My friend just came to me all depressed because his kid’s failing 3rd grade, and he doesn’t know how to break it to him.
Apparently “slowly” wasn’t the advice he was looking for.
*.*
I caught my son chewing on electrical cords...
So I had to ground him...
He's doing better currently...
And conducting himself properly.
*.*
Wayne was returning home from a business trip, bags in hand, and slowly making his way to his vehicle in the crowded airport garage. Suddenly a large dark car screeched to a stop in front of Wayne, and the driver pointed menacingly at him. "Get in," the driver ordered. "I'll take you to your car."
Startled, Wayne took a step backward. "Ah...no thanks," he answered. "I can get there myself."
"No!" the man barked back as he threw open his passenger side door. "Get in!"
Wayne's eyes now darted around the garage, hoping to find a security guard.
Just then, the driver's face softened. "Please," he said, "I've been driving up and down for two hours. I can't find a space to park, and I want yours."
*.*
The wife phones.
“Hi!”
“Hi! Did you clean the house?”
“Uhh…YUP!”
“OK, I’m coming home. Need anything?”
“Yes, about 2 hours.”
*.*
People say being a waiter is a bad job.
Hey, it puts food on the table.
Quote of the Times;
The law of the universe is; the more you try the more you get. - Roosh
Link of the Times;
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/03/gary-d-barnett/the-covid-vaccine-is-a-weapon-of-mass-destruction/
Issue of the Times;
To defeat woke tyrants, the rest of us must treat them like the monsters they are by Glenn H. Reynolds
Most Americans hate woke politics — and most minorities don’t share “woke” priorities. Indeed, according to pollster David Shor, woke excesses are causing black voters to flee the Democratic Party. Despite endless charges of “racism,” former President Donald Trump took the biggest share of minority voters of any Republican in my lifetime.
Woke tyrants ride high, even so; according to a Cato/YouGov poll, 62 percent of Americans self-censor their political expression. Only a tiny minority of consumers care about Mr. Potato Head’s toxic masculinity, about “Aunt Jemima” as a brand or about the #MeToo aggressions of Pepé Le Pew. Yet corporations, universities and governments rush to placate that minuscule slice of the population, trashing large chunks of our culture in the process.
It’s happening not because anybody voted for it, but because a small but determined and vicious minority is bullying people to go along, relying on cowardice and groupthink to achieve ends that could never happen via majority vote: How do you think Dr. Seuss would have done in a referendum?
How does this happen? To some degree, the woke abuse the good nature of Americans. For the most part, Americans want their fellow citizens to be happy. If they hear something makes others unhappy, they generously look to change things.
And there’s fear. Writing about the goings-on at New York’s Dalton School, Bari Weiss notes that even parents who think the political correctness has gone too far are afraid to speak out: They think their kids’ shot at the Ivy League could be at risk. And it’s not just Dalton.
Weiss quotes one mother: “I look at the public school, and I am equally mortified. I can’t believe what they are doing to everybody. I’m too afraid. I’m too afraid to speak too loudly. I feel cowardly. I just make little waves.” Another says: “It’s fear of retribution. Would it cause our daughter to be ostracized? Would it cause people to ostracize us? It already has.”
In his book “Skin in the Game,” Nicholas Nassim Taleb writes about the surprising ability of small but intransigent minorities — 3 percent to 4 percent is enough — to change the direction of entire societies. He writes: “The most intolerant wins. . . . Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy. . . . [I]t will eventually destroy our world. So, we need to be more than intolerant with some intolerant minorities.”
Does this mean we should be less tolerant of our own minoritarian tyrants? In a word, yes.
I don’t mean that they should be forced into camps, or even driven from their jobs and from polite society, as the woke are all too willing to do to their opponents. But they need to be deprived of the thing that is most important to their self-image: moral credibility.
The woke think of themselves — and want everyone else to think of them — as deeply moral. If they have a flaw, it’s that they just care too much. They’re too idealistic, too empathetic, too eager to make the world a better place.
That’s bulls–t (pardon my French, Pepé!). If you look at what they do, rather than what they say about themselves, it quickly becomes obvious that the woke are horrible, awful people, and they should be treated as such and reminded of this whenever they raise their head.
Historically, it’s not the good guys who are out burning books and censoring speech. It isn’t the caring, empathetic people who try to destroy lives based on something someone said years ago, often while young, often taken out of context. It isn’t the good guys who take undisguised glee at the ruining of lives, families and careers.
You know who does these things? Horrible, awful people. Selfish people. People with serious mental and emotional problems who seek some sort of vindication for their deficient characters by taking power trips while imposing suffering on others.
Treat these tyrants as what they are: awful people who shouldn’t be listened to and who need to work hard on joining the better half of the human race. And remind them of it, over and over. Because it’s true. Deep down, they know it, too.
News of the Times;
https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/04/im-still-not-getting-the-vaccine/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56969414
https://www.voanews.com/south-central-asia/taliban-overrun-afghan-base-capture-troops-us-nato-forces-exit
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/devout-catholic-joe-biden-doesnt-mention-god-national-day-prayer-proclamation/
https://www.sott.net/article/452262-Significant-jump-this-week-in-reported-injuries-deaths-after-COVID-vaccine
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/05/04/biden-goes-off-the-rails-in-a-gaffe-arama-including-one-word-that-has-people-talking-n374171
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/breaking-former-oregon-democrat-house-majority-speaker-arrested-human-sex-trafficking/
https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/03/who-gets-to-define-whats-patriotic/
https://www.amren.com/commentary/2021/02/squeezed-to-zero-how-the-woke-and-the-chinese-are-destroying-academic-mathematics/
https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2021/05/03/exclusive-david-ray-the-u-s-is-an-accomplice-to-the-largest-child-trafficking-operation-in-u-s-history/
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/florida-governor-desantis-suspends-all-remaining-covid-restrictions.html
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/irish-police-break-mans-home-remove-children-3-films-police-barging-shutting-catholic-mass-video/
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2021/05/03/insanity-wrap-198-looted-burned-target-store-puts-up-mural-celebrating-arson-n1443948
https://vdare.com/posts/seriously-black-lives-truly-matter-1-dead-3-injured-in-mass-shooting-at-black-heritage-festival-in-fla
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/video-blm-militants-draw-ar-15s-ak-47s-portland-motorists-no-police-scene-reign-terror-continues/
Rest?
Tensions?
Anthony Hopkins won the 2021 Oscar for best male actor and Frances McDormand won for best female actress.
The Academy have yet to state who won the other 62 gender awards.
*.*
My wife claims I'm a baseball fanatic. She says all I ever read about is baseball. All I ever talk about is baseball. All I ever think about is baseball.
I told her she's way off base!
*.*
Oneliners:
Those who confuse burro and burrow don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.
Currently helping my son search for his chocolate that I ate last night.
I wonder how many WTF's today will bring.
Quick question; can I still use the carpool lane if the other person is in the trunk?
Diet tip: Your pants will never get too tight if you don't wear any.
I have found that these days, people don't like holding hands in public, especially if they don't know you.
I've never seen an alcohol company use a drunk person in any of their advertising.
Bread is like the sun; it rises in the yeast and sets in the waist.
Dear Facebook, quit pointing out people I may know, I do know them I just don't like them.
I don't think we get smarter as we get older, we just run out of stupid things to do.
Now that we have everyone washing their hands properly, next week: turn signals!
*.*
Top 5 Signs your Accountant has some Bad News:
He asks you not to look at what you owe until he gets a 10-minute head start.
"Before I show you how much you owe, would you like some black tar heroin?"
He'd tell you how much you owe, but he won't stop crying.
Offers you travel brochures to places without a U.S. extradition agreement.
Right before he shows you the results, he says, "Boy, I'm glad I'm not you."
*.*
A 39 year old woman in Colorado has been killed in a bear attack.
Let's paws and reflect on this grizzly tragedy, and prey that her family can bear the grief.
Quote of the Times;
You must find the courage to leave the table if respect is no longer being served. - Edwards
Link of the Times;
https://mishtalk.com/
Issue of the Times;
How China is stoking America’s racial tensions by Ian Williams
A government that would never dream of allowing free elections in its own country mocks America’s democratic process
Footage of a brutal late March attack on a 65-year-old Asian American woman in Manhattan drew widespread outrage on social media. It also made for a productive afternoon for Zhao Lijian. From his Beijing office, the Chinese government spokesman retweeted 20 posts and shared the video 12 times on his official Twitter account. ‘We can’t help but wonder, who will be the next victim? When will it all end?’ he asked his almost 900,000 followers.
Zhao isn’t the only one who’s been busy. In the wake of the Atlanta spa shootings on March 16, Chinese state media used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stoke a narrative of American racism and hatred. One Twitter post from Global Times, a Communist party tabloid, shows the Statue of Liberty, gun in hand, towering over a tiny cardboard cutout figure marked ‘Asian’, with a target on its chest. Another cartoon, shared by CGTN, the international arm of China’s state broadcaster, shows an American COVID-19 vaccination center, and a young Asian asking the doctor, ‘By the way, is there also a vaccine for racism?’
Two years ago, China had almost no diplomatic presence on western social media. Now around 200 diplomats growl and troll their way around these platforms — the vanguard of a concerted push by party-controlled organizations, working in concert with a vast and shifting array of bogus accounts, to sow disinformation and discord.
They cut their teeth early in the COVID-19 pandemic, promoting conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus. Beijing pumped out propaganda and disinformation internationally through thousands of fake and hijacked Twitter accounts. It sought to portray itself as a leader and benefactor in public health, at the same time trashing the faltering efforts of Western democracies.
The EU accused China of running ‘a global disinformation campaign to deflect blame for the outbreak of the pandemic’. In June last year, Twitter shut down 170,000 accounts linked to the Chinese government, citing ‘a range of manipulative and coordinated activities’. YouTube banned almost 2,600 Chinese channels in the second quarter of 2020 alone, as part of what YouTube calls ‘our ongoing investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to China’.
CGTN was accused of spreading disinformation and propaganda on Twitter about the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. State media manipulated images and videos, and depicted protesters as violent tools of the West, practicing ‘terrorism’. In response, Twitter removed nearly 1,000 accounts and suspended thousands of others, which were part of what it described as a ‘significant state-backed information operation’. Facebook and YouTube also removed accounts.
Last summer, Chinese diplomats reveled in American protests over policing and race, embracing the Black Lives Matter movement with relish and accusing the US government of hypocrisy and double standards on human rights. When it came to the presidential election campaign and its messy aftermath, Beijing largely avoided showing a preference for either Trump or Biden. Instead, a government that would never dream of allowing free elections in its own country mocked America’s democratic process. Party-controlled media stoked a narrative of US national decline, highlighting chaos, dysfunction and the threat of violence — all amplified by social media.
China has pursued this theme in its coverage of the recent anti-Asian violence, using it to deflect attention from the persecution of the Uighurs in Xinjiang and the coordinated response, sanctions against Chinese officials by the US, UK, Canada and the EU. With western companies under pressure over the use of forced labor in Xinjiang, spokesman Zhao Lijian tweeted, ‘It is a historical fact that the #UnitedStates forced black slaves to collect cotton. Who on earth engaged in forced labor?’ Later he tweeted: ‘Shocking conspiracy of the US & West: destabilize #Xinjiang & contain China’s development. The cotton smears are just part of the bigger plot.’
China’s state-controlled news outlets appear to be among the highest ranked accounts on Twitter and Facebook. CGTN has 13.6 million Twitter followers and 116 million on Facebook. Global Times has 1.8 million on Twitter and 62 million on Facebook. Xinhua, a state news agency, has 12.4 million on Twitter and 89 million on Facebook. Obscure diplomats have quickly built followings to rival Hollywood celebrities.
Can there really be such an audience for stultifying propaganda? Perhaps, but there are many dark social media arts, which China has quickly learned. The figures are almost certainly false, inflated by automated programs (bots) that generate fake followers and fake likes. The idea is to give the pages more credibility and reach, and thereby pull in legitimate users. Bogus or hijacked accounts are used as ‘amplifiers’ to push posts and tweets and get them trending.
There used to be a distinction between Russian and Chinese activities in cyberspace. While China concentrated on cyber-espionage, plundering secrets from Western corporate and government systems, the Russians were the vandals. They launched destructive cyberattacks while engaging in disinformation and hack-and-leak operations, tactics with their roots in the Cold War heyday of ‘active measures’. Their aim was to sow division, doubt and distrust, spotting and exploiting cracks to weaken the target. Those aims have not changed.
Now Russian and Chinese tactics are converging. Both use social media to peddle disinformation and toxic content, amplifying fringe media, obscure ‘experts’ and conspiracy theorists.
The aim of both is not only to obscure facts but to disorient and depress: when Zhao Lijian pumped out tweets after the Manhattan attack, the content was carefully chosen. The posts he shared were not the angriest, but they were full of despair: ‘What the hell is wrong with people?’, ‘This is incredibly difficult to watch’, ‘Oh my God, what is happening to this country?’ ‘This is a state of emergency.’
And China has a wider policy goal — framing hate crime as a consequence of the US government’s more assertive recent stance against Beijing. ‘Experts say [hate crime] results from US politicians’ smearing of China as culprit of COVID-19. Worsening bilateral ties play part in discrimination surge,’ Global Times said in a recent tweet, without naming the ‘experts’.
The Communist party also has formidable weapons in the form of TikTok and WeChat.
The TikTok app, popular among 16- to 24-year-olds, is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. TikTok is a platform for catchy short videos, with an estimated 100 million users in the US. It has been criticized for its zealous collection of personal data and intrusions on the data security of users, and recently agreed to pay $92 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging it illegally tracked users and shared biometric data from photos and videos. The data, which included face scans, was allegedly shared with third parties, some in China. The company denies any wrongdoing.
More invidious is TikTok’s opaque algorithm that determines what a user sees. On Twitter and Facebook, users are mostly served content from accounts they subscribe to. On TikTok the videos can come from anywhere, and the app takes account of a range of information. This includes the type of videos you look at, the duration, your likes, comments and sharing, as well as user data such as age, gender and location. The precise recipe is unknown, since it has been designated a state secret. Last year, when it looked like ByteDance might be forced to sell its US operations, the Chinese government imposed export controls on the algorithm. While the company does employ engineers in the US, control is firmly in the hands of secretive China-based teams, which have been experimenting with advanced inputs including facial and voice recognition and sentiment analysis. In China the com- pany deploys this tech to censor content and promote CCP propaganda. It claims it does not censor in the US, but all Chinese companies must by law cooperate with the Communist party on ‘national security’, a very elastic concept. While the US algorithm might not be massaged as blatantly as in China, there is ample room for subtle manipulation.
WeChat presents a different sort of challenge. It is aimed at Chinese speakers, with an estimated 19 million regular users in the US. For immigrants it has become a vital way of keeping in touch with friends, family and developments in China, where it is known as the ‘app for everything’, such is the range of its services. This has made it an important component of the surveillance state, a weapon of social control, censorship and disinformation. Overseas, it has been used to intimidate Uighurs, Tibetans and other dissidents, often with threats relayed via relatives at home. But the broader danger is that by pumping nationalist propaganda into Chinese-speaking communities, shaping what they read and see, it is creating bubbles and magnifying divisions within America.
The Trump administration sought to ban both TikTok and WeChat on national security grounds. Both have fought back in the courts, and President Biden has paused the action against them while his staff becomes ‘familiar with the issues in this case’.
China has been quick to take advantage of this opening, presenting itself as the champion of Asian American communities in the wake of the recent anti-Asian violence. Older established migrants and political exiles have little time for Communist propaganda, but newer communities, particularly those drawn to the US by economic and educational opportunities, may be more receptive to WeChat-enabled propaganda and nationalist blandishments.
China’s use of social media can at times be clunky and crude. The irony is that the reach of its increasingly toxic and combative message, its ability to reach a Western audience, is being enabled by American social media platforms — platforms that are blocked in China, where trying to access them can lead to interrogation and jail.
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube do crack down on Chinese disinformation when it becomes impossible to ignore, as with COVID and Hong Kong, but their actions are inconsistent and patchy. Twitter and Facebook have now started labeling Chinese accounts as ‘state-affiliated’ but that has not dampened unease, even among Facebook’s own employees. Staff there are reportedly concerned the company is being used as a conduit for state propaganda, with a wave of sponsored posts of happy Uighurs, dancing, singing and generally thriving under Chinese rule.
Still, the Chinese embassy in Washington is having to do without its Twitter account, which was suspended in January after diplomats responded to evidence of forced sterilizations with a tweet claiming Uighur women had been ‘emancipated’ from extremism and were no longer ‘baby-making machines’. It was typical of China’s approach to try to whitewash an atrocity by appealing to feminism. In this case they misjudged their audience and overstepped the mark.
In targeting identity politics, China is stoking the most difficult and divisive issues in America. The absurd part is that Xi Jinping’s rule is built on an increasingly virulent ethnic nationalism. This fuels the CCP’s combative stances internationally — see, for instance, China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi unashamedly berating secretary of state Antony Blinken for America’s record on human rights.
At home, meanwhile, the Communist party crushes human rights and regards any cultural and religious difference as a threat. This is what drives the appalling repression in Xinjiang, where the party is seeking to neuter Uighur culture and subjugate it to the Han Chinese. China’s Communist leadership is no position to lecture anybody about racism. Yet they do.
News of the Times;
https://lidblog.com/chinas-navy/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/04/german-police-ransack-home-doctor-provides-evidence-court-children-endangered-mental-physical-spiritual-obligation-wear-face-masks/
https://electionwiz.com/2021/04/28/arizona-school-board-flees-parents-elect-new-board-vote-to-end-mask-mandate/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/04/police-officer-made-viral-tiktok-video-mocking-lebron-james-suspended-fundraiser-launched/
https://summit.news/2021/04/29/uk-christian-pastor-arrested-for-saying-marriage-is-between-a-man-and-a-woman/
https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/29/stanford-student-government-candidate-says-white-people-need-to-be-eradicated/
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/general-motors-make-1-bln-electric-auto-investment-mexico-2021-04-29/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/delaware-officer-who-was-brutally-assaulted-dies-from-injuries-suspect-now-charged-with-murder
https://summit.news/2021/04/30/poll-majority-of-french-agree-with-military-generals-that-the-country-is-heading-towards-civil-war/
https://abc7news.com/exclusive-trump-supporter-infiltrates-north-bay-anti-fascist-group/10558396/
https://nypost.com/2021/05/01/maryland-firefighters-indicted-on-arson-charges-and-setting-fires-while-working/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/california-release-63000-violent-repeat-felons-back-onto-streets-create-safer-prisons/
https://americandigest.org/noted-in-passing-think-of-how-stupid-the-average-person-is-and-realize-half-of-them-are-stupider-than-that/
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/crazy-conspiracy-theories-2020/
https://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2021/03/washday-blues.html
The Academy have yet to state who won the other 62 gender awards.
*.*
My wife claims I'm a baseball fanatic. She says all I ever read about is baseball. All I ever talk about is baseball. All I ever think about is baseball.
I told her she's way off base!
*.*
Oneliners:
Those who confuse burro and burrow don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.
Currently helping my son search for his chocolate that I ate last night.
I wonder how many WTF's today will bring.
Quick question; can I still use the carpool lane if the other person is in the trunk?
Diet tip: Your pants will never get too tight if you don't wear any.
I have found that these days, people don't like holding hands in public, especially if they don't know you.
I've never seen an alcohol company use a drunk person in any of their advertising.
Bread is like the sun; it rises in the yeast and sets in the waist.
Dear Facebook, quit pointing out people I may know, I do know them I just don't like them.
I don't think we get smarter as we get older, we just run out of stupid things to do.
Now that we have everyone washing their hands properly, next week: turn signals!
*.*
Top 5 Signs your Accountant has some Bad News:
He asks you not to look at what you owe until he gets a 10-minute head start.
"Before I show you how much you owe, would you like some black tar heroin?"
He'd tell you how much you owe, but he won't stop crying.
Offers you travel brochures to places without a U.S. extradition agreement.
Right before he shows you the results, he says, "Boy, I'm glad I'm not you."
*.*
A 39 year old woman in Colorado has been killed in a bear attack.
Let's paws and reflect on this grizzly tragedy, and prey that her family can bear the grief.
Quote of the Times;
You must find the courage to leave the table if respect is no longer being served. - Edwards
Link of the Times;
https://mishtalk.com/
Issue of the Times;
How China is stoking America’s racial tensions by Ian Williams
A government that would never dream of allowing free elections in its own country mocks America’s democratic process
Footage of a brutal late March attack on a 65-year-old Asian American woman in Manhattan drew widespread outrage on social media. It also made for a productive afternoon for Zhao Lijian. From his Beijing office, the Chinese government spokesman retweeted 20 posts and shared the video 12 times on his official Twitter account. ‘We can’t help but wonder, who will be the next victim? When will it all end?’ he asked his almost 900,000 followers.
Zhao isn’t the only one who’s been busy. In the wake of the Atlanta spa shootings on March 16, Chinese state media used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stoke a narrative of American racism and hatred. One Twitter post from Global Times, a Communist party tabloid, shows the Statue of Liberty, gun in hand, towering over a tiny cardboard cutout figure marked ‘Asian’, with a target on its chest. Another cartoon, shared by CGTN, the international arm of China’s state broadcaster, shows an American COVID-19 vaccination center, and a young Asian asking the doctor, ‘By the way, is there also a vaccine for racism?’
Two years ago, China had almost no diplomatic presence on western social media. Now around 200 diplomats growl and troll their way around these platforms — the vanguard of a concerted push by party-controlled organizations, working in concert with a vast and shifting array of bogus accounts, to sow disinformation and discord.
They cut their teeth early in the COVID-19 pandemic, promoting conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus. Beijing pumped out propaganda and disinformation internationally through thousands of fake and hijacked Twitter accounts. It sought to portray itself as a leader and benefactor in public health, at the same time trashing the faltering efforts of Western democracies.
The EU accused China of running ‘a global disinformation campaign to deflect blame for the outbreak of the pandemic’. In June last year, Twitter shut down 170,000 accounts linked to the Chinese government, citing ‘a range of manipulative and coordinated activities’. YouTube banned almost 2,600 Chinese channels in the second quarter of 2020 alone, as part of what YouTube calls ‘our ongoing investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to China’.
CGTN was accused of spreading disinformation and propaganda on Twitter about the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. State media manipulated images and videos, and depicted protesters as violent tools of the West, practicing ‘terrorism’. In response, Twitter removed nearly 1,000 accounts and suspended thousands of others, which were part of what it described as a ‘significant state-backed information operation’. Facebook and YouTube also removed accounts.
Last summer, Chinese diplomats reveled in American protests over policing and race, embracing the Black Lives Matter movement with relish and accusing the US government of hypocrisy and double standards on human rights. When it came to the presidential election campaign and its messy aftermath, Beijing largely avoided showing a preference for either Trump or Biden. Instead, a government that would never dream of allowing free elections in its own country mocked America’s democratic process. Party-controlled media stoked a narrative of US national decline, highlighting chaos, dysfunction and the threat of violence — all amplified by social media.
China has pursued this theme in its coverage of the recent anti-Asian violence, using it to deflect attention from the persecution of the Uighurs in Xinjiang and the coordinated response, sanctions against Chinese officials by the US, UK, Canada and the EU. With western companies under pressure over the use of forced labor in Xinjiang, spokesman Zhao Lijian tweeted, ‘It is a historical fact that the #UnitedStates forced black slaves to collect cotton. Who on earth engaged in forced labor?’ Later he tweeted: ‘Shocking conspiracy of the US & West: destabilize #Xinjiang & contain China’s development. The cotton smears are just part of the bigger plot.’
China’s state-controlled news outlets appear to be among the highest ranked accounts on Twitter and Facebook. CGTN has 13.6 million Twitter followers and 116 million on Facebook. Global Times has 1.8 million on Twitter and 62 million on Facebook. Xinhua, a state news agency, has 12.4 million on Twitter and 89 million on Facebook. Obscure diplomats have quickly built followings to rival Hollywood celebrities.
Can there really be such an audience for stultifying propaganda? Perhaps, but there are many dark social media arts, which China has quickly learned. The figures are almost certainly false, inflated by automated programs (bots) that generate fake followers and fake likes. The idea is to give the pages more credibility and reach, and thereby pull in legitimate users. Bogus or hijacked accounts are used as ‘amplifiers’ to push posts and tweets and get them trending.
There used to be a distinction between Russian and Chinese activities in cyberspace. While China concentrated on cyber-espionage, plundering secrets from Western corporate and government systems, the Russians were the vandals. They launched destructive cyberattacks while engaging in disinformation and hack-and-leak operations, tactics with their roots in the Cold War heyday of ‘active measures’. Their aim was to sow division, doubt and distrust, spotting and exploiting cracks to weaken the target. Those aims have not changed.
Now Russian and Chinese tactics are converging. Both use social media to peddle disinformation and toxic content, amplifying fringe media, obscure ‘experts’ and conspiracy theorists.
The aim of both is not only to obscure facts but to disorient and depress: when Zhao Lijian pumped out tweets after the Manhattan attack, the content was carefully chosen. The posts he shared were not the angriest, but they were full of despair: ‘What the hell is wrong with people?’, ‘This is incredibly difficult to watch’, ‘Oh my God, what is happening to this country?’ ‘This is a state of emergency.’
And China has a wider policy goal — framing hate crime as a consequence of the US government’s more assertive recent stance against Beijing. ‘Experts say [hate crime] results from US politicians’ smearing of China as culprit of COVID-19. Worsening bilateral ties play part in discrimination surge,’ Global Times said in a recent tweet, without naming the ‘experts’.
The Communist party also has formidable weapons in the form of TikTok and WeChat.
The TikTok app, popular among 16- to 24-year-olds, is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. TikTok is a platform for catchy short videos, with an estimated 100 million users in the US. It has been criticized for its zealous collection of personal data and intrusions on the data security of users, and recently agreed to pay $92 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging it illegally tracked users and shared biometric data from photos and videos. The data, which included face scans, was allegedly shared with third parties, some in China. The company denies any wrongdoing.
More invidious is TikTok’s opaque algorithm that determines what a user sees. On Twitter and Facebook, users are mostly served content from accounts they subscribe to. On TikTok the videos can come from anywhere, and the app takes account of a range of information. This includes the type of videos you look at, the duration, your likes, comments and sharing, as well as user data such as age, gender and location. The precise recipe is unknown, since it has been designated a state secret. Last year, when it looked like ByteDance might be forced to sell its US operations, the Chinese government imposed export controls on the algorithm. While the company does employ engineers in the US, control is firmly in the hands of secretive China-based teams, which have been experimenting with advanced inputs including facial and voice recognition and sentiment analysis. In China the com- pany deploys this tech to censor content and promote CCP propaganda. It claims it does not censor in the US, but all Chinese companies must by law cooperate with the Communist party on ‘national security’, a very elastic concept. While the US algorithm might not be massaged as blatantly as in China, there is ample room for subtle manipulation.
WeChat presents a different sort of challenge. It is aimed at Chinese speakers, with an estimated 19 million regular users in the US. For immigrants it has become a vital way of keeping in touch with friends, family and developments in China, where it is known as the ‘app for everything’, such is the range of its services. This has made it an important component of the surveillance state, a weapon of social control, censorship and disinformation. Overseas, it has been used to intimidate Uighurs, Tibetans and other dissidents, often with threats relayed via relatives at home. But the broader danger is that by pumping nationalist propaganda into Chinese-speaking communities, shaping what they read and see, it is creating bubbles and magnifying divisions within America.
The Trump administration sought to ban both TikTok and WeChat on national security grounds. Both have fought back in the courts, and President Biden has paused the action against them while his staff becomes ‘familiar with the issues in this case’.
China has been quick to take advantage of this opening, presenting itself as the champion of Asian American communities in the wake of the recent anti-Asian violence. Older established migrants and political exiles have little time for Communist propaganda, but newer communities, particularly those drawn to the US by economic and educational opportunities, may be more receptive to WeChat-enabled propaganda and nationalist blandishments.
China’s use of social media can at times be clunky and crude. The irony is that the reach of its increasingly toxic and combative message, its ability to reach a Western audience, is being enabled by American social media platforms — platforms that are blocked in China, where trying to access them can lead to interrogation and jail.
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube do crack down on Chinese disinformation when it becomes impossible to ignore, as with COVID and Hong Kong, but their actions are inconsistent and patchy. Twitter and Facebook have now started labeling Chinese accounts as ‘state-affiliated’ but that has not dampened unease, even among Facebook’s own employees. Staff there are reportedly concerned the company is being used as a conduit for state propaganda, with a wave of sponsored posts of happy Uighurs, dancing, singing and generally thriving under Chinese rule.
Still, the Chinese embassy in Washington is having to do without its Twitter account, which was suspended in January after diplomats responded to evidence of forced sterilizations with a tweet claiming Uighur women had been ‘emancipated’ from extremism and were no longer ‘baby-making machines’. It was typical of China’s approach to try to whitewash an atrocity by appealing to feminism. In this case they misjudged their audience and overstepped the mark.
In targeting identity politics, China is stoking the most difficult and divisive issues in America. The absurd part is that Xi Jinping’s rule is built on an increasingly virulent ethnic nationalism. This fuels the CCP’s combative stances internationally — see, for instance, China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi unashamedly berating secretary of state Antony Blinken for America’s record on human rights.
At home, meanwhile, the Communist party crushes human rights and regards any cultural and religious difference as a threat. This is what drives the appalling repression in Xinjiang, where the party is seeking to neuter Uighur culture and subjugate it to the Han Chinese. China’s Communist leadership is no position to lecture anybody about racism. Yet they do.
News of the Times;
https://lidblog.com/chinas-navy/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/04/german-police-ransack-home-doctor-provides-evidence-court-children-endangered-mental-physical-spiritual-obligation-wear-face-masks/
https://electionwiz.com/2021/04/28/arizona-school-board-flees-parents-elect-new-board-vote-to-end-mask-mandate/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/04/police-officer-made-viral-tiktok-video-mocking-lebron-james-suspended-fundraiser-launched/
https://summit.news/2021/04/29/uk-christian-pastor-arrested-for-saying-marriage-is-between-a-man-and-a-woman/
https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/29/stanford-student-government-candidate-says-white-people-need-to-be-eradicated/
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/general-motors-make-1-bln-electric-auto-investment-mexico-2021-04-29/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/delaware-officer-who-was-brutally-assaulted-dies-from-injuries-suspect-now-charged-with-murder
https://summit.news/2021/04/30/poll-majority-of-french-agree-with-military-generals-that-the-country-is-heading-towards-civil-war/
https://abc7news.com/exclusive-trump-supporter-infiltrates-north-bay-anti-fascist-group/10558396/
https://nypost.com/2021/05/01/maryland-firefighters-indicted-on-arson-charges-and-setting-fires-while-working/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/california-release-63000-violent-repeat-felons-back-onto-streets-create-safer-prisons/
https://americandigest.org/noted-in-passing-think-of-how-stupid-the-average-person-is-and-realize-half-of-them-are-stupider-than-that/
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/crazy-conspiracy-theories-2020/
https://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2021/03/washday-blues.html
Boredom?
A real smart TV would increase the volume when I start eating chips.
*.*
I had social services come round my house today complaining that I don't look after my kids properly.
I bet it was my oldest that spread these lies.
The little sh!t keeps getting out of his cage.
*.*
Moishe: Black is a color
Abram: No it is not.
Moishe: I'm telling you, black is a color.
Abram: No, it's not.
They go to the rabbi.
Moishe: Rabbi, is black a color?
Rabbi: Yes, Moshe, black is indeed a color.
Moshe: See, Abram, I told you.
Abram: Okay, but white is not a color,
Moishe: Yes it is.
Abram: No, it is not.
Moishe: Rabbi, is white a color?
Rabbi: Yes, Moishe, white is indeed a color.
Moishe: See, I told you I sold you a color TV.
*.*
The longest drum solo ever recorded was 10 hours and 26 minutes.
It was performed by the child sitting behind me on Delta flight 963 from LA to Tokyo.
*.*
Corona must have hit India really hard.
I´ve not received a single phone call this week from Microsoft to warn me about a virus on my computer.
Quote of the Times;
The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves. - Lenin
Link of the Times;
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/
Issue of the Times;
Affluence + Secularism = Boredom = Leftism by Dennis Prager
Just as physicists look for equations to explain the natural world, I have always thought it useful to look for equations to explain human nature. For example, in my book on happiness, I offer this equation: U = I – R. Unhappiness = Image – Reality. The difference between the images we have for our life and the reality of our life is one way of measuring how much unhappiness we experience.
Here, I offer another theorem, this time to help explain leftism.
A + S = B = L
Affluence + Secularism = Boredom = Leftism
The search for an equation to help explain leftism (as distinguished from traditional liberalism) emanates from these facts:
Most leftists come from the upper and upper-middle class. This was true for the two founders of leftism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx was supported by his family and by Engels, who was a wealthy businessman and the son of a very wealthy businessman. All the Western spies for the Soviet Union were economically secure. And the great funder of radical causes today is a billionaire George Soros.
Nearly all leftists are irreligious people. And the breeding place of leftism, the university, is the most secular institution in modern society.
These two facts produce a problem: Many people lack meaning in their lives. And lack of meaning is another way of stating “boredom” — a boredom of the soul.
People need meaning. After food, that is the greatest human need. As important as sex is, there are happy people who go without sex (loss of a partner, never having found a partner, vows of chastity), but there are no happy people who go without meaning (no matter how much sex they have).
This need for meaning has traditionally been met by four things: religion, family, providing for oneself and one’s family, and patriotism. And all are fading.
Let’s begin with religion. In America today, religion is in sharp decline. According to Pew Research, more than a third of all Americans born after 1980 identify with no religion. That is the highest percentage ever. In a recent Gallup Poll, only 47% of American adults said they were members of a church, mosque or synagogue. It was the first time since Gallup began asking Americans about religious membership in the 1930s that a majority of Americans said they were not members of a church, mosque or synagogue.
Next comes family. Marrying and making a family have always been sources of meaning to the great majority of people. However, like religion, the American family is also in steep decline. For the first time in American history, according to Statista, as of 2020, nearly half of all men in America (46%) have never been married, and 41% of American women have never been married. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 85.4 million Americans 18 and over have never been married. There are presently 130 million unmarried American adults. Worse yet, as Dr. Bella DePaulo of the University of California at Santa Barbara wrote in Psychology Today, “Half of all solo single people don’t want a romantic relationship or even a date.”
As every criminologist knows, a lot of single men is a problem for society. And as the ubiquity of women on the left and among the left’s angriest protesters makes clear, a lot of single women is no blessing either.
Another nearly universal source of meaning has been providing for oneself and one’s family. That’s why, though the poor lack money and material wealth, they have never lacked meaning. Figuring out how to feed one’s family every day provides a person with a great deal of meaning.
Finally, belonging to one’s nation also provided meaning to most people in modern history. But love of country largely died in Western Europe after World War II, and it is dying in America today.
So, then, with the four primary sources of meaning dying — killed in large measure by leftist ideology — meaning must be found elsewhere. And that is where the left steps in. Leftism has always been a secular religion. It kills traditional religion and presents itself as a secular alternative.
It certainly provides meaning. “Anti-racism” and saving the world from a threat to its very existence (global warming) are two prominent life-filling examples.
Therefore, the only way to prevent the left from destroying America and its core value of freedom is to make the case for Judeo-Christian religions, the importance of marriage and family, and the unique achievement of America as the world’s first and greatest multiracial, multiethnic, multinational society.
Americans should have been making that case in every generation. Post-World War II, they forgot, or never really believed, that the land of the free is, as former President Ronald Reagan warned, always just one generation away from losing its freedom.
News of the Times;
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/26/tulsi-gabbard-slams-divisive-racialization-we-are-/
https://babylonbee.com/news/in-closing-argument-prosecutor-tearfully-addresses-each-juror-by-name-phone-number-and-street-address
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/why-georgia-reopening-coronavirus-pandemic/610882/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/23/biden-stops-fining-illegal-aliens-who-do-not-depart-u-s-cancels-their-debt/
https://www.dailywire.com/news/black-owned-businesses-at-george-floyd-square-beg-for-help-amid-spiking-crime-nosediving-revenue
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/iran-foreign-minister-john-kerry-javad-zarif-israel
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/04/26/kamala-gate-the-white-house-responds-to-growing-scandal-over-giving-away-vps-book-to-illegal-aliens-n1442836
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/texas-capitol-staffer-alleges-being-drugged-lobbyist-n1265433
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/23/more-than-900-people-shot-in-mayor-lightfoots-chicago-this-year/
https://technofog.substack.com/p/declassified-fisa-opinion-shows-more
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/pentagon-reveals-3-hour-long-irgc-swarming-incident-us-vessels-gulf
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/04/26/police-less-in-seattle-cops-are-leaving-in-droves-n1442800
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/former-obama-adviser-arrested-stealing-new-york
https://wirepoints.org/what-a-foundation-two-illinois-profs-on-hot-mic-giddy-about-social-justice-everywhere-in-schools-wirepoints/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fk-police-proclaims-32-year-oid-livestreamer-killing-cop-2am-drunken-hit-and-run
*.*
I had social services come round my house today complaining that I don't look after my kids properly.
I bet it was my oldest that spread these lies.
The little sh!t keeps getting out of his cage.
*.*
Moishe: Black is a color
Abram: No it is not.
Moishe: I'm telling you, black is a color.
Abram: No, it's not.
They go to the rabbi.
Moishe: Rabbi, is black a color?
Rabbi: Yes, Moshe, black is indeed a color.
Moshe: See, Abram, I told you.
Abram: Okay, but white is not a color,
Moishe: Yes it is.
Abram: No, it is not.
Moishe: Rabbi, is white a color?
Rabbi: Yes, Moishe, white is indeed a color.
Moishe: See, I told you I sold you a color TV.
*.*
The longest drum solo ever recorded was 10 hours and 26 minutes.
It was performed by the child sitting behind me on Delta flight 963 from LA to Tokyo.
*.*
Corona must have hit India really hard.
I´ve not received a single phone call this week from Microsoft to warn me about a virus on my computer.
Quote of the Times;
The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves. - Lenin
Link of the Times;
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/
Issue of the Times;
Affluence + Secularism = Boredom = Leftism by Dennis Prager
Just as physicists look for equations to explain the natural world, I have always thought it useful to look for equations to explain human nature. For example, in my book on happiness, I offer this equation: U = I – R. Unhappiness = Image – Reality. The difference between the images we have for our life and the reality of our life is one way of measuring how much unhappiness we experience.
Here, I offer another theorem, this time to help explain leftism.
A + S = B = L
Affluence + Secularism = Boredom = Leftism
The search for an equation to help explain leftism (as distinguished from traditional liberalism) emanates from these facts:
Most leftists come from the upper and upper-middle class. This was true for the two founders of leftism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx was supported by his family and by Engels, who was a wealthy businessman and the son of a very wealthy businessman. All the Western spies for the Soviet Union were economically secure. And the great funder of radical causes today is a billionaire George Soros.
Nearly all leftists are irreligious people. And the breeding place of leftism, the university, is the most secular institution in modern society.
These two facts produce a problem: Many people lack meaning in their lives. And lack of meaning is another way of stating “boredom” — a boredom of the soul.
People need meaning. After food, that is the greatest human need. As important as sex is, there are happy people who go without sex (loss of a partner, never having found a partner, vows of chastity), but there are no happy people who go without meaning (no matter how much sex they have).
This need for meaning has traditionally been met by four things: religion, family, providing for oneself and one’s family, and patriotism. And all are fading.
Let’s begin with religion. In America today, religion is in sharp decline. According to Pew Research, more than a third of all Americans born after 1980 identify with no religion. That is the highest percentage ever. In a recent Gallup Poll, only 47% of American adults said they were members of a church, mosque or synagogue. It was the first time since Gallup began asking Americans about religious membership in the 1930s that a majority of Americans said they were not members of a church, mosque or synagogue.
Next comes family. Marrying and making a family have always been sources of meaning to the great majority of people. However, like religion, the American family is also in steep decline. For the first time in American history, according to Statista, as of 2020, nearly half of all men in America (46%) have never been married, and 41% of American women have never been married. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 85.4 million Americans 18 and over have never been married. There are presently 130 million unmarried American adults. Worse yet, as Dr. Bella DePaulo of the University of California at Santa Barbara wrote in Psychology Today, “Half of all solo single people don’t want a romantic relationship or even a date.”
As every criminologist knows, a lot of single men is a problem for society. And as the ubiquity of women on the left and among the left’s angriest protesters makes clear, a lot of single women is no blessing either.
Another nearly universal source of meaning has been providing for oneself and one’s family. That’s why, though the poor lack money and material wealth, they have never lacked meaning. Figuring out how to feed one’s family every day provides a person with a great deal of meaning.
Finally, belonging to one’s nation also provided meaning to most people in modern history. But love of country largely died in Western Europe after World War II, and it is dying in America today.
So, then, with the four primary sources of meaning dying — killed in large measure by leftist ideology — meaning must be found elsewhere. And that is where the left steps in. Leftism has always been a secular religion. It kills traditional religion and presents itself as a secular alternative.
It certainly provides meaning. “Anti-racism” and saving the world from a threat to its very existence (global warming) are two prominent life-filling examples.
Therefore, the only way to prevent the left from destroying America and its core value of freedom is to make the case for Judeo-Christian religions, the importance of marriage and family, and the unique achievement of America as the world’s first and greatest multiracial, multiethnic, multinational society.
Americans should have been making that case in every generation. Post-World War II, they forgot, or never really believed, that the land of the free is, as former President Ronald Reagan warned, always just one generation away from losing its freedom.
News of the Times;
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/26/tulsi-gabbard-slams-divisive-racialization-we-are-/
https://babylonbee.com/news/in-closing-argument-prosecutor-tearfully-addresses-each-juror-by-name-phone-number-and-street-address
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/why-georgia-reopening-coronavirus-pandemic/610882/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/23/biden-stops-fining-illegal-aliens-who-do-not-depart-u-s-cancels-their-debt/
https://www.dailywire.com/news/black-owned-businesses-at-george-floyd-square-beg-for-help-amid-spiking-crime-nosediving-revenue
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/iran-foreign-minister-john-kerry-javad-zarif-israel
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/04/26/kamala-gate-the-white-house-responds-to-growing-scandal-over-giving-away-vps-book-to-illegal-aliens-n1442836
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/texas-capitol-staffer-alleges-being-drugged-lobbyist-n1265433
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/23/more-than-900-people-shot-in-mayor-lightfoots-chicago-this-year/
https://technofog.substack.com/p/declassified-fisa-opinion-shows-more
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/pentagon-reveals-3-hour-long-irgc-swarming-incident-us-vessels-gulf
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/04/26/police-less-in-seattle-cops-are-leaving-in-droves-n1442800
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/former-obama-adviser-arrested-stealing-new-york
https://wirepoints.org/what-a-foundation-two-illinois-profs-on-hot-mic-giddy-about-social-justice-everywhere-in-schools-wirepoints/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fk-police-proclaims-32-year-oid-livestreamer-killing-cop-2am-drunken-hit-and-run
Follow?
I went to a party last night - my neighbor celebrated his 105th birthday.
He's 80 really, but since his wife died three weeks ago he said it feels like his birthday every day.
*.*
To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the IT guy, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
*.*
Lines:
A plateau is the highest form of flattery.
Remember back when we would eat cake after someone blew all over it? Man, we were wild.
The funny thing about kids is: they're the reason we lose it, and also the reason we keep it together.
Co-worker: Can you fax that to me? Me: I can't fax from where I live. Co-worker: Where do you live? Me: 2021. I live in 2021, Susan.
Meghan Markle says she was advised by her doctors not to travel and attend Prince Phillip's funeral. She was advised by everyone else in the world not to attend just because.
I'm not rude. I'm just not afraid to say what everybody else is thinking.
I love it when people think they're going to punish me by not talking to me.
It's great that cold and flu season is finally over so we can move on to allergy season.
It's OK to fall apart sometimes. Tacos do and we still love 'em.
When we were young, we'd sneak out of home to go to parties. When you're old, you sneak out of parties to go home.
Nothing tops a plain pizza.
Hostess has ordered a recall on their Snowballs. My guess is they finally realized what's in those things.
Cosmetology student miss's class. Forced to take makeup class.
I'm going to start collecting highlighters. Mark my words.
It turns out if you show up to the Olive Garden with a U-Haul, they won't really give you unlimited bread sticks.
Never do anything you wouldn't want to explain to the paramedics.
I'm getting ready for bathing suit season by learning Photoshop.
The adult version of "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" is "Wallet, glasses, keys and phone."
*.*
Sneaker manufacturer Nike has graciously reached out to the Biden administration with an offer to house thousands of unaccompanied migrant children at their factories around the globe.
“Nike is committed to being a good corporate citizen. We are proud to assist the Biden administration by caring for these unaccompanied migrant children,” a spokesman for the company said Friday. “We have plenty of factories all around the globe with lots of room for kids. We’re here to help!”
The spokesman said that the migrant children will be fed, clothed, and educated by Nike employees until permanent homes can be found for them. In addition to a regular school curriculum, Nike said they will focus heavily on recreational activities.
“The core of our plan is our arts and crafts program,” the spokesman said. “These lucky kids will get to spend up to 18 hours each day on fun activities such as leather-working, sewing, and embroidery. What could possibly be more fun than that?”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the move makes sense on many levels. “When it comes to looking after thousands of orphaned children from impoverished countries, nobody has more experience than Nike,” she noted.
*.*
I was in the Far east and I went into a restaurant, ordered Octopus and the waiter said: "It takes about 4 hours."
I asked "Why?"
He said, "It keeps turning the gas off."
Quote of the Times;
A line drive foul ball hits a four year old boy in the head at Fenway. Jim Rice, realizing in a flash that it would take EMTs too long to arrive and cut through the crowd, sprang from the dugout and scooped up the boy. He laid the boy gently on the dugout floor, where the Red Sox medical team began to treat him. When the boy arrived at the hospital 30 minutes later, doctors said, without a doubt that Jim's prompt actions saved the boy's life. Jim returned to the game in a blood-stained uniform. A real badge of courage. After visiting the boy in the hospital, and realizing the family was of modest means, he stopped by the business office and instructed that the bill be sent to him. This is what a sports Hero looks like.
Link of the Times;
https://returntonow.net/
Issue of the Times;
Follow The ‘Science,’ They Said by Victor Davis Hanson
As a general rule, the next time an official, a politician, or an expert lectures us on the “science,” make sure that he is not projecting his own unscientific biases onto others.
Throughout the Trump years and in particular during the 2020 COVID pandemic crisis, the nation was lectured by the Left “to follow the data,” as the Democrats proclaimed themselves the “party of science.” As sober and judicious children of the enlightenment, they alone offered the necessary disinterested correctives to Trump’s supposed bluster and exaggeration—and to his anti-scientific deplorable following (often dismissed by Biden as dregs, chumps, and Neanderthals).
In truth, leftists and Democrats have become the purveyors of superstition. Their creation of a fantasy world is not because they do not believe in science per se, but because they believe more in the primacy of ideology that should shape and warp science in the proper fashion for the greater good. What prompted Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, or Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hysterically and wrongly to forecast widespread demographic or climatological catastrophe in just a few years was not ignorance of science per se, but a desire to massage science for our own good.
The Godheads of COVID-19
The medical pandemic godhead of the Left has been octogenarian Dr. Anthony Fauci. His twin chief public relations explainer has been liberal darling New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Both were always supposed to be on top of “the science.”
Dr. Fauci has not just been flat-out wrong on the science of COVID—in his assessments of the origins and possible dangers of COVID-19, of when we can get back to normal, of when the vaccinations would appear, and of which particular governors have been doing the most or least effective management of the disease. He has also, by his own admission, deliberately lied.
That is, Fauci has rejected science, as he knew it, to mislead the public. For our own interests, he adopted the Platonic “noble lie” on occasion. So, for example, he conceded that he had downplayed the value of masks (he now seems to approve of wearing one on top of another) in order to prevent too many wearing them, and thus the public shorting the supply available to more important health care workers.
Fauci also proverbially moved the goal posts on herd immunity, from the high 60s to the low 90s as a percent of the population, either vaccinated or with antibodies, necessary to achieve a de facto end of the pandemic. Again, Fauci defied the science on the theory he knew better, in assuming that the childish public would become too lax when and if it believed herd immunity was on the horizon.
Unspoken, is that Fauci usually errs on the side of what is deemed progressive orthodoxy. In contrast, Dr. Scott Atlas warned us that extended and complete lockdowns in any cost-benefit analyses might well inflict more human and economic damage than the virus. And he added that an opened-up Florida and Texas might do no worse virally than a locked-down California or New York, while avoiding the severe recessionary collateral damage.
Yet Atlas was damned for “not following the science” for the crime of working for Trump and for following the science: while targeted wearing of masks and social distancing and quarantining of vulnerable populations are necessary, complete quarantines of the entire population and extended closing schools are counterproductive.
Little need be said of Cuomo other than the applicable Roman dictum he created a desert and called it peace. When the federal government delivered a tent-hospital and a huge hospital ship, they went unused. When it sent ventilators, Cuomo raged that they were too little, too late.
When his own record in New York of COVID mismanagement became public (currently over 2,500 deaths per million population, the second highest state in the nation and about 35-40 percent higher than the open, but hated Texas and Florida), he lied about his own redirection of COVID patients into pristine long-term care facilities that resulted in a proverbial bloodbath.
In his adherence to science, Cuomo received an Emmy for his narcissistic press conferences and adeptness at blame-gaming. That he was brought low not by his lethal politicking, but by serial allegations of being rude and handsy with female staffers suggests that his unscientific approaches to the pandemic were of little concern to his “scientific” supporters.
The “Science” of Quarantines
Consider another scientific debacle. In the midst of the quarantine, when governors and mayors were threatening to jail any who violated social distancing, mask wearing, or assembling en mass outdoors, hundreds of thousands hit the nation’s streets in crowded phalanxes of screaming and saliva-projecting protestors—all supposedly in violation of “the science” of epidemiology and public health.
The reaction of our elected officials—not just silence but open approbation—is to be expected, given the political class is so often timid and simply genuflects to perceived voter pressure groups. But “the science” on spec also came to the rescue of the quarantine violators to offer pseudo-scientific support for violating government-mandated “data”-driven policies.
Over 1,200 healthcare officials weighed in with their “expertise” and postmodern gibberish to defend mass violations of quarantine rules: “Instead, we wanted to present a narrative that prioritizes opposition to racism as vital to the public health, including the epidemic response.”
And the experts added all sort of postmodern hedging to emphasize that their recalibrated woke “science” was now different than others’ less woke “science”:
However, as public-health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States.
So in Animal Farm terms, some protests “are more in violation than others.” In a more historical vein, we might imagine these “experts” at another time and place, joining the chorus of scientists praising the agronomic genius of Joseph Stalin, whose “brilliant” and “scientific” irrigation fantasies began the destruction of the Aral Sea. In any case, millions decided why stay indoors when millions of others hit the streets to protest, loot, burn, destroy, and injure—with the sanction of our experts.
Non Compos Mentis
The Left hammered the 74-year-old overweight Trump about his supposedly iffy health. They brought in a Yale psychiatrist, Dr. Bandy X. Lee, to testify about his incapacity to Congress. There and in op-eds, she offered a pseudo-scientific assessment of debility (e.g., “I and hundreds of mental health professionals are available and eager to assist with any or all these efforts”). Yes, and unethically so, without ever having examined the patient in question.
According to Lee, Trump was mentally impaired, a sociopath, and needed an “intervention,” a serious medical diagnosis that soon became a “scientific” grounding for the wild charges leveled at Trump of incompetence on network and cable news. Trump in his exasperation at “fake news,” took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test to prove his powers of recall and analysis. He aced the exam.
But where is Lee now in the era of a 78-year-old Joe Biden in the White House?
Or rather, where is the Left to use her “research” to question whether Joe Biden is compos mentis? In the last 30 days, he has claimed there were none vaccinated when he entered office (he was photographed receiving a shot on December 21, a month before his inauguration).
In truth, 1 million a day were receiving vaccinations when Biden assumed the presidency. He cannot at times remember the name of his own secretary of defense or of the Pentagon where Gen.(ret.) Lloyd Austin works, and increasingly needs a translator to make sense of his slurred words, raspy voice, off-topic wandering, truncated vocabulary, and fragmented syntax.
Trump was once said to be shaky and disguising an obvious illness because after a long day at West Point he walked slowly in his leather shoes on a smooth ramp. In contrast, this week Joe Biden staggered and fell three times climbing the stairs to Air Force One—without a commensurate media howl. Will Joe be subject to an outside medical assessment? Might Dr. Lee reappear to give him the Montreal test?
I think we know the answer. “Science” is used to denigrate a perceived enemy of the people, and ignored to enhance a guardian of the flock.
Hate Crimes by Whom?
Joe Biden and the Left are implying if not outright asserting that there is now an epidemic of Anti-Asian violence perpetrated by white racists, insidiously emboldened by Trump’s past references to the “Wuhan” or “China” virus. No doubt, in a nation of 330 million, there are lots of haters who happen to be white, but are they the main culprit for racially-motivated crimes of hatred against Asians?
Recently, a deranged sex-addict and religious fanatic shot and killed eight people in the Atlanta area, six of whom were apparently Asian Americans. When apprehended, the 21-year-old confessed to the murders. In unhinged fashion, he claimed that he sought to eliminate sex workers and their places of business in general, with which he was apparently obsessed.
The unhinged shooter denied that race drove his murdering and indeed, he murdered two whites and injured a Latino. And his past proven sex addition and mental instability, along with his lethal shooting of non-Asians, suggest he was a pathological, mentally impaired murderer, not a race hater bent of mowing down the Other.
No matter. The media massaged the story into proof of its theories that a spate of recent hate crime attacks against Asian Americans were fueled by white supremacists, or at least those goaded on by the racist Donald Trump. That narrative was lacking evidence in both the Georgia shootings and the recent assaults on Asians.
One data point to justify such unsubstantiated charges that we might not see is a list of all Asian American victims of recent hate crimes, calibrated by the race/ethnicity of the attacker, and then adjusted to percentages in the general population—all in the context of clear racial animosity.
To do so, might suggest that in all those attacks where a clear, premeditated racial motive, rather than random violence or psychological deviance, is found, black males are inordinately represented.
For example, in the FBI hate crime statistics for 2019, the most recent year available, 4.4 percent of all single bias racial hate crimes were Asian Americans. Where the race and ethnicity of the perpetrators for all hate crimes was known, 52.5 percent were “white,” of whom 33.1 percent were in the ethnic category list as “Not Hispanic or Latino.”
Such so-called non-Hispanic whites make up about 65-70 percent of the population, depending on the method of categorization. In contrast, 23.9 percent of hate-crime perpetrators were identified as black or African American, while they comprise only 12-13 percent of the population. Data from New York and San Francisco on bodily violence or crimes in general against Asians suggest the same pattern.
The science might suggest that in matters of hate crimes—if society insists on focusing on the race and ethnicity of the attacker and knows the motive—it should then compare relative percentages of the population to determine who is inordinately, or not inordinately, committing such crimes.
To the degree, some progressives follow the science, the more honest left-wing venues have conceded that blacks may have been inordinately responsible, in demographic terms, for anti-Asian violence and indeed are over-represented in race-driven hate crimes in general. But they escape the obvious ramifications of such intersectional hatreds, by offering an exculpatory exegesis: nonetheless, whites are responsible for the hate, by pitting one racial group against another to ensure Roman-like divide-and-conquer “white supremacy.” Thus, for example, one Antoine Watson ran across the street to push down and kill 84-year-old San Franciscan Vicha Ratanapakdee because either Donald Trump had used the phrase “Chinese virus” or due to the insidious “white supremacy” that had conditioned the African American Watson to hate immigrants from Thailand.
Fencing in Cities, Vaccination, and Ruskies
The science might also tally up all the material and human damage committed in 2020 in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. and then compare it to the carnage of January 6 at the Capitol. And then experts might show whether there is a scientific correlation between the number of federal troops posted in Washington to other major riot-torn cities, at least in terms of soldiers stationed per person injured and killed or millions of dollars in property damaged. Otherwise, why the inordinate military build-up around the Capitol?
In truth, our woke officials pay little attention to science. If the point is to vaccinate first all Americans most likely to die or become seriously ill by COVID-19, then age and proven comorbidities might have been the most effective scientific criteria to schedule vaccinations. Yet for weeks in many states instead we floundered by ignoring science as scientists haggled over which particular marginalized or essential community should gain precedence over another.
In the Russian collusion hoax, to this hour, we have ignored the findings of Robert Mueller’s failed $35 million, 22 month investigation. Christopher Steele testified that he had no data to present to back up his mythical, now biblical dossier. James Comey pleaded amnesia 245 times as in “I don’t recall” when asked under oath about his own investigation. Robert Muller himself testified that he knew almost nothing about Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier, the catalysts for his own investigation. James Clapper had no evidence, he testified under oath, to substantiate his public charges that the president of the United States may be a “Russian asset.” No matter, in “learning-nothing-forgetting-nothing” fashion, we are now returning to the theme of Trump as a Russian asset and colluder on the basis of “new” evidence from the “intelligence community.”
Such is the “science” of Russian collusion.
As a general rule, the next time an official, a politician, or an expert lectures us on the “science,” make sure that he is not projecting his own unscientific biases onto others.
News of the Times;
https://justthenews.com/government/congress/relatives-able-edit-death-certificates-loved-ones-fema-funeral-reimbursement
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/04/breaking-msnbc-films-thugs-looting-dollar-star-looters-notice-attack-msnbc-live-tv-tell-go-fk-home-video/
https://thepostmillennial.com/ex-california-mayor-who-advocated-for-defunding-police-arrested-for-child-sex-crimes/
https://barenakedislam.com/2017/05/17/bbc-documentary-on-the-widespread-sexual-assault-and-exploitation-of-young-white-christian-girls-by-pakistani-muslim-men/
https://www.westernjournal.com/az-cop-finds-17-illegal-aliens-car-forced-set-free-border-patrol-refuses-help
https://thecoloradoherald.com/2021/video-chinese-masks-contain-tiny-worms/
https://newspunch.com/90000-boy-scouts-break-silence-on-massive-pedophile-ring/
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/cancel-rent-champion-ayanna-pressley-has-made-thousands-as-landlord/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/defense_departments_extremists_happen_to_look_exactly_like_trump_voters.html
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/04/oklahoma-drivers-now-have-immunity-from-hitting-rioters-in-streets-under-new-law-signed-by-gov-stitt/
https://national-justice.com/uk-activist-judge-sentences-woman-jail-calling-holocaust-cash-cow
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/04/24/report-border-czar-kamala-harriss-book-is-purchased-with-us-tax-dollars-and-given-as-welcome-gift-to-illegal-aliens-n1442572
https://nationalfile.com/facebook-co-founder-gave-millions-to-blms-patrisse-cullors-before-facebook-censored-news-story-about-her-mansions/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9504445/French-policewoman-stabbed-death-inside-police-station-attacker-shot-killed.html
https://econimica.blogspot.com/2021/04/federal-reserve-induced-inflation-has.html
He's 80 really, but since his wife died three weeks ago he said it feels like his birthday every day.
*.*
To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the IT guy, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
*.*
Lines:
A plateau is the highest form of flattery.
Remember back when we would eat cake after someone blew all over it? Man, we were wild.
The funny thing about kids is: they're the reason we lose it, and also the reason we keep it together.
Co-worker: Can you fax that to me? Me: I can't fax from where I live. Co-worker: Where do you live? Me: 2021. I live in 2021, Susan.
Meghan Markle says she was advised by her doctors not to travel and attend Prince Phillip's funeral. She was advised by everyone else in the world not to attend just because.
I'm not rude. I'm just not afraid to say what everybody else is thinking.
I love it when people think they're going to punish me by not talking to me.
It's great that cold and flu season is finally over so we can move on to allergy season.
It's OK to fall apart sometimes. Tacos do and we still love 'em.
When we were young, we'd sneak out of home to go to parties. When you're old, you sneak out of parties to go home.
Nothing tops a plain pizza.
Hostess has ordered a recall on their Snowballs. My guess is they finally realized what's in those things.
Cosmetology student miss's class. Forced to take makeup class.
I'm going to start collecting highlighters. Mark my words.
It turns out if you show up to the Olive Garden with a U-Haul, they won't really give you unlimited bread sticks.
Never do anything you wouldn't want to explain to the paramedics.
I'm getting ready for bathing suit season by learning Photoshop.
The adult version of "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" is "Wallet, glasses, keys and phone."
*.*
Sneaker manufacturer Nike has graciously reached out to the Biden administration with an offer to house thousands of unaccompanied migrant children at their factories around the globe.
“Nike is committed to being a good corporate citizen. We are proud to assist the Biden administration by caring for these unaccompanied migrant children,” a spokesman for the company said Friday. “We have plenty of factories all around the globe with lots of room for kids. We’re here to help!”
The spokesman said that the migrant children will be fed, clothed, and educated by Nike employees until permanent homes can be found for them. In addition to a regular school curriculum, Nike said they will focus heavily on recreational activities.
“The core of our plan is our arts and crafts program,” the spokesman said. “These lucky kids will get to spend up to 18 hours each day on fun activities such as leather-working, sewing, and embroidery. What could possibly be more fun than that?”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the move makes sense on many levels. “When it comes to looking after thousands of orphaned children from impoverished countries, nobody has more experience than Nike,” she noted.
*.*
I was in the Far east and I went into a restaurant, ordered Octopus and the waiter said: "It takes about 4 hours."
I asked "Why?"
He said, "It keeps turning the gas off."
Quote of the Times;
A line drive foul ball hits a four year old boy in the head at Fenway. Jim Rice, realizing in a flash that it would take EMTs too long to arrive and cut through the crowd, sprang from the dugout and scooped up the boy. He laid the boy gently on the dugout floor, where the Red Sox medical team began to treat him. When the boy arrived at the hospital 30 minutes later, doctors said, without a doubt that Jim's prompt actions saved the boy's life. Jim returned to the game in a blood-stained uniform. A real badge of courage. After visiting the boy in the hospital, and realizing the family was of modest means, he stopped by the business office and instructed that the bill be sent to him. This is what a sports Hero looks like.
Link of the Times;
https://returntonow.net/
Issue of the Times;
Follow The ‘Science,’ They Said by Victor Davis Hanson
As a general rule, the next time an official, a politician, or an expert lectures us on the “science,” make sure that he is not projecting his own unscientific biases onto others.
Throughout the Trump years and in particular during the 2020 COVID pandemic crisis, the nation was lectured by the Left “to follow the data,” as the Democrats proclaimed themselves the “party of science.” As sober and judicious children of the enlightenment, they alone offered the necessary disinterested correctives to Trump’s supposed bluster and exaggeration—and to his anti-scientific deplorable following (often dismissed by Biden as dregs, chumps, and Neanderthals).
In truth, leftists and Democrats have become the purveyors of superstition. Their creation of a fantasy world is not because they do not believe in science per se, but because they believe more in the primacy of ideology that should shape and warp science in the proper fashion for the greater good. What prompted Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, or Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hysterically and wrongly to forecast widespread demographic or climatological catastrophe in just a few years was not ignorance of science per se, but a desire to massage science for our own good.
The Godheads of COVID-19
The medical pandemic godhead of the Left has been octogenarian Dr. Anthony Fauci. His twin chief public relations explainer has been liberal darling New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Both were always supposed to be on top of “the science.”
Dr. Fauci has not just been flat-out wrong on the science of COVID—in his assessments of the origins and possible dangers of COVID-19, of when we can get back to normal, of when the vaccinations would appear, and of which particular governors have been doing the most or least effective management of the disease. He has also, by his own admission, deliberately lied.
That is, Fauci has rejected science, as he knew it, to mislead the public. For our own interests, he adopted the Platonic “noble lie” on occasion. So, for example, he conceded that he had downplayed the value of masks (he now seems to approve of wearing one on top of another) in order to prevent too many wearing them, and thus the public shorting the supply available to more important health care workers.
Fauci also proverbially moved the goal posts on herd immunity, from the high 60s to the low 90s as a percent of the population, either vaccinated or with antibodies, necessary to achieve a de facto end of the pandemic. Again, Fauci defied the science on the theory he knew better, in assuming that the childish public would become too lax when and if it believed herd immunity was on the horizon.
Unspoken, is that Fauci usually errs on the side of what is deemed progressive orthodoxy. In contrast, Dr. Scott Atlas warned us that extended and complete lockdowns in any cost-benefit analyses might well inflict more human and economic damage than the virus. And he added that an opened-up Florida and Texas might do no worse virally than a locked-down California or New York, while avoiding the severe recessionary collateral damage.
Yet Atlas was damned for “not following the science” for the crime of working for Trump and for following the science: while targeted wearing of masks and social distancing and quarantining of vulnerable populations are necessary, complete quarantines of the entire population and extended closing schools are counterproductive.
Little need be said of Cuomo other than the applicable Roman dictum he created a desert and called it peace. When the federal government delivered a tent-hospital and a huge hospital ship, they went unused. When it sent ventilators, Cuomo raged that they were too little, too late.
When his own record in New York of COVID mismanagement became public (currently over 2,500 deaths per million population, the second highest state in the nation and about 35-40 percent higher than the open, but hated Texas and Florida), he lied about his own redirection of COVID patients into pristine long-term care facilities that resulted in a proverbial bloodbath.
In his adherence to science, Cuomo received an Emmy for his narcissistic press conferences and adeptness at blame-gaming. That he was brought low not by his lethal politicking, but by serial allegations of being rude and handsy with female staffers suggests that his unscientific approaches to the pandemic were of little concern to his “scientific” supporters.
The “Science” of Quarantines
Consider another scientific debacle. In the midst of the quarantine, when governors and mayors were threatening to jail any who violated social distancing, mask wearing, or assembling en mass outdoors, hundreds of thousands hit the nation’s streets in crowded phalanxes of screaming and saliva-projecting protestors—all supposedly in violation of “the science” of epidemiology and public health.
The reaction of our elected officials—not just silence but open approbation—is to be expected, given the political class is so often timid and simply genuflects to perceived voter pressure groups. But “the science” on spec also came to the rescue of the quarantine violators to offer pseudo-scientific support for violating government-mandated “data”-driven policies.
Over 1,200 healthcare officials weighed in with their “expertise” and postmodern gibberish to defend mass violations of quarantine rules: “Instead, we wanted to present a narrative that prioritizes opposition to racism as vital to the public health, including the epidemic response.”
And the experts added all sort of postmodern hedging to emphasize that their recalibrated woke “science” was now different than others’ less woke “science”:
However, as public-health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States.
So in Animal Farm terms, some protests “are more in violation than others.” In a more historical vein, we might imagine these “experts” at another time and place, joining the chorus of scientists praising the agronomic genius of Joseph Stalin, whose “brilliant” and “scientific” irrigation fantasies began the destruction of the Aral Sea. In any case, millions decided why stay indoors when millions of others hit the streets to protest, loot, burn, destroy, and injure—with the sanction of our experts.
Non Compos Mentis
The Left hammered the 74-year-old overweight Trump about his supposedly iffy health. They brought in a Yale psychiatrist, Dr. Bandy X. Lee, to testify about his incapacity to Congress. There and in op-eds, she offered a pseudo-scientific assessment of debility (e.g., “I and hundreds of mental health professionals are available and eager to assist with any or all these efforts”). Yes, and unethically so, without ever having examined the patient in question.
According to Lee, Trump was mentally impaired, a sociopath, and needed an “intervention,” a serious medical diagnosis that soon became a “scientific” grounding for the wild charges leveled at Trump of incompetence on network and cable news. Trump in his exasperation at “fake news,” took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test to prove his powers of recall and analysis. He aced the exam.
But where is Lee now in the era of a 78-year-old Joe Biden in the White House?
Or rather, where is the Left to use her “research” to question whether Joe Biden is compos mentis? In the last 30 days, he has claimed there were none vaccinated when he entered office (he was photographed receiving a shot on December 21, a month before his inauguration).
In truth, 1 million a day were receiving vaccinations when Biden assumed the presidency. He cannot at times remember the name of his own secretary of defense or of the Pentagon where Gen.(ret.) Lloyd Austin works, and increasingly needs a translator to make sense of his slurred words, raspy voice, off-topic wandering, truncated vocabulary, and fragmented syntax.
Trump was once said to be shaky and disguising an obvious illness because after a long day at West Point he walked slowly in his leather shoes on a smooth ramp. In contrast, this week Joe Biden staggered and fell three times climbing the stairs to Air Force One—without a commensurate media howl. Will Joe be subject to an outside medical assessment? Might Dr. Lee reappear to give him the Montreal test?
I think we know the answer. “Science” is used to denigrate a perceived enemy of the people, and ignored to enhance a guardian of the flock.
Hate Crimes by Whom?
Joe Biden and the Left are implying if not outright asserting that there is now an epidemic of Anti-Asian violence perpetrated by white racists, insidiously emboldened by Trump’s past references to the “Wuhan” or “China” virus. No doubt, in a nation of 330 million, there are lots of haters who happen to be white, but are they the main culprit for racially-motivated crimes of hatred against Asians?
Recently, a deranged sex-addict and religious fanatic shot and killed eight people in the Atlanta area, six of whom were apparently Asian Americans. When apprehended, the 21-year-old confessed to the murders. In unhinged fashion, he claimed that he sought to eliminate sex workers and their places of business in general, with which he was apparently obsessed.
The unhinged shooter denied that race drove his murdering and indeed, he murdered two whites and injured a Latino. And his past proven sex addition and mental instability, along with his lethal shooting of non-Asians, suggest he was a pathological, mentally impaired murderer, not a race hater bent of mowing down the Other.
No matter. The media massaged the story into proof of its theories that a spate of recent hate crime attacks against Asian Americans were fueled by white supremacists, or at least those goaded on by the racist Donald Trump. That narrative was lacking evidence in both the Georgia shootings and the recent assaults on Asians.
One data point to justify such unsubstantiated charges that we might not see is a list of all Asian American victims of recent hate crimes, calibrated by the race/ethnicity of the attacker, and then adjusted to percentages in the general population—all in the context of clear racial animosity.
To do so, might suggest that in all those attacks where a clear, premeditated racial motive, rather than random violence or psychological deviance, is found, black males are inordinately represented.
For example, in the FBI hate crime statistics for 2019, the most recent year available, 4.4 percent of all single bias racial hate crimes were Asian Americans. Where the race and ethnicity of the perpetrators for all hate crimes was known, 52.5 percent were “white,” of whom 33.1 percent were in the ethnic category list as “Not Hispanic or Latino.”
Such so-called non-Hispanic whites make up about 65-70 percent of the population, depending on the method of categorization. In contrast, 23.9 percent of hate-crime perpetrators were identified as black or African American, while they comprise only 12-13 percent of the population. Data from New York and San Francisco on bodily violence or crimes in general against Asians suggest the same pattern.
The science might suggest that in matters of hate crimes—if society insists on focusing on the race and ethnicity of the attacker and knows the motive—it should then compare relative percentages of the population to determine who is inordinately, or not inordinately, committing such crimes.
To the degree, some progressives follow the science, the more honest left-wing venues have conceded that blacks may have been inordinately responsible, in demographic terms, for anti-Asian violence and indeed are over-represented in race-driven hate crimes in general. But they escape the obvious ramifications of such intersectional hatreds, by offering an exculpatory exegesis: nonetheless, whites are responsible for the hate, by pitting one racial group against another to ensure Roman-like divide-and-conquer “white supremacy.” Thus, for example, one Antoine Watson ran across the street to push down and kill 84-year-old San Franciscan Vicha Ratanapakdee because either Donald Trump had used the phrase “Chinese virus” or due to the insidious “white supremacy” that had conditioned the African American Watson to hate immigrants from Thailand.
Fencing in Cities, Vaccination, and Ruskies
The science might also tally up all the material and human damage committed in 2020 in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. and then compare it to the carnage of January 6 at the Capitol. And then experts might show whether there is a scientific correlation between the number of federal troops posted in Washington to other major riot-torn cities, at least in terms of soldiers stationed per person injured and killed or millions of dollars in property damaged. Otherwise, why the inordinate military build-up around the Capitol?
In truth, our woke officials pay little attention to science. If the point is to vaccinate first all Americans most likely to die or become seriously ill by COVID-19, then age and proven comorbidities might have been the most effective scientific criteria to schedule vaccinations. Yet for weeks in many states instead we floundered by ignoring science as scientists haggled over which particular marginalized or essential community should gain precedence over another.
In the Russian collusion hoax, to this hour, we have ignored the findings of Robert Mueller’s failed $35 million, 22 month investigation. Christopher Steele testified that he had no data to present to back up his mythical, now biblical dossier. James Comey pleaded amnesia 245 times as in “I don’t recall” when asked under oath about his own investigation. Robert Muller himself testified that he knew almost nothing about Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier, the catalysts for his own investigation. James Clapper had no evidence, he testified under oath, to substantiate his public charges that the president of the United States may be a “Russian asset.” No matter, in “learning-nothing-forgetting-nothing” fashion, we are now returning to the theme of Trump as a Russian asset and colluder on the basis of “new” evidence from the “intelligence community.”
Such is the “science” of Russian collusion.
As a general rule, the next time an official, a politician, or an expert lectures us on the “science,” make sure that he is not projecting his own unscientific biases onto others.
News of the Times;
https://justthenews.com/government/congress/relatives-able-edit-death-certificates-loved-ones-fema-funeral-reimbursement
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/04/breaking-msnbc-films-thugs-looting-dollar-star-looters-notice-attack-msnbc-live-tv-tell-go-fk-home-video/
https://thepostmillennial.com/ex-california-mayor-who-advocated-for-defunding-police-arrested-for-child-sex-crimes/
https://barenakedislam.com/2017/05/17/bbc-documentary-on-the-widespread-sexual-assault-and-exploitation-of-young-white-christian-girls-by-pakistani-muslim-men/
https://www.westernjournal.com/az-cop-finds-17-illegal-aliens-car-forced-set-free-border-patrol-refuses-help
https://thecoloradoherald.com/2021/video-chinese-masks-contain-tiny-worms/
https://newspunch.com/90000-boy-scouts-break-silence-on-massive-pedophile-ring/
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/cancel-rent-champion-ayanna-pressley-has-made-thousands-as-landlord/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/defense_departments_extremists_happen_to_look_exactly_like_trump_voters.html
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/04/oklahoma-drivers-now-have-immunity-from-hitting-rioters-in-streets-under-new-law-signed-by-gov-stitt/
https://national-justice.com/uk-activist-judge-sentences-woman-jail-calling-holocaust-cash-cow
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/04/24/report-border-czar-kamala-harriss-book-is-purchased-with-us-tax-dollars-and-given-as-welcome-gift-to-illegal-aliens-n1442572
https://nationalfile.com/facebook-co-founder-gave-millions-to-blms-patrisse-cullors-before-facebook-censored-news-story-about-her-mansions/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9504445/French-policewoman-stabbed-death-inside-police-station-attacker-shot-killed.html
https://econimica.blogspot.com/2021/04/federal-reserve-induced-inflation-has.html
Rules?
I was dismayed this afternoon when my wife told me my 6-year-old son wasn't actually mine.
She added; I need to pay more attention at school pick up.
*.*
I saw on a flyer coming home:
Missing from the town center area: our 3-year-old cat Tiddles (pictured).
He is recently neutered, wears a collar with a bell to alert birds, and is on a strict vegan diet.
I thought, "And you're surprised he fuvked off?"
*.*
James is walking on a downtown street one day, and he happens to see his old high school friend, Harry, a little ways up ahead. "Harry, Harry, how are you?" he greets his old buddy after getting his attention.
"Not so good," says Harry.
"Why, what happened?" James queries.
"Well," Harry says, "I just went bankrupt and I've still got to feed my family. I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Could have been worse," James replies calmly. "Could have been worse."
A month or so later, James again encounters Harry, in a restaurant. "And how are things now?" he asks.
"Terrible!" says Harry. "Our house burned down last night."
"Could have been worse," says James, again with total aplomb, and goes about his business.
A month later, James runs into Harry a third time. "Well, how goes it?" he inquires.
"Oh!" says Harry. "Things just get worse and worse. It's one tragedy after another! Now my wife has left me!"
Harry nods his head and gives his usual optimistic-seeming little smile, accompanied by his usual words: "Could've been worse."
This time, Harry grabs James by the shoulders. "Wait a minute!" he says. "I'm not gonna let you off so easy this time. Three times in the past few months we've run into one another, and every time I've told you the latest disaster in my life. Every time you say the same thing: 'Could have been worse.' This time, for God's sake, Harry, I want you to tell me: how in Heaven's name could it have been any worse?"
James looks at Harry with the same little wisp of a smile. "Could have been worse," he says. "Could have happened to me."
*.*
My wife asked me an upbeat tone, "Truth or dare?"
I chuckled and played along, "Truth."
She went on, "So tell me, do I look fat in this dress?"
I backed up, "Woah, woah, woah. This is not fair. I said truth, not dare."
*.*
Top Five Least Successful Comic Book Heroes:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Sloths
Dr. Align, Chiropractor
Captain America Top 40
Spider Vein Man
Aquafina Man
Quote of the Times;
"Don’t tell me I have to respect your 'preferred pronouns' when you don’t respect my free speech." - @tweettruth2me
Link of the Times;
https://www.deconstructingconventional.com/post/18-reason-i-won-t-be-getting-a-covid-vaccine
Issue of the Times;
The 10 Radical New Rules That Are Changing America by Victor Davis Hanson
There are 10 new ideas that are changing America, maybe permanently.
1) Money is a construct. It can be created from thin air. Annual deficits and aggregate national debt no longer matter much.
Prior presidents ran up huge annual deficits, but at least there were some concessions that the money was real and had to be paid back. Not now. As we near $30 trillion in national debt and 110 percent of annual GDP, our elites either believe permanent zero interest rates make the cascading obligation irrelevant, or the larger the debt, the more likely we will be forced to address needed income redistribution.
2) Laws are not necessarily binding anymore. Joe Biden took an oath to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” But he has willfully rendered federal immigration laws null and void. Some rioters are prosecuted for violating federal laws, others not so much. Arrests, prosecutions, and trials are all fluid. Ideology governs when a law is still considered a law.
Crime rates do not necessarily matter. If someone is carjacked, assaulted or shot, it can be understood to be as much the victim’s fault as the perpetrator’s. Either the victim was too lax, uncaring and insensitive, or he provoked his attacker. How useful the crime is to the larger agendas of the Left determines whether a victim is really a victim, and the victimizer really a victimizer.
3) Racialism is now acceptable. We are defined first by our ethnicity or religion, and only secondarily — if at all — by an American commonality. The explicit exclusion of whites from college dorms, safe spaces, and federal aid programs is now noncontroversial. It is unspoken payback for perceived past sins, or a type of “good” racism. Falsely being called a racist makes one more guilty than falsely calling someone else a racist.
4) The immigrant is mostly preferable to the citizen. The newcomer, unlike the host, is not stained by the sins of America’s founding and history. Most citizens currently must follow quarantine rules and social distancing, stay out of school and obey all the laws.
Yet those entering the United States illegally need not follow such apparently superfluous COVID-19 rules. Their children should be immediately schooled without worry of quarantine. Immigrants need not worry about their illegal entry or residence in America. Our elites believe illegal entrants more closely resemble the “founders” than do legal citizens, about half of whom they consider irredeemable.
5) Most Americans should be treated as we would treat little children. They cannot be asked to provide an ID to vote. “Noble lies” by our elites about COVID-19 rules are necessary to protect “Neanderthals” from themselves.
Americans deserve relief from the stress of grades, standardized testing, and normative rules of school behavior. They still are clueless about why it is good for them to pay far more for their gasoline, heating, and air conditioning.
6) Hypocrisy is passe. Virtue-signaling is alive. Climate change activists fly on private jets. Social justice warriors live in gated communities. Multibillionaire elitists pose as victims of sexism, racism, and homophobia. The elite need these exemptions to help the helpless. It is what you say to lesser others about how to live, not how you yourself live, that matters.
7) Ignoring or perpetuating homelessness is preferable to ending it. It is more humane to let thousands of homeless people live, eat, defecate, and use drugs on public streets and sidewalks than it is to green-light affordable housing, mandate hospitalization for the mentally ill, and create sufficient public shelter areas.
8) McCarthyism is good. Destroying lives and careers for incorrect thoughts saves more lives and careers. Cancel culture and the Twitter Reign of Terror provide needed deterrence.
Now that Americans know they are one wrong word, act, or look away from losing their livelihoods, they are more careful and will behave in a more enlightened fashion. The social media guillotine is the humane, scientific tool of the woke.
9) Ignorance is preferable to knowledge. Neither statue-toppling, nor name-changing, nor the 1619 Project require any evidence or historical knowledge. Heroes of the past were simple constructs. Undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees reflect credentials, not knowledge. The brand, not what created it, is all that matters.
10) Wokeness is the new religion, growing faster and larger than Christianity. Its priesthood outnumbers the clergy and exercises far more power. Silicon Valley is the new Vatican, and Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter are the new gospels.
Americans privately fear these rules while publicly appearing to accept them. They still could be transitory and invite a reaction. Or they are already near-permanent and institutionalized.
The answer determines whether a constitutional republic continues as once envisioned, or warps into something never imagined by those who created it.
News of the Times;
https://www.dailywire.com/news/study-cities-with-blm-protests-had-up-to-6000-more-homicides-than-expected-from-2014-2019
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/we-were-creating-story-our-focus-was-get-trump-out-cnn-director-busted-undercover-veritas
https://nypost.com/2021/04/10/inside-blm-co-founder-patrisse-khan-cullors-real-estate-buying-binge/
https://www.wnd.com/2021/04/throw-away-masks-burn-vaccine-passport-rand-paul/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/04/florida-woman-bath-salts-claims-harry-potter-kills-federal-judge-runs-6-year-old-boy/
https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/baltimore-police-manpower-falls-below-700-sworn-officers-as-morale-fades/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/04/14/the-truth-about-papa-john-schnatter-finally-comes-out-n1440078
https://vdare.com/posts/suspect-in-austin-massacre-is-black-former-sheriff-s-detective-also-accused-of-child-rape
https://www.newstarget.com/2021-04-11-oprah-richest-black-woman-longing-race-war.html
https://summit.news/2021/04/13/footlocker-looted-again-despite-200-million-in-donations-to-blm-causes/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5628556/
https://breaking911.com/previously-deported-convicted-rapist-among-group-of-migrants-illegally-crossing-us-mexico-border/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/texas-nonprofit-hires-biden-transition-official-then-lands-half-billion-dollar-contract
https://www.westernjournal.com/one-year-trump-mocked-sunlight-covid-comments-research-shows-8x-effective-previously-thought/
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/04/10/finally-some-research-into-whether-diversity-training-actually-works-unfortunately-its-not-very-promising/
She added; I need to pay more attention at school pick up.
*.*
I saw on a flyer coming home:
Missing from the town center area: our 3-year-old cat Tiddles (pictured).
He is recently neutered, wears a collar with a bell to alert birds, and is on a strict vegan diet.
I thought, "And you're surprised he fuvked off?"
*.*
James is walking on a downtown street one day, and he happens to see his old high school friend, Harry, a little ways up ahead. "Harry, Harry, how are you?" he greets his old buddy after getting his attention.
"Not so good," says Harry.
"Why, what happened?" James queries.
"Well," Harry says, "I just went bankrupt and I've still got to feed my family. I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Could have been worse," James replies calmly. "Could have been worse."
A month or so later, James again encounters Harry, in a restaurant. "And how are things now?" he asks.
"Terrible!" says Harry. "Our house burned down last night."
"Could have been worse," says James, again with total aplomb, and goes about his business.
A month later, James runs into Harry a third time. "Well, how goes it?" he inquires.
"Oh!" says Harry. "Things just get worse and worse. It's one tragedy after another! Now my wife has left me!"
Harry nods his head and gives his usual optimistic-seeming little smile, accompanied by his usual words: "Could've been worse."
This time, Harry grabs James by the shoulders. "Wait a minute!" he says. "I'm not gonna let you off so easy this time. Three times in the past few months we've run into one another, and every time I've told you the latest disaster in my life. Every time you say the same thing: 'Could have been worse.' This time, for God's sake, Harry, I want you to tell me: how in Heaven's name could it have been any worse?"
James looks at Harry with the same little wisp of a smile. "Could have been worse," he says. "Could have happened to me."
*.*
My wife asked me an upbeat tone, "Truth or dare?"
I chuckled and played along, "Truth."
She went on, "So tell me, do I look fat in this dress?"
I backed up, "Woah, woah, woah. This is not fair. I said truth, not dare."
*.*
Top Five Least Successful Comic Book Heroes:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Sloths
Dr. Align, Chiropractor
Captain America Top 40
Spider Vein Man
Aquafina Man
Quote of the Times;
"Don’t tell me I have to respect your 'preferred pronouns' when you don’t respect my free speech." - @tweettruth2me
Link of the Times;
https://www.deconstructingconventional.com/post/18-reason-i-won-t-be-getting-a-covid-vaccine
Issue of the Times;
The 10 Radical New Rules That Are Changing America by Victor Davis Hanson
There are 10 new ideas that are changing America, maybe permanently.
1) Money is a construct. It can be created from thin air. Annual deficits and aggregate national debt no longer matter much.
Prior presidents ran up huge annual deficits, but at least there were some concessions that the money was real and had to be paid back. Not now. As we near $30 trillion in national debt and 110 percent of annual GDP, our elites either believe permanent zero interest rates make the cascading obligation irrelevant, or the larger the debt, the more likely we will be forced to address needed income redistribution.
2) Laws are not necessarily binding anymore. Joe Biden took an oath to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” But he has willfully rendered federal immigration laws null and void. Some rioters are prosecuted for violating federal laws, others not so much. Arrests, prosecutions, and trials are all fluid. Ideology governs when a law is still considered a law.
Crime rates do not necessarily matter. If someone is carjacked, assaulted or shot, it can be understood to be as much the victim’s fault as the perpetrator’s. Either the victim was too lax, uncaring and insensitive, or he provoked his attacker. How useful the crime is to the larger agendas of the Left determines whether a victim is really a victim, and the victimizer really a victimizer.
3) Racialism is now acceptable. We are defined first by our ethnicity or religion, and only secondarily — if at all — by an American commonality. The explicit exclusion of whites from college dorms, safe spaces, and federal aid programs is now noncontroversial. It is unspoken payback for perceived past sins, or a type of “good” racism. Falsely being called a racist makes one more guilty than falsely calling someone else a racist.
4) The immigrant is mostly preferable to the citizen. The newcomer, unlike the host, is not stained by the sins of America’s founding and history. Most citizens currently must follow quarantine rules and social distancing, stay out of school and obey all the laws.
Yet those entering the United States illegally need not follow such apparently superfluous COVID-19 rules. Their children should be immediately schooled without worry of quarantine. Immigrants need not worry about their illegal entry or residence in America. Our elites believe illegal entrants more closely resemble the “founders” than do legal citizens, about half of whom they consider irredeemable.
5) Most Americans should be treated as we would treat little children. They cannot be asked to provide an ID to vote. “Noble lies” by our elites about COVID-19 rules are necessary to protect “Neanderthals” from themselves.
Americans deserve relief from the stress of grades, standardized testing, and normative rules of school behavior. They still are clueless about why it is good for them to pay far more for their gasoline, heating, and air conditioning.
6) Hypocrisy is passe. Virtue-signaling is alive. Climate change activists fly on private jets. Social justice warriors live in gated communities. Multibillionaire elitists pose as victims of sexism, racism, and homophobia. The elite need these exemptions to help the helpless. It is what you say to lesser others about how to live, not how you yourself live, that matters.
7) Ignoring or perpetuating homelessness is preferable to ending it. It is more humane to let thousands of homeless people live, eat, defecate, and use drugs on public streets and sidewalks than it is to green-light affordable housing, mandate hospitalization for the mentally ill, and create sufficient public shelter areas.
8) McCarthyism is good. Destroying lives and careers for incorrect thoughts saves more lives and careers. Cancel culture and the Twitter Reign of Terror provide needed deterrence.
Now that Americans know they are one wrong word, act, or look away from losing their livelihoods, they are more careful and will behave in a more enlightened fashion. The social media guillotine is the humane, scientific tool of the woke.
9) Ignorance is preferable to knowledge. Neither statue-toppling, nor name-changing, nor the 1619 Project require any evidence or historical knowledge. Heroes of the past were simple constructs. Undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees reflect credentials, not knowledge. The brand, not what created it, is all that matters.
10) Wokeness is the new religion, growing faster and larger than Christianity. Its priesthood outnumbers the clergy and exercises far more power. Silicon Valley is the new Vatican, and Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter are the new gospels.
Americans privately fear these rules while publicly appearing to accept them. They still could be transitory and invite a reaction. Or they are already near-permanent and institutionalized.
The answer determines whether a constitutional republic continues as once envisioned, or warps into something never imagined by those who created it.
News of the Times;
https://www.dailywire.com/news/study-cities-with-blm-protests-had-up-to-6000-more-homicides-than-expected-from-2014-2019
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/we-were-creating-story-our-focus-was-get-trump-out-cnn-director-busted-undercover-veritas
https://nypost.com/2021/04/10/inside-blm-co-founder-patrisse-khan-cullors-real-estate-buying-binge/
https://www.wnd.com/2021/04/throw-away-masks-burn-vaccine-passport-rand-paul/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/04/florida-woman-bath-salts-claims-harry-potter-kills-federal-judge-runs-6-year-old-boy/
https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/baltimore-police-manpower-falls-below-700-sworn-officers-as-morale-fades/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/04/14/the-truth-about-papa-john-schnatter-finally-comes-out-n1440078
https://vdare.com/posts/suspect-in-austin-massacre-is-black-former-sheriff-s-detective-also-accused-of-child-rape
https://www.newstarget.com/2021-04-11-oprah-richest-black-woman-longing-race-war.html
https://summit.news/2021/04/13/footlocker-looted-again-despite-200-million-in-donations-to-blm-causes/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5628556/
https://breaking911.com/previously-deported-convicted-rapist-among-group-of-migrants-illegally-crossing-us-mexico-border/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/texas-nonprofit-hires-biden-transition-official-then-lands-half-billion-dollar-contract
https://www.westernjournal.com/one-year-trump-mocked-sunlight-covid-comments-research-shows-8x-effective-previously-thought/
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/04/10/finally-some-research-into-whether-diversity-training-actually-works-unfortunately-its-not-very-promising/
Several animals were savagely beaten in the making of this page, including but not limited to; kittens, rabbits, zebu, skunks, puppies, and platypus. Also several monkeys where force fed crack to improve their typing skills.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.