Category Archives: Politics on the left

In the hands of idiots

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It seems to me that every political leader wants to be remembered as the Winston Churchill of their times, when the reality is that there is no greater truth than rooster today, feather duster tomorrow. It is incredible what a bunch of fools this country is led by, state and federal.

We here in Victoria are blessed with the Laurel and Hardy duo of Dopey Dan and Slo Mo. Possibly the stupidest statement to come out of our present situation is from Paul Kelly in relation to the PM: “Political capital built during the virus crisis must be spent wisely on reform”. The only form of capital that occurs to me is capital punishment. We are led by such power-driven idiots that it is hard to have imagined this outcome. If any kind of reform is needed it is to find ways to limit the power we seem inadvertently to have put into the hands of our political leaders. Let me therefore take you to this from Adam Creighton – Coronavirus: We’re paying a high price for saving not many lives – who shows a great deal of what is now missing everywhere, common sense.

He discusses the absurd numbers flowing from the Victorian government. Whoever wrote the document he refers to should resign in disgrace:

The most absurd document published by an Australian government in recent times must be from Victoria’s Health and Human Services Department, which claimed 36,000 Victorians would have died from COVID-19 without the tough lockdowns brought in by Premier Daniel Andrews.

Adam Creighton also puts a number of what this is costing:

The cost [per life saved] is looking enormous and far more than we typically spend to save lives. If we’d followed the Swedish trajectory we might, crudely, have an extra 4500 fatalities by now (our population is 2½ times the size).

For the federal government alone, that works out at $48m per life saved, given the $214bn in budgeted federal assistance.

That is only the additional tally for federal money spent, leaving out the states. I did another similar estimate based on lost GDP which came to $300b per life saved. But let’s work with merely the $48m per individual life saved.

We are in the hands of idiots of such colossal proportions that no one will ever again be able to look back at the Salem Witch Trials and laugh at the people of their time since we are among people so far in advance with their own superstitions that believing in witches will eventually seem rational compared with the dolts we are in the hands of today.

Madness and politics

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From The Other McCain and in full.

Study: 56% of Liberal Women Under Age 30 Have Been Diagnosed as Mentally Ill

Posted on | April 22, 2020 | 42 Comments

Trump Derangement Syndrome is real:

Zach Goldberg . . . has analysed the latest dataset released by the reputable Pew Research Center. This is the Pew Research Panel, Wave 64, which interviewed a representative sample of 11,537 American adults between March 19th and March 24th. . . .

Among those aged 18 to 29, some 20.9% of those who described themselves as “Conservative” answered “Yes” to the question “Has a doctor or healthcare provider ever told you that you have a mental health condition?” For those in this age group who were political “Moderates,” 26.3% answered “Yes.” But among those who self-classified as “Liberal” those answering “Yes” jumped up to an astonishing 45.9%.

So, to be clear, almost half of young white American Leftists have been diagnosed with a mental illness. . . .

In general, females are more likely to suffer from mental health conditions than males, because one of the most common of these conditions is depression. According to psychologist Daniel Nettle in his 2007 book Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are, females, being more prone to worry and anxiety, are more prone to depression than males. So Jonathan Haidt, known for his Moral Foundations Theory of political preferences whereby Liberals and Conservatives have a fundamentally different system of morality, asked Goldberg if he had broken down the data by sex.

And Goldberg — who is doing a PhD in Political Science at Georgia State University — analysed the data again, breaking it down by gender. The results were as predicted and were all the more striking for it. According to Pew Research Center data, 56% of Liberal females aged 18 to 29 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition . . .

 

The obvious question is, “Why?” And the most obvious answer, supplied by Emily Ekins of the Cato Institute, is “locus of control”:

 

Part of the reason liberals and conservatives disagree about the causes of poverty and wealth is that they disagree about the extent to which personal choices or external forces directs people’s lives. In other words: they disagree about the role of personal agency.
This idea is related to a concept in psychology called the locus of control. People who tend to believe events in their lives are within the control of the individual are described as having an internal locus of control. Those who tend to believe events in their lives are outside of a person’s control are described as having an external locus of control. While in reality both external forces and personal choices play a role, the question is what individuals emphasize. . . .
The [2019 Cato] survey finds that liberals emphasize external forces and that conservatives emphasize personal choices in explaining personal outcomes in their own lives. . . .

These data demonstrate that liberals and conservatives emphasize the impact of personal agency on outcomes differently. Conservatives are more likely to believe that people are responsible for their situations and use their agency to direct their lives, and liberals are more likely to believe that people’s situations are shaped by their environment and other external factors.

Modern liberalism (or “progressivism”) is obsessed with inequality, claiming that all disparities in outcomes are a result of systemic oppression, which must be ended in the name of “social justice.” Everything is interpreted through the lenses of identity politics, where racism, sexism, homophobia and other biases are believed to define the axes of oppression. Because vast social and historic forces are involved in this worldview, it is easy to see why it tends to breed an attitude of helplessness. If the “patriarchy” has been oppressing all women for the past 6,000 years — a core claim of feminist ideology — a young woman who buys into this worldview must see herself engaged in a desperate struggle, even though she herself might be highly privileged, by any objective standard. Feminist activism, I would argue, is a chief cause of the epidemic of insanity that prevails among girls at elite universities.

 

Think about this: You’re an upper-middle-class suburban white girl whose parents can afford the tuition at Oberlin, Stanford or Yale. Given your advantageous socioeconomic background, your success in life is almost guaranteed — or it would be, were it not for a curriculum that teaches you deranged nonsense, e.g., “gender is a social construct,” in a campus climate where becoming an “activist” is considered a smart career move. The path of progressive activism is unlikely to lead to personal happiness in life, because this sort of activism is all about grievance-mongering around claims of oppression.

 

Correlation should not be confused with causation, of course. Does liberalism create insanity, or does it merely attract insane people? A political movement based upon policy ideas that are obsolete, discredited and harmful will not attract the best people to its banner. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the core belief of leftism — equality through economic redistribution imposed by an all-powerful government — has been entirely discredited. No honest and intelligent person could endorse the crypto-Marxist policy agenda of the Democratic Party, which is why Democrats attract so many stupid and dishonest people.

Young people have no memory of the Cold War. They do not remember the failure of LBJ’s “Great Society” programs (about which Amity Schlaes has written a new book). Academia is now so dominated by the Democratic Party that Republicans can never be hired to the faculty at elite universities. Students thus never encounter a professor who will explain them that “progressive” policies are doomed to failure, and are instead encouraged to devote themselves to the politics of futility.

Frauds and conmen

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We are dealing with totalitarian mentalities which must always lurk behind everyone who runs for political office. They want not just to manage our affairs, but to run our lives. There is no longer anything to worry about, and the data are even more stark by the day. But was in an argument this afternoon – online of course – over the data. In the end, I went looking for the numbers, and this is what I found.

This was published by the ABC in Feb 2020 so “last year” in the story refers to 2019. Flu season which struck down 310,000 Australians ‘worst on record’ due to early outbreaks. The final lines:

“While 2019 saw the highest number of influenza cases across the country, 2017 still holds the record for the highest number of flu-related deaths, with over 1,100 cases.”

Last year there were over 900 influenza linked deaths in Australia.“

And then there was this from the ABS, not the ABC this time.

Australia’s leading causes of death, 2018

Influenza and pneumonia (J09-J18)

Number: 3102
Median age: 89.3

The number of deaths from the Corona Virus will possibly never reach 100 and will certainly never reach 1000.

We are in the midst of a gigantic fraud and a burst of the most disgusting hysteria. We are not led by leaders but by hysterics and conmen who love power and love to tell everyone else what to do. They have no business being leaders in a free society. First they do everything they can to scare as many people as possible and then invent a near-on-totalitarian system to protect virtually all of us from virtually nothing at all.

Where this is headed and what the end game may well be

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The Democrat long game with the longest game of all at the end. From Lucianne.com:

Rob Reiner Says Trump ‘Will Lose in a Landslide
Because Americans Will be Voting for Their
Lives’
Breitbart Entertainment, by Alana Mastrangelo Original Article
Left-wing Hollywood director and actor Rob Reiner is predicting that President Donald Trump will lose his reelection this November because “Americans will literally be voting for their lives.” While Reiner’s remarks are an apparent reaction to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, the director did not clarify how exactly he arrived at his prediction. “Trump will lose in a landslide because Americans will literally be voting for their lives,” tweeted the Misery director on Saturday. [Tweet] Saturday’s tweet is not Reiner’s only prediction about the president. In January, The Jerk actor suggested that National Security Advisor John Bolton could be of major value for Democrats during the president’s impeachment trial
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‘The Worse, the Better!’ –
a Strategy of the Left
Breitbart Politics, by David Horowitz Original Article
During the rebel Sixties, one could easily identify the ranks of the hardcore left by their constant predictions of a coming fascism and the evident glee with which they welcomed the prospect. Whether this was the product of a serious attempt to read the political winds, or merely a radical wish was irrelevant. They defended it as a strategy of “the worse the better.” In the 1968 presidential election, it was better to elect a fascist like Nixon than a moderate like Hubert Humphrey – that is, if you were serious about revolution.Of all my memories of the Sixties the revelations provoked
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How the Obamas could easily win
eight more years in the White House
New York Post, by Michael A. Walsh Original Article
As the president of the United States shelters in place with the White House press corps, and Joe Biden gibbers senselessly into the GoPro camera in his Delaware basement, this fall’s national election has been thrown into a cocked tricorn by the coronavirus. Many of Donald Trump’s retail-politicking strengths — the huge rallies, his command of crowds — have been neutralized, and while he still has control of the narrative from his bully pulpit in the West Wing, the national media remains dead set against him, and puts the worst possible spin on every word he speaks.

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Michelle for President has long been at the back of my mind as the intended strategy. I think it has only been Michelle’s reluctance that has kept this from boiling over, but with Biden’s senility unmistakeable, a new strategy will be imperative. And the less time there is to discuss what this means, the greater the possibility of pulling it off.

Tara Reade never heard of her

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The one great shift in American politics is that the right has decided not to ever again spike its own candidates when attacked by the left for actions that no Democrats would ever have cared about if their own candidates were accused of the same thing. Tara Reade has a credible accusation of sexual predation against Joe Biden which no media organisation has in any way investigated. All this is discussed here: Joe Biden Exposes #MeToo Movement as Total BS

Let me count the ways in which Reade’s allegation is infinitely more credible than Blasey Ford’s…

  1. Reade can prove she knew and worked with Biden in 1993, the time in question.
  2. Reade is welcoming investigative reporters to scrutinize her story, whereas Blasey Ford refused to do anything other than hide behind her attorneys.
  3. Reade has two living witnesses whom she told of the alleged assault at the time, both of whom confirm she told them about it.
  4. Investigative reporter Rich McHugh found a third person, a person who worked under Reade at the time, who confirmed that Reade disappeared from Biden’s Senate office around the time the alleged assault occurred. This fits perfectly with Reade’s allegation of the retribution she faced.
  5. McHugh found a fourth person Reade told about the event some 15 years ago.
  6. Joe Biden has a long and very disturbing history of unwanted touching, kissing, and nuzzling — we have video after video after video of him behaving this way in full view of the public — even with children, so one can only imagine how he behaves when no one is looking.
  7. Reade said she filed an official complaint against Biden at the time. McHugh says if that complaint exists, it is locked up with Biden’s papers at the University of Delaware, and those papers are locked up forever.
  8. Reade filed an official police report against Biden last week and did so under penalty of prison if she’s exposed as a liar.
  9. Reade is a lifelong Democrat.

I’ve heard it said that the Dems like the accusation since it indicates that a pulse still remains within Biden’s carcass. He will never get to be the nominee, or if he does, they either don’t expect him to win or if he does, that he will die soon after, or if not that, that a committee of the presidency will do whatever they do and merely wheel Biden in for the signing ceremonies.

Why didn’t Malcolm see his removal as a CIA coup?

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From The Age: ‘Trump kept talking over the top of me’: Turnbull recounts tense call. Turnbull has to be the absolute high water mark of political stupidity. Is there anyone more completely dense who has ever been a political leader anywhere. Read this and wonder.

A furious Donald Trump berated then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull over a deal to resettle hundreds of refugees, only to joke about the agreement months later by claiming 2000 “terrorists” would come to America.

The US President swung wildly in the negotiations to resettle asylum seekers from Manus Island and Nauru, in a pattern repeated in volatile talks to give Australia valuable exemptions in Mr Trump’s trade war with China.

Recounting the clashes and compromises in a new memoir, Mr Turnbull tells of a colleague going “white with horror” at Mr Trump’s ferocity about the refugee deal in a notorious phone conversation in January 2017….

“As his anger rose, Trump kept talking over the top of me, with more intensity,” Mr Turnbull writes of the phone call.

“It was as though at times he was talking to himself or perhaps to the people in the room, which of course included [then presidential adviser] Steve Bannon, one of the deal’s fiercest opponents.

“At one point, I looked up from the phone across my desk to [senior adviser] David Bold – his face was white with horror – so I turned to look out the window instead.”…

When Mr Trump asked his wife, Melania, to join the talks, he joked with Mr Turnbull about the refugee deal he had been so angry about months earlier.

“Melania, do you know, Malcolm has 2000 of the worst terrorists in the world locked up on a desert island and that fool Obama agreed to take them?” Mr Trump said, according to the new memoir.

“And now Malcolm has talked me into taking them, too.”

Mr Turnbull notes that while the conversation was “surreal”, the deal meant refugees would soon begin leaving the islands to resettle in the US….

“So, you’ve been having a little fun at my expense, Malcolm?” he said, according to Mr Turnbull’s account. “It’s not bad. Lots of people think you are better than Alec Baldwin.”

As French President Emmanuel Macron listened, Mr Turnbull told Mr Trump – “wearily” – that the refugees were not terrorists.

“Oh, yes, they are,” Mr Trump replied, in Mr Turnbull’s account. “They are the worst, and that fool Obama – the worst president EVER – agreed to take them to America. Can you believe that? Would you take them, Emmanuel?”

Mr Turnbull says the French President opened his mouth but did not say anything.

Mr Turnbull concludes that Trump is a “radical” and “populist” leader whose deliberate unpredictability generates fear and anxiety in other nations rather than respect for American strength.

The only reason we can rule out a CIA coup is that everything Malcolm stood for is part of the American Deep State agenda.

ILLUSTRATING THE POLITICAL DIVIDE: It is worth having a look at the comments section on this post at The Age. This is the comment which was selected by the others as “most respected”.

It’s all part of the job, as MT would have known this before he took it on. The American people did elect a lunatic and our far right wing politicians see Trump’s behaviour as pretty good, that is, anything you can get away while still holding the treasury benches is okay. Democracy is such a lottery, anyone can nominate and when they get elected their true traits come out. In Canberra Malcolm was from a different universe, well educated and successful while so many of the career MPs have done little else since they landed a ministerial adviser job at age 25 or so. These people no nothing about dealing with ‘normal’ human beings – they see everything from the prism of the Canberra bubble. My hope is the Libs and Nats implode – what a nice thought!

What overlap is there with people who see things this way? Unbelievably ignorant, with not an ounce of common sense or understanding of anything. But they’re there, and in large numbers too. Useful idiots though they may be, they will yet doom us to perdition.

The left could not care less about you other than your vote

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Consecutive articles at Lucianne.com.

Why Trump Will Win the
Post-Pandemic Election
American Spectator, by David Catron Original Article
It is by now obvious that the Democrats are determined to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic in a last desperate attempt to get the president. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has launched yet another Trump investigation, said his call to reopen the economy is “sinful,” and colluded with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to block the GOP effort to pass financial aid without which even more Americans will lose their jobs. Meanwhile, the nation’s Democratic governors refuse to ease their job-killing lockdowns, despite indications that the spread of COVID-19 has already passed its peak. The Democrats clearly hope that the resultant recession will cause Trump to lose in November.
–
The Pelosi Recession
Washington Free Beacon, by Editors Original Article
As another five million people flood the unemployment system, the country faces a classic whodunit: Who killed the U.S. economy? The novel coronavirus must bear some of the blame. Social distancing has pushed millions of consumers and producers into their homes. A temporary societal shutdown means a temporary economic contraction. But the length of the recession—whether the economy bounces back post-shutdown, or whether we lose another decade of growth—is as much about government as the conditions on the ground.

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And bear in mind that the whole world has been turned upside with almost entirely the sole purpose being to defeat Donald Trump in the election in November. We would have had the virus anyway, because of Wuhan and the coverup by the Chinese government, but the over-reaction was entirely an American thing. But first the American left needed to work out how to confect the story. Here, is Nancy Peolosi saying there was nothing in it when Donald Trump had suggested there was and had cut off travel to the US from China.

https://twitter.com/hollandcourtney/status/1250560991969988608

And when that went nowhere as an election issue the Dems went for how derelict Trump had been in reacting to the virus too late. The leadership on the left is not just filled with stupid and harmful ideas. They are actually evil and will literally do anything it takes to gain power, which is their sole interest.

Make sure you watch the video while you still can since Pelosi is doing what she can to ensure no one else ever again is able to.

And for added emphasis:

Who will guard us from the guardians?

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Not Malcolm Turnbull, that’s for sure.

I posted what you see below in February 27, 2015 just as Malcolm was about to overturn Tony Abbott as Prime Minister: I would never vote for a Coalition led by Malcolm Turnbull. It turned out that I would vote for Malcolm Turnbull when he led the Coalition, but everything else below remains unchanged. And to all this we can add this new revelation discussed by Andrew Bolt in the video above which is a revelation from Malcom’s new book: it was he who encouraged The Guardian to open an Australian edition. Why would he even say it if he wanted to have an ounce of influence on the side he once led. Only because he is an even bigger fool than most of us had already believed he is.

Going even further, more evidence that the Libs have a rotten core of funders and MPs is also highlighted in the video if one listens to Fiona Scott, a Coalition MP from New South Wales. She is barely capable of saying anything negative about Malcolm, even now, even with everything we know.

Below, however, goes back to my post from 2015 in which the only change I can think of is that my views have hardened a great deal further since then.

Andrew Bolt says that Malcolm Turnbull is about to have his final go at taking over the leadership of the Liberal Party by Tuesday, so that it is now or never to make our views known (see here, here and here).

When I used to work in Canberra, our offices backed onto the Liberal Party headquarters, and I was asked one time, even before Malcolm entered Parliament, what I thought about him. My answer was that if I was in the constituency that would decide the fate of the next election, and my vote was the one that would put him in or out, that I would hesitate about which way to go. That was then. Today I would have no doubt. The reasons.

Peter Wright For me, national security is the ultimate issue in any election. There are always international issues that matter, and they weigh heavy with me. All but forgotten today, The Spycatcher Trial was one of those moments I do not forget. Wright was an MI5 agent who set out to write a tell-all/reveal-all of the English intelligence service. Margaret Thatcher sought to prevent the publication of his book, and the final determination was in a court in Tasmania, in which Malcolm Turnbull sought to defend Wright and ultimately was successful in allowing the book to be published worldwide because it could be published in Australia. I was told then that everyone deserves the best defence and etc etc, but if Malcolm has ever said that he defended Wright even though he was treasonous scum, I haven’t heard it. I would never trust Turnbull on any national security issue, and there is nothing more important at the present time.

He’s a Warmist Anyone soft-headed enough to take in the Global Warming scam without at least some doubts is not a possessor of the shrewd, sensible, incisive mind I am looking for in a leader. He lost the leadership on this one issue at the time because there are people like me who would never line up behind anyone who believes this stuff needs trillion dollar government solutions to what is looking every day less of a problem.

He’s a Keynesian I once had a conversation with Malcolm over economic issues and mentioned something that I think of instinctively as an issue, the kind of thing Peter Costello put at the centre of his own management of the economy. His response was to walk off. Having watched and listened to him over the years, he has no sense of how an economy works. Given that when he led the Libs he was all set to follow Labor’s lead on the stimulus, and declared that the Coalition would have done much the same, in many ways he owns the problems we have right now.

Useless as a Minister He may be popular with the ABC and others like it, but this is only because he has never done anything of any use that would upset them. If he doesn’t upset the ABC, what could he possibly stand for? What issue has he carried forward as part of the government that has done an ounce of good? If the NBN is his crowning achievement, he has done nothing other than implement Kevin Rudd’s back-of-the-envelope idiocy that will cost us billions and return millions.

He Cannot be Trusted To draw a distinction between himself and the Prime Minister over the Human Rights Commission Report on children in detention not only shows the worst imaginable political judgement, but has him line up with the Government’s enemies. I am a million miles from Canberra right now, but since all and sundry report Turnbull’s treachery, who am I to doubt it. This is a government that needs to survive and win that next election. Abbott is learning how to be a PM on the job, and is actually getting the hang of it. Shame about the wasted first year, but that is now the past.

There is clearly a succession plan in place at the top of the Liberal Party. What may have begun as the second eleven is now starting to function as a very good government. And the PM does not like to lose, and I don’t think he will.

Actually, there is one other matter I should have included but will include now.

Led the Republican Movement He has no idea how we are governed nor the crucial role of the Governor-General in a Parliamentary Democracy. He prefers a system in which a single person makes the rules and everyone else follows the rules this single person has made. Utterly ignorant of the necessary constitutional restraints on a government of the day. Even though a shift to a republic was utterly rejected across the country he remains bitter about the loss. Too shallow to understand any of the deeper issues involved.

“Only by acting collectively … will be be able to protect personal liberty”

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This was a posting at the History of Economics discussion forum which I find both very revealing in the state of mind it displays but also in how he connects the reaction to the coronavirus with global warming. I intend to put up my own comment but thought I would see what the reaction of others here might be.

Of course, with the spread of the COVID virus, I have been thinking of the libertarian arguments of the constraints of government on liberty. But now the constraint on liberty is not from the government but from nature where one’s individual actions can harm others. I would assume that for a responsible libertarian, they would recognize their behavior affects the liberty (health) of another, and change their behavior. Besides having rights, liberty also means individual responsibility to protect the liberty of others from one’s actions.
But what if individuals don’t and add to the tragedy of the commons?

If one believes ecological economists, individual constraints are going to increase with global warming. It is only by acting collectively to control global warming that we will be able to protect personal liberty from the constraints that nature will force on us. The point I’m getting at is that besides demanding rights, individuals need to act responsibly. If not, then collective action needs to step in to protect the common good. The libertarian argument for me has only made sense if individuals besides demanding rights are also willing to respect and act to protect the rights of others. If not, you get too many tragedies of the commons.

I will only say this is to me a true example of the depths to which economic theory has fallen.