Monthly Archives: April 2021

Mainstream media’s panic porn and the modern left

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America is now a failed state or near enough. First this from White liberals more likely to have a mental health condition. Of course, they are the only ones to take seriously what they read in the papers or see on the news. And where we find:

Other polls show liberals have bought into the mainstream media’s panic porn surrounding COVID-19 more than other ideologies, also causing them more stress and fear.

The vast majority of Democrats overestimate the probability of being hospitalized and dying from COVID-19, compared to other ideologies, a Gallup survey found. There’s only a 1 to 5% chance of somebody with COVID-19 having to be hospitalized, yet 41% of Democrats’ believe there’s a greater than 50% chance. Only 10% of Democrat respondents in the survey knew the correct answer.

With all of this misinformation, it’s not surprising why Democrats are afraid to take off their masks even after they’ve been vaccinated or are outdoors, and why liberal governors have been reluctant to reopen their states.

And then there’s this from Instapundit which kinda underscores the point.

ALSO THE ONLY PERSON WITHOUT A COUNTRY FLAG:  Biden is The Only Person Wearing a Mask During Virtual Climate Change Summit.

As one of the commenters put it, “why are they calling this a summit? A summit is when leaders get together behind closed doors, size each other up, and negotiate. This is just a bunch of recorded windbaggery.”

Leftism is a mental health disorder

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White liberals more likely to have a mental health condition is just as it says.

White liberals are more prone to mental health disorders than individuals who identify as conservative or moderates, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

Sixty-two percent of Whites who classify themselves as “very liberal” or “liberal” have been told by a doctor they have a mental health condition, as compared to 26% of conservatives and 20% of moderates, the study found.

Young White people who identified as “very liberal” were almost one and a half times more likely to report mental health problems than those who considered themselves “liberal.”

Although the Pew Study was published last year, Zach Goldberg, a doctoral candidate, consolidated the data on Twitter, which sparked a column by news magazine Evie trying to dissect why this actually is.

Mr. Goldberg speculated the disparity may be because White liberals were more likely to seek mental health evaluations than other ideologies. This could be a simple, and true, answer.

Yet, there’s a lot of drawbacks to believing in liberalism.

The entire ideology “forces its followers to wallow in feelings of helplessness and victimhood,” Evie noted, as opposed to “building resiliency against hardship,” which helps combat depression.

Then there’s this about the left and the Chinese flu.

Other polls show liberals have bought into the mainstream media’s panic porn surrounding COVID-19 more than other ideologies, also causing them more stress and fear.

The vast majority of Democrats overestimate the probability of being hospitalized and dying from COVID-19, compared to other ideologies, a Gallup survey found. There’s only a 1 to 5% chance of somebody with COVID-19 having to be hospitalized, yet 41% of Democrats’ believe there’s a greater than 50% chance. Only 10% of Democrat respondents in the survey knew the correct answer.

With all of this misinformation, it’s not surprising why Democrats are afraid to take off their masks even after they’ve been vaccinated or are outdoors, and why liberal governors have been reluctant to reopen their states.

With this comment which speaks for me as well.

Having been a left wing liberal when I was young, I know first hand that much of what the PEW study stems from is cognitive dissonance. You’re passionately trying to believe in an ideology that real world facts don’t fully comply with it. So you fudge and reinterpret the facts but down deep you know you’re not being totally honest with yourself. The solution is to reinforce it all and the dissonance increases, surfacing as irrational behavior and dogmatic bluster.

Living in an “epistemological crisis”

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I read this sentence which began the article and stopped right there. This, I said to myself, is the single most strikingly offputting statement that I have ever read that would ensure that from then on I would not trust a word of what follows. This was the sentence:

Barack Obama is one of many who have declared an “epistemological crisis,” in which our society is losing its handle on something called truth.

An authority on lying he definitely is having been one of the most grotesque liars in quite a long line of dishonest politicians, and not just in America. The article was, How physicist Steven Koonin became a climate truth teller.

The article is so empty of analysis that I am virtually unable to provide a brief example of its inanity. This will have to do.

Mr Koonin created the Energy Biosciences Institute at Berkeley that’s still going strong.

At Berkeley! Meanwhile the article is from the Wall Street Journal. The last thing I would look for in any of this would be something that might accurately be described as “truth”.

Beyond stupidity and deeply into mental illness

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These climate cranks are literally mad. There is no reasoning with them, and the wronger they are, the more the will to believe becomes stronger. From:

When dealing with a fundamentalist religion it does no good to point out the facts and data about improving environmental conditions, or the reasons behind these happy trends (namely economic growth, open markets, and technological advance), or the sorry record of environmental doomsday predictions ever since the first Earth Day 51 years ago. This one may be my favorite:

Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

Whose side are they on?

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It’s actually very clear. Israeli Military Officials Unite in Opposition to Biden Admin’s Iran Deal.

The Biden Administration is about to make a catastrophic mistake. They would be wise to consider this: and that is Israel will never allow Iran to manufacture nuclear weapons. No matter what agreement they sign with the terror regime.

The illegitimate administration is bringing the world to the very brink of war.

Related – US willing to lift Trump-era terrorism sanctions ‘not legitimately’ imposed on Iran

Related – ‘Total American collapse’ before Iran in negotiations, say Israeli officials

Related – Iran Rattled As Israel Repeatedly Strikes Key Targets

To which may be added this: How Much Ruin Do We Have Left? . Quite a lot apparently. From Victor Davis Hanson.

“Unfortunately in the last few months all of those centuries-old reasons to be confident in American strength and resiliency have now been put into doubt. 

“The challenge is not just enemies abroad such as China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran. Instead, the greater problem lies within us—as we erode the inherited and acquired strengths that made us singular, both materially and spiritually.  

“We are now witnessing a concentrated effort to alter the constitutional order and centuries of custom and tradition. Only that way, the Left believes, can it retain its transient power given the unpopularity of most of its current agenda.”

The United States is now a rogue state and cannot be counted on by any of its old friends.

The ageing process

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The one above is from Glastonbury in 2013. The one below is from 48 years before. But at least the audience stays the same age.

And the lyrics in case they somehow passed you by (or you forgot).

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

The Rolling Stones
I can’t get no satisfaction, I can’t get no satisfaction
‘Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can’t get no, I can’t get no
 
When I’m drivin’ in my car, and the man come on the radio
He’s tellin’ me more and more about some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination
I can’t get no, oh, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey

That’s what I say
I can’t get no satisfaction, I can’t get no satisfaction
‘Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can’t get no, I can’t get no
 
When I’m watchin’ my TV and a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be
But, he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke
The same cigarettes as me
I can’t get no, oh, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey

That’s what I say
I can’t get no satisfaction, I can’t get no girl reaction
‘Cause I try…
`

Do they really have our best interests at heart?

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I want to explain why I worry. First the conclusion to this: Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis.

The existing scientific evidences challenge the safety and efficacy of wearing facemask as preventive intervention for COVID-19. The data suggest that both medical and non-medical facemasks are ineffective to block human-to-human transmission of viral and infectious disease such SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, supporting against the usage of facemasks. Wearing facemasks has been demonstrated to have substantial adverse physiological and psychological effects. These include hypoxia, hypercapnia, shortness of breath, increased acidity and toxicity, activation of fear and stress response, rise in stress hormones, immunosuppression, fatigue, headaches, decline in cognitive performance, predisposition for viral and infectious illnesses, chronic stress, anxiety and depression. Long-term consequences of wearing facemask can cause health deterioration, developing and progression of chronic diseases and premature death. Governments, policy makers and health organizations should utilize prosper and scientific evidence-based approach with respect to wearing facemasks, when the latter is considered as preventive intervention for public health.

OK. It’s an argument. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. But then this: Democrats Furious Over Stanford Study that Found Masks are Useless Against COVID. The results of studies like this should not be a politicised issue but it is. It would be one thing if I thought they were worried about bad science becoming generally believed, but that is the last thing I think Democrats (and the political left in general) worry about. They are worried that some of the political power that has accrued to them because of Covid might slip away.

 

The American system of injustice

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It’s astonishing that this Chavin verdict in Minneapolis is not seen as the scandal that it is. This was chosen as the Best comment at Powerline which seems to sum it up.

So much for due process in America. The judge allows selection of a biased jury. The biased jury operates in a fortress atmosphere, knowing that the city will burn and the jurors will be in danger if they vote not guilty. The judge allows all sorts of improper rhetoric and opinion testimony by expert and lay witnesses alike (kids are allowed to say the defendant “murdered” Floyd; a kung fu dude is allowed to play medical expert, a purported medical expert is allowed to speculate as to how much oxygen is in Floyd’s lungs by watching videotape, etc.). The State is allowed to use a pro bono army of lawyers against a single defense counsel. The media poisons the jury pool. The President and Congresspersons stridently seek a guilty plea to further poison the jury. The defendant is found guilty of felony murder even though he was not committing any felony (felony murder is when someone is killed in the course of an armed robbery, etc.) This was as fair as a trial in Mississippi in the 1920s that you see in the movies. And everyone will cheer, and no one will defend due process. It is just too convenient to throw away the defendant’s rights so that BLM doesn’t riot. And here we are in 2021 America.

Worse than “mob justice”. That the entire political establishment of the United States, from the President on down, are united in agreeing on a conviction of a man who was trying to stop a criminal in the midst of a crime. 

Then there’s this, about the “insurrection” at the Capitol.

GLENN GREENWALD ON WHAT THE TRUTH ABOUT OFFICER SICKNICK’S DEATH SAYS ABOUT THE MEDIA:

They never cared in the slightest about Officer Brian Sicknick. They had just spent months glorifying a protest movement whose core view is that police officers are inherently racist and abusive. He had just become their toy, to be played with and exploited in order to depict the January 6 protest as a murderous orgy carried out by savages so primitive and inhuman that they were willing to fatally bash in the skull of a helpless person or spray them with deadly gases until they choked to death on their own lung fluids.

He’s right of course. If you support BLM then you necessarily support the routine verbal abuse of police officers as racists akin to the Klan. So it was very curious that a police officer would suddenly become the hero of this same group of progressives apart from the politics of doing so. In fact, you may recall people were simultaneously claiming Sicknick was a victim of the mob and that the same Capitol Hill police had treated BLM protesters unfairly. He was both a victim (where needed) and a perpetrator.

QED: Guess what Maxine Waters requested before going to Minneapolis.

Not to mention Ashli Babbitt who was murdered before the world but the killing and the killer have been suppressed and protected. This is apparently the chap who shot her to death at point blank range.

More details here.

Vaccine irony

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Vaccine resistance and Covid fear within families begins with two paras, each with a message of its own, but each just as I see things myself.

It would be funny if the stakes were not so high, but political differences within families seem to fall along the same lines as party differences.  Who could have predicted that all those Trump haters who swore they would never submit to a vaccine that President Trump had brought to market with Operation Warp Speed are those who now are lining up like bleating sheep to get vaccines that are experimental? Or that millions of those who support the former President are much more likely to be wary of the four vaccines now available?

All one has to do is visit the websites of the vaccine manufacturers themselves to discover that those big pharma companies do not claim that their jabs can prevent Covid or its transmission.  They claim only that they may reduce the severity of symptoms.  And as the number of serious adverse reactions and even deaths by vaccine mount, those who have succumbed to the media fearmongering and Biden administration heavy-handed promotion still ignore the many, many obvious factors that mitigate against all four of the vaccines,  all of which may have serious consequences down the road when other viruses come along.

Here then are the last three paras which have messages of their own.

President Trump obviously meant well when rushing a vaccine to availability.  He had no idea that Fauci had been funding that lab in Wuhan, that despite legal prohibition of gain-of-function (making known viruses more lethal) experiments in the US, he was funding that research in China as well.

He and his cohorts at NIAID resemble mad scientists who for twenty years had been dying to experiment on human beings using mRNA despite having no idea what the long-term effects may be.  And the fact that Bill Gates has been in on this scheme for years should give everyone pause.  He is a known depopulation advocate who, at the same time, funds mass vaccinations around the world, sometimes with murderous results.

What do we do to protect the grandkids?  Try to convince their vaxed parents not to submit their children to what is an experimental trial with potentially lethal consequences.  The use of these vaccines is an affront to essential medical ethics.   Throughout history, parents and grandparents have strived above all to protect their progeny, but with the onslaught of mass media, toxic social media and the wholesale censorship by those who control what and how information is disseminated to the public, the once-revered wise counsel of the storied family trust has been sorely dissipated.  To paraphrase the words of Thomas Paine, these are truly the times that try men’s souls.

Time will tell. Unwillingness to trust governments will actually mean something this time. And then there is this I picked up at Small Dead Animals.

Sebastian Rushworth, M.D. is a Swedish physician;

“As mentioned, 132,000 people had received the Astra-Zeneca vaccine in Norway when this was discovered. And at least five of those people developed this new disease state, which the authors of the case series are calling VITT (vaccine induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia). If we assume (generously) that every case of vaccine side effects gets reported, that would mean an incidence of around one in 26,000. […]

“These case series show that a number of previously healthy young people have so far been killed by the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. Considering their age and underlying health status, the risk to them from covid-19 itself was infinitesimal. For healthy young people it is not at all clear that the potential benefits from the covid-19 vaccines outweigh the potential harms.

“That doesn’t just go for the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. It goes for all the vaccines. It is quite possible that new revelations will arrive over the coming months concerning the other vaccines too. Now would be a good time for governments to change vaccination strategies, halt all plans to vaccinate healthy young people, and instead only vaccinate those who are at substantial risk of serious outcomes from covid-19.

“It is unethical to vaccinate healthy young people until it is clear that the benefits to them outweigh the harms. At the present point in time, that is not at all clear.”

A thoughtful and reasoned piece.