Three Decisions from America

Three Decisions from America

1. Let me see if I've got this right. Zelensky is making a stand to defend his country's freedom and is willing to die for his cause. And Biden, the president of the beacon of human freedom in the world, has offered him a flight out.

Would that be sort of like offering George Washington asylum after the Boston encounter? Is that the best we could do? And is "Run!" the correct thinking for the leader of the free world?

2. The Americans have had negotiations with China over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We shared significant intel with them. China then shared that intel with Russia.

Had Trump done that, he would have been impeached.

3. Russia's ability to do mischief and savagery and to threaten human life depends entirely upon its oil revenue. Our policy is to decrease our own energy production and have the Russians make up the difference. (500,000 barrels/day.) We also asked the Saudis to increase their production. (They declined.) So, essentially, we are trying to stop a war we are funding.

America and the world simply can not afford these people.

Sunday/Form and Substance

 

Sunday/Form and Substance

The gospel today is the fruit of the tree gospel, the nature of the individual will be shown in his deeds, not his words. This is such a known gospel that it may be fatigued. Yet the wheel always turns.

Our world today values the gesture. We punish the wrong opinion more firmly than the wrong action. In a sense, it is a replay of the old "form vs. substance" discussion. And it is powerful. The international problems we face now in Europe scream it. Russia invades Ukraine, the strength of the act being the West's dependency on cartel oil. The solution to the energy threat, to unleash the energy resources in the U.S., is captive to the green-world gesture.

So we wear the badge of social concern when the true problems hide in plain sight with their solutions.

 

A Thesis.

“Once again I speak to the Ukrainian soldiers,” he said, addressing his enemy. “Do not allow neo-Nazis and Banderites to use your children, your wives and the elderly as a human shield. Take power into your own hands. It seems that it will be easier for us to come to an agreement than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”
The speech seemed to be ripped from an alternate reality – or from the second world war, where Putin appears to be spending more of his time as he launches the kind of broad military offensive not seen in Europe for nearly 70 years.--A scary assessment from The Guardian

A Thesis.

CNN was astounded when Putin invaded. Astounded. The British were astounded when Germany invaded Poland. People in this country were astounded when the areas that 'defunded the police' had a rise in crime.

The Thesis: Some people do not believe in evil. They think conflict and violence and ill will is a problem with education or upbringing (or, in this country, whiteness.) Consequently, vicious, self-centered, predatory behavior comes upon these people like a sudden storm, unexpected and bewildering. But, because they do not believe in evil, they can not learn.

Some notes

Some Notes

An observation that should raise a lot of collateral questions. We have been told for decades that wind and solar would save the world. Yet here we are with the Russians invading their democratic neighbors and all of us are saying the great problem is going to be our access to petroleum. If the West continues to rely upon people who hate them to provide petroleum to them, and act as if wind and solar are a viable alternative, a real conflagration is much more likely--and frightening--than rising sea levels.

A major consideration in sanctions by NATO is the vulnerability of several NATO countries to Russian petroleum. This has compromised the NATO response. This was certainly known. If this vulnerability was known, why wasn't our alternative energy capacity developed and used to free up those countries from petroleum dependence and make NATO's position stronger?

Was the American daily broadcast countdown to the Ukraine invasion one of the weirder things you have seen?

Gerhard Schröder, a former German chancellor with close ties to Russia, has been tapped to join the Gazprom supervisory board. The former German chancellor!

Angela Merkel was chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. While born in Hamburg, Merkel grew up in East Germany and, in 1968, Merkel joined the Free German Youth (FDJ), the official communist youth ...wait a minute!

Sean Penn is sitting in the front row of the reporters for Biden. Is anybody serious here?

A thought experiment: could you sit down with the drug cartel, explain the problems they were causing, and appeal to their better nature?

A challenge: How to support the European need for energy and, at the same time, suppress energy production at home.

Questions 47

Questions 47

So, Europe is reverting to form with historic animosities and ambition emerging in mindless violence and destruction. I wonder if the Ottomans will strike back.

So can we agree that economic sanctions against peripheral criminal citizens do not deter national military aggression? Interestingly, several European states are reluctant to be too severe because there might be negative impact on some free economies.

One economic lever against the Russians is the price of oil. Driving down the Russians' main product will hurt them. Simply increasing the oil production by the Saudis would be a tremendous help. The Saudis will do that because they have some loyalty to the free West, right?

And, apparently, in the face of obvious evil resulting in murder and chaos, the free West will dither. This is not a function of freedom, it is a function of leadership and strength.

Think of the leaders in the free West; does any one of them inspire confidence?

Democracies historically have been of no threat to their neighbors. So, what is it that Putin hopes to achieve here? Preventing an expansion of NATO seems a Pyrrhic victory. There is some natural resource value but wars usually are not economic positive, even when plunder is included. (There are some incredible exceptions.)

Who exactly was Macron speaking for when he went to Putin?

Was Trump's harassing of the NATO countries any more effective in driving home the need for NATO solidarity than the invasion of Ukraine?

Will the anti-Americanism in Europe recede now that the awareness of real evil in the world has reemerged?

The 'optics' here are just terrible yet the Chinese, who are very sensitive to optics, supports Putin. Why?

Trump said that the sanctions against Putin were worthless and Putin's next step was virtually unopposed and 'smart.' The press has said this shows Trump was pro-Putin. Is this true or just a smear and, if a smear, will it work?

 

Non-questions

 

Non-questions

Europe is clawing back to the Europe we all love and remember: Putin has moved into Ukraine. A big, well-armed country attacks a smaller, poorly armed one. Power attacks weakness. One plunders another's goods. No one is willing to say why--maybe in search of some Kulaks. And it reminds many of the Sudanland invasion right before Hitler invaded Poland. So the act has some historic symmetry. Maybe it has something to do with the Chinese, maybe there is a testing or diversion there. And, of course, one of the warring parties, is led by an autocrat who sounds a bit weird.

It's strange, all this surmising. There is really only one question here: how much will Putin be allowed to take? Many factors might be involved: price of gas, naval ports, grain. But some questions will not be asked: isn't this an independent country, how many will be killed, how many families destroyed, how many refugees created, how much rape and pillage, isn't the attack of civilian centers a 'war crime,' isn't the U.N. supposed to do something about this kind of international behavior?

And, of course, can a culture completely submerged in its own narcissistic masochism see real rather than manufactured evil in the world?

Question 46

Question 46

 

The Russians have invaded Ukraine. We will have posturing on steroids, the press will pay attention to the U.N., and the White House will debate over the verb "invade." But the insight will be lost: malice, murder, and mayhem are a part of us and any government philosophy that does not include that is useless and dangerous. Not to say some are more prone to malice, murder, and mayhem than others.

Special counsel John Durham outlines in his latest indictment “definitely showed that the Hillary Clinton campaign directly funded and ordered its lawyers at Perkins Coie to orchestrate a criminal enterprise to fabricate a connection between President Trump and Russia,” says Kash Patel, the former chief investigator for the House Intelligence Committee.
But, is that accurate? Was the intrusion into a candidate's and then president's computer a rogue act or did the Clinton campaign initiate it?

The NBA runs ads that say, "Speak for the people who may not be able to be heard," But that doesn't seem to include speaking out for Uyghurs and their genocide.

Morey, a Rockets exec, commented on it in a tweet and China didn't like hearing an NBA executive say that. Chinese TV stopped broadcasting Rockets games. The NBA then apparently told its players and front offices to shut up. Morey deleted his tweet and instead tweeted that he "did not intend to cause any offense."
The NBA itself also apologized to China, saying that they were "disappointed" by Morey's "inappropriate" tweet. Lebron James called Morey "misinformed." James Harden said, "We love China."
Chamath Palihapitiya, a part-owner of the Golden State Warriors, was unusually honest when he said, "Nobody cares about what's happening to the Uyghurs….We have a responsibility to take care of our own backyard first."

New world success and hypocrisy, two tracks, one train.

Latest from Neil Ferguson and Imperial estimates Omicron as intrinsically 70% less severe than Delta.
Quite a difference from their 16th Dec report to SAGE: “We find no evidence of Omicron having different severity from Delta.”

Only six of Alabama’s 143 school districts have more than half of their students proficient in math.

Taliban fighters will no longer be allowed to carry their weapons in amusement parks in Afghanistan…in what appeared to be another effort by the country’s new rulers to soften their image.

The phrase “zero tolerance” (of a virus, or violence, or something) is favored by people who are allergic to making judgments and distinctions: i.e., thinking.--will

Funny story from Riley on the recent NFL racism charge.
One reason is that teams don’t want to hire someone they can’t fire without being labeled racist...
Not long after Barack Obama became president, he made an appearance on the “Late Show With David Letterman. ” It was September 2009, and the administration’s plans to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system had not been going over well in the polls. Some people, including former President Jimmy Carter, were insisting that criticism of Mr. Obama was racially motivated. Asked about it, Mr. Obama demurred. “It’s important to remember,” he said to Mr. Letterman, “that I was actually black before the election.”

Sort of astonishing, sort of not:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/11/university-illinois-chicago-cowardice/

A new bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security on February 7th warns that “false or misleading narratives” about COVID-19 could be fueling terrorism and says those who publicly question the government’s protocols regarding mandates and restrictions are creating a “heightened threat environment.” 

Looks as if Trudeau took that to heart.

Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.--Acton

There will very soon come a time in this miserably long pandemic where the only sizable group left wearing masks by order of the government will be the cohort threatened the least by COVID-19 — school-aged kids. And for this anti-science, anti-education, anti-childhood-development outrage we have one person above all to blame: American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. Very hard to understand.

Utopian Thinking

Utopian Thinking

(Sir Thomas More (1477 - 1535) was the first person to write of a 'utopia', a word used to describe a perfect imaginary world. ... He coined the word 'utopia' from the Greek ou-topos meaning 'no place' or 'nowhere'. It was a pun - the almost identical Greek word eu-topos means 'a good place'.)

The NYT has an article by Ezra Klein, The Economic Mistake the Left Is Finally Confronting. Below is a segment. The Left's problem with Supply-Side Economies is, I think, accurate. But it has an underlying viewpoint--as does the referenced Bastani--that is worth reflection: what will make people happy and the world stable? Their answer seems to be, A Workless Paradise.

"The left needs to think as much about supply as it does about demand. But look closely and you can see something new and overdue emerging in American politics: supply-side progressivism. . . .

. . . [P]rogressives are often uninterested in the creation of the goods and services they want everyone to have. This creates a problem and misses an opportunity. The problem is that if you subsidize the cost of something that there isn’t enough of, you’ll raise prices or force rationing. You can see the poisoned fruit of those mistakes in higher education and housing. But it also misses the opportunity to pull the technologies of the future progressives want into the present they inhabit. That requires a movement that takes innovation as seriously as it takes affordability. . . .

. . . Supply-side progressivism shouldn’t just fix the problems of the present; it should hasten the advances of the future. A problem of our era is there’s too little utopian thinking, but one worthy exception is Aaron Bastani’s Fully Automated Luxury Communism, a leftist tract that puts the technologies in development right now — artificial intelligence, renewable energy, asteroid mining, plant- and cell-based meats, and genetic editing — at the center of a postwork, post-scarcity vision.

“What if everything could change?” he asks. “What if, more than simply meeting the great challenges of our time — from climate change to inequality and aging — we went far beyond them, putting today’s problems behind us like we did before with large predators and, for the most part, illness? What if, rather than having no sense of a different future, we decided history hadn’t actually begun?"

But there is no shortage of "utopian thinking" on the Left. The Left always has their default position available: what if people were different than they are? What is more utopian than that?

 

Sunday and the Moral Spectrum

In Seattle, home to one of the largest populations of bike commuters in the country, officials have overturned a decades-old regulation requiring cyclists to wear helmets because of discriminatory enforcement of the rule against homeless people and people of color.


Sunday and the Moral Spectrum

Today's is one of the difficult gospels--and insights--of the New Testament: the 'love your neighbor' gospel. Christ's position is almost unfathomable, especially for the times. National hatred was, and is, an elaboration of tribal hatred, something inherent in us. Christianity's broad reassessments--charity, equality of value of the individual--were not just revolutionary, they were unheard of. (Aristotle thought women were incomplete men.) Christ's realignment of thought here was simply stupendous.

And an astonishing demand, a challenge to any non-theologian with an opinion. But it seems to be more a tableau, a portrait of the problem rather than a simple solution. Turning one's cheek in Ukraine will be fatal, surrendering your family to slavers almost collaborative. The purity Christ asks for is less a demand than a context, a way of measuring the moral failures that are guaranteed by our natural limits and those of our natural world. Christ's sacrifice is humanity at its purist, his torturers, man at his worst. Between those extremes, Christ expects us not to be Pilate.

Revelation

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has been removed from Amazon’s charity platform for its failure to disclose where tens of millions of dollars in donations it received nearly two years ago have gone.

The special counsel John Durham said in a new court filing that "members of the media" may have "misinterpreted" claims that he made in a previous filing. This may be a signal that Hilary has no exposure to this serious crime.

                                   Revelation

 "There is segregation in America. Xenophobia exists in America. Antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, all exist." Chinese propaganda? The Russian response to America's efforts in Eastern Europe? ISIS?

No. This is a statement put out in Farsi on an American government website. You might think this anti-American propaganda was the result of a Chinese or Russian hack. It was not. The source of this international anti-American smear is the American Vice-President. Kamala Harris said this.

You could ruminate on this for a long while. How could a public official be so stupid? Where are the people who are supposed to provide her guide rails? Is she ill, crazy or does she really believe this is true and that she should proclaim it to the world for use by our enemies? How could such a person rise in the ranks of American political leadership?

This is beyond mere incompetence or illness. This shows a profound misunderstanding of the nation, its people, and its position in a dangerous world. That any public official would think that this is even remotely reasonable is shocking. And frightening.

Washington--and we--need a rescue.

Redistribution

'The gold medalist said she felt empty. The silver medalist pledged never to skate again. The favorite left in tears without saying a word.
Runner-up Alexandra Trusova was also in despair after her history-making five quadruple jumps proved not enough to beat teammate Anna Shcherbakova to the gold medal. “I hate this sport,” she shouted at the side of the rink. “I won’t go onto the ice again.”'---From the AP on the emotion chaos in the Totalitarian Games in China. These are children. Children. The Press sisters, the East German women's swim team--the Russians and their totalitarian cousins have always been good at recognizing how the vulnerable and the weak can be used and sacrificed for a greater goal.

Redistribution

“No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars.” This is AOC channeling Ghengis Khan. This 'fixed pie,' or zero-sum notion is not a very modern view of the world but it is a common one, the view of raiders, pirates, and warlords as they victimize their neighbors and farmers to improve their own life at the expense of others. It is the gourmand philosophy of the cannibal.

And it explains a lot of the behavior of failed states. It is a virtual thumbnail sketch of the history of Europe. And it has reassembled itself again as Russia, Europe's largest country, salivates on the border of Ukraine, Europe's second-largest country. See below a collection of the value of Ukraine: (from Don)

How the independent, sovereign, democratic nation of Ukraine ranks:

1st in Europe in proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores;

2nd place in Europe and 10th place in the world in terms of titanium ore reserves;

2nd place in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores (2.3 billion tons, or 12% of the world's reserves);

2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons);

2nd place in Europe in terms of mercury ore reserves;

3rd place in Europe (13th place in the world) in shale gas reserves (22 trillion cubic meters)

4th in the world by the total value of natural resources;

7th place in the world in coal reserves (33.9 billion tons)

Ukraine is an agricultural country:

1st in Europe in terms of arable land area;

3rd place in the world by the area of black soil (25% of world's volume);

1st place in the world in exports of sunflower and sunflower oil;

2nd place in the world in barley production and 4th place in barley exports;

3rd largest producer and 4th largest exporter of corn in the world;

4th largest producer of potatoes in the world;

5th largest rye producer in the world;

5th place in the world in bee production (75,000 tons);

8th place in the world in wheat exports;

9th place in the world in the production of chicken eggs;

16th place in the world in cheese exports.

Ukraine can meet the food needs of 600 million people.

Ukraine is an industrialized country:

1st in Europe in ammonia production;

2-е Europe's and 4th largest natural gas pipeline system in the world (142.5 bln cubic meters of gas throughput capacity in the EU);

3rd largest in Europe and 8th largest in the world in terms of installed capacity of nuclear power plants;

3rd place in Europe and 11th in the world in terms of rail network length (21,700 km);

3rd place in the world (after the U.S. and France) in production of locators and locating equipment;

3rd largest iron exporter in the world

4th largest exporter of turbines for nuclear power plants in the world;

4th world's largest manufacturer of rocket launchers;

4th place in the world in clay exports

4th place in the world in titanium exports

8th place in the world in exports of ores and concentrates;

9th place in the world in exports of defence industry products;

10th largest steel producer in the world (32.4 million tons).

Source: Andriy Futey

Ukrainian Congress Committee of America Ukrainian World Congress - Свiтовий Конґрес Українців

So it is with the looter and the bandit who always depend upon the effort and sacrifice of others to support themselves, using some excuse or another, just as long as it doesn't imply laziness or envy. It's curious that their redistributive righteousness doesn't extend to include those stronger than they.

And the progress from Atilla is nice to see; they have philosophies now.

Question 45

Question 45

Stan Stavrin has a lung cancer.

Russian fighters flew within five feet of American fighters. The fallout from their acts is insignificant to these political monsters. It is a characteristic of self-absorbed predators: they do not care about the general implications of their acts. The shark has no taste buds.

I know a number of older people who did not know who the half-time entertainment at the Super Bowl were. I'll bet there are a number of young people who do not know who Herman Melville is. The question is, is that huge cultural separation important?

“Individuals are trying to blockade our economy, our democracy, and our fellow citizens’ daily lives. It has to stop.” Trudeau actually said this.

The FDA can regulate drugs and devices. But physicians decide on treatments—including off-label prescribing of FDA-approved drugs and devices for unapproved uses—because they are best able to assess their patients’ circumstances and the evolving state of scientific knowledge. Off-label usage is common and the standard of care in many specialties, including oncology and pediatrics.
This latter activity seems to have been outlawed for Covid therapy as the government has expanded its reach as medical practitioners. Isn't it illegal to practice medicine without a license?

The New York Times reports that children have a greater risk from car rides than from covid. Sooooo....

A summary of the Australian government's response to the Virus: a declared ‘state of disaster’ giving police carte blanche to enter your home and carry out spot checks without permission or a warrant; an 8pm to 5am curfew; a ban on leaving home in the day except for food and essentials, care and caregiving, daily exercise or work; exercise to last no longer than an hour and to be conducted within a 5km radius of your home; mandatory masks, even outdoors.

In a recent analysis of Ireland's demographics, one statistic stands out from a census comparison from the first decade of the twenty-first century. Just 2.1 percent of the population in Northern Ireland were born in the South, and just 1.3 percent living in the South were born in the North.
And that is with rights of free migration.

“No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars.” This is AOC channeling Ghengis Khan. This is an embarrassingly uneconomic view of the world that should be whispered in tent cities, not voiced by an elected representative--in a free country, no less. But there are practitioners of such primitive thinking. See Ukraine.

During 2020 the WHO took several months to negotiate the terms of a visit to China to investigate the origin of the virus. When that team eventually visited Wuhan in January 2021, they were treated to a strictly controlled tourist itinerary that included a museum and the wrong campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, followed by a risible press conference at which they endorsed a fanciful Chinese theory that the virus might have been imported from frozen food.
During these many months, the British government kept telling me that we should leave it to the WHO to carry out such investigations. So the WHO’s role was to prevent a proper investigation, albeit inadvertently.

--Ridley

Recent studies suggest dogs do not show increased socio-cognitive skills and they are not less aggressive than wolves. Rather, compared with wolves, dogs seek to avoid conflicts, specifically with higher ranking conspecifics and humans, and might have an increased inclination to follow rules, making them amenable social partners. These conclusions challenge the suitability of dog domestication as a model for human social evolution and suggest that dogs need to be acknowledged as animals adapted to a specific socio-ecological niche as well as being shaped by human selection for specific traits.

 

Murray and Murder

P J O'Rourk has died.

The Durham accusation is serious, but is it deep?

                         
Murray and Murder

In his new book, Charles Murray reviews the database for New York City murders and finds that of the 1,906 blacks killed from 2006-2017, 89 percent were killed by African Americans. Latinos committed 10 percent of these murders, and just 0.6 percent of black homicide victims died at the hands of whites. These figures, Murray writes, are “useful as a counterweight to much of the rhetoric from the Black Lives Matter movement.”

The problem with this kind of logical criticism is that it assumes the sincerity of its opponents.

Question 44

Question 44

Is Putin pulling back in Ukraine? Or, since we have impaired our energy production, was oil prices the point? Or does he fear the "tiger team?'

Trudeau has invoked 'emergency powers.' They include the right of the government to impound citizens' saving accounts. We should be as tough with Putin as Trudeau is with his own people.

Did the intelligence community know the Clinton campaign was hacking into Trump’s campaign, presidential transition, and White House offices? If they knew nothing about Clinton’s efforts to infiltrate Trump’s campaign, why not? Isn't that their job?

In Perth, Australia, police stopped mass to see whether parishioners were wearing masks during a recent church service.

Rap emphasizes the rhythm and the word. Like Yeats, Eliot, and Frost.

Here's the intro for "Police" by the Super Bowl headliner, Mr. Snoop Dogg:

“All you n***** out there
Take your guns that you using to shoot each other
And start shooting these b**** a** motherf******* police
That’ll impress a motherf******* n**** like me, the crooked motherf******
‘Cause these police getting way too motherf****** outta line.”

But apparently, the NFL couldn't find anyone better.

Currently, the number of people dying after testing positive for coronavirus is hovering at around 0.95 percent, after peaking at 10 percent in April 2020 when testing was minimal. Data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest that around 0.1 to 0.2 percent of symptomatic flu cases result in death.

So, is Whoopi the Jewish side of Sen. Warren's Native American? Are all of these people insubstantial? 

There is no way to censor lies without censoring the truth. You do only damage by trying.--Jenkins

When Bertrand de Jouvenel said that law had lost its soul, he meant that the grand concept of law was being eroded away, or prostituted, until it became nothing more than an ensemble of rules and rulings, changeable without notice, and reflecting little more than an arbitrary exercise of power – the very antithesis of law.--sowell

Matheson, a defenseman, has virtually matched Hornqvist’s offensive production in Florida this season.

According to a poll published in September 2020, 74% of French Muslims under the age of 25 said the laws of Islam were more important than the laws of the French Republic. Another poll published two months later showed that 57% of French Muslims under the age of 25 wanted to live under Islamic sharia law.
One polling institute recently asked a sampling of French people:
"Some people speak of the great replacement, European, white and Christian populations being threatened with extinction following Muslim immigration from the Maghreb and black Africa. Do you think such a phenomenon will occur in France?"
67% of respondents answered: Yes. The poll then asked whether respondents worry about the possibility of a great replacement. 67% of people answered: Yes. 63% percent responded that they thought Islam was a danger for France.

65% of American seafood comes from Alaska.

A bill is afoot to amend the California constitution to make tax rates permanently higher and impose an excise tax, payroll taxes, and a special income tax.
The excise tax would be a stiff 2.3 percent on businesses for all their gross receipts over $2 million. That’s gross receipts, not net receipts.
A typical business’s profit in the United States is about 8 percent of gross receipts. So this 2.3 percent tax would amount to a 29 percent tax on a business’s profit.
To add insult to injury, the bill’s authors say the tax would be imposed “for the privilege of doing business” in California. 

Have these people lost their collective minds?

Interesting.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/yesterday-i-was-levis-brand-president
 

Relentless, Impassioned Lying

 

Relentless, Impassioned Lying

This is from an article in the NY Post over the weekend, a right-leaning paper but they didn't make this up. The story itself is so dangerous for what it says about politicians and their groupies. If you were a Russian or Chinese operative, could you have asked for more?

How it is responded to is probably as important. But we know how that's going to go, don't we?

"So there you have it. 

Russiagate, the collective delusion that Donald Trump was secretly a Russian agent aided and abetted by the Kremlin, the topic of uncountable inches of Washington Post and New York Times copy and the entire prime-time lineup of MSNBC, was a dirty trick by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Not just part of it. All of it. One of the most diabolical, successful misinformation campaigns ever concocted. 

We already knew that the Steele dossier was garbage. Christopher Steele was paid indirectly by the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt, which he did by turning to other Clinton operatives, laundering every outlandish rumor about Trump he could find into an “investigative” document. 

He shopped it to the FBI, which couldn’t verify his sources or any of his stories, but the agency dragged out the investigation to cast maximum suspicion on the new president. In the meantime, Steele found willing accomplices in the media to push his propaganda. The dupes at BuzzFeed even decided to print the whole pack of lies, with the flimsy rationale of “Well, why not?” 

A made-up story 

Now another piece of Russia, Russia, Russia is kaputski. A computer server operated by Trump’s company was secretly communicating with a Russian firm, so claimed Slate magazine and endless Twitter threads of would-be tech experts. 

But as special counsel John Durham outlines in his latest indictment, that was just a story made up by tech executive Rodney Joffe, who desperately wanted a job with the Clinton administration. He hacked Trump’s servers, cherry-picked privileged Internet data he had access to, and molded it to look like something nefarious. 

He was coached by lawyer Michael Sussmann — who was being paid by the Clinton administration, although he lied about that to investigators. Sussmann goes to the FBI as a “concerned citizen” — not a “Clinton stooge” — to try to get them to bite. The ultimate goal: be able to leak to the Times that Trump is under official investigation. 

Durham “definitely showed that the Hillary Clinton campaign directly funded and ordered its lawyers at Perkins Coie to orchestrate a criminal enterprise to fabricate a connection between President Trump and Russia,” says Kash Patel, the former chief investigator for the House Intelligence Committee. 

Beyond outrageous 

Of course, Hillary didn’t get what she wanted — the presidency. But her operatives didn’t stop, going on CNN to give “very concerned” interviews about a theory they knew was bull. All to undermine Trump’s presidency. It would take three years for the Mueller report to finally put the lie to rest, and we’re now, five years out, at the point where Durham is detailing the full conspiracy. 

f this had happened to a Democrat, the press would be losing its mind. A candidate for president weaponized the nation’s Justice Department to pursue an investigation into their political opponent based on what they knew were lies. Americans were wiretapped! Some were entrapped for flimsy claims of perjury. The director of the FBI went into the Oval Office to tell the president that there was a sexual rumor floating around, so that it could be promptly leaked to the media. Outrageous doesn’t cover it. And still no shame from Hillary Clinton and her supporters, because it’s Donald Trump — anything is fair game to take him down."

SatStats

SatStats

I haven't been following the Canada truckers too closely but, from what I can see, the government has declared they can't work without a lot of restrictions. When the truckers objected, the government said they had to go home or they couldn't work.

The government isn't just ignoring the truckers, it's ignoring itself.

1. According to Johns Hopkins researcher Marty Makary, the results of the latest data on reinfection rates demonstrated that “natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination.”
Yet, the CDC spun the truth when reporting on this study. They claimed “vaccination remains the safest strategy for averting future SARS-CoV-2 infections, hospitalizations, long-term sequelae, and death,” based on a comparison between hybrid immunity (combination of prior infection and vaccination) with natural immunity. They did not clarify what the study’s results actually show: that vaccination does not significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization for those with natural immunity.


2. A new study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supposedly shows that wearing a face mask in public places dramatically reduces your risk of catching COVID-19. The CDC summed up the results in a widely shared graphic that says wearing a cloth mask “lowered the odds of testing positive” by 56 percent, while the risk reduction was 66 percent for surgical masks and 83 percent for N95 or KN95 respirators.

Regrettably, the footnotes state that the results were not statistically significant. So, why did they publish it as confirmatory?

This is the CDC. This is our public health organization, not an enemy with the intent of dangerous propaganda. This is us!

Populations and 'Low Incomes:'

The increase in U.S. incomes from the 1930s to the 1940s led elderly persons to move out of their children’s homes into rooms and apartments of their own. Presumably, both the older persons and the families with growing children found that separate establishments provided a real advance in their welfare. Yet the usual income distribution data will report an increase in inequality: the number of “low-income families” – in the form of newly created “families” of older persons who had previously been included with their children – has increased.

An add-on. 

The National Review, a very conservative mag, devoted an entire issue to the 1619 semi-controversy. The 1619 creator, Ms. Hannah-Jones, responded and the NR wrote a review of her response. Both are interesting and telling.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/nikole-hannah-jones-responds-to-our-1619-and-slavery-issue/

The NR can be harsh but, the more I read this, the greater Hannah-Jones' self-inflicted wound is. This is really bad.

The Scourge of Male Economists

The Scourge of Male Economists

Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a profile of economist Stephanie Kelton, known for her work on Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT.

Larry Summers tweeted this in response:
“I am sorry to see the @nytimes taking MMT seriously as an intellectual movement. It is the equivalent of publicizing fad diets, quack cancer cures or creationist theories.”

This is the beginning of an article in Axios, commenting on the exchange:
"A handful of prominent male economists, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, are freaking out — mostly on Twitter — about a weekend New York Times profile of economist Stephanie Kelton, known for her work on Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT....
And the gender dynamics — male economists piling on against a female economist and a female journalist, Times' reporter Jeanna Smialek, in ways distinctive from typical academic arguments — look terrible here."

Before people start to criticize the press for their opinions, they will need a period of decompression where they can relearn to take the press seriously.

GoFundMe or Else

GoFundMe or Else

Apparently, GoFundMe looked at the donations coming in for the Ottawa truckers and decided to divert the money to what they believed a more worthy charity. They actually had a meeting and thought that was a good idea. They reconsidered after a threat of a fraud investigation.

There are a couple of lessons here. First, high-tech good ideas with a charitable element can be run by unethical morons. Second, despite the incredible problems with these decisions, the press will not emphasize it too much so you might skate along and not get public scorn. And, third, if this company survives, capitalism is much more forgiving than you thought.

Question 43

Question 43

Is the West's relationship with Russia really dependent on the French negotiating with Putin? The French?

Are the Germans even in NATO anymore? Did they agree with Biden yesterday about the pipeline?

Will questions be raised, as they were with Trump, that Putin has something on Biden?

Viewership for Friday's Olympics Opening Ceremony was a dismal 16 million, as NBC faces what Yahoo!sports' Dan Wetzel called a "cataclysmic loss" of audience - a record low exceeding the previous record of 20.1 million viewers for 1988's Calgary games. It was 43% below the 2018 games' opening ceremony in South Korea which had 28.3 million viewers.

Last summer, Press Secretary Jen Psaki causally informed the media that the White House was “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.” Would that be a 'speech crime?'

While we prefer dignity in the White House, it is more important to have secure borders, a non-nuclear Iran, a docile Russia, low inflation, and energy independence—all destroyed in a year by negating Trump policy, and still without dignity in the White House. Our president publicly called a reporter a “son of a b—.” Mr. Biden is as rude as any president, and without the success to compensate.--wsj

Last week McCann was two goals short of his career-high of 19 with the Kraken still having 38 games left to play.

This deserves the complete story.
A 26-year-old California man convicted of molesting a 10-year-old girl will serve out his sentence in a female juvenile facility because he now identifies as a woman.
James Tubbs was 17 when he grabbed the child by the neck, shoved her into a school bathroom stall, and sexually molested her.
DNA only recently linked Tubbs to the assault eight years ago.
After being taken into custody Tubbs adopted a new gender identity of Hannah Tubbs, making him eligible to serve his two-year sentence in a detention facility for women.
Tubbs is still anatomically a male and has not undergone any gender reassignment surgery.
The prosecutor, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, tried Tubbs as a juvenile even though he is 26 years old, which made him eligible for sentencing as a juvenile. That means Tubbs will not only be housed with females, but with minors.

Incidentally, he has had more recent, adult convictions.

Just a few days after dropping off Spotify, Young participated in the launch of a (temporary) satellite radio Neil Young channel.

The security threats in west Africa now include piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. In 2020, all but one of the world’s 28 kidnappings recorded at sea occurred in these waters. Similarly, in 2018, all six hijackings at sea, and 13 of the 18 incidents of ships fired upon occurred in the Gulf of Guinea. Of the 141 hostages held at sea that year, 130 were captured by pirates here.

Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rapper whose verses are usually in Spanish (and, on one occasion, Japanese), was the most played artist in 2020 and 2021 for listeners on Spotify, the world’s largest music-streaming platform.

While English still dominates, it is in decline.

On the eve of the 2020 election, 54 percent of Republicans and independents who lean Republican said they considered themselves more a supporter of Trump than of the Republican Party, compared with 38 percent who said they considered themselves more a supporter of the Republican Party. By January 2021, views were evenly divided, with 46 percent saying Trump and 46 percent saying the GOP.
The latest poll, released last weekend, shows a reversal in attitudes, compared with the pre-election 2020 survey, and a further decline from last January. Today, 56 percent of Republicans say they are more supporters of the party than of Trump, while 36 percent say they are more supporters of Trump than the party.

From Musa al-Gharbi's article in The Guardian:
We are not living in a “post-truth” world. We are not on the brink of a civil war. The perception that we are is almost purely an artifact of people taking poll and survey data at face value despite overwhelming evidence that we probably shouldn’t…
In fact, rather than January 6 serving as a prelude to a civil war, the US saw lower levels of death from political violence in 2021 than in any other year since the turn of the century. Even as violent crime approached record highs across much of the country, fatalities from political violence dropped. This is not an outcome that seems consistent with large and growing shares of the population supposedly leaning towards settling the culture wars with bullets instead of ballots. This turn of events does not seem consistent with the notion that tens of millions of Americans – including large numbers of military, law enforcement and militia members – literally believe the presidency was stolen, elections can no longer be trusted, and the fate of the country is on the line.
Indeed, far from giving up on elections, Republican voters are reveling in the prospect of taking back one or both chambers of Congress at the end of this year; they are eagerly awaiting the midterms (likely for good reason).
In truth, most Republican voters likely don’t believe in the big lie. But many would nonetheless profess to believe it in polls and surveys – just as they’d support politicians who make similar professions (according to one estimate, Republican candidates who embrace the big lie enjoy a 6 percentage point electoral boost as compared to Republicans who publicly affirm the 2020 electoral results).

Science Leaders

Science Leaders

In the U.K., Ridley writes of “a tendency to admire authoritarian China among scientists that surprised some people.” He was not surprised. “I’ve noticed for years,” he says, “that scientists take a somewhat top-down view of the political world, which is odd if you think about how beautifully bottom-up the evolutionary view of the natural world is.”

The problem of complexity in society is important--and dangerous--only if you think it can be captured and controlled; the real problem is quality. Science as an institution has “a naive belief that if only scientists were in charge, they would run the world well.” Perhaps that’s what politicians mean when they declare that they “believe in science.” As we’ve seen during the pandemic, science takes halting, uncertain steps but, regardless, can be a source of power. And, before any ideal, any goal, the coin in politics is power.

Reminiscent of the faith the Americans had in engineers. They elected Hoover with confidence. The next engineer was Jimmy Carter.
--(some from WSJ)

Sunday/Conversions

Sunday/Conversions

In the readings today, two men are called to God. The first, in the Old Testament, the great prophet Isaiah stands awestruck before a vision of God seated on a throne of gold and surrounded by angels. Isaiah's lips are purified with hot coals. In the second, Peter, in the New Testament, is astounded by an unusually large catch of fish. The early vision is fearsome; in the latter, Christ is sitting in a boat, teaching and reasoning with people.

Something has changed here. It isn't the times. The average guy was subjected to the same arbitrary threats in both the Old and New Testament--as are we now: Plagues, famine, armed malice, armed stupidity, the horseman--now motorized. But somehow the relationship between man and God is different.

It's reminiscent of Moses changing the rules for divorce because the Jews just were not ready for the real laws. 

Critics have always argued that God has changed--because we are creating him. But maybe Moses was right. Maybe we have changed.

SatStats

SatStats

Ours is a culture obsessed with disparities. What about these and what should be done?

From Thomas G. Mortenson, senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington, D.C., updated.

Birth and Death (20)
For every 100 girl babies who die in the first 27 days of life 127.5 boy babies die.
For every 100 girl babies who die after the first 27 days but in the first year of life 130 boy babies die.
For every 100 infant girls who die under one year old, 128 infant boys die.
For every 100 girls ages 1 to 4 years who die 141 boys die.
For every 100 girls ages 5 to 14 years who die 130 boys die.
For every 100 girls and women ages 15 to 24 years who die 270 boys and men die.
For every 100 women ages 25 to 34 who die 227 men die.
For every 100 women ages 35 to 44 who die 177 men die.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics

For every 100 women who die by opioid overdose, 227 men die.
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

For every 100 female deaths attributable to alcohol worldwide, there are 329 male deaths.

Source: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health

For every 100 women who die on the job, 1,118 men die working.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

For every 100 females ages 15 to 19 who commit suicide there are 293 males.
Source: Centers for Disease Control

For every 100 females ages 20 to 24 who commit suicide there are 464 males.
Source: Centers for Disease Control

For every 100 females ages 25-29 who commit suicide there are 418 males.
Source: Centers for Disease Control

For every 100 females ages 15-19 who die of homicide, there are 642 males.
Source: Centers for Disease Control

For every 100 females ages 20-24 who die of homicide, there are 717 males.
Source: Centers for Disease Control

For every 100 females ages 25-29 who die of homicide, there are 579 males.
Source: Centers for Disease Control

For every 100 females ages 30-34 who die of homicide, there are 488 males.
Source: Centers for Disease Control

For every 100 female military personnel who have died during Operation Enduring Freedom, 4,506 men have died.
Source: Congressional Research Service

For every 100 female military personnel who have died during Operation Iraqi Freedom, 3,915 men have died.
Source: Congressional Research Service

Don't those numbers look like a crisis? 

The Other Side of the Ledger

The Other Side of the Ledger

There are many a mystery in the world. Why do philosophies that result in mountains of dead people and poverty still get serious consideration from some? Why do people who favor decreasing law enforcement seem surprised when crime goes up? Why is the restriction of speech on campus seen as liberal? There are countless current beliefs that rival Middle Ages religion.

Perhaps the greatest current mystery--certainly in the damage promised--is the shift away from fossil fuel. Now this concept includes a basic, astonishing dogma: people and cultures who have not yet gained from the use of fossil fuel will not get to do so.

Fossil fuel is available and cheap. Switching away will be very hard and expensive. But the ads are out. The car manufacturers already have slick, quick EVs. We're gonna do this. (Africa, however, will not be doing this. Nor are we going to let them use fossil fuel.)

The switch away from fossil fuels is based upon a speculation. The Little Ice Age in Europe began around 1300; a sharper and more abrupt onset of cold started in 1570 and lasted for about a hundred and ten years. Since then, there has been a rise in the earth's temperature. That rise is said to threaten life on earth and is said to be the result of fossil fuel use. The answer is to stop fossil fuel use.

The question of modeling here is probably the basic one. Are the modeling estimates convincing enough to reverse the greatest engine of economic, health, and comfort growth in history? That aside, what are the complexities? And what are the environmental and economic costs of this alternative miracle?

First, efficiency. Solar panels convert photons to electricity. The maximal conversion is about 33%. We currently are about 27% efficient. Wind turbines convert wind energy to electricity at about 60% max. Current technology is at about 45%. Coal efficiency is about 40% and natural gas efficiency is around 60%. This, coupled with the variability of the sun and wind, has stimulated the hope of a battery rescue.

There have not been significant advances in the battery in the last one hundred years. And the task is daunting. It is said that Tesla's huge battery factory in Nevada would need 500 years to build enough batteries to supply the U.S. with its needs for a single year. We could stack them on the border.

Second, the creation of a battery. A single EV battery weighs about 1/2 tons but requires the mining of 250 tons of earth for the minerals within it. Each. That is a huge project and will require a lot of environmental sacrifices. The scale is considerable. A 100 Megawatt wind farm could supply 75,000 American homes. However, it would take 30,000 tons of iron ore, 50,000 tons of concrete, and 900 tons of nonrecyclable plastics to build. Each. To build a solar farm for 75,000 homes would require 150% more iron ore, cement, and plastics. Each.

The mining of rare earths would have to increase by up to 2000%. This requires deference to nations incredibly hostile to the U.S., mostly child labor to turn a blind eye to, and an undetermined destruction of environmental resources with the historic risk of species extinction and the release of new perhaps toxic organisms. (China accounts for over 60% of rare earth element production in the world and controls around thirty percent of the world’s reserves, estimated at 99 million tons.)

There are other components. There are sizable energy requirements in the mining and refining. There is an unmeasured nonrecyclable waste. Wind and solar equipment last 20 years, gas turbines last 40. By 2050 the nonrecyclable solar waste will be 2X the current plastic waste. Plus wind and battery waste. (a lot from Mills)

Wealth does not come from making people safe. It comes from shortages.

Question 42

Question 42

 

For years there has been a drumbeat of criticism toward the concept of 'original sin.' The argument is that it burdens a child with a whithering guilt. But, of course, that avoids the real idea: the point is that forgiveness is available and ready. The point is forgiveness. Now, what is the impact on children when taught that they are congenital guilty over congenital racism or gender certainty without the balancing of forgiveness?

'Limited government' will never occur because of government self-restraint. Creating bureaucracies with any power is a guarantee of that power's abuse.

“If you mix politics and immunology or health sciences, at the end of the day you get politics.”--cohen

Aptera, Lightyear, and Sono all plan to release solar-assisted commercial EVs over the next few years. These vehicles promise less frequent plug-in charging by using solar panels to charge their batteries.

“In 1961, labor-force participation for prime-age men was at 96.9%,”  Eberstadt says. Since then, “the chart looks more or less like a straight line down.” By November 2021, “the seasonally adjusted rate was 88.2%.” Almost 1 in 8 men is sitting out during his best years.

The share of working-age Americans claiming Social Security Disability Insurance has roughly doubled in the past half-century, from about 2.2% in 1977 to 4.3% last year. The federal government spends more on disability insurance each year than on food stamps and welfare put together, and few recipients work.

Gov. Newsome apologized for calling the people who attacked a train in California a "gang." Where did the criticism of that 'vile' word come from? Who is this guy's constituency anyway?

 
A funny/scary definition: Bio-Security Police States. 

Here is a lady preempting arrest by protecting herself in a space helmet.

Whoopi

Whoopi

Whoopi Goldberg must stand in the corner for two weeks not for what she believes but for what she let out of the bag.

She said yesterday that the Holocaust was not about race. Strange that both the Nazis and the Jews thought it was. But what seems like just another moronic celebrity declaration is actually quite revealing.

Hitler hated the Jews, refining a strong European tradition. He--and Europe--thought them an inferior subset, distinctive both culturally and genetically. But Jews are not a true race. So, is Whoopi right?

Do we need Ms. Goldberg to clarify the motives of a murderous regime? Teach the basics of race to homicidal goons? I don't think that was her intent. She is not interested in violence toward helpless victims, she is concerned about the 'racism' brand.

Tribalism identifies an 'other,' then turns on him. From the Hatfields and the McCoys to the Hutus and Tutsis, the hatred depends on identifying, dehumanizing, then obliterating an 'other.' Racism looks no different from tribalism because it is tribalism, only easier. Racism makes identifying the other more simple.

Ms. Goldberg has revealed her concern: racism must not be confused with broader tribalisms. Racism must be special, never part of man's general defects, never part of man's larger problems. According to Ms. Goldberg, the Holocaust was pretty awful, but it does not rise to the level of real racism. Anger at Islamist is one thing, but it does not distill into real evil until it is branded racism.

Nothing must allow common tribal animosity to dilute racism. Racism must always be particular, must always stand out. It must never become just anther arrow of disgust in the quiver of the pure.

 

 

Question 41

Question 41

The Republicans are suggesting that Kamala Harris might be the nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy. A genius strategy. 

The NYT said it paid a price in the low seven figures for Wordle. The game will move from its current website to the New York Times site and apps.

Good line from Oakeshott: Thus, governing is recognized as a specific and limited activity; not the management of an enterprise, but the rule of those engaged in a great diversity of self-chosen enterprises.

There's going to be a vacancy on the Supreme Court. I certainly hope we can do as well as we did with the wise Latina. But they are talking about filling it with a Black woman. We already have a Black man and several women. Why not a wise Asian?

SONIA SOTOMAYOR, U.S. SUPREME COURT ASSOCIATE JUSTICE and WISE LATINA: 'We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.' (There were actually 3,500 admitted.) CDC Director Rochelle Walensky repeatedly refused to correct the error.
President Joe Biden said, “How about making sure that you’re vaccinated, so you do not spread the disease to anyone else,” and no public-health official blinks.
Rachel Maddow declares, “The virus stops with every vaccinated person. . . . It cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to get more people,” and no public-health official objects.
There is a weird dichotomy here. Clearly, the science is over many heads but the democracy demands a certain even-handed, anti-elitism among us all. Strangely, these guys have taken their obvious inability to understand the science and have made themselves an elite anyway. 

And a funny line: justice Sotomayor is a 67 year old overweight diabetic who participated in oral argument on Friday by phone because she was too afraid to come to court to hear the arguments in person. And her response to this is that every American–including our kids–should be compelled to get vaccinated to protect people like her.

So, modeling has been used for global warming estimates and for Covid. Covid modeling was wrong. Other models exist for many areas, including stock investing and online gambling. Now if you come up with a stock market model, you have to attach a disclaimer. Should we have similar disclaimers for other modelings?

In any case, scarcity implies competition to resolve who gets how much of which goods. If monetary competition is suppressed, other forms of competition must occur.-- universal economics

A digital pass known as the SMART Health Card is voluntary and minimal by design to protect personal information. It has a person’s name, date of birth, and the dates and brands of vaccination doses, all contained within a type of scannable bar code known as a QR code.
“This is a de facto standard,” said Rick Klau, California’s chief technology innovation officer. “This is essentially the one common way for residents to secure that digital copy and then use it.”
But no voter ID?

Florida residents are being warned about falling iguanas.

Iguanas are cold-blooded, and their bodies can go dormant when exposed to temperatures less than 45 degrees. When an iguana's body goes dormant, the creature can lose control of its grip and drop from trees and bushes. Once on the ground, dormant iguanas often appear dead but aren't.
CNN reported cold-stunned iguanas can still breathe and operate critical body functions in their dormant state.
 

Multiple studies have shown that the Omicron variant itself affects the upper airways far more than the lungs, even as it’s much more transmissible than any other variant. This is exactly what happened in the later stages of 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, according to John M. Barry, author of “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History.”  

'What happens when only a handful of giant grocery store chains like
@Kroger dominate an industry? They can force high food prices onto Americans while raking in record profits. We need to strengthen our antitrust laws to break up giant corporations and lower prices.' This is a quote from giant-brain Eliz. Warren on Twitter.
According to data compiled this month by New York University finance professor Aswath Damodaran, the entire retail grocery industry currently averages barely more than 1 percent in net profit. In its most recent quarter, Kroger reported a profit margin of 0.75 percent, during a time in which Warren claims that the chain was "expanding profits" due to its "market dominance."

Now everyone gets to have an opinion. But wouldn't you think that a Senator would have an opinion that made her look at least of average intelligence? This is a very stupid opinion.

When you see something as obviously wrong as that, --like those of Sotomayor--don't you start thinking of other explanations?

That said, sometimes politicians look stupid or malicious because they are prompted to be. Consider poor Boris Johnson. A report from Imperial College about the severity of Omicron showed a 40 to 45 percent reduction in the risk of hospitalization compared to Delta, and a 50 percent reduction in risk for people who had a prior infection.
Less than a week earlier, the same team at Imperial College, led by Professor Neil Ferguson, had said they could find ‘no evidence… of Omicron having different severity from Delta’. On the day before that, the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, had appeared on television telling the nation that ‘there are several things [about Omicron] we don’t know but all the things we do know are bad.’.

I don't know if this is true but it is a really scary idea from an educator in Canada: Our students were taught to think of their schools as hubs for infection and themselves as vectors of disease. This has fundamentally altered their understanding of themselves.

There is a frequent claim that global warming will increase the number of people killed by natural disasters. Instead, since 1920, the number of people killed by natural disasters has declined by over 80 percent, as the planet’s average temperature has risen by 1.12 degrees Celsius.

Kamala Harris is roughly as popular inside the Democratic Party as Biden, with a job approval rating among Democrats exceeding 80 percent, according to a recent CBS News poll.