Easter/sunday

 

Easter/Sunday

Easter is the essential Christian event. Every aspect of the Christian church hinges on Christ's resurrection.

The gospel is filled with little particulars (the woman hesitant to enter the tomb, Peter being outrun to the tomb, the meticulous arrangement of the burial cloths, the assumption that the body was stolen--after the assumption by the Pharisees that the apostles would steal it)--all giving misdirection and specificity to what becomes the philosophical earthquake of all time. And, of course, another biblical irony: The first to arrive, the women, could not be legal witnesses.

Yet how does this all hinge? Hearsay? The interpretation of a sacred book? Amulets and magic rites? No. Amazingly it hinges on us.

By the time Christ rises, we know all the players. We even have some insights about them. They are not revolutionaries, not mystics and, while seemingly sincere, they are not special. They are relatively normal working folks with responsibilities and, probably, annoyed families. As seen by their behavior during the Passion, they are not fully aware of what is happening. Nor are they particularly brave. Yet, after this crisis where their leader is tortured and killed, they somehow emerge as philosophers and martyrs. They all, to a man, experience a mind-changing, life-changing event. Scattered and leaderless they raise a religious movement that challenges everything in its time and, eventually, forces mighty Rome to adapt.

Christ performed the great, unarguable miracle. It was the behavior of men, people, who confirmed and developed it. No leap of faith was necessary. They were convinced and changed. Then they convinced and changed the world.

Quick Hits

 

Quick Hits

Is Beyonce's new album cultural appropriation?

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The growth of China’s agricultural subsidies is incredible: now at $300bn per year, according to the OECD. The graph, which as usual I could not paste, is astounding

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Ambitious plans to build a utopian sustainable city at the foot of an active Japanese volcano are well on their way to completion.

First announced in 2021, Toyota has been hard at work constructing their Woven City just miles away from Mount Fuji on the island of Honshū, with the first of 2,000 anticipated residents now expected to move in before the end of the year.

***

A criticism of Dune 2 from a Vicky Osterweil, clearly from a recent fiction program:
"..despite all the attempts of the literalists, the movies still contain resonances and ideas beyond their control. ...Stilgar believes in a prophecy that a messiah, the Mahdi, is coming to save the Fremen from the imperium. In this prophecy, that messiah comes from outside of the planet--Paul Atreides is that messiah (yes, it's giving Lawrence of Arabia). Javier Bardem, an incredibly talented actor, spends the entire movie pointing to something Paul has just done and saying "See! This is proof he's the Mahdi!" Once or twice this is comical. But by the film's climax it's so tedious that, when Paul demonstrates his power to a war council of the Fremen leadership and the camera cuts to Bardem yelling "The Mahdi!" someone behind me in the audience said loudly to their friends "this is so stupid."

This kind of audience-condescending premise-forward literalism is not just in the narrative and scripting, it’s in the acting. The actors of Dune 2 almost all speak in that tedious whisper-growl that stands in for profundity, a vocal style also popularized by Nolan, in Christian Bale’s portrayal of the caped crusader in 2005’s Batman Begins. I believe that if a movie features a bunch of good actors and all the performances are flat and dull, as is the case in Dune Part Two, where even Florence Pugh, Lea Seydoux, and Josh Brolin lack all charisma, it is ultimately a reflection on the director (and the script), not the actors."

***

And a pro TikTok position:

People keep saying “but they do the same to us.” That’s no excuse. We shouldn’t take a page from the Chinese censorship playbook and basically give them the moral high ground, combined with the ability to point to this move as justification for the shenanigans they’ve pulled in banning US companies from China.

Don’t let the authoritarians set the agenda. We should be better than that.

Good Friday

“Russian early-warning satellites don’t work accurately. As a country, Russia doesn’t have the technological know-how to build a system as good as we have in the United States.” This means “their satellites can’t look straight down at the earth,” a technology known as look-down capability. As a result, Russia’s Tundra satellites “look sideways, which handicaps their ability to distinguish sunlight from, say, fire”--Postol

***

The Netherlands, which is a bit bigger than Maryland, has become the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States. Perhaps even more significant in the face of a warming planet: It is among the largest exporters of agricultural and food technology. The Dutch have pioneered cell-cultured meat, vertical farming, seed technology, and robotics in milking and harvesting — spearheading innovations that focus on decreased water usage as well as reduced carbon and methane emissions…

The country has nearly 24,000 acres — almost twice the size of Manhattan — of crops growing in greenhouses. These greenhouses, with less fertilizer and water, can grow in a single acre what would take 10 acres of traditional dirt farming to achieve. Dutch farms use only a half-gallon of water to grow about a pound of tomatoes, while the global average is more than 28 gallons.

***


Good Friday



How the norms slide and slip, how the bell-shaped curve moves. Two poems about Good Friday that were outliers, now the norm.


Christina Rossetti's Good Friday


Am I a stone, and not a sheep,

That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,

To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,

And yet not weep?


Not so those women loved

Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;

Not so the thief was moved;


Not so the Sun and Moon

Which hid their faces in a starless sky,

A horror of great darkness at broad noon –

I, only I.


Yet give not o’er,

But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

And smite a rock.


And the atheist Housmann's Easter Sunday, taking the position of the thief:


If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,

You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,

Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright

Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night

The hate you died to quench and could but fan,

Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.


But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,

At the right hand of majesty on high

You sit, and sitting so remember yet

Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat,

Your cross and passion and the life you gave,

Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.

The Last of Affirmative Action

 

The Last of Affirmative Action

This is the last of the Hillsdale article on "disparate outcomes," the outcomes of education and crime. Whatever the causes, they are a crisis for the black community. And, regardless of what these politicians say, identities cannot separate and insulate us; failure of one is failure of all.

In 2019, 66 percent of all black 12th graders did not possess even partial mastery of basic 12th-grade math skills, defined as being able to do arithmetic and to read a graph. Only seven percent of black 12th graders were proficient in 12th-grade math, defined as being able to calculate using ratios. The number of black 12th graders who were advanced in math was too small to show up statistically in a national sample. The picture was not much better in reading. Fifty percent of black 12th graders did not possess even partial mastery of basic reading, and only four percent were advanced.

According to the ACT, a standardized college admissions test, only three percent of black high school seniors were college-ready in 2023. The disparities in other such tests—the SAT, the LSAT, the GRE, and the GMAT—are just as wide. Remember these data when politicians and others vilify Americans as racist because this or that institution is not proportionally diverse.

We can argue about why these disparities exist and how to close them—something that policymakers and philanthropists have been trying to do for decades. But in light of these skills gaps, it is irrational to expect 13 percent black representation on a medical school faculty or among a law firm’s partners under meritocratic standards. At present, you can have proportional diversity or you can have a meritocracy. You cannot have both.

As for the criminal justice system, the bodies speak for themselves. President Biden is fond of intoning that black parents are right to fear that their children will be killed by a police officer or by a white gunslinger every time those children step outside. The mayor of Kansas City proclaimed last year that “existing while black” is another high-risk activity that blacks must engage in. The mayor was partially right: existing while black is far more dangerous than existing while white—but the reason is black crime, not white vigilantes.

In the post-George Floyd era, black juveniles are shot at 100 times the rate of white juveniles. Blacks between the ages of ten and 24 are killed in drive-by shootings at nearly 25 times the rate of whites in that same age cohort. Dozens of blacks are murdered every day, more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined, even though blacks are just 13 percent of the population. The country turns its eyes away. Who is killing these black victims? Not the police, not whites, but other blacks.

As for interracial violence, blacks are a greater threat to whites than whites are to blacks. Blacks commit 85 percent of all non-lethal interracial violence between blacks and whites. A black person is 35 times more likely to commit an act of non-lethal violence against a white person than vice versa. Yet the national narrative insists on the opposite idea—and too many dutifully play along.

These crime disparities mean that the police cannot restore law and order in neighborhoods where innocent people are most being victimized without having a disparate impact on black criminals. So the political establishment has decided not to restore law and order at all.

We must fight back against disparate impact thinking. As long as racism remains the only allowable explanation for racial disparities, the Left wins, and our civilization will continue to crumble.

Even the arts are coming down. Classical music, visual art, theater—all are dismissed as a function of white oppression. The Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted an astonishing show last year called the Fictions of Emancipation. The show’s premise was that if a white artist creates a work intended to show the cruelties of slavery, that artist (in this case, the great 19th-century French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux) is in fact arguing that the natural condition of blacks is slavery. Prosecuting this nonsensical argument required the Met to ignore or distort almost every feature of the Western art tradition—including the representation of the nude human body, artists’ use of models, and the sale of art.

Only Western art is subjected to this kind of hostile interpretation. Chinese, African, and Indian cultural traditions are still treated with curatorial respect, their works analyzed following their creators’ intent. As soon as a critic turns his eye or ear on Western art, however, all he can see or hear is imperialism and white privilege. It is a perverse obsession. We are teaching young people to dismiss the greatest creations of humanity. We are stripping them of the capacity to escape their narrow identities and to lose themselves in beauty, sublimity, and wit. No wonder so many Americans are drowning in meaninglessness and despair.

We must stop apologizing for Western Civilization. To be sure, slavery and segregation were grotesque violations of America’s founding ideals. For much of our history, black Americans suffered injustice and gratuitous cruelty. Today, however, every mainstream institution is twisting itself into knots to hire and promote as many underrepresented minorities as possible. Yet those same institutions grovelingly accuse themselves of racism.

The West has liberated the world from universal squalor and disease, thanks to the scientific method and the Western passion for discovery and knowledge. It has given the world plumbing, hot showers in frigid winters, flight, clean water, steel, antibiotics, and just about every structure and every device that we take for granted in our miraculously privileged existence—and I use the word “privilege” here to refer to anyone whose life has been transformed by Western ingenuity—i.e., virtually every human being on the planet.

It was in the West that the ideas of constitutional government and civil rights were born. Yes, to our shame, we had slavery. What civilization did not? But only the Anglosphere expended lives and capital to end the nearly universal practice. Britain had to occupy Lagos in 1861 to get its ruler to give up the slave trade. The British Navy used 13 percent of its manpower to blockade slave ships leaving the western coast of Africa in the 19th century, as Nigel Biggar has documented. Every ideal that the Left uses today to bash the West—such as equality or tolerance—originated in the West.

***

The ongoing attack on colorblind excellence in the U.S. is putting our scientific edge at risk. China, which cares nothing for identity politics, is throwing everything it has at its most talented students. China ranks number one in international tests of K-12 math, science, and reading skills; the U.S. ranks twenty-fifth.

China is racing ahead in nanophysics, artificial intelligence, and other critical defense technologies. Chinese teams dominate the International Olympiad in Informatics. Meanwhile, the American Mathematical Association declares math to be racist and President Biden puts a soil geologist with no background in physics at the top of the Department of Energy’s science programs. This new science director may know nothing about nuclear weapons and nuclear physics, but she checks off several identity politics boxes and publishes on such topics as “A Critical Feminist Approach to Transforming Workplace Climate.”

What do we do in response to such civilizational immolation? We proclaim that standards are not racist and that excellence is not racist. We assert that categories like race, gender, and sexual preference are never qualifications for a job. I know for a fact that being female is not an accomplishment. I am equally sure that being gay or being black are also not accomplishments.

Should conservative political candidates campaign against disparate impact thinking and in favor of standards of merit? Of course, they should! They will be accused of waging a culture war. But it is the progressive elites, not their conservative opponents, who are engaging in cultural revolution!

Most conservatives today are not even playing defense. How about legislation to ban racial preferences in medical training and practice? How about eliminating the disparate impact standard in statutes and regulations? Conservatives should by all means promote the virtues of free markets and limited government, but the diversity regime is the nemesis of both.

Lowering standards helps no one since high expectations are the key to achievement. In defense of excellence, we must speak the truth, never apologize, and never back down.

More Affirmative Action

 More Affirmative Action

"Disparate results" require lowering of standards in the legal profession, which came up with the disparate impact concept in the first place. Upon taking office in 2021, President Biden announced that he would no longer submit his judicial nominees to the American Bar Association (ABA) for a preliminary rating. Why? According to a member of the White House Counsel’s Office, allowing the ABA to vet candidates would be incompatible with the “diversification of the judiciary.”

This claim was dubious. The ABA, after all, cannot open its collective mouth without issuing a bromide about the need to diversify the bar. Its leading members are obsessed with the demographics of corporate law firms and law school faculties. This is the same ABA that gave its highest rating to a Supreme Court nominee who as a justice would make the false claim during a challenge to Covid vaccine mandates that “over 100,000 children are in serious condition [from Covid] and many are on ventilators.”

State bar associations are also busy watering down standards to eliminate disparate impact. In 2020, California lowered the pass score on its bar exam because black applicants were disproportionately failing. Only five percent of black law school graduates passed the California bar on their first try in February 2020, compared to 52 percent of white law school graduates and 42 percent of Asian law school graduates. The lack of proportional representation among California’s attorneys was held to be proof of a discriminatory credentialing system.

The pressure to eliminate the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) requirement for law school admissions is growing, because it too has a disparate impact. As a single mother told an ABA panel, “I would hate to give up on my dream of becoming a lawyer just due to not being able to successfully handle this test.” Note the assumption: the problem always lies with the test, never with the test taker. The LSAT requirement will almost certainly be axed.

But equality of circumstance is a lot different than equality before the law. The curious state of our criminal justice system today is a function of the disparate impact principle. If you wonder why police officers are not making certain arrests, or why district attorneys are not prosecuting whole categories of crimes—such as shoplifting, trespassing, or farebeating—it is because apprehending lawbreakers and prosecuting crime have a disparate impact on black criminals. Urban leaders have decided that they would rather not enforce the law at all, no matter how constitutional that enforcement, than put more black criminals in jail.

Walgreens, CVS, and Target would rather close down entire stores and deprive their elderly customers of access to their medications than confront shoplifters and hand them over to the law, because doing so would disproportionately yield black shoplifters, as the viral looting videos attest. Macy’s flagship store in New York City was sued several years ago because most of the people its employees stopped for shoplifting were black. The only allowable explanation for that fact was that Macy’s was racist. It was not permissible to argue that Macy’s arrests mirrored the shoplifting population.

Even colorblind technology is racist. Speeding and red-light cameras disproportionately identify black drivers as traffic scofflaws. The solution to such disparate impact is the same as we saw with the medical licensing exam: throw out the cameras.

The result of this de-prosecution and de-policing has been widespread urban anarchy and, in 2020, the largest one-year spike in homicide in this nation’s history. Thousands more black lives have been lost to drive-by shootings. Dozens of black children have been fatally gunned down in their beds, in their front yards, and in their parents’ cars. No one says their names because their assailants were not police officers or white supremacists. They were other blacks.

(more from a Hilsdale lecture)

Affirmative Action

In 2013, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was launched by Xi Jinping, featuring an ambition to reinvigorate the old silk trading route along the East African coast. Chinese investment in Africa peaked around 2016. Since then, Chinese loans to African governments declined significantly, falling from $28.4 billion in 2016 to $1.9 billion in 2020 – partly due to changing priorities in domestic Chinese politics, and partly due to the apparent difficulty African countries had repaying loans. Citing data from China's National Bureau of Statistics, the number of Chinese workers in Africa has plummeted from 263,696 in 2015 to 88,371 in 2022.

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Affirmative Action

"Disparate results" are quite the rage. Several of the next few days will be on that topic, culled from a Hillsdale lecture.

The Medical College Achievement Test (MCAT) is an exam, like the SAT, that assesses students for application, specifically to med school. The average MCAT score for black applicants is a standard deviation below the average score of white applicants. The tests have been redesigned to try to eliminate this disparity. A quarter of the questions now focus on social issues and psychology. Some medical schools have waived the submission of MCAT scores for black applicants. The changes have been extended to the medical school curriculum which is being revised to offer more classes in white privilege and focus less on clinical practice.

The medical licensing exam has two parts. The first part is taken during or after the second year of medical school and tests medical students’ knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. On average, black students score lower on the exam, making it harder for them to land their preferred residencies. That exam has a “disparate impact” on black medical students. The answer, implemented last year, was to eliminate the grading disparity by instituting a pass–fail system. Hospitals choosing residents can no longer distinguish between high and low-achieving students.

But sacrifices must be made.

The American Association of Medical Colleges will soon require that medical faculty demonstrate knowledge of “intersectionality”—a theory about the cumulative burdens of discrimination. Heads of medical schools and chairmen of departments like pediatric surgery are being selected based on identity, not knowledge.

The federal government is shifting medical research funding from pure science to studies on racial disparities and social justice. Why? Not because of any assessment of scientific need, but simply because black researchers do more racism research and less pure science. The National Institutes of Health has broadened the criteria for receiving neurology grants to include things like childhood welfare receipt because considering scientific accomplishment alone results in a disparate impact.

Disparities have explanations, explanations that can be addressed. But there is a real problem with any organized attack on quality--or should be. Not only is it damaging to the nature of the academic pursuit and its participants, it offers mediocrity as a cultural goal. 

We are simply not robust enough a culture to indulge in such an uncritical world.

 

The Revenant of Class

The Revenant of Class

The middle class's unstated goals are to maintain a decent standard of living for itself and to pass on a stable, good life to their children, all within an agreed-upon set of constitutionally described limits. Prosperous but self-made, elite-adjacent but not elite themselves, it followed the rules while nurturing a belief in the ability to improve one’s circumstances no matter where you found yourself on the social ladder. The middle class served as a stabilizing force, taming the extremes of wealth and poverty while going about its business as white-collar professionals, small-business owners, and mid-level managers. 

The middle class was actually shrinking as many moved into the upper class. The middle class was proof of concept. 

In other words, the middle class, despite its anxieties, was supposed to homogenize the American culture, smoothing out its rough spots and spackling its ruptures as it traveled the cultural path. 

That may not be working now.

The Democrat Party has decided that fostering separation rather than unity benefits their political cause. They have emphasized differences rather than commonalities and have developed a program of intense, isolated, narrow, group identification that demands embracing failures and antagonism toward outsiders who are held responsible for its circumstances. The Republicans have decided they can win that fight with populism. But the essence of both positions is resentment.

And what remains to be seen is if such a self-loathing, self-destructive, and balkanized culture can persist and what, if anything, must be sacrificed for its survival.

 

Sunday/Palm Sunday

 

Sunday/Palm Sunday

An old testament battle began over succession to David's throne. Solomon is David's choice over a false claimant. Solomon arrives in victory to Jerusalem riding on an ass. He then builds the new temple.

So the bible endorses symbolism and poetry. The concrete world, not so much. 

Today is Palm Sunday, a long and difficult Gospel from Holy Thursday to Christ's burial, filled with drama, conflict, and ambiguity. It is so dramatic, so much a part of the Western world, it is hard to believe students are regularly deprived of it. 

That frustrating, "That is what you say." And this strange back-and-forth which sounds bitterly ironic, even in Christ's mouth:
He said to them,
“But now one who has a money bag should take it,
and likewise a sack,
and one who does not have a sword
should sell his cloak and buy one.
For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me,
namely, He was counted among the wicked;
and indeed what is written about me is coming to fulfillment.”
Then they said,
“Lord, look, there are two swords here.”
But he replied, “It is enough!”

The Gospel is oblique as Christ is passive throughout; the real actors are the humans. Humans fail on just about every level you can imagine. Christ's friends leave Him, the future head of the Church denies Him, the religious organization that He is a member of conspires against Him and the State washes its hands of Him, unable to follow even their own laws. 

It's a pretty ugly picture. There are some obvious explanations. Christ is the only answer. Friends are fickle and the world transient. Organizations can not be relied upon. They may all be true. But there seems to be very little faith in human beings or their constructs. Even the tried-and-true customs and institutions that we all think of as society's DNA fall apart at this moment.

It is a view of moral and social dystopia. Chaos of the spirit. The storm that comes later after Golgotha is only an exclamation point. 

What does come through in astonishing clarity is the unbelievable gentleness of the victim, gentle and forgiving. 

It is overwhelming.

Bits of Economics

 

Bits of Economics

Here are a few isolated economic notions.

Zero-sum in economics believes that every positive economic step is accompanied by a backward step; every heads has a tails. Peter is always robbed to pay Paul. The size of the economic pie is fixed. My slice comes from yours. This requires a lot of very specific self-imposed restrictions when looking at the world for the last two hundred years when growth during that short period overwhelmed the total human economic growth since hunter-gathering.

But some hold growth in low regard because improvement undermines their basic vision: conflict.

Marx described the value of a commodity as a function of the labor time it took to produce. So the value of the product was disconnected from its availability, appeal, or need.

McCloskey's "failure to stay for the whole play." Being seduced into looking at the immediate effects of an action or event. Economic acts can have delayed effects, tails, like long covid.

“Constructivism” is a Hayek term describing the fallacy of believing that all observed order is the result of conscious design. This leads to economic creation with the overconfident belief in a determined outcome. ("The bottom 2% in terms of income in the United States, the bottom 5 percent, and for sure the top 1% all live better than John D. Rockefeller was living when I was six years old. John D Rockefeller was the richest man in the world." He emphasized the improvements in medicine, education, entertainment and transportation, arguing that these aspects of life are now better than ever before.--Warren Buffett)

Electric vehicles made up only 7.6% of 2023 vehicle sales despite heavy subsidies.

 .

A Few Bits of Significant Info

A Few Bits of Significant Info

Thousands of Chinese workers have left Africa over the last seven years.

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The Smithsonian Institution announces that “emphasis on the scientific method” and an interest in “cause and effect relationships” are part of totalitarian whiteness.

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Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.--Adam Smith

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A comprehensive review suggests that contrary to the forbidden-fruit belief, "parents imposing strict rules related to adolescent alcohol use is overwhelmingly associated with less drinking and fewer alcohol-related risky behaviors".

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Electric vehicles use six times more metals and minerals than traditional vehicles, but permits for the mines needed to produce these minerals in the U.S. are hard to get.

***

85% of Palestinians support the October 7th attack.

Religious Politics

 

Religious Politics

Have you noticed the rise of packaged religious-political podcasts and programming with paywalls? Many conservative programs are adding direct religious messaging. Even ads contain religious wording. The Israel problem may be recruiting religious adherents. The administration's weird legal hierarchy--like raising suspicions about outspoken citizens at school board meetings and Latin mass Catholics--could be provoking reaction.

These stats from a recent survey are interesting.

55% of Hispanic Protestants, most of whom identify as evangelical, hold Christian nationalist beliefs. About 66% of white evangelicals hold such views — the biggest share of any group surveyed.
Among Latino Catholics, 72% said they rejected or were skeptical of Christian nationalism.
Republicans (55%) are more than twice as likely as independents (25%) and three times more likely than Democrats (16%) to say they hold Christian nationalist views, the survey found.

Intensity may be hard to measure. Analog vs. digital. But something's up.

Touts

 

Touts

The World Health Assembly in May of this year plans to divert $10.5 billion of aid away from diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. Instead, that money will go toward combating the threat of viruses newly caught from wildlife. Behind this initiative, endorsed by the Group of 20 summit in Bali in 2022, is the assumption that the threat of pandemics from spillovers of animal viruses is dramatically increasing. Perhaps this assumption is an echo of the stories that HIV jumped from monkeys to humans and, of course, the Wuhan disaster.

Matt Ridley believes the assumption of increased movement of infectious diseases from animals to people is false. A new report from the University of Leeds, prepared in part by former World Health Organization executives, finds that the claims made by the G-20 in support of this agenda either are unsupported by evidence, contradict their own cited sources, or fail to correct for improved detection of pathogens. Over the past decade, the burden and risk of spillover has been relatively small and probably decreasing. The Leeds authors conclude: “The implication is that the largest investment in international public health in history is based on misinterpretations of key evidence as well as a failure to thoroughly analyze existing data.”

This is not reassuring. Somebody--that is one group of scientists or another--is completely wrong. And is encouraging the spending of huge amounts of money to follow their suggestions.

Scientists have become like touts at a racetrack, invested in their own predictions.

Speech and Ideas

It appears that the border wall between The Dominican Republic and Haiti works.

***

The number of couples in China choosing to marry has gone up for the first time in nine years.

***

Speech and Ideas

There is a big case coming before the Supreme Court on Freedom of Speech. The substance involves the efforts by the federal government to control the information coming out of social media that opposed the government's position on COVID-19, how people got it, how they spread it, and how vaccines influenced it.

There is a peculiar picture here of acres of computer farms with technicians combing through postings from a housewife in Peoria looking for her subversive questions about the value of immunizing infants.

But what about speech the other way? What about speech originating not from the small computer on the kitchen table but from the center of opinion-making? Like Washington.

Here's an example.

A typical university policy statement (such as this one from California State University, Fullerton) reads, “Faculty members from traditionally underrepresented groups may experience additional demands on their time, a phenomenon termed ‘cultural taxation.’ Cultural taxation involves the obligation to demonstrate good citizenship towards the institution by serving its needs for ethnic representation and cultural understanding, often without commensurate institutional rewards.”

An example of "Cultural taxation" might be a black professor who is burdened with the supposed need to spend more time with black students than a white professor would be and therefore deserves some extra compensation. There isn’t any evidence that this is true, there is no reason to assume these Black students require more help, there is no reason why the helpful professor would necessarily be Black ....on and on. 

The point is that we now are dealing with a new concept--"cultural taxation"--with its own structure, theories, costs, and--most importantly--its own mythology. What is essentially a coffeehouse notion has become policy and will result in its own bureaucracy, rules, administration, and justice system. Without any proof.

Does such an idea deserve support or should the veracity of this idea be questioned? If the idea is imaginary and without foundation, should it be suppressed or should it be allowed to advance in deference to "Free Speech?"

Another way of putting it is, Why is the citizen always the offender?

 

Pro-Consumer Report

 

Pro-Consumer Report

An update on the evil American corporations and their arbitrary, anti-competitive, predatory pricing policies as wonderfully, if haltingly, exposed by our glorious leader.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is concerned that consumers are buying low-cost electric vehicles from China rather than higher-priced American creations. The government may have to intervene. How? Tariffs; a tax on imports. How does this fit with Biden's unending drumbeat of unreasonable corporate profits, American price-gouging, and consumer victimization?

It doesn't. It creates all those distortions.

Protectionism, remarkably, does just what it says. It protects American producers from foreign competition by raising those foreign competitors' prices with tariffs. There may be some reasons The Powers That Be may want to raise domestic prices on their citizens--none of them of any economic merit--but any benefit to the beleaguered consumer is nonsense.

At some point, inconsistencies become incoherent.

Sunday/The Universal

 

Sunday/The Universal

Today's gospel is fascinating. "Some Greeks" ask Phillip "who was from Bethsaida in Galilee" to see Christ. The message works its way to Christ who answers with what appears to be a non sequitur:

'Some Greeks who had come to worship at the Passover Feast
came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee,
and asked him, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”
Philip went and told Andrew;
then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.
Jesus answered them,
“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
it remains just a grain of wheat;
but if it dies, it produces much fruit.
Whoever loves his life loses it,
and whoever hates his life in this world
will preserve it for eternal life.
Whoever serves me must follow me,
and where I am, there also will my servant be.
The Father will honor whoever serves me."'

This gospel is long but in this opening paragraph, a basic human problem is developed, then answered. First, the provincialism. Initially, we are shown two geographic, ethnic, and philosophic groups--the inquiring, philosophical, pagan, western Greeks and the faith-based, religious, eastern Jews. Both of these subsets have their own history, genetics, literature, traditions, successes, and failures. Both are looking for truth.

Do all of their disparate elements distort them? Does each have their own truth? Are the philosophical Greeks looking for answers in an impossible place? 

Can there be any commonality between the two groups?

The entire nineteenth century in the West was devoted to answering "No!" Marx and his homicidal accomplices built a murderous world on the concept of 'different truths' depending upon different circumstances. These competitive realities had to be resolved with conflict. The more recent "Critical Theory" is the twisted scion of this disbelief in truth.

Here both groups are looking for a hub. Christ says there is one. 

Take a Load Off Fani

They are voting in Russia, according to the BBC. Is this an example of the distinction between form and substance?

***

Take a Load Off Fani

The Fani Willis decision is in. Ms. Willis has been found to have used the Georgia Trump case for her own personal advantage, has demonstrated breathtaking disregard for public appearance, has gone outside the court to racially disparage opponents, and, from all appearances, has raised questions of her truthfulness under oath. She has created an atmosphere of mendacity, personal advancement, and blatant disregard for the public welfare as should be the concern of a public servant.

The weight of responsible, honest, competent behavior is heavy.

One would expect this to result in exactly nothing. It is of no advantage for the Left to examine itself. But the reaction has been surprising. Fox was academically thorough but CNN was furious. They saw this as undermining the Trump case and the very confidence people have in the justice system.

This, of course, is not new; the Right has been complaining about this for years. That the Left is picking this up is shocking. They may simply be seeing this as a frustration of their parochial pursuit of Trump but that they see any larger picture is telling and could be meaningful.

Politics has always trumped truth but competence has been assumed; distinction has been seen as 'only' policy. These last years --and the next election--raise questions about the ability of the republic to generate capable leadership at any level. Ms. Willis will probably not become the poster child for governmental self-centeredness, indifference, and incompetence but she might make concerns more mainstream--and dangerously quotidian.

Astounding Stuff

Astounding Stuff

I was watching the news last night and all this unbelievable stuff popped up. This in just a few minutes.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Israel to hold new elections, saying he believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “lost his way” and is an obstacle to peace in the region amid a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
So the head of the Senate in the U.S., a country that has been virtually hysterical over election interference, is publically criticizing a democratically elected foreign government and demanding its replacement. Worse, all the commentators are blaming this position on the Democrats' concern for pro-Palistinian domestic voters, not about the people, or Israel or Palestine at all.

N.B. Reason aside: Israel's war policy is determined by their War Council, a body of which Netanyahu is one. One. Another member is the oppositiion leader. This is a national policy, not a personal one.

A small dog was attacked by a coyote in the city's Mount Washington neighborhood, Pittsburgh Public Safety said in an alert Thursday.

Dak Prescott is now being investigated for his involvement in an alleged sexual assault that took place in 2017, Dallas police confirmed to the Dallas Morning News on Thursday.
The alleged incident occurred in the parking lot of a strip club, around Feb. 2, 2017, Dallas Morning News reported.
It comes days after Prosper (Texas) police opened an investigation into the Dallas Cowboys quarterback's claims that he was extorted.

Bernie Sanders, a Senator who has never held a non-government job, has introduced a law in the Senate that would limit the American work week to 32 hours while continuing 40-hour pay.

So the relationship between wages and production is not a factor, only a government declaration. Price and wages by fiat. There is no "value." This famous error on the value of labor and production has historically invalidated Marx.

The only thing that can save China and Russia is if we become more like them.

The U.S. will send $150 million to Haiti as emergency money. To whom? There is no government; they are all dead, or in hiding, or dinner. Fortunately, the inevitable Haitian flood will be accommodated here on Biden's non-border.

Obama gave Haiti $4 billion. Can you imagine? $4 Billion dropped into Haiti.

Several billion dollars were earmarked for the border wall by Trump and this money was diverted elsewhere by Biden. A court overturned this decision and repurposed it to the wall.

And all this is China and Ukraine free.

These stories were broadcast in just a few minutes in the evening news. Enough to interfere with digestion.

Rising Unseriousness

“Almost 30% of Gen Z women identify as LGBTQ+, most as bisexual,” Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup, told NBC News. What could explain this discontent?

***

The Brits have banned the use of pituitary blockers.

***

Rising Unseriousness

In our world of mendacity and shallow symbolism, the President of the United States wants to tax "the rich." Now, this is the man who says the rich are taxed at 8.3%. This is the same guy who says the border is secure, the Republicans want to end Social Security, and crime is under control. On the judgment side, he offered Zekensky asylum.

Biden wants to raise the corporate rate to 28% from 21%. The 2017 tax reform dropped the rate to 21% from 35%. (By the way, China’s corporate tax rate is 25%.) A National Bureau of Economic Research paper last year found that the corporate tax reform effectively paid for itself by boosting investment and raising worker wages.

So, increasing the rate to 28% will probably result in lower tax revenue by reducing business investment and wages. Exactly the opposite of its intended effect. Because money goes where it's treated best. Taxes are punishments that incidentally raise money for the state; a higher corporate rate is a disincentive to invest in the U.S. – which is why Republicans cut it.

Control of finances is a sure way to limit them. See rent control. And creating a country hospitable to investment should be a national priority. This should be beyond debate. But, with these people, nothing is off the table regardless of logic, national benefit, or goodwill.

   

Nicodemus

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 completed the agency’s seventh commercial crew rotation mission to the International Space Station on Tuesday after splashing down safely in a Dragon spacecraft off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. The international crew of four spent 199 days in orbit.

The Crew-7 mission lifted off at 3:27 a.m. Aug. 26, 2023, on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. About 30 hours later, Dragon docked to the Harmony module’s space-facing port. Crew-7 undocked at 11:20 a.m. Monday, March 11, to begin the trip home.

***




Nicodemus

There has always been an interesting slant on Christ and Christianity, particularly in academic circles, that Christ was a profound thinker, a great humanist, not divine in any way but a great man. They probably haven't read as far as the recent gospel where Christ actually has a dialogue with Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin. This is the first of three times Nicodemus is mentioned in the Gospel of John. (The second time he appears is when he reminds the other members of the Sanhedrin that a man must be first heard before he is condemned. The third time was when Jesus was killed and Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes to prepare Jesus’ body for burial.)

Christ is direct. He is the Son of God and the Redeemer, "so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

Is there some context you can imagine where such a claim could fit comfortably in the thesis that Christ was only "a great man?" Either He was a lot more or a lot less.

Good News for the Dismemberment Community

There is an alarming article in The Hill. 

The DEI requirements built into The Chips Act have distorted the nation's supply lines. Intel has postponed its Columbus facility and started planning one in Ireland. Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was launching a CHIPS-funded training program for historically black colleges.

"The CHIPS Act’s current identity as a jobs program for favored minorities means companies are forced to recruit heavily from every population except white and Asian men already trained in the field. It’s like fishing in all the places you aren’t getting bites.

Instead of solving the problem, the people in charge are trying to cover the problem up just long enough to win reelection. Don’t be fooled by the Biden administration’s upcoming weekend-at-Bernie’s act — the CHIPS Act is dead."

***

Good News for the Dismemberment Community

On Tuesday, the dismembered remains of a man and woman from the Hudson Valley were found at three Long Island locations.

Last Thursday, the severed legs, an arm, and head of a woman, as well as the arms of a man were found in Southards Pond Park in Babylon. This week, more human remains were found at Bethpage State Park and in a wooded area in West Babylon. Authorities believe the remains belong to a man and woman from the Hudson Valley. Suffolk County Police report the remains to a 59-year-old woman and a 53-year-old man.

Video surveillance film led police to an Amityville home where officials say meat cleavers and butcher knives were confiscated. Two men and two women are now facing charges.

All four were released because charges related to the mutilation and disposal of murdered corpses are no longer bail-eligible.

No longer bail-eligible.

These people are out in the world, standing in line at the bakery, getting on buses.

Can you imagine any civilized society doing this? And how could such an outrage in a voting Republic--where the citizens are said to be sovereign--be explained?

 

Biopsy

 

Biopsy

Biden's SOTU harangue was a true snapshot of the condition of the nation: lies, manipulation, and ambition writ loud.

Mendacity may simply be the preferred default position for politicians, but it is ingrained in the Left's very nature. The Left cannot tell the truth because its ultimate goal, socialism, will not allow it. Socialism sells a benign fantasy that masks a malignant truth. The fantasy is that a nation’s production, distribution, and wealth can be entrusted to a benevolent state dedicated to the common good. The traditional counterargument is that central planning is always unsuccessful. But the greater malignant truth is, there is no such state. Socialism, which centralizes power, leads to oppression and human misery. Always. Always.

Because socialism opposes the rights of man and can’t be rightly argued for, the Left just lies about it and their shapers of culture peddle diversionary hatred and division instead.

All life is hierarchy. There are only people with more--or less-- power. Since the freedom revolution in the West, the power-seekers have learned to wear the clothes and speak the tongue of republicans. But the restraints always weaken, the habits fall away. Not sometimes—always.  Socialism, which centralizes power, leads to oppression and human misery. 

Like the t-shirt says, you can vote your way in, but you have to shoot your way out.

Sunday/Works

 

Sunday/Works

Today is the Fourth Sunday of Lent, hard to fathom in this Year of the Plague. The gospel is from part of Christ's conversation with Nicodemus. It is upbeat and hopeful with a dark assessment of man.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
And this is the verdict,
that the light came into the world,
but people preferred darkness to light,
because their works were evil.

"Works" here has caused a lot of trouble as in the history of Christianity; there have been groups who felt salvation could come from a good, if unbelieving, heart. Paul writes this:

For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not from you; it is the gift of God;
it is not from works, so no one may boast.

Wars--presumably with good hearts--have been fought over these lines. Christ is clearly stating that He is essential to salvation, that no atheistic good heart will suffice. This is black-and-white. A decision must be made.

Hopkins suffered with moments of imagining a life without God, with only 'works'. This is from one of his Poems of Desolation:

                           'I wake and feel'

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood grimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

Sticks and Stones

 

Sticks and Stones

Conflict arose following the SOTU last night. Was it over what Biden said about inflation? The tax rate on the wealthy? His failure to discuss the withdrawal from Afghanistan? The administration's shutting down LNG exports? His cutting the deficit? The peculiar prominence of IVF?

No. The Right has been furious Biden mispronounced the name of the student nurse in Georgia who was murdered by the illegal alien. The Left is furious because Biden called the murderer "illegal" rather than "undocumented" (soon to be "newcomer"), presumably because it was an assault on the murderer's dignity.

SOTU

 

SOTU

Good news from the SOTU.

Biden can speak for an hour; better than expected. This unbelievably low bar has been met and we now can return to politics as usual. That is exaggeration, distortion, and mendacity.

Biden's message in the State of the Union Address--also known as the Get Off my Lawn speech--loudly reestablished his norms. The speech was soaked in "exaggeration, distortion, and mendacity" but there are some interesting examples. The 8% taxation rate of the wealthy is a fascinating one. Tax rates in 2023 were the same as the last several years: 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37%. The richest pay 37%. Your filing status and taxable income, including wages, will determine the bracket you're in. So where did Biden get the 8% rate he said last night? He included in taxable income all of a person's unrealized capital gains, gains on property that has increased in value over time but not yet sold. Like your house. This is a notion held only by the most peripheral of "thinkers." But that was a centerpiece of the speech.

And IVF. There were "guests" in the building who were introduced who had IVF therapy. This was somehow connected to a case in Alabama regarding the management of stored embryos and, consequently, a vague and distant reflection of "a woman's right to choose." (This management of embryos is actually a reasonable concern, although hardly new. A number of years ago, two recently orphaned siblings--I think in Austrailia--sued to have their parents' embryos destroyed so they could not share in their inheritance.) But in the SOTU? In a speech about NATO, the economy, inflation, AI, China, North Korea, Afghanistan and government control over our shower heads?

The good news is that Biden can hold a thought when prompted. The bad news is that an entire political party thinks the substance and truth of those thoughts are unimportant.

BREAKING NEWS

 

                                  BREAKING NEWS

The White House has leaked the new Biden election campaign message that will be introduced in tonight's State of the Union Address. According to reliable sources, Biden's message for the new presidential campaign will be "A chicken in every campfire," a reference to the increasing restriction of energy in the United States. 

"The President sees American families coming together, perhaps in parks or their backyards, roasting chicken over an open fire, bonding, singing, sharing.

"We Americans might disagree sometimes," a White House spokesman said, "but we always pull together. The President has confidence in American adaptability and fortitude."

The President will also emphasize a continuation of older American values with the announcement that President Biden's now beloved tradition of giving interviews in front of jet airplane engines, will continue tonight in his State of the Union speech.

Two F-18 Super Hornets will be brought into the House Chambers to accompany the President's address.

"This further exemplifies the President's long-known commitment to American traditions and values," a White House spokesman said.

"We want to acknowledge the assistance of those Republicans who joined us in this bipartisanship effort," a White House spokesman said, referring to the House bipartisan vote that allowed the back of the rotunda in the House Chambers to be broken open and removed to accommodate the two F-18 Super Hornets that will be trucked in, placed in the new opening, and fired up for the speech.

The Joint Session of Congress meets at the United States Capitol on Thursday, March 7, 2024 at 9 PM ET.

The address fulfills the requirement in Article II, Section 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution for the president to periodically "give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

Colorado Dreamin'

EVs, due to their heavier weight, may release significantly more particulate matter from brakes and tires compared to modern gas-powered vehicles with efficient exhaust filters. The study suggests this could be 1,850 times greater.

***

Independents poll 60 to 70 percent opposed to Biden's foreign policy, economic policy, and border policy. Yet... yet...they refuse, by about the same percentage, to vote for Trump were he the Republican nominee. So there may be another side to Biden's unpopularity. Maybe Independents won't vote for any poor candidate. And maybe party guys will vote for anyone.

***



Colorado Dreamin'

So, the decision on the Colorado state law banning a national candidate from a state ballot is now complete. This inane notion was repeated by several other state camp followers and publicity seekers. While it was never taken very seriously by the embattled U.S. citizenry, it received great traction on liberal talk shows. Now those commentators are mournfully reconsidering.

The question here is how could anyone take this Colorado court seriously? How could any sensible person sit before a camera, stroke his chin, and consider this totally unhinged idea? Even the ideologically divided Supreme Court was quickly unanimous.

There is a fallout when a culture opens affirmative-action pilot schools and puts tampon dispensers in the men's rooms because, horrifyingly, reason does not have a firm purchase on the human heart.

Little Bullies

The FBI is searching for an Iranian spy it believes has been plotting to assassinate senior Trump Administration officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former special envoy to Iran, Brian Hook.

***

"Whites are psychopaths, and their behavior represents an underlying biologically transmitted proclivity with roots deep in their evolutionary history... I think whites are psychopathic. I think there are many lies, the level of lying that white people do that has started since colonialism, we're just used to it."--Dante King, a professor of medical education, following the science

***

Little Bullies

A lot on display for the next administration to manage. Probably the most important is the imbalance of power that no one but Putin and Israel seems to understand. A guerrilla group from Yemen is sinking British ships and disrupting commerce. Mexico ignores our requests on the border. Venezuela tears its infrastructure down, destroying its society and its people without a care. It is the age of the little bully, where a small state cloaks itself in vulnerability.

We haven't seen this since Cuba. Now Israel is the ultimate little bully. Hostile, tribal, and armed to the teeth, they are showing Biden what it means to be completely self-interested on an international scale. Like Russia, they will have what they want, and complaining will induce a solemn, thoughtful look disguising complete and total self-absorbed ambition. In Israel, the Biden pick-up squad is dealing with the Baltimore Ravens as they broadcast peace signals from the charnel house.

The world of the little bully is a world without consequence.

But I am not worried with the prospect of another Biden term or a new Trump one in the offing. That's a great advantage of democracy: choice.

Democracy and its Discontents

Suspected far-left terrorists are being hunted by heavily armed German police this morning plunging parts of the capital Berlin into lockdown after gunfire was heard during early morning raids.


***

The Democratic Socialists of America says it has more than 92,000 members and chapters in all 50 states. That is, the entire membership couldn't fill an SEC stadium


***




Democracy and its Discontents

The Press is all excited about Super Tuesday, as if it were a meaningful exercise of democracy. This election raises very serious questions as the result of the blessed Super Tuesday will be a confirmation of the election between a president who is so addled that his assistants do not bring questions to him and a man who, as the previous president, was not given crucial information because his assistants thought him an erratic, narcissistic, buffoon who, in another job, would be just silly.

The arc of this country has always been a fulfillment of the great human vision, ideals carved in the stone of the Constitution and brought to life by the efforts of its well-meaning citizens. 

The population of the entire U.S. during the Civil War was 26 million free, 4 million enslaved. Now there are over 300 million, most products of the American school system. 37% of these people, according to polls, think Biden has done a good job. 37%. Between the foreign and domestic disasters and his obvious infirmities, how could anyone say that? 43% of Americans have a 'favorable opinion' of Trump. (538) After the public statements of Trump's previous government associates, how could anyone say that?

And, on the flip side, what do either of these men bring to the office of President?

Biden and Trump are not the problem here. The problem is whether or not democracy is actually workable, whether or not these true, awful candidate choices are the actual reflection of a true, awful electorate. 

The world faces incredible risk and this seems to be the best the democracy can do.

Navalny

A former career US diplomat who had served as the US ambassador to Bolivia has pleaded guilty to working as an agent of Cuba for more than 40 years.
Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, was charged with secretly passing information to the communist-run Cuban government since 1981 while working for the US State Department.

***

This is a most interesting observation. German writer Josef Joffe has noted, “America is dotted with biblical place names like Jerusalem, Shiloh, Zion, Canaan, and Goshen,” but “there is no Shiloh anywhere in Europe.”

***


Navalny

Alexie Navalny was a lawyer and a man willing to stand up in opposition to the Putin government. He was buried several days ago.

In August 2020, Navalny was hospitalized in Russia in serious condition after being poisoned. (The source of the poison was revealed to be in the hotel water bottle.) He was medically evacuated to Berlin and discharged a month later. The doctors in Germany made an announcement, confirming that Navalny had been poisoned with a cholinesterase inhibitor. Navalny accused Putin of being responsible for his poisoning, and an investigation implicated agents from the Federal Security Service.(FSB)

In January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia and was immediately detained on accusations of violating parole conditions while he was hospitalized in Germany. Following his arrest, mass protests were held across Russia. In February 2021, his suspended sentence was replaced with a prison sentence of over 21⁄2 years' detention, and his organizations were later designated as extremist and liquidated.

In March 2022, Navalny was sentenced to an additional nine years in prison after being found guilty of embezzlement and contempt of court in a new trial described as a sham by Amnesty International, his appeal was rejected and in June, he was transferred to a high-security prison. In August 2023, Navalny was sentenced to an additional 19 years in prison on extremism charges.

In December 2023, Navalny went missing from prison for almost three weeks. He re-emerged in an Arctic Circle corrective colony in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. On 16 February 2024, the Russian prison service reported that Navalny had died at the age of 47.

Why would he go back to Russia after being poisoned there? Why would he stand trial? And who would be brave enough to go to his funeral?

And what does it say about a political system that would be indifferent to these investigations and demonstrations?

Illness is Entertaining

The nation’s debt permanently crossed over to $34 trillion on Jan. 4.
The U.S. debt load is increasing by about $1 trillion nearly every 100 days.

***

Pennsylvania progressive Rep. Summer Lee (Pittsburgh district) has bowed out of a speaking engagement with a Muslim group after intense backlash about other speakers’ antisemitic and homophobic comments.

Lee canceled her appearance at an event for the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim group. That's CAIR!

***

Illness is Entertaining

Leah McSweeney, a former star of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of New York City,” is suing Bravo, Andy Cohan, and anyone else within reach. The case centers on her alcoholism and her accusation that Bravo thought she was more interesting as a character drunk than sober. 

She joined the “Housewives of New York City” cast around the time she had relapsed after nine years of sobriety.

She became sober just before she started filming the show and has alleged that producers developed “artificially close relationships” with her through which they “cultivated a treasure trove of Ms. McSweeney’s dark secrets with intent to place her in situations known to exacerbate her alcohol use disorder and mental health disabilities because they thought that intentionally making these conditions worse would create good television.”

The complaint goes on to allege that producers frequently undermined Ms. McSweeney’s sobriety not only by encouraging her outright to drink but by “engaging in guerrilla-type psychological warfare intended to pressurize Ms. McSweeney into a psychological break and cause Ms. McSweeney to relapse.”

Forces of defense have arisen--there has been a lot of legal action around reality shows--but this story is particularly creepy. Maybe they think it's mainstreaming.

Courtesy

The 2SLGBTQI+ acronym stands for "two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and additional sexually and gender diverse people."

You are welcome

Now, what does the + stand for?

***

Twelve plant species and five animal species are responsible for 75% of the world’s food supply.

***

A massive storm will unload a general 6-10 feet of snow and bring high winds in the Sierra Nevada through this weekend. The storm will not only close the major roads in the passes but may bury and isolate communities for an extended period.The snow will fall at the rate of 4 inches per hour at times, while 60- to 75-mph winds will create a dangerous blizzard with mountainous snowdrifts.

***

Courtesy

Corruption starts small. It needs acceptance, a rationale before it gets a foothold and does its diffuse infective damage. Social media, a growing laxity, and significant moral confusion have created serious potential problems. Exhibit One: the prominence of public mendacity--look at the shameless behavior in the Atlanta courts after Trump--much under oath. Here's another.

“Courtesy cards,” (perfect, 'courtesy' is a virtue) are cards given out by the NYC police union (and presumably elsewhere) to friends and family who use them to get easy treatment if they are pulled over by a cop. One would think this common only in tinpot dictatorships and flailing states. The cards even come in levels, gold, silver and bronze!

A retired police officer on Quora explains how the privilege is enforced:

The officer who is presented with one of these cards will normally tell the violator to be more careful, give the card back, and send them on their way.

…The other option is potentially more perilous. The enforcement officer can issue the ticket or make the arrest in spite of the courtesy card. This is called “writing over the card.” There is a chance that the officer who issued the card will understand why the enforcement officer did what he did, and nothing will come of it. However, it is equally possible that the enforcement officer’s zeal will not be appreciated, and the enforcement officer will come to work one day to find his locker has been moved to the parking lot and filled with dog excrement.

A NYTimes article discusses the case of Mathew Bianchi, a traffic cop who got sick of letting dangerous speeders go when they presented their cards.

By the time he pulled over the Mazda in November 2018, drivers were handing Bianchi these cards six or seven times a day.  

…[He gives the ticket]…The month after he stopped the Mazda, a high-ranking police union official, Albert Acierno, got in touch. He told Bianchi that the cards were inviolable. He then delivered what Bianchi came to think of as the “brother speech,” saying that cops are brothers and must help each other out. That the cards were symbols of the bonds between the police and their extended family and friends.

Bianchi was starting to view the cards as a different kind of symbol: of the impunity that came with knowing someone on the force, as if New York’s rules didn’t apply to those with connections. Over the next four years, he learned about the unwritten rules that have come to hold sway in the Police Department.

Bianchi is reassigned, given shit jobs, isn’t promoted etc. Mayor Adams and police chief Chief Maddrey protect this utterly corrupt system.

Rust never sleeps.

--From Alex Tabarrok