Archive for November, 2020
19th November 2020
The Other McCain is fed up.
Nothing annoys me quite so much as people who presume me to be so ignorant of political philosophy that they must tutor me. Sometimes this happens in the comments (you know who you are) whenever I use the word “liberal” to mean, roughly, whatever Democrats believe this week.
I know how he feels.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Oh, Please, Give Me Another Unnecessary Lecture About Classical Liberalism
19th November 2020
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A new bioinspired material is here to overtake petroleum-based plastics. A team led by Prof. Shu-Hong Yu from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) reports a method to manufacture materials with similar structure as nacre from wood-derived fiber and mica, with adaption to mass production, good processability, and tunable coloration.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Tough New Bioinspired Material to Replace Petroleum-Based Plastics
19th November 2020
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Their initial refusal to vote placed the Board in a 2-2 deadlock, putting in jeopardy the state’s ability to certify Joe Biden’s win. Hours later, the two flip-flopped and agreed to certify. Now, they’re taking it back.
“I rescind my prior vote to certify Wayne County elections,” wrote Monica Palmer in a sworn affidavit, who along with fellow GOP board member William C. Hartmann refused to certify the election on Tuesday. The two fell under intense pressure from the left – with Palmer claiming that her family was threatened (via Just The News). The two were also doxxed over social media.
“The comments made accusations of racism and threatened me and members of my family,” continues Palmer’s affidavit, addimg: “The Wayne County election had serious process flaws which deserve investigation. I continue to ask for information to assure Wayne County voters that these elections were conducted fairly and accurately. Despite repeated requests I have not received the requisite information and believe an additional 10 days of canvas by the State Board of canvassers will help provide the information necessary.”
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on In Shocking Reversal, Wayne County Election Board Republicans Rescind Certifications; Claim Family Threatened
19th November 2020
Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine.
Yesterday, the Washington Post took a moment off from Trump bashing and Biden promoting to run an actual news story on its front page. The story had a surprisingly (for the Post) honest and direct headline: “Minneapolis violence surges as police officers leave department in droves.”
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Fort Apache Minneapolis
19th November 2020
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Keith Rabois, a former exec at Square and PayPal, has lived in the Bay Area for two decades.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Tech Titan Flees San Francisco for Florida, Says City Is Poorly Managed
18th November 2020
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Researchers have found that note-taking associated with keyboarding involves taking notes verbatim in a way that does not involve processing information, and so have called this “non-generative” note-taking. By contrast, taking notes by hand involves cognitive engagement in summarising, paraphrasing, organising, concept and vocabulary mapping — in short, manipulating and transforming information that leads to deeper understanding.
Sometimes the old ways are best.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Computers and Phones Have Become the Go-To Note-Taking Method for Many. But Your Brain Benefits From an Old-Fashioned Pen and Paper.
18th November 2020
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Standing out from the rest, the trio of Left Coast governors are apparently competing for the dubious distinction of “America’s Top Tyrant”—and Oregon’s Kate Brown might have just upped the ante.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on How Oregon’s Governor Became the Latest Poster Child for COVID-19 Tyranny
18th November 2020
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As postelection litigation rages in multiple battleground states, lawyers representing President Donald Trump include big and small names.
Several lawyers withdrew after reporting pressure from anti-Trump activists that included posting the lawyers’ names and contact information on social media. Twitter removed such information posted on its platform.
Of the lawyers who remain, some are litigating in court while others largely play a media role. Here are eight of them.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Here Are 8 Lawyers in the Thick of Trump’s Election Fight
18th November 2020
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
18th November 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
18th November 2020
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
18th November 2020
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Initial claims that a military-grade crowd control sonic pulse weapon capable of causing severe bodily discomfort, including dizziness and nausea, was used by China’s PLA military on Indian soldiers along the Line of Actual Control, were recently made by a notable professor at a Beijing university.
It would mark the first known instance in history such a controversial weapon was deployed in battle.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on China Used ‘Secret Microwave Pulse Weapon’ Against Indian Troops in Border Battle
18th November 2020
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In the 1980s, Howard-Yana Shapiro, now chief agricultural officer at Mars, Incorporated, was looking for new kinds of corn. He was in the Mixes District of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, the area where the precursors to maize (aka corn) first evolved, when he located some of the strangest corn ever seen. Not only was it 16 to 20 feet tall, dwarfing the 12-foot stuff in American fields, it took six to eight months to mature, far longer than the 3 months needed for conventional corn. Yet it grew to those impressive heights in what can charitably be called poor soil, without the use of fertilizer.. But the strangest part of the corn was its aerial roots–green and rose-colored, finger-like protrusions sticking out of the corn’s stalk, dripping with a clear, syrupy gel.
Shapiro suspected that those mucousy fingers might be the Holy Grail of agriculture. He believed that the roots allowed this unique variety of corn, dubbed Sierra Mixe and locally bred over hundreds or even thousands of years, to produce its own nitrogen, an essential nutrient for crops that is usually applied as fertilizer in epic amounts.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on The Corn of the Future Is Hundreds of Years Old and Makes Its Own Mucus
18th November 2020
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Funny how all this violence seems to come from the Left.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Florida Dem Arrested for Threatening to Shoot GOP Politicians
18th November 2020
ZMan deals with a puzzle.
Back in the Cold War, one of the unanswered questions that came up from time to time was why did the people in the Soviet Union put up with it? American propaganda said that the living conditions were terrible. They had to stand in line for essentials like toilet paper and meat. The secret police regularly hauled people away, sending them into exile in Siberia or worse. Despite it all, the people, including those in the captive nations never revolted against the state or the communist party.
It is a useful question to ponder now as America and the West slip into the abyss of soft totalitarianism. We don’t have cops busting down doors and hauling away dissidents, at least not yet. We do have ideologues armed with the power of the state pushing people around because they can. The Covid hassles are the result of petty pipsqueaks in government offices dreaming up new ways to torment us. Curfews and bans on alcohol are punitive measures, not palliative ones.
It brings up that old question. Why are people tolerating this?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Trade-Offs
18th November 2020
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One of the great looming battles in America will pit the forces of statist education against parents who are increasingly coming to realize that such education is making a terrible mess of their kids.
There is a vast amount of Real Science out there regarding how people, especially kids, learn, and very little of it is being taught in schools of education. That’s why Education degrees are held in about as much esteem as Gender Studies degrees.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on We Need to Change Teacher Training
18th November 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
18th November 2020
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The U.S. Navy has shot down an intercontinental ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean with an SM-3 Block IIA missile in a milestone test that demonstrated a potential scheme to defend Hawaii, the Missile Defense Agency announced Tuesday morning.
The test, which comes on the heels of the revealing of a larger North Korean ICBM in October that could potentially strike the U.S. East Coast, is the first time the United States has shot down an ICBM with anything other than a ground-based interceptor, an MDA official said.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on US Navy Destroyer Shoots Down an ICBM in Milestone Test
18th November 2020
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Regardless of your politics, you have to agree that Donald Trump remembered the “forgotten man” and woman. Yet that particular class of American still seems forgotten, frankly – or deliberately overlooked. And that doesn’t bode well for Flyover Country no matter what happens on Tuesday.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on After Tuesday, We’ll Still Be ‘Forgotten Man’
18th November 2020
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While the army is finding and attacking Boko Haram bases in the north, the Islamic terrorists continue disrupting commerce in Borno state by attacking road traffic and occasionally even army bases. The army has set up a convoy system and even these escorted convoys are attacked. Boko Haram continues to raid rural towns and villages for supplies and prisoners. The captured civilians are either convinced (if they are teenage boys) to join the fight or used as slaves. Prisoners from families with money can be ransomed. The threat of attacks on civilians keeps the northern half of Borno state a chaotic combat zone. Since 2009, when Boko Haram turned violent, the Islamic terrorist violence, largely in Borno state, has left 30,000 dead and nearly three million people driven from their homes. The economy in the northern half of Borno state was devastated and continued Boko Haram violence has crippled efforts to revive the economy.
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on Nigeria: A Cure Worse Than the Disease
18th November 2020
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Brant Frost V, second vice chairman of Georgia’s Republican Party, joins the show to explain the state’s recount process and why he is suspicious of the recount in Fulton County, which includes the city of Atlanta. Frost also describes his own experience as a poll watcher and why Georgia appears to be turning a little more blue with each election.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Georgia Poll Watcher Explains State’s Recount of Votes for President
18th November 2020
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In 1998, Portland-area voters rejected plans to build a new light-rail line. So TriMet, the region’s transit agency, built it anyway.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Vote No, They’ll Build It Anyway
18th November 2020
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There is plenty of evidence, both circumstantial and direct, which breaks down into six basic categories:
- Precedent – It has happened before.
- Motive – Deep State/Military dislike of Trump’s policies is widely known.
- Foreknowledge – Establishment voices predicted this exact situation.
- Opportunity – The voting system is highly susceptible to fraud.
- Voting Irregularities – Known software “glitches” & irregularities in the reporting of the results.
- Cover-up – Dishonesty in the reporting of the situation.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on 6 Factors Which Point to a Rigged Election
17th November 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
17th November 2020
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
17th November 2020
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
17th November 2020
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
17th November 2020
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
17th November 2020
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Although not by much. Still, every vote counts.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Second Memory Card With 2,755 Votes Found During Georgia Election Audit, Decreasing Biden Lead
17th November 2020
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Members of two rural Oregon counties voted to push their lawmakers towards moving their communities to Idaho because they feel the neighboring state is more reflective of their political views.
This is measure is part of a larger movement to create Greater Idaho, a group mainly composed of citizens from Southern and Eastern Oregon, Northern California, and Idaho who wish to be better represented by their state, according to their webpage.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Two Oregon Counties Petition sto Join Idaho Over Political Differences
17th November 2020
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Joe Biden “named at least 40 current and former registered lobbyists to his transition team,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Restore the soul of America, indeed. More like restore the soles of the loafers at Gucci gulch.
The swamp is back in the saddle again.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Biden’s Lobbyists
17th November 2020
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Dominion Voting Systems has refuted claims about being biased toward Democratic officials during the Nov. 3 election, including allegations about a raid on a server in Germany as well as ties to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
However, it did note that it made a donation to the Bill- and Hillary Clinton-operated Clinton Foundation and did not dispute that a former staffer of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was hired as a lobbyist.
Totally unrelated! Totally unrelated!
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Dominion Confirms Clinton Foundation Donation, Pelosi Staffer Link
17th November 2020
National Review cuck Rich Lowry blames the victim.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on How to Lose Georgia in One Easy Step
17th November 2020
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Funny how nobody ever has to resign after an anti-Trump post, even though he’s the President and Biden isn’t.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Virginia College Dean Resigns After Anti-Biden Post
17th November 2020
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The Crust jumps the gun. The gators can’t wait to get back in the swamp.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Biden Starts Doling Out White House Jobs to Longtime Democratic Operatives, Campaign Staff
17th November 2020
Severian is not a happy camper.
College as I have taught it — and I did it for many, many years — is pretty much nothing but socialization. Not in the sense that you get a bunch of students together and hang out with them — most profs I know, being the kind of socially awkward autistic dorks that make “gamers” seem well-adjusted ladies’ men, would commit suicide first — but in the sense that all the “schoolwork” consists of nothing but recitations of the catechism. You don’t go to college even to learn a skill, much less anything so gassy as “critical thinking.” All you learn is the catechism, how to fill out Social Justice Mad Libs. This isn’t a side-effect of a “college” “education;” it’s the entire point.
One of the chief objections to homeschooling that I have heard from civilians is that their kids will miss ‘socialization’ with their age-group. I usually point out that such brainwashing is one of the chief benefits of homeschooling; do you really want your kid to have to write an essay apologizing for being white (or Asian, ‘honorary white’). They looked stunned and say ‘Oh.’
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Education Reform
17th November 2020
ZMan looks at ch-ch-ch-changes.
Very bad people back in the cultural revolution of the 1960’s noticed that radicals were very good at the first phase of their project, but not the second. The radicals wanted to knock down the institutions of society and replace them with something better, but they never managed to pull off that last part. In fact, the thing they cooked up as the new and improved version of what they destroyed tended to create new problems, which required new solutions that created new problems and so on and so on.
An obvious example of this is family life. The nuclear family, with clear and natural roles for the sexes, worked pretty well. The radicals, on the other hand, could not understand why divorce laws and custody laws were as they were. They could not understand why those sex roles existed. They smashed them up and replaced them with family courts, liberal divorce and weird feminist ideas about sex roles. The result has been three generations of family and social dysfunction.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Next Phase of the War
17th November 2020
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Chinese illegal espionage operations inside the United States were worse than originally thought. Recently the U.S. arrested and charged one American private investigator (Michael McMahon) and seven Chinese citizens. Th charge was operating a secret repatriation effort to coerce fugitives from China to return to China. The victims were usually political opponents who were falsely charged with corruption and faced long prison terms in China. In the past the Chinese have sought to extradite such people. These efforts usually failed when it was discovered that they were political opponents of the government facing false charges to halt their protest activities and discourage others from doing the same. Since the Americans won’t extradite political opponents of the Chinese government the Chinese resorted to trying long distance demands, via email or phone, threatening to jail family members in China if the wanted men, along with wives and children, did not return. It was noted that China was already using illegal repatriation teams in other countries.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Special Operations: Chinese Extraction Teams in America
17th November 2020
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The Daily Beast posted a piece on Monday warning that “Dems Are Losing the Social Media War.” Left unsaid was the Dems are winning the “news media” war.
Lachlan Markay, Hanna Trudo, and Sam Stein reported the Biden campaign had a reason to be worried about the potential damage of reporting on Hunter Biden’s sleazy gig trading on his powerful father’s name overseas.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Daily Beast: Dems Knew Hunter Biden Drew HUGE Social-Media Buzz, But MSM Spiked
17th November 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
17th November 2020
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The modern world has dramatically parted ways with this minimalist pre-modern approach to reading. We have adopted an Enlightenment mantra that runs in a very different direction, stating that there should be no limit to how much we read because, in answer to the question of why we read, there is only one response that will ever be encompassing and ambitious enough: we read in order to know everything. We aren’t reading to understand God or to follow civic virtue or to calm our minds. We are reading to understand the whole of human existence, the full inventory of the planets and the entirety of cosmic history. We are collective believers in the idea of totalising knowledge; the more books we have produced and digested, the closer we will be to grasping everything.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on How to Read Fewer Books
17th November 2020
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Positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests have been used as the justification for keeping large portions of the world locked down for the better part of 2020.
This, despite the fact that PCR tests have proven remarkably unreliable with high false result rates, and aren’t designed to be used as a diagnostic tool in the first place as they cannot distinguish between inactive viruses and “live” or reproductive ones.
Dr. Mike Yeadon, former vice president and scientific director of Pfizer, has even gone on record stating that false positive results from unreliable PCR tests are being used to “manufacture a ‘second wave’ based on ‘new cases,’” when in fact a second wave is highly unlikely.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Why COVID-19 Testing Is a Tragic Waste
17th November 2020
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The first generation of Tea Party protests were, unlike media depictions, filled with happy warriors pushing the country towards more fiscal responsibility. It involved crowds of flag-waving Americans who cleaned up every bit of garbage they may have created in the process of protesting across the country. The next round of protests by conservatives will look nothing like the last; they will be angry, deeply angry, and you won’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out why.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Next Tea Party Is Going to Be Much, Much Angrier
17th November 2020
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A GOP recount observer in Georgia claims that several ballots recorded as Biden were actually votes for Trump, and workers conducting the recount became angry when he reported what was happening to elections officials.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on “No, This Is Trump”: Georgia Recount Auditor Claims Multiple Trump Ballots Fraudulently Called for Biden
16th November 2020
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Republican Michigan State Rep. Matt Maddock joined with lawmakers to call for an impeachment of Democratic Michigan Gov, Gretchen Whitmer after she announced new coronavirus restrictions, according to Fox News 2 Detroit.
“The list of violations is long and the call is overdue,” Rep. Maddock tweeted Sunday, announcing his intent to work with Michigan legislators for impeachment hearings. Maddock argued the new restrictions violate an individuals’ constitutional rights, and that “ignoring court orders” is “impeachable conduct,” per Fox News 2 Detroit.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on State Representative Calls for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to Be Impeached After Announcing Latest Coronavirus Restrictions
16th November 2020
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It seems that much of the media hivemind now insists that voter fraud never happens, that it’s equally impossible for an election to be stolen or tainted in any way, and that going a few weeks with two rival candidates both declaring victory (including one they really don’t like) means we are witnessing the end of America as a free country.
It’s amazing that this is the case after countless Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, insisted that Trump colluded with Russians to steal the 2016 election, a story that most major media outlets ran with for years without providing any hard evidence.
It’s also amusing to see so many in the media praising former Georgia state Rep. Stacey Abrams for her work to flip the Peach State into the Democrat column in 2020.
Abrams lost the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election to Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, in a race Kemp won by almost 55,000 votes.
Abrams insists that voter suppression is the only reason Republicans came out ahead and never conceded defeat. Yet she has received, literally, glowing profiles in The Washington Post and countless other media outlets.
Whatever the results of Trump’s legal challenges, the situation hardly portends a slip into dictatorship.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Contesting Election Results in Court Isn’t the End of Democracy. Quite the Opposite.
16th November 2020
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Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, lashed out on Monday over ‘baseless’ accusations coming from President Trump and his allies, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), questioning the validity of ballots cast in the state, according to the Washington Post.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | 1 Comment »
16th November 2020
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“It is a felony to vote in Georgia if you are not a resident of Georgia with no intention of leaving and is punishable by up to 10 years in jail and a $100,000 fine,” Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Friday. He also vowed to prosecute those who do so and said it constitutes voter fraud.
“If you illegally participate in our elections, you might be spending a lot more time in Georgia than you planned,” Raffensperger added, according to local Georgia outlet
Yeah, but you gotta catch ’em first. Democrats have more experience committing vote fraud than Raffensperger has at catching it, I’m thinking.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Is It Actually Legal to Move to Georgia to Vote in Its January Runoff?
16th November 2020
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
16th November 2020
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic