WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY, THEY FIRST MAKE RIDICULOUS: Dept. of Education investigates conservative scholar’s ‘misgendering’ of DEI official.
Archive for 2023
September 10, 2023
NEO: Trump as martyr.
In a post I wrote about three weeks ago, I mentioned that Trump might be becoming a martyr in the eyes of voters on the right. I certainly perceive him that way, and have for some time – not in the religious sense but in the more general sense of, “a person who suffers very much or is killed because of their religious or political beliefs, and is often admired because of it.”
It can be dangerous to make someone into a martyr. However, that person’s enemies can weigh all their options and believe that martyrdom is better than either letting the person live or continuing to let the person function freely. The Ayatollah Khomeini is a pretty good example; in this post I wrote about how in 1963 he was under a death sentence but his life was spared by the Shah’s government because they didn’t want to make him a martyr and therefore even more powerful. Of course, we know what ended up happening – and one of the first people Khomeini had executed was the general who had successfully argued years earlier for sparing Khomeini’s life.
I am not for a single moment suggesting that Trump is some sort of Khomeini and the left the Shah. What I’m trying to say, however, is that when there’s a figure that a political group sees as the enemy, there is the dilemma of how to counter that person and the movement represented by those who support the person, and there are many different ways to handle it.
Exit quote: “‘Martyr’ seems to have become part of Trump’s job description. He’s well aware of it. Will this perception affect anyone other than those who already support him? I’m speaking not about those on the left, or those who already hate his guts. I’m speaking about those in the middle who aren’t sure. Such people must still exist, right?”
Trump positioning himself as a martyr needs to be tempered with his role in the lockdowns of 2020, however:
The fact is former president Trump led the opposition to my decision to reopen Georgia – the first state in the country to do so.
While he listened to Fauci & parroted media talking points, I listened to hardworking Georgians.
He may not remember, but I sure as hell do. https://t.co/8eWPidlnfP
— Brian Kemp (@BrianKempGA) September 9, 2023
Details here: Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Affable Culture Warrior.
Under the rubric “insanity” a friend just wrote with the news that the Department of Education has opened a civil rights investigation into New College of Florida. Why? Have they excluded black students from the tennis team? Have they made Mexican stud sleep in the parking lot? Nothing so minor. No, this is serious. Put a pat of butter on that crumpet and listen: the former director of “DEI” (“diversity, equity, inclusion” for the innocents among my readers) has revealed that Chris Rufo, a trustee of New College, “mocked and misgendered” this creature after she (or so I am guessing) complained.
Serious stuff. Can a dawn raid from the Stasi (aka, the FBI) be far behind?
The new is full of such reports these days. It is partly comic, yes, but also, when you step back, profoundly depressing, for at least two reasons.
First, with respect to the individuals involved, it is evidence of a profound psychological disturbance, a wound, as it were. Anyone who tells you that she (or, as the case may be, “he”) wants to be referred to as “ze/zir” (or whatever) is issuing not only a bid for attention but a cry for help. Such folks have my (qualified) compassion.
But when we see an agency of the federal government blunder into the case with talk of “civil rights” violations and so on, such episodes are occasions for melancholy thoughts about a government that is out of control.
It’s a political investigation, of course, by an illegitimate and politicized federal bureaucracy.
But oft evil will shall evil mar: “Across multiple polls, Biden seems to be losing support from minority voters…. This raises the possibility that there’s a social-issues undertow for Democrats in which even when wokeness isn’t front and center, the fact that the party’s activist core is so far left gradually pushes culturally conservative African Americans and Hispanics toward the G.O.P. — much as culturally conservative white Democrats drifted slowly into the Republican coalition between the 1960s and the 2000s.”
The racial and sexual politics that appeal to neurotic upper-middle-class white people are not those that appeal to most working-class Americans of any race.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Dak Prescott sedated for 11 hours to get massive leg tattoo.
Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott underwent anesthesia for 11 hours to get a massive leg tattoo, reports say.
The tattoo was unveiled in the spring, but news that he was sedated for it recently surfaced.
The piece, which takes up most of Prescott’s right leg, pays tribute to his brother Jace, who died of suicide in 2020, his mother Peggy who passed to cancer in 2013, and honors sports legends Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali and the late Kobe Bryant. The tattoo also shows Daffy Duck doing Dak’s signature touchdown celebration.
“People are gonna think it’s crazy and it is crazy,” Prescott told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “I get that. But I’m crazy. That’s my point is I am. I know I am. I’m not afraid of nothing.”
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was shocked to learn that the star player was sedated over 10 hours for the procedure.
“I certainly didn’t know he was under for 10 hours,” Jones told the Star-Telegram. “Just so you’re clear, I had no idea about tattoos. I better get up to date on it. I had no idea that required that kind of sedation of any tattoo. It further explains to me why I don’t have a tattoo.”
Flashback: We All Need To Admit That America Has A Tattoo Problem.
THAT WAS FAST: Challenge to N.M. Governor’s Ban on Public Gun Carry in Albuquerque and Surrounding County.
The motion for a Temporary Restraining Order can be found here.
TIME TO ABOLISH PUBLIC SCHOOLS? The war on merit in public schools continues and it’s blatantly racist.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: White House Report Card: Unprecedented double fail. “This week’s White House report card finds President Joe Biden at another international summit, the G20 in India, hobbled by a horrible approval rating, a public struggling to make ends meet, and a disgruntled liberal base who want somebody else to run for president on the 2024 Democratic ticket. And now, in line with that, both of our graders, conservative analyst Jed Babbin and Democratic pollster John Zogby have done something they rarely do: Agree on a grade. And it’s an unprecedented double fail.”
Well, he’s objectively horrible. But the Establishment preferred this horrible failure to a second Trump term, because Biden is a failure they control. Which tells you all you need to know about the Establishment’s priorities.
HOW’S THAT WELCOME WAGON PROGRAM COMING ALONG? It’s Really Time for Parents to Move Their Families Out of California.
GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP: Federal Government Improperly “Coerced” and “Significantly Encouraged” Certain Speech Restrictions by Social Media Platforms.
In yesterday’s decision in Missouri v. Biden, the Fifth Circuit (Judges Edith Clement, Jennifer Elrod, and Don Willett) held that the federal government violated the First Amendment by causing social media platforms to block posts on various topics (including “the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, pandemic lockdowns, vaccine side-effects, election fraud, and the Hunter Biden laptop story”).
The court acknowledged that the First Amendment doesn’t bar social media platforms from acting on their own to restrict user speech, since the First Amendment applies only to the government and not to private parties (including large corporations). But the court concluded that the First Amendment may be violated “when a private party is coerced or significantly encouraged by the government to such a degree that its ‘choice’—which if made by the government would be unconstitutional—’must in law be deemed to be that of the State.’ This is known as the close nexus test.”
Heads should roll.
KEEPING THE ILLEGALS WHERE THE DEMOCRATS WANT THEM:
This would essentially just be de facto kicking Texas out of the United States.
If federal immigration laws dont apply to Texas, why should any other federal laws apply? Why should federal agents, or federal judges have any jurisdiction there?
— Miguel (@Miguel64185066) September 8, 2023
BRYAN CAPLAN: The Grave Evil of Unemployment.
Free-market economists rarely declare, “We have to do X about unemployment.” Why not? Free-market economists’ standard reply is just, “We expect X to fail.” Their critics, however, have a less favorable explanation: Free-market economists oppose X because free-market economists are cavalier and callous. They cavalierly deny the reality of involuntary unemployment, and callously belittle the suffering of the unemployed.
I know hundreds of free-market economists. They’re friends of mine. Indeed, I’m a free-market economist myself. It saddens me to say, then, that our critics are often right. While some free-market economists merely doubt the efficacy of policies intended to alleviate unemployment, the average free-market economist doesn’t take the unemployment problem seriously.
Why not? At the level of high theory, free-market economists love market-clearing models. If there’s surplus wheat, the price of wheat will fall to clear the market. If there’s surplus labor, similarly, the wage will fall to eliminate unemployment. What about nominal wage rigidity? Most free-market economists concede that nominal wage rigidity exists to some degree, but think the problem is mild and short-lived: “It’s been three years. The labor market must have fully adjusted by now.”
High theory aside, though, free-market economists have a toolbox of quips they use to belittle the problem of unemployment.
There’s the argument from the safety net: “Why would anyone want to go back to work when he can collect 99 weeks of unemployment insurance?”
There’s the argument from relocation: “There are plenty of jobs in North Dakota. Anyone who refuses to move there is therefore voluntarily unemployed.”
There’s the argument from worker hubris: “If he’s an ‘unemployed carpenter,’ then I’m an ‘unemployed astronaut.’”
There’s the argument from Zero Marginal Product: “If the guy can’t find a job, his labor must be worthless.”
I’d be delighted if my fellow free-market economists’ high theory and belittling quips were entirely correct. But they aren’t. The high theory’s wrong: Nominal wage rigidity is both strong and durable. And the quips are far less insightful than they sound.
Reminds me of the joke about two economists walking down the road. Economist 1: “Look, on the sidewalk, a twenty dollar bill!” Economist 2: “Impossible, someone would have picked it up!”
REVOLVING DOOR REVOLVES: Former Biden Official Jen Psaki Given Key Primetime Slot on MSNBC Ahead of 2024 Election.
MSNBC’s cult of far-left viewers will probably be delighted to see former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is joining the network’s lineup on Mondays beginning later this month.
The network announced on Thursday the former mouthpiece for the inept Biden administration will take up the 8 p.m. ET of its programming on Mondays beginning later this month, Variety reported.
Psaki will take one night from MSNBC host Chris Hayes, who has been giving up Mondays to a rotating cast of far-left hosts recently anyway.
At least Nicolle Wallace will no longer be the most abrasive person on the network.
And speaking of the incestuous relation of the DNC-MSM and the Biden White House: White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre ends relationship with CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux.
MATT TAIBBI ON THE ONGOING TECH CENSORSHIP CAMPAIGN:
They’re doing this while larger corporate outlets that according to “anti-disinformation” trackers score highest for trustworthy practice are tossing out standards. The New York Times since eliminating its public editor has lacked basic accountability mechanisms, leaves even infamous oopsies unadorned by editor’s notes (here’s one of Judith Miller’s worst WMD goofs flying free), and routinely publishes whole articles about topics or events without linking to source material, as “contextualizing” in place of allowing audiences to judge for themselves becomes standard. Leaving news stories mostly or totally uncovered if they feature inconvenient narratives is similarly a norm. Washington Post coverage of the Missouri v. Biden Internet censorship case has been thin to the point of being amusing. . . .
Meanwhile, in what might be a double or triple-irony, platforms like Google that score papers like the Post high for “authority” plant warning flags on sites like mine for, no kidding, editorial commentary about Orwellian practice . . . This is in addition to the litany of preposterous warning categories (“adult content,” “unsafe content”) and economic sanctions (like the recent hold on a Grayzone fundraiser) that have been cooked up to apply almost exclusively to non-legacy outlets and individual users. This entire system is also corrupted by the fact that many of the larger news companies that benefit from de-ranking of independents either partner with or subsidize review organizations.
The whole thing sounds like a conspiracy in restraint of trade, as well as a conspiracy aimed at denying people their civil rights.
September 9, 2023
OUT: FOLLOW THE SCIENCE. IN: FOLLOW THE MONEY AND INFLUENCE. Cochrane Review the latest scientific institution ruined by COVID ideology.
A few months back a controversy burst onto the scene with the now infamous Cochrane Review analysis that demonstrated that masking is useless as a population-level non-pharmaceutical intervention to address the COVID pandemic. There simply is no evidence that masking reduces the burden of disease and plenty of evidence that they don’t in large populations.
When the review dropped it caused quite a stir for the most obvious of reasons: it popped a bubble that should never have been allowed to inflate. It has been well known for a century that whatever their virtues, masks simply do not work to stop the spread of respiratory viruses in large groups over any extended period of time. This was a consensus position–one that Anthony Fauci himself endorsed before COVID changed the messaging suddenly.
Cochrane Review is widely held as a gold standard for medical information, and its findings are based upon meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials done by researchers across the world. These reviews do not rely on one study but on tens or hundreds using different methods in different places, with the goal of sorting out the signal from the noise that will always be found in any particular study.
When the analysis dropped the world seemed to explode. To have Cochrane Review debunk the mask narrative was unacceptable, and like a ton of bricks, the criticism poured in.
The editor apparently panicked. A quick addendum was attached to the analysis suggesting that it was not dispositive–and that addendum has been used ever since to claim that the review was flawed or even retracted. That is not and never was the case, and it is clear that the editor simply buckled to criticism.
Paul Thacker has done a deep dive into what happened and why, and the story is dispiriting. A study that was based upon extensive analysis, peer-reviewed, and based on the best evidence available was undermined by an editor with no relevant experience in a matter of hours, for the simple reason that she was scared by criticism from news organizations such as the New York Times.
Cochrane’s bending the knee to the mask mob has created a crisis of confidence in the research world. Not only do medical professionals rely on Cochrane to be utterly dedicated to the evidence above all else, but the scientists involved in producing the research can’t have a politically-motivated editor simply wiping out their research based on a hasty political decision driven by an inquiry from a newspaper.
Many people have been led to believe that the Cochrane study has been “debunked” or “retracted,” but neither is the case. The sole purpose of the note attached to the study is to create the impression that it has been retracted while it has not. The research stands; the political impression is the opposite, as intended.
To give you an idea how slapdash the editor’s response was, consider this: Soares-Weiser got an email from the New York Times and hastily responded, undermining the scientists–without even making an attempt to speak with them. She implied that the study was wrong without even seeking comment from the people who did the study, on a subject with which she was utterly unfamiliar.
This is science in the modern world.
Fire her and blacken her name as an enemy of science.
OPEN THREAD: Well, here we are.
FLASHBACK: IN THE NEW YORK TIMES: Taking Sarah Palin’s Ideas Seriously. “Strangely, she was saying things that liberals might like, if not for Ms. Palin’s having said them.” That’s why it was so important to thoroughly demonize her right up front.
FLASHBACK:
The elites lost their mojo by becoming absurd. It happened on the road between cultural appropriation and transgender bathrooms.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) February 17, 2017