed it a success.

Personally, I like best the fact that they managed to fit Climate Change into it, while “blaming” – and, by extrapolation, most or all ecological damage – it upon masculinity.

Here’s a paragraph from the conclusion, which was held in high regard by both reviewers:

We conclude that penises are not best understood as the male sexual organ, or as a male reproductive organ, but instead as an enacted social construct that is both damaging and problematic for society and future generations. The conceptual penis presents significant problems for gender identity and reproductive identity within social and family dynamics, is exclusionary to disenfranchised communities based upon gender or reproductive identity, is an enduring source of abuse for women and other gender-marginalized groups and individuals, is the universal performative source of rape, and is the conceptual driver behind much of climate change.

You read that right. We argued that climate change is “conceptually” caused by penises. How do we defend that assertion? Like this:

Destructive, unsustainable hegemonically male approaches to pressing environmental policy and action are the predictable results of a raping of nature by a male-dominated mindset. This mindset is best captured by recognizing the role of [sic] the conceptual penis holds over masculine psychology. When it is applied to our natural environment, especially virgin environments that can be cheaply despoiled for their material resources and left dilapidated and diminished when our patriarchal approaches to economic gain have stolen their inherent worth, the extrapolation of the rape culture inherent in the conceptual penis becomes clear.

And like this, which we claim follows from the above by means of an algorithmically generated nonsense quotation from a fictitious paper, which we referenced and cited explicitly in the paper:

Toxic hypermasculinity derives its significance directly from the conceptual penis and applies itself to supporting neocapitalist materialism, which is a fundamental driver of climate change, especially in the rampant use of carbon-emitting fossil fuel technologies and careless domination of virgin natural environments. We need not delve deeply into criticisms of dialectic objectivism, or their relationships with masculine tropes like the conceptual penis to make effective criticism of (exclusionary) dialectic objectivism. All perspectives matter.

Yeah, I’m laughing my ass off at the Gender Studies crowd, most of whom are working for minimum wage. 😆 I’m also laughing at useful idiots and apologists at Reason, who are so hell-bent to deride the impact of this hoax upon that “field of study.”

Of course, I’m also facepalming because of the simple of sad truth that Boghossian and Lindsay seem to have either missed or ignored the fact that nothing they wrote, despite it being little but jargon-laden gobbledygook, was particularly at variance with the content and position of actual scholarly papers and books on Feminist theory or with actual international policy statements.

So yeah, I’m laughing at the Gender Studies crowd being hoist on the own petard, but I’m also crying because, as hoaxes go, this wasn’t as bad of one as its perpetrators seem to have thought.

Honor Guard

Posted in Society on May 29th, 2017

Honor GuardHonor Guard

Trumpex For The Cure

Posted in Humor, Politics on May 28th, 2017

Trumpex For The Cure

At last, some good news. They’ve developed a treatment for TURD, the horrific and debilitating mental disease sweeping the nation. Now the many sufferers can lead something akin to normal, productive, American lives.