BLM has been Bad for Blacks

The Reuters news service fired Isaac Kriegman for writing this essay on why Black Lives Matter has been bad for Blacks.

Here is the latest example of Black suffering from systemic racism:

A ProPublica analysis found that traffic cameras in Chicago disproportionately ticket Black and Latino motorists. But city officials plan to stick with them — and other cities may adopt them too.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.

… But for all of their safety benefits, the hundreds of cameras that dot the city [of Chicago] — and generate tens of millions of dollars a year for City Hall — have come at a steep cost for motorists from the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods. A ProPublica analysis of millions of citations found that households in majority Black and Hispanic ZIP codes received tickets at around twice the rate of those in white areas between 2015 and 2019.

The consequences have been especially punishing in Black neighborhoods, which have been hit with more than half a billion dollars in penalties over the last 15 years, contributing to thousands of vehicle impoundments, driver’s license suspensions and bankruptcies, according to ProPublica’s analysis.

So the robot cameras are racist?

The obvious conclusion from this is that Blacks are unable or unwilling to live according to the norms of a civilized society. Complaints about racism are just demands to subsidize bad behavior.

Update: Studies show:

Diversity training doesn’t work, ditto with microaggression training, implicit bias training, or any mandatory DEI training

Most Whites have no antagonism towards Blacks, and believe that Blacks have suffered from systemic racism. But when Whites have to take classes on the subject, they see that it is all BS.

For a long time, I thought that there were examples of Blacks being mistreated. But no one can seem to find any. All of the big BLM examples are Black criminals who are treated much better than they deserve.

The Real Reason Djokovic is Being Detained

Australia's battle against Novak Djokovic appears to ba about forcing political submission, not health. The NY Times reports:

In a statement explaining why he revoked Djokovic’s visa a second time, Alex Hawke, Australia’s minister for immigration, argued that if Djokovic were allowed to remain in Australia and play, the influential tennis star could harm efforts to combat the virus. The government has conceded that Djokovic poses no imminent threat to spread the disease. It is more about the example it would set by allowing him to stay.

“Given Mr. Djokovic’s high-profile status and position as a role model in the sporting and broader community,” Hawke said in a statement, “his ongoing presence in Australia may foster similar disregard for the precautionary requirements following receipt of a positive Covid-19 test in Australia.”

Djokovic’s lawyers argue that the government unfairly based their decision to revoke his visa again on the premise that Djokovic would engender anti-vaccine sentiments and not on the rule of law.

I am surprised that the Australian authorities would admit this. We have had two years of crazy health advice and orders, making many suspicious that the pandemic was just used as an excuse to force new rules on everybody.

Now it is confirmed. Djokovic is not being allowed to tried for his 21st big tourney win. Not because he might spread the disease, but because he might spread opinions about freedom and personal choice.

Update: The Australian court ruled against Djokovic.

More Sick Advice from NY Times

The NY Times is getting sicker all the time. Here is news:

An upsurge in teenagers requesting hormones or surgeries to better align their bodies with their gender identities has ignited a debate among doctors over when to provide these treatments.

An international group of experts focused on transgender health last month released a draft of new guidelines, the gold standard of the field that informs what insurers will reimburse for care.

Many doctors and activists praised the 350-page document, which was updated for the first time in nearly a decade, for including transgender people in its drafting and for removing language requiring adults to have psychological assessments before getting access to hormone therapy.

But the guidelines take a more cautious stance on teens. A new chapter dedicated to adolescents says that they must undergo mental health assessments and must have questioned their gender identity for “several years” before receiving drugs or surgeries.

Experts in transgender health are divided on these adolescent recommendations, reflecting a fraught debate over how to weigh conflicting risks for young people, who typically can’t give full legal consent until they are 18 and who may be in emotional distress or more vulnerable to peer influence than adults are.

Some of the drug regimens bring long-term risks, such as irreversible fertility loss.

I am not sure which is worse -- sterilizing children with or without psychiatric endorsement. No, this is not gender alignment, or a gold standard, or a legitimate medical treatment. This is mutilation to pursue a sick sexual fantasy.

Here is advice to parents of a daughter having an affair with a married man:

Try to understand, as best you can, what your daughter likes about this arrangement and how it satisfies her.

As a show of respect, read up on polyamory before you broach the subject with her.

I suppose they are going to tell us that polyamorous people are born that way, as they now say for pedophilia.

ACLU Attacks Jewish Supremacy

A Jewish site reports:

The @ACLU human rights head rails about "Jewish supremacy." A brief history of that term. ...

Nowadays, however, the phrase "Jewish supremacy" is used far more often by the Left than the Right.

Apparently Jewish Supremacy was an issue in Germany all the way back to 1880.

I had thought that Hitler invented German anti-semitism in the 1920s by finding a poor defenseless ethnic group, and using them as scapegoats for other problems. No, it turns out that Germans had been concerned about Jewish supremacy for decades before Hitler.

One article said Jews were outcompeting Germans in the intellectual and commercial race. Another said:

Jews ... form a race who do not produce any results due to their own labor. Their sole desire is to derive the benefits of others' labor by tricks and frauds. I hold that the Jewish spirit is corrupting the gentiles.

A Newsweek essay on this subject complains that Hitler wrote:

Hence it is that at the present time the Jew is the great agitator for the complete destruction of Germany. Whenever we read of attacks against Germany taking place in any part of the world the Jew is always the instigator. In peace-time, as well as during the War, the Jewish-Marxist stock-exchange Press systematically stirred up hatred against Germany, until one State after another abandoned its neutrality and placed itself at the service of the world coalition, even against the real interests of its own people.

The Jewish way of reasoning thus becomes quite clear. The Bolshevization of Germany, that is to say, the extermination of the patriotic and national German intellectuals, thus making it possible to force German Labour to bear the yoke of international Jewish finance--that is only the overture to the movement for expanding Jewish power on a wider scale and finally subjugating the world to its rule. As has so often happened in history, Germany is the chief pivot of this formidable struggle. If our people and our State should fall victims to these oppressors of the nations, lusting after blood and money, the whole earth would become the prey of that hydra. Should Germany be freed from its grip, a great menace for the nations of the world would thereby be eliminated.

Obviously Hitler thought that Jewish Communists were a threat to Germany, and to the world.

This Newsweek essay also concludes that the real anti-semites are the leftists who side with the Arab Moslems against Israel.

Why EO Wilson was Hated

I commented on E.O. Wilson's obituary, but I am still trying to figure out why the Left hated him so much. It appears that everyone liked and admired him personally.

Here is an open letter attacking him:

In his attempt to graft speculation about human behavior onto a biological core, Wilson uses a number of strategies and sleights of hand which dispel any claim for logical or factual continuity. Of the twenty-seven chapters of Sociobiology, the middle twenty-five deal largely with animals, especially insects, while only the first and last chapters focus on humans. Thus, Wilson places 500 pages of double column biology between his first chapter on “The Morality of the Gene” and the last chapter, “From Sociobiology to Sociology.” ...

This approach allows Wilson to confirm selectively certain contemporary behavior as adaptive and “natural” and thereby justify the present social order. ...

For instance, in insect populations, Wilson applies the traditional metaphors of “slavery” and “caste,” “specialists” and “generalists” in order to establish a descriptive framework. Thus, he promotes the analogy between human and animal societies and leads one to believe that behavior patterns in the two have the same basis. ...

What we are left with then is a particular theory about human nature, which has no scientific support, and which upholds the concept of a world with social arrangements remarkably similar to the world which E. O. Wilson inhabits. We are not denying that there are genetic components to human behavior.

Wilson did once call Stephen Jay Gould a charlatan. That was correct.

Amy Wax on Limiting Asian Immigration

U Penn law professor Amy Wax has tenure, survived previous woke cancelation attempts, and is at retirement age anyway, so she is one of the last Americans who can speak her mind. Here is her email opinion, on the site of a non-woke Black professor:

I have great respect for George Lee and his efforts to preserve the admissions requirements for exam high schools in New York City, and I have joined him in this cause. But I think he is too optimistic about the influence of Asians and Asian immigrants on our polity and culture. Although Lee is right that Asians vary in their political views, as do all groups, the important and often overlooked question is “how many?” Enoch Powell asked that question about third-world immigration to Britain decades ago and was excoriated and ostracized for it, but the importance and wisdom of the question prove themselves over and over.

Numbers matter, a lot! In the case of Asians in the U.S., the overwhelming majority vote Democratic. In my opinion, the Democratic Party is a pernicious influence and force in our country today. It advocates for “wokeness,” demands equal outcomes despite clear individual and group differences in talent, ability, and drive, mindlessly valorizes blacks (the group most responsible for anti-Asian violence) regardless of behavior or self-inflicted wounds, sneers at traditional family forms, undermines and disparages the advantages of personal responsibility, hard work, and accountability, and attacks the meritocracy.

I confess I find Asian support for these policies mystifying, as I fail to see how they are in Asians’ interest. We can speculate (and, yes, generalize) about Asians’ desire to please the elite, single-minded focus on self-advancement, conformity and obsequiousness, lack of deep post-Enlightenment conviction, timidity toward centralized authority (however unreasoned), indifference to liberty, lack of thoughtful and audacious individualism, and excessive tolerance for bossy, mindless social engineering, etc.

Maybe it’s just that Democrats love open borders, and Asians want more Asians here. Perhaps they (and especially their distaff element) are just mesmerized by the feel-good cult of “diversity.” I don’t know the answer. But as long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration. There needs to be more focus on people who are already here, and especially the core (and neglected) “legacy” population, and a push to return to traditional concepts and institutions and Charles Murray’s “American Creed.”

Wow, this is both innocuous and offensive at the same time.

Razib is an Asian who objects to her lumping all Asians together. Some Asians vote Republican, he says.

The explanation could be simpler. Maybe most Asians do not pay much attention to politics. Someone explained to them that USA has a White and an anti-White party, so they just vote with the anti-White party.

We could import 100 million Asians a year, if we wanted to. Or we could take zero. It is all a matter of policy, as carried out by elected official. By some measures Asian immigrants are the best, but there are still good reasons not to take them.

Angry at being Called a Mother

NPR Radio book review, about 6 months ago:

Belc's family structure often confounds the people around him. Anna carried their eldest and youngest children, while Belc carried the couple's middle child, all three conceived using the same donor. Belc carried his pregnancy before his medical transition — he knew he was not a woman, but the world often read him that way — and credits the pregnancy and birth of his son, Samson, with helping him realize that he needed to go on testosterone. "Without him," Belc writes of his son, "I never could have believed in myself enough to say yes. Yes to hormones, yes to finding out how to live."

Belc's gender often occupies an in-between space that defies categorization, both for himself but also for the world around him. People do not know how to make sense of a child who was "made by their dad." There are no models of other transmasculine parents that Belc can turn to for support, or to show his children that they are not alone in the world. "[Samson] asks when we can meet other families like ours and I say, honestly, that I do not know," he writes. Even an interaction Belc has with Anna, a nurse who is seeking lactation support certification, shows how much of an outlier gestational parents who are not women are thought to be: Belc suggests Anna change the word "mother" to "parent" on worksheets she is creating for a class; she brushes him off, telling him not to "take everything so seriously."

The book is not linear in structure, and skews literary and lyrical, told as a collection of fragmented essays. Belc seamlessly weaves in primary source documents with historical references, including the history of ultrasound machines, and of mastectomies to treat breast cancer ("The problem with reading about the science of pregnancy is that I cannot help being angry at the words mother and maternal," Belc writes).

It is hard for me to imagine someone giving birth to a child, and then being angry at being called the mother. In today's society, you are the oddball if you do not appreciate that anger.

The J6 Rioters were Led by Federal Agents

I hate to post conspiracy theories, but there is a lot of evidence that the Jan. 6 violence was instigated by federal agents. The only organizations found in the investigations are Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, and they were both infiltrated by FBI informants.

Real Clear Politics reports:

FNC's Will Cain reported an update Wednesday on Ray Epps, the guy from the January 6 riot that Rep. Massie asked Attorney General Garland about at a hearing in October.

"Interesting to hear the crowd begin to chant, 'Fed, Fed, fed[eral agent]' as he encourages them to storm the Capitol," Will Cain noted about the videos showing Epps in the gathering of pro-Trump protesters in Washington on January 5 and 6.

Cain: "Epps was on the front line between rioters and Capitol Police on January 6. Two days later, on January 8, the FBI placed Ray Epps on the Most Wanted list. He remained there until July 1st, which was a day after the New York Times reported that Epps had encouraged Trump supporters to breach the Capitol. But unlike almost every other person near the Capitol on January 6th, including people who didn't even enter the building or commit any violence, Ray Epps has never been charged with a crime. He hasn't even been arrested."

"So where has Ray Epps been? According to photos from the 'Daily Mail,' it appears Epps has been relaxing on his ranch outside of Phoenix, Arizona. The 'Daily Mail' asked him if he had involvement with the FBI," Cain reported. "He answered by yelling at reporters to get off his property."

Apparently Garland refused to say whether Ray Epps was a federal agent carrying out a false-flag riot.

Surely Garland and the feds know who Epps is. Why won't they tell us?

Also, Garland says that the US DoJ has 20,000 hours of video surveillance recordings. Why haven't they been released?

This is all smelling like the Mueller investigation, where it kept leaking hints that it was going to incriminate Trump as a Russian spy, and only admitted years later that it exonerated Trump early on.

The Banality of the Insurrectionists

Slate tries to explain:

What We Still Refuse to Accept About the Insurrectionists A year later, we are still trying to understand what drove the individuals to the Capitol, and still ignoring what we already know about how they got there. ...

Hannah Arendt coined the term—banality of evil—after watching the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi SS officer who had shuttled millions of Jews to their deaths during World War II ...

The insurrectionists are depicted in a similar light. ...

A subset of Americans, mostly white, vehemently believes the country is being stolen from them by liberal elites and people of color. ...

What do we do about the people, like Howley’s protagonists, who have been so whipped up by the right and its conspiracy theories, and the millions of others who have yet to act? The fallout from the insurrection is still working its way through our democracy.

It is not that complicated.

The USA really has imported millions of foreigners. More than any other nation in history.

Our leaders really have shifted sharply to the Left.

Pres. Trump really did win a clear majority of the votes cast and counted on Election Day.

The Jan. 6 protesters were not carrying out a coup. They were merely pushing for constitutional election processes. They were trying to make their voices heard in the Capitol and influence a Congressional vote.

Most of the conspiracy theories I hear are from the Left. They spent about four years pursuing conspiracy theories about Trump being a Russian agent. There was more evidence of Clinton and Biden being Russian agents. And they keep reciting Jan. 6 conspiracy theories, but we have now had one of the biggest US DoJ investigations in history, and no conspiracies at all have been found, except for some chatter among FBI informants.

Here is Ted Cruz admitting that it was a mistake to call the Jan. 6 protest a terrorist attack. Terrorism usually means organized violence against civilians for political aims. The J6 protesters were merely trying to get into the Capitol building, and did not use any extra violence. Trespassing is more accurate.

Update: Pat Buchanan writes:

The left cannot let go of Jan. 6. Indeed, it has fixated upon, exploited and exaggerated the riot to discredit and destroy the Trump presidency in the history books and to prevent Donald Trump from ever running or being elected president again.

Though Trump was exonerated by the Senate ...

There are other reasons the left cannot let go of Jan. 6.

Democrats have no other issue on which to run this November.

The Biden presidency has produced an uninterrupted string of disasters: the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, the Texas border crisis, inflation, an explosion of gun violence and murders setting records in Democrat-run cities, failure to produce an adequate federal response to the delta and omicron waves of COVID-19. ...

Was Jan. 6 really comparable to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, during each of which 3,000 Americans went to their deaths in an hour’s time and major wars followed — as Vice President Kamala Harris said yesterday?

If so, why, a year after Jan. 6, 2021, has no one been charged with inciting a rebellion, sedition, treason, armed insurrection, plotting a coup, or a takeover of the government of the United States? ...

Another reason for the left to paint up the horror of that day is that the perpetrators of Jan. 6 were not the radical left who battled cops and burned and looted Seattle, Portland, Milwaukee and scores of other cities in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing.

They were the “deplorables” of Trump, the populists of the American right, against whom any slander is justified.

Democrats in a Panic about Election Control

AG M. Garland gave a speech yesterday about how he is preserving democracy by locking up political protesters. The public is not buying it. The Jan. 6 protesters were making a legitimate political statement.

The Democrats are increasingly panicking that they might not get away with another election steal.

The lead new year NY Times editorial:

In short, the Republic faces an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy and has shown that it is willing to use violence to achieve its ends. No self-governing society can survive such a threat by denying that it exists. Rather, survival depends on looking back and forward at the same time. ... Thus the Capitol riot continues in statehouses across the country, in a bloodless, legalized form that no police officer can arrest and that no prosecutor can try in court.

An opinion column adds:

The outcome will clearly come down to those three key states — all with Republican legislative majorities that put in place laws making them the final arbiters of electoral disputes. As the counting in the three proceeds, Democratic Party representatives raise a hue and cry that it is proceeding unfairly, with significant numbers of valid ballots being rejected without proper cause. State election officials (mostly pro-Trump Republicans) declare that there is no substance to these objections. All three conclude that Mr. Trump won their states’ electors, and with them the presidency. ... The scenario I described above is precisely what multiple observers have been warning about in the year since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Republican legislatures in several states have revised their election statutes to give themselves more authority over the conduct of elections in their states, reducing the authorities of state secretaries of state, governors and county election officials in the process. From the perspective of anyone who isn’t a Republican, those moves look like preparation to commit fraud and to do so with legal impunity.

Another essay:

These next three years will test our democracy in ways it hasn’t been tested since the 1860s, or maybe ever. The scenario is pretty straightforward. The Republicans retake the House in the midterms. Immediately, any chance of Biden passing meaningful legislation is dead, but that’s the least of it. The GOP will launch hearing after hearing, issue subpoena after subpoena; they will find some flimsy rationale on which to impeach Biden, and they will stretch it out as long as possible. Trump will run—as Raskin put it, “for psychological, political, and financial reasons”—and he will be the GOP nominee, Raskin has little doubt. Assuming Biden seeks reelection, the election will probably be close, because elections just are these days. If Biden wins by a matter of several thousand votes in a few states, as he did in 2020, the Trump machinery will kick into gear to steal the election. Republican election commissioners and state legislators and even some governors will put forward pro-Trump electors. The House of Representatives will not vote to certify Biden’s win in January 2025, which will toss the election to the House, which will make Trump president. (When a presidential election gets thrown to the House, under the Twelfth Amendment, the vote is by state delegation, so North Dakota has the same voting power as California; Republicans now control, and will likely in 2025 still control, a majority of state delegations, and Liz Cheney will probably be gone, meaning that Wyoming will go pro-Trump.) For the second time in the history of the United States, the other time being 1824, Congress will have installed as the president a candidate who did not win a plurality of votes in either the Electoral College or the popular vote. “Donald Trump has now converted every formerly ministerial step of the process into a moment for partisan rumble and contest,” Raskin told me.

Larry Tribe wrote an article with a lot of scare-talk about a "coup", but his main fear is not a coup at all, or anything illegal. He warns that the states might use their constitutional powers to determine a method for choosing electors that might be unfavorable to the Democrat Party.

It is scary to think that Garland and Tribe almost got appointed to the Supreme Court. They are partisan anti-American ideologues.

Forced to Stay in Israel for 8 Millennia

Israel is famous for keeping out non-Jews, but some are forced to stay there!

The London Sun reports:

A DAD has reportedly been banned from leaving Israel for nearly 8,000 years under a bizarre divorce law after his ex-wife filed a child support claim.

Noam Huppert, 44, is barred from leaving the country until December 31 in the year 9999 unless he forks out more than $3million in future child support payments.

It means the Australian dad has effectively been slapped with an 8,000-year prison sentence.

He moved to Israel in 2012 to be nearer to his two young children after his ex-wife returned to the country and filed a divorce case against him in an Israeli court, news.com.au reports.

In 2013, the court issued a so-called "stay-of-exit" order against Huppert.

It bans him from leaving the country even for holiday or work until he pays "future debt" for the child maintenance of his two kids - until they turn 18.

Huppert said: "Since 2013, I am locked in Israel."

He claimed he is one of many foreign nationals who have been "persecuted by the Israeli 'justice' system only because they were married to Israeli women".

Maybe he is supposed to wait for the fulfillment of prophesy:

In the Olivet Prophecy Jesus said to His disciples, “Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (Matthew 24:15). Daniel spoke of more than one abomination. This particular abomination would precede Jesus’ second coming.

Daniel speaks of this end-time abomination in Daniel 12:11. A forerunner of this end-time abomination is found in Daniel 11:31. ...

The second coming of Jesus Christ will result in a dramatic change to the topography of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. We read of “a great earthquake” that destroys a “tenth of the city” and kills “seven thousand people” at the end of the sixth trumpet in Revelation (Revelation 11:13).

The prophet Zechariah prophesied that a great earthquake will split the Mount of Olives, which is located east of the Temple Mount, creating a new valley through the middle of it (Zechariah 14:4). These earthquakes will apparently destroy the present Temple Mount and require the building of a new one.

The prophet Ezekiel was given a vision describing a new millennial temple in great detail (Ezekiel 40-44). Jesus Christ is coming to set up the Kingdom of God on the earth (Zechariah 14:9), and there will be a temple throughout His millennial rule on the earth.

I do think that child support is the most anti-family policy we have. Worse than no-ault divorce, same-sex marriage, and child protective services. I haven't heard of a man being literally trapped in the USA, but the USA does have draconian laws that enforce payment orders to the mom, and that separate the dad from his kids.

Do your own research

Social psychologist David Dunning co-authors an NY Times op-ed:

A new slogan has emerged in the culture: “Do your own research.” On internet forums and social media platforms, people arguing about hotly contested topics like vaccines, climate change and voter fraud sometimes bolster their point or challenge their interlocutors by slipping in the acronym “D.Y.O.R.”

“Two days ahttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/opinion/dyor-do-your-own-research.htmlfter getting the jab, a friend of mine’s friend had a heart attack,” a Reddit user wrote recently in a discussion about Covid-19 vaccines. “I’m not saying they’re connected, but D.Y.O.R.”

The slogan, which appeared in conspiracy theory circles in the 1990s, has grown in popularity over the past decade as conflicts over the reliability of expert judgment have become more pronounced. It promotes an individualistic, freethinking approach to understanding the world: Don’t be gullible — go and find out for yourself what the truth is.

That may seem to be sound advice. Isn’t it always a good idea to gather more information before making up your mind about a complex topic?

In theory, perhaps. But in practice the idea that people should investigate topics on their own, instinctively skeptical of expert opinion, is often misguided. As psychological studies have repeatedly shown, when it comes to technical and complex issues like climate change and vaccine efficacy, novices who do their own research often end up becoming more misled than informed — the exact opposite of what D.Y.O.R. is supposed to accomplish.

Dunning is famous for the Dunning–Kruger effect, which is supposed to be a profound result on how people have less expertise than they think. All the work really showed was that if you measure experise in two different ways, then one measure is apt to be greater than the other. That is, it tells us nothing.

Now he brags about other dopey research:

Likewise, a 2018 study of attitudes about vaccine policy found that when people ascribe authority to themselves about vaccines, they tend to view their own ideas as better than ideas from rival sources and as equal to those of doctors and scientists who have focused on the issue. Their experience makes them less willing to listen to well-informed advisers than they would have been otherwise.

Sure, it is foolish for an amateur to think that he knows as much as an expert, but there are lots of good reasons to doubt the experts. See the video Vaccine Hesitancy EXPLAINED, before it is banned.

Unable to Renounce Citizenship

The USA has more immigrants, refugees, and illegal aliens than ever, and we cannot even get rid of the ones who want to exit. The London Guardian reports:

or almost two years, since the pandemic struck in March 2020, most US consular missions around the world have suspended their expatriation services for those wishing to give up US citizenship. The US embassy in London, the largest of its sort in western Europe, announces on its website that it is “currently unable to accept appointments for loss of nationality applications” and is unable to say when services will resume.

The US state department says giving up citizenship requires a face-to-face interview with a government official, and that it is too risky given coronavirus.

Delays have led to a growing mountain of disgruntled citizens. By some calculations, there may be as many as 30,000 people among the 9 million US citizens living abroad who would like to begin the renunciation process but can’t.

Until they renounce, they have to file USA income tax returns.

New Zealand is Not So Great

It used to be that New Zealand was the favorite refuge of those giving up on Western Civilization. Peter Thiel bought himself a citizenship there.

But now, there are more and more stories of it going politically nuts. They have banned cigarettes for younger poeple, while allowing other illegal drugs. They have onerous vaccine mandates.

They are replaceing science in the schools with primitive witchcraft.

They used to be a reliable ally, but now they declare themselves to be a nuclear-free zone.

Officially, it has elections, but it has no written constitution, and is subordinate to the Queen of England. It currently has a female prime minister.

Jerry Coyne reports:

Despite a rise in spending per pupil over the last 25 years, performance in these three areas in New Zealand has declined, both absolutely and in comparison to the countries like England, Australia, the U.S., Canada, and Singapore—countries regarded as educational competitors with (and comparable to) New Zealand.

Over the past few decades, the national curriculum and assessment have turned the school system into an experiment in child-centred orthodoxy.

The philosophy has changed everything from what is taught to the teacher’s role in the classroom. It has transformed the purpose of school.

I would think that an island nation on the other side of the world would be immune to this nonsense, but apparently not.

Tattoos are a Mark of the Uncivilized

Americans have freedom, and China is under the dictatorial rule of Communists. Here is the latest example.

The UK BBC TV reports:

Footballers who play for China's national team have been banned from getting tattoos - and advised to remove ones they have - under a new directive. ...

In Chinese culture a stigma has been attached to tattoos - in the past they were used to brand criminals and the tattoo still has links to organised crime groups in east Asia. Tattoos among ethnic groups were often seen as a mark of the uncivilised.

They are disapproved of by China's ruling Communist Party, but have become increasingly popular among young Chinese. ...

Last December, a women's university football match in China had to be called off after players were told they were not allowed to have dyed hair.

The match organisers, the National Youth Campus Football League, said in a statement at the time: "Athletes at all stages shall not have tattoos, dye their hair, wear weird hairstyles, or wear any accessories, otherwise they will be ineligible for the competition."

Update: A Chinese woman reports in the NY Times:

China is facing serious challenges on multiple fronts: Great power competition with the United States. Trade disputes. The future of Taiwan. But that doesn’t mean it’s too preoccupied to escalate a battle of another sort on the home front.

The Chinese government, you see, has been fighting what state news outlets have called a “masculinity crisis” for the past few years, with one top official warning that “effeminate” men in popular culture were corrupting “a generation.” The Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece decreed that young men need to have “toughness and strength” and censors have blurred out male celebrities’ earrings in television and online appearances. ...

These women’s embrace of a more fluid form of masculinity is not a phenomenon the party should dismiss. Well-educated and financially independent, these women are bucking gender norms themselves by turning away from matrimony and motherhood and are proving to be resistant to the party’s push to boost marriages and births to offset the effects of an aging population.

So the NYT wants Chinese men to be gender fluid, and Chinese women to turn away from marriage and motherhood.

The government’s idea of the ideal male reads like an outdated description of 1950s gender norms: Muscular, reliable, career-oriented providers. The “masculine spirit” requires physical and mental fitness as well as “strong will power,” the Ministry of Education said earlier this year.

Yeah, they hate manly men.

Biden has Failed Covid Promises

From Politifact, last year:

Speaking about the coronavirus during a CNN town hall less than two months away from Election Day, former Vice President Joe Biden said every one of the nearly 200,000 COVID-19 deaths recorded in the U.S. can be laid at President Donald Trump’s feet.

"If the president had done his job, had done his job from the beginning, all the people would still be alive," Biden said at the CNN town hall in Moosic, Pa. "All the people. I'm not making this up. Just look at the data. Look at the data."

From a Newsweek fact checker:

The Claim

This week, multiple public figures and social media users attempted to directly compare how current and previous administrations fared in the battle against COVID by analyzing the cumulative number of deaths from the virus under each president.

"Joe Biden based his entire 2020 presidential campaign on the promise he would solve covid by trusting "the science." It was all bullshit. He's presided over more deaths, hospitalizations & cases than Trump. Yet media crushed Trump for covid, gives Biden a pass," political commentator Clay Travis tweeted.

Others simply posted death count figures that suggested more Americans fell victim to COVID under Biden than under Trump.

False.

While the number of deaths from COVID in the U.S. under president Biden is on course to top the death count during the Trump administration, it has not yet done so. Around 379,000 people have died in the U.S. from COVID since January 20, when Biden took over as president, around 45,000 fewer than under Trump.

So the Biden covid death count will surpass Trump's in several weeks.

The claim is essentially true, not false. Biden did base much of his campaign on doing better against covid, and he has not done better at all. The news media was constantly blaming Trump, but giving Biden a pass.

While you are keeping score, Biden lost the Afghan war, brought back monetary inflation, created racial animosity, caused crime waves in the cities, spent money irresponsibly, and opened the borders for bogus refugees. He is senile, and his VP is incompetent and disliked. He has accomplished nothing worthwhile.

Polls indicate that people have wised up to Biden. The Trump presidency was better in every way.

Last year, PBS TV reported:

Trump’s sinking approval rating is due in part to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. This month, the U.S. reached 5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, more than any other country in the world, as states struggle to scale up to recommended levels for testing and contact tracing, and the daily death toll has rebounded to levels not seen since mid-May.

Fifty-three percent of U.S. adults think Biden would handle the coronavirus pandemic better than Trump, while 37 percent think Trump would do a better job.

But now that is reversed:

In the latest sign that President Joe Biden is falling out of favor, the public now thinks that former President Donald Trump handled the coronavirus crisis better.

What’s more, the latest Rasmussen Reports survey found that voters believe Biden has broken his promise to end the virus. On the question of fighting COVID-19, likely voters said Biden has done a “worse” job than Trump by a 49%-39% margin.

The press and other establishment influencers are still overwhelmingly favoring Biden, and trying to put Trump in jail.

NY Times Libels Dog-Walking Karen Again

Black professor Michael Eric Dyson writes in a NY Times op-ed that Whites should be forced into "restorative justice" re-education, and gives this example:

By contrast, take the case of Amy Cooper, a white woman who falsely claimed to the police that an amateur bird-watcher, Chris Cooper, who is Black, had threatened her. After a public outcry, she was fired from her job. Although she received some form of restorative justice, an even better approach would have been her keeping her job while her employer demanded that she read and study more about race, Black masculinity, white privilege and social injustice. The loss of her job as an act of retributive justice left all these structural issues aside and merely shamed her without transforming her or using her circumstances to throw light on similar cases.

He is falsely shaming and libeling her. Here is the Wikipedia account:

The Central Park birdwatching incident was a confrontation on May 25, 2020, between Amy Cooper, a white woman walking her dog, and Christian Cooper (no relation), a black man who was birdwatching, in a section of New York City's Central Park known as the Ramble. Amy Cooper's dog was unleashed in the Ramble, an area where leashing is required; she allegedly refused Christian Cooper's request that her dog be leashed. Christian then said, by his own account, "Look, if you're going to do what you want, I'm going to do what I want, but you're not going to like it," and beckoned the dog toward him with a dog treat. Amy responded by yelling "Don't you touch my dog!".

The Black man is clearly threatening her, by his own account. He says he is going to do something to her that she will not like, in response to her unleashed dog. That is what a threat is. My dictionary defines it:

a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone in retribution for something done or not done.

He did, in fact, inflict a lot of pain on her by getting her fired from her job, prosecuted, publicly humiliated, and subjected to about a dozen negative NY Times stories, in retribution for her unleashed dog and calling 911.

According to Wikipedia, she was forced into restorative justice, and "completed a five-session educational and therapeutic program focused on racial identity."

I am not saying that she is entirely innocent, but this was a trivial little argument between a White woman dog walker and a Black man bird watcher. He was at least as much at fault as she was, as he aggressively threatened her, publicly shamed her, and proceeded to ruin her life.

And yet the NY Times continues to try to shame her, and say that she deserves racial re-education schooling.

There is a pattern here. The newspaper dishonestly distorts all these incidents, racializes them, excuses the Black criminal behavior, and blames the White person. Before long, it will be saying that all Whites must be sent to re-education camps.

E. O. Wilson Obituary

NY Times obituary:

Edward O. Wilson, a biologist and author who conducted pioneering work on biodiversity, insects and human nature — and won two Pulitzer Prizes along the way — died on Sunday in Burlington, Mass. He was 92. ...

At first, “Sociobiology” was showered with praise and attention. An article about it landed on the front page of The New York Times on May 28, 1975. In Scientific American, the Princeton biologist John Tyler Bonner called it “an extraordinary beginning.” Dr. Bonner wrote that Dr. Wilson “has identified and brought together in one tome all those elements that will be the ingredients of sociobiology in the future.”

Then, Dr. Wilson later recalled in his memoir, “Everything spun out of control.”

Dr. Wilson got in trouble for extending sociobiology to humans. He had invited his readers to consider how human nature might be shaped by evolutionary pressures. He warned them that this would not be easy: It would be hard to tease apart the effects of human culture from those of natural selection. Making matters worse, no one at the time had linked any genetic variant to any particular human behavior. “There is a need for a discipline of anthropological genetics,” he wrote.

Nevertheless, Dr. Wilson argued that our species had a propensity to behave in certain ways and form certain social structures. He called that propensity human nature.

Natural selection could help explain psychology, in other words. Human aggression, for example, may have been adaptive for early humans.

From this, he was maybe the most accomplished biologist alive. The strange thing is how he was hated by left-wing academics.

Not that he was a right-winger. He appears to be a typical academic liberal. He was hated for wanting to study human nature, and claiming that there was a human nature like plant and animal nature.

Yes, of course there is human nature. The leftist denial of human nature is striking.

Dr. Wilson’s critics ignored these caveats. In a letter to The New York Review of Books, some denounced sociobiology as an attempt to reinvigorate tired old theories of biological determinism — theories, they claimed, that “provided an important basis for the enactment of sterilization laws and restrictive immigration laws by the United States between 1910 and 1930 and also for the eugenics policies which led to the establishment of gas chambers in Nazi Germany.”

In her book “Defenders of the Truth” (2000), Dr. Segerstrale wrote that Dr. Wilson’s critics had shown “an astounding disregard” for what he had written, arguing that they had used “Sociobiology” as an opportunity to promote their own agendas. When Dr. Wilson attended a 1978 debate about sociobiology, protesters rushed the stage shouting, “Racist Wilson, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” A woman dumped ice water on him, shouting, “Wilson, you are all wet!”

After drying himself off with paper towels, Dr. Wilson went ahead and gave his speech.

In that speech and elsewhere, Dr. Wilson declared that sociobiology offered no excuse for racism or sexism. He dismissed attacks against him as “self-righteous vigilantism.” And he went on to dig even deeper into the evolution of human behavior.

His main expertise was in ants, not humans.

I have seen the new Matrix movie, as everyone says it is disappointing. The original was partially an exploration of human nature. Neo had to take the red pill to see who he really was. People were programmed robots, blissfully unaware of their programming.

Scientific American magazine has a Black woman attacking Wilson:

Second, the application of the scientific method matters: what works for ants and other nonhuman species is not always relevant for health and/or human outcomes. For example, the associations of Black people with poor health outcomes, economic disadvantage and reduced life expectancy can be explained by structural racism, yet Blackness or Black culture is frequently cited as the driver of those health disparities. Ant culture is hierarchal and matriarchal, based on human understandings of gender. And the descriptions and importance of ant societies existing as colonies is a component of Wilson’s work that should have been critiqued. Context matters.

I really don't think Wilson's studies of ant colonies had anything to do with Black obesity rates.

Jerry Coyne adds:

Scientific American has hit rock bottom with this new op-ed that is nothing more than a hit piece on Ed Wilson, basically calling him a racist.

It is written by someone who apparently has no training in evolutionary biology, though she says she “intimately familiarized [herself] with Wilson’s work and his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior.” I usually don’t question someone because of their credentials, but this piece is so stupid, so arrantly ignorant of Wilson’s work, that I can attribute its content only to a combination of ignorance (perhaps deliberate) or a woke desire to take down someone as a racist who wasn’t a racist. Or both.

In fact, the piece below could have been written by any social-justice ideologue, for its real aim is more than smearing Wilson; it;s also to change the nature of science.

Apparently woke racism has replaced science at what used to be the best science magazine.

More Paranoia about Coming Civil War

Newsweek essay:

America's massive and mostly Republican gun-rights movement dovetails with a growing belief among many Republicans that the federal government is an illegitimate tyranny that must be overthrown by any means necessary. That combustible formula raises the threat of armed, large-scale attacks around the 2024 presidential election—attacks that could make the January 6 insurrection look like a toothless stunt by comparison. ...

Both Democrats and Republicans are rapidly losing faith in the integrity of U.S. elections. Democrats worry that voter suppression and election interference from Republican state officials will deny millions of Americans their say at the polling booths. A PBS NewsHour/ NPR/ Marist poll in early November reported that 55 percent of Democrats saw voter suppression as the biggest threat to U.S. elections. Republicans claim, contrary to the evidence, that Democrats have already manipulated vote counts through fraud to steal a presidential election. An October CNN poll found that more than three-quarters of Republicans falsely believe Joe Biden's 2020 election win was fraudulent. ...

In October 2020, 13 men were charged with plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat; all of them were aligned with the political right.

I am skeptical about this. That whole kidnap plot story seemed fishy. The plot didn't make much sense, but why would some FBI agents frame some right-wingers? The whole thing seems to have been carried out by FBI informants. A Michigan TV station reported some clues:

One of the lead FBI agents on the federal kidnapping case involving Michigan’s governor didn’t just betray the badge off-duty, he also showed questionable judgment online by posting an obscenity-laden, anti-Trump tirade.

“If you still support our piece of s–t president you can f–k off,” began the 2020 post on Richard Trask’s personal Facebook page.

As Trask, 40, prepares to enter a plea Monday on charges he beat and choked his wife at their Kalamazoo County home, Target 8 investigators are revealing the contents of a vitriolic, Trump-bashing post on Trask’s personal Facebook page.

Target 8 has also obtained police body camera video of Trask’s July 18, 2021, arrest for allegedly assaulting his wife after they attended a swinger’s party at a Kalamazoo-area hotel.

Trask’s Facebook declaration blasting then-President Donald Trump was dated March 28, 2020.

At the time, the FBI was in the early stages of its investigation into the alleged plot to abduct Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.

Trask played a central role in the case, which has since become one of the most politicized in Michigan’s history, with defense attorneys claiming the FBI orchestrated the abduction plan itself through its direction of confidential informants.

This is one of several examples of outlandish plots that were supposedly broken up by FBI informants. I do not know whether to credit the FBI for stopping terrorism, or blame them for instigating it.

A lot of Americans are arming themselves, but I think it is mostly driven by police failures to curb crime, and by pro-criminal political forces.

The Jan. 6 protest was not an insurrection. The protesters were not armed. Donald Trump did win a big majority of the votes cast and counted on Election Day, and many people legitimately disapprove of how Joe Biden got into the White House.

Blacks are being told that they are suffering systemic racism, as shown by the jury conviction of a female Minnesota police officer. As Ann Coulter explains and the NY Times omits, she was arresting the young half-Black man for trying to choke a woman to death while robbing her at gunpoint. He also shot a guy in the head. The policewoman was trying to hit him with a taser when he was resisting arrest.

She will now serve many years in prison for using more force than was intended.

Robots Deter Invasive Species

The NY Times is usually pro-immigration, but it now reports on efforts to stop invaders:

How to Scare an Invasive Fish? A Menacing Robot Predator. ...

The mosquitofish is not a fussy creature: It can live in filthy bodies of water and has an undiscerning appetite. Larvae? Other fishes’ eggs? Detritus? Delicious. Often, the voracious few-inch creature chomps off the tails of freshwater fish and tadpoles, leaving them to die.

But the invasive fish is threatening some native populations in Australia and other regions, and for decades scientists have been trying to figure out how to control it, without damaging the surrounding ecosystem.

Now, the mosquitofish may have finally met its match: A menacing fish-shaped robot.

It’s “their worst nightmare,” said Giovanni Polverino, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Western Australia and the lead author of a paper published Thursday in iScience, in which scientists designed a simulacrum of the fish’s natural predator, the largemouth bass, to strike at the mosquitofish, scaring it away from its prey.

The robot not only freaked the mosquitofish out, but scarred them with such lasting anxiety that their reproduction rates dropped; evidence that could have long term implications for the species’ viability, according to the paper.

“You don’t need to kill them,” Dr. Polverino said. Instead, he said, “we can basically inject fear into the system, and the fear kills them slowly.”

The research paper starts:

Human activities have resulted in the rapid redistribution of the world's biota, assisting some species to colonize regions far beyond their natural range

Here is another summary. Or here and here.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.

I post a lot of complaints about the direction America and the world are heading. But I am an optimist by nature. Things will get better. I wish everyone well.

Bill Gates Advocates Vaccine Censorship

I used to think that Bill Gates was a trustworthy source, on subjects like vaccines. Yes, he is invested in vaccines, but he has so much money that he can say whatever he thinks.

Now he advocates censorship, in his annual letter:

I believe that governments need to regulate what you can and can’t use social media for. In the United States, this topic has raised a lot of free speech questions. But the reality is that our government already has all sorts of norms around communication.

You can’t slander someone or trick them out of their money by promising something you don’t deliver on. Network TV shows can’t show explicit sex scenes or use certain profane language before 10 p.m. in case children are watching. These rules exist to protect people. So why couldn’t our government create new rules to protect them from the most tangible harms created by social media? They wouldn’t be easy to enforce, and we’d need public debate about exactly where the lines should be, but this is doable and really important to get done. A video falsely claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine makes you infertile should not be allowed to spread widely under the guise of being news.

Men only advocate censorship to suppress truths, not lies.

The covid vaccines have had adverse effects in many people. For most people, the benefits appear to outweigh the risks. But we can only assess those risks if we have open access to info on the subject.

Gates says that there should be laws prohibiting communication of covid vaccine ill effects.

You might say that we don't know if the vaccine caused the adverse effects, in most cases. That is true. But the vast majority of communication platforms are dominated by vaccine advocates who are able to get the safety evidence out to everyone. Wanting to suppress minority views about unproven risks can only have one explanation -- that Gates and others believe that the stupid public needs to be tricked into getting vaccines.

Once we know that they believe in outlawing info about adverse effects, how can we ever believe their safety evidence? The same reasoning would lead them to doctor the evidence in favor of what they want to trick you to doing.

CNN News reports:

A sixth child has died in hospital after a bouncy castle was lifted into the air at a school event in Australia late last week, police said Sunday.

Wow, 6 kids dead from a bouncy castle! This makes bouncy castles appear more dangerous than covid, to little kids. If Gates were as invested in bouncy castles as he is in vaccines, would he be lobbying for laws to suppress this news?

IQ Tests do Measure Intelligence

Professor Scott Aaronson defends colleges using standardized testing, and draws this silly anonymous comment:

It is a fact that minorities score worse on those tests than the standard advantaged classes. There are two possible explanations for this:

1) The tests are meritocratic, and minorities have less merit.
2) The tests are not meritocratic (and thus are probably reinforcing entrenched privilege, not eliminating it).

You do not seem to believe (2), which means you must believe (1). (1) could be explained by things like early childhood inequality (something like the iodine deficiencies of the early 1900s), but given the emphasis on meritocracy in adulthood I’m not sure how you plan on solving this as a generational thing even if you do believe it. And I don’t think you do. I think you, like the other Scott and like most people in your ideological sphere, believe that it’s genetic.

And I gotta be honest with you, Scott, I really don’t know how you can call yourself an advocate for social justice when you’re implicitly taking the stance “minorities are worse off because they’re naturally stupider”. Be a Bayesian for a second. Of all the people in history who claimed this, how many of them were right? Would they have been right when Ashkenazim were stuck in ghettoes for centuries, without a grand achievement to their name? Were they right when they closed the borders of Japan, believing nothing better could come from abroad? Were they right when they rolled their eyes at the challenge of some horseman from Mongolia?

When people have made this kind of claim they have, without exception, been wrong and been reflecting the biases of their time and culture. And the people promoting these claims today are obvious, active, and malignant racists (seriously, have you *seen* Steve Sailer talk?). Why on Earth would you listen to them, and why on Earth would you trust they’re not just manipulating you? Are you so arrogant as to believe you can definitely avoid manipulation, even by groups of bad-faith actors, often with the support of major governments?

This is wrong from beginning to end. First, some minorities score better on those tests.

No, iodine deficiencies cannot explain the differences.

Ashkenazi Jews were not thought to be of low intelligence. As far back as 1900, they were seen to have high IQ.

The advantage of those Mongolian horsemen was their stirrups. Not sure how that or Japanese nationalism relates to standardized testing.

IQ tests do measure intelligence differences between people. It is comical to see leftists try to deny it by citing someone a millennium ago rolling his eyes at a Mongolian horseman.

Many colleges are dropping standardized test requirements, but it is not because the tests fail to predict college performance. It is because they predict it too well.

On Being a Trans Abortion Provider

Medpage Today has this essay that appears to be satire, but is not:

On Being a Trans Abortion Provider

"I'm so glad it's all women in here."

As a family doctor and abortion provider, I hear this all the time. I know how important it is for many of the patients I care for to be seen by someone who shares their experiences. But I am not a woman.

I am trans. Getting dressed for every shift, I put on my they/them and he/him pronoun pins. Like many trans folx, I use multiple pronouns. Often these go unseen. People assume my gender based on what they've been taught about which bodies look like a woman and which bodies look like a man. ...

But what I cannot make space for is being misgendered by my colleagues. It is a daily occurrence. Sometimes followed by over-apologizing, asking me to excuse the mistake to assuage their discomfort at my own expense. It happens despite the pronoun pins and Zoom name. Despite me talking about how weird it is to give myself testosterone injections. Despite the they/he in my email signature on that email I sent months ago announcing my pronouns and asking for some basic inclusion. ...

There has been a concerted effort by some in the reproductive rights movement to make abortion more gender inclusive. Some clinics ask patients for their pronouns and some of those staff members will use them. Some organizations use "pregnant people" in their communications. The key phrase being "some." ...

Quinn Jackson, MD, (they/he) is a family medicine physician in Kansas and fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health.

So when Jackson was a girl, did she say that she wanted to do this when she grew up?

Here is some dubious sex-related research:

The notion that men are more variable than women has become embedded into scientific thinking. ... However, evidence for greater male variability is limited to morphological traits, and there is little information regarding sex differences in personality-like behaviours for non-human animals. ... In sum, we find no evidence for widespread sex differences in variability in non-human animal personality.

Their press release said:

The ANU team reviewed more than 10,000 biological studies and analysed behavioural traits of males and females in more than 200 animal species, from insects to dolphins. ...

"But our research in over 200 animal species shows variation in male and female behaviour is very similar. Therefore, there is no reason to invoke this argument based on biology to explain why more men than women are Nobel laureates, for example, which we associate with high IQ."

So they studies papers about insect and dolphin personalities, did not see much difference, and concluded that male Nobel prize winners are not any smarter than women. This is what statistician call a null result. Research looks for something, and does not find it.

Epstein Trial is Rigged

From the Ghislaine Maxwell trial:

The Defense … moved to permit three anticipated witnesses to testify under a pseudonym or their first names only…. The Defense's primary contention is that some form of anonymity for its witnesses is justified by the same reasons that the Court permitted three alleged victims and two related government witnesses to testify under pseudonyms. The Court disagrees with this basic premise and denies the Defense's motion.

She is going to get convicted by anonymous witnesses before a biased judge for things that supposedly happened 25 years ago, but no one can say when or where they happened.

She probably did cover up some crooked behavior, but this is just a show trial that seems to be also covering up what Jeffrey Epstein did. Strange.

City Helps Drug Dealers Compete

News:

San Francisco supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved an ordinance to suspend the city’s Cannabis Business Tax through the end of next year, in an attempt to curb illegal marijuana sales.

This is one indication that the city's priorities are disordered. For more, see the book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.

How Schools get CRT and other Woke Training

Andrew Joyce writes:

In August, California’s Newport-Mesa Unified School District voted to continue its relationship with the ADL, but “with modifications.” The school district was the victim of an ADL shakedown in March 2019, after it was revealed that some drunken students from Newport Harbor High School arranged cups in the shape of a swastika at an off-campus party. After the prank was made viral by a malcontent, the ADL swooped on the instance of “abhorrent anti-Semitic activity” and shamed the nervous school board into accepting a rapidly escalating series of contracts for anti-bias training for staff and students.

The minutes of the school boards meetings are publicly available, and contain the actual contracts with the ADL which run to the value of some $96,650 over a two-year period for anti-bias and pro-immigration training sessions. The shakedown started to come apart in August, when board members began to question the transparency and cost of their agreements with the ADL, as well as the content of ADL training courses. In response to parents objecting to the school district’s relationship with the ADL on the grounds that it was “bringing critical race theory into the classroom,” the school district “reviewed the proposed contract and recommended eliminating second-level anti-bias courses for school employees.” Unfortunately, the most damaging aspect of ADL ‘training”—their lessons for children—remain in place (at a cost of $27,800), prompting Anti-Defamation League Regional Director Peter Levi to gloat, “We have long believed education is the best antidote to hate and bias.”

What BLM Stands For

In case you support Black Lives Matter, you should hear what its leaders actually say.

From BlackLivesMatter.com:

The below is a statement from Dr. Melina Abdullah, Director of BLM Grassroots and Co-Founder of BLM Los Angeles, regarding the ongoing trial of Jussie Smollett:

As abolitionists, we approach situations of injustice with love and align ourselves with our community. Because we got us. So let’s be clear: we love everybody in our community. It’s not about a trial or a verdict decided in a white supremacist charade, it’s about how we treat our community when corrupt systems are working to devalue their lives. In an abolitionist society, this trial would not be taking place, ...

In our commitment to abolition, we can never believe police, especially the Chicago Police Department (CPD) over Jussie Smollett, a Black man who has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom. ...

Black Lives Matter will continue to work towards the abolition of police and every unjust system.

Smollett was found guilty of perpetrating a hate hoax.

Wikipedia:

Melina Abdullah (born Melina Rachel Reimann on September 18, 1972)[1] is an American academic, Marxist and civic leader. She is the former chair of the department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, and a co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter.

Melina Rachel Reimann was born on September 18, 1972 at East Oakland, Oakland, California, U.S.[2] Her father, John Reimann, was "a union organizer and self-proclaimed Trotskyist."[2] Her mother is Linda Fowler Blackston and she was raised by Oji "Baba" Blackston. Her paternal grandfather was Günter Reimann (born Hans Steinicke), a German-Jewish Marxist economist and member of the Communist Party of Germany ...

Abdullah is a self-described "womanist scholar-activist". ...

Abdullah is a tenured professor and served as chair of the department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. ...

Reimann changed her surname to Abdullah due to her marriage to filmmaker Phaylen Abdullah and kept the name after their divorce.[

Abdullah is a supporter of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

Wow.

A blogger writes:

Radical feminist Brittany Cooper recently responded to being called out on her stance that the Black nuclear family isn’t necessary for Black children to thrive by doubling down on her comments.

While Cooper said she is “pro-family” and “pro-family planning,” she was clear in her opinion that it isn’t necessary for a family to include a mother and father to raise successful children.

“We don’t need traditional nuclear families for Black thriving,” Cooper said in a Twitter thread. “As one raised by my mother, grandmother and aunts I can attest. We should support families however they are configured to provide basic needs in loving and safe environments. That’s what being pro-Black family means.” ...

In Sept. 2020. Black Lives Matter removed a page and language from its website that some, including former NFL lineman Marcellus Wiley, deemed problematic.

“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable,” the website formerly read, according to the New York Post.

Okay, I guess the nuclear family is a tool of the White supremacist patriarchy.

How Biden is Destroying Girls Sports

Doriane Coleman writes:

The House of Representatives (in passing The Equality Act) and the Biden Administration (in Title IX litigation) have taken the position that distinctions on the basis of sex in regulated programs are prohibited, no exceptions, full stop. According to them, maybe we can still have "girls'" and "women's" sport, but if we do, the eligibility standards for the category can't discriminate on the basis of sex, which they define to include gender identity. In other words, "women's" sports can include both males and females without regard to their gender identity or their physical status. They've provided no explanation for what makes the categories meaningful in light of this.

I thought that I was going to like this article, but she goes on to advocate boys competing in girls sports if certain conditions are met.

A lot of her argument is based on testosterone levels. She writes: 

On average, even in the elite athlete population, males have 30 times more T than females. ...

For example, swimmer and multiple Gold Medalist Missy Franklin is six feet two inches tall with a wing span of six feet four inches. Her world record in the 200 meters backstroke, set at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, is 2:04.06. Ryan Lochte's world record, set at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, was a full nine seconds faster at 1:53.94.

Actually, a full ten seconds.

I don't think the arguments for girls sports have anything to do with Missy Franklin's testosterone level or wing span. Girls are different from boys in many ways, and it is for cultural reasons that we separate them in sports, not reasons of testosterone fairness.

Title IX was adopted for fairness in educational programs, and does not even mention sports.  

J.K. Rowling has made a lot of enemies, and now tweets:

War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.

Almost all of the controversy is from choosing to distinguish sex from gender, allowing people to choose a gender identity not matching the sex, and changing sex distinctions to gender distinctions.

I am not sure that distinguishing sex and gender serves any useful purpose legally, or in sports competition. The main purpose of the distinction is to play out the fantasies of drag queens.

It is funny that Rowling is the world's greatest creator of a fantasy world, and now she is hated for bringing a dose of reality to the fantasies of drag queens.

Update: I am beginning to think that elite female sports should be abolished. Wokeness is on a collision course with reality.

Update: Here is a review article on testosterone effects. Regulating levels in transgender athletes does not work.

NY Times Beating the Drums for Civil War

I hope we find a way to avoid civil war, but the mainstream press sees it as more likely all the time.

NY Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall writes:

Political analysts, scholars and close observers of government are explicitly raising the possibility that the polarized American electoral system has come to the point at which a return to traditional democratic norms will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. ...

On Dec. 10, The Washington Post published “18 Steps to a Democratic Breakdown,” which warned:

Democracy is most likely to break down through a series of incremental actions that cumulatively undermine the electoral process, resulting in a presidential election that produces an outcome clearly at odds with the voters’ will. It is this comparatively quiet but steady subversion, rather than a violent coup or insurrection against a sitting president, that Americans today have to fear most.

We have already had a Presidential election, in Nov. 2020, that was clearly at odds with the voters' will on Election Day.

And columnist Charles Blow writes:

I see too many uneasy parallels between what was happening nearly 200 years ago and what is happening now. I see this country on the verge of another civil war, as the Calhounian impulse is reborn.

Right-wing and conservative opinions have not changed too much. A large faction of the Democrats have jumped radically to the Left, and show no interest in compromising.

Update: Wash. Post columnist Dana Milbank writes:

“Indeed, the United States has already gone through what the CIA identifies as the first two phases of insurgency — the “pre-insurgency” and “incipient conflict” phases — and only time will tell whether the final phase, “open insurgency,” began with the sacking of the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6. …

The enemies of democracy must not be allowed to prevail. We are on the doorstep of the “open insurgency” stage of civil conflict, and Walter writes that once countries cross that threshold, the CIA predicts, “sustained violence as increasingly active extremists launch attacks that involve terrorism and guerrilla warfare, including assassinations and ambushes.”

It is no exaggeration to say the survival of our country is at stake.”

I think that i t is an exaggeration, but it is worthwhile noticing that liberal news media see it this way.

Almost a Billion Dollars for One Physician's Behavior

NPR Radio reports:

USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee have agreed to pay a $380 million settlement to hundreds of survivors of sexual abuse by former team doctor Larry Nassar. ...

The deal grew out of a bankruptcy filing by USA Gymnastics in 2018, with a federal judge in Indiana approving the settlement Monday afternoon. ...

It is a defeat for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and USA Gymnastics who spent over $100,000,000 in legal fees,

This is in addition to a $500 million settlement from Michigan State University.

One of the claimants was Simone Biles, who was recently Time magazine sportsman of the year. Time praised her for quitting some Olympic events in order to preserve her mental health.

This is all very fishy. How could defense lawyers burn this much money? What will the plaintiffs lawyers get, $200 million?

This settlements are based on a theory that Michican State and USA Gymnastics somehow knew that Nassar was a child molester, and encouraged his crimes. However that seems very unlikely, as no one anywhere approves of physicians molesting underage girls.

I wonder how much of this case has been driven by lawyers sniffing deep pockets.

Professor Fired for Confusing Two Students

Professors today have to walk on eggshells.

The NY Post reports:

A Fordham University professor was fired after mixing up the names of two black students in class, according to a report.

Hours after what he called an “innocent mistake,” lecturer Christopher Trogan, 46, sent a rambling, nine-page email to students in his Composition II classes explaining the faux pas — and defending, without being asked, his “entire life” of working on “issues of justice, equality, and inclusion,” the campus newspaper reported.

“The offended student assumed my mistake was because I confused that student with another Black student,” Trogan wrote, according to a Nov. 29 article in the Fordham Observer. “I have done my best to validate and reassure the offended student that I made a simple, human, error. It has nothing to do with race.”

He blamed the mistake on his “confused brain” when the two students arrived to class late on Sept. 24, while he was reading a classmate’s work.

It used to be that students were blamed for being late to class.

Head can be a Plural Noun

Think of a word to describe a single animal. Change the third letter to get a word that describes the plural of that animal. Both are nouns, and neither word contains an "s."

The solution is:

HEAD, HERD, as in: The farmer had 123 head of cattle in his herd.

I sent this in as the obvious intended answer, but it makes no sense to me.

The word "head" in that sentence refers to all 123 animals, not a single animal. The clue is wrong.

It can be used for the singular, such as:

Owners are charged a per diem for each head of livestock pastured.

Yes, but i could also say I sold each sheep for $100, and then sheep would refer to one animal in that sentence. But the word "sheep" is still a collective noun that can refer to any number of animals.

The Great Men of History

Interview of historian Patrick Wyman:

His new book, The Verge, focuses on the years 1490 to 1530. It’s a four-decade period that, Wyman explains, laid the groundwork for Western European nations — and later, the United States — to become the dominant players for the next 500 years. At the start of the period, Western Europe was largely a backwater, a collection of far-flung ministates that produced little in the way of goods anyone else wanted to buy. Those countries lagged far behind the Ottoman Empire or Imperial China or a host of other civilizations around the globe. But by the end of the period — thanks to a breathtaking series of technological changes, historical accidents, and decisions that were little understood at the time — these nations had laid the groundwork for dominating the globe.

I think he is right that the advances get overcredited to a few great men, like Christopher Columbus.

List of 1963 Communist Goals

In order to get a better understanding of our storm clouds, let’s exam a few of the 45 Communist, and by extension Socialist and Progressive, goals that have been read into our Congressional Record:

Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

Get control of the schools and teachers’ associations. Soften the curriculum.

Gain control of all student newspapers.

Infiltrate the press.

Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and pictures.

Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and press.

Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in the media.

Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, and healthy.”

Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion.

Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principal of “separation of church and state.”

Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate and old-fashioned.

Discredit the American founding fathers as selfish aristocrats [and racists].

Belittle American culture and discourage the teaching of American history.

Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

Infiltrate and gain control of big business and unions.

Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as mental health or social problems.

Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.

Repeal the Connally Reservation, allowing the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.

There are groups still pursuing these goals, successfully, without calling themselves Communists.

Atlantic Magazine supports Great Replacement

An Atlantic magazine article complains:

Pape was alluding to a theory called the “Great Replacement.” The term itself has its origins in Europe. But the theory is the latest incarnation of a racist trope that dates back to Reconstruction in the United States. Replacement ideology holds that a hidden hand (often imagined as Jewish) is encouraging the invasion of nonwhite immigrants, and the rise of nonwhite citizens, to take power from white Christian people of European stock. When white supremacists marched with torches in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, they chanted, “Jews will not replace us!”

I am trying to uderstand this. Jews seem to have two complaints here, against (1) Whites who say Jews promote importing non-whites to replace Whites; and (2) Whites who say Jews will not replace Whites.

Either way, this is an issue that Jews talk about endlessly. Joe Biden said that it was the reason that he ran for President.

For an example of Hollywood Jews advocating White Replacement, see the new Santa Inc trailer. Sarah Silverman and Seth Rogen are openly anti-Christian, and push diversity as a way of replacing White Christian men, including Santa Claus. The show is supposed to be funny, but is bombing:

The show’s first (and possibly only) season was released in full on Thursday (December 2), and has thus far been majorly panned by viewers. Feather imdb 90.6 percent rating out of 5,236 viewers Santa Inc. a star; It has an overall score of 1.1 out of 10, making it the lowest-rated TV series in the site’s history. over on rotten Tomatoes, only three percent of the rated audience Santa Inc. Gave favorable marks. ...

Controversy erupted even before its release, with its trailers being targeted by alleged far-right hate groups spreading anti-Semitic comments (the majority of the show’s producers and cast are Jewish).

So Jews make an unfunny anti-Christian movie, and it is anti-Semitic to criticize it.

Emmett Till Case Closed, after 66 years

Tjhe NY Times is getting more racially woke every day. Consider this: exmplae of Whites telling Blacks how to respect Mexican transsexuals:

In California, a Black college freshman from the South is telling a story about his Latino friends from home when he is interrupted by a white classmate. “We say ‘Latinx’ here,” he recalls her saying, using a term he had not heard before, “because we respect trans people.”

Or this complaint about Whites moving into a Black neighborhood, and reading books. Or this Black man feeling death looming, and he is not talking about Blacks killing Whites.

The NY Times reports today on a 1955 lynching:

The Justice Department announced on Monday that it had closed an investigation into the abduction and murder of Emmett Till, the African American teenager whose gruesome killing by two white men more than six decades ago in Mississippi helped begin the civil rights movement.

In a news release dated Dec. 6, federal officials said there was not enough evidence to pursue charges in the case, which was reopened after a historian claimed in a book that Carolyn Bryant Donham, the central witness whose account of an encounter with Emmett led to his death, had recanted the most salacious portions of her story — that he had grabbed her and made sexually suggestive remarks. ...

In a statement on Monday, the Justice Department said Mr. Tyson, despite saying he had recorded two interviews with Ms. Donham, provided just one recording to the F.B.I. that did not contain a recantation.

So it appears that the case had been kept alive by lies.

In articles about racism in America, the 1955 story of Emmett Till is often mentioned. It is almost as if one criminal act 66 years ago proves systemic racism.

There are some hot trials still going on today: Ghislaine Maxwell, Jussie Smollett, and Elizabeth Holmes. Probably all three will be guilty.

Not a vaxxer or an anti-vaxxer

Merriam-Webster now defines:

Definition of anti-vaxxer
: a person who opposes the use of vaccines or regulations mandating vaccination

This is bizarre.

First, the English language does not use a double-x. Someone who boxes is a boxer, not a boxxer. A tax collector would be a taxer, not a taxxer.

Second, someone against mandates is anti-mandate.

Would someone call himself anti-abortion if he is against abortion mandates? Anti-gun if he is against gun mandates?

I believe medicine should be based on informed consent, but such a view is not defined as anti-vaxxer.

Supreme Court Opinion does not apply to Private Parties

Salon article:

I was one of the lawyers who helped win marriage equality. And yes, the GOP can take it away
And they might not even need another landmark legal battle to do it

Knowing that the courts will demur, could the GOP launch a similarly successful offensive on marriage equality? You bet. It's already happening.

A couple of weeks ago, a letter from a Texas state representative calling on the Attorney General to declare that private citizens can ignore federal law was making the rounds on social media. ...

The Republican Party Platform, a 66-page conniption fit, mentions the word "marriage" 19 times and the phrase "one man and one woman" five times under three separate headings ("Religious Liberty," "Marriage, Family, and Society," and "Defending Marriage Against an Activist Judiciary"). If the GOP can get the gun to the head of marriage equality, you'd better believe they'll squeeze the trigger. The question is: How will they go about it?

The letter says:

The State of Texas has not amended or repealed its marriage laws in response to Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015). And the Supreme Court has no power to amend formally or revoke a state statute or constitutional provision — even after opining that the state law violates the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution. See Pidgeon v. Turner, 538 S.W.3d 73, 88 n.21 (Tex. 2017) (“[N]either the Supreme Court in Obergefell nor the Fifth Circuit in De Leon ‘struck down’ any Texas law. When a court declares a law unconstitutional, the law remains in place unless and until the body that enacted it repeals it”); Texas v. United States, 945 F.3d 355, 396 (5th Cir. 2019) (“The federal courts have no authority to erase a duly enacted law from the statute books, [but can only] decline to enforce a statute in a particular case or controversy.” (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). The federal judicial power extends only to the resolution of cases and controversies between litigants. The fact that a federal district court has enjoined state officials from enforcing the Texas marriage laws1 in no way affects the existence or validity of those laws with regard to private parties, who are not even bound by the Fourteenth Amendment — let alone the Supreme Court’s purported interpretations of it. See Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883).

California is the most leftist state, and its constitution says that marriage is between a man and a woman. The gay lobby has made no serious attempt to remove this clause.

This is not a loophole. The gay lobby probably could have legalized same-sex marriage in some states, but they decided to bet everything on everyone going along with a majority opinion on the Supreme Court regarding death certificates and estate taxes.

It hasn't happened. I would not be surprised for the courts to say that they have no authority to force private parties to recognize a marriage that is not a marriage under statutory law or religious tradition.

The recent Supreme Court abortion arguments had the liberals mostly arguing in favor of authoritarianism:

[Justice Sotomayor] Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?

To ask the question is to admit the stench.

How Medicine got Corrupted

Psychiatrist Sally Satel writes in Quillette:

Twenty-one years ago, I wrote a book called PC, M.D. How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine. One chapter explored “multicultural counseling,” a form of therapy that encouraged white clinicians to ask themselves, “what responsibility do you hold for the racist oppressive and discriminating manner by which you personally and professionally deal with minorities?” ...

Today, the Indoctrinologists are officially in.

She goes on to describe the situation today. It is so much worse, that it is a wonder what she could have been complaining about 20 years ago.

She concedes:

I strongly agree that much of black Americans’ disadvantage in health and access to care is the cumulative product of legal, political, and social institutions that have historically discriminated, and sometimes continue to discriminate, against them. Systemic racism may indeed have broad explanatory value regarding health disparities,

People say this, but with no data to back it up. I doubt it. Do Blacks get better treatment in African countries? No. Blacks come to the USA, and they do not leave.