I STILL THINK FOR JUSTICE TO BE SERVED THERE SHOULD BE A PISSOIR OVER HIS GRAVE: Marx’s Name Being Yanked The Least Of What Should Happen.
Archive for 2022
March 30, 2022
THERE ARE REAL PEOPLE CAUGHT UP IN THIS: KS native Gwen Baumgardner reports on refugee crisis from Ukraine.
March 29, 2022
AH, CRAP, I somehow scheduled two open threads for tonight. I’ll just leave ’em both up. Like with Ginger or Mary Ann, the real answer is “both.”
OPEN THREAD: Ginger, or Mary Ann?
OPEN THREAD: If only for today, I am unafraid.
JEREMY CLARKSON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: “Petromasculinity” Is Becoming Toxic, Too—at Least to Online Daters. OkCupid users say climate denial is now their top deal-breaker.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China launches first Long March rocket with solid boosters.
I MENTIONED THE NUKALERT THE OTHER DAY, and reader Bill Rudersdorf, who recommended it, followed up with this email:
From recent correspondence with George Atkinson of NukAlert / KI4U:
“The battery is rated for about 16 yrs. at normal ‘ticking’ mode.”
Which is probably far longer than we will have to worry about Putin, but there’ll probably be someone else to bother with. I’m glad you got one, it provides very valuable knowledge. I got my first Geiger Counter when I was nine. We Empiricists like data.
I got one when I was 12, surplused out from Oak Ridge National Lab, for a science fair project. The NukAlert is less fun to play with, but quite useful. And in 16 years I’ll probably be retired and sailing around the Caribbean or something. I guess I could always equip my used Hallberg-Rassy with a fresh one then.
JOHN HINDERAKER: How to Respond if You are Libeled.
Jeff Van Nest, who has a spotless reputation, was unused to being libeled in the press. So he retained the Upper Midwest Law Center to represent him. His lawyer demanded that the Post Bulletin immediately retract their defamatory articles, on the front page of the paper where the first article appeared.
I think the newspaper’s editor realized that his company had no defense, that there was ample evidence of actual malice, and that a jury verdict for punitive damages could put the paper out of business. (Newspapers often carry insurance coverage against defamation claims, but such insurance does not cover punitive damages, which are recoverable on a showing of actual malice, i.e. reckless disregard of the truth.) In any event, he did the right thing: the paper published a full and unequivocal retraction of the defamatory articles on its front page. This is an image of the page containing the retraction.
Punch back twice as hard.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Study Shows Very Masculine Men Are More Likely To Be Happy And Married.
OKAY, GROOMERS: Biden and top Democrats slam DeSantis for controversial parental rights law.
In a tweet, Biden declared that “every student deserves to feel safe and welcome in the classroom” and “our LGBTQI+ youth deserve to be affirmed and accepted just as they are.”
“My Administration will continue to fight for dignity and opportunity for every student and family — in Florida and around the country,” the president said in the tweet.
[Education Secretary Miguel Cardona] was far more forceful, calling out DeSantis by name, and accused the governor of hiding behind parental rights.
“By signing this bill, Gov. DeSantis has chosen to target some of Florida’s most vulnerable students and families, all while under the guise of ‘parents’ rights.’” Cardona said in a statement. “Make no mistake: this is a part of a disturbing and dangerous trend across the country of legislation targeting LGBTQI+ students, educators, and individuals.”
Cardona said that the Department of Education would be monitoring the implementation of the law “to evaluate whether it violates federal civil rights law,” while encouraging students who believe they are being discriminated against to file a complaint with the department’s Office for Civil Rights.
“Instead of telling some students or families it’s not okay to be who they are, our Department is fighting for dignity and opportunity for every student and family,” Cardona said.
Pelosi likewise condemned the new law as “cruel legislation” that was “an affront to our Nation’s cherished values.”
“[DeSantis] and Florida Republicans have chosen to needlessly bully, isolate and demean LGBTQ students,” Pelosi said in a tweet.
Meanwhile, at America’s Newspaper of Record: Teachers Who Insist They’re Not Teaching Your Kid About Sex Also Weirdly Outraged By Ban On Teaching Your Kid About Sex.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Chris Rock Smooths Things Over With Will Smith By Sleeping With His Wife.
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: The tragic folly of lockdown. Data on excess deaths show that countries that locked down hard fared no better than those that didn’t:
What can we learn from these data? How did three main pandemic strategies compare: (a) a do-nothing, let-it-rip approach; (b) focused protection of high-risk older people with only limited restrictions on others, and (c) general lockdowns and restrictions on all age groups?
Belarus and Nicaragua did little to protect older people and they imposed very few Covid restrictions. They also report among the lowest Covid mortality numbers. From the excess-mortality data, it is clear that they did not escape the pandemic. Nicaragua had 274 excess deaths per 100,000 population, which is precisely the same as the regional average. Belarus had 483 excess deaths per 100,000, higher than the average for either Eastern Europe (345) or Central Europe (316).
In Western Europe, the Scandinavian countries had the lightest Covid restrictions while they tried to protect their older high-risk population. Sweden was heavily criticised for this by the international media. The Guardian, for instance, reported in 2020 that life in Sweden felt ‘surreal’, with ‘couples stroll[ing] arm in arm in the spring sunshine’. Many journalists, politicians and scientists expected that the lighter Scandinavian touch would lead to disaster. That did not happen. Sweden has among the lowest reported Covid mortality numbers in Europe. Of the European countries with more than one million people, Denmark (94), Finland (81), Norway (7), and Sweden (91) are four of only six countries with excess mortality less than 100 per 100,000 inhabitants, the other two being Ireland (12) and Switzerland (93).
What about the UK, with its more heavy-handed Covid restrictions*? Compared to the Western European average of 140 excess deaths per 100,000, England had 126, Scotland 131, Wales 135, and Northern Ireland 132.
In the US, South Dakota imposed few Covid restrictions, while Florida tried to protect older people without too many restrictions on the general population. Did that result in the predicted disaster? No. Compared to the national average of 179 excess deaths per 100,000, Florida had 212 while South Dakota had 156.
Read the whole thing.
Flashbacks:
● Johns Hopkins Analysis: ‘Lockdowns Should be Rejected Out of Hand.’
● Two Years After Lockdowns, The West’s Troubles Aren’t Ending — They’re Just Beginning.
* Since the article mentions the UK, it’s worth highlighting this classic moment in lockdown hypocrisy: What Neil Ferguson’s booty call tells us about modern politics. “It is actually incredibly important news that Ferguson, the Imperial College modeller who said it was possible 500,000 Brits would die if we didn’t lock down, defied the lockdown. It deserves the frontpage treatment it is getting today. For Ferguson’s booty call with his married lover actually reveals a great deal about the 21st-century elites and how they view their relationship with the masses. It’s one rule for them and another for us.”
THAT SEEMS RIGHT: Does Ban on Carrying Weapons “Inside Any Building in Which Judicial Proceedings Are in Progress” apply to a judge’s home when the judge is participating in judicial proceedings remotely? “Nope, says the Tennessee Attorney General in a Mar. 14 opinion (No. 22-04) that was just posted on Westlaw.”
AND THE ANSWER IS NONE. NONE MORE GRAUNIAD: Guardian columnist writes that ‘white outrage’ over Will Smith’s Oscar slap ‘is rooted in anti-Blackness.’
Before we get into The Guardian’s take on Will Smith slapping comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars Sunday night, we have to once again marvel at satirist Titania McGrath, whose tweets so very often turn out to come true. Check out her take:
And here’s the Grauniad’s headline: White outrage about Will Smith’s slap is rooted in anti-Blackness. It’s inequality in plain sight.
If that’s the case, doctrinaire lefty Jim Carrey’s going to have to audit a lot of White Fragility courses if he wants to keep working in Tinseltown: Jim Carrey ‘sickened’ by Oscars’ standing ovation for Will Smith: ‘Hollywood is spineless.’
“I was sickened. I was sickened by the standing ovation,” Carrey told Gayle King in a “CBS Mornings” interview that aired Tuesday.
Smith scooped the Best Actor Oscar for his role in “King Richard” just minutes after assaulting Rock, with the crowd getting out of their seats to cheer for the star.
“Hollywood is just spineless en masse and it really felt like this is a really clear indication that we aren’t the cool club anymore,” Carrey, 60, told King of the audience’s warm reception for Smith.
Somebody should write a book on that recently developing topic!
WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT? Senators Release Receipts Showing Direct Payments From Foreign Oligarchs To Hunter Biden.
Shortly after The New York Times quietly admitted that Hunter Biden’s laptop is legitimate even though it was smeared as “disinformation” to protect then-candidate Joe Biden during the 2020 election, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin released bombshell receipts showing Hunter received payments from foreign oligarchs that further reveal “the extent to which President Biden might be — and almost certainly is — compromised.”
According to the documents obtained by the senators, energy company CEFC, “an arm of the Chinese Government,” paid Wells Fargo Clearing Services $100,000 and designated “further credit to Owasco,” Hunter’s firm.
More: Eight Joe Biden Scandals Inside Hunter Biden’s MacBook That Corporate Media Just Admitted Is Legit.
UPDATE: Joe Scarborough’s 2020 Hunter Biden Rant Aged Like a Carton of Milk.
WHY DID NIH DELETE COVID GENETIC SEQUENCING INFO? It might have helped determine the origin of the Pandemic that has killed 6 million people around the world, but when the Wuhan lab in China asked NIH to delete the info from its database, it was gone, according to documents Empower Oversight obtained via a FOIA suit.
OH, THAT’S JUST THE BEGINNING: Dealers Annoyed With Price of EV Charger Installs.
STILL POPULAR: Garage Light – LED Garage Light 2 Pack – 8000LM Glare-Free 360° Illuminator Garage Light. #CommissionEarned
HE ISN’T ALL THERE: Photo shows Biden’s ‘Tough Putin Q&A’ cheat sheet.
GLOBAL WARMING: IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Too Much Lake Water is Climate Change, Not Enough Lake Water is Climate Change.
WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Larry Summers: ‘The situation continues to resemble the 1970s.’
I’m probably as apprehensive about the prospects for a soft landing of the U.S. economy as I have been any time in the last year. Probably actually a bit more apprehensive. In a way, the situation continues to resemble the 1970s, Ezra. In the late ‘60s and in the early ‘70s, we made mistakes of excessive demand expansion that created an inflationary environment…
And so now I think we’ve got a real problem of high underlying inflation that I don’t think will come down to anything like acceptable levels of its own accord. And so very difficult dilemmas as to whether to accept economic restraint or to live with high and quite possibly accelerating inflation. So I don’t envy the tasks that the Fed has before it.
…I think it’s very important not to be shortsighted and to recognize that what we care about is not just the level of employment this year, but the level of employment averaged over the next 10 years. That we care not just about wages and opportunities this year, but we care about wages and opportunities over the long-term.
And the doctor who prescribes you painkillers that make you feel good to which you become addicted is generous and compassionate, but ultimately is very damaging to you. And while the example is a bit melodramatic, the pursuit of excessively expansionary policies that ultimately lead to inflation, which reduces people’s purchasing power, and the need for sharply contractionary policies, which hurt the biggest victims, the most disadvantaged in the society, that’s not doing the people we care most about any favor. It’s, in fact, hurting them.
The “Ezra” Summers name-checks in the above interview is Ezra Klein, formerly with The American Prospect and “Young Adult Website*” Vox.com, now with the New York Times. Ezra may want to dust off his 2009 TAP post on why Carter’s Malaise Speech really wasn’t such a bad moment after all.