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Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Tuesday, December 8, 2020
Erick Erickson Just Wow!
Erickson's got a big "substack" piece up, and it's a revelation, dang, "How the F— Am I the Sane One?":
I used to be a super political animal and now I am less so and find I am surrounded by people who have become more political. The 24/7 news cycle, social media, the atrophication of in-person social networks, the political demands resulting from a small base of persuadable voters turning America into an “us v them” society, the realization that much of the media really does hate conservatives and Christians — it has all turned into a perfect storm of polarization, politicization, and theological supplementation. As I was disentangling from a lot of it, a lot of people were getting tangled up in it. I stepped back and realized so little of it does matter and so little of it does change and a lot of people stepped forward for change they could believe in or change from that. But the reality is neither side is really changing much in Washington anymore. Now I get yelled out by both sides — from the one for not going down the stolen election rabbit hole or sufficiently genuflecting and from the other for still actually being a Christian conservative. It was a rude awaking for some new followers to find out I actually really do believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God and yes, transgenderism is a mental issue and Ellen whatshername can call herself whatever she wants, but I won’t be bullied into thinking it is normal, healthy, or right. On the other side, I have a lot of people yelling at me for refusing to accept the election was stolen. Frankly, I don’t even think the Trump team really believes it. His lawyers sure as hell don’t or they wouldn’t have screwed up so may cases with late filings, missing paperwork, missing fees, and erroneous affidavits. I know of a call wherein they told some folks I am very familiar with that they really were just going to scream and holler and refuse to concede. It is all payback for 2016. They’ve lost about 50 lawsuits and in their latest, in state court in Georgia, they forgot to pay the court filing fees and fill out the right paperwork. That got their lawsuit thrown out. That’s not even considering the batshit crazy lawsuit from Sidney Powell and her insane claims. I’m sorry some people take that stuff seriously. I’m sorry some people really believe Ware County, Georgia had machines seized. I’m sorry there are up and coming grifters on the right who don’t really believe it but get clicks, followers, and money by convincing you that they do. I’m sorry some people will take at face value the claims of some without thinking through or seeking rebuttal. I’m really concerned with the crazy on my side, or at least what should be my side. I’m not even sure I have a side anymore. I just tell people I’m a conservative who thinks the GOP has failed on the debt and a bunch of issues and the Democrats are going full bore socialist secularists who’ll eventually get their own Mao and deny it while trying to silence people like me. I’m a Christian who thinks a lot of Christians have turned politics into religion. I’m a husband who wants to take care of my wife. I’m a dad who just wants to raise my kids to love Jesus and improve their community. It’d be far easier for me, as a conservative talk radio show host to just get on the crazy train and tell you all exactly what you want to hear even though it is not true even though you are epistemically convinced it is true. It’d be far easier and less stressful and more financially lucrative for me to sound like everyone else on the right, right now. But I think it would be wrong...
Monday, December 7, 2020
The Peasants Are Resisting the Regime's 'Stay-at-Home' Diktats (VIDEO)
At the Los Angeles Times, "Many aren’t buying public officials’ ‘stay-at-home’ message. Experts say there’s a better way."
And from Vodkapundit, at Instapundit, "This Is Not a Sane World, Exhibit #1,000,006."
Sunday, December 6, 2020
Supreme Court to Hear Nazi-Era Art Cases
Background at the Times of Israel, "Heirs seek return of ‘cursed’ $200m golden treasure bought for Hitler: The Guelph collection, a trove of medieval Christian art, was sold to Nazi-run Prussia in 1935. Was the sale fair, or did Goering make its Jewish owners an offer they couldn’t refuse?"
And now at the Los Angeles Times, "Supreme Court weighs heirs’ claims over forced Jewish art sales during Nazi era":
WASHINGTON — Two years after Adolf Hitler took power in Germany, the Nazis achieved one of their cultural goals: the return of the Guelph Treasure, a collection of medieval Christian relics. Under pressure from Hitler’s deputy Hermann Goering, a consortium of Jewish art dealers agreed to sell the collection to the Prussian State Museum. On June 14, 1935, Saemy Rosenberg signed the sale documents in Berlin on behalf of his partners, receiving about one-third of what they had paid for the items in 1929. On Monday, the Supreme Court will consider whether Rosenberg’s grandson and heirs to two other art dealers can sue Germany and its state museum to recover the treasure or obtain compensation for the loss. “This was a forced sale to one of the greatest art thieves of all time. And it was literally a present for Hitler,” said Jed Leiber, a musician and record producer in Los Angeles. He was referring to reports that Goering later presented the treasures to Hitler. Most of the collection, known as Welfenschatz in Germany, is on display in the Bode Museum in Berlin. Not long after the sale, Rosenberg and his family left Germany for Amsterdam, where his daughter is said to have been a playmate of Anne Frank’s. From there, they moved to London before finally settling in New York City after the war, where Rosenberg reestablished himself as a prominent art dealer. In an interview, his grandson remembered the “wise, kind and elegant man” who taught him how to play chess. But he did not learn until decades later, long after Rosenberg’s death in 1971, about his grandfather’s role in the sale of the Guelph Treasure. It is one of two Holocaust-era cases to be heard by the Supreme Court on Monday, and both turn on whether a foreign state — in this instance Germany or Hungary — may be sued in the United States for “rights in property taken in violation of international law.” Usually, foreign governments and their agencies are shielded from suits under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. But there is an exception for an “expropriation” that violates international law, and the federal appeals court in Washington last year refused to dismiss the suits against the Hungarian national railroad and the German state museum because the alleged seizures of property were acts of genocide. “Nowhere was the Holocaust executed with such speed and ferocity as it was in Hungary,” the appeals court said in Simon vs. Hungary. In the summer of 1944, “Hungary rounded up more than 430,000 Jews for deportation to Nazi death camps,” the court noted. Government officials, including agents of the state railroad, organized four daily trains to shuttle victims to their deaths. Before cramming between 70 and 90 people into each freight car, railroad employees robbed them of all of their possessions. Rosalie Simon and 12 other survivors of the death camps sued Hungary and its railroad, and the D.C. Circuit appeals court, by a 2-1 vote, rejected Hungary’s claim of immunity. That decision helped clear the way for the suit against Germany over the Guelph Treasure. Before that, Leiber and his two co-plaintiffs, Alan Philipp and Gerald Stiebel, had filed a claim for recovery in Germany with an advisory commission for the Return of Cultural Property Seized as a Result of Nazi Persecution. The commission, which included several retired German politicians and judges, decided the 1935 sale was the result of a back-and-forth negotiation and “not a compulsory sale due to persecution.” The reduced value reflected the impact of the Great Depression, the commission said. The heirs then filed suit in federal court in Washington. “It is beyond serious debate that Nazi Germany took property in violation of international law by systematically targeting its Jewish citizens to make their property vulnerable for seizure,” they argued. Again, the D.C. Circuit Court agreed and refused Germany’s claim of immunity...
Keep reading.
After 2020 Losses, Some Democrats Question Party’s Health-Care Focus
Didn't some former (infamous) political advisor proclaim, "It's the economy, stupid"?
Well, that infamous person then was a Democrat and the stupid thing now is the Biden 2020 campaign (and all the stupid Squad-type associated losers).
After suffering losses in congressional races across the country, some Democrats are pushing the party to re-evaluate its focus on health care and prioritize the economy ahead of two key Senate races in Georgia. Health care was the most-mentioned issue across all Democratic presidential and Senate television ads, airing nearly 1.5 million times, in the 2020 election cycle, according to data from political ad tracker Kantar/CMAG. Democrats made defending the Affordable Care Act a top issue in Supreme Court confirmation hearings weeks before the election and promised repeatedly on the campaign trail to protect the law. Democrats took the House majority in 2018 after centering their campaigns on the Trump administration’s efforts to chip away at the health law. But after the party lost multiple House seats and underperformed in several Senate races this year, some former candidates and strategists who worked on 2020 campaigns say Democrats should have focused more on people who were losing their jobs and struggling to pay rent during the pandemic. “I think that the message needs to shift more towards the economy,” said Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who lost her race in November in a Miami-Dade County district that swung toward President Trump after voting overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016. “There’s a lot of fear that many people here will not be able to get back to work, that they don’t know where they’re going to be able to find their next paycheck,” she said. Following the election, Ms. Mucarsel-Powell wrote an opinion column that in part argued Democrats need to focus on the economy to win back support among Florida Latinos. Democratic lawmakers have also squabbled in private calls over what policies to run on. President-elect Joe Biden won after campaigning heavily against what he described as Mr. Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic, which has killed more than 276,000 people in the U.S. Mr. Biden said getting the virus under control was necessary for businesses and schools to get back to normal operations and to rebuild the economy. He made other economic promises, such as raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and forgiving some student-loan debt, but they were not as prominent in the general-election campaign. Chris Meagher, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said the party’s messaging was successful: “We took back the House in 2018, we continue to have the majority in 2020 and we beat an incumbent president on that message.” A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll the month before the election found the economy was the most important issue to voters, followed by the coronavirus and health care. Voters said they trusted Republicans most to deal with the economy, while they gave Democrats the lead on health care. In Georgia, where two runoff races will decide the majority in the Senate, Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have brought up the virus repeatedly in their ads in recent weeks and tried to address both health care and economic concerns related to the pandemic. Representatives for their campaigns said they are trying to balance both messages. “Especially in the throes of this pandemic, you really can’t shortchange either one of those ideas,” said Howard Franklin, an Atlanta-based Democratic strategist, who said more Democrats need to intertwine the health-care and economic messages. Brad Woodhouse, executive director of the health-care-focused Protect Our Care, said his group’s surveys have shown coronavirus relief as the top issue for voters. He said protecting people with pre-existing conditions and the Affordable Care Act are “not as resonant at this very minute,” though he said Democrats can still link those issues to their response to the pandemic. In addition to the pandemic, Democrats campaigned on a lawsuit from GOP-led states seeking to invalidate the 2010 health law. The Supreme Court heard arguments Nov. 10 and a decision is expected before June. After health care and coronavirus, jobs and unemployment was the No. 3 issue in Democratic ads, while it was the second-most-mentioned issue in Republican ads. Health care was the top issue mentioned in Republican ads as well, as they criticized Democratic candidates for a push in the progressive wing of the party to end private insurance and extend Medicare to all Americans. Mr. Biden and many other Democrats didn’t support that, instead backing an expansion of Obamacare by adding a public-insurance option. Kansas state Sen. Barbara Bollier, a former anesthesiologist who lost her race for the U.S. Senate, said it didn’t matter that she opposes Medicare for All—people said she supported it anyway...Still more.
Sharyl Attkisson, Slanted
Just out, at Amazon, Sharyl Attkisson, Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism.
If There Were War Right Now...
Interesting:
This young girl understand whats going on pic.twitter.com/2k9Vfs3Rko
— Once you know the truth you can not sleep (@lizzywales) December 6, 2020
Sunday Rule 5
At Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."
And some young Asian titties:Gotta love big titty Asians pic.twitter.com/YmeIWq4SsL
— TRY NOT TO GET A BONER (@dontgetboner) December 5, 2020
Sweden Ends Its Pandemic Experiment
Now Sweden decides to lock down, eh?
I guess building up national herd immunity was taking too long. Too many dying. It's bitch, girl.
Sweden’s Covid-19 experiment is over. After a late autumn surge in infections led to rising hospitalizations and deaths, the government has abandoned its attempt—unique among Western nations—to combat the pandemic through voluntary measures. Like other Europeans, Swedes are now heading into the winter facing restrictions ranging from a ban on large gatherings to curbs on alcohol sales and school closures—all aimed at preventing the country’s health system from being swamped by patients and capping what is already among the highest per capita death tolls in the world. The clampdown, which started last month, put an end to a hands-off approach that had made the Scandinavian nation a prime example in the often heated global debate between opponents and champions of pandemic lockdowns. Admirers of the Swedish way as far as the U.S. hailed its benefit to the economy and its respect for fundamental freedoms. Critics called it a gamble with human lives, especially those of the most vulnerable. With its shift in strategy, the government is now siding with those advocating at least some mandatory restrictions. When the pathogen swept across Europe in March, Sweden broke with much of the continent and opted not to impose mask-wearing and left known avenues of viral transmission such as bars and nightclubs open, leaving it to citizens to take their own precautions. As late as last month, Swedes enjoyed mass sporting and cultural events and health-care officials insisted that the voluntary measures were enough to spare the country the resurgence in infections that was sweeping Europe. Weeks later, with total Covid-19-related deaths reaching almost 700 per million inhabitants, infections growing exponentially and hospital wards filling up, the government made a U-turn. In an emotional televised address on Nov. 22, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven pleaded with Swedes to cancel all nonessential meetings and announced a ban on gatherings of more than eight people, which triggered the closure of cinemas and other entertainment venues. Starting Monday, high schools will be closed. “Authorities chose a strategy totally different to the rest of Europe, and because of it the country has suffered a lot in the first wave,” said Piotr Nowak, a physician working with Covid-19 patients at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. “We have no idea how they failed to predict the second wave.” Last week Sweden’s total coronavirus death count crossed 7,000. Neighboring Denmark, Finland and Norway, all similar-sized countries, have recorded since the start of the pandemic 878, 415 and 354 deaths respectively. For the first time since World War II, Sweden’s neighbors have closed their borders with the country. “We don’t like to say that Sweden has been the black sheep, but it has been the different sheep,” said Vivikka Richt, spokeswoman of the Finnish health ministry. Dr. Nowak said medical personnel had never shared the optimism of the country’s public-health agency about so-called herd immunity—population-wide resistance to a pathogen acquired through gradual exposure—and had repeatedly warned that the virus couldn’t be controlled with voluntary measures alone. One reason Sweden stuck to its approach for so long despite the warning signs is the high degree of independence and authority enjoyed by the health agency and other similar state bodies under Swedish law. The public face of the country’s pandemic strategy was Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist. Dr. Tegnell declined to be interviewed this week, but in earlier conversations with The Wall Street Journal and other media he said lockdowns were unsustainable and unnecessary. His agency has continued to discourage mask-wearing just as the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, a European Union agency whose headquarters are located near Dr. Tegnell’s office in Stockholm, recommends wearing them.Still more.
Saturday, December 5, 2020
It's a Con. It's Been a Con the Whole Time (VIDEO)
At AoSHQ, "Confused Old Man: If I Have a Disagreement With Kamala I'll Just Pretend I Have Advanced Cognitive Decline and Resign as Being Mentally Incompetent to Serve as President."
Joe Biden is asked about his disagreements with Kamala Harris on certain issues:
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 4, 2020
"Like I told Barack, if I reach something where there's a fundamental disagreement we have based on a moral principle, I'll develop some disease and say I have to resign." pic.twitter.com/SLcvrwaPCA
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom
At Amazon, Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual.
FIND YOUR WILL, FIND YOUR DISCIPLINE--AND YOU WILL FIND YOUR FREEDOM.
Jocko Willink's methods for success were born in the SEAL Teams, where he spent most of his adult life, enlisting after high school and rising through the ranks to become the commander of the most highly decorated special operations unit of the war in Iraq. In Discipline Equals Freedom, the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Extreme Ownership describes how he lives that mantra: the mental and physical disciplines he imposes on himself in order to achieve freedom in all aspects of life...
Shop Deals
At Amazon, Today's Deals: New deals. Every day. Shop our Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and more daily deals and limited-time sales.And, Tiny Survival Guide: A Life Insurance Policy in Your Pocket - The Ultimate “Survive Anything” Everyday Carry: Emergency, Disaster Preparedness Micro-Guide.
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BONUS: F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek).
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BONUS: F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek).
Will Amazon Suppress the True Michael Brown Story?
Interesting. And I'm just learning about this. It's a Shelby Steele joint.
Watch the trailer of Vimeo (here), apparently since YouTube won't host is.
Jason Riley wrote about it a WSJ (paywall) and City Journal:
Shelby Steele’s new film takes a critical look at the prevailing narrative. It’s now under ‘content review.’ August was the sixth anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, the black teenager who was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo. The incident, and the nationwide coverage it attracted, marked the beginning of a period of mass protests against police, which culminated (let’s hope) after the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis this May. The fashionable explanation for what happened to Brown, Floyd and others—such as Freddie Gray in 2015 and Philando Castile in 2016—is so-called systemic racism. The activist left and the mainstream media insist that law enforcement targeted these men because they were black—and that if they weren’t black, they would still be alive. The truth is more complicated and less politically correct, and it’s the subject of an engrossing new documentary that is scheduled to premiere Oct. 16. The film, titled “What Killed Michael Brown?,” is written and narrated by the noted race scholar Shelby Steele and directed by his son, Eli Steele. Readers of these pages probably know the elder Mr. Steele through his best-selling books and occasional Journal op-eds. But earlier in his career, Mr. Steele also won acclaim for his work in television. In 1990 he co-wrote and produced “Seven Days in Bensonhurst,” an Emmy-winning documentary about Yusef Hawkins, the black teenager from Brooklyn who was fatally shot in 1989 after he and some friends were attacked by a white mob. In an interview this week, Mr. Steele, who is based at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, explained the significance of Brown’s death and what it tells us about race relations today. “Michael Brown represented, even more so than Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray and others, the distortion of truth, of reality,” he said. Mr. Steele added that when it comes to racial controversies, liberals have developed what he calls a “poetic truth,” which may be at complete odds with objective truth but nevertheless helps them advance a desirable narrative. In the case of Michael Brown, reality was turned on its head. “It was almost absolute,” Mr. Steele said. “The language—he was ‘executed,’ he was ‘assassinated,’ ‘hands up, don’t shoot’—it was a stunning example of poetic truth, of the lies that a society can entertain in pursuit of power.” Despite ample forensic evidence, the grand-jury reports and the multiple Justice Department investigations clearing the police officer of any wrongdoing, “there are blacks today, right now in Ferguson, as I point out in the film, who still truly believe that Michael Brown was killed out of racial animus,” he said. “In a microcosm, that’s where race relations are today. The truth has no chance. It’s smothered by the politics of victimization.” Yet Mr. Steele sees a better future, and the interviews highlighted in “What Killed Michael Brown?” help to explain his optimism. One of the film’s strong suits is showcasing the words and deeds of everyday community leaders in places like Ferguson, St. Louis and Chicago. These people are far more focused on black self-development than on badgering whites or blaming society for problems in poor black communities. They understand and accept objective truth but mostly toil in obscurity while liberal billionaires cut million-dollar checks to subsidize Black Lives Matter activism and antiracism gibberish from “woke” academics. “It’s easy to say, ‘The white man, the white man,’ and point the finger,” says a pastor in the film whose church is located in one of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. “In reality, we have to take a very close look at ourselves.” His focus is on “the transformation of the person. And we’re telling them, hey, educationally, you gotta get it together. Economically, you gotta get it together. Family and spiritually, you gotta get it together. And you have to take responsibility.” The president of the St. Louis NAACP chapter told Mr. Steele there was no evidence that the Ferguson protests had done anything to help the black people who live there. Property values have fallen, crime has increased, and schools continue to underperform. “Let’s be clear. The progressive agenda is not the black agenda,” he says. “The people in that community are no better off than they were prior to the death of that young black child. They’re no better off, and everybody knows it.” Amazon, which was scheduled to stream the movie, is now having second thoughts and has placed it under “content review.” Eli Steele, the director, told me that he will resort to other streaming platforms if he has to and is referring people to the film’s website, WhatKilledMichaelBrown.com, for more details on how to view it. The progressive agenda may not be the black agenda, but it is the media’s agenda. Sadly, speaking plain truths about racial inequality in America today remains controversial.More here.
Friday, December 4, 2020
Rania Khalek on Biden's Cabinet
Ms. Rania's further to the kooked-out left than Max Blumenthal, but she's a killer performance artist, and hot.
Covid Shrinks the Labor Market, Pushing Out Women and Baby Boomers
At WSJ, "Nearly four million Americans have stopped working or looking for jobs":
Unlike previous recessions, this one is making it especially difficult for parents, women in particular, to work because of school closures and the loss of child care. https://t.co/tMz82YGdnX
— Catherine Lucey (@catherine_lucey) December 3, 2020
Since spring lockdowns were lifted, the demand for workers has snapped back faster than many economists expected. Between April and October the unemployment rate fell by more than half, to 6.9%, undoing more than two-thirds of its initial rise.But unemployment data overstates the health of the labor market because the supply of people either working or looking for a job has declined. The U.S. labor force is 2.2% smaller than in February, a loss of 3.7 million workers.The labor-force participation rate, or the share of Americans 16 years and over working or seeking work, was 61.7% in October, down from 63.4% in February. Though up from April’s trough, that is near its lowest since the 1970s, when far fewer women were in the workforce.The supply of workers and their productivity are the building blocks of economic growth. A smaller labor force leaves fewer workers to build machines and clean tables, restraining the economy’s long-term prospects.“If we don’t get all the workers back, we can never have a V-shaped recovery,” said Betsey Stevenson, economics professor at the University of Michigan, referring to a quick and sustained bounce-back after a sharp decline. “Everybody should be worried about making sure that we don’t leave workers behind,” she said.>Many economists say it’s too soon to conclude this year’s decline in participation is permanent. They note labor-force participation usually falls in recessions. The lack of good-paying job opportunities prompt many of the unemployed to give up the job search, return to school or simply retire earlier than they had planned. When labor markets tighten, rising wages and better hours pull people back into the workforce. Heading into the pandemic, labor force participation rates had improved; unemployment fell to 50-year lows and wages rose during the last economic expansion.Many who have left the labor force had worked in low-wage sectors like retail, hospitality and personal care services disproportionately hit by the pandemic. Once the virus is contained, many of those jobs and workers may return, boosting participation.Just a third of the increase in the number of people sidelined from the labor force since February 2020 say they still want a job but are not now looking, according to the Labor Department.>Older workers who leave the labor force for good might mean employers turn to hiring more younger workers at lower wages when the economy recovers more broadly. But that’s not the same thing as the creation of new jobs, which is the engine of economic growth.Some economists say the extent to which participation revives depends on how swiftly demand rebounds. Joel Prakken, chief U.S. economist at IHS Markit, believes that the combination of falling unemployment and the reversal of virus-related economic effects will gradually restore participation to pre-pandemic levels.The economy has already recovered faster than many predicted in the spring, and advances in vaccine development suggest the potential for a strong recovery as the health threat ebbs.New applications for unemployment benefits declined last week, a sign layoffs are easing but remain high. U.S. services businesses, a key driver of economic growth, gained ground for the sixth straight month in November, adding to signs of a continued recovery.Nonetheless, some economists see three reasons the pandemic’s depressing effect on the labor force could linger. First, it appears to have sped up some baby boomers’ decision to retire, shrinking the number of productive workers in the economy prematurely. Second, it is forcing some parents of young children, in particular women, to reduce their hours or stop working altogether, which could make a comeback harder. Third, it is falling particularly heavily on workers with less education and skills. These workers often struggle to find well-paying work and many drop out of the workforce.Participation fell sharply after the 2007-09 recession and never fully recovered. This partly reflected demographics as the first baby boomers qualified for Social Security in 2008. The recession damped participation of “prime-age” workers, those 25 to 54, which didn’t return to 2007 levels until 2019, when the labor market was strong. Lower participation reduced average annual economic growth by 0.6 percentage point from 2009 to 2017, according to S&P Global.This recession appears to be speeding up retirements. In the third quarter of this year, about 3.2 million more baby boomers said they were out of the labor force due to retirement than in the same period a year earlier, according to Pew Research. From 2011 through 2019, the number of retired baby boomers rose at a rate of about two million annually.Labor-force participation among workers aged 55 and over logged in at 38.7% in October, down from 40.3% in February.
“It’s always harder for older workers to find jobs when they’re pushed out,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, labor economist at the New School in New York City.That’s especially true for older workers who entered the pandemic already in a vulnerable position. At the start of the year, Karen Naranjo, age 65, was unemployed, networking at charity events while preparing to look for a job at a nonprofit serving homeless or at-risk youth that used her project-management skills. But then the pandemic upended her plans.
Wednesday, December 2, 2020
I'm Interviewed at the 'Viking'
It's the school newspaper. I'm not linking, But they were fair. And I must have been particularly loquacious.
Two political science professors at Long Beach City College provided their insight into the presidential election. Since the country has received the news that previous vice president, Joe Biden, would become the 46th president of the United States, the country has been hit with many questions, some being about voter fraud and what to expect in the upcoming weeks. “Trump and his campaign will continue to challenge the election, in public opinion and in the courts. Trump’s supporters claim this was a ‘stolen election,’ but so far, there’s been little hard proof (of massive fraud in particular, at least from what I’ve seen),” said political science professor, Donald Douglas, who has been teaching at Long Beach City College since 2000. Douglas shared more of his insight to what is currently happening in the country. “The problem, of course, is that everybody’s going to view the whole thing from their own partisan perspective. Trump and his supporters say he was robbed. Democrats say Biden is the president-elect. It all seems like a blur. Mostly, we’ll have to let the legal process play out. Trump’s campaign has filed at least 16 lawsuits in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It doesn’t look like things are going all that well so far, but it’s complicated,” said Douglas. Douglas shared information on the requirements every state has for the election. “The 50 states are required to submit their final election certifications to Congress by December 14th, when members of the Electoral College are set to meet. If Trump’s legal challenges go to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the final winner of the majority of the Electoral College vote is disputed, a decision will come before December 14th. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Gore on December 12th, stopping the recount in Florida, leaving Bush ahead in the state and delivering Florida’s electors to Bush, and victory in the Electoral College,” he said. A possible Supreme Court case in the future leaves some uncertainty on who will take office on January 20. Douglas discussed the different possibilities that could take place. “There won’t be a temporary vacancy of the office of presidency. Trump will absolutely serve out his term until January 20th, and most likely Joe Biden will be sworn in. It’s complicated, but if there was a tie in the Electoral College, or if Congress refused to accept the certification of elections from a state or a number of states, Congress would have to vote to choose the winner, and the vote is by state delegations.” Matthew Atkinson, a political science professor at Long Beach City College since 2016, also had more insight on this possibility. “The rules are very specific, I don’t think that there are any states where the election is so close that the courts are going to throw the electors into limbo,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any possibility that these recounts or lawsuits would change any of the outcomes. I think Biden has by now had more than enough votes to lose one of the states that contested. I don’t think he’ll lose any of them but even if he did, he still has enough Electoral College votes in,” said Atkinson. Despite the uncertainty still on who will be sworn into office this upcoming January, it was a tight race throughout the entire election. Joe Biden won with 306 electoral college votes, and President Donald Trump with 232 electoral college votes. Why was this election so close? “Overall turnout was 66 percent of eligible voters, the highest turnout since 1900. Quite simply, more people voted. And Trump increased his numbers from 2016. The movement to “Keep America Great” is here to stay. It’s going to be a powerful and enduring factor of American politics for a long time, long after Trump’s retired from the scene. Democrats are worried, and rightly so. They lost seats in Congress. They failed to win back the majority in the Senate, and the two Georgia runoff elections to the Senate are a long shot for the party. And Democrats failed to win back the majority in any state legislature. Except for the presidential race, it was a bad night for Democrats and the left,” said Douglas. This election had the highest voter turnout compared to every past election. Atkinson said, “Through most of the late 20th century, voters didn’t really feel like that there was much at stake in the election and they certainly didn’t feel like there was an option for them that was important or exciting for a lot of Democratic voters.” “It’s the top down mobilizing effect where it’s the parties and the politicians investing the resources and getting people to turn out to vote because that’s essential, and then there’s the bottom up people all of a sudden waking up and saying, oh wow, this is really important and start talking about it,” said Atkinson. “If people sustain this level of voting, it would be really good for democracy, because it is good for Democratic representation,” said Atkinson. “A lot can happen, but should gridlock reign in Washington, it’s going to be rough for the party in the 2022 midterms, with a strong possibility of Republicans retaking majority control of that chamber two years before the 2024 election,” said Douglas.
A Plea for a Humanist Antiracism
At Areo:
If the astounding fact that Donald Trump received a greater share of non-white people’s votes in 2020 than any Republican president since 1960 reveals anything at all, it’s that this past summer’s racial reckoning didn’t resonate with many. In contrast to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, which found expression in historic legislation, the results of this year’s cultural upheavals have been more symbolic than substantive. Statues were toppled—not just of confederates but of abolitionists and national founders; defund the police became the impromptu battle cry of progressive activists; dissenters like James Bennett, David Shor, Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan were fired from or pressured to leave their jobs for refusing to acquiesce. But, despite the fact that major corporations from Walmart to Goldman Sachs, along with almost every major media outlet, celebrity and cultural institution came out in full support of Black Lives Matter, conspicuously few national policies advocating structural reforms in policing have emerged as a result.
A sharp uptick in violent crime and homicides was the predictable outcome of the widespread anti-police sentiment galvanized by Black Lives Matter. Rioting caused billions of dollars in property damage in largely minority neighborhoods and dozens of lives were lost. It would be a terrible irony if a movement ostensibly dedicated to preserving black lives inadvertently cost more of them than it saved.
Trump’s gains among non-white, women and LGBTQ voters (and his setbacks among white male voters) have not stopped some progressives from blaming the unprecedented turnout of support for him on white supremacy, patriarchy and racism. Charles Blow, for example, has commented, “All of this to me points to the power of the white patriarchy and the coattail it has of those who depend on it or aspire to it … Some people who have historically been oppressed will stand with the oppressors, and will aspire to power by proximity.” Likewise Roxane Gay has asserted, “The way this election has played out shouldn’t be a surprise if you’ve been paying attention or if you understand racism and how systemic it really is.” Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted that the Latino vote for Trump can be attributed to the whiteness of certain Hispanic ethnic groups. But the much more parsimonious answer is that demography is not destiny.
This is an ideology incapable of adapting to new information. Modern, race-conscious antiracism is not just a political affiliation, like libertarianism or democratic socialism. The sense of meaning it provides in our increasingly secular society has turned it into a quasi-religious belief system that grow stronger in the face of disconfirmatory information. If our political identity is our primary source of morality, any challenge to our political worldview will be perceived as an existential threat. In modern anti-racism, resistance to reality is more of a feature than a bug.
The misplaced assumption that racism killed George Floyd virtually guaranteed a disproportionate and jumbled response. The ostensible concerns of BLM—racial profiling in policing and the lack of accountability and transparency among officers—are laudable and well substantiated. But it was no coincidence that race and racism, rather than structural policing issues, quickly became the main issue.
Police killings of unarmed people of any race are exceedingly rare in the US (there were only about 55 last year). The group most targeted by police are the poor. Interracial violence is extremely uncommon and black police officers may be just as likely to kill black suspects as white officers. White people are regularly killed by police and in higher absolute numbers than black people. The death of a white man called Tony Timpa, who was killed in nearly identical circumstances to Floyd’s attracted little interest. The discomfiting reality is that racial gaps in policing start to close when we account for differences in crime rates and frequency of encounters with police. Any honest conversation about policing must also take into account the around 400 million guns circulating in the population along with America’s disproportionate rates of violent crime in relation to our peer countries. Around 81% of black Americans want as much or more policing in their communities as they currently have. All these facts have been ignored and treated as extraneous, at best. Those who raised them are often viewed with suspicion. Questioning whether racism really killed George Floyd opens one up to the charge of being a racist oneself. To be against Black Lives Matter is framed as being against black lives. To be against the current form antiracism has taken is framed as being in favor of racism. This discourages honest conversation.
It doesn’t have to be this way. If the advocates of anti-racism could address its two major blind spots—historical determinism and race essentialism—a better version would emerge. We can mitigate the lingering effects of racism in society without resorting to the same moral logic that gave rise to white supremacy in the first place: the use of group identity as a means to power and absolution. Any successful antiracist movement must begin with the premise that race is a fiction...Still more.
Hot Girls Wednesday
At Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."
⏩ IG: ( luna.benna ) pic.twitter.com/zMNacdD1e5
— HottieYeep (@HottieYeep) November 26, 2020
╭═➤ ✰ ✯ IG: raphabonas ✯ ✰
— vagarymodels (@vagarymodels) November 21, 2020
🇲╔══╗⋆∘･ﾟﾟ･･:⋆∘∵⋰◦⋆∘
🇺║═╦╩╦╗╔╗╔═╦╦╦╗
🇸║╔╣╬║╚╣╚╣╬║║║║
🇹╚╝╚═╩═╩═╩═╩══╝
╰═➤⏩ @HotGirlsZ0ne @BadBab3s ⏪ pic.twitter.com/YbcgGZiD6z
Tuesday, December 1, 2020
Monday, November 30, 2020
Statewide Mask Mandate
Fock Newsom. Just fock 'im and his focking French Laundry.
At LAT, "Californians must mask up outside their homes under new expanded mandate."
New expanded bullshit. I wear my mask when I go out. I don't want any hassles, mostly, but I don't like.
I will never go back to teaching if I'm required to wear a mask. That's my line in the sand.
Top CAP Executive Neera Tanden is Biden's Pick for Director of Management and Budget
Lame.
She's a lawyer and political consultant by training. She's way out of her league.
At USA Today, "Live politics updates: Neera Tanden, Biden's pick for budget chief, draws fire from left and right."
BONUS: Glenn Greenwald, "Biden Appointee Neera Tanden Spread the Conspiracy That Russian Hackers Changed Hillary's 2016 Votes to Trump."
Oh Fock China. Just Fock 'Em
Why, oh why, is the Chinese minister's tweet not flagged as "disinformation" by the "woke" Twitter memory-hole apparatchiks?
You know the answer. Big Tech, Big Pharma, the NBA, they're all in the tank for Beijing and they greedily grab for the potential market of billions and billions of endless consumers. Truth and decency be focking damned.
And at the Syndey Morning Herald, "China fires back at Morrison, doubles down on war crimes accusation."
So brazen. I'd personally like to kick Chinese diplomat Zhao Lijian right in the teeth.
Australia’s prime minister condemned what he called a fabricated image tweeted by a Chinese official. The post showed an Australian soldier with a knife to the throat of an Afghan child. https://t.co/L1MMIMqXRJ
— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 30, 2020
Shocked by murder of Afghan civilians & prisoners by Australian soldiers. We strongly condemn such acts, &call for holding them accountable. pic.twitter.com/GYOaucoL5D
— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) November 30, 2020
Sunday, November 29, 2020
YouTube Star Jake Paul Smashes Nate Robinson with 'Brutal' Knockout (VIDEO)
Jake Paul should get in the ring with Mike Tyson. That'd be worth it, lol.
At Sporting News, "Jake Paul vs. Nate Robinson fight results: YouTube star wins with brutal KO."
[That just reminded me: "The Great White Hope"? (Wiki.)]
Short knockout video here.
Biden's Win Hides Dire Warning for Democrats in Rural U.S.
I'm been giddy about this, especially because radical leftists and Democrats (but I repeat myself) have no clue. I've been shouting this from the rooftops to family members and friends since the election. I'm now dead to them, especially my older sister (who calls me "Mr. Republican," which I'm most definitely not, lol) and her friends.
At the Minneapolis Tribune, "While Democrats powered through cities and suburbs to reclaim the White House, the party slid further behind in huge rural swaths of northern battlegrounds."
'The Queen's Gambit' Turning Out to Be the Most-Watch Series Netflix Has Ever Shown
I'm trying to cut down on the number of shows I'm streaming --- or else I'll have time for nothing else, man. You can get sucked into non-stop streaming pretty fast when you're facing endless Democrat Party lockdowns.
I'm watching football today, but maybe I'll sample episode one tonight.
At AoSHQ, "Saturday Afternoon Chess thread 11-28-2020."
And at the Guardian U.K., "'It's electrifying': chess world hails Queen's Gambit-fuelled boom."
'Cold as Ice'
Live from 1978:
And at the comments:
"Lou Graham's voice was simply amazing in his prime. He is right up there with Steven Tyler, Freddie Mercury, et al... Pick your legendary hard rock or metal singer - Cornell, Plant, Rogers, Daltry, Zander, Dickinson, Halford, Hagar. Graham holds his own with any of them. Legend!"
Saturday, November 28, 2020
Was That the Goal?
Of course that was the goal. Why even post such journalistic speculation except as a massive gaslighting operation.
At NYT (FWIW), "Assassination in Iran Could Limit Biden’s Options."
On the Way: More Sweeping Stay-at-Home Order for Los Angeles County
Are you surprised? You're certainly not entertained.
At LAT, "A more sweeping stay-at-home order is likely if L.A. County can’t slow COVID-19 spike."
I work in Los Angeles County, so this directly affects me, as my college will remain closed, not just because of the county, though it's that, but because of the state government's panic too. Where're all the economic relief payments to families and businesses (already!) devastated by these catastrophic shutdowns? My goodness.
Post-George Floyd, Wave of 'Anti-Racist' Teaching Sweeps K-12 Schools Targeting 'Whiteness'
Colleges too, and big time. And as you know, I'll be writing quite a bit about this topic of "anti-racist" teaching indoctrination in the weeks and months to come, but unfortunately, it has to be done. At RCP Investigations. Also, "The Totalitarian Tendencies of the Woke."BONUS: At the Other McCain, "The Anti-Anti-Racist Professor."
William Julius Wilson, The Bridge over the Racial Divide
At Amazon, William Julius Wilson, The Bridge over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics.
British Couple Take 9 Hours to Drive from Bournemouth to Kent in Their New 'Fully Electric' Porsche Taycan 4S
It takes carbons to fuel an automobile. Electricity is most effectively generated for industrial-scale use by fossil fuels, especially coal. But coal's out if you're a leftist. These idiots don't understand that wind, solar, and hydro will never provide enough energy to meet current demand, not in Britain, not in the U.S, and certainly not worldwide, where poor countries are still decades if not centuries behind the West in terms of their political-economic (especially industrial and scientific) modernization.
But these are the times in which we live, and we've got mountains to move before we can finally crush the left and save Western civilization. We'll do it. But it takes time. (More about that later.)
In any case, at Dana Pico's Journal 14, "Out of juice: What happens when you can't find a working charging station for your plug in electric vehicle?":
BONUS: At London's Daily Mail, "‘Bet they wish they had gas!’ Chaos in California as Tesla drivers are stranded for hours in a half-a-mile-long line to charge their cars on Black Friday: Shanon Stellini was travelling through Kettleman City on November 30 when she stumbled across around 50 of the electric cars waiting in line for a recharge."If you have a plug-in electric car, you'd better have a fossil fueled second car if you want to go further than just tooling around town. https://t.co/A6VHIolJU1 British couple takes nine hours to make 130 mile trip because they can't find a working charging station. pic.twitter.com/aANkxEVOo7
— Dana Pico (@Dana19707 on Parler.com) (@Dana_TFSJ) November 29, 2020
Eric Clapton? Just Wow!
Well, it was 1976, for some context. He's a little out of control, obviously. And at a live concert, basically telling immigrants to leave, they're not welcomed? Man, that's harsh.
But Britain was a shithole country in the 1970s and Labour policies were destroying the very fabric of society. Maybe Clapton's message was actually resonating with people, with his fans. But that was then and this is now. There's no way a performer can get away with saying anything like that nowadays, not even with the context and no matter how true. In fact, you know celebrities are ALWAYS cancelled for exactly the truth they speak on topics the left thought they'd already silenced through their campaigns of intimidation and violence.
And, this isn't really a new issue. He apologized for his previous comments in 2018, but this is the age of the Twitter rage mob, so no one's safe. Absolutely nobody.
All the racism wouldn’t fit in one screenshot pic.twitter.com/8xu2hZkt6S
— Deren Ney (@DerenNey) November 27, 2020
Thanksgiving Pardon for Retired United States Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn
Leftists destroyed this man's life as a political vendetta. He was convicted on a "process" crime with no substantial underlying linkage to the allegations of electoral collusion with the Russians.
Now he's received a presidential pardon, but how does someone rebuild one's life --- a life of patriotism and exemplary national service --- after a diabolical ideological smear campaign like this?
Thank goodness for President Trump.
Background at NPR, "Trump Pardons Michael Flynn, Who Pleaded Guilty to Lying About Russia Contact, and at NYT (with fear and trepidation, lol), "Trump’s Pardon of Flynn Signals Prospect of a Wave in His Final Weeks in Office."
And for the analysis, see Grim's Hall, "Michael Flynn Pardoned":
It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2020
In a particularly grueling miscarriage of justice, retired general Michael Flynn had to be pardoned for a crime of which he was innocent. Investigated by the FBI at the behest of President Obama, who decided for some reason that Flynn was a Russian spy, Flynn was cleared of all charges as a result of the investigation. The FBI closed the case.
He was prosecuted anyway by a politicized Department of Justice, which nevertheless failed to produce the only piece of evidence it allegedly had against him. That evidence would have been the original "302" form showing that the FBI agents who interviewed him thought that he'd lied to them -- about a case in which the FBI had already cleared him. No such 302 was ever produced, allegedly being lost, but we do have one that we happen to know was edited long after the fact by disgraced liar and political agent Peter Strzok. We know this because he discussed it in unencrypted text messages with his lover, also-married disgraced former prosecutor Lisa Page.
After a financially ruinous prosecution in which the FBI/DOJ produced almost none of the exculpatory evidence that the law requires them to produce -- including the record of the investigation that completely cleared him on all charges -- Flynn's sorry lawyers convinced him to plead guilty. This was done in such a way that the DOJ and his sorry lawyers (perhaps motivated by one of their partners, a former Obama attorney general) made an illegal deal to hide the agreement not to prosecute Flynn's son from the judge! Not only did the judge lack the information he needed to discern whether the guilty plea was coerced, anyone against whom Flynn later might have testified as a result of the deal would have been denied their constitutional right to know of the deal so they could raise it as a defense against the value of his testimony.
That judge -- a personal friend of Obama's, it turns out -- wasn't upset about the fact that the law firm and the DOJ conspired to hide these facts from him in violation of the law. His ire was for Flynn, whom he accused of selling out his country even though the DOJ had never even attempted to charge Flynn with that. What they charged him with was perjury for "lying" to the FBI (in the vanished 302), and a paperwork violation for which the FBI investigation had already cleared him.
(They cleared him of the FARA violation because he had in fact filed paperwork with the government under another act, on the advice of lawyers he hired specifically to help him meet the legal reporting requirements -- thus, he had not tried to hide his lobbying work for a NATO ally, and clearly they could not s how criminal intent. DOJ knew all of that and made him plead guilty to it anyway, if he wanted them not to send his son to prison on trumped-up charges too.)
Then we spent a year while Flynn's new lawyer, Sidney Powell, managed to get all the exculpatory information illegally hidden from him in the first place. None of it convinced the judge one bit to let Flynn withdraw the coerced guilty plea, nor to accept the DOJ's determination that it should probably actually drop those baseless charges after all. Ordered to drop the charges by the DC Court of Appeals in a three-judge ruling, the judge instead sought en banc approval to continue the case. He was granted it, provided he would dispose of the matter with "dispatch." That was now several months ago, and instead of disposing of the case he has been dragging it out towards an obvious intent to sentence Flynn in spite of his innocence.
What this case shows is how completely distorted our system has become...Still more.
Lori Laughlin's Daughter Lives It Up at Santa Barbara's Rosewood Miramar Resort While Her Mother Lori Does Time for Admissions Scandal Conviction at Federal Correctional Institution, in Dublin, California
Oh these daughters make my blood boil.
Sure, these parents are literally imbeciles, especially for the fact that for all they did to get their daughters into an "elite" private university (U.S.C.'s not "elite," but that's another story), their daughters couldn't care less. Olivia Jade even attacked her mom when the scandal broke --- she slammed her for getting arrested, because it ruined her career as a YouTube influencer. The youth generation is the greatest generation of spoiled, no-talent trust-fund brats. This story has always blown me away.
Lori Loughlin's daughter Isabella Rose Giannulli, 22, relaxes at a luxury Santa Barbara resort as her parents languish in jail https://t.co/ob4otPcae3
— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) November 27, 2020
Her parents' prison time seemed a distant memory as she relaxed with a dark-haired male companion wearing a dark t-shirt and blue shorts and joked around, appearing to bury her feet in the sand at one point.
Rooms at the luxury beachside getaway currently start from $806 per night, with many boasting views across the ocean.
It's a far cry from the current dwellings of her parents who are both serving time in California prisons for their parts in the college admissions scandal.
Loughlin, 56, started her two-month sentence at FCI Dublin in California on October 30.
She is said to have been a 'wreck' during her first few weeks behind bars.
A former inmate turned prison consultant told DailyMail.com this month that the mom-of-two was 'anxious about contracting COVID, is living off a diet of dry cereal and fruit and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, is sharing a cell with three other inmates and is only allowed to shower three times a week.
Still more.
Saturday Links
Morning everybody.
All is right in the blog world, as I've gotten an Instatlanche this morning: "WHEN FRENCH INTELLECTUALS THINK THE AMERICAN LEFT HAS GOTTEN TOO CRAZY…"
Linked there, at my piece, is Assistant Village Idiot, who logically should be getting a tertiary Instalanche: "Critical Race Theory."
And at the Other McCain, "In the Mailbox: 11.27.20 (Evening Edition)."
More at Maggie's Farm, "Saturday morning links."
Found there, at Power Line, "MORE EVIDENCE THAT LIBERALS HATE AMERICA."
At AoSHQ, "Thanksgiving ONT."
Proof Positive, "Best of the Web."
At Pirate's Cove, "Clapton, Van Morrison Team Up For Anti-Lockdown Anthem."
Theo's, "Cartoon Roundup.
At Director Blue, "Larwyn’s Linx: Pennsylvania State Legislature Files Resolution to Dispute Statewide 2020 Election Results."
BONUS: At 90 Miles From Tyranny, "Report Claims Fox News Is Blacklisting Guests Who Appear on Newsmax TV..."
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's Top Nuclear Scientist, Assassinated in 'Brazen' Ambush Outside Tehran (VIDEO)
I love this story. I love all this winning. We've taken out Iran's terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani, and now their top doomsday scientist.
Big story, but no matter where you find it among the MSM outlets, this is a supposed to be a bad thing. Why? It looks good on President Trump and his Middle East policy. It looks good on U.S. strategy of isolating Iran behind a ring of new strategic alliances. And it affirms Israel's role once again as the undisputed hegemon in the region and the linchpin of the American the alliance posture there. I mean, all the recent peace deals, and the breakneck diplomacy? Not bad. Not bad. That is, unless you think the Obama administration's $400 billion quid pro quo pallets of cash was okey-dokey!
It's such a damn shame Biden and his fanatical appeasers are coming back to power. They won't have long though. They won't have time to fuck things up, unless Biden goes all Obama and starts yet another Middle East war.
At the Times of Israel, "US, world leaders mum on Fakhrizadeh killing; ex-CIA chief calls hit ‘reckless’." And at J.Post, "Iran's Rouhani blames Israel for killing of nuclear scientist.
And FWIW, CBS's Margaret Brennen with last nigh report:
Friday, November 27, 2020
If You're Tired of Quarantine...
... Maybe head out to the (Chinese?) market and do some shopping? With luck you'll bump carts (or private parts?) with an absolutely amazing woman like this, dang! (Via Funky Links.)
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