Steve Sailer.

These days, even Third World countries tend to have rapid vote counting, and when the process breaks down, such as in Bolivia recently, it’s a national crisis.

In contrast, America seems to have gotten slower at figuring out who won, with the closer you get to Silicon Valley, the slower. Good thing the presidential primary season doesn’t start in California or the results wouldn’t be final until April.

Read it.

Waits for care in Canada’s government-run health insurance system, the closest analog to “Medicare for all” in the world, are spiraling. The remedy for those waits, according to a new report from the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute? A dose of U.S.-style private insurance.

Right now, Canada is the only high-income country with universal health coverage that bans its citizens from purchasing private insurance for anything deemed “medically necessary.” “Medicare for all” would make the U.S. the second.

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #397

Losing coastal plant communities to climate change will weaken sea defences  If it actually happens.

Swedish Lawmakers Nominate Climate Activist Greta Thunberg For A Nobel Peace Prize  Because nothing promotes peace like a teenager scolding adults.

Warming oceans could cause Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse, sea level rise  ‘could’

Attenborough’s Arctic Betrayal: New video reveals that terrorizing young children about climate began with polar bears

Climate Models Are Running Red Hot, and Scientists Don’t Know Why

Permafrost Is Thawing So Fast, It’s Gouging Holes in the Arctic

Read it.

We all want to change the world.

Read it.

Dead cow and spuds are the basis of all true civilization.

Note how everyone is trying to find a vegetable substitute for meat — nobody ever tries to find a meat substitute for vegetables.

The technical term for vegetarians is ‘prey’.

Analysis of a carbon forecast gone wrong: the case of the IPCC FAR

The Ocean Floor is Sinking Due to Climate Change  Newsweek.

The Conversation? “ethically misguided and downright dangerous” NOT to Censor Climate Deniers

Read it.

As Eric Raymond suspected, it appears to be a bioweapon.

Since it also appears to be targeted at East Asians, I’m not going to worry about it.

I don’t know whether this was deliberately targeting China or merely the result of a fumble on their part, but the effect will be equally devastating all the same.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/mapping-where-corruption-most-rampant

Why were whales increasingly caught in crab lines? Because of the climate crisis The Guardian.

New research highlights how plants are slowing global warming

Enviros Rally Around A Podcast Designed To Out Supposed Big Oil Propagandists

Cold wave grips northern Saudi Arabia, meteorologists fear strongest cold snap ever  Gotta lobe that global warming.

Read it.

This is news?

His choice for President instead of Trump was David French. What does this tell you about David French?

ZMan peers behind the curtain into the Deep State.

Eric Ciaramella, the CIA plant, who concocted the predicate for the impeachment hoax is friends with John Brennan, the former CIA director. He is also in the same social set as members of Adam Schiff’s crew of witch hunters. Like a religious cult, these people reinforce the paranoia of one another with these bizarre theories to explain what they think is some great anomaly. Trump could not have won the election fair and square, so there must be some hidden reason behind it.

Read it.

Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney was notified Friday by a tweet from Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) chair Matt Schlapp that he was “not invited” to the annual conference after being one of two Republicans in the Senate to vote to call additional witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.

Aussie Academic: “we need to drive the [Climate] Dismissive group out of positions of power”

“Lions and Tigers and Bears!” Major League Sports Tackle Climate Change!

Climate change: 2,000 years of Earth’s climate in one simple chart – and the copycat that isn’t what it seems  CBS, so I’d check a second source.

Warming and the Snows of Yesteryear

MSNBC FREAKS Over ‘Jim Crow’ GOP Engaging in a ‘Cover Up’; ‘Very Scary’ Time in America

Not to Ruin the Super Bowl, But the Sea Is Consuming Miami  Wired ‘Science’.

Dem Lawmaker Gets Pushback After Asking YouTube To Stop Spreading Climate Skepticism  Freedom of speech is not a Democrat value. Just ask Professor Umbrage.

Read it.

At least somebody is awake over there.

Read it.

I hope somebody in the fancy-pants new U.S. Space Force is paying attention.

Steve Sailer.

As am I. If I were Bloomberg, I’d promise to buy the Dodgers and move them back to Brooklyn where they belong.

Dem Lawmaker Gets Pushback After Asking YouTube To Stop Spreading Climate Skepticism

Democrat Congressional Committee Demands Google Bury “Climate Misinformation”

Climate doomsayers keep putting sell-by dates on their credibility

Whether It’s a ‘Climate Emergency’ or Nuclear War: Doomsday Never Seems to Happen

Democrat Congressional Committee Demands Google Bury “Climate Misinformation”

House Dems Unfurl Climate-Tinged Infrastructure Plan

Babylon Bee.

Sounds about right.

I have no idea what ‘avocado toast’ might be, but it sounds Communist.

CNN, always on the forefront of what’s Really Important.

Grievance Studies Majors and Social Justice Warriors might; actual People do not.

Read it.

Looks as if we have a living wall that Mexico has paid for.

Read it.

This continued trend has elicited howls of protest from union supporters who, of course, want to see an increase in union membership. It has also led several Democratic presidential candidates to make calls to reconfigure labor law. Bernie Sanders wants to double union membership and give federal workers the right to strike, as well as ban at-will contracts of employment, so that any dismissal could be subject to litigation under a “for cause” standard. Not to be outdone, Elizabeth Warren wants to make it illegal for firms to hire permanent replacements for striking workers. They are joined by Pete Buttigieg in demanding a change in federal labor law so that states may no longer pass right-to-work laws that insulate workers from the requirement to pay union dues in unionized firms. All of these new devices are proven job killers.

Epstein is currently the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.

“Public opinion is an effect, not a cause. Told the same story, most people will have the same opinion. Story drives opinion; opinion drives action. There, I saved you a whole Walter Lippmann book. And as Voltaire said: those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

— Curtis Yarvin (Mencius Moldbug)

Kevin Williamson takes a break from pissing on Trump to do some actual writing.

There is a maxim in regulatory affairs holding that “complexity is a subsidy.” For example, the complexity of the tax code is a subsidy for big businesses that can afford to employ large teams of tax attorneys. Complexity in government is a subsidy for lobbyists and their employers, disadvantaging relatively small firms and upstarts that do not have, e.g., General Electric’s operation in Washington. Complexity in the legal system is a subsidy for lawyers and for people who can afford good lawyers, which is one of the reasons rich people so often enjoy better outcomes in criminal cases than poor people.

Complexity is a subsidy for bureaucracies, too, a way of offloading work from the bureaucrats onto the populations they are in theory intended to serve. That’s the DMV model of public service.

But often the populations bureaucracies are supposed to serve are not very well equipped to do the bureaucracies’ work for them. I know we’re supposed to studiously avoid such patronizing thoughts, but you don’t usually end up in a welfare office because you’re doing awesome at life right at that moment. Many of our social programs are explicitly directed at people with reduced capacities — children, sick people, old people, etc. Using bureaucratic complexity to keep the welfare rolls down is underhanded. It would be better to be more honest about our intentions.

This complexity is not ‘intentional’, of course, despite Kevin’s indulgence in Conspiracy Theory. Never ascribe to malevolence what can be adequately explained by incompetence. Still, let us be thankful for small blessings that save the taxpayer money.

Steve Sailer.

This is the future of the American workplace: endless meetings in which Persons of Color get incoherently emotional.

You can see why tech companies are letting Indians take over their firms: diversity is not working, so creeping racial monopolization by somebody who feels zero white guilt at least might get some work done.

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #396

Is “Green” Energy a Ponzi Scheme?

House Republicans caught between Trump and young voters on climate change

Burning Trees For Heating Won’t Help With Climate Change: UK Think Tank

Do alarmists know the difference between weather and climate?  Doubtful.

While Microsoft Was Making Its Climate Pledge, Was Sponsoring an Oil Conference  The swine.

DC Solar Owners Plead Guilty to Largest Ponzi Scheme in Eastern California History

CNN Slams Republicans ‘Avoiding Uncomfortable Facts’ on Impeachment by Watching Fox News

AlSparks: Greta Thunberg: Little Tyrant?

Bottled Water Company Admits Dumping Deadly Arsenic Into CA’s Ecosystem… Nobody Goes To Jail

Enviro Activist Berates Hickenlooper For Once Suing To Prevent A Colorado Town From Banning Fracking I don’t know who this Hickenlooper is but I like him already.

Distinctive wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux could be lost forever, as climate change forces grape change  ‘could’

Whether he is alive or whether he is dead makes not a shred of difference to me or my life.

Not. One. Shred.

Nor to you, I suspect.

Moral: Do not let the shouting in the streets distract you from what is important TO YOU.

Relevant Ancient Wisdom: “Cobbler, stick to your last.’

I am far more interested in what the government is doing in response to this Chinese virus threat.

So far as I can see, that is exactly NOTHING.

Are they closing the airports to flights from China or carrying people from China who might have this virus? NO.

Aren they closing the ports to shipments from China or carrying people from China who might have this virus? NO.

WHAT KIND OF A FUCKING JOKE IS A SO-CALLED TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION THAT IS NOT CHECKING EACH AND EVERY PERSON ARRIVING IN THE UNITED STATES WHO MIGHT BE CARRYING THIS VIRUS?  The worst kind.

Nancy Pelosi and Pencil-Neck Schiff are Congresscritters from California. Are they working to make sure that California is safe from a potential pandemic? No, they’re too busy trying to lynch Trump.

Your tax dollars at work.

</rant>

Read it.

Hey — priorities, man.

Steve Sailer.

Apparently some Toxic Masculinity is more equal than others.

Jakarta is not an Exemplar of Sea Level Rise

Fury after Prince Charles flew 16,000 miles in private jets before climate change lecture

Gardens will look completely different in 20 years time as pests are out of control, Gardeners’ World presenter warns

A Surge of New Plastic Is About to Hit the Planet

Climate-friendly food choices protect the planet, promote health, reduce health costs

UK Climate Assembly: What is more Eco-Friendly, British Beef or Avocados?

The Guardian: Aussie Climate Skeptics are Self Hating Cowards

Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C  Betcha it’s not.

University offers students struggling with anxiety about climate change THERAPY to tackle their feelings of ‘anger, guilt and grief’

Read it.

Ring offers a front-door view of a country where millions of Amazon customers use Amazon cameras to watch Amazon contractors deliver Amazon packages.

I have a Ring doorbell, and my problem with it is that it is too slow — by the time the video comes up on my computer screen, the person on the porch has decided that there is nobody home and has wandered off.

More than 500 police departments have partnered with the company, gaining access to a service called Neighbors Portal, which allows users to “ask Ring to request video footage from device owners who are in the area of an active investigation,” according to the company. (This footage is often shared by law enforcement with media organizations for broadcast segments.) Some police departments assist in marketing Ring devices to local citizens, in some cases offering government-subsidized discounts, according to documents obtained by Vice.

Got no problem with that. Cops want my video, they’re welcome to it. Wish there were some way I could send it to them automatically with a complaint. Maybe next year.

Ring’s efforts to court law enforcement have drawn scrutiny from civil-rights organizations for violating the privacy of users and the subjects of their recordings, and for encouraging profiling by race.

Once you step on my property, you got no privacy. If you don’t want to be ‘racially profiled’, don’t belong to a race that has a high crime rate … or move to Chicago.

Read it.

An Australian bookstore has urged a “dating coaching” company to stop sending clients to their store to practice “pickup” tactics.

Gotta love Australians.

Read it.

group of protesters set alight on Sunday the lobby of a newly built residential building in Hong Kong that authorities planned to use as a quarantine facility, as public fears in the financial hub about the coronavirus outbreak intensified.

John Hinderaker at Power Line looks behind the curtain.

From early in our nation’s history, America’s intellectuals have mostly looked down on their own country and yearned for it to be like someplace else–someplace more sophisticated, and more in tune with “modern” intellectual currents, whatever they might be at the moment. That is a long history, which I will skip over. In our own time, American intellectuals have claimed that Soviet Russia, Germany and Japan were harbingers of the future that the U.S. needed to imitate. In each case, the point was that we had to shed our archaic freedoms and enter the brave new world of central planning under the control–benign, of course!–of intellectuals and bureaucrats. Strangely, however, American free enterprise has managed to outlast and surpass all of those supposedly more advanced challengers.

Most recently, China has been the favored nation of the future. It has the advantage over Germany and Japan of being straightforwardly authoritarian (if no longer exactly Communist), which endeared it to anti-democratic liberals like Tom Friedman. Thus, liberals have eagerly calculated the future time when China’s GDP–or alleged GDP, as dictatorships have always been better at producing statistics than goods and services–would surpass ours. Given that China has three times our population, that would not seem to be a signal accomplishment. Nevertheless, liberals looked forward to it.

U.S. Government continues to dump funds into an electrical sinkhole

Climate Racism? Black Climate Activist Cropped from Greta Photo

CLAIM: Climate Change Cited for Penguin Decline

Mexican conservationist feared murdered by illegal loggers

Citizens Assembly lets public consider how UK should meet climate change goals  Another self-appointed ‘watchdog’ group.

Read it.

n Israeli biological warfare expert claims a deadly coronovirus spreading globally may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory linked to China’s secret biological weapons program, the Washington Times reported.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is the only declared site in China capable of working with the virus, the news outlet’s national security correspondent Bill Gertz wrote.

ZMan does a deep dive on the culture.

By just looking at how males today seek attention, what we see is that they are mostly empty gestures. There is no merit at the core of the act. Rather than parade around the village with their kill, they are parading around empty handed, making wild claims about what they did on the hunt. Status in this age is now gained by telling increasingly bizarre and outrageous fishing tales. It is a desire to seek attention, and therefore status, without first doing anything of merit.

This is not just a phenomenon among the proletariat on-line. In fact, it is a habit learned by watching the elites. Status in areas like politics or entertainment is often just the result of clever attention seeking. In the music business, attention seeking has been industrialized and monetized. In politics, the people running for office take pride in having never accomplished anything. In fact, never have tried to accomplish anything is the badge of honor. A man of deeds is wholly unwelcome.

Of course, this is further evidence of the feminization of society. Attention without merit is an entirely female trait. Males take great risks to accomplish things for which they will get acclaim and status. Females use their natural charms to gain the attention of the high status males. For the female, the accomplishment is in gaining attention, rather than in doing something that results in attention. Today’s male social media stars are highly feminized males performing female roles.

Apple TV+ is close to picking up a Scott Z. Burns climate change series

Billionaires who made their fortunes by trying to stop climate change

Real-life climate disasters are mirroring doomsday myths—and that’s worse than you think Popular ‘Science’.

Chris Cuomo Says Greta Thunberg Is Off Limits Because She’s A ‘Kid.’ Twitter Users Recall Some Recent CNN History

Nature Predicts Worsening Climate Driven Forest Fires – Burning What?

The West Is Burning! (Or Is It?)

German Language Police Group Decides To ‘UnWord’ The Term “Climate Hysteria”

Global warming could have a negative impact on biodiversity generation processes  I’m sure it would — if it existed.

EPA’s Andrew Wheeler Explains Why Activists Are Wrong To Blame Australian Wildfires On Climate Change

Read it.

Let me be the first then: Hunder Biden took a no-show job with a company that hoped to leverage influence with the sitting Vice President.

Both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden ought to be under DOJ investigation.

Victor Davis Hanson.

None of these decades-old rationales for Middle East intervention remain relevant today. The Cold War is over. China is using cash, not arms, to seduce Middle East regimes to lease out ports and facilities for its Belt and Road Initiative, an extravagant neo-imperial global project that grows ever more dubious in a strictly cost-to-benefit analysis, especially as China bogs down in a trade war with the United States and seems to be offering round-one concessions to try to end it. With a million Muslims in Chinese reeducation camps, and its clumsy diplomacy abroad, Beijing may eventually become as unpopular in Arab capitals as Moscow was during the Cold War.

I think that the question is not ‘Must America be in the Middle East?’ but rather ‘Must America linger in the Middle East?’.  Our technological superiority is such that if some development in the Middle East threatens an American interest, we can just go in and blow it all to Hell, kill the people who are causing the problem and then back off — no need for ‘boots on the ground’, just a demonstration that if you cross us you wind up dead, and we don’t care what form of government rules over the rubble.

Babylon Bee.

That would certainly save a lot of effort.