Archive for April, 2021
25th April 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
25th April 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
25th April 2021
Portland Police Declare Riot After Vandals Attack Businesses
Former US Soccer Player Lori Lindsey Says Banning Transgender Athletes ‘Upholds White Supremacy’ I guess there aren’t any white ‘transgender’ people. Good to know.
What we can learn from Canada on gun control (CNN)
Washington state kicks off major tax fight with new capital gains levy (The Hill)
Portland Mayor Belatedly Urges Residents To Help “Unmask” Rioters, Stops Short Of Condemning Antifa
Why Illinois Is In Trouble: 122,258 Public Employees Earned $100,000+ Costing Taxpayers $15.8 Billion
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
25th April 2021
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Congress and the president have adopted many critically important policies in great haste during brief periods of perceived national emergency. During the first “hundred days” of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in the spring of 1933, for example, the government abandoned the gold standard, enacted a system of wide-ranging controls, taxes, and subsidies in agriculture, and set in motion a plan to cartelize the nation’s manufacturing industries. In 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act was enacted in a rush even though no member of Congress had read it in its entirety. Since September 2008, the government and the Federal Reserve System have implemented a rapid-fire series of bailouts, loans, “stimulus” spending programs and partial or complete takeover of big banks and other large firms, acting at each step in great haste.
Any government policymaking on an important matter entails serious risks, but crisis policymaking stands apart from the more deliberate process in which new legislation is usually enacted or new regulatory measures are usually put into effect. Because formal institutional changes—however hastily they might have been made—have a strong tendency to become entrenched, remaining in effect for many years and sometimes for many decades, crisis policymaking has played an important part in generating long-term growth of government through a ratchet effect in which “temporary” emergency measures have expanded the government’s size, scope, or power.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on 12 Myths Fueling Government Overreach In Times Of Crisis
25th April 2021
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We hear all the time that “children are our future”. We must spend more money on education because children are our future! We must spend more money on social welfare services because children are our future! We must destroy school lunches because our children’s future depends on it! We must wage war on climate change because it’s our children’s future! (You never hear these same people say we must manage the debt for our children’s future. Weird.)
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Why Save the World if Kids Aren’t In Your Future?
25th April 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
25th April 2021
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Some books are dull because of their subject matter, and others are dull despite it. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s new opus, Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age, manages to be even duller than its already dull subject. Though the last few pages detail Klobuchar’s goals as head of the Senate antitrust subcommittee and may therefore be useful for some readers, they’re packaged in 500 pages of incoherent fluff.
Of course, antitrust law is a warren of dull economic jargon, and even the flashiest author would be hard-pressed to jazz it up. Early on, the Minnesota Democrat announces her commitment to making it accessible to a lay audience: In Antitrust, this approach means we get a long discursion on her maternal grandparents.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Klobuchar’s Big Bust of a Book
25th April 2021
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Over the past decade, the annual population growth rate has slipped to 0.06%, lower than at any time since at least 1900. California would drop from 53 to 52 House seats – still more than any other state – and would in turn lose electoral votes in the presidential election.
Meanwhile, states like Texas and Florida are growing their populations and political clout. Texas is expected to gain as many as three seats, according to an Election Data Services analysis, and Florida two. Arizona and Colorado could also gain seats.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on California May Lose Congressional Seat for the First Time in History
24th April 2021
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A recent study conducted at the Naval Academy showed that students learn less from easy teachers. As the researchers state, “Instructors who tend to give out easier subjective grades… dramatically hurt subsequent student performance.” While a generalization, these claims support the intuitions of anyone who has ever been to school or met a human. When students can give less effort, they do. So, why have schools been moving toward easier grading?
In a decade working in high schools, I’ve seen a consistent push to reduce writing, reading, and note-taking, expand late work windows, lighten workloads, dilute the weight of assessments, and, most fundamentally, to eliminate failures. The same can be seen at the university level. According to an article in the 2020 Journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology, the amount of time college students have spent on academic work has gone from 40 hours per week in 1960, to 27 in 2003, to just 15 hours in 2008. During that time, the average grade has risen in both public and private universities, while national SAT scores continue to decline. Today’s graduates are not smarter or more prepared for their future, but at least they think they are.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Grade Inflation Is Ruining Education
24th April 2021
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
24th April 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
24th April 2021
MIT researchers say you’re no safer from Covid indoors at 6 feet or 60 feet in new study challenging social distancing policies
The petty narcissism of small vaccine differences
“It’s On” – Germany, France Back EU Push To Sue AstraZeneca Over Botched Vaccine Rollout No good deed goes unpunished.
India’s Super Rich Scramble Private Jets Ahead Of UK “Red List”
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
24th April 2021
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
24th April 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
24th April 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
24th April 2021
Matt Taibbi.
The effort by the “SALT caucus” to hold a $2 trillion relief bill hostage in order to help what they’re calling “struggling families” in the “middle class” is just the latest development in a years-long saga revealing Congress at its phoniest and most shameless.
This issue that “means so much to the American people,” according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is really a niche matter concerning a sliver of the most well-off Americans in a handful of blue states, who were made the target of a political prank of sorts by the Trump administration in 2017.
The problem with the class warfare rhetoric that the Democrats indulge in habitually is coming back to bite them on their well-upholstered butts now that the Democrats have turned into the Party of the Rich. (They keep talking as if the Republicans are the party of the rich, but the truth is out there.)
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Heroic Congressional Fight to Save the Rich
24th April 2021
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Two different topics, but the same problem: 1. There is no crisis at the border. 2. And “authorities say (Ma’Khia Bryant) was wielding a knife.”
Thus reported, successively, Politico and NBC News produced two vivid examples of exactly why millions of Americans no longer trust the mainstream liberal media.
The first example comes from Politico, caught in the act by The Washington Examiner with this headlined story: “Politico forbids ‘crisis’ when describing border surge, despite Biden’s own use.”
One of the advantages of having the Internet is that it has never been easier for anyone who goes to a minimal amount of effort to find out the truth that there is a Media Narrative, that said Narrative supports a partisan political agenda, and that said political agenda is Not Your Friend if you are one of the Dirt People.
The disadvantage is that it allows lazy people to become Low Information Voters and assist each other in doing the Lemming Leap off the cliff, screaming ‘No, I didn’t want that!’ all the way down.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on The Real Crisis Is the Media’s Disregard for Facts and Truth
24th April 2021
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The new system—named Advanced Superconducting & Cryogenic Experimental powertrain Demonstrator (ASCEND)—is in ground-based demonstrations. The three-year project “aims to show that an electric- or hybrid-electric propulsion system can be more than 2 to 3 times lighter than a conventional system without compromising a 97 [percent] powertrain efficiency,” Airbus says.
If it works, ASCEND could be a landmark achievement in future-looking aeronautics. The snag facing electric aircraft designs mostly comes down to a matter of weight. On the ground, cars can add up to 1,000 pounds worth of batteries. But in the sky, that could mean the difference between an aircraft flying or sinking. Passenger planes in particular are already a very finely balanced system.
Yeah, well , maybe.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on The Cryogenic Hydrogen Powertrain That Will Transform Propulsion
24th April 2021
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Vertical farming is nothing less than exactly what it sounds like. As opposed to spreading crops out along the ground, beds are effectively turned on their side, and grown on vertical panels. This isn’t exactly new; some of the earliest indigenous farmers would plant crops on layered terraces to achieve similar results. But the modern form of vertical farming is barely two decades old. While it’s proven hyper-efficient, the technological cost of entry has also traditionally proven to be high, requiring expensive lights, temperature and irrigation control systems, and enormous amounts of electricity — to say nothing of capital. Until now.
Like ‘green’ energy, these guys talk a good fight, but I’ll believe it when it comes to my local grocery store. (No, not Whole Paycheck.)
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on This Is What The Future of Farming Looks Like
24th April 2021
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Hollywood has taught us a painful lesson in recent years.
No amount of fame, fortune, prestige or power is enough to inoculate you against the woke mob.
We’ve seen powerhouse figures like Scarlett Johansson, Stephen King, Matt Groening and Halle Berry all buckle when pressured by woke activists.
Now, it’s Chuck Lorre’s turn.
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on This Outspoken Lefty Celeb Has Now Bowed to Cancel Culture. Who’s Next?
24th April 2021
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thics. Objectivity. These things are not high priorities for CBS. One continuing example of that is Gayle King, a Democratic donor and cheerleader for her preferred political party. The fact that she co-hosts CBS This Morning and interviews powerful politicians, as well as reports on politics, doesn’t seem like a problem for the network. Four years ago this week that fact came into view, yet again. It turns out that King had been vacationing with the Obamas.
See the image at above right of the three on Hollywood producer David Geffen’s yacht.
CBS had no comment on the “ethical quandaries” of King vacationing with the Democratic power couple. When finally asked about it on April 21, 2017 by Access Hollywood, the co-host ridiculously insisted, “My vacations are not political and so I went on vacation with a great group of people and, to me, that’s not a political statement.”
A black ‘journalist’ goes on vacation with The Magic Negro & Woke Wife. No, not political at all….
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Ethics Flashback: Remember When Gayle King Went Yachting With the Obamas?
24th April 2021
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And promptly get stolen.
The Narrative media tend to forget that not everybody in New Yawk is a Woke Hipster.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on E-Scooters Roll Into New York
24th April 2021
Some bosses never make it past this simple threshold.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
23rd April 2021
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Apocalypse Not-Now
23rd April 2021
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Like being called ugly by a pond full of frogs.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Scarborough Fights With Mika, Colbert Whether GOP Is ‘Fascist’ or Just ‘Morons’
23rd April 2021
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Former defense secretary Robert Gates once wrote that President Joe Biden has been ‘wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades’. To which John Kerry might reply, what am I, chopped liver? After all, when it comes to disastrous track records, America’s haughtiest envoy should not be overlooked.
John Kerry has been failing upward since Vietnam.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Failure Falls Upward for John Kerry
23rd April 2021
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Whether their leaders realize or admit it or not, American colleges and universities are on the verge of a crisis. And it’s a crisis, by and large, of their own making.
The National Association of Scholars last month published a report by Neetu Arnold, “Priced Out: What College Costs America,” which finds, among other things, that an undergraduate degree is now prohibitively expensive for many Americans, who have turned to the federal government to subsidize their education.
“The average price of college,” writes Arnold, “has more than doubled since 1980.” She adds that “[n]early 44 million Americans now owe more than $1.5 trillion in student debt.”
And eventually those people will have to depend on government assistance, through handouts or debt cancellation. Students are the original sub-prime lendees.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Woke but Broke: How US Colleges Are Pricing Students, Themselves Out of Business
23rd April 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
23rd April 2021
America’s biggest environmentalists and their private planes
Why the World Can’t Trust America on Climate (New York Magazine)
Changes to giant ocean eddies could have ‘devastating effects’ globally (The Guardian)
Climate change has altered the Earth’s tilt
“Agricultural Disaster” – Frost Blast Decimates French Vineyards, May Slash Total Wine Output By Third
John Kerry Unveils America’s Latest War… On Carbon Dioxide Put tape over his mouth. That will lower carbon dioxide production by a bunch.
Biden’s Climate Denialism
How Global Warming Isn’t
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
23rd April 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
23rd April 2021
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
23rd April 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
23rd April 2021
NYC dad says daughter ‘recognized’ private school was ‘trying to make her feel guilty’ about ‘skin color’ Racism, straight up.
Ayanna Pressley, a vocal proponent of rent cancellation, made $15,000 income as a landlord: Report
White North Carolina official removed for not acknowledging black woman’s doctoral title (Daily Mail)
Couple planned wedding at Florida mansion. But no one told the owner.
13-Year-Old Girl Stabbed To Death By Her Former Friend, Another 13-Year-Old
‘Trying To Stab Us’: NBC Edits Out Portion Of 911 Distress Call That Preceded Ma’khia Bryant Police Shooting
‘Could End Up Costing People Their Lives’: Joe Concha Demands NBC Apologize For Airing Edited Ma’Khia Bryant 911 Call
‘You Shoot Us, We Shoot You’: BLM Activists Threaten To Kill Cops ‘Eye For An Eye’ After Columbus Shooting
Twitter Again Shows Hypocrisy, Won’t Review LeBron’s Threatening Tweet
Reid, Panelists Defend Bryant as Teen Who Had a Bad Day, Used Knife to Defend Herself
‘Prohibited By Every Agency’: Fraternal Order Of Police Is Not Impressed By Joy Behar’s ‘Warning Shot’ Suggestion
ABC Fire Drama: ‘Being Black in America Is a Life Threatening Condition’
‘I Am Nonviolent’: Maxine Waters Defends Call For Protesters To ‘Get More Confrontational’ Let’s have someone get more confrontational with Mad Maxine and see what she says.
Man Pleads Guilty To ‘Execution-Style’ Killing Of Sergeant Who Gave 29 Years To The Force
Alternate Juror On Chauvin Trial Says She Feared Riots, People Turning Up At Her Home
‘Having A Bad Day’: Gender And Africana Studies Professor Suggests Ma’Khia Bryant Was Shot For ‘Not Being Perfect’
Washington Post Fact Checkers Expose Truth About Tim Scott’s Black Privilege in Triumph of Accountability Journalism Just kidding.
Black-Owned Minneapolis Businesses Claim City Has Abandoned Them
Joy Reid, BLM Activist: DeSantis Is the New George Wallace, ‘Should Be’ Scared of Black People
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
23rd April 2021
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A New Hampshire man has turned himself into the police after setting off eighty pounds of explosives as part of a ‘gender reveal’ party. NBC reports that the explosion, which was apparently caused by a legal explosive called Tannerite, led to fears of an earthquake and cracked the foundations of nearby homes. ‘Are you kidding me?’ said one local, ‘I’m all up for silliness and what not, but that was extreme.’
Extreme? Yes. Unique? No. ‘Gender reveal’ parties, for those who are unfamiliar, involve the announcement of whether a couple’s new child is a boy or a girl through the release of blue or pink smoke or other substances. Sounds innocent? Sure. But the elaborate risk-taking that goes into these events has escalated to frightening, fascinating levels.
LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!
I can’t imagine giving a shit about the gender of my own kid (if I had one , which fortunately I don’t), much less someone else’s.
Stupidity is usually a capital crime. Think of it as evolution in action.
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on Why Are People Dying at Gender Reveal Parties?
23rd April 2021
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Impeoper usage – ‘gambit‘ presumes a sacrifice, or at least a risk, and Democrats are risking nothing.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on The D.C. Statehood Gambit
23rd April 2021
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One hand washes the other.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Manchin Endorses Murkowski
23rd April 2021
ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.
Every once in a while, you cannot help but notice that the people who rule over us are operating like primitives from another age. A great example is this video in which Susan Wojcicki, the head of YouTube, gives herself an award. The award in this case is for her support of free speech. While accepting the award, she brags about the efforts of YouTube to stifle the speech of anyone with whom she disagrees. You see, slavery is freedom, war is peace, and she is a hero of free speech.
The amazing bit is where she mentions that her family was chased out of Poland because they kept saying and doing things the Poles did not like. She says this experience that she did not actually experience, is what drives her now to drive people off the internet who say and do things she does not like. You see, back then it was bad, but now it is good because she is doing it. More important, she is justified in doing it because Hitler, which makes everything right.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Mob Rules
23rd April 2021
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on ISLAMOCOPIA FRIDAY: What’s New in the Religion of Peace
23rd April 2021
Steve Sailer.
Sometimes, the big media monopolies employ prudent discretion when the latest Hate YT cause célèbre sweeps social media. For example, I know it seems like ten years ago by now, but can you remember back a week or when the most hated white man in America was drill Sgt. Jonathan Pentland, who was videoed telling Deandre Williams to leave his neighborhood? It then turned out that Williams was a dangerous lunatic whose parents immediately had confined to a psychiatric facility. Well, showing an impressive nose for a story that everybody else was playing big but just didn’t smell right, the New York Times ignored the case entirely. It hasn’t mentioned anybody named “Pentland” since 2016.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on The Washington Post Doubles Down on the Columbus Knife Girl
23rd April 2021
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Or at least think they do.
Sixty-two percent of Whites who classify themselves as “very liberal” or “liberal” have been told by a doctor they have a mental health condition, as compared to 26% of conservatives and 20% of moderates, the study found.
Young White people who identified as “very liberal” were almost one and a half times more likely to report mental health problems than those who considered themselves “liberal.”
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on White Liberals More Likely to Have a Mental Health Condition
22nd April 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
22nd April 2021
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
22nd April 2021
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
22nd April 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
22nd April 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
22nd April 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
22nd April 2021
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The National Labor Relations Board overruled hundreds of Delaware poultry workers who had voted to reject union leadership. The agency said in a 3-1 ruling released Wednesday that a provision prohibiting workers from leaving a union for a set time period after a contract is signed allowed the board to ignore the workers’ March 2020 vote. The decision reversed a regional NLRB director who had initially ruled in the workers’ favor.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | 1 Comment »
22nd April 2021
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Amazon One, which debuted in September and is currently in use at about a dozen Amazon physical stores, allows shoppers to pay for items by placing their palm over a scanning device. The first time shoppers use the kiosk, they have to insert a credit card to link it with their palm print. But after that, shoppers can pay simply by holding their hand over the kiosk.
Amazon One is distinct from the company’s Just Walk Out technology, which allows shoppers to pick up items and walk out of the store without going through a checkout line. However the two technologies can work together, and Amazon employs them both at its cashierless Amazon Go stores.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Amazon Is Bringing Palm-Scanning Payment System to Whole Foods Stores
22nd April 2021
The Other McCain is on the case.
We have talked before about this case (“Nika Holbert and the BLM Myth”), but I must again address the death of Nika Holbert because one of the YouTube channels I watch regularly has featured it.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Nika Holbert, the ‘Drug War’ and the Importance of Penalizing Stupidity
22nd April 2021
Zman preaches to the choir.
Back when the Covid-19 panic started, a clever fellow pointed out that one possible way out of it would be a vaccine that did not work, but with enough effort could convince people it did work. The rulers could claim it is 80% effective at preventing infection and there would be no way to know it was a lie based on medical statistics. The vaccinated who got Covid would just be those for whom the vaccine did not work. If the producer could keep the secret, no one would be the wiser.
The reason for this is simple math. The claims about the infectiousness of this virus were always nonsense. A year of aggressive testing has resulted in about 10% of the public having tested positive. We know that the false positives are very high, but we also know many infected people never get tested. Either they have no idea they have been infected or their symptoms are so mild they ignore it. Like the flu, Covid can be expected to infect around 20% of the public in a year.
If your vaccine is 80% effective, then that 20% is miraculously accurate. A clever ruler could roll out a fake vaccine and claim it is doing as it claims. The gullible media and research community would fall for it completely. Unless someone in on the scam spilled the beans, no one would know. In the age where the media is just the marketing department for the corporate state, whistleblowers are ignored. Given the money involved, a fake vaccine program is not a bad bet.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Blessed Are the Covidians