WHEN LIES IS ALL YOU HAVE: Leftists Still Regurgitating Lies About Kyle Rittenhouse.
Archive for 2021
November 21, 2021
THEY DON’T BELIEVE IN FACTS; ONLY FEELINGS: Democrat Donkeys Don’t Care About Facts.
THE REAL MEANING OF AMA IS “AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE”: AMA Wants Doctors To Be Woke, Not Useful.
And just about anything coming out of the organization gets more so every year. Heck, all professional organizations and even things like AARP are now fully brain-dead woke zombies.
THEY THINK YOU HAVE A MORAL OBLIGATION TO SURRENDER TO THEIR VIOLENCE.
Or, at least, they want you to think you have such an obligation. Spoiler: You don’t.
November 20, 2021
HMM: Vaccinated English adults under 60 are dying at twice the rate of unvaccinated people the same age. And have been for six months. This chart may seem unbelievable or impossible, but it’s correct, based on weekly data from the British government. “I have checked the underlying dataset myself and this graph is correct. Vaccinated people under 60 are twice as likely to die as unvaccinated people. And overall deaths in Britain are running well above normal.”
So my first thought was that people with health problems might be more likely to get vaccinated. But the overall death rate for that age group is up too.
UPDATE: Jim Bennett writes: “I wonder if the unvaccinated population has been checked for prior COVID exposure. It may be that most surviving over-60s in England have been infected with COVID and many had mild or no symptoms, and had acquired immunity without knowing it.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Eugene Volokh writes:
Glenn: I looked at the dataset mentioned in the post below, and I saw that they just have one band for everyone 10-59. But both death rates and vaccination rates for various parts of that band are very different, and I’m nearly certain that both go up with age – older people are more likely to be vaccinated, and also more likely to die from COVID. Wouldn’t that adequately explain the twice-as-likely data point? (It’s a version of your “people with health problems might be more likely to get vaccinated,” but the “health problem” is simply being older.) And that’s consistent with the death rates being sharply lower among vaccinated people in each of the higher bands. Am I missing something here?
That could be. There are any number of potential confounding variables here, but that said the difference in groups is pretty striking. I certainly hope someone is looking into this more closely.
MORE: Long-time reader Daniel Aronstein writes:
I saw the Volokh critique you added.
The numbers simply do not support Berenson’s claim that the vaccinated are dying at a higher rate than the unvaccinated.
This Reuters analysis completely debunks Berenson. (Please review it.)
He, and other antivaxxers, made similar errors analyzing data from Israel, where – like Britain – about 80% are vaccinated. (At the time about 700 Israelis were hospitalized with covid, and of these 500 were vaccinated. Berenson and others claimed this meant one was more than twice as likely to be in hospital with covid if you were vaccinated. Wrong: 8 million Israelis were vaccinated and 1 million were not; therefore, 500/8,000,000 is a much lower hospitalization rate than 200/1,000,000.
(Neither rate is an existential threat, and the government overreaction and power grabs are hurting humanity more than the virus!)
The development of the vaccines were one of Trump’s greatest accomplishments. They have saved lives. They shouldn’t have ever been solely distributed by the government or ever mandated. This added to the paranoia surrounding them. (The handling requirements of the mRNA vaccines made government distribution necessary.)
Publishing bad analysis, like that from Berenson, only makes the irrational paranoia surrounding these “Trump/Operation Warp Speed” vaccines worse.
Other than that: you are still the greatest.
He adds:
From the same source Berenson used; (though from a different page):
“Between 2 January and 24 September 2021, the age-adjusted risk of deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19) was 32 times greater in unvaccinated people than in fully vaccinated individuals.”
Stay tuned.
OPEN THREAD: Come on baby, roll with me.
OH, I DISAGREE: Biden Administration Urges Court Not to Appoint Special Master in Project Veritas Case.
A federal judge should not accept a proposal by Project Veritas to appoint a special master after FBI agents raided homes linked to the journalism group, U.S. government lawyers argued in a court filing on Friday.
After agents executed search warrants on several homes linked to Project Veritas, including a residence of founder James O’Keefe, the group’s lawyers asked a judge to appoint a special master, or a retired judge, to sift through material seized by federal agents and separate out certain files.
Agents seized cell phones and other electronic devices from O’Keefe and two former Project Veritas journalists earlier this month, according to court documents.
The raids were motivated by the apparent belief that the group committed crimes in its handling of a diary said to be penned by Ashley Biden, daughter of President Joe Biden. Project Veritas says it was given the diary last year, but passed it onto law enforcement when it could not verify its authenticity.
“The extraordinary actions taken by the government, most significantly the use of search warrants to seize news gathering materials from journalists, appear to be founded on the premise that the diary does belong to Ashley Biden. That fact, however, does not warrant the exercise of federal criminal authority to investigate and punish journalists who merely obtained the diary and possessed it temporarily,” lawyers for the group wrote in a motion to the court.
Even more troublesome, there were no limits imposed in the search warrants on the government’s access to material it seized, lawyers said, which enables it to access privileged material, whistleblower material, and material about news investigations.
“The appointment of a special master to review the seized materials is necessary to protect core First Amendment interests and attorney-client privileged information,” they added.
Forget a special master. We need a special prosecutor to investigate the FBI’s behavior in this case.
KEEP PUSHING: Concern grows for tennis player who accused Chinese official of sexual assault.
That’s okay, LeBron is still willing to shill for the Chinese: LeBron James blasts Enes Kanter’s criticism of his ‘sad & disgusting’ China ties.
You’re a sad and disgusting person, LeBron.
PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Joe Biden is the first president to turn 79 while in office.
NO MENTION OF WINDMILLS IN THIS STORY: Hundreds of Millions of Birds Have Vanished Across Europe in The Last 40 Years.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Coffee, tea may lower stroke, dementia risk, study finds.
ANOTHER DEM RETIREMENT: Texas Democrat Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson will retire ahead of 2022 midterms. “The 85-year-old Texas Democrat did not endorse a replacement but said she hopes that she will be replaced by a woman.”
Party of youth!
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Antifa Forced To Postpone Riot As Brick Supply Still Stuck On Cargo Ship.
SOMETHING EVERYONE SHOULD BE ABLE TO AGREE ON: I Trust Kyle Rittenhouse With A Gun More Than I Trust Alec Baldwin.
THE LACK OF ANY DETAIL PROBABLY MEANS THE GUN BELONGED TO A POLICE OR SECURITY OFFICER: Accidental gun discharge causes panic at Atlanta airport. “A gun that fired accidentally caused panic at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, but authorities assure that there is no active shooter. A gun was unintentionally discharged at approximately 1:30 p.m. local time Saturday near the security screening area, the airport said on social media. The accidental firing caused mass panic, with travelers dropping to the floor.”
UPDATE: This report says it was a passenger’s gun, accidentally discharged while going through security. So I read the tea leaves wrong!
ANOTHER UPDATE: A lot of people in the comments questioning the official story here.
THIS IS THE KIND OF LEGAL REASONING THAT DESTROYS NATIONS: Can a Vice-President Be Confirmed by a Majority Vote of Both Houses Put Together? “Steve Lubet (Faculty Lounge) suggests the answer may be yes, so that (say) an unbroken 50-50 tie in the Senate might be combined with a 221-213 vote in the House might yield a confirmation, since the result will be a 271-263 total. Indeed, under this approach a 40-60 defeat in the Senate combined with a 230-205 win in the House would yield a confirmation as well.”
Nothing illustrates the out-of-touch partisan alignment of academia like this sort of thing. And as Eugene Volokh notes, Dems might not like the other implications of this approach, but they seldom think too far ahead for this stuff.
To be fair, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with talking about this stuff. But actually trying to proceed along these lines would be explosive and irresponsible. Any trial balloons need to be shot down.
JUST ANOTHER FRIDAY NIGHT IN SAN FRANCISCO: Looters and vandals strike San Francisco’s Union Square.
San Francisco’s Louis Vuitton store in Union Square was “emptied out” by thieves Friday night, witnesses posted to social media.
* * * * * * * *
San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management sent out an alert shortly after 9 p.m. to avoid the area and to expect traffic delays because of the police activity.
It is unclear if this incident was connected to protest movements in light of the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, which was announced hours earlier. When the police officer killing of George Floyd happened in 2020, Union Square was heavily looted.
Related: The ORC Invasion.
ROGER SIMON: Rittenhouse Free, but Where Can the ‘White Supremacist’ Go in Race-Obsessed America?
Normally, the case wouldn’t have been tried at all. It was obvious self-defense. We do, last I heard, have the right of self-defense and the right to bear arms, though much of the craziness around this trial seems aimed at taking those rights away.
But the biggest lie of all was and is about race. Rittenhouse has been called a “white supremacist” more times than Joe Biden has said “C’mon, man.” This even though all combatants in the trial incident were white. As clearly shown on videotape, a young white man was defending himself against extremely violent white attackers.
Yet it’s become another version of the old story—who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? Or, more ominously and, alas, more accurately, as Joseph Goebbels once put it, “A lie told once is just a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”
Unfortunately, we are well past a thousand when it comes to false accusations of racism in our country, maybe closer to a million.
If racism were a God, the Democrats would pray to it and the media would write its Bible.
Andrew Cuomo’s young “supremacist vigilante” might be well-advised to move to Europe. As COVID surges, everyone is about to be locked down in Austria. No one would know he is there.
Just kidding, of course. Many of us, myself included, wish Rittenhouse the best.
Good luck, Kyle and godspeed. We’re pulling for you. Some of us are even crying from happiness that you got cleared. But don’t tell Joy Reid.
Earlier: Once more with feeling! Media coverage of the Rittenhouse case was hot garbage.
It’s all about the (race-driven) narrative — and in CNN and MSNBC’s case, the ratings. As Glenn wrote in April, and re-posted today, “The thing is, it’s a lot easier to encourage violence when the consequences happen to someone else. Too much of upper-class America is cocooned from real risk. For the people in poor and working-class neighborhoods where riots and looting tend to happen, the consequences are much more apparent. That’s why the cavalier attitude of so many Democrats toward riots makes sense. Democrats are now the party of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and upscale suburbs. The people who have to deal with consequences will have to go somewhere else politically. And they will.”
THERE IS UNREST IN THE FOREST, TROUBLE WITH THE TREES. FOR THE MAPLES WANT MORE SUNLIGHT, AND THE OAKS IGNORE THEIR PLEAS: Tree Planting So White? Bizarre Racism at Vice.
Hey, Whitey! Yeah, you, the one about to send cash to your favorite environmental grift! Cease and desist. White people should not try to combat climate change. Only black, brown and various “indigenous” people can do it right.
I know this because I read it on Vice. A delightful young person named Anya Zoledziowski has penned an article asserting that “Tree Planting Is a White Person’s Solution to Climate Change.”
What’s white about it? I’m still not sure, but Zoledziowski is an “award-winning staff reporter at VICE World News,” whose “reporting focuses on a wide-range of social justice issues, including Indigenous affairs, race, politics, sex worker rights, and the disproportionate harm experienced by racialized communities as the climate crisis worsens.” So I have to trust her.
Her article comes on the heels of a dopy social media episode where somebody claimed they’d plant a tree for every picture of a pet people responded with. Shockingly, they didn’t have enough trees. Dumb situation, but Zoledziowski is here to make you think deeper about it.
“The reality,” she says, is that tree-planting initiatives are not always done right, and are rarely subjected to meaningful oversight—have you ever checked if that trendy brand planted a seedling after you bought your plaid?”
What is it with the left and racist — checking notes — trees this year? Earlier: $3.5T spending package includes big money for ‘tree equity,’ bias training and more.
Among the most contentious provisions, the bill gives a substantial funding boost to the Internal Revenue Service, which stands to gain an additional $78.94 billion over the next 10 years. The money would help the IRS strengthen tax enforcement activities, expand audits and modernize its technology. An additional $410 million would go to IRS oversight.
Democrats also are putting equity at the center of the bill. The Agriculture Committee has earmarked $3 billion for a tree-planting program “with a priority for projects that increase tree equity.” The legislation dishes out another $4 billion for “neighborhood access and equity grants.” Meanwhile, its “electric vehicle charging equity program” comes with a $1 billion price tag.
The bill generally doesn’t elaborate on the meaning of equity in this context, though American Forests defines “tree equity,” for example, as a tree-planting program that “identifies the cities that can gain the most significant health, economic and climate benefits by increasing tree canopy in places of high need.”
The legislation would add billions of dollars in climate change funding, starting with the “Civilian Climate Corps,” which would get at least $7.5 billion across multiple committee budgets. The organization, which President Biden has placed at the top of his climate wishlist, would employ thousands of young people to carry out conservation and climate change-related projects on public lands.
But what on earth is “tree equity?” Here’s a word salad of an article from June that tries to explain it: Finally Quantified: Tree Equity Has an Impact on Poorer Neighborhoods.
The effects of the decades-long systematic denial of mortgages to people of color, called redlining, are undeniably visible across the country. One effect has been the persistence of poverty in predominantly Black communities across the United States. Another is a distinct lack of tree cover in these communities. For the first time, the inequality in neighborhood vegetation has been quantified through the Tree Equity Score, developed by the nonprofit conservation organization American Forests.
Assessing nearly 500 municipalities representing more than 70 percent of the U.S. population, staff at American Forests found that neighborhoods consisting mostly of people of color have an average of one-third less tree canopy than majority white communities.
What’s the issue with tree equity, or lack thereof?
The prevailing problem with having too few trees in an urban area is the heat. Some neighborhoods have so much exposed concrete absorbing sunshine that they become heat islands, which can be up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than nearby areas with natural cover. One study found that urban heat islands can experience warming up to twice as strong as that caused by global warming.
In the face of elevating heat, the Tree Equity Score opens new opportunities for effective planting. Its tally puts an exact number on the trees needed to achieve equity amongst neighborhoods, leading to better health and livability. American Forests has calculated a total of 522 million trees needed nationwide, but not planted just anywhere. The online, publicly-accessible map shows exactly where cities need to plant trees — the goal, after all, is community uplift through equity.
“We don’t just need more trees in America’s cities. We need tree equity,” Jad Daley, president and CEO of American Forests, told Fast Company.
Not surprisingly, Twitter users had loads of fun dunking on the phrase “tree equity” in late September: “Spending $3B on ‘tree equity’ is really the perfect encapsulation of Democrats in 2021.”
Question: Are trees more or less racist than roads and bridges in 2021’s intersectional bingo?
BAD NEWS FOR THE OTHER 56 SEXES: Why a drug used to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients may only benefit males.