ZMan has some bad news.

The underlying assumption is that liberal democracy will work just fine, if we can just get rid of those terrible liberals or go back and correct some mistake from the past. No one ever stops to wonder if maybe those nasty liberals and errors in judgement are a feature of liberal democracy, rather than a defect. Like Marxists or libertarians, the right has worked from the assumption that the right sort of citizen can be conjured or created, in order to make liberal democracy function as intended.

The truth is, the results we see around us, whether it is spasms of radical self-destruction or the suicidal flood of migrants, are all the natural result of liberal democracy. The troubles facing the West are not the result of some defect or shabby operators at the top. This is what you get from liberal democracy. As a wise once man said, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

Read it.

Americans are increasingly looking outside of the U.S. for retirement and freedom. True believers in the republic are seeing the rising wave of socialist and even communist policies being championed on the right. There seems to be no resistance to the increasingly hysterical demands of the environmentalists. The passing of the Patriot Act nearly two decades ago has proven to be as radical and damaging to individual liberty and privacy as it was feared and discounted by government officials as “conspiracy theory.”

Anti-Trump Republicans do not recognize their role in his election. If there had been one solid line of resistance against Barack Obama’s policies, that was not ultimately compromised, Trump would not have been elected. If a candidate like Jeb Bush had been seen as anything other than Democrat-lite, he would have won the nomination.

Climate Champion China Ramping Up Government Funding for Fossil Fuel

CIA, Climate, And Conspiracy: More Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #378

Scientists Identify How Many Trees to Plant and Where to Stop Climate Crisis

Activist biologist filled with eco-anxiety shares unfounded fear of polar bear catastrophe

Water Behaving Badly

Martin Armstrong: No Evidence Of Human-Induced Climate Change

Forbes: Global Warming to Blame But Definitely Not Linked to Early Snow in the Rockies

Babylon Bee.

You can never be too careful.

How Many Times do Useless Climate Models have to be Killed before they Die?

The “climate doom” timeline

Climate activist Greta Thunberg proclaimed “Successor of Christ” by Church of Sweden  Funny, she doesn’t look Jewish.

Read it.

In his new book, Proof!: How the World Became Geometrical, historian Amir Alexander advances an audacious claim: that Euclidean geometry profoundly influenced not just the history of mathematics, but also broader sociopolitical reality. In prose that makes his passion for the material both clear and catching, he describes how Euclid’s Elements present a vision of a perfectly rational order, but one that was viewed as purely theoretical: There was no place for geometrical ideals in messy reality. In the 1400s, Leon Battista Alberti, an Italian polymath, upended that understanding, countering that the world was, in fact, fundamentally geometrical. Other thinkers, from Copernicus to Galileo, followed. And, as Alexander argues, this sea change had profound implications: If the world was geometrical—not only rational, but also hierarchical and permanent—then that was the divinely ordained social order, too. Euclidean geometry, that is, was used to justify monarchy.

Read it.

A fascinating look at a top-flight hedge fund entrepreneur and his family viewed from the perspective of how he got his kids into top-flight colleges.

Most interesting fact: “Shaw is one of the country’s top donors to the Democratic Party.”  Rich people aren’t stupid; they know that aligning with Democrats yields more clout than Republicans, and they’e all about clout.

Climate change on Cape Cod: At the edge of a warming world

Greta’s Handlers

Greta Thunberg To Poor Countries: Drop Dead

Drug Inquiry: Fear of Climate Change is Destroying the Lives of Young People

2019 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Tied for Second Lowest on Record

NYT: “How the Climate Kids Are Short-Circuiting Right-Wing Media”

On Maher Show, Barney Frank Calls Trump ‘Accessory to Murder’ of Ukrainians by Russia

Thousands join Greta Thunberg in Canada climate strikes

Speech of Harrison Ford: “If We Don’t Protect Nature We Can’t Protect Ourselves”  Ever notice how Ford now looks like a homeless guy?

Climate Change Protesters Snarl DC Traffic in a ‘Fight for My Future’  Apparently it is the conventional wisdom that pissing people off by interfering with their daily lives is the way to win their support for your cause. I scratch my head….

The Tragedy of Greta Thunberg

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And who could blame them/

Plenty of room in Texas, y’all. (Leave your California attitudes behind, though.)

Read it.

For those who haven’t been paying attention (for which I do not blame you), Jeong is an ethnic-Korean activist whose claim to fame is unapologetic anti-white racism.

UPDATE: “Dumba$$ F**king White-Men”-Hating NYTimes Editor Has Left Board

Steve Sailer.

Do you think that when Admiral Hyman Rickover was a cadet at the Naval Academy he had learn the names for various knots? Or was every knot back then some kind of noose like they are today?

I don’t recognize the knot from the tiny picture but it certainly isn’t a noose.

Climate Hysteria Is Damaging Children

Mont Blanc glacier could collapse at any moment  ‘could’

New IPCC report on ocean warming cites a flawed and retracted paper

Special NY Times Editorial Takes Greta Thunberg’s Side: ‘Climate Kids and Right-Wing Media’

Here Are The Climate Alarmist Predicting The Apocalypse

Climate Bully Plays The Race Card At #ShutDownDC

Team Trump’s Unconvincing Ukraine Spin  Jonah Goldberg

Ukraine Transcript Confirms Trump Asked Zelensky to ‘Look Into’ Biden, Prosecutor  Jack Crowe

The Trump–Ukraine Transcript Contains Evidence of a Quid Pro Quo  David French

Excuses, Excuses  Ramesh Ponnuru

The Impeachment Train  Yuval Levin

Can going nuclear combat climate change?

Dozens of Failed Climate Predictions Stretch 80 Years Back

Steven Novella’s Junk Science About Climate Change Acceleration

Read it.

Environmentalists love their trains. Apparently, the cutting edge of 19th-century technology is the solution to our transportation problems. The City of Austin recently spent about $150 million on a commuter rail system. This expenditure has reduced traffic congestion approximately 0 percent. If you stand next to I-35 during rush hour, more people will pass you in one minute than ride the train all day. A while ago, I was stopped at a railroad crossing for one of these trains. When it went by, I could see that there were fewer people in the train than cars stopped for it. It was only for a short time, no longer than a long traffic light. Still, that means that a couple of dozen cars were idling so 20 people could ride the train. If you multiply that by every railroad crossing in the city, that means that more gas is being wasted and more CO² being generated by the idling vehicles than if those twenty people had driven their cars.

A Line-By-Line Response to Greta Thunberg’s UN Speech

Nuclear energy too slow, too expensive to save climate

A Clean Kill of the Carbon Dioxide-Driven Climate Change Hypothesis?

We’re Killing the Oceans, and We’ll Pay Dearly for It

Climate for You: The Big Picture

Surprise! Climate Activists Declare UN New York Climate Conference a Failure

Mont Blanc glacier ‘close to collapse’, experts warn, as roads are closed and mountain refuges evacuated

Climate change now irreversible due to warming oceans, UN body warns  So maybe now they’ll shut up about it.

After Release of Ukraine Letter, Andrea Mitchell Compares Trump to Gangster ‘Godfather’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Ukraine Transcript Shows Trump Committed ‘An Outright Betrayal Of Our Country’  Guess she didn’t bother to read it.

Adam Schiff Accuses Trump Of ‘Mafia-Like Shakedown’ Of Ukrainian President  Guess he didn’t bother to read it either.

EU Could Be Spending More On Private Jet Travels For Climate Crusading Officials: Report

Will Making People Late For Work Save The Environment?

Aussie PM Trying to Please Everyone on Climate Change But that trick never works….

Read it.

A student who sued Boston College over its mishandling of a sexual assault allegation against him won a $100,000 judgment. The case is considered legally significant because it is the first lawsuit to reach a jury since the Obama administration altered rules for adjudicating sexual assault allegations back in 2011.

Victor Davis Hanson.

So upset are our woke progressive candidates that they insist that the rich, the privileged, the white, and the native-born must now pay ever more penance. Amid such acrimony is an inconvenient truth, though one that remains utterly unspoken: Most of those on stage who are so livid at the exploitative “system” have become wealthy and quite privileged through it — especially since they have spent so much of their adult lives gaming supposedly poorly compensated political service.

Read it.

In their paper, Krapivsky and Redner map three simple parking strategies onto an idealized, single row parking lot. Drivers who grab the first space available follow what the authors call a “meek” strategy. They “waste no time looking for a parking spot,” leaving spots near the entrance unfilled. Those who gamble on finding a space right next to the entrance are “optimistic.” They drive all the way to the entrance, then backtrack to the closest vacancy. “Prudent” drivers take the middle path. They drive past the first available space, betting on the availability of at least one other space further in. When they find the closest space between cars, they take it. If no spaces exist between the furthest parked car and the entrance, prudent drivers backtrack to the space a meek driver would have claimed straightaway.

Read it.

Thank God white people are no longer running the country or who knows what sort of hellhole it would be.

Babylon Bee.

It’s always worked  before.

Read it.

Dont confuse our Narrative with facts!

Scott Adams has come up with a taxonomy of the various stages of a Trump Impeachable Offense, by analogy to the well-known Stages of Grief:

1. Bombshell report in either the New York Times or the Washington Post. ‘We can’t name any of our sources , but it’s A  BOMBSHELL!’
2. The softening — turns out that the situation isn’t exactly the way it was originally reported.
3. The inversion — turns out that whatever took place is perfectly legal and in line with what Presidents are supposed to be doing.
4. Carl Bernstein is trotted out to squawk that it’s Worse Than Watergate.
5. Mitt Romney is trotted out to show that there’s at least one (nominal) Republican who is Deeply Disturbed by the situation.
6. The media try to flog life back in the story by shouting ‘It really happened! It did! You’re talking about it wrong!’

He goes through this about halfway through the linked podcast.

Read it.

Which points up a foundational aspect of Trump’s strategy: Use of selective tariffs as a means of leverage againsg both China and domestic corporations.

Ignorant chatter-heads can’t follow this and just complain about ‘Trump’s whims’.

No One Seemed To Notice Greta Thunberg’s Critique Of The Green New Deal

The Washington DC Climate Strike Gets Crashed By A Polar Bear

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #377

Silicon Valley is one of the most polluted places in the country

New York Times Pushes ‘Ecocide’ as ‘International Crime Against Peace’

Climate Change Protesters Descend On DC, Nuke Their Own Cause

SolarCity Panels Spontaneously Ignite On Colorado Residential Rooftop  Gotta love that Global Warming.

Global Warming Cooling Change

Zealot Moppet Greta Thunberg Damns Adults as “Evil,” Curses Alexandria Donkey-Chompers’ Cowardly, Lethal Green New Deal

Read it.

I’ve always been suspicious of green tea.

Joel Kotkin.

From Jefferson and Madison’s republic of yeoman farmers to the suburban homeowners of the postwar era, the notion of dispersed property ownership shaped our democracy. The founders understood the role of small property owners in ancient Athens and the Roman Republic, as well as contemporary examples in such places as the Netherlands. Those who own something — a house, a farm, a small business — tend to be far more engaged with their communities than those who rent or work merely for wages.

This era may now be coming to an end. In the United States, the proportion of land owned by the nation’s 100 largest private landowners grew by nearly 50 percent between 2007 and 2017. In 2007, according to the Land Report, this group owned a combined 27 million acres of land — holdings larger than the entirety of New England.

Read it.

The term “useful idiot,” often credited to Vladimir Lenin, applies to people supporting a cause or movement injurious to their own self-interest. Nowhere is this more relevant these days than in Silicon Valley, a place dominated by brilliant technologists and marketers who often seem to have the social and political acuity of middle schoolers, as evidenced by their strong support for progressive Democrats poised to destroy the underpinnings of their businesses.

Read it.

When it comes to the impact of automation (robots, AI, etc.) on jobs, there are two schools of thought: one holds that technology has always created more and better jobs than it destroys, and this will continue to be the case. The other holds that the current wave of automation will destroy far more jobs than it creates, but the solution is to tax the robots and use these revenues to distribute the wealth to everyone who no longer has a livelihood.

John Hinderaker at Power Line gives it to you straight.

If, like me, you have wondered how a left-wing loony like Jeremy Corbyn can remain in control of the Labour Party, this poll, reported in the Sun, suggests the answer: Labour is a party of left-wing loonies.

All of the adults have abandoned the Labour Party. That’s why they suck in the polls even though progressivism is more popular in Britain than it has ever been.

Ace of Spades throws up his hands.

I am sure that all of you are, like me, breathlessly waiting for the next blockbuster charge to be flung against the White House walls by the barking-mad moonbats of the media. Those charges are so often based on the sleazily leaked half-truths and disinformation leaked to them by their compatriots and handlers in the Deep State. But as Angelo Codevilla writes, the Constitution gives the president essentially all the power to conduct foreign policy, and all of the braying and whining and backstabbing in the media arsenal isn’t going to change that.

Climate-Alarmist Parents Warned Not To Cause ‘Eco-Anxiety’ By Terrifying Children  Too late.

In media coverage of climate change, where are the facts?

The Radical Green Road To Venezuela – Poverty, Misery And Dictatorship

90% Of Plastic Waste Polluting Earth’s Oceans Comes From Asia and Africa

Extinction Rebellion protesters cause ‘carnage’ by ‘gluing’ themselves to A20 exit road near Port of Dover

Do Models Run Hot Or Not? A Process Control View

‘Absurd Medieval Witchcraft’: ‘Hannity’ Panel Deconstructs Climate Change ‘Lunacy’

Watch Climate Activists Try To Explain Why They Use Products Made From Fossil Fuels

The best pushback to the misinformation of @GretaThunberg you’ll find

America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys  When it hits Malibu, I’ll worry.

Panicky NY Times’s Climate Crusade Feeds Kids’ Fears: ‘Our Terrifying World’

Democrat Candidate: One Year Climate Crisis Mandatory National Service for 18-26 Year Olds

Read it.

I’m surprised it wasn’t made mandatory. (Of course, it might have been. Students skip ‘mandatory’ meetings all the time.)

Read it.

Houellebecq argues that the social structures which maintained Western hegemony by checking the societally harmful excesses of this competition, namely religion and the family unit, have been gradually lost to individualism and the market. Without any institutional checks on this competition, a growing number of individuals have been left behind. The recognition that one has lost out leads to despair and resentment, emotions which further destabilise society. For Houellebecq, this widespread “atomisation” of society is the principle cause of a perceived decline of the West. His evidence for this demise is the declining birth rates in Western countries. Unlike other broadly right-wing figures, however, Houellebecq is sceptical that the social stabilising force of Christianity can be called upon anytime soon, and he accepts the decline of religion’s influence over society as a logical consequence of scientific progress.

Read it.

Liberals who view our meritocracy as a fraud aren’t entirely wrong about their ability to game the system at various stages. It is possible, I take it, to leverage “privilege” to get one’s three year-old into a fancy pre-school program. Indeed, as has been confirmed recently, it’s possible through bribery, in effect, to get one’s 18 year-old into a fancy college (although it’s not clear how widespread this practice is).

Where these liberals (and not just liberals) go wrong, I think, is in hugely overestimating the advantage they bestow on their kids through manipulation. Actual merit will have a vastly greater say in determining ultimate success — success as adults — than will successful parental manipulation of various admissions processes.

‘This is science’: Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg she wants action, not praise

The Climate Circus Comes to Town Again

Why 100% Renewable Energy Is Less Realistic Than a Unicorn

Climate Concerned India’s Coal Imports Surging

Climate Confessions

Doomsayers

Century-old ship logs show how much ice the Arctic has lost  Have they looked under the couch?

GOLDSTEIN: Feds scrapped 100 years of data on climate change

Government That Wants You To Take Climate Change Seriously Invites Foreign High School Kid To Testify Before Congress

Birds Are Vanishing from North America  Women and minorities hardest hit.

The Climate Faith

The world is striking for climate action on Friday, and teens made it happen  Which underlines what a stupid idea it is.

Read it.

Our language is full of interjections and verbal gestures that don’t necessarily meananything beyond themselves. Most of our words – ‘baseball’, ‘thunder’, ‘ideology’ – seem to have a meaning outside themselves – to designate or stand for some concept. The way the word looks and sounds is only arbitrarily connected to the concept that it represents.

But the meanings of other expressions – including our hmms, hars and huhs – seem much more closely tied to the individual utterance. The meaning is inseparable from or immanent in the expression. These kinds of expressions seem to have meaning more how a particular action might have meaning.