We need to hear from Covid-19 skeptics

I have now heard several otherwise intelligent people say something like:

I used to be a free speech absolutist, and believe that the best antidote to bad speech is more speech. But I have changed my mind in the last year, because of covid-19. Bad advice about masks and vaccines is too harmful, and the opinions of people like Alex Berenson must be suppressed.

This opinion is so wrong, I don't know where to start.

Berenson may be wrong about some things, but he is not any more wrong that Anthony Fauci, who has a long history of being wrong.

More importantly, I was willing to get a covid-19 vaccine because I believe that if it were particularly harmful or dangerous, I would have heard about it by now. But if the Left succeeds in suppressing such stories, then I will lose confidence in the vaccine.

Covid-19 has proved the importance of openness and free speech in health matters.

Covid-19 is not as bad as we are told

The NY Times published this chrt bout week go.

A surge in deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic created the largest gap between the actual and expected death rate in 2020 — what epidemiologists call “excess deaths,” or deaths above normal.

This was a big story, and was picked up by everyone else. 

But look at this chart. Two things are striking. First, covid-19 appears to be the greatest natural disaster in history, with deaths far exceeding everything else, including the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. It also appears that a miracle occurred in 1919 that saved millions of lives.

This is all bogus. There was no miracle in 1919, and deaths that year were about what was expected from before 1918. And 2020 only had about 15% more deaths than the year before. 1918 had about 40%.

The NY Times data is supposed to be "age-adjusted", whatever that means. Any genuine age adjustment should make the 1918 flu appear very much worse than the 2020 one, as the 1918 flu mainly killed the young and covid-19 mainly killed the elderly. So if you counted years of life being taken by disease, the 1918 flu might be 50 times worse.

See  this statistician for more info.

Avoiding McDonalds Restaurants

McDonalds does a lot of things really well, but some policies seem designed to alienate customers. You cannot get a clerk to tell you the difference between a Big Mac and a Quarter Pounder. It is difficult to get a burger without mustard and ketchup. And the ice cream machines are usually broken.

The company makes lots of money, so I can only assume that it has some business interest in doing things this way. My guess is that they are trying to train their customers to like mustard and ketchup, so people stop making special orders.

The ice cream baffled me, and here is a video trying to explain it: The REAL Reason McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken. I don't know if this is right or not, but I go elsewhere for ice cream.

ACLU and SPLC have gone kooky Left

Americn liberal groups are not wht they used to be:

Last 100 @ACLU tweets by topic
Immigration/Muslim ban: 8
Police reform/racial justice: 9
Voting rights: 7
Economic inequality: 3
Prison: 1
Surveillance: 2
Abortion: 3
DC Statehood: 2
ACLU fundraising: 1
Trans issues: 63
Free speech: 1
Due process: 0

Also:

The Southern Poverty Law Center claims it’s dedicated to fighting hate. But some things are more important than fighting hate.

Like “equity”.

In the name of equity, the SPLC announced that it’s shutting down its black nationalist hate groups category like the Nation of Islam. After “doing the internal work of anti-racism”, the SPLC will no longer list black racist hate groups because “the hate is not equal”.

The SPLC hs been anti-White for years.

Political Prisoners are held without Bail

William Saletan writes in Slate:

Three months after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Republican Party still won’t fully renounce it. In Congress, Republicans are opposing an investigation of the attack unless other incidents are included.

And I don't see any Democrats denouncing this:

Demonstrators chanting "Black Lives Matter" stormed the Oklahoma Capitol on Wednesday, forcing the state House of Representatives into lockdown, in order to protest several Republican-backed bills, including one that provides legal protections to motorists fleeing riots.

Many Jan. 6 protesters have been held without bail:

[Federal judge] Sullivan, a Clinton appointee, cited former President Donald Trump’s continued false claims about the November presidential election as one reason why he denied Whitton’s request for bond.

“As was true in (co-defendant Jeffrey) Sabol’s case, such comments reflect the continued threat posed by individuals like Mr. Whitton, who has demonstrated that he is willing and able to engage in extreme and terrifying levels of violence against law enforcement with a chilling disregard for the rule of law and the lives of law enforcement, seemingly based on mistaken beliefs about the illegitimacy of the current administration,” the judge wrote.

Magistrate Judge Regina Cannon granted bond for Whitton a day after his April 1 arrest, but federal prosecutors appealed the decision, keeping Whitton locked up in the federal jail in Lovejoy. At a hearing last week, his defense attorney said he had no prior criminal history and presented dozens of letters and affidavits signed by Whitton’s friends and relatives attesting to Whitton’s “strong moral code.”

These protesters probably deserve some punishment, but holding them without bail appears to be purely political. Even the official justification relies on quoting an opinion of the ex-President.

Just imagine if you were investigating a human rights abuse in another country. You found a political protester in jail, and the judge's explanation was that he must be jailed without trial because the ex-head-of-state claimed that an election was stolen.

High rate of sexually transmitted infections

Everyone has been going to the CDC for coronavirus data, but there are other diseases:

CDC estimates 1 in 5 people in the U.S. have a sexually transmitted infection ...

It is estimated there were:

Nearly 68 million STIs on any given day in 2018 (prevalent STIs).
26 million newly acquired STIs in 2018 (incident STIs).
Nearly one in two incident STIs were acquired by people aged 15 to 24 years old.
Nearly $16 billion in direct lifetime medical costs resulting from STIs acquired in 2018.

This is all pre-pandemic. We should have more recent data than 2018. Have STIs been going up or down?

The next thing that surprises me is how high these figures are. I would have guessed that about 80% of the population are leading lifestyles that do not expose them to STIs. That is, they are faithfully married, or not in sexual relationships.

That would seem to imply that most of those who are sexually active with more than one partner are getting infections. I find this hard to believe.

Congresswomen want Feminist Foreign Policy

Here is the new Congress at work:

117th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 196

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the importance of taking a feminist approach to all aspects of foreign policy, including foreign assistance and humanitarian response, trade, diplomacy, defense, immigration, funding, and accountability mechanisms.

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the importance of taking a feminist approach to all aspects of foreign policy, including foreign assistance and humanitarian response, trade, diplomacy, defense, immigration, funding, and accountability mechanisms.

Whereas a feminist approach to public policy requires meaningful analysis of and proactive challenges to power structures and inequalities based on intersecting systems of discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of race, age, language, socioeconomic status, physical or mental ability, sex, including gender identity or expression and sexual orientation, indigenous identity, religion, ethnicity, citizenship, and nationality or migrant status;

Whereas foreign policy reflects how a government defines and prioritizes peace and security, structures international trade, provides humanitarian aid and development assistance, and works with other nations and non-state actors;

Whereas feminist foreign policy is the policy of a state that defines its interactions with other states, as well as movements and other non-state actors, in a manner that—

(1) prioritizes peace, gender equality, and environmental integrity;

No, it has not passed yet.

NPR Radio wants a feminist internet. It has already created a feminist radio network. The hosts are nearly all women now, and the opinions are all feminist.

Dawkins is canceled

The Atheist community acts as if it is rational and objective, but they have just canceled their most prominent member because he believes there are two sexes:

Regrettably, Richard Dawkins has over the past several years accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values. His latest statement implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient. His subsequent attempts at clarification are inadequate and convey neither sensitivity nor sincerity.

Consequently, the AHA Board has concluded that Richard Dawkins is no longer deserving of being honored by the AHA, and has voted to withdraw, effective immediately, the 1996 Humanist of the Year award.

What kind of award is it, if it can be retracted later?

They gave him a trophy in 1996, supposedly for what he did that year. They want it back for his opinions in 2021. So was he a good humanist in 1996 or not?

I have come to the conclusion that terms like Atheism, Humanism, Rationalism, etc. don't mean what they say at all. These have become terms that represent a range of left-wing political beliefs.

More and more, the news is filled with cancelations. In today's NY Times, the new Philip Roth biography is being halted because of allegations of inappropriate behavior in the 1990s. A police lieutenant in Virginia lost his job after he contributed $25 to a legal-defense fund. A make-up artist lost his 25M-subscriber Youtube channel. These stories go on and on.

Update: Former award winner Steve Pinker explains the AHA error. Also, a philosopher describes the position of many public intellectuals today:

If you can pose as a champion of the underdog and a speaker of truth to power whilst ingratiating yourself with the neoliberal regime, that kind of hits the jackpot, by combining the ego gratifications of being a tribune of the people with the career benefits of being a lackey of the establishment. Consequently this is what a lot of people do.

Update: It appears that the atheists are split on this issue. One prominent blogger defends retracting the award, but if you google him, you will find a history of him making reckless accusations against other atheists, and of others making accusations against him. Maybe they will all cancel each other.

George Floyd Verdict

George Floyd death verdict is in. Here are my observations.

The had to prove bad intent on Chauvin, and I did not see any proof of that.

I did not see any proof, based on hard evidence, that Chauvin failed to follow police policy and training. It was all after-the-fact opinion.

There was conflicting testimony about the cause of death. Floyd may have died of a fentanyl overdose.

I do not believe the prosecution expert who testified that the body position and abdomenal pressure would have killed a healthy man.

No evidence of racial motive was given, nor any other bad motive.

I can accept that Chauvin was guilty of culpable negligence or something that, and deserves some penalty for that. But that is not what this case was about.

The upshot of this case is that many people are taking this as proof of systemic racism. Police departments everywhere are demoralized. New York City has just abolished the safest and most effective arrest procedures. Big city murders and other crimes are skyrocketing. Riots have killed dozens and destroyed millions in property. Democrats are rushing to pay slavery reparations to Blacks.

All of this crazy. This is a case where a cop had to hold a criminal for about ten minutes while waiting for ambulance, and made a bad judgment. That's all.

Bailing out of a very fancy girls school

I was expecting to like this widely publicized letter from a father to a fancy girls school, disenrolling his daughter.

She has been at Brearley for seven years, beginning in kindergarten. In short, we no longer believe that Brearley’s administration and Board of Trustees have any of our children’s best interests at heart.

Why did he ever think that they did?

He was paying them $54k a year to educate his daughter. It is a business. That's all.

I object to Brearley’s vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as “equity,” “diversity” and “inclusiveness.” If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called “equity,” it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets.

Why does he care about their words, concerns, or admissions policies? Are they educating his daughter, or not?

Lastly, I object, with as strong a sentiment as possible, that Brearley has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think. I object that the school is now fostering an environment where our daughters, and our daughters’ teachers, are afraid to speak their minds in class for fear of “consequences.” I object that Brearley is trying to usurp the role of parents in teaching morality, and bullying parents to adopt that false morality at home. I object that Brearley is fostering a divisive community

He is probably right, but I would like to see some specifics. Has the school really usurped the role of parents?

What did he really think that he was getting for that $54k? Teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic? I am guessing not, as surely the basics can be learned more cheaply. He wanted the school to impart values, and now he does not agree with the values being taught. And that is a good reason to withdraw from the school, but he does not really explain it.

You don't feed a dog that bites your hand

Republicans got a lot of criticism for these remarks:

“I found it completely discouraging to find a bunch of corporate CEOs getting in the middle of politics,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whined Monday. He fumed on Tuesday that his “warning, if you will, to corporate America is to stay out of politics.” Then he hastened to add: “I’m not talking about political contributions.” ...

Earlier this month, the Georgia House of Representatives voted to revoke a break on fuel taxes that benefits Atlanta-based Delta Airlines, which had criticized the state’s recent voting law. House Speaker David Ralston, R, explained: “You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand. You gotta keep that in mind sometimes.”

This is common sense, not corruption.

Corporations exist to make money, so I have to assume that Delta Airlines and others are making money out of their political meddling. They may be assuming that their opponents will not stop feeding the dog.

Stop feeding the dog that bites your hand.

The Bachelor is trolling us

NBC News reports:

Former "Bachelor" star Colton Underwood revealed that he is gay in a taped interview with "Good Morning America" anchor Robin Roberts that aired Wednesday. ...

Underwood, a former football player, was first introduced to viewers in 2018 as a contestant on Becca Kufrin's season of "The Bachelorette." He then joined the cast of "Bachelor In Paradise" in Season 5, before becoming "The Bachelor" in 2019 for its 23rd season.

He had a relationship for a year and a half with a contestant he met on that season, Cassie Randolph.

Is this a courageous admission that sacrificed his TV career? No, just the opposite:

After the interview aired, TMZ and CNN reported that Underwood had already begun production on a reality series with Netflix documenting his life as an out gay man. (TMZ reported that the series had, in fact, already begun filming.)

Anything for show business. I am guessing that in a couple of years, he will announce that he is now straight, and go back on The Bachelor. Or he will change his gender identity, and go on a reality TV show about that. Or he will enter into an interracial marriage and adopt an African transgender child. This game can be played a few more times.

Weaved into our Founding Documents

The Hill reports:

Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that white supremacy is “weaved” into America’s “founding documents” during a speech Wednesday to the National Action Network.

"I have seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles," said Thomas-Greenfield.

In addition to her remarks on white supremacy and its history in the U.S., Thomas-Greenfield told the activist organization that issues of “equity and justice” must be approached with “humility.”

Thomas-Greenfield also said the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery resulted from the nation's institutionalized white supremacy.

I have mentioned here and here that there is a history of arguments that the USA was founded as a White supremacist nation. These arguments are being increasingly accepted by mainstream Democrats.

I do not think that this is a good strategy. This just encourages Whites to say "This is a White country, founded by Whites for Whites. If you are non-white, then go back to some other country with your own kind."

Update: The NY Post reports:

Emerald Robinson of Newsmax asked Psaki at her daily press briefing whether Biden is “going to remove her from her position” — saying the speech hit themes similar to an anti-US diatribe by Chinese diplomats in Alaska last month. ...

“Is the president going to remove an African American woman with decades of experience in the Foreign Service who is widely respected around the world from her position as ambassador to the UN? He is not,” Psaki said.

Evolutionists join delusional leftist political fad

Biology professors define evolution as the history of life on Earth, and so everyone accepts under that definition. But the subject is couple to a number of seemingly unrelated ideologies.

In particular, evolutionists are nearly all leftists and atheists. They used to be all in favor of eugenics, and now they have gone to the other extreme.

Now it appears that they are adopting a bunch of anti-white racial delusions.

Evolution Society news:

The Society for the Study of Evolution, the American Society of Naturalists, and the Society of Systematic Biologists stand in solidarity with the many Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander communities and vehemently condemn these acts of domestic terror. To our Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander members: we support and respect you. We will continue the work of transforming our Societies into safe and inclusive places for you, and for all members of our communities.

The murders of Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Delaina Ashley Yaun, and Paul Andre Michels in the Atlanta area are symptoms of violent anti-Asian racism, which has only increased since the onset of the pandemic in the United States last year. These events are widespread. ...

We call on our largely white membership to capitalize on their privilege to support their colleagues.

Not all of those white members agree, as here are a couple who don't.

These murders were not acts of domestic terror, and are not symptoms of violent anti-Asian racism. And they should have nothing to do with academic pursuits of evolutionary biology.

I don't know what it is about the subject of Evolution, but it has a long history of prominent advocates like Stephen Jay Gould giving opinions on politics, religion, social customs, and other topic outside their expertise, and pretending that they are imparting evolutionary wisdom on us.

CNN has jump on this Asian fad, and declared that chop suey fonts are racist. The article seems like a joke, but it is not.

Congress is preparing to pay slavery reparations to Blacks, and making it a hate crime to associate China with the coronavirus.

A NY Times Black columnist writes:

Rage Is the Only Language I Have Left

Society has become horribly desensitized to police killings of Black men. ...

One of the first times I wrote about the police killing of an unarmed Black man was when Michael Brown was gunned down in the summer of 2014 in Ferguson, Mo. Brown was a Black teenager accused of an infraction in a convenience store just before his life was taken.

This is pretty crazy stuff. Brown was a violent criminal who was trying to kill a cop. The recent Minnesota death was of a Black man with a history of gun crimes.

Meanwhile, Ashli Babbitt was an unarmed White woman participating in a political protest when a cop shot and killed her. That cop will not be charged or even identified. She was much more innocent than any of the examples of Black killings. She was not threatening to hurt anyone. It makes much more sense to say that society has become accepting of police killings of White women.

Medical Schools get Woke

Remember when medical schools were only concerned with teaching medicine?

Here is an Antiracism Statement from Harvard Medical School:

We will focus on measures designed to improve recruitment, hiring, retention, and promotion of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color ... We must be intentional in accompanying the marginalized, and actively engaging in anti-racism in all our collaborations. This means recognizing and including our Black, Indigenous, and colleagues of color in setting the agenda in all aspects of our academic, policy and advocacy work.

Translation: in order to become fully anti-white, we need to hire a lot of BIPOCs.

U. of Virginia medical School kicked out a student for this exchange:

Bhattacharya: Hello. Thank you for your presentation. I had a few questions just to clarify your definition of microaggressions. Is it a requirement, to be a victim of microaggression, that you are a member of a marginalized group?

Adams: Very good question. And no. And no—

Bhattacharya: But in the definition, it just said you have to be a member of a marginalized group—in the definition you just provided in the last slide. So that's contradictory.

Adams: What I had there is kind of the generalized definition. In fact, I extend it beyond that. As you see, I extend it to any marginalized group, and sometimes it's not a marginalized group. There are examples that you would think maybe not fit, such as body size, height, [or] weight. And if that is how you would like to see me expand it, yes, indeed, that's how I do.

Bhattacharya: Yeah, follow-up question. Exactly how do you define marginalized and who is a marginalized group? Where does that go? I mean, it seems extremely nonspecific.

Adams: And—that's intentional. That's intentional to make it more nonspecific . ...

His lawsuit was just reinstated by an appellate court.

It appears that medical culture operates on groupthink, and that anyone who questions official policy is not likely to be successful.

The Harvard student newspaper has a popular article on The Scarcity of Harvard’s Conservative Faculty. Only 3% lean conservative at all, and only 0.4% are truly conservative. While the professors talk about diversity all the time, there is no attempt at ideological diversity. Just the opposite, there are active campaigns to kick out any Trump supporters.

If Harvard professors publish research on climate science, or crime, or economics, or many other topics that can be influenced by politics, would you take it as objective research? Not anymore. Harvard has become a left-wing think tank.

You would think that a magazine title The Skeptic would rely on hard objective science, but it is filled with leftist nonsense. Sure it has anti-superstition articles, but it also a lot of articles pretending to be scientific, but actually are just political opinions denying modern science.

I expect political, religious, and other organizations to give opinions that are not necessarily grounded in science. But these opinions in The Skeptic are not much different from the superstitions that they denounce.

NY Times endorses White Replacement Theory

NY Times Black columnist Charles M. Blow writes:

On Thursday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson caused an uproar by promoting the racist, anti-Semitic, patriarchal and conspiratorial “white replacement theory.” Also known as the “great replacement theory,” it stands on the premise that nonwhite immigrants are being imported (sometimes the Jewish community is accused of orchestrating this) to replace white people and white voters. The theory is also an inherent chastisement of white women for having a lower birthrate than nonwhite women. ...

Carlson continued, “Every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter.”

The whole statement is problematic.

I don't think he said anything about Jews or White women. I think that the birthrate has fallen for all races and religions in the USA. You can watch his comments here and here.

By "problematic", Blow means an unsettling truth, and he goes on to confirm everything Carlson said:

the percentage of voters who are white in America is shrinking as a percentage of all voters ...

But now, in addition to Black voters voting overwhelmingly Democratic, there is a wave of nonwhite immigrants who also lean Democratic. ...

I would even argue that the bizarre obsession with trans people is also rooted in part in white anxiety over reproduction.

Carlson didn't say anything about trans people either.

The Democrats are the ones who are obsessing with importing non-white immigrants, and getting them to vote Democrat. There is not any conspiracy, and the Democrats are quite open about it. The Democrats are also the ones obsessed with trans people. The NY Times writes about these subject much more than conservative sites do, and Democrat politicians talk about them much more.

Update: Here is the ADL response. In it, Jonathan A. Greenblatt argue that since FoxNews is run by Jews, it should fire Carlson as being contrary to Jewish interests.

He has no answer to Carlson's point:

Go to the Anti-Defamation League’s website sometime if you’d like a glimpse of what an honest conversation about the nation’s interests might look like. In a short essay posted to the site, the ADL explains that the state of Israel should not allow more Arabs to become citizens with voting rights, quote: “With historically high birth rates among the Palestinians, and a possible influx of Palestinian refugees and their descendants now living around the world, Jews would quickly become a minority within a bi-national state, thus likely ending any semblance of equal representation and protections. In this situation, the Jewish population would be increasingly politically – and potentially physically – vulnerable. It is unrealistic and unacceptable to expect the state of Israel to voluntarily subvert its own sovereign existence and nationalist identity and become a vulnerable minority within what was once its own territory.”

That is, the ADL, NY Times, and other Jewish organizations strongly advocate keeping non-Jews out of Israel, because of a Replacement Theory. They also admit that Jews are working to replaces Whites in the USA. But they are very much opposed to any American Whites even talking about Replacement Theory as it might apply to the USA.

Trump's vaccine promise is realized

Intellectuals attacked Donald Trump for COVID-19 more than anything else, with everyone claiming that he was lying about it. They all said that Gov. Cuomo and Newson showed excellent science-based leadership.

Those governors were so terrible that they are being run out of office.

But how does Trump's record hold up?

The Wash. Post attacked Trump, 6 weeks before the election:

Trump says, without evidence, every American will get coronavirus vaccine by April https://t.co/PdkoQyaagX — The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 18, 2020

President Trump said Friday that every American would have access to a coronavirus vaccine by April, contradicting his own statement of two days earlier and sowing deeper confusion about the process and timing of vaccine approval and distribution.

When Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said earlier in the week that the general public was unlikely to get access to a vaccine until the second and third quarters of 2021, echoing other scientific leaders in the administration, Trump said he’d misspoken.

“I think he made a mistake with that statement,” Trump said Wednesday. “When he said it, I believe he was confused. I’m just telling you we’re ready to go.”

Trump then said a vaccine would be ready in weeks and swiftly made available, despite the fact that no one knows yet when sufficient data will be collected from clinical trials to show that one of the vaccines in late-stage trials is effective or safe.

We now know that Trump was telling the truth, and the FDA, CDC, and vaccine companies conspired to conceal the trial data until after the election.

And his promise of universal vaccination by April was right on target:

President Joe Biden said Tuesday that all adults in the U.S. should be eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine by April 19 … The new deadline to expand eligibility — which is two weeks earlier than Biden had previously targeted — should not be difficult to meet since several states have already begun administering the vaccine to anyone over 16 who wants it.

This Wash. Post lie probably cost Trump the election. There were a fair number of centrist voters who only voted against Trump because of the coronavirus.

Of there were many other times Trump was accused of lying, when he was actually telling the truth. The Lincoln Project just put out of video titled "Trump's Big Lie", where Trump predicts that the only way he will lose the election is thru mail-in votes. And that is exactly what happened. Trump won the votes of those who actually voted according to pre-existing rules. Biden's extremely narrow margin was based on changing the rules to allow unauthenticated early mail-in votes.

Floyd trial witnesses have surprising testimony

I have been following the George Floyd murder trial, and some witnesses have some surprising testimony.

One expert indentified the precise second Floyd died. It was about 6 minutes into the 9-min. video.

He also said Chauvin was the sole cause of death, and the same thing would have killed a healthy man.

Others said that there were multiple contributing causes.

Chauvin knee was not on Floyd's neck; it was on the shoulder blade.

Floyd's breathing difficulties were caused by the position of the body and the pressure on lungs, and not on by blocking air or blood in the neck.

The police chief and others said that Chauvin did not have cause to use deadly force, and that his actions were contrary to his training and police policy.

Some of this changes my thinking. If it is really true that Chauvin went against policy and training, then he ought to be convicted of something. But the prosecution have not produced specifics to back this up, and the defense may be able to rebut. We really just heard police officers say that they would not have made the judgments that Chauvin, and that is not convincing. I want to see the actual training materials used on Chauvin.

The prosecution has to prove intent, and there has been nothing about that so far.

I am expecting the defense to present testimony that:

Chauvin had training to do what he did.

A healthy man would have survived being held down like Floyd, and it happens all the time.

If Floyd died at the 6-min mark, then Chauvin's actions for the last 3 minutes have no bearing on the charges.

Chauvin will testify that he was following accepted procedures to restrain Floyd so that he could get medical attention. Chauvin's a apparent aloofness was the result of bystander heckling.

The judge seems fair. I think Chauvin may be convicted of a lesser charge. He really needs to testify, to give evidence of intent, but if he does, he will be subjected to a nasty character assassination.

The larger issue is that this case was supposed to prove the existence of systemic racism. No such evidence has even been presented.

The picture shows a lethal dose of fentanyl, compared to a penny.

Jews try to censor Fox News

Jonathan A. Greenblatt of the Jewish lobbying organization ADL is trying to get Fox News to fire Tucker Carlson:

Last night, in a segment on his program dealing with voting rights and allegations of voter disenfranchisement, Tucker Carlson disgustingly gave an impassioned defense of the white supremacist “great replacement theory,” the hateful notion that the white race is in danger of being “replaced” by a rising tide of non-whites. While couching his argument in terms of what he described as the Democratic Party attempting to replace traditional voters with immigrants from third-world countries, Carlson’s rhetoric was not just a dog whistle to racists – it was a bullhorn.

Make no mistake: this is dangerous stuff. It is a notion that fueled the hateful chants of “Jews will not replace us!” in Charlottesville in 2017. ...

In short, this is not legitimate political discourse. ... Furthermore, Carlson has suggested that the very idea of white supremacy in the U.S. is a hoax, ...

Here is the Tucker Carlson video. As you can see, he doesn't say anything about Jews. He also denies that it is mainly a racial issue, as he objects to American Whites being replaced by foreign Whites, and American Blacks being replaced by other foreigners.

The above letter is curious for what it does not say. It does not claim that claim that Carlson said anything factually incorrect. It does not even deny that Jews are seeking to replace White Christian Americans with foreigners. He merely argues that it is against Jewish interests to have a public discussion of the issues.

It is funny how Jewish publications and organizations are forever complaining about what a few protesters chanted in Charlottesville in 2017. The NY Times alone has published about 200 articles complaining about it, but never doubting that Jews seek a great replacement.

Update: This article relates the controversy to longstanding Jewish policies towards immigration.

Update: The United Nations calls it "replacement migration".

Prince Philip Dies

When a king marries, his wife becomes the queen. But when Queen Elizabeth II married, her husband just became Prince Philip, not the king.

What goes? I thought that Britain had a patriarchal monarchy. It used to give a preference to male heirs, so I guess Elizabeth II only became queen because she had no brothers. A few years ago, they decided that was sexist, and the system now prefers the first-born, whether boy or girl. As it happens, males are in line for the throne, so the next crowning will be of a king, and then his wife will be the queen.

Professors blame Whites for Black crimes

Today's universities teach White hatred all the time, and don't miss a chance to blame Whites. Here is the latest example:

White supremacy is the root of all race-related violence in the US

[by] Jennifer Ho, Professor of Asian American Studies, University of Colorado Boulder ...

The point https://www.unz.com/isteve/white-supremacy-is-the-root-of-all-race-related-violence-in-the-us/I’ve made through all of those experiences is that anti-Asian racism has the same source as anti-Black racism: white supremacy. So when a Black person attacks an Asian person, the encounter is fueled perhaps by racism, but very specifically by white supremacy. White supremacy does not require a white person to perpetuate it.

White supremacy is an ideology, a pattern of values and beliefs that are ingrained in nearly every system and institution in the U.S. It is a belief that to be white is to be human and invested with inalienable universal rights and that to be not-white means you are less than human – a disposable object for others to abuse and misuse.

The dehumanization of Asian people by U.S. society is driven by white supremacy and not by any Black person who may or may not hate Asians.

By "Asian", I assume she means Oriental. And she blames Whites when a Black commits a crime against an Oriental.

The department has this Land Use Statement:

We honor and acknowledge that the University of Colorado’s four campuses are on the traditional territories and ancestral homelands of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute, Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, Lakota, Pueblo and Shoshone Nations. Further, we acknowledge the 48 contemporary tribal nations historically tied to the lands that comprise what is now called Colorado.

These statements have become common. Again, this seems to have no purpose except to express hatred for Whites. It credits non-whites, but not the Whites who built the state and the university. If they really think that they are occupying stolen land, then they can leave.

Causes of racial identification

Comment:

In a Clubhouse discussion back in February, an immigrant to the U.S. from China said that, in her opinion, our roughly nine months (so far) of #BLM and #SocialJustice was the primary driver behind people perniciously identifying as “white”. As far as she was concerned, prior to all of the efforts in “anti-racism”, people who happened to be white would primarily identify as “Italian” or “German-American” or “New Yorker” or “Dentist” or whatever. But with the constant media drumbeat of Black vs. white, Asian vs. white, and Pacific Islander vs. white, the former “Anglo-Scotch-American” now identifies as “white”.

I agree with that. I don't think most whites identified as white, until recently. Maybe they still don't.

The Democrats have become the anti-white party, and blame whites for everything. Pres. Biden campaigned on promises of considering racial reparations, and now he is making such payments to Black farmers. Whites are the ones who are not eligible, whether they like it or not.

The Anti-Asian Hoax

A libertarian immigrant law professor writes in The Hill:

Lost in this partisan war of words is the reality that both the right and left-wing versions of anti-Asian bigotry deserve condemnation. The two rest on similar flawed foundations and perpetrate similar injustices.

His examples of left-wing anti-Asian bigotry involve Americans acting against Asian-Americans. But his right-wing examples all involve Americans supposedly discriminating against foreigners living on the other side of the world!

In my experience, Americans have been extraordinarily kind to Asians. In the last few weeks, the leftist press has dug up some Asian complaints, and they are remarkably petty. They are mostly things that no one else would complain about. There is an occasional crime, but it is not clear that Asian-Americans are victims any more than anyone else. The whole thing is a big hoax.

MSN reports:

Joe Biden is considering restarting construction on Donald Trump's southern border wall as his administration continues to grapple with a growing immigration crisis including record numbers of illegal crossers.

It is already obvious that Pres. Trump was a much better President that Joe Biden will ever be.

The Kinds of Beliefs

People have different kinds of beliefs. Roughly, there are beliefs based on reason and faith, but I want to break it down further.

Positivism beliefs. These are beliefs in proven knowledge, such as 2+2=4 or conservation of energy.

Probability beliefs. These are factual beliefs that you admit could be wrong, but they are justified by sufficiently high probability. For example, you might believe that you will drive to the beach tomorrow, even though accidents or external events could interfere.

Solipsism beliefs. These are untestable beliefs that exist in your mind, such as belief in a God that does not reveal himself in the natural world.

Fantasy beliefs. These are beliefs that allow you to live out a fantasy of how the world ought to be. For example, recycling your plastics may help you feel better about the environment, even though there is no actual benefit.

Alignment beliefs. This is where you profess a belief in order to socially align with others.

When someone declares something to be the truth, I need to figure out which of these five categories of belief applies. If I pick the wrong category, then nothing I say will mean anything to him, because my argument will have nothing to do with what underlies his belief.

This last category of alignment beliefs is particularly confusing. We just celebrated Easter, which commemorates Jesus Christ rising from the dead. This is a core Christian belief. If you want to be a Christian, and align yourself with other Christians, you need to accept this.

If you are a Republican American politician, you need to be pro-gun, anti-tax, and anti-abortion. A Democrat must be pro-tax, pro-immigration, anti-gun, pro-abortion, and favor identity politics of anyone but straight White Christian men.

CNN was recently attacked for saying:

It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.

How could anyone even say something so silly? I think the way to understand this is that CNN has become a left-wing network, and this is a statement that aligns with leftist transgender activists. It is not a statement of fact in the usual sense.

Several have made an analogy between the Woke Left and a religion. This gives the Left too much credit. It is not a religion. They do have a willingness to recite things that are obviously false, but that is not what defines religion. When the Woke Left says things that are obviously false, they are just aligning themselves with their leftist causes.

Jan. 6 prosecutions fall apart

By Julie Kelly reports:

He is known as the “zip tie guy.”

In one of the most iconic photographs of the January 6 Capitol melee, Eric Munchel, wearing tactical gear, is seen holding up a fistful of zip ties in the Senate gallery. Munchel, the media quickly concluded, brought the flex cuffs to arrest lawmakers attempting to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. The woman photographed with him later was identified as his mother, Lisa Eisenhart.

The top federal prosecutor who handled the first two months of the Justice Department’s Capitol breach probe recently bragged that Munchel was one of the first protestors targeted in the agency’s unprecedented 50-state manhunt for alleged “insurrectionists.”

The feds threw the book at them, as they were prosecuted for the so-called armed insurrection. They were held in jail without bail, because they were supposedly so dangerous.

But they were just innocent pro-democracy protesters, like everyone else.

The three judges carefully deconstructed the charges against mother and son, noting neither has been accused of violence such as assault or destruction of property. One judge argued the detention order should be reversed, not revisited. In his partial dissent, Judge Gregory Katsas took aim at the Justice Department’s exaggerated case.

“While there, they attempted neither violence nor vandalism,” Katsas wrote. “They searched for no Members of Congress, and they harassed no police officers. They found plastic handcuffs by chance, but never threatened to use them. Munchel’s threat to ‘break’ anyone who vandalized the Capitol was intended to prevent destruction and was addressed to no one in particular.”

Katsas detailed how both defendants fully cooperated with authorities, both were employed at the time of surrender—Eisenhart has been a nurse for 30 years—and neither has a criminal record with the exception of Munchel’s two marijuana possession charges from several years ago.

The only felony the government could come up with to charge Munchel and Eisenhart—who are being charged together—is “obstruction of an official proceeding,” which is an enhancement count filed against defendants charged with misdemeanors.

If this were any other country, they would be regarded as political prisoners.

White liberals have mental health disorders

Bill Hennessy writes:

Researchers have identified a strong correlation between liberalism and mental illness.The correlation is so powerful that almost one in two young white liberals have been diagnosed with mental health disorders according to Pew American Trends research.

We have identified four major takeaways from this research, conducted earlier this year:

Nearly 1 in 2 (45.9%) of white liberals have been diagnosed with mental health disorders.
White liberals of all ages are more than twice as likely as conservatives of any age to suffer from mental health disorders.
White liberals are almost twice as likely as non-white liberals to be diagnosed with mental health problems.
Among conservatives of all ages, there is very little difference in the rates of mental disorders between whites and non-whites.

The Censorship increases

The NY Post reports:

Facebook and Instagram removed an interview with former President Donald Trump by his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, simply because it “featured Trump speaking” and the “voice of Donald Trump,” Facebook said in an internal email.

As big tech companies continue their bid to cancel the ex-commander-in-chief, audio from the podcast “The Right View With Lara Trump,” was yanked from Facebook Tuesday night and reportedly later removed by Instagram.

Lara Trump, who also contributes to Fox News, shared a screenshot of an email sent by a Facebook employee, saying the company would be taking down the interview.

“We are reaching out to let you know that we removed content from Lara Trump’s Facebook page that featured President Trump speaking,” the email she posted states.

“In line with the block we placed on Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, further content posted in the voice of Donald Trump will be removed and result in additional limitations on the accounts,” the email continued.

You can view the interview here. The interview has nothing offensive, except that it criticizes the Biden presidency, and the press.

YouTube has announced that it is removing this Dershowitz-Kennedy debate on the pros and cons of vaccination.

This disgusting Pantene ad is on YouTube, but no comments are allowed.

2020 death totals announced

I posted speculation that COVID-19 might not lead to measurable excess deaths. It appears that I was wrong:

The coronavirus was the third leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020, behind heart disease and cancer, according to a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 3.3 million deaths were reported in the U.S. last year, a 16% increase over 2019, according to provisional data published Wednesday compiled by the National Vital Statistics System, which examines and reports annual mortality statistics based on death certificates.

The deadliest weeks last year were at the beginning of the pandemic and then in the middle of the holiday surge, during the weeks ending April 11, with 78,917 fatalities, and Dec. 26, when 80,656 people died, the CDC found.

According to the study released Wednesday, Covid-19 was listed as the underlying cause for 345,323 deaths, killing more Americans than unintentional injuries, strokes, chronic lower respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia and kidney disease.

Compared to other countries, 11 European countries had higher per capita death rates, and some countries had much lower rates. China, Vietnam, and Tanzania did the best, if you believe the official figures.

Most of those US covid deaths had multiple other co-morbidities, and no actual positive test for covid.

2020 showed that the USA is really good at keeping elderly obese diabetics alive in nursing homes, until a pandemic strikes.

This does not settle the question of whether the lockdowns and other measures were worthwhile or not. Since different countries used different strategies, you would think that we would have good data on what works and what does not. We do not, and it is still hotly debated whether any of these deaths were preventable, and whether the prevention measures were worth the cost.