21st February 2021
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‘America is back.’ Speaking to the 57th annual Munich Security Conference, Joe Biden made that point for the umpteenth time in his short presidency. His crisp declarative sentence requires decoding, of course. To his audience of European elites, he was offering this assurance: ‘Trump is gone and won’t be returning anytime soon: trust me.’
In other words, the Swamp is back in charge and we member of the Transnational Ruling Class can get back to the way we were before Trump ruined everything.
Alternatively it could express the reality that Trump put America first and Democrats will return it to the back of the bus where it belongs — for a hefty fee, of course.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on What ‘America Is Back’ Really Means
21st February 2021
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The byzantine bureaucratic rule that made useful airport connections to mass transit difficult is finally gone. Its legacy will live on in our crappy trains.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains
21st February 2021
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The reality is that there is little consensus among economists about the effects of the minimum wage on aggregate employment.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The High Cost of Using the Minimum Wage as a Form of Welfare
21st February 2021
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I live in Texas and write about climate science and energy, so I get a lot of questions about the recent problems. My wife and I are OK, we have a natural gas powered generator and did not lose power like most people did earlier this week. We also had a broken pipe, but it was outside the house, and I was eventually able to cap it, with the help of a neighbor, after the normal (for me) three trips to the hardware store and two failed attempts.
I am seriously considering installing a gas-powered emergency generator.
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
21st February 2021
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Funny how that works.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on What Ever Happened to Daniel Dale? CNN Fact-Checker Has Disappeared From Air Post-Trump
21st February 2021
Severian continues his discussion of Myers-Briggs.
Not being a computer person myself, I keep forgetting that computer people are just people, meaning they’re no less silly, cliquish, and fad-chasing than the rest of us. Meyers-Briggs seems like a very short step above astrology to me — do I really need a long questionnaire to tell me I’m an extrovert? — but I shouldn’t be surprised that computer people like it. In my experience, “psychology” is to computer people what “computers” are to psych majors — randomly blinking ooga booga boxes that do some cool things, but are mostly a terrifying mystery. Liberal Arts people (of which Psych Majors are the most liberal) love Apple products not least because they promise to bury all that blinky ooga-booga stuff under “the user experience;” thus it shouldn’t surprise me that a quick-and-easy “test” that promises to unlock the secrets of the psyche appeals to the other sort.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on For Future Historians’ Benefit….
21st February 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
21st February 2021
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What kind of fool tries to shoot people at a gun store?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Louisiana Shooting Spree Leaves 3 Dead; Armed Citizens Credited With Saving Lives
20th February 2021
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Has Trump derangement syndrome cost Texan lives? Back in 2017, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry proposed paying Coal and Nuclear Power Stations to keep at least 90 days worth of fuel onsite, for disaster resilience. At the time the resilience proposal was widely criticised as being a thinly disguised Trump scheme to pump government money into the coal and nuclear industries. But in hindsight, a bit more resilience might have saved Texas from days of painful electricity blackouts.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Trump Energy Resilience Plan which Could have Saved Texas
20th February 2021
Freeberg nails it.
Like the electrical power in Texas, public trust in our officials and our institutions is down at crisis levels. And much like the Texas power shortage, this public trust shortage is widely regarded as a spontaneous thing. We like to think of it in passive-voice terms, with no subject to the sentence, no one bearing any responsibility for cratering the quantity of this essential asset. Of course we’re not thinking of it that way because it’s true; we’re thinking of it that way because any inspection of who is responsible, would prove inconvenient to those who brandish the power of telling us what opinions to have.
These crises are hurting people though. Others are doing a better job of looking into the cause of the Texas problem than I could. I shall leave it to them. They’re closer. But on the other problem, the public trust problem, I’m square in the middle of it. I’m a member of the public. And I do not trust. I have reasons not to trust, so let’s look into them because I’m not alone.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on So Much Fake Stuff
20th February 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
20th February 2021
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
20th February 2021
Watchdog Group: Cuomo COVID-19 Edict Might Have Caused 1,000 Nursing Home Deaths How does one get to be a ‘watchdog group’? Is there a form you fill out, or is it just enough to have an impressive-sounding name?
How the COVID-19 Censors Killed the Truth
Latest Viral Threat: Bubonic Plague Emerges In Congo
“It’s A National Crisis” – Officials Admit Billions Lost In “Veritable Tsunami” Of Pandemic Aid Fraud
Entire School Board Resigns In California After Being Caught On Video Disparaging Parents Who Wanted Schools To Reopen Every cloud has a silver lining.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
20th February 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
20th February 2021
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I’ve written before about one particularly toxic strain of this authoritarian “reporting.” Teams of journalists at three of the most influential corporate media outlets — CNN’s “media reporters” (Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy), NBC’s “disinformation space unit” (Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny), and the tech reporters of The New York Times (Mike Isaac, Kevin Roose, Sheera Frenkel) — devote the bulk of their “journalism” to searching for online spaces where they believe speech and conduct rules are being violated, flagging them, and then pleading that punitive action be taken (banning, censorship, content regulation, after-school detention). These hall-monitor reporters are a major factor explaining why tech monopolies, which (for reasons of self-interest and ideology) never wanted the responsibility to censor, now do so with abandon and seemingly arbitrary blunt force: they are shamed by the world’s loudest media companies when they do not.
One of the essential characteristics of ‘Puritan’ is the firm believe that there is one righteous way of acting, one righteous way of speaking, one righteous way of thinking; everything outside of that narrow compass is Unrighteous, concerning which condemnation is not only permissible but compulsive. It is not enough to be righteous yourself, you must be committed to promoting righteousness in others, which always winds up being committed to denouncing unrighteousness in others and seeking their punishment.
That is why the analogy between the Old Puritans and the Social Justice Warriors is obvious to the most casual observer. Neither group can rest easy so long as somebody, somewhere is acting, speaking, or thinking unsupervised by their moral superiors. As the people of Salem discovered, if you were insufficiently proactive about denouncing others, you ran the risk of being denounced yourself, and fanatics have no liking for what we lawyers call Due Process.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Glenn Greenwald Obliterates “Tattling, Hall Monitoring, Speech Policing” Journalists After Taylor Lorenz Self-Owns Into Oblivion
20th February 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
20th February 2021
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Her basic message:
“I ask that Smith College stop reducing my personhood to a racial category. Stop telling me what I must think and feel about myself. Stop presuming to know who I am or what my culture is based upon my skin color. Stop asking me to project stereotypes and assumptions onto others based on their skin color.”
For this the president of Smith College, Kathleen McCartney, sent out a campus-wide note denouncing Shaw, and openly lamenting that labor laws prevented her (McCartney) from disciplining or firing Shaw for her wrongthink.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Disgrace of Smith College
20th February 2021
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As reported here previously, former Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is on trial for “kidnapping” due to his actions as interior minister in closing Italian ports to migrant ferries run by NGOs. The judge in the case is a fellow named Nunzio Sarpietro.
As it happens, Judge Sarpietro was recently discovered dining in a restaurant in Rome, in an “orange zone” where no restaurants are allowed to be open because of the Wuhan Coronavirus. Like California Governor Gavin Newsom, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and many other grandees, the esteemed judge is not bound by lockdown rules — when he wants to dine out with his daughter, he dines out with his daughter. Let the peons stay at home and eat gruel!
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Lockdown for Thee, But Not for Me!
20th February 2021
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The inauguration of President Biden as the 46th US President hasn’t produced quite the catharsis that Democrats (and others) had hoped for. After only a few months of one-party rule in Washington, DC—and the sputtering finale of impeachment—there should be fear among Democrats that attention will return to the signs of real damage done to the progressive/liberal project in the wake of its collision with the Trump train.
The shifting of both American political parties into one another’s former political spaces has been head-spinning. The trend of Republicans turning into the party of labor and Democrats becoming a party of capital looks to continue in the 2020s—something few people outside of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot would have guessed 30 years ago. And it turns out that the promise of a Democrat-voting bloc made up of well-educated whites, blacks, and the growing Hispanic population delivering a decades-long progressive era in American politics is not coming to pass.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Environmentalism, Trumpism, and the Working Class
20th February 2021
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The former computer repair shop owner who claimed he came into possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop has sued Twitter for a second time alleging defamation.
John Paul Mac Isaac, who owned a Delaware computer repair shop until closing it last year, filed his lawsuit Thursday in the Southern District of Florida, per the Washington Examiner.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Ex-Computer Shop Owner Sues Twitter Again for Defamation Regarding Hunter Biden Laptop
20th February 2021
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When a dog curls its lip and bares its teeth, you know what sort of dog you’re dealing with. One such dog curled its lip in Massachusetts recently. His name is David Ismay – possibly related to the Bruce Ismay of Titanic fame, but hold that thought.
This Ismay wants to “break the will” – his words – of people who rely on gasoline to power their cars and oil and natural gas to heat their homes, in order to “combat climate change.”
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on “Break Their Will!”
19th February 2021
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The former defense secretary Robert Gates famously wrote that Joe Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” If the early days of his presidency are any indication, Biden is determined to prove him right.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on A Headlong Rush to Surrender
19th February 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
19th February 2021
New Report Shows Cops Used Ring Cameras to Monitor Black Lives Matter Protests Thank God Rign doorbells are good for something. They sure suck at being video doorbells.
‘Squad’ member Pressley calls for creation of ‘federal job guarantee’ program Science tells us that the average IQ of African-Americans is 85. History tells us that many of these are elected to Congress.
Cornel West Claims Opposition To Israeli ‘Occupation’ Is Reason He Did Not Receive Tenure At Harvard Or maybe it was because he was too much of a racist asshole even for Harvard.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
19th February 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
19th February 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
19th February 2021
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
19th February 2021
The Other McCain points out the nude monarch in the room.
Everybody knows this, but you’re not supposed to say it….
A new study from renowned University of Hamburg researcher Roland Wiesendanger concludes the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the “cause” of COVID-19.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Yes, China Caused This Pandemic
19th February 2021
Popular ‘Science’.
But it might as well.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Eating Soy Does Not Make Men Grow Boobs
19th February 2021
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The metal mesh screens in front are ideal for when BLM/AntiFa come calling.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on This Prefabricated Intelligent Tiny Home Is a Reinforced Concrete + Weatherproof Design, Making It Nearly Indestructible!
19th February 2021
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eviewing “Repressive Tolerance” and other works by Herbert Marcuse, the quack who became America’s most influential thinker
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Marcuse-Anon: Cult of the Pseudo-Intellectual
19th February 2021
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The most frustrating argument is the one you agree with but is made badly. With the death yesterday of Rush Limbaugh, NRO’s Michael Brendan Dougherty reflected on the division between the Rush Limbaugh-wing of conservatism and Roger Scruton-wing; and how they will always have an uneasy alliance. He also laments, “If anything, considering the place of Rush Limbaugh in his nation’s political life is to realize that conservatism has been late to develop a voice that cuts in somewhere between its aloof intellectuals and aggro broadcasters. Conservatism is still searching for a middlebrow voice.” Alas, he fails to see his own role in finding the middlebrow voice, and blames Rush Limbaugh for the failings of institutional conservatism, Michael Brendan Dougherty very much included. Rush Limbaugh fulfilled a specific role in conservatism, and he fulfilled it very well. Scruton, likewise, fulfilled a specific role, and did so very well. Leftists are well aware of the idea of “Diversity of Tactics,” and letting different people use their talents in different ways to get effect. The failure on the right was of those who thought there was only one way to do things -and refused to adapt either to the success of Limbaugh, the critiques of Scruton, or the manifest failures of conservatism.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Rush Impediment
19th February 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for Today
19th February 2021
The Other McCain shines a spotlight.
Whenever police kill a black criminal, it is now predictable — as night follows day — that the media will run a story about how the family of the deceased suspect “demands answers” about the shooting. Generally speaking, there will be a “civil rights” lawyer at the press conference, and there will eventually be a lawsuit against the cops. We take this for granted nowadays, along with the media interviewing relatives of the deceased criminal, who had an extensive felony record, saying that he was really a wonderful person, a beloved father, blah blah blah.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Family Demands Answers
19th February 2021
ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.
Blackness, as has been discussed here many times, is a negative identity. Black identity depends entirely on the relationship between blacks and whites, real and imagined. Everything about being black in America revolves around the black relationship with whites. Remove whites from the equation and blackness has no meaning. If whites pack up and leave, blacks will have to follow them, as whites are their reason to exist now.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Extra Black
19th February 2021
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In what pundits and pols are beginning to dub “a fight for the soul of the Republican Party,” Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump signaled last week they would be backing disparate candidates for Republican nominations.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Trump Team Out in Front of McConnell’s in ’22 Senate Primaries
19th February 2021
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One of the notable features of 21st century life is that America’s blue states are failing and losing population, while red states are thriving and growing. This is blindingly obvious to anyone who travels around the country, or to those who have seen half of their friends move to Nashville. But today Stephen Moore’s Committee to Unleash Prosperity sent an email that shows the trend graphically.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Red States Trounce Blue States
19th February 2021
John Hinderaker at PowerLine.
I agree. Anyone who sends a kid to a government school these days is committing child abuse.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Time to Fire the Public Schools
19th February 2021
Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine.
Sen. Ted Cruz is under attack for flying to Mexico while Texas is facing severe winter weather and power outages. Cruz explained why he went there:
With school cancelled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon. My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas.
If true (and I’m unaware of any reason to believe it isn’t), this is a complete defense to the attack on Cruz. Those who suggest that he was derelict in his duty as a Senator should explain what Cruz could have done to help his state, beyond having his staff in constant contact with officials, during the brief time he was on this trip.
But they won’t, they’re just grasping at any excuse to trash-talk Cruz.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Uses and Abuses of Texas Power Outages
19th February 2021
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on ISLAMOCOPIA FRIDAY: What’s New in the Religion of Peace
18th February 2021
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President Joe Biden is forcing Chicago’s top federal prosecutor to resign amid ongoing criminal probes of powerful Illinois Democrats and their associates.
U.S. attorney John Lausch is prosecuting close confidants of Democrat boss Mike Madigan, an ally of former president Barack Obama who resigned from the state legislature Thursday after a decades-long reign in Springfield. Lausch’s office will also prosecute Chicago alderman Edward Burke (D.), an influential figure accused of strong-arming businesses into retaining his law firm.
Investigating Democrats? Can’t have THAT!
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Biden Muscles Out Chicago Prosecutor Hot on the Heels of Powerful Dems
18th February 2021
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At younger ages than ever before, American children are being targeted by the left with sexual content and destructive gender ideology.
It’s coming at them not just from cultural forces in social media and entertainment, but from state governments and local school boards. Now, the White House and Congress are poised to exacerbate these trends by infusing K-12 schools with destructive ideology, politicizing medicine, and undermining parental rights.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Promise to America’s Children Warns of Destructive ‘Equality Act’ LGBT Agenda
18th February 2021
NYT Quietly Updates Article Claiming Capitol Police Officer Died After Being Struck With Fire Extinguisher During Jan. 6 Riot
‘The Dam Is Breaking’: Rep. Stefanik Says Bipartisan Opposition To Cuomo Is Building
ABC REFUSES to Cover Disgraced Biden Aide’s Resignation for Attack on Their Former Colleague
Democrat Who Harassed, Called For Doxxing Of Pro-Life Teens Announces Bid For PA Lt Gov
Former Gang Member Tapped for Democratic Campaign Committee Post Obviously, he has a skill-set that they need.
CNN’s Brian Stelter Helps Freshman Democrat Push ‘Truth Commission’ for Trump Backers
China Threatens To Hobble US Defense Industry By Limiting Export Of Rare-Earth Metals Of course they do.
Aim Of Impeachment Was To Paint All Trump Voters As Criminals: Rep. Mike Johnson
How The Chinese Communist Party Infiltrated US Academia
Joe Scarborough: Ron Johnson ‘Not Worthy To Be A United States Senator’
Impeachment Manager Hopeful ‘9/11-Style Commission’ Will Expose ‘The Hatred That Is Lurking Within’ Although not ‘within’ the Democrat party, which is where the true world-class hatred resides.
‘The Left Wants To Re-Write Our History’: Gov. Kristi Noem Criticizes MSNBC’s Joy Reid
‘The Daily Show’ Host Compares Trump To O.J., Says ‘He’s Responsible For More Deaths’ Trump – Is there anything that blaming him can’t do?
Unions Are Keeping Students and Teachers Out of the Classroom. Here’s What Lawmakers Can Do About It. Smile and bend over?
Court Upholds Twitter Ban of Feminist Who Said Men and Women Are Different
NYT Discreetly ‘Updates’ Their Own Fake News on Capitol Police Officer’s Death
MSNBC Propagandist Rachel Maddow Strategizes With Guest on How to Destroy GOP
‘The Only Way To Become A Good Republican Is To Become A Democrat’: Meghan McCain Slams Media’s Coverage Of GOP And she would know.
Fired Football Coach Sues School Officials for Retaliation Over Political Differences
New York Prep School Principal Sent Parents An Actual Whiteness Meter, Including A ‘White Traitor’ Category, Reports Say That flapping sound is chickens coming home to roost … and poop.
Exclusive: Twitter Suspends Free Speech Group’s Account
The Woke Madness That’s Devouring the New York Times
Texas Mayor Reportedly Resigns After Calling Residents ‘Lazy’ During Mass Power Outages
Banned from researching trans
Los Angeles School District Cuts More Than 130 Police Officer Positions And Will Replace Them With ‘Climate Coaches’
Deadspin, LGBT Forces Rage Against State Attempts To Protect Integrity Of Women’s Sports
‘I Wish We Could Just Blow Up All The Trump Buildings’: MSNBC Guest Wants Former President Erased From Country’s Memory Gee, I wish we could blow up MSNBC.
Cartoon Network Urges Kids To View Each Other By Skin Color
Why Is Bill Gates Telling You What You Should Eat? Because he can.
An Absurd Look At The Marxist, Ultra-Woke “Education” System In 2021
Portland Police Keep Crowd From Raiding Dumpster
America 2021? Cops Block Hungry Portlanders Scrambling For Discarded Food
State-Run Radio? Pompeo-Pounding NPR Now Nodding and Winking at Blinken
‘Loud Enough For My Wife To Hear’: Ron Kim Details Threatening Phone Call From Gov. Cuomo
NBC’s Roker to Gates: How Can ‘Big Tech’ Shut Down ‘Climate Deniers’?
Scandal-Plagued Illinois Democrat Resigns from Office
‘The Bullying Is Nothing New’: De Blasio Says Reports Of Threats And Demands Are ‘Classic Andrew Cuomo’ And, to tell the truth, classic De Blasio.
Chicago Reviewing Statues of American Icons Lincoln, Washington BRAAAAAAAINS!
Ignorant Senator Shares New York Times Article Thinking It’s Real Babylon Bee.
Video Ignites Tensions in Closed California School District; Board Caught Mocking Parents
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
18th February 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
18th February 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
18th February 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
18th February 2021
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It’s a captured Twitter thread, so if you’re comfortable navigating those, which I am not, you might find it educational.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on NYT Article on Slate Star Codex Sourced from Reddit “Sneer Club”
18th February 2021
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Today the French government published its defense in the court case brought by several environmental groups claiming that the French government is not keeping its commitments to the 2015 Paris agreement.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on France Resists Deindustrialization