VITAMIN D UPDATE: More evidence that lack of vitamin D is linked to COVID-19 severity.
Archive for 2020
June 22, 2020
THE ESSENCE OF ENVIRONMENTALISM: False Gods for Lost Souls. In the Wall Street Journal, I review Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, a new book from a refreshingly sane environmentalist, Michael Shellenberger. He sees nuclear power as the cleanest and safest source of energy — and the only practical way to drastically curtail carbon emissions. So why do greens oppose it? He details the financial benefits that Jerry Brown’s family and green groups have reaped by opposing nuclear power.
“Every major climate activist group in America,” he writes, including the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club, “has been seeking to close nuclear plants around the United States while taking money from or investing in natural gas companies, renewable energy companies, and their investors who stand to make billions if nuclear plants are closed and replaced by natural gas.”
Shellenberger’s debunking of green myths will be familiar to readers of Ronald Bailey’s The End of Doom and Gregg Easterbrook’s It’s Better Than It Looks, but maybe it will be more convincing to devout greens because of his own record as an activist. He understands the irrational appeal of the movement.
“I was drawn toward the apocalyptic view of climate change twenty years ago,” he writes. “I can see now that my heightened anxiety about climate reflected underlying anxiety and unhappiness in my own life that had little to do with climate change or the state of the natural environment.”
For him and so many others, environmentalism offered emotional relief and spiritual satisfaction, giving them a sense of purpose and transcendence. It has become a substitute religion for those who have abandoned traditional faiths, as he explains in his concluding chapter, “False Gods for Lost Souls.” Its priests have been warning for half a century that humanity is about to be punished for its sins against nature, and no matter how often the doomsday forecasts fail, the faithful still thrill to each new one.
“The trouble with the new environmental religion is that it has become increasingly apocalyptic, destructive, and self-defeating,” he writes. “It leads its adherents to demonize their opponents, often hypocritically. It drives them to seek to restrict power and prosperity at home and abroad. And it spreads anxiety and depression without meeting the deeper psychological, existential, and spiritual needs its ostensibly secular devotees seek.”
Someone should give the book to Greta Thunberg and the journalists working so hard to publicize her inanities. It might even cheer them up.
THIN BLUE LINE: The side of policing you don’t see in the news.
We get to work with some amazing local service organizations, who help those in greatest need, to feel valued, as members of our community. We mentor young people who sometimes just want an adult to chat with. We share a cup of coffee with neighborhood families and talk about their hopes and dreams and introduce them to others they may not yet know. We joke with kids in school hallways so that if they ever feel endangered, they have somewhere to turn. These are the things that warm our hearts and feed our souls.
There are, naturally, challenging aspects to our job, as well. A few of those scenarios are detailed below and will give you a view through the lens of law enforcement.
We often encounter people at their lowest points; they are scared, depressed, injured, or simply feeling powerless over something that has occurred. Emotions are often heightened, which can easily cause people to behave out of character. Good people can have bad days.
A call comes in. There is a scream on the other end: “Help, hurry!” The phone drops, shouting and crying can be heard on the other end. The phone is grabbed, and an address is given, followed by a simple desperate, “please” and the call ends.
We don’t know what’s happening, but it is clear that every second counts.
Every second counts inside CHOP, too, but they’ve decided they neither want nor need police there.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Health history might predict life expectancy in seniors with diabetes.
ASKING (AND ANSWERING) THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Are we doomed? Not with good people, good dogs & good bourbon.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE: Will the Real Justice Gorsuch Please Stand Up? “Gorsuch’s contorted analysis of the act’s text is sophistry that any freshman English teacher would flunk—and that Jefferson would contemptuously dismiss as squeezing out a meaning against the text, with a whiff of bad faith.”
20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Non-Government 2021-2024.
In the end, either President Trump will be re-elected or the Left will be in charge of the Executive. The Senate will likely be retained by a thin majority of Republicans. The House might come back into Republicans’ hands, but the media will still be controlled by the anti-Trump forces. Academia and popular culture will remain under Leftist control. As such, there will be no peace in a second term for President Trump.
If the Left is victorious in November and if Nancy Pelosi still controls the House, we will see the mirror image of #Resistance. But the question is how vocal and how strong? If it wasn’t enough to carry Trump to victory how effective can it be as an out and out movement? Given the violent tactics of the Left, it is more likely to be a guerrilla movement. The focus will be on how to undermine the rule of the Left. I am pretty confident that the Red States are not going to turn purple under a President Biden or whoever controls/replaces him. The “flyover states” who will basically be unrepresented in the power centers of America after a Leftist takeover are not going to go along easily. A Leftist prohibition of liberty will be resisted.
I pray we do not learn how, even as I pray that it happens if the Left takes control.
Related: Ancien Regime Change:
Here is what’s going to happen. The Democrats are going to take power, in part because of Trump Republican incompetence and weakness. They are going to move to build a Social Credit System to fight “white supremacy,” which will be anything they don’t like. Censorship by Twitter, YouTube and others (you saw YouTube has banned as “hate speech” the video of the detransitioned man expressing regrets about his trans experience?), including demonetizing any independent dissenting media, is going to be part of this. The US will follow China in going cashless. This will mean that under the Social Credit System, it will be next to impossible to buy or sell or work if the state lists you as anti-social. It’s a lot harder to do this if we keep using cash, so watch the US government, under Democratic rule, push harder to make us cashless.
Silicon Valley’s role in creating that “Social Credit System” can be implemented no matter which party is in power. Abandoning the decentralized Blogosphere for the walled gardens of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube was a huge mistake, particularly for conservatives.
A SUPPORTER WRITES PROF. JACOBSON: “The spines of thousands are being strengthened by hearing of your fight.” Never give up, never surrender!
WHO? BidenWatch for June 22, 2020. “Exploring the enthusiasm gap between Trump and Biden (plus the equally huge campaign technology gap), some fundraising analysis, more Veepstakes, and a majority of Americans think Biden is a few tacos shy of a combo plate.”
THEY’D NEVER DO THIS TO BLACK LIVES MATTER, but with the incubation period not even passed they’re already running headlines about Trump’s rally: Oklahoma Reports Highest Ever Daily COVID-19 Cases After Trump Tulsa Rally.
Related: Economists declare riots slow the spread of covid-19.
A RARE MOMENT OF SANITY IN CALIFORNIA: Ninth Circuit Strikes Down Statute Limiting IMDb’s Display of Actor Ages.
NYC GETS IT GOOD AND HARD: Weekly NYC Shootings Soar 358% Over Last Year, Data Shows.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: China, Seattle and the Frankensteins of History. “It follows that the only way an elite can regain a semblance of control is to rebuild the devastated political consensus. But that is impossible while America’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is underway. If Washington’s elites envy China they would do well to note that the foundational moment for the current regime in Beijing was when they crushed their own Woke movement in a last ditch effort to save China.”
Needless to say, read the whole thing.
IF YOU THOUGHT THE FED IS INDEPENDENT, THINK AGAIN: That’s the view, at least, of Thomas L. Hogan, writing for the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). He is particularly concerned that having the Fed provide municipal and state government loans is a bad idea.
He notes, among much else, that the $3 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Assistance Act (CARES) “gives the Fed permission to pursue these facilities, but it does not require the Fed do so. In contrast to previous Chairs [Ben] Bernanke and [Janet] Yellen, who publicly opposed the Fed funding municipal governments and other fiscal policy actions, presiding Chair [Jerome] Powell seems to be an enthusiastic supporter of such programs. However, it is not too late to close these fiscal-policy facilities before causing further harm to the Fed’s reputed independence.”
SO UNIVERSITIES ARE NOT ONLY CESSPITS OF RAPE, BUT ALSO OF SYSTEMIC RACISM? MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST SHUT THEM DOWN. Syracuse U. drama students allege ‘pervasive institutional racism,’ make demands.
BUT IT’S OKAY BECAUSE APPARENTLY NONE WERE SHOT BY “RACIST COPS.” Chicago: 12 minors among 102 shot, 14 fatally, as citywide gun violence spikes over Father’s Day weekend.
Flashback: Chicago Tribune: Why is there so much shooting and killing in Chicago?
WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? NYC shootings skyrocket as court closures let pistol perps walk free.
DAVID MARCUS: Americans Disagree About What Racism Is, And It’s A Big Problem.
There are two basic definitions of racism in the United States, one roughly associated with progressives and one roughly associated with conservatives. The former describes racism as the failure to acknowledge and seek to redress systemic discrimination against select disadvantaged minority groups. It is very broad and captures everything from unconscious bias to white supremacy. The latter views racism as making assumptions about, or taking action towards, an individual or group on the sole basis of their race. It is narrow and generally requires belief, intent, and animosity.
These definitions don’t simply differ; to a great extent they actually contradict each other. Much of the contradiction stems from the fact that the progressive definition of racism requires that an advantaged individual or group must be attacking the less privileged. The more conservative and narrow definition of racism requires no appeal to power structures, only to bias, and can be committed by anyone towards anyone.
Read the whole thing.
HIGHER EDUCATION HAS CHOSEN ITS SIDE: Ideological imbalance among commencement speakers alive and well, even amid pandemic.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Sorry, Brett Favre—Colin Kaepernick Is a Failed Quarterback, Not an Activist Hero. “He’s a good running quarterback, but not a great passer. He’s out of the NFL because he sucked at it. That’s what people need to bring up every time this ‘Hero of the People’ nonsense narrative starts up.”
THIS IS GOOD, BUT QUALIFIED IMMUNITY SHOULD NOT EXIST FOR ANY GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS, NOT JUST LAW ENFORCEMENT: Colorado Passes Landmark Law Against Qualified Immunity, Creates New Way To Protect Civil Rights.