Category Archives: Politics on the left

The Australian is now the print version of the ABC

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The comments section still carries just enough of the right side balance but the rest of the paper is ideologically just The New York Times. Two days back I took a look at Jonathan Swan’s useless interview with Donald Trump which you can find here. I wrote then:

Hardly wild at all. If you see these posts in the context of the full interview, there is nothing whatsoever noteworthy about these moments to single out. I don’t know how the President puts up with it. Must also say that this Swan is a serious jerk. And so shallow that it is an embarrassment. Rude as well.

And you know why you haven’t heard a thing about this interview? It’s because Donald Trump takes the interviewer apart. It also seems to be truncated from what would have been the full interview so Trump must have done even better with the rest of it.

It has now shown up in Cut&Paste: Trump gets grilled by Aussie Jonathan Swan, son of the ABC’s Norman. Here’s how it ends:

Fran Kelly, RN Breakfast, Thursday:

And, full disclosure, he’s the son of Norman Swan, our Norman Swan, host of the Health Report here on RN and the Coronacast podcast.

Days until the US presidential election:

88.

From the C&P you’d think Trump was completely done over. But if you watch the interview, even the bits they were willing to show, Trump took him to the cleaners. And what will happen in 88 days that the Oz is looking forward to? That Joe Biden will be elected? It’s not just the bias at the Oz that bothers me, but the stupidity.

Say what you like 2+2 really is 4

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It is as much a puzzle as an irritation that no one on the left ever wishes to discuss any of their absolute conclusions about the world, whether it is socialism, open borders, global warming or the deadly potential of the CoronaV. Since each of these seems empty and without merit, there is no doubt that in entering any of these topics it is the start of a discussion about the relative merits of our different points of view. Since all of these issues seem clear as a bell to me, as they also seem to be to them, you would think that it might at least lead to each of us clarifying our own points of view for ourselves. At least I might learn something, and you never know – actually you do know – I might change my mind. Still, there was a time when discussion was just interesting in and for itself.

The reality now is and has been for some time that no one is interested in engaging. The last time I had such a discussion was over why this woman, who was a guest in our house, was voting for Obama over Romney (ie 2012). We have virtually not spoken to each other since, nor to her husband. And all she would say is that since she is not an American, she doesn’t vote in the American election which was insulting and stupid and of course, since neither do I, was of no relevance to the question why she would prefer Obama to Romney. Since then, there is no one who has been open to what used to be part of life’s entertainment. Discussing with others our particular political points of view.

So perhaps this article by James Lindsay will provide the answer: No, the Woke Won’t Debate You. Here’s Why. All should be read, but here is a part of it.

I often get asked specifically if there’s some paper or book out there in the Critical Social Justice literature that prohibits or discourages debate and conversation with people who don’t already agree with them. I honestly don’t know. I’ve looked in a cursory fashion and haven’t found one, but, then, Critical Social Justice scholars are also rather incredibly prolific (an undeniable benefit of having no rigorous standards to meet and a surplus of ideological zeal, as it happens). That is to say, there’s a lot of Woke literature out there, and maybe someone has explained it very clearly and at length with a lot of specificity, but if so, I haven’t seen it. So far as I know, there’s not some specific piece of scholarship that closes the Woke off to debate, like a single paper or book explaining why they don’t do it. It’s just part of the Woke mindset not to do it, and the view of the world that informs that mindset can be read throughout their scholarship.

To me, the answer is that the modern left has abandoned argument because they cannot find one that will even begin to convince anyone else. They might end up winning the political wars within our own societies but they will only surrender the gates to others who will enslave them.

Lindsay’s argument is also summarised here by John Sexton. I will merely repeat two quotes from Lindsay which are well selected. First

There are a number of points within Critical Social Justice Theory that would see having a debate or conversation with people of opposing views as unacceptable, and they all combine to create a mindset where that wouldn’t be something that adherents to the Theory are likely or even willing to do in general. This reticence, if not unwillingness, to converse with anyone who disagrees actually has a few pretty deep reasons behind it, and they’re interrelated but not quite the same. They combine, however, to produce the first thing everyone needs to understand about this ideology: it is a complete worldview with its own ethics, epistemology, and morality, and theirs is not the same worldview the rest of us use. Theirs is, very much in particular, not liberal. In fact, theirs advances itself rather parasitically or virally by depending upon us to play the liberal game while taking advantage of its openings. That’s not the same thing as being willing to play the liberal game themselves, however, including to have thoughtful dialogue with people who oppose them and their view of the world. Conversation and debate are part of our game, and they are not part of their game.

And then there’s this.

Debate and conversation, especially when they rely upon reason, rationality, science, evidence, epistemic adequacy, and other Enlightenment-based tools of persuasion are the very thing they think produced injustice in the world in the first place. Those are not their methods and they reject them. Their methods are, instead, storytelling and counter-storytelling, appealing to emotions and subjectively interpreted lived experience, and problematizing arguments morally, on their moral terms.

I don’t take any of this seriously since the people who spout such nonsense are the least worldly, knowledgeable people around. They know nothing that adds value to a conversation. If all you know, surrounded by modern technology is that sometimes what people have believed has turned out to be untrue then you know nothing worth knowing at all.

Also by Lindsay is this: The Complex Relationship between Marxism and Wokeness.

And another by Sexton on Lindsay is found here: Does 2+2=4? Woke Academics Say Not Necessarily.

Amazingly for some, 2+2=4 is an open question. The absolute certainty is there is nothing to learn from these people whatsoever, other than to do what you can not to allow these people to make the political rules where you live.

The Melbourne Syndrome

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The Covid pandemic has brought on our modern version of The Stockholm Syndrome: “feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor.” We now have the Melbourne Syndrome, which I come across versions of every day:

Feelings of trust or affection felt during a lockdown by its victims towards their most authoritarian political leaders.

Since Melbourne has now implemented the hardest lockdown at the hands of the dumbest and most incompetent political leader in the world, I believe that Melbourne should have the honour of bearing the name of this widely observed form of insanity.

And just for contrast, let me note what is simultaneously going on in Stockholm: Destroying Western Media’s “Swedish Public Health Disaster” Narrative In Two Simple Charts

In the top chart, when we compare the mortality rates of covid19 in Sweden v. the US, including all data until the end of July, the US’s mortality rate of covid 19 in the age group of less than 39 years of age was 0.58%, more than 1,230 times greater than the 0.00047% mortality rate of Sweden. Furthermore, in the age demographics of 40-59 and 59-69, the death rate in the US from covid19 versus Sweden was respectively 215 times and 211 times greater than Sweden.

In the bottom chart, I compared Sweden’s mortality rate for different age demographics compared to the US mortality rate for the common flu. For the comprehensive age group of all ages less than 60 years of age, the Swedish mortality rate of covid19 is less than 1/3rd of the American mortality rate for the common flu. Clearly, as can be easily observed in the bottom chart, the overall covid19 mortality rate forSweden’s population was greatly skewed by nearly all covid19 deaths occurring in the above 70 year old demographic, with the majority of Sweden’s covid19 deaths occurring in those older than 80 and 90 years of age!

Go to the link and have a closer look. [THE LINK HAS BEEN FIXED.]

Only when it’s all over and years from now will we reach some kind of consensus on what ought to have been the right approach. As for the worst approach, we here in Melbourne have been able to observe it for ourselves. But the thanks Daniel Andrews and the rest of them are getting for this disgusting botch needs to be memorialised even as so many amongst us bless him for his efforts.

Was it worth it? How many lives did we save?

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Letters from friends.

Of the first one, I can see how that might be true if things are looked at from within the United States. Looking at things from within Victoria, it doesn’t stand up, mostly because I think Daniel Andrews is too stupid to get to that conclusion. And I mean really dumb, not just that he is a fool. There are plenty of fools everywhere. The universities are filled with people who are high-IQ morons. They can reason and read. They can research and write. They can do a crossword and a sudoku. That is the kind of conclusion one of them might reach. But not DA. He is a union thug who just likes to push people around. He never discusses. He never debates. He never explains. And I think it’s because he works on some low-grade principle of capitalists-bad, workers-good. Lockdowns simply reflect his nature and intellect. Force is something he understands.

I will, however, say now that he has postponed the results of his Inquiry to November 6, I am beginning to see some reason to believe what you see below may be true, since the results of the Inquiry will be released following the end of the election in the United States. After that, according to this note, what happens to the Corona Virus will no longer matter. Almost certainly just a coincidence.

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Speaking for myself, from very early on I have entirely thought of the Covid-19 “pandemic” as a hoax that has been seized upon by the left in the United States as a means to engineer the Democrats to a win in the election in November. The origins were in China and occurred either by chance or design, but once it had occurred, the dangers were seized on and amplified by the left to create the panic we now see. Everything else the left has tried had come up a bust, the American economy has performed better than possibly at any time in anyone’s memory, the Deep State and its media cohort have been exposed, and at long last there has been some kind of border protection put in place. Trump was in an unloseable position whereas now it is no better than 50-50.

As for conspiracy theories, that is all there are in politics. Every political strategy requires all kinds of people to do their part with no scripting or instructions required. Every so often there are lone players, such as Lee Harvey Oswald. The rest of the time, however, there is a general theme that is played out where everyone on both sides understand the agenda, with those promoting the agenda all making up their own means of contributing towards its fulfilment, and those on the other side doing what they can to push back. So the theme on the left was – We must do everything we can to limit the spread of death and destruction from this deadly virus. For Trump, there was no serious choice but to take this hysteria seriously, and whatever he may have personally believed, to do all he could to limit the spread of the virus. So he stopped the borders, supported lockdowns and put Dr Fauci out in front to call the shots. The rest of the world, either because they too had no choice but to play along, which in all cases required them to do something, or because they were on the left and understood the game in play, amplified the horrors by working out their own response to highlight how bad things were and how Donald Trump had screwed up the response. Meanwhile in Democrat states, everything was done to make the pandemic appear as dangerous as possible. The actions taken in New York by Andrew Cuomo were not errors of judgement but undertaken to raise as much concern as possible.

In Australia, for whatever reason, nothing happened. No major pandemic, no deaths beyond the normal seasonal total for the flu, and no real contribution to add to the hysteria other than to suggest there was no need for it.

Which brings me to Daniel Andrews who has not for nothing been called the Andrew Cuomo of Australia. It’s not as if he blundered. Everything he has done has been deliberately aimed at creating as much media-driven alarm as possible in the midst of absolutely nothing statistically of significance. But the media are also playing along to the fullest extent they can as one would expect so you would think we were back to the Spanish flu once again.

I cannot therefore promise you that you will survive the Covid panic without some kind of damage to yourselves or families, but that is far far more likely than that you or anyone you know should come to any serious harm. The harm you should worry about, and this is much more serious than anything else that might happen, is that Joe Biden should become President. That you have had the possibility you might die within the next twelve months raised by 0.005% is hardly worthy of a moment’s thought.

And this is the second letter. This is about the cost and benefits of the efforts made to contain the CV-19. Was it worth it? he asks. How will we even be able to tell and by what date can we know? Lives interrupted everywhere.

Most of the decline in output from COVID is from shutting down the economy, not from the disease itself. What would have been the economic impact of C0VID if governments had not shut down our economies? Well, we have to make some simplifying assumptions – lets try …

  • With no government shutdowns, half the population gets covid over a period of about a year, half of those are asymptomatic. I’ve seen the asymptomatic ratio ranging from 40% to 80%.
  • Of the symptomatic quarter of the population, assume mortality is 5% (Worldometer.info estimates New York State mortality rate from verified and estimated infection is only about 1.4%. It was higher in Europe).
  • Of those deaths, most occur in the elderly cohorts. So labour force mortality (18-65 years) is less, lets say 2.5% (18-65 years). (New York State estimate would make labour force mortality under 2%). Impact on labour input is 50% infection rate x 2.5%mortality = 1.3%.
  • The symptomatic but recovered portion of the labour force, is off work for a month on average, worth 1/12 x 50% infection rate x 50% symptomatic ratio = 2.1%  of labour input.
  • So total reduction in labour input is only about 2.1 +1.3 = 3.4% for a year (assuming full employment).
  • There would be some substitution of capital for labour – about 0.5 elasticity in the long run (Knoblach et al, Oxford 2019) and less but still positive in the short run. Also some overtime and informal work accommodation.
  • On a micro/sectorial level, high mortality among the elderly would generate actuarial gains for defined benefit pension funds and actuarial losses for life insurance companies. For health plans there would be short-term losses and long term gains. Hard to say what the overall impact would be. There would be stress (even higher output) on health systems.
  • Another imponderable would be the impact on risk premia and liquidity in financial markets if there was a pandemic panic.

Bottom line: its hard to see an impact on global GDP of more than about -3% from the disease itself (-3.4% labour input with some capital and technology offsets). The forecast decline in world GDP of –5.2% this year (World Bank) means a total gap of about 8.5% (+3.3% potential growth less WB’s –5.2% forecast 2020). The global GDP decline is mostly the result of shutting down much of the global economy. Was it worth it? How many lives did we save?

Obama’s literary fraud

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Obama is no better at writing than he was at governing. A fantastic fraud in every way, which the left insisted on electing and then re-electing. And that he cannot write is no minor issue since he was elected more or less on his autobiography supposedly personally detailed in his Dreams from My Father. The man who exposed all of this was Jack Cashill in his Deconstructing Obama.

How did Barack Obama, a man who had previously written little else, suddenly pen what Time magazine calls “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician”? Here, in Deconstructing Obama, political scholar and author Jack Cashill analyzes and pieces together Obama’s statements about his life to get at the truth behind the man.

Cashill’s “eureka” moment came when he realized that the structure of Dreams of My Father loosely mirrors that of Homer’s Odyssey. From the moment of that revelation, Cashill researched, read, and examined interviews, writings, and statements about the President’s life story, focusing especially on a poem written when Obama was nineteen. According to the facts, in conjunction with Obama’s statements and writings, Cashill’s conclusion is that the stories don’t add up—and for the nearly 2 million people who read and accepted the story about Obama’s life—the truth is that it may be more myth than history.

That is putting it mildly. With Obama, there is no there there. And he has returned to the scene of Obama’s literary crime of the century discussing the memoir Obama is owed to his publisher, now at least three years late. This one even involves Donald Trump who apparently had seen through Obama’s literary pretensions right from the start: Why the Media Chose Not to Hear When Trump Called Obama a Literary Fraud. Here are the last paras, but read it all since it’s short.

the media wanted nothing to do with the idea that Ayers was Obama’s muse, no matter who made the claim.  At least fifty publications reviewed his book, and not a one mentioned the six pages he spent on the book’s most newsworthy revelation.

Relentless Obama-defender Chris Matthews interviewed Andersen on MSNBC’s Hardball and did not address the authorship issue.  Said Matthews at the end of the interview, “You’re amazing, successful guy.  You have a winning streak here.”  If Matthews did not read the book, which is likely, someone on his staff surely must have but chose not to notice the damning Ayers revelation.

To accuse Obama of being a literary fraud opens one up to the charge of racism.  This I can verify from experience.  There is only one reason, then, that the mainstream media passed on the opportunity to call out Trump: the deep-seated fear that he was right.

Trump was right. If you count on the media to understand what is going on, you will hardly know a thing about the times in which you live.

The political consequences of CV-1984

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From These Two Charts Should Land Dr. Fauci in Prison. And if that doesn’t, this definitely should if it’s even remotely true: In New Interview Bobby Kennedy Jr. Claims Dr. Fauci will Make Millions on Coronavirus Vaccine and Owns Half the Patent. Not to mention this as well: CDC director acknowledges hospitals have a monetary incentive to overcount coronavirus deaths.

But it is this bit of common sense that really does get to me: from Rush Limbaugh.

I’ll tell you there’s something else. There is something else about this, folks. The people who are telling you what you have to do to shut down your business, to not send your kid back to school, to not go back to work, these are people that have not lost a paycheck during this crisis. Have you noticed? There’s not a single [Victorian] worker that’s been fired. Not a single one. This is crucially important. The people that have not lost a paycheck are the ones telling you that you need to give up your livelihood, shut down your business, don’t go back to your job.

This used to be an issue when this began, but has for some reason gone away. This is the socialist ideal; income security exists only in the public sector. But after a while, and it does take a while, the money you get will buy you only a fraction of what it used to buy as the economy caves inwards. And at the same time your personal freedom and independence disappears in ways you never dreamed might happen. This is from The Wall Street Journal which is as mainstream as it is possible to be: The Pandemic Is a Dress Rehearsal. This is what you can see before the story cuts out:

Eight months after the novel coronavirus burst out of Wuhan, China, it has created unprecedented economic and social disruption, with economies cratering across the globe and more destruction to come. Tens of millions have lost their jobs, and millions more have seen their life savings disappear as governments forced restaurants, bars and other small businesses to shut their doors.

Wealthy societies are able, for now, to print and pump money in hope of limiting the social and economic damage, but such measures cannot be extended…

And then, eventually, what happens after that?

The Covid hoax

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A letter from a friend.

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Speaking for myself, from very early on I have entirely thought of the Covid-19 “pandemic” as a hoax that has been seized upon by the left in the United States as a means to engineer the Democrats to a win in the election in November. The origins were in China and occurred either by chance or design, but once it had occurred, the dangers were seized on and amplified by the left to create the panic we now see. Everything else the left has tried had come up a bust, the American economy has performed better than possibly at any time in anyone’s memory, the Deep State and its media cohort have been exposed, and at long last there has been some kind of border protection put in place. Trump was in an unloseable position whereas now it is no better than 50-50.

As for conspiracy theories, that is all there are in politics. Every political strategy requires all kinds of people to do their part with no scripting or instructions required. Every so often there are lone players, such as Lee Harvey Oswald. The rest of the time, however, there is a general theme that is played out where everyone on both sides understand the agenda, with those promoting the agenda all making up their own means of contributing towards its fulfilment, and those on the other side doing what they can to push back. So the theme on the left was – We must do everything we can to limit the spread of death and destruction from this deadly virus. For Trump, there was no serious choice but to take this hysteria seriously, and whatever he may have personally believed, to do all he could to limit the spread of the virus. So he stopped the borders, supported lockdowns and put Dr Fauci out in front to call the shots. The rest of the world, either because they too had no choice but to play along, which in all cases required them to do something, or because they were on the left and understood the game in play, amplified the horrors by working out their own response to highlight how bad things were and how Donald Trump had screwed up the response. Meanwhile in Democrat states, everything was done to make the pandemic appear as dangerous as possible. The actions taken in New York by Andrew Cuomo were not errors of judgement but undertaken to raise as much concern as possible.

In Australia, for whatever reason, nothing happened. No major pandemic, no deaths beyond the normal seasonal total for the flu, and no real contribution to add to the hysteria other than to suggest there was no need for it.

Which brings me to Daniel Andrews who has not for nothing been called the Andrew Cuomo of Australia. It’s not as if he blundered. Everything he has done has been deliberately aimed at creating as much media-driven alarm as possible in the midst of absolutely nothing statistically of significance. But the media are also playing along to the fullest extent they can as one would expect so you would think we were back to the Spanish flu once again.

I cannot therefore promise you that you will survive the Covid panic without some kind of damage to yourselves or families, but that is far far more likely than that you or anyone you know should come to any serious harm. The harm you should worry about, and this is much more serious than anything else that might happen, is that Joe Biden should become President. That you have had the possibility you might die within the next twelve months raised by 0.005% is hardly worthy of a moment’s thought.

How can any sane person not support Donald Trump?

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You know, anyone who does not want Trump to win re-election is as politically empty as anyone can possibly be. I therefore continue to marvel at The Oz, and Greg Sheridan in particular with his article today: In strange times, Donald Trump can still win this election. What makes these time so strange is that Joe Biden has even been nominated never mind that he might yet win this election.

On November 3, barely 90 days away, will the gigantic, fantastic, psychedelic, unbelievable reality show of Donald Trump’s presidency come to a crashing halt, and the sleepy, somnolent, simpering tones of Uncle Joe Biden, Great Uncle Joe, replace the orange-haired tweeter-in-chief?

Unbelievably empty. Shallow. Inane. Want some more?

Trump is running on four issues: who is best to revive the economy; law and order; China; and Biden’s manifest weaknesses.

He is not running on how he handled the COVID-19 pandemic, which is still raging, with new milestones this week. US cases are nearly five million, with more than 155,000 dead. Florida broke its record for daily deaths. Other states have been posting nasty records. Many states, Republican and Democrat, are imposing new restrictions.

Seems a pretty conclusive pro-Trump case to be running on who is best to revive the economy; law and order; China; and Biden’s manifest weaknesses. Also on sealing the borders. And then there’s Portland, Seattle and a few other rundown and misbegotten Democrat cites beyond that.

As for running on how he handled the China flu, see the video above.

Looking back at Looking Backward

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If you have never read Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000-1887 you really should. There are so many ways to savour its uniqueness that it just has to be sampled on one’s own. A man, for reasons explained in the book falls into deep sleep in Boston in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000 into a socialist utopia, or at least as much of a utopia as could be imagined in 1887.

To get some sense of the book, there is this Looking backward at Edward Bellamy’s utopia written by the incomparable Martin Gardner in 2000.

Gardner is much too kind to the book. What I find so fascinating is that our reality today has so far transcended the best imaginable socialist universe that could be conjured in the nineteenth century. No one today would swap our reality for what had been seen as the near perfect world as it had once been conceived.