Archive for August, 2021
11th August 2021
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After a year of start-and-stop public-health measures, more often guided by intuition than by science, studies are confirming what economists long suspected: the Covid-19 lockdowns were an expensive, unnecessary failure, based on models that overestimated the number of cases and deaths because they failed to account for individual responses to the pandemic.
Epidemiologists viewed lockdowns as the logical response to a new virus to which humans lacked immunity and that could overwhelm hospitals and cause many deaths. Yet health economists, following seminal work by Tomas Philipson, have long understood that people respond to incentives and alter their behaviors to avoid the risks and costs of infectious diseases. Epidemiologists failed to account for these voluntary changes in assessing what would happen without a lockdown.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Individual Choices, Not Lockdowns
11th August 2021
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
11th August 2021
Steve Sailer.
We live in an age increasingly resentful of the world-historical achievements of white men over the last six or eight centuries. Therefore, it’s worth trying to understand better how and why Europeans accomplished so much. Was it due to their vices, which surely our brave new world can do without? Or was it due to their virtues, about which we ought to think twice before discarding?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Measure of Man
11th August 2021
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The fiscal 2022 Senate Democratic budget proposal released on Monday calls for “SALT cap relief” among its sweeping measures. While the budget is not legislation and is not binding, approving it would unlock a legislative process that would allow for Democrats to enact legislation with a simple majority in the Senate, meaning that Republicans could not block it using the filibuster.
The proposal comes after vocal advocates in the self-described “SALT caucus” pushed for changes to the tax code. A $10,000 cap on the SALT deduction, which largely benefits high-income households, was imposed by Republicans as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was signed by then-President Donald Trump.
Members of the SALT caucus, which include both Republicans and Democrats, hail from high-tax states and argue that the cap doesn’t just affect wealthy people because of the cost of living in their districts, although the Tax Policy Center found that only 3% of middle-income households would pay less in taxes if the cap is removed.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Democrats s to Pass ‘SALT Cap Relief’ Tax Break for Wealthy
11th August 2021
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Gary Maynard, age 47, set a series of fires in Lassen National Forest and Shasta Trinity National Forest, an area in rural Northern California near where the Dixie Fire, the second-largest in state history, still burns, federal prosecutors allege. California Forestry Department agents arrested him Saturday. He is charged with intentionally setting fire to public land and is being held without bail in the Sacramento County Main Jail.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Criminal Justice Prof Set Blazes Across NorCal as Dixie Fire Raged: Cops
10th August 2021
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I read this morning about how some companies are deducting $50 from unvaccinated employees’ pay. My mind immediately went to how an employee (and their lawyer) would go about making out a claim against their employer and the defenses that the employer might assert. Is there a documented difference in medical expense between the vaccinated and unvaccinated employee? Does the employer track health information about employees and apply a surcharge for costs associated with other chronic or lifestyle sourced health outcomes for which the employer pays?
But then I paused and thought about how rigorous a court these days would be in protecting the rights of the individual employee or any individual these days? Sure, there is a lot of procedural protections in criminal cases and these are non-controversial in contemporary law. It is kind of a muscle memory of the courts to apply Miranda rights and evidence exclusion when criminal due process is at issue. Rights are routinely safeguarded except, maybe, in the Capitol breach cases; except, maybe, in health orders that restrict religious practice; except, maybe in landlord-tenant rights in a pandemic; except, maybe…. You see where I am going.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Are the Courts Committed to Liberty?
10th August 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
10th August 2021
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
10th August 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
10th August 2021
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
10th August 2021
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
10th August 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
10th August 2021
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Could materials mined from the deep sea be the answer? That’s what commercial mining firms and scientists are trying to determine this month during two separate expeditions to a remote part of the Pacific Ocean known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ). A potential treasure chest of metals waiting to be plucked is at stake: This region of water is the size of the continental US, and its floor is littered with potato-sized metallic nodules, each containing high concentrations of cobalt, nickel, copper, and manganese, which are used in EV batteries. (Lithium, another key component, is primarily mined from Australia.) These materials would all be harvested as minerals, then refined into metals that could be used in batteries, usually by adding an oxide. Of course, the trick is getting the nodules off the bottom, which is 12,000 to 18,000 feet deep, without killing the creatures that live there or the fish that swim above.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Will Future Electric Vehicles Be Powered by Deep-Sea Metals?
10th August 2021
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Rep. Andy Biggs filed articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday, accusing him of refusing to enforce laws against migrants illegal crossing the border, The Washington Times reported.
The Arizona Republican said in a statement that the country “is more in danger today” than when Mayorkas took office. He also insisted that the secretary “is failing to faithfully uphold his oath of office and is presiding over a reckless abandonment of border security and immigration enforcement, at the expense of the U.S. Constitution and the security of the United States.”
The statement added that “under his direction, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “is systematically releasing COVID-19 positive aliens into our communities, subjecting the American people to unnecessary and avoidable risks.”
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Rep. Biggs Files Articles of Impeachment Against Mayorkas
10th August 2021
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They’re essentially a large international criminal enterprise.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on The Taliban Are Megarich – Here’s Where They Get the Money They Use to Wage War in Afghanistan
10th August 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
10th August 2021
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Here’s a fact for you. It is impossible to win a debate against a woke person. Not, of course, because they have the better arguments: woke people believe stuff that is indefensible tosh, all sane people know that. No, you won’t win because the woke person will immediately question your ethical motives and, from that point on, you won’t have a leg to stand on.
Whether you are telling them you believe that humans are best understood as being divided into two biological sexes, or whether you’re explaining that race relations are not best served by kneeling in obeisance to Marxist yobs, or whether you’re aiming to show that cancel culture is a threat to our basic freedoms, you’ll get the same response. You will be called a bigot, a racist, a transphobe, a hate-monger. And there won’t be a damn thing you can do about it.
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on We Can’t Win Without a Name
10th August 2021
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Most gang violence in Modern Multicultural Sweden that does not include rape involves enricher-on-enricher attacks. Knives, machetes, guns, AK-47s, hand grenades — the lethality of the gangs’ arsenals increases in direct proportion to the density of cultural enrichment in the no-go zones.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on West Side Story, Swedish Style
10th August 2021
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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Migrant Who Burnt Down Nantes Cathedral Is Released, Kills a Catholic Priest
9th August 2021
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
9th August 2021
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
9th August 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
9th August 2021
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State District Judge Brad Urrutia in Travis County, which includes the state Capitol in Austin, Texas, issued the temporary restraining order late Sunday night, The Texas Tribune reported Monday.
The order is for 14 days unless extended by Urrutia and it blocks state police – on the permission of GOP Gov. Greg Abbott and GOP House Speak Dade Phelan – from “detaining, confining, or otherwise restricting” free movement of Texas House Democrats that fled the state to avoid losing votes in another special session, according to the report.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Texas Dem Judge Blocks Arrest of AWOL State House Democrats
9th August 2021
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Salafist jihadist terrorist groups on Aug. 5 detonated an explosive device outside the Bianco Resort. The groups had warned the resort’s owner that they would take retribution for the hotel’s hosting of a mixed-sex concert. No one was injured, but the attack damaged a wall.
“Today we went to Bianco Resort in order to deny the evil before it happened, as this resort will hold a mixed singing party on the beach of Beit Lahiya,” terrorist member Issa Miqdad wrote on Facebook on the day of the attack.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on ISIS-Inspired Terrorists Bomb Gaza Strip Resort for ‘Evil’ of Mixed-Sex Concert
9th August 2021
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Democratic governor Kate Brown of Oregon signed a bill last month that drops the requirement that high schoolers prove they can read, write, and do math at a basic high school level in order to graduate.
The bill, which the Democratic legislature passed in June in a mostly party-line vote, suspends Oregon’s high school graduation requirements for at least five years as the state works to reform its high school standards. A spokesman for the governor’s office told the Oregonian that suspending the proficiency requirements will benefit “Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”
You don’t really need
To know how to read
To follow the proglodyte program.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Oregon Dems Eliminate High School Reading Proficiency Requirement
9th August 2021
Freeberg jerks back the curtain.
So few among us have the capacity or spare bandwidth to deal with the awful truth, but here it is: Biden/Harris got 81 million votes, or democrats are stealing our elections. And it is virtually impossible for Biden/Harris to have received that many votes. Also, if the democrats did steal the last election, it is virtually impossible for them to have been doing it for the first time.
There is a real possibility, and some would credibly assert a likelihood, that democrats haven’t legitimately won a national election since Bill Clinton in 1992 (a three-way, Taft/Roosevelt/Wilson type of fluke).
The most ominous thing about this is the possibility, by no means remote, that very soon after people see posts like this on social media, those posts will be scrubbed.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on It’s Open to Legitimate Question, Like it or Not
9th August 2021
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“Tribute to Bury woman found on fire in street,” reports the BBC. Found on fire? What happened? Was she making chips or did she fall asleep while smoking a cigarette? Read on and one learns that Sarah Hussein died from her injuries and that “three men, aged 24, 26 and 34, who were arrested have been bailed pending further inquiries.” Oh.
In the local press one finds a few more details. Hussein’s family live in Pakistan and say she was a “very nice, kind, polite person who worked hard every day to support us all.” Neighbours report hearing her screams and ingeniously using a wet duvet on her burns. But what happened before? No one will tell us.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Funny Old Priorities
9th August 2021
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A growing number of places in the United States are offering as much as $20,000 to attract newly remote workers to move to their regions, USA Today reported on Monday.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Small Communities Offering Remote Workers Up to $20,000 to Move to Their Towns
9th August 2021
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According to Fox News, it seems that they stood by and let Antifa violently break up a Christian outdoor worship event on the waterfront and the police did nothing. Before they turned their thuggish attention to the “Proud Boys” who came later, the Antifa goons…
are seen spraying red and yellow gas at the group of worshippers, as other Antifa members steal sound equipment, lawn chairs and wagons left across the lawn by families who had come to listen to the pastor speak.
And again, while this was happening, the police stood by and did not intervene. Antifa threw projectiles at children and pepper-sprayed a pastor. In their coverage of the incident, Fox News mentions that brave journalist Andy Ngo has documented this disgusting display of cowardice in the face of violence toward innocent civilians.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on What Portland Has Become
9th August 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
9th August 2021
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When you overprotect people from any and all risks, you’re not doing them any favours. Trauma-informed approaches and safetyism lead to antifragility, a term coined by Nassim Taleb, which refers to the fact that many systems — including our immune system and psychological system — need to experience stressors to grow strong. Instead of helping young people, we are empowering their anxiety. These overprotective approaches can stunt the natural coping responses that individuals need to develop.
Critical gender studies can also have a detrimental impact on mental health. In 2016, Dr Jordan Peterson expressed his concerns about a bill under consideration by the Canadian federal government. The bill included a list of gender expressions whose use would be prohibited on the grounds of discrimination. Peterson pointed out that the bill let the notion of identity be determined solely by the individual in question — whatever identity that might be. The problem with this is the fact that identity is not solely an individual construct but also a social one. There’s more to it than a person’s choices; identity oscillates between the psychological and the social. Therefore, if someone subjectively decides their identity without taking society into account, this decision will potentially compromise others by unilaterally redefining their roles in society.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Being a Snowflake Is Bad for Your Mental Health
9th August 2021
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The annual Planned Parenthood gala is the mecca of liberal elitism. In any given year, one can find Meryl Streep, Scarlett Johansson, and Sarah Silverman rubbing elbows with Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and other members of the Democratic Party’s power center, as they raise money for the nation’s largest abortion provider. They will gather at midtown Manhattan’s “premier event venue”—capacity 1,200 people—and then file to the exits for an afterparty hosted by a star of the show Queer Eye. Questlove will DJ. Vogue will provide fawning coverage.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Last Blue Dogs: Local Democrats Call on Party To Save Hyde
9th August 2021
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Stupidity is a very specific cognitive failing. Crudely put, it occurs when you don’t have the right conceptual tools for the job. The result is an inability to make sense of what is happening and a resulting tendency to force phenomena into crude, distorting pigeonholes.
High intelligence merely means that one thinks very very fast; it is no guarantee of the quality of the resulting conclusion. In fact, it often guarantees just the opposite, because the more quickly one comes to a conclusion, the more apt one is to think ‘it’s just obvious’ and put more weight behind its correctness than is deserved. That’s the truth behind the meme ‘an idea so bad that only an intellectual would believe it’.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Why Some of the Smartest People Can Be So Very Stupid
9th August 2021
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Physician burnout has been a problem for a long time, but it’s exploded since Obamacare. So many physicians are changing careers and retiring early that our projections about how many new doctors we need to produce each year in medical schools has turned out to be way off. We’re trying to fill the gap with nurse practitioners and physician assistants because it takes less time to educate those, but we still can’t catch up. Even the famously leftist medical journals are starting to take note.
This month’s “Family Practice News” has an article entitled, “Zero-burnout practices often solo, physician-owned.” They did a survey of several hundred small to medium-sized primary care practices and found that the burnout rate in solo practices was much lower than in other practice types.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Doctors Are All Getting Burned Out
8th August 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
8th August 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck`
8th August 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
8th August 2021
Reba Announces Breakthrough COVID-19 Infection Post Vaccination Yup, gonna run right out and get that vaccine.
Did The CDC Director Just Accidentally Admit That Vaccination Passports Are Futile?
The CDC’s Voodoo Epidemiology
More on the Corona Stasi
“Trust The Science”, They Said…
These top US chains are reinstating their mask requirements (CNN)
160 San Francisco Sheriffs’ Deputies Threaten To Resign Due To Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccine
All French Youths Must Get the Vax!
Tragic Consequences of the Vax in Hungary, Part One
Pandemic Set Off Deadly Rise in Speeding That Hasn’t Stopped
France, Italy Swept By Mass Protests Against COVID Health Pass
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
8th August 2021
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
8th August 2021
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he Taliban tightened the noose around northern Afghanistan Sunday, capturing three more provincial capitals as they take their fight to the cities after seizing much of the countryside in recent months.
The insurgents have snatched up five provincial capitals in Afghanistan since Friday in a lightning offensive that appears to have overwhelmed government forces.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Taliban Seize 3 More Afghan Provincial Capitals in Northern Blitz
8th August 2021
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Now that’s a form of environmentalism I can get behind.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Glenfiddich Uses Own Whisky Waste to Fuel Trucks
8th August 2021
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If a frank enemy of the United States had taker over the executive branch this past January, I wonder if he would conduct himself one whit differently than have Joe Biden, his administration, and his Democratic enablers in Congress and the media. This isn’t the point that Andrew McCarthy expressly makes in his August 7 NR column “Why the Border Crisis Is Here to Stay,” but the column supports the point and it is the one I would like to make.
…
How would an enemy of the United States do any differently?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Biden’s Open Border & the Open Question
8th August 2021
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Twenty-two of the Texas Democrats who fled to Washington, D.C, to prevent a quorum in the state House have filed a lawsuit in federal court against Gov. Greg Abbott.
The lawsuit, which two of the twenty-two Democrats are disputing they signed onto, is embarrassingly bad.
The complaint does not include the usual section for “claims” or “causes of action,” so we have to sift through its pell-mell paragraphs to figure out just what the Texas Democrats are alleging.
Posted in Full Frontal Stupidity | Comments Off on Texas Democrats’ Embarrassing Lawsuit Against Gov. Abbott
8th August 2021
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Former President Barack Obama was caught on video dancing maskless at his 60th birthday party Saturday night in Martha’s Vineyard — inside a giant tent filled with celebrities.
In a video posted to Instagram by singer-songwriter, Erykah Badu, Obama could be seen holding a microphone and dancing in the middle of the raised dance floor — to the cheers of gathered guests, the Daily Mail reported.
Badu had been performing with members of her band and managed to convince Obama to get on stage.
While the president’s back was turned, she took a selfie video capturing Obama fully in the frame, which she then posted directly to Instagram — despite photos being banned at the event. Crowds of people could be seen in the background, also in contrast to Obama’s insistence the event would be scaled back because of the spread of the delta variant of COVID-19, the Daily Mail reported.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Obama Hosts Massive Maskless 60th Birthday Bash
8th August 2021
Freeberg heads down a rabbit hole.
Liberals go through the motions of coming up with brand new ideas, and then the conservatives complain about them. High up on the list of these complaints the conservatives have about the liberal idea, is the observation that the idea is anything but new.
Liberals then complain about the conservatives. They ascribe all sorts of personal defects to the conservatives that are rather silly, for if they apply at all, a search for an enthused self-identifying liberal who shares such defects in equal measure, is a brief search. High up on the list of these complaints the liberals have about conservatives that apply with equal legitimacy to liberals, is the complaint that conservatives do a lot of complaining. But that one, at least, has the virtue of being true.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on My Complaint About Complaining About Complaining
8th August 2021
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The myth of ‘intellectual property’ is showing its age.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Major U.K. Science Funder to Require Grantees to Make Papers Immediately Free to All
8th August 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
8th August 2021
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Taliban fighters have seizesd key government buildings in the northeastern Afghan city of Kunduz, leaving government forces hanging onto control of the airport and their own base, a provincial assembly lawmaker said on Sunday.
Where are they getting the money to do all of this?
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Taliban Capture Key Afghan City of Kunduz
8th August 2021
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Democrats on Capitol Hill are proving their socialist stripes: They’ve reportedly considered raiding the “super-sized retirement savings accounts” of the wealthy to pay for their $3.5 trillion progressive spending fiasco. s
Posted in Democrats: Party of Plundering and Blundering | Comments Off on Dems Should Keep Their Grubby Paws Off Americans’ Retirement Savings
7th August 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture