OUCH: Elon Musk’s SpaceX taunts Russia at Starlink launch: ‘Time to let the American broomstick fly.’ “Last week, Russia halted rocket sales to the US. Rogozin said the US could fly on ‘broomsticks.'”
Archive for 2022
March 13, 2022
YOU KNOW YOU’RE OVER THE TARGET WHEN YOU START RECEIVING FLAK: How Fact-Finding Fauci Led To My Cancellation At Forbes.
20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Biden warns Democrats it will be a ‘sad two years’ if Republicans take control of Congress.
As always, don’t get cocky during the run-up.
QUESTION ASKED: What Have Two Years of ‘Two Weeks to Slow the Spread’ Taught Us?
SPEAKING THE TRUTH SHOULD ALWAYS BE LEGAL: University Adjunct Prof Fired for Labeling Flyers About “Microaggressions” as “Garbage.”
Simplifier: Pretty much everything woke is garbage.
IT’S TOO BAD WE’RE LED BY MORONS:
Related: The world’s weak leadership isn’t up to the Ukraine crisis.
OUT ON A LIMB: No, Don’t Use A ‘Morality Pill’ To Stop The Covid-19 Pandemic.
I have updated the headline to more clearly state my position, as opposed to the position being discussed. The original headline was “Could A ‘Morality Pill’ Help Stop The Covid-19 Pandemic?” The article has received some recent attention in February 2022 more than a year after the original publication, and some readers had contacted me requesting clarification of my own views. As I mentioned in the original piece, I regard the idea of a “morality pill” as both unrealistic and undesirable. Instead, I greatly favor “discussion, debate, and rational persuasion” to decide public policy.)
As the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to kill thousands of Americans each week, bioethicist Parker Crutchfield has suggested a controversial approach to battling the pandemic — namely a “morality pill.” Specifically, he suggests that widespread administration of psychoactive drugs could provide “moral enhancement” that would make people more likely to adhere to social norms such as wearing masks and adhering to social distancing guidelines.
Crutchfield — an Associate Professor of Medical Ethics, Humanities and Law at Western Michigan University — acknowledges that the idea is “far out” and controversial. But he does note that well-known chemicals, such as oxytocin and psilocybin (the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”) can lower aggression and increase empathy towards others, and thus potentially “boost” our “cooperative, pro-social behavior.”
Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick intended the Ludovico Technique to be a warning, not a how-to guide for a safer society.
THE BOMBER’S STILL AROUND, AND SO IS THE COLD WAR: The US flew its most iconic Cold War bomber over Europe: The B-52 sorties traveled from the United Kingdom to Romania and back. Here’s why.
HE’S NOT WRONG: Trump in South Carolina: Biden is ‘physically and mentally challenged’ at most important time in history.
And everyone knows it.
Related: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA THINKS PUTIN IS DOOMED. Given Fukuyama’s track record, this makes me feel worse, not better.
THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Flu vaccine ‘essentially ineffective’ this season.
Yeah, I know they’re aiming at a moving target. But as I’ve noted here in the past, before they were doing it about the Covid vaccine they were calling people who didn’t get flu shots near-murderers, which is a pretty high horse to get on with a vaccine that at best is less than 50% effective, and is often much, much worse than that.
I ALWAYS KNEW THE LITTLE BASTARD WAS SECRETLY A PUTIN STOOGE:
And all that lasagna? Clearly it’s a callback to Mussolini as well.
Earlier: Let’s Discuss What’s Happening in Russia: “To put it simply, it’s going full fascist. Authorities launched a propaganda campaign to gain popular support for their invasion of Ukraine and they’re getting lots of it. You can see ‘Z’ on these guys’ clothes. What does it mean?”
IT’S AS IF THEIR ACTIONS ARE DRIVEN BY THE POLITICS OF THE MOMENT, AND NOTHING ELSE: “Several people said they felt whipsawed as Democratic mayors and governors who once championed safety measures as a public good and emblem of civic virtue now seemed ready to turn the page on a pandemic that, while easing, is still killing more than 1,000 people every day across the United States.”
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QUESTION ASKED: Is Russia going to lose?
One way to answer the question in the headline is “It already has.” Even to a rank amateur like me, it was clear by *day three* that Putin was facing a strategic debacle. He misjudged Ukraine’s desire and ability to resist, he misjudged the strength of his military, and he misjudged the west’s willingness to paralyze Russia’s economy with sanctions. “No Russian leader since Tsar Nicholas II has done his country so much harm, so fast, as Vladimir Putin,” David Frum tweeted a few days ago, marveling at how diminished Russian power has been by Putin’s folly in the span of a few weeks.
Nothing that happens in Ukraine from this point will undo that. It’s a fiasco.
But a strategic defeat is distinct from defeat on the battlefield. Even optimists have assumed that Russia would eventually brute-force its way to controlling Kiev and other major Ukrainian cities. The “real” fight for Ukraine would come after that when Russia’s occupying forces and Ukraine’s insurgency would wage a war of attrition. Eventually Moscow would run out of patience and withdraw, but “eventually” could take months. Years. Decades, conceivably.
But what if the optimists were too pessimistic? What if Russia is facing near-term defeat on the battlefield as well?
Realistically, there are three ways in which the Russian army might lose:
Russia’s quagmire is what happens when generals are too terrified to tell their boss the truth about the quality of the soldiers, their equipment, their chances, etc. Or as Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin tells the New Yorker, “Was Iraq the way it was because of Saddam, or was Saddam the way he was because of Iraq? In other words, there’s the personality, which can’t be denied, but there are also structural factors that shape the personality. One of the arguments I made in my Stalin book was that being the dictator, being in charge of Russian power in the world in those circumstances and in that time period, made Stalin who he was and not the other way around…You have an autocrat in power—or even now a despot—making decisions completely by himself. Does he get input from others? Perhaps. We don’t know what the inside looks like. Does he pay attention? We don’t know. Do they bring him information that he doesn’t want to hear? That seems unlikely. Does he think he knows better than everybody else? That seems highly likely. Does he believe his own propaganda or his own conspiratorial view of the world? That also seems likely. These are surmises. Very few people talk to Putin, either Russians on the inside or foreigners.”
FIGHT THE POWER: This student spoke out when her professor played an anti-Trump video in class. Here’s what happened next. “I am paying thousands of dollars for a poor education.”
Yet another story about Clemson.
WE’RE RULED BY CLOSE-MINDED MORONS:
HISTORY FORGOTTEN: Academics claim Hitler didn’t kill ethnic Germans, use chemical weapons.
While comparing Putin to Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” Stanford University political science professor Michael McFaul — “a leading expert on Russia, American foreign policy, and democratic development around the world” according to his website — claimed that even as evil as the der Führer was, at least he didn’t murder his own people.
Paraphrasing what a Ukrainian commentator had offered, McFaul noted a Russian journalist had said “You know, there’s one difference between Hitler, when he was coming in, and Putin: Hitler didn’t kill ethnic Germans. He didn’t kill German-speaking people.”
Elsewhere, Atlantic Council Senior Fellow and Georgetown University adjunct Anders Åslund took to Twitter to claim Putin “violates every international law there is. Hitler did not use chemical weapons. Putin is preparing to do so.”
Just in case it needs to be noted, Hitler did indeed murder his own people, and one of the ways he did so was with chemical agents.
Note that McFaul “made it worse, suggesting that Jews could not be ‘ethnic Germans.’ [Editor’s note: the tweet was removed, but as they say, the internet is forever. We’ve added a second tweet, too.]”
Jerry Dunleavy has copies of the half-dozen tweets McFaul posted yesterday morning and then later deleted as the Corbynization of the Democratic Party continues apace.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Repel Umbrella Windproof Travel Umbrella. #CommissionEarned
GIVE ‘EM HELL:
