Whitlock on Target

It's comforting when a man with an experience so different than my own says something so closely aligned with my perspective. 

https://www.outkick.com/blm-101-continued-harassment-from-protesters-reveals-bigotry-and-hate-not-progress/

Hanson Been So Wrong for So Long

Bolstered by the sycophantic-praise he received following his 1988 Congressional testimony on man-made global warming, NASA climate scientist/activist James Edward Hansen continued his prophesies well into the 2000s–despite his ever-growing list of climate fails.

“The greenhouse effect is here,” pronounced doomsayer Hansen back on June 23, 1988.

“We’re [still] toast,” he repeated with a straight face 20 years later, in 2008.

https://electroverse.net/nasa-climate-prophet-james-hansen-said-the-arctic-would-be-free-of-summer-ice-by-2018/e

Just incorrect predictions, one after another, that doesn't mean he doesn't understand what's happening, does it?

"COVID Supremacists"

I also believe that my willingness to compromise demonstrates an ability to reason effectively. So it has become infuriating, to the point of feeling untenable, that the “lockdown indefinitely” crowd has become so unhinged as to label people like me morons, “deniers” and pro-murder because we find the reaction to this virus outsized and dangerous.

But Kira, you can’t compromise on DEATH! Why do you hate the elderly????

Can’t we? We compromise on death every day, pandemic or not. We calculate the risk to drive our vehicles, attend events, get on airplanes. We use a complicated equation based on what facts we know, our fears and our goals. If this virus had the fatality rate we were promised in the beginning, extended lockdowns might…might…be defensible. But we are looking at a virus with a 99.6% survivability rate.

https://www.redstate.com/kiradavis/2020/08/21/sick-to-death-of-covid-supremacists/

Action, Re-Action

 Wills the Dems pay again for their soft on crime "let them burn it" approach?

"This is bad news for the Biden/Harris campaign and gun control activists across the country. It’s not just red states that are seeing a huge influx in the number of new gun owners these days. Even anti-gun strongholds like New Jersey are seeing unprecedented interest from residents who’ve decided it’s time to exercise their Second Amendment rights."

https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/08/21/new-jersey-interest-in-2a-at-record-highs/

Lebron, Tell Me About Malcolm

LeBron James says he’s reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Is he?

On Wednesday, via Instagram, James posted a picture of himself, shirtless, riding a stationary bike and wearing earbuds while reading the iconic book. On Thursday, following the Lakers 111-88 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers, LeBron carried the book into his postgame news conference. Bleacher Report’s Taylor Rooks asked James for his biggest takeaway on the book. You can listen to his complete response on Rooks’ embedded tweet below.

https://www.outkick.com/lebron-james-claims-he-is-reading-malcolm-x-autobiography/

This Was Us

 The chaos, the cultural transformations, fascinating. 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-the-first-farmers-arrived-in-europe-inequality-evolved/

3 for the Wuhan Bug

Examining why some clusters are mostly harmless and some are lethal. 

 https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2020/08/22/learning_our_lessons_from_asymptomatic_covid-19.html

Age 55 and up accounts for 92% of the fatalities, but many people don't realize this fact.

https://global.beyondbullsandbears.com/2020/07/29/on-my-mind-they-blinded-us-from-science/?fbclid=IwAR0DL755nrM1rZANS88ijj6GnCIyPGOeG-85rjRPq1-PCw99rnLgT9cpGRA

A brit visits Sweden and discusses the impacts in both places.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8652523/amp/No-lockdown-no-hysteria-DOMINIC-SANDBROOK-asks-Sweden-proof-got-terribly-wrong.html?__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR0MiJMnCISbvq1EDnGykdJ1hWvV5Kfloyk-NOdPhRWWbp3viMMv872lPh4

Does He Know What He's Saying?

Now officially the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden offered himself to Americans this week as an affable, trustworthy and experienced alternative for the White House. But his five-decade record in politics offers plenty of controversies ranging from insulting confrontations over IQ and race to fabrications and plagiarism.

An episode from the first of his three runs for president provides a case study. Biden once sparred in 1987 with a political reporter who asked him about his law school record. A tart Biden responded that he “probably” had a “higher IQ” than the reporter. And he claimed he finished in the top half of his class.


https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/biden-has-history-controversies-involving-plagiarism-fabricated-stories

The More (CO2) the Merrier

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2020/08/17/lets_be_serious_more_c02_is_making_the_earth_uninhabitable_574271.html

And EM-DAT (The International Disaster Database) data show that since 1920, the number of people killed by natural disasters has declined from almost 55,000 per year to less than 10,000 per year.

Sustaining a population that has grown by about six billion people, lifting most of those people out of extreme poverty, and reducing the number of natural disaster deaths by over 80 percent show that whatever impacts increasing CO2 emission and atmospheric levels and rising temperatures have, they are not making the planet “an inhospitable place for humans.”

The data instead suggest that increasing CO2 emission and atmospheric levels and rising temperatures are making the planet more, not less, hospitable for human life.

Peace in the Middle East?

The peace process did not fare well, chiefly because Israel made the mistake of bringing the unreformed terrorist Yasser Arafat back from exile to negotiate on the Palestinian side. It came to a complete halt during the Obama administration because Obama totally misunderstood what makes the U.S. so indispensable to the peace process. Tempted to think that his own sense of justice was the missing link, Obama tried to be an impartial arbiter. But the Arabs and Israelis couldn’t care less what Obama thought was fair. That’s not why they talk to the United States.

Anyone — you or I, for example — could play the role of impartial arbiter. What the U.S. can do that no other entity in the world can do is to underwrite the security risks of a peace deal for Israel. Israel will make far greater concessions for peace with the U.S. standing strongly behind it than without. That’s what makes the U.S. a valuable mediator to both the Israelis and the Arabs.

Today’s announcement demonstrates all of this. Where Obama cozied up to Iran and cooled towards Israel, President Trump has unabashedly supported Israel while confronting Iran. This peace agreement has come, not in spite of the U.S. moving its embassy to Jerusalem and killing Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, but precisely because of those moves. Israelis and more than a few Arabs have breathed an enormous sigh of relief at America’s renewed strength.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/israel-united-arab-emirates-accord-milestone-middle-east-peace/

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/covid-spread-cant-only-be-explained-by-whos-being-bad/ar-BB17VlsC

Rethinking what is known v. believed about this freaking bug that turned the world upside down but helped improve our capacity for blaming those with beliefs different from our own. The most widely held belief I see and try to push back against is "because this happened after that, it happened because of that". It's such an old logical flaw there's a cute latin phrase for it. We enlightened 20th century geniuses with the oh so great reverence for science seem as vulnerable to it as ever. "We may also be heterogeneous in our biology. A recent paper in Science suggests that many people who’ve never been infected with SARS-CoV-2 carry a kind of immune cell, called a T-cell, which recognizes this novel virus and may partially mitigate an infection. These cells may be left over from infections with related viruses — the coronaviruses that cause the common cold. "While scientists who authored the paper warn that it doesn’t imply that people with pre-existing T-cells can’t get infected, they leave open the possibility that it might account for some of the vast variability in symptoms. "Whatever the source of this heterogeneity, we know it exists. Most people on the contaminated cruise ship Diamond Princess remained uninfected, while others got asymptomatic infections and still others got severely ill."

Politics at its Worst

I hope this is the worst of US politics, but I fear it is not. 

_____________

Long-sought documents finally pried from U.S. intelligence agencies prove that the Obama administration used the occasion of providing a standard intelligence briefing for major-party candidates as an opportunity to investigate Donald Trump on suspicion of being a Russian asset.

I say investigate Donald Trump advisedly.

As I contended in Ball of Collusion, my book on the Trump-Russia investigation, the target of the probe spearheaded by the FBI — but greenlighted by the Obama White House, and abetted by the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies — was Donald Trump. Not the Trump campaign, not the Trump administration. Those were of interest only insofar as they were vehicles for Trump himself. The campaign, which the Bureau and its apologists risibly claim was the focus of the investigation, would have been of no interest to them were it not for Trump.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/new-disclosures-confirm-trump-was-the-target-of-obama-administrations-russia-probe/

The Dossier source ....

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/07/24/meet_steele_dossiers_primary_subsource_fabulist_russian_at_us_think_tank_whose_boozy_past_the_fbi_ignored_124601.html

Media Myths about Guns Prevail

Myth 1: Los Angeles Times: “Why the U.S. is No. 1 — in mass shootings”

This claim is based on one study by Adam Lankford at the University of Alabama. Lankford asserted that the U.S. accounted for 31% of mass public shooters from 1966 to 2012, despite having less than 5% of the world population. But for over four years, he refused requests from both academics and media outlets, including Real Clear Politics, Fox News, and the Washington Post, to release his data. When he finally released his list of cases after I had published an academic paper going through the data, it was clear why he had waited so long. He had over-counted cases in the U.S. and missed thousands of others in the rest of the world.

The United States accounted for just 1% of the shooters — far less than its share of the world population. France, Switzerland, Russia, Finland, and Norway all have substantially higher per capita fatality rates than does the U.S. Indeed, France’s rate is 111% higher than ours. By far, the worst mass public shootings have occurred in Europe.

Americans may be surprised by these numbers, because they hear so little about mass shootings in other countries. The dozens of times in recent years that such shootings are stopped by concealed handgun permit holders is also ignored. Something else the news media won’t tell you: Since 1950, 94% of the mass public shootings have occurred in gun-free zones, places where citizens are banned from having guns.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/01/myths_the_media_perpetuate_about_gun_control_143848.html

200 of 153000?

 Just over 153,000 Americans have been recorded as having died from the coronavirus – and fewer than 200 of them were below the age of 25.

In the most recent week of data available, a total of 408 people between the ages of 15 and 24 died in the U.S., 5 of which were from the coronavirus. For the 5-14 age range the figures were 53 total deaths, zero from coronavirus.

While teachers unions and Democrats are heavily protesting reopening schools, the consensus among the CDC, Dr. Fauci and even Bill Gates is that they should reopen (whom I chose to quote because perhaps liberal will listen to them). When it comes to the risks children face at school, there are already far greater public health risks children face that we don’t keep schools closed for, and the disparity in potential harm isn’t even close.

https://bongino.com/seasonal-flu-poses-4x-higher-risk-to-schoolchildren-than-coronavirus/

Putting Money in the Pockets of the Citizenry

Amy Johnson, a nurse practitioner, spoke at the South lawn event about how deregulation and modernization of the federal healthcare bureaucracy had aided healthcare providers in rural areas who are now able to use telehealth to dramatically expand the range of services available to patients.

Similarly, Arizona rancher Jim Chilton spoke of a much-needed reprieve from the Obama-Biden administration’s notorious Waters of the United States rule, which allowed federal bureaucrats to regulate private land with almost no restrictions. In Chilton’s case, the government decreed that the “dry washes” on his property constituted “waters of the United States” because, despite having no water, they have at least 12 inches of sand at the bottom.

During his first year in office, the president delivered on his campaign pledge to reduce the tax burden on ordinary Americans, signing into law historic tax cuts. But, because tax cuts get all the fanfare, not everyone is aware that deregulation is actually just as — if not more — significant.

For example, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, estimates that government regulation is a “$1.9 trillion ‘hidden tax’” which “is greater than the corporate and personal income taxes combined.”

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trumps-deregulatory-agenda-andy-puzder

Showing the Virtue of the 2nd Amendment

“My whole adult life, opponents of private gun ownership have insisted that an individual right to keep and bear arms was outmoded because it is better to rely on the police,” Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett recently remarked. “In multiple ways, in 2020 that argument has been completely demolished.”

He is correct on both counts. The argument that only the police should have guns was once standard. It has now become unfashionable, as everyone is expected to accept the premise that only criminals and rioters should have them.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/abolish-police-and-the-second-amendment-becomes-a-first-resort

The 2nd Amendment was instituted to allow us to defend ourselves against an over bearing government, however, it comes in very handy when the government fails to accomplish its legitimate purpose of defending individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

How Dare You Claim It Is Not a Catastrophe?!

 Another example of how opposing the climate religion will get a person ex-communicated. 

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/07/28/prominent-environmentalist-censored-forbes-called-white-supremacist-writing-sense-about-climate-14938

Pandemic Impacts on Schools

A darned good read from CNN, never would have thunk it.

The pandemic appears to be intensifying the longstanding threat to the future of universal public education. Proponents of school privatization see closings as an opportunity to make inroads; if public schools don't open, the argument goes, parents should be able to take their taxpayer money elsewhere. President Donald Trump has threatened to do just that by withdrawing public funds from schools that don't offer in-person learning and giving the money directly to parents. How that would work is unclear, but for-profit distance learning companies are already ramping up business.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/07/opinions/school-reopening-threat-to-public-schools-kantrowitz/index.html

Lockdown the Lockdowns

Invasion of liberty doesn't achieve any of the desirable effects. 

https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-comparing-europe-us-evidence-clear-lockdowns-dont-work/

Americans are now facing this predicament: The more the effectiveness of these executive policies is disproven, the more the politicians use that lack of results as a pretext for even more rules. Thus, if stay-at-home orders failed to work as promised, they demand mask-wearing. If mask-wearing was in place for months and still didn’t work, which has been the case in most hot spots, then they mandate mask-wearing in personal homes in Broward County, Florida, and for two-year-olds in Baltimore County, Maryland. Because you know, the only possible explanation for continued spread of a virus that is not deadly for most people is that two-year-olds weren’t wearing masks. Never mind studies from nearly every major European country showing kids, particularly young kids, do not contribute to community spread, even if masks did work.

Speaking of European countries, it’s time to dispel one of the more popular myths propagated by our new dictators. We are constantly being lectured to by the “experts” that America didn’t have enough of a lockdown and that is the reason why we are still seeing a spread of the virus while Europe seems to be done with it. A new eye-opening analysis from the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) shows that America had just as severe a lockdown as most European countries and in fact had a longer-lasting lockdown than every country except for England.

______________________________________

This one may already be out of date - however, it's another example that the spread is more about the flow of infectious people into a locale that about the responses by governments to awareness that the bug has reached their political sphere. 

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/how-japan-beat-coronavirus-without-lockdowns-11594163172?fbclid=IwAR3_pvLdqhHkbTRpYS-9JjUvKndvyS6JfPsp5iK_YGcAYHW8YGsTLc3IIGM

Obvious and Fascinating

This is an example of what "Guns Germs and Steel" explained in the evolution from hunter gatherer to agriculturalist.

Basic premise - agriculture made humans sick and frail relative to hunter gatherers, but also let them reproduce at a 4x higher rate. It allowed humans to have specialists like blacksmiths, carpenters and politicians, and combined with the higher populations led to the displacement of the hunter gatherers all around the world. History was there to watch it happen in the 1800s in north america, when, for example, the dominant plains tribe, the Comanche reached a population of 20,000.  By then there were millions of european immigrants and their children. It was only a matter of time. 

-Roughly 9,000 years ago farmers from the Middle East headed toward Europe, seeking new land to cultivate.
-The farmers traveled either along the Mediterranean coast or the Danube River, encountering hunter-gatherers who lived in dense forests.
-At first, the farmers and hunter-gatherers traded or mated. By 5,000 years ago, however, agriculture dominated the continent and hierarchical societies had evolved.
-Genetic studies suggest that individuals with high hunter-gatherer ancestry may have been treated as inferiors.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-the-first-farmers-arrived-in-europe-inequality-evolved/

Olympic Gold Medal Winners, Depression

I never would have guessed this. I grew up thinking that if I could accomplish something like winning an Olympic gold medal, I would transcend the struggle of life and the rest of life would be easy street. 

https://www.insidehook.com/article/sports/weight-of-gold-documentary-hbo-olympic-depression

In Support of Schools Re-Opening

I can see the virtues of keeping schools closed from both side of the argument. On the one hand, what if we just let them go away and let online learning take over - high costs to the underprivileged but the regular kids will get access to the best teaching on the planet, with options that let kids and families select the best option for their kids. It would interrupt the current leftist indoctrination inherent in schools.

The grotesque way some teachers' unions are trying to leverage the event with no regard for the kids is disgustingly typical.

"There is a great deal of fear generated in the media about risk to children, but the truth is that children are incredibly resistant to coronavirus. So much so that children are far more likely to die from the flu, or even just from driving to school, than from COVID-19.

"The CDC has recorded a total of 20 COVID-19 deaths in children ages 5-14compared to almost 2,000 deaths from non-COVID causes in the same time period for the same age group. It means children have been 100 times more likely to die from non-COVID causes during the pandemic than from COVID. This puts the risk of COVID death for children 5 to 14 in the same ballpark as deaths by lightning.

"Claims of long-term damage or mystery illnesses have not been backed by any definitive evidence and they therefore serve more as a scare and intimidation tactic than as a medical guide. The truth is that children so far have had around a 1 in 20,000 rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations, according to the CDC. While controversial to some, Sweden’s policy of keeping primary schools open even at the height of the pandemic serves as an excellent counterpoint. With over 1 million children, Sweden did not have a single death of a school-aged childdespite full attendance and no masks."

Also cited a Swiss study that failed to find a case of a child passing this bug to an adult.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/31/politics_not_science_keeping_schools_closed_143847.html

"First, when it comes to children, the virus doesn’t impact them even on the same level as the flu. A JAMA Pediatrics report states, “Our data indicate that children are at far greater risk of critical illness from influenza than from COVID-19.” The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reports, “SARS-CoV-2 appears to behave differently in children and adolescents than other common respiratory viruses, such as influenza, on which much of the current guidance regarding school closures is based.”

"Toronto’s world-renowned Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) echoed this finding, saying, “evidence is mounting that children may be less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and may be less likely to transmit the virus to others.” Daniel Koch, Switzerland’s head of public health, has said that even when children test positive for the virus, their viral load is low, and it seems that adults tend to infect children, not the other way around."

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/30/gov-kristi-noem-science-shows-not-going-to-school-hurts-kids-much-worse-than-covid/

Shellenberger tries to speak truth to power but ....

then something strange happened at Forbes and they took the article down. Shellenberger's Points:

· Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”

· The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”

· Climate change is not making natural disasters worse

· Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003

· The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska

· The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California

· Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s

· Netherlands became rich not poor while adapting to life below sea level

· We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter

· Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change

· Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels

· Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/07/28/prominent-environmentalist-censored-forbes-called-white-supremacist-writing-sense-about-climate-14938