Conformity and its Discontents

Bozo: At a rally, Biden asked to meet a woman he knew was dead. Bozette: Kamala Harris praised our strong relationship with North Korea while standing in the DMZ. This all should make us reassess the belief that the terrible government decisions over the last years are malicious. Maybe they really are this stupid.

(What is malicious is that they are protected.)

***

A Washington, D.C., council committee voted unanimously on Tuesday to advance a measure allowing illegal immigrants to vote in local elections.

***

Somehow entrepreneurs, who have made fortunes by conforming their products to the restraints of price and efficiency, believe they can develop national and international policies by ignoring those restraints.
 


         Conformity and its Discontents

There has been some talk about how gender identification occurs, especially since a Supreme Court nominee--and eventual appointee--could not define what a woman is. Well, the good news is that "woman is what woman does." Some might think that is a bit slippery, that expropriation might be possible. And some might think that such a definition vulnerable to cultural--even behavioral--pressures. No matter. These people will clear all this up for us. And, in this fluid world, we seemingly are a lot more rigid than we thought.

Conformity seems to be a big element of identification.

The Gender Affirming Health Program at the University of California San Francisco describes the “hormonal and surgical transition” considerations for “people who do not live within the binary gender narrative,” which they say includes people who identify as “genderqueer, gender non-conforming, and gender nonbinary.”

"Gender non-conforming."

The Children’s Hospital of Chicago says its patients include “gender expansive or gender non-conforming children,” which it defines as “children and adolescents who exhibit behavior that is not typical of their assigned birth sex.”

“Gender expansive or gender non-conforming.”

Apparently, if it plays with dolls, it is, and if it plays third base, it isn't.

A Dystopia of the Mind

Hundreds have died in Florida.

Oz continues to poll behind Fetterman.

Denmark believes “deliberate actions” caused big leaks in two natural gas pipelines running under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, and seismologists said powerful explosions preceded the leaks.
Who benefits from this?

The pursuit of accurate knowledge and the pursuit of ideological satisfaction are inherently conflicting goals, whether in American universities today or in universities in other times and places.--Sowell

                A Dystopia of the Mind

This is a good little summary from Baker on the current dangerous state of affairs in the U.S.:

"If I had to pick the most worrying characteristic of our current dystopia, I would choose the unsettling disconnect between the seriousness of the challenges we face and the public discourse that is supposed to be addressing them.

We are used to politicians bending facts and logic to fit their aims, but the problem goes well beyond political rhetoric. Our larger discourse is dominated by cultural authorities who want us to believe things that the human mind rebels against—that there is no such thing as biological sex, that the way to fight past discrimination is with present discrimination, that not punishing crime is the way to prevent crime, that words can mean whatever they tell us they mean."

These are short examples of a remarkably long list that also includes Iran policy, energy policy, inflation, and immigration. And, importantly, loss of common sense, the inability of the political culture to recoil from illogic and foolishness. 

The wealth of the country has always allowed a certain forgiveness of nonsense. But our self-imposed vulnerabilities, like the mad self-punishing flagellation of the engine of the West's growth over the last two hundred years and the apparent embarrassment over the basic principles that allowed that growth to occur, have foundation-shaking implications for the U.S. and those who depend upon it.

The Trump Mystery

Nice night at the Edgewood library at a talk by Ken Gormley. A very productive guy. Has a new fiction book after several serious non-fiction.

The Pirates picked two guys off the wire and started them.


The Trump Mystery

Trump is a blustering, exaggerating, obnoxious guy. He doesn't have much of a political philosophy. He came to power 'riding a horse he neither bred nor raised.' A disruptive populist anti-politician his supporters identify with. Yet his opponents hate him. Hate him. And that hatred runs the risk of bleeding into his supporters. What has stimulated the incredible animosity toward a guy who is more of a caricature of a politician than a politician? 
Or, is that--and his cartoon presidency--the point? Maybe the people who revere political power just cannot stand to see it debased.

Question 90

 Question 90

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. -T.S. Eliot

Biden said Friday that the price of gas was under three dollars.

FedEx reported horrible numbers, as if we are already in a huge slowdown.

The BBC says that Trump-endorsed candidates have won 92% of the time this year.

Food is up 14% this year. Biden said it was 'zero.' Is anyone responsible for anything they do or say? Or are we to see and hear difficult problems 'in context?'

Biden is impaired. Fetterman is impaired. Is that unimportant?

Mistrust stains everything. Was the January 6th event a significant threat to the country? Or is it being managed like The Reichstag Fire?

Kaiser Permanente Oakland, carried out 70 'top surgeries' in 2019 on teenagers aged 13 to 18, up from five in 2013, according to researchers who led a recent study.

Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship on Monday to Edward Snowden. By their fruits...

Majorities and Minorities

 Majorities and Minorities

And since the theoreticians of democracy have for over a hundred years taught the majorities that whatever they desire is just, we must not be surprised if the majorities no longer even ask whether what they decide is just.--hayek

Soooo.....

Lockdowns shredded the social contract. They splintered society into violently opposed factions. (They damaged religions, they contributed to the inflation disaster, they contributed to roughly doubling the food price index, they led to mass surveillance, etc). And if the governments got lockdowns so wrong, why should we believe that they got other things right? This is still a relevant question as we careen toward energy rationing and food crises and already see inflation at around 10%.--lynch

There is another problem: are these decision-makers the majority? Or are they just a small group of guys with their hands on the levers who have some ideas that they think are moral? Who is really in favor of shutting down modern energy, closing the farms, and returning to the halcyon days of the 18th century?

Sunday/Another Lazarus

Sunday/Another Lazarus

In today's gospel, Christ gives a parable that depicts the death of the beggar Lazarus at the door of an unnamed rich man who has ignored him. Both die and the rich man goes to hell, Lazarus to heaven. In hell, the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus back to his five brothers and warn them of the punishment suffered by those who dismiss the plight of their fellows. Abraham, in the parable, refuses, saying,

'If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.'"

This gospel is traditionally discussed in its parallels to Christ's torture and death. But, isolated, this is a remarkable line, fitting more of Mencken than Christ. Here is another, less rewarding, Lazarus than the friend Christ raises from the dead. And there is a head-shaking bitterness about it, as Christ predicts the ineffectiveness of His coming sacrifice. In its indirect praise of the Old Testament, it recalls the God of Lot, annoyed and discouraged by man.

A scary idea.

Stats

Stats

---Pujols hits 700th.

---Brewers are now worried that a carbon dioxide shortage could force production cuts and price hikes. A carbon dioxide shortage? Wait a minute....

---Makowsky and Warren find that greater access to firearms in the Black community reduced the rate of lynching in the Jim Crow South.


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A big drop in Economic Freedom, mostly due to pandemic policies. Not surprising but will we recover? This is from the just-released Economic Freedom of the World 2022 Annual Report.

---Crime is increasing, but immigrants are far less likely to commit violent and property crimes than native‐​born Americans. Texas is the only state that tracks criminal convictions and arrests by immigration status. In 2019 in Texas, illegal immigrants were 37.1 percent less likely to be convicted of a crime than native‐​born Americans and legal immigrants were about 57.2 percent less likely to be convicted of a crime than native‐​born Americans. Estimated nationwide incarceration rates for illegal immigrants are similar. Across Texas counties, there is no relationship between all criminal convictions and the illegal immigrant population. --Nowrasteh

Although I'm not sure how the denominator of illegals is determined.

---We are incessantly told about disasters, whether it is the latest heatwave, flood, wildfire or storm. Yet the data overwhelmingly shows that over the past century, people have become much, much safer from all these weather events. Indeed, in the 1920s, around half a million people were killed by weather disasters, whereas in the last decade the death-toll averaged around 18,000. This year, just like 2020 and 2021, is tracking below that. Why? Because when people get richer, they get more resilient.--Lomborg

The Immigrant

 Some disturbing ideas on immigration:

The Immigrant

In The Culture Transplant, Garett Jones documents the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands―toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government―that persist for decades, and likely for centuries, in their new national homes. Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth. And the cultural traits migrants bring to their new homes have enduring effects upon a nation’s economic potential.

Built upon mainstream, well-reviewed academic research that hasn’t pierced the public consciousness, this book offers a compelling refutation of an unspoken consensus that a nation’s economic and political institutions won’t be changed by immigration. Jones refutes the common view that we can discuss migration policy without considering whether migration can, over a few generations, substantially transform the economic and political institutions of a nation. And since most of the world’s technological innovations come from just a handful of nations, Jones concludes, the entire world has a stake in whether migration policy will help or hurt the quality of government and thus the quality of scientific breakthroughs in those rare innovation powerhouses. (don't remember where I found this)

Volunteers and Press Gangs

 

Volunteers and Press Gangs

What sacrifices does global warming demand? For example, is the Ukraine War bad for global warming? If it is, should Americans support the Ukrainians? Or should they help Russia and encourage an early ending and the Ukrainians' defeat--for the betterment of the world? It certainly seems as if Americans are going to make serious sacrifices themselves as our government forces us into the 18th Century--no transportation, decline of farms, depression, and starvation. Should they force others to make sacrifices, like should the Ukrainians be forced to forgo their freedom, for example?

News

News 

President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered Russia's first mobilization since World War Two and backed a plan to annex swathes of Ukraine, warning the West he was not bluffing when he said he'd be ready to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia. 

In this mendacious world, it is unsure if he really believes the West wants to impair Russia's integrity or if he has lost his mind.
The announcements are likely efforts to discourage West support for Ukraine. And no one knows our response as no one knows who is running the country. From what we see, there is no guarantee of quality in leadership regardless of who it is.

240 million dollars were stolen from the food program in Wisconsin.

New Politics

New Politics

"It's foolish to assume that the wealth of America was earned justly."--Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin.

An elderly, impaired president, an avowed socialist and stroke victim who is a senate candidate in Pennsylvania, this Barnes guy, how could people like this be nominated for national office? What voter or political party could support them?

The Woman King

The Woman King

There is a new movie, The Woman King, reviewed by The National Review, that raises an interesting question.

"In writing about the new film The Woman King, I assumed from the trailer and advance press releases that the central plot of the film would focus on the West African kingdom of Dahomey’s defeat and colonization by France in two wars in 1890 and 1892, thus whitewashing Dahomey’s prior, longstanding history as the most extreme example of a state built on the enslavement of free people among its own neighbors — a history in which its female soldiers, the “Amazons,” played a willing and culpable part. Well, Kyle Smith has seen the movie, and its history is even worse:

'Set in 1823 . . . the film . . . positions Nanisca (based on a real person, although she lived in a later era) as the leader of an epic fight to destroy slavery. Under the approving eye of a wise king — also a real person — named Ghezo . . . she suggests transforming the country’s trade into one built on palm oil. All that is required to achieve this economic and moral revolution is one final decisive victory against the Oyo, who after being rejected in a demand for tribute seek to defeat and enslave the Agojie. Beat the Oyo, and slavery will be beaten.'

Even leaving aside the extensive slave-raiding and slave-trading history of Dahomey prior to 1823, this is comical: Oyo collapsed in 1835, and Ghezo used the opportunity created by the fragmentation of the empire to capture more slaves from Oyo’s now-unprotected population. Warring to enslave his neighbors was the main source of Ghezo’s wealth. He stoutly resisted every British entreaty and threat to get him to abandon slave-trading and get into the palm-oil business (which, it should be noted, was itself largely produced on slave plantations within West Africa). It is true enough that Oyo was a larger, once-mighty state that exacted tribute and sometimes worse from Dahomey, but that was all normal in West African politics — and had been since before the Europeans arrived in the 1440s.

A movie in which Ghezo and his female soldiers are anti-slavery figures in the 1820s makes about as much sense as a movie painting John C. Calhoun as an abolitionist."

This raises an interesting and serious problem: should heritage be fostered among people, especially mythical heritage. Malcolm X said the creation of a history, even an arbitrary one, was essential to the modern Black culture. Critical theory says the opposite; all the trappings of the past must be excised like eschar to get to the basic, 'authentic,' entity. (I don't know if that entity is a lovable one or not.) Apparently, reruns of Bonanza and Gunsmoke have a disclaimer stating 'this show contains outdated cultural depictions;'' that cowboy narrative could be dangerous to your mental health.

Stuff

Stuff

On Friday night, in the third inning of a scoreless game, the Mets had Eduardo Escobar at first base with one out. Tomas Nido dropped a hit-and-run single into right field. Third-base coach Joey Cora began to put up a stop sign, but Escobar, 33, a 12-year veteran, kept going.
Escobar scored with a head-first slide, but his belly flop wasn’t even necessary. The throw from right fielder Ben Gamel was about 30 feet up the line and had to be tracked down in foul ground by pitcher Mitch Keller.
Watching the replay, SNY Mets analyst Todd Zeile noticed something shocking. As Escobar rounded third, Hayes was standing with his mitt off and reaching into his back pocket for some seeds — seemingly uninterested in the play.
“That’s September baseball when you’re in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization right now,” Zeile said. (Atlantic)

Hayes, when asked about this embarrassing event--something that would embarrass a Little Leager--responded like a modern man: he dismissed its importance and refused to discuss it.

Hayes is a talented defensive player and this will always remain in his resume. But one wonders how much damage a disinterested and incompetent organization has on its employees, regardless of their talent.

Three of the largest recipients of China’s rescue lending have been Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Argentina, which together have received as much as $32.83bn since 2017, according to data compiled by AidData, a research lab at William & Mary, a university in the US.
Other countries receiving rescue lending from Chinese state institutions included Kenya, Venezuela, Ecuador, Angola, Laos, Suriname, Belarus, Egypt, Mongolia and Ukraine, according to AidData, which did not provide details for these countries.--ft

If you know, for example, that real income per head has risen in Europe since 1800 by a factor of about thirty, then your political impulse to condemn “capitalism” as impoverishing or riddled with “imperfections” is at least disciplined. You may continue to be a socialist or a regulator, but you will need to sharpen your argument in some other way than going on and on using the same alternative false facts and fake science of impoverishment and imperfection.--mcclosky

The rise in food prices—buoyed by increased fertilizer, energy and transport costs—amid the conflict in Ukraine has exposed inherent flaws in the argument for organic farming. Because organic agriculture shirks many of the scientific advancements that have allowed farmers to increase crop yields, it’s inherently less efficient than conventional farming. Research has conclusively shown that organic farming produces less food per acre than conventional agriculture. Moreover, organic farming rotates fields in and out of use more often than conventional farming, which can rely on synthetic fertilizer and pesticides to maintain fertility and keep away pests.--lomborg

Tradeoff

Tradeoff

The migraine-inducing news peaked last week with the announcement that California, the sixth largest economy in the world, was going to outlaw all vehicles except 'zero-emission vehicles.' Note there is nothing said about the source of power here because EVs use electrical battery-charging from all sources, 80% of which is carbon-based. That is to say, carbon energy, once removed. They are not going to ban the cheap wellspring of the modern world, they are going to make it less visible, more expensive, less reliable, and less convenient.

California is outlawing the internal combustion engine, a power so integral to man's development it sounds like the outlawing of gravity.

Somehow, this craziness has caused us to flail about in our criticism and focus on the bizarre risk-reward conflict: do we know this is worthwhile, especially when the real change is not the energy source but only its location? Is this pain being endured for symbolism and virtue-signaling?

But there is a much larger point: How does the California governor get to do this? What business is it of his what kind of car we drive? The point is not that California is a huge and important market, it is that the governor is not that market, we are. His opinions might be interesting--even valuable. But they can not be edicts. Unless, of course, the notion of limited government and power ceded to the state is no longer a foundation of the nation. And that, along with the concept of the equality of peoples, is sort of the essence of the land.

Illegal Stunts

 

Illegal Stunts

The criticism of the illegals being sent to D.C. and N.Y. is that it is a stunt. As if American politics is some ideal, some virtue in practice, and is not all a 'stunt.' The Bill to stop inflation, the Bill to renege on tuition, the endless gun Bills, EV gimmicks, economic shutdowns, facemasks, the Supreme Court Nominations, the solemn rotating impeachments, Not one of these programs was conceived with an ounce of sincerity or pursued with an ounce of expertise. But they all have a certain... je ne sais quoi, no?

Makes you long for the days of the WIN button, doesn't it?

Bad Judgment

 

Bad Judgment

Gross bad judgment has consequences for its victims; does it have consequences for its proponents?

Biden's dark speech in Philadelphia is being called 'The Red Wedding' speech.

What is of interest is that somebody thought it was a good speech and a good idea. Just like they thought the 'Semi-Fascists' speech was a good idea. Just like the Defeat of Inflation Party was a good idea. And the Withdrawl from Afghanistan was a good idea. And the 'Forgive Student Loans' project was a good idea.

How is it that the originators of these Good Ideas are not revealed and laid off? And why is the criticism so quiet in the face of such gross ineptitude? And another question: How many such obvious and embarrassing errors can a nation suffer before it begins to decline?

Stuff 1

Stuff 1

Suddenly the Pirates have two pitchers with ERA in the mid-threes and last night introduced a new kid who threw a one-hitter for six innings and was spotting a 100 mph fastball.


Although one person’s income may be a hundred or a thousand times greater than another’s, it is of course very doubtful that one person is a hundred or a thousand times more intelligent or works a hundred or a thousand times as hard. But, again, input is not the measure of value. Results are. --Sowell


Talib, arguing that the preservation of mystery is essential to religion and Vatican 11's switch to English was damaging, writes: 'The fastest growing religion today is Sunni Islam, with one and a half billion followers, all praying in Arabic, a foreign language to nine tenth of them, and in an ancient version (fusha) never, never spoken in conversation by Arabs –when a Moroccan wants to converse with a Lebanese, they do so in French or English, not classical Arabic. Judaism survived with its prayers only in Hebrew (and some Aramaic as in the book of Daniel).'

Did the subsidies to the airline industries during the suicidal shutdown go to buyouts and early retirement? Did that lead to shortages of workers?

Stuff

Stuff

The Russians have lost 3000 square miles of Ukraine territory.

Harris's interview with Todd was so bad I found myself longing for the days of better political liars.

If the Press had an understanding of history, an argument could be made that their dislike of Trump stems from his resemblance to Kaiser Wilhelm.

An editorial in the Seattle Times tells us, “We are all socialized in whiteness as a by-product of living here. The primary purpose of whiteness is to consolidate power through the value, protection and reinforcement of white western ways of knowing and being at the expense of non-white racial and ethnic identities via structural racism.” If whites are being told they are the enemy of Blacks, does this make Blacks the enemy of whites?"

So, what will be the result of people being constantly told they are natural enemies?

Question 89

Question 89

New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell insisted she had to fly first class on recent taxpayer-funded junkets to France and Switzerland because economy class is not safe for a black woman and because she has a child.

343 firefighters died in NY on 9/11. '60 Minutes' had a very moving story about it last night.

'…I was shocked to discover that many social policy interventions, including some of the most touted, don’t help boys and men. The one that first caught my eye was a free college program in Kalamazoo, Michigan. According to its evaluation team, “women experienced large gains,” in terms of college completion (increasing by 50%), “while men seem to experience zero benefit.” This is an astonishing finding. Making college free had no impact on men…So not only are many boys and men struggling, they are less likely to be helped by policy interventions.'
And:
'In the U.S. for example, the 2020 decline in college enrollment was seven times greater for male than for female students.'
And:
'The bottom line is that Finland’s internationally acclaimed educational performance is entirely explained by the stunning performance of Finnish girls.'
That is from the forthcoming Richard V. Reeves book.

 Anna Kasprzak is a Danish dressage rider who has represented Denmark in the Summer Olympics in 2012 and 2016. Kasprzak is considered to be one of the best dressage riders in the world and she has won multiple medals throughout her career.
As of August 2022, Anna Kasprzak’s net worth is estimated to be $1 billion.

A survey found that 43 percent in the 19-30 age group had used cannabis 20 or more times over the previous month, up from 34 percent.

Sunday/Prodigal

 

Sunday/Prodigal

In the Old Testament reading, Moses argues with God, who plans retribution against the 'depraved' Israelites, and wins. 

The Gospel has three parables, one of a shepherd going after a lost sheep, one of a fussy woman who has lost a coin, and the doting father who is thrilled with the return of his prodigal son. A responsible loner in the mountains, an obsessive cleaner/collector, and the father in love-- nothing like the fierce and vengeful God depicted in the Old Testament reading--all devoted to the lost, the separated, the failed. All the victims of chance and, in the Prodigal, free will. And only the righteously offended older brother of the Prodigal comes off badly.

These parables have emerged recently as a defense of the current culture's obsession with the culture's outliers.

Stuff

 

Stuff on a Saturday

A remarkable clip on Epstein sent by Ned:

Maze on Twitter: "Here is Cindy McCain admitting that her (sic) and John McCain knew all about what Jeffrey Epstein was doing. Unfortunately she didn’t know anyone brave enough to go after him. https://t.co/Uwgcjbo7Zw" / Twitter

 

Found this and wondered about the evolution of lyrics, from the intimate to whatever we have now. This is Wodehouse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HeasqkO1Ko

And, from Farwtrade, the wit and wisdom of Kamala Harris:

 

Question 88

Question 88

Jackson Mississippi still has no water.

Less than 1.2 percent of bachelor of arts degrees were awarded to history majors in 2019, the lowest percentage since records began being kept in 1949.

There are eight main advantages of rationing by price over political rationing: it is neutral, informative, cautionary, pacific, humane, non-authoritarian, the essential missing link between supply and demand, and in any event indestructible.--seldon

In 2020, Ireland overtook South Africa as having the latest marrying couples worldwide.
The average age for a groom is 37.8 and for a bride is 35.7, for opposite-sex couples. This is the fairer comparison because same-sex marriages obviously aren’t allowed everywhere and are less relevant to reproduction.

If you consider first-time marriages only, the average age of grooms marrying for the first time was 35.7 years and for brides the average age was 34.2 years. By comparison, for first-time marriages the United States is 30.5 for males and 28.6 for females.

Developers in west London face a potential ban on new housing projects until 2035 because the electricity grid has run out of capacity to support new homes, jeopardizing housebuilding targets in the capital.
The Greater London Authority wrote to developers this week warning them that it might take more than a decade to bulk up grid capacity and get developments underway again in three west London boroughs

 

Question 87

Question 87

In the Penguin Random House/S&S antitrust trial it was revealed that out of 58,000 trade titles published per year, half of those titles sell fewer than one dozen books. 

90 percent of titles sell fewer than 2,000 units. 

NYT: "about 98 percent of the books that publishers released in 2020 sold fewer than 5,000 copies."

On Sept. 13, 2001, the Met reopened two days after the attack on the World Trade Center. The next day the New York Times reported that by 4 p.m., 8,270 visitors had passed through its doors, “more than normal for this time of year.” 

At a time of fear and despair, people sought out art.

Trouble at NASA? Former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver writes in her new book, “Escaping Gravity,” that the agency is paying the manufacturing company Aerojet Rocketdyne $150 million apiece to refurbish the outdated RS-25 outdated engines—$600 million a flight. It is no wonder that taxpayers so far have put nearly $30 billion into the Artemis moon-launch program before its first launch: $12 billion for the first SLS, $14 billion for two Orion crew capsules and $3.6 billion for new SLS launch facilities at Cape Canaveral.

Is the current rewriting of history just another effort to deprive Black Americans of the revolutionary American experience?

Britain’s German mercenaries noted that “you do not see a regiment” in the Continental Army “in which there is not a large number of blacks”? Africans did not contradict American ideas of freedom; they embraced them and enlarged them alongside other Americans “by linking those ideas to a larger spirit of equality and humanity.”

So Batgirl has been canceled, post-production?

Energy: What the Government Says

 

Energy: What the Government Says

One of the significant changes in American politics is that some of our leaders have an apocalyptic vision of the world that requires them to put the world's interest paramount in their thinking. This hierarchy subordinates U.S. safety and independence as well.

Biden's opinion of oil producers and refiners is pretty public and available.

"Putin is causing the rise in the price of gas in America by invading Ukraine." This is a tough sell because the argument against cutting out Russian oil imports was that we imported so little. And the price of oil was up 48% since Biden's election before the Russians went into Ukraine.

This is like blaming the shutdown of the economy on Covid.

The only thing worse than a stupid lie by a politician is when he believes it. Then you have the worst of both worlds, the stupid and the mendacious.

Some numbers from somewhere:

The U.S. imports only 3% of its petroleum supply and less than 1% of coal from Russia.

There are 9,000 available unused drilling permits, Biden claimed, and only 10% of onshore oil production takes place on federal land. Talk about a misdirection play.

First, companies have to obtain additional permits for rights of way to access leases and build pipelines to transport fuel. This has become harder under the Biden Administration. Second, companies must build up a sufficient inventory of permits before they can contract rigs because of the regulatory difficulties of operating on federal land.

It takes 140 days or so for the feds to approve a drilling permit versus two for the state of Texas. The Administration has halted onshore lease sales. Producers are developing leases more slowly since they don’t know when more will be available. Offshore leases were snapped up at a November auction because companies expect it might be the last one.

Interior’s five-year leasing program for the Gulf of Mexico expires in June. Yet the Administration hasn’t promulgated a new plan. Nor did it appeal a liberal judge’s order in January revoking the November leases. But the Administration has appealed another judge’s order requiring that it hold lease sales.

Then there’s the not-small problem of financing. Companies can’t explore and drill, or build pipelines, without capital. Biden financial regulators allied with progressive investors are working to cut it off. The Labor Department has proposed a rule that would require 401(k) managers to consider the climate impact of their investment holdings.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to issue a rule requiring companies and their financiers to disclose greenhouse gas emissions. Mr. Biden has nominated Sarah Bloom Raskin, of all people, to be the Federal Reserve’s top bank supervisor. Her top priority is using bank regulation to redirect capital from fossil fuels to green energy.

Large energy producers are buying back stock and redirecting capital to renewables because they see the Administration’s writing on the wall. Small independent producers are eager to take advantage of higher prices but can’t get loans. Many relied on private equity during the last shale boom, but now these firms are cutting them off.

Progressive outfit Global Energy Monitor gleefully proclaimed Tuesday that $244 billion in U.S. liquefied natural gas projects are stalled because they “are struggling to find financiers and buyers” amid “pressure from cheap renewables"—i.e., rich green energy subsidies that Democrats want to make richer—and “tightening climate commitments.”

***

It’s almost a miracle that any oil and gas production is occurring in America amid this political hostility. The Ukraine crisis ought to be an inflection point that causes the Biden Administration to do an energy reset. Instead, the President says it “should motivate us to accelerate the transition to clean energy” and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

Replacing Russia’s five million barrels of global crude exports with U.S. and Canadian oil and building pipelines to transport it would take time. But the transition to a fossil-free world will take decades and technological breakthroughs—and will leave the U.S. dependent on China, Russia and other countries for minerals like lithium and nickel.

Mr. Biden bemoans today’s skyrocketing gas prices, yet he remains hostage to the green-energy donors whose policies guarantee higher prices. The President is enabling Vladimir Putin’s energy leverage even as he claims the opposite.

When Do Voters Get Reflective?

                   When Do Voters Get Reflective?
 
I came across this from the fierce Lionel Shriver:

 
Last week’s Spectator interview with Rishi Sunak conveyed the anti-science ‘science’, the paucity of even fag-packet cost-benefit analysis and the ideological lockdown of Boris Johnson’s cabinet that brought forth calamitously extensive lockdowns of everyone else. Ever since, numerous politicians and institutions implicated in this rash experiment have had a vested interest in maintaining the myth that putting whole societies into standby mode, as if countries are mere flatscreens that can be benignly switched on and off by governmental remote, saved many millions of lives.

As it will take years for culpable parties to retire, I once feared that a full generation would need to elapse before we recognised lockdowns for what they were: the biggest public health debacle in history. Yet everywhere I turn lately, still another journalist is decrying the avoidable social, medical and economic costs of this hysterical over-reaction to a virus, while deriding lockdown zealots for having vilified sceptics of a policy that may well end up killing more people than it protected. The Covid revisionism is welcome – though it’s a good deal easier to publish these opinion pieces now than it was two years ago, and I speak from experience.

I’m all for holding officialdom accountable for mistakes from on high that continue to generate dire consequences, not least today’s soaring inflation. Yet it’s worth pressing more uncomfortably: should the public not also be held accountable? After all, the professional naysayer Neil Ferguson notoriously assumed that democracies would never ‘get away with’ lockdowns in Europe – ‘and then Italy did it. And we realised that we could.’ What facilitated sending entire populations to their room like naughty children? Not merely draconian laws, but widespread public eagerness to obey them. Johnson’s heavy hand was forced in part by British opinion polls.
With nary a whimper, the public abdicated every civil right they’d imagined to be inalienable

What was wrong with people – individual people, and in many instances this means you, reader – yes, you – who’d never even heard of a ‘lockdown’ outside a prison or an American school-shooting drill, yet who overnight embraced as inevitable a method of suppressing communicable disease never before tried at scale, never recommended in public health literature and first used to ‘successfully’ quell Covid by lying, authoritarian China? Why didn’t more independent thinkers say: ‘Hold on a minute. Have you thought this through? Might nationwide house arrest be just a tad over the top? And have you pols never heard of unintended consequences?’ Why didn’t more enterprising citizens hit the internet and note: ‘Wow! We’ve had pandemics before’ – and some older folks would have lived through the contagions of 1957 and 1968 themselves – ‘and we didn’t close so much as a betting shop. Why can’t we be trusted to act like grown-ups and behave in our own self-interest?’ Why didn’t more members of the public get angry?

In the UK, a resistance did emerge, but we were few and roundly traduced. Chillingly uniform journalistic cheerleaders for government restrictions on all the major networks might at least claim to have been intimidated by coercive Ofcom ‘guidelines’. But under no such regulatory pressure, most regular shmoes in whose faces interviewers poked microphones still obligingly spouted: ‘No ruination of our lives is too extreme!’ With nary a whimper, the British public abdicated every civil right they’d imagined the very week before to be inalienable: the right to assembly; to free association; to family life; to travel, even the right to leave the country; effectively, too, the right to free speech. Worse, a substantial volunteer army became the state’s enforcers, ringing the police when neighbours dared to go running twice in a day.

If we step back to gain a modicum of perspective, what’s most disturbing about the past ten years is a different kind of climate change: a sequence of social manias that have swept the world like back-to-back sandstorms.

In 2012, a rare mental illness entailing estrangement from the sexual signifiers of one’s own body suddenly snowballed into an international obsession, until now we have thousands of women lopping off their healthy breasts with the blessing of both the medical establishment and the state.

In 2017, a movement energised by legitimate consternation over a sexually predatory Hollywood producer’s abuse of power exploded into a worldwide female grudge-fest, until no woman could hold her head high in public without a personal story of sexual victimisation, which ambitious females carried with them everywhere like bespoke handbags. Some of the men destroyed by this frenzy surely deserved their fate, but others didn’t. In the process of conflating rape and a disappointing date while demonising commonplace flirtation and courtship, we must have lowered the birth rate in multiple countries by several babies per thousand.

In 2020, we all moaned cosily, ‘Here we go, another lockdown,’ as if the state barricading us in our homes for months on end were a time-honoured tradition like Christmas. With the populace primed for hysteria, that summer massive marches all over the world poured into the streets after a single unjustified murder of a black suspect by a white policeman in Minneapolis, issuing in an era consumed by race that is, alas, still with us. It never appeared to enter the heads of indignant protestors in Seoul that, gee, they didn’t really have any black people in South Korea.

Swept up in this succession of manic social waves, everyone gets exercised about the same thing, mindlessly repeats the same empty phrases and eagerly adopts the same branding (with its implied chiming in, the coinage ‘MeToo’ was pitch-perfect). Trans women are women! Believe women! Protect the NHS! Black lives matter! Yet once a mania begins to subside, we never hear any sheepish self-examination. Say, something like: ‘Hmm. I do feel badly about that Floyd chap, but why did I find myself shouting on a London street “Hands up, don’t shoot!” when our constabulary is unarmed?’ Members of the throng never seem to notice that none of these passing intoxications was their idea, or to wonder what this blowing-in-the-wind suggestibility says about their vulnerability to, er, you know, fascism. So you’ve really got to worry what comes next.

Sunday/Philemon

 Sunday/Philemon

The epistle today is from Paul's to Philemon, Paul's shortest. In it Paul, old now and in prison. recommends his 'child,' Onesimus, to his old friend, Philemon

The second reading from the letter of St. Paul to Philemon
9-10, 12-17

I, Paul, an old man,
and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus,
urge you on behalf of my child Onesimus,
whose father I have become in my imprisonment;
I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you.
I should have liked to retain him for myself,
so that he might serve me on your behalf
in my imprisonment for the gospel,
but I did not want to do anything without your consent,
so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary.
Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while,
that you might have him back forever,
no longer as a slave
but more than a slave, a brother,
beloved especially to me, but even more so to you,
as a man and in the Lord.
So if you regard me as a partner, welcome him as you would me.

The backstory is important. Onesimus is an actual slave. More importantly, he's Philemon's slave. And he was not just 'away from you for a while,' he stole from Philemon, then ran off, both maiming offenses. He is in prison with Paul for a third, unrelated crime. He is being returned to his master--who can by rights chop off his hand and foot--not for justice but for Christian charity. His life is not to be viewed by birth or circumstance, it is to be cherished equally as a child of God. As Paul himself.

At this time in history, nobody was thinking and talking like this. This was a cataclysmic revolution in thought.

Question 86

Question 86

This looks fun. Poland’s top politician said Thursday that the government will seek the equivalent of some $1.3 trillion in reparations from Germany for the Nazis’ World War II invasion and occupation of his country…
“We will turn to Germany to open negotiations on the reparations,” Kaczynski said, adding it will be a “long and not an easy path” but “one day will bring success.”
He insisted the move would serve “true Polish-German reconciliation” that would be based on “truth.”

Days after releasing a plan to phase out new gas-powered cars, Ben Zeisloft of the Daily Wire reports that California officials are “asking residents to avoid charging their electric vehicles in the interest of not overwhelming the power grid.”

In the starkest way possible, it is important to remember that while [Adam] Smith identified the human propensity to truck, barter and exchange, Hobbes and others had also identified the human propensity to rape, pillage and plunder unless constrained. Whether men are Smithian or Hobbesian in their behavioral propensities is a function of the rules of the game under which they operate. If the costs of raping, pillaging and plundering are less than the benefits, then the ‘society’ under examination will indeed resemble the Hobbesian jungle. If the costs of predation are raised, and the benefits of cooperation are greater, then Smithian wealth creation through realizing the mutual gains from trade will be the foundation of the social order.--a scary idea by Boettke.
Is it true?

China’s carbon emissions fell almost 8 percent in the April-to-June quarter compared with the same period last year, the sharpest decline in the past decade, according to climate research service Carbon Brief.
The fall in emissions reflects a dramatic slowing in Chinese economic growth caused by large-scale coronavirus lockdowns and a crisis in the heavily indebted property sector. It was the fourth consecutive quarter in which emissions have fallen in China, the world’s biggest emitter.
Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which compiled the data for Carbon Brief, said there had been a drop of 44 percent in the number of construction projects started and a 33 percent fall in those completed during the second quarter.

There is an explosion of referrals for gender-dysphoria services for children and young people in the U.K., which have gone from 50 in 2009 to 2,500 annually by 2020. The spike first started in 2014-2015, according to an interim report National Health Service gender services made public in March; the backlog now totals 4,600 people, who can expect about two years on the waitlist.

Question 85

Question 85

President Joe Biden charged in a prime-time address Thursday that the “extreme ideology” of Donald Trump and his adherents “threatens the very foundation of our republic,” as he summoned Americans of all stripes to help counter what he sketched as dark forces within the Republican Party trying to subvert democracy.
Wait. Trump has an ideology?

[I]t is not right to talk, as often happens, about the tyranny of capital, since even in the most extreme an cases its presence can never be more damaging than its absence to the situation of the worker.--Bastiat

Transgender women report bottom surgery at rates between 5–13%
Chest surgery is generally reported at about twice the rate of genital GCS. In studies that assessed transgender men and women as an aggregate, chest surgery has been reported at rates between 8–25%, and genital surgery at 4–13%

Is the problem on the border serious enough to use land mines?
Why not?

30% of people think that Biden has done a good job. How is that possible? Does one standard deviation being 68.27% help?

A study of Russian publications in the 1990s found that some 39 percent of all nonfiction published in Russia in that decade had something to do with the occult.

One of the most consequential statistics passed by without much noise. India's total fertility rate fell below the population replacement rate to 2.0, with many states far below that level, thanks to effective campaigns around family planning & contraception.

Question 84

Question 84

This “novel theory” (novel with Adam Smith) is, of course, that the allocation of resources should be determined by the forces of the market rather than as a result of government decisions. Quite apart from the malallocations which are the result of political pressures, an administrative agency which attempts to perform the function normally carried out by the pricing mechanism operates under two handicaps. First of all, it lacks the precise monetary measure of benefit and cost provided by the market. Second, it cannot, by the nature of things, be in possession of all the relevant information possessed by the managers of every business … to say nothing of the preferences of consumers for the various goods and services…--coase.

[It is] the first quality of a Liberal to claim the same thing for others and for oneself, to dislike exception and prerogative, to think of all men and all countries, to acknowledge the rights of the individual, derived from nature and universal, in preference to the primitive rights of a country or of a clan, obtained by force and not from heaven.--Lord Acton

immigration reduced union density by 5.7 percentage points between 1980 and 2020, which accounted for 29.7 percent of the overall decline in union density during that period.

A government thus limited [as proposed in the American Declaration of Independence] is not in the business of imposing its opinions about what happiness the citizens should choose to pursue. Having such opinions is the business of other institutions – private and voluntary ones, including religious ones, that nourish the conditions for liberty. The Founders did not consider natural rights reasonable because religion affirmed them; rather, the Founders considered religion reasonable because it secured those rights.--Will

Alex Washburne, a Montana-based mathematical biologist and statistician who has published in ecology, evolution, epidemiology and finance, tried to sound the alarm bell on the massive collateral damage of lockdowns very early on. His background in finance and economics led him to believe that “the COVID response was greatly imbalanced and risked causing harm in the service of public health.”
“Covid showed me ways in which socioscientific inefficiencies…can lead to an insular expert class that mismanages critical risks our society faces and, without checks and balances, they can weaponize their myopic expertise (e.g. epidemiology) to mislead society and cause harm…”
As a result of the backlash he faced, Washburne eventually left academia and founded Agora, a new scientific startup and incubator ‘safe space’ for scientists of different backgrounds and divergent political views to collaborate. (from cohen)

From a recent study: "Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students."

In Soundview Bronx, only 7% of students who enter ninth grade are ready for college four years later. For black students, the figure is 4%.

A libertarian – which mean a true “liberal” in the original sense of the word – wants a society with no human-made, involuntary ups and downs, no masters and slaves. That’s all there is to it.-McCloskey

Will on Bauerline: "...he anticipated that millennials were going to become “unsatisfied and confused” adults, bereft of the consolations of a cultural inheritance, which is unavailable to nonreaders. They would be gripped by the furies of brittle people bewildered by encounters with disagreement, which they find inexplicable. And by the apocalyptic terrors that afflict frustrated utopians, the only kind there is."

Sally Hemmings, Native American lands, and slavery have become very prominent in the tour of Monticello, along with diminishing Jefferson himself.
Monticello’s push to “finish the restoration of the landscape of slavery” on the estate has largely been funded by left-leaning philanthropist David M. Rubenstein, who donated $20 million toward that effort in 2015. Rubenstein, a private-equity billionaire and former Carter Administration official — recently pledged to continue his extensive investments in China — and is on the boards of the globalist World Economic Forum, China’s Tsinghua University, and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others.