Biden Attacks Whites Again

Reuters reports:

President Joe Biden and top White House officials railed against white supremacy on Monday, asking Americans to unite against hatred ...

“Silence is complicity and we’re not going to remain silent,” Biden said. "White supremacy is a poison." ...

"We have to act," Biden insisted, noting that white supremacy was now the greatest terrorist threat facing the United States. "All of us need to say clearly and personally, as forcefully as we can, that hate will not prevail."

No, there is no White supremacy, and no White supremacist terrorist threat. This is just an attempt to stir up a race war. If there is one thing Biden stands for, above all else, is getting votes by stirring up anti-white hatred.

Update: Ann Coulter writes:

White supremacists are responsible for .001% of all murders each year. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting statistics for 2021, black people are responsible for 60% of all murders in the U.S., and the majority of their victims are other blacks. Those are the many, many black lives that absolutely do not matter to the media.

Nor to Democrats. Predictably, President Joe Biden immediately issued a statement on the Jacksonville shooting decrying “white supremacy.” There will be no denunciations of black criminality, no photos of their victims’ grieving families, no black pastors saying, “We’re burying our future.” It’s doubtful that more than 10 people could name any of the eight black Chicagoans killed between Friday night, Aug. 18, and Sunday, Aug. 21.

Imagine if tomorrow, instead of one white person being killed in Chicago every week, whites suddenly started being killed once a day, Monday through Thursday — and twice on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It would be a national crisis. But that’s what’s happening to blacks.

Biden can only get re-elected by stirring up hatred against Whites.

More Educated People are more Anti--semitic

The Jerusalem Post reports:

How we combat hate may need to be reevaluated after a new study found that educated people may actually in some ways be more antisemitic than less educated people, despite largely accepted views supporting the contrary, according to an article by the researchers behind the study in Tablet magazine.

The common view of the relationship between antisemitism and education is that higher education leads to less antisemitism, with education seen as an important tool in combating hate of all kinds and antisemitism in particular.

The study did not really measure anti-semitism, but the willingness to distinguish Jews from other groups in policy questions. It is unconvincing because there could be good reasons for the distinctions, and maybe more educated people will make the distinction.

The whole purpose of these articles is to help Jews use the concept of anti-semitism to manipulate non-Jews to serve the interests of Jews.

Why Rich Married People are Happier

Kevin Mims writes in Quillette:

In July, Sam Peltzman, an economist at the University of Chicago, published a study showing a strong connection between marriage and happiness. “Being married,” Peltzman wrote, “is the most important differentiator with a 30-percentage point happy-unhappy gap over the unmarried. … No subsequent population categorization [black vs. white, young vs. old, rich vs. poor, etc] will yield so large a difference in happiness across so many people.”

Many cultural commentators quickly picked up on this study and began urging Americans, especially young people, to focus more on finding a spouse than on finding a good career. In the New York Times, David Brooks wrote:

My strong advice is to obsess less about your career and to think a lot more about marriage. Please respect the truism that if you have a great career and a crappy marriage you will be unhappy, but if you have a great marriage and a crappy career you will be happy.

He goes on to agree, citing his happy marriage.

This sounds very strong, but I am unconvinced. Here is the study summary:

Since 1972 the General Social Survey (GSS) has asked a representative sample of US adults “… [are] you …very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” Overall, the population is reasonably happy even after a mild recent decline. I focus on differences along standard socio demographic dimensions: age, race, gender, education, marital status income and geography. I also explore political and social differences. Being married is the most important differentiator with a 30-percentage point happy-unhappy gap over the unmarried. Income is also important, but Easterlin’s (1974) paradox applies: the rich are much happier than the poor at any moment, but income growth doesn’t matter. Education and racial differences are also consequential, though the black-white gap has narrowed substantially. Geographic, gender and age differences have been relatively unimportant, though old-age unhappiness may be emerging. Conservatives are distinctly happier than liberals as are people who trust others or the Federal government. All above differences survive control for other differences.

It claims to control for differences, but of course there was no control group.

If marriage is correlated with happiness, then the obvious explanations are that marriage causes happiness, or that happiness causes marriage. The paper admits:

The usual caveats about causal inference should be kept in mind All of them – mutual and reverse causality, omitted variables, selection, etc. – apply to most every comparison you will see. For example, married people are happier than unmarried. Is that because marriage produces happiness or because unhappy people tend to be difficult to live with or because they sort out of the marriage market and on and on or all of the above? I leave such questions to others but show that the marriage gap is large enough to merit asking them.

So the study does not substantiate David Brooks' advice. Likewise, are the rich happier because they have more money, or did their happy outlook help them get rich?

Brooks is known for being very sloppy in citing social science data. Some consider him a charlatan.

There are also studies saying that married folks are healthier, longer-lived, richer, better-looking, etc. My guess is that the healthy happy rich people have a much better supply of mates to choose from, and hence more likely to get married.

Missourt Rejects Gender Changing Ideology

CBS News reports:

A Missouri judge ruled Friday that a ban on gender-affirming health care for minors can take effect on Monday, as scheduled.

The ruling by St. Louis Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer means that beginning next week, health care providers are prohibited from providing gender-affirming surgeries to children. Minors who began puberty blockers or hormones before Monday will be allowed to continue on those medications, but other minors won't have access to those drugs.

Here is the ACLU lawsuit. The complaint is a pretty good summary of the pro-trans science/medical position. Glad to see someone saw thru it. It is misleading and nonsensical from beginning to end.

79. Hormone therapy can have significant masculinizing or feminizing effects and can assist in bringing transgender people’s secondary sex characteristics into alignment with their gender identity. Therefore, hormone therapy is medically necessary care for transgender people who require it to treat their gender dysphoria.

80. Gender-affirming hormone therapy does not necessarily result in a loss of fertility, and many individuals treated with hormone therapy can and do still biologically conceive children. The first sentence is just a lie, and is contradicted by the 3rd sentence. No one's sex characteristics are changed if he/she is still fertile under the original sex. Sandwiched in between is "Therefore, hormone therapy is medically necessary", and absurd non-sequitur.

This footnote is silly:

For these reasons, the Endocrine Society, an international medical organization representing over 18,000 endocrinology researchers and clinicians, warns practitioners that the terms “biological sex” and “biological male or female” are imprecise and should be avoided.

Those terms are probably the most precise terms in the brief. Terms like "gender identity" are hopelessly ill-defined, and there is no consensus on what it is. Some say there is a biological element underlying gender identity, and that it is innate and immutable. Others say that it is a psychological phenomenon, or even a social construct. Others say there is no such thing, that it cannot be measured, and the phrase is just used to describe some role-playing.

Human Ancestors Originated Outside Africa

Anthropologists have been telling us for a century that we are all descended from African apes. Ever since the 1912 Piltdown Man turned out to be a fake. They seem to take great glee in saying it, as if it shows that we should identify with Africans.

Okay, I can accept that, but they ignore so much evidence to the contrary. It appears that our ancestors ten million years ago were not African at all.

Sci-Tech Daily reports:

A recent discovery of a fossilized ape from a site in Turkey, aged 8.7 million years, is challenging long-accepted ideas of human origins. This finding supports the hypothesis that the forebears of African apes and humans may have evolved in Europe and later migrated to Africa approximately 7 to 9 million years ago.

The findings establish Anadoluvius turkae as a branch of the part of the evolutionary tree that gave rise to chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and humans. Although African apes today are only known from Africa, as are the earliest known humans, the study’s authors ... conclude that the ancestors of both came from Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.

Anadoluvius and other fossil apes from nearby Greece (Ouranopithecus) and Bulgaria (Graecopithecus) form a group that comes closest in many details of anatomy and ecology to the earliest known hominins, or humans. The new fossils are the best-preserved specimens of this group of early hominines and provide the strongest evidence to date that the group originated in Europe and later dispersed into Africa.

The study’s detailed analysis also reveals that the Balkan and Anatolian apes evolved from ancestors in western and central Europe. With its more comprehensive data, the research provides evidence that these other apes were also hominines which means that it is more likely that the whole group evolved and diversified in Europe, rather than the alternative scenario in which separate branches of apes earlier moved independently into Europe from Africa over the course of several million years, and then went extinct without issue.

Those were apes, but the first ancestors who were identifiably human were Neanderthals living in Europe.

Trump for President

Pres. Trump was arrested again.

I would never vote for Pres. Biden for the following reasons.

Biden lost 2 wars. The Biden foreign policy in Afghanistan and Ukraine has been extremely damaging and irresponsible.

Borders. Biden has permitted an invasion of millions of foreigners, making USA worse.

Corruption. The Biden family has accepted millions of dollars in bribes, from China and Ukraine.

Econonmy. We have inflation, big deficits, oil dependency, runaway spending.

Politicized prosecutions. Biden has used the US DoJ to go after political enemies. Yes, I have read the four Trump indictments, and they are for things no one ever thought was criminal before, and with flimsy evidence. They are un-American.

Appointments. Trump appointed much better judges than Biden.

Culture war. Biden is aligned with those grooming your kids into trannies.

Senility. Biden is obviously unfit for any position of responsibility. He is obviously a puppet, and others are calling the shots.

I have tried reading the rants of the Trump-haters. They complain about his personality, but almost never try to even make an argument that the Biden administration was somehow better than Trump's.

Even on subjects like climate change, Biden's policies will be putting more CO₂ into the atmosphere than Trump's presidency, largely by moving Third World residents to the USA where they and their descendants will use fossil fuels.

There are some other Republicans who would be better than Biden. But they have either disqualified themselves, or not yet ready for the White House. Trump is the only man who can save the nation.

These phony charges only underline the necessity of draining the swamp.

We are at a crossroads. 200 million people clicked ont he Trump-Tucker interview, according to Twitter/X. Are we going to sit back a senile corrupt pervert puppet frame his political opponent with bogus charges?

Medical Journals have gone Woke

The Lancet, a British medical journal that is one of the tops in the world, published a May 2023 editorial:

Occasionally, someone says something so appalling, so shocking, and so disheartening that you just stop in disbelief. On April 26, 2023, UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman said this: “I think that the people coming here illegally do possess values which are at odds with our country. We are seeing heightened levels of criminality when related to thttps://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)00900-5/fulltexthe people who have come on boats related to drug dealing, exploitation, prostitution.” ...

This is the era of culture wars—politicised conflicts over values, identities, and beliefs. Are British institutions systemically racist? Should the monarchy pay reparations for its historical links to slavery? Are activists terrorising the young with climate doom? Has Brexit been a success? What is the definition of a woman? ...

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) was arrested by Mussolini's police in 1926. Imprisoned, he used his time to fill the pages of 33 notebooks. Gramsci sought to make sense of his experience in the vanguard of Italian politics. One question in particular occupied his thoughts. Why did every effort to bring about revolutionary change in Europe fail? His great insight, one largely forgotten today, was to recognise the way in which the dominant group uses culture to exert its controlling influence. If the ruling power can persuade people to share its social, cultural, and moral values, the motivation for radical political change will wither. The culture wars suggest that it is not the economy, stupid. If populist governments can win over the public to their beliefs, progressives have little chance of electoral success. It was this cultural hegemony, according to Gramsci, that explained the resistance to progressive political change in the aftermath of World War 1. And it is the modern struggle for cultural hegemony that explains today's bitter disputes over race, sex, and gender.

Responses are here and here.

Why is it so shocking to a medical journal that a politician said that illegals were bringing crime into the country? It is an obvious fact. Maybe a medical journal should stay our of pollitics, or maybe it should address social problems. But this medical journal wants to complain when someone else points out social problems.

Do not be an Ally

I see a lot of public schools are adopting a slogan to be an ally:

Becoming an Ally

Working to create a more equitable and inclusive school, community and society starts by looking inward. The “tools” described in this section provide guidelines and a general direction for this lifelong process that can bring about a fundamental change in our perspectives and attitudes.

These tools are intended for all members of the school community. They recognize that everyone has a part to play in creating an equitable and inclusive culture. Everyone has the capacity to be an ally to those who have been marginalized and excluded.

The word ally primarily means for a nation to take sides in a war or potential war. Usually there is a mutual defense treaty.

There is a new definition:

: one that is associated with another as a helper : a person or group that provides assistance and support in an ongoing effort, activity, or struggle

a political ally

She has proven to be a valuable ally in the fight for better working conditions.

—often now used specifically of a person who is not a member of a marginalized or mistreated group but who expresses or gives support to that group

The storyline on "Glee" captures something larger that we are seeing with a new generation of allies (allies are people who support LGBT rights but aren't LGBT themselves).—
David M. Hall

Following the metaphor, this means that LGBT folks are at war with straights, and straights are allies if they side with the LGBT. There is no indication that the LGBTs will help the straights in any way.

No, I do not think that the public schools should take sides in the culture wars in this way. They are trying to get normal kids to side with perverts.

NY may Decriminalize Sex Trade

NY Post:

More than a half-dozen sex-trade survivors and advocates from anti-trafficking and women’s rights groups gathered in Midtown to call on politicians to reject bills put forth in the state Senate and New York City Council that would decriminalize prostitution.

“We have now become a society that looks at the sex trade as an employer like any other, and prostitution as labor like any other type of work,” said Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. ...

“Every day we see that sex buyers and traffickers indiscriminately rape, kidnap, and torture the people that they’re buying and selling them in the sex trade,” said Ann Matheson, co-director of the Empower Center.

“The majority of sex buyers do not care whether the person they buy is trafficked, has a pimp, identifies as ‘empowered,’ or is a teenager.”

There are good arguments against prostitution (and/or sex work), but these arguments are not convincing. Prostitutes are not abused anymore than any other profession. Sure, customers care about the product, rather than the history of the product, but you could say that about a lot of things.

Everyone is against sex slaves and child prostitutes, but those are just bogeymen, and not relevant to the complaint here about NY City not enforcing laws against the adult consensual sex trade.

I think prostitution will be decriminalized in the USA, as no one is making serious arguments against it. Yes, major religions say it is immoral, and various groups say it is exploitative, but they do not get related to modern legal notions of consent.

Did Neanderthals have Souls?

An evolutionary biology professor mocks this theological issue:

So did Christ die for Neanderthals? ...

So were Neanderthals theologically human or not? I think the only way we can approach this question is to ask whether or not Neanderthals had immortal souls, as we do. But, apart from Christian teaching, how do we know that we even have such souls? We cannot just have a look at our immaterial souls, and Aquinas thought that we only know the character of our souls through what we do.

. . . What we need to look for in the case of Neanderthals is evidence of some behaviour that bears the mark of an intellectual soul such as we have.

We do commonly make distinctions about who is human, and who is not. Legally, gorillas, chimps, and ChatGPT are not. Morally, not either.

Non-Africans humans today are descended from matings between Neanderthals and out-of-Africa hominin of about 50,000 years ago. Some say that the Africans looked more human, because they lacked brow ridges. In terms of tools, rituals, art, socialization, and brain size, they were comparable. Some evidence seems to show that the Neanderthals were more advanced, but it is unclear.

Modern anthropologists call the Africans human, and the Neanderthals extinct cousins of humans. This seems more absurd to me than the theological Acquinas musings. Either they were all human, or none were.

There is another argument that humans were not fully conscious until several thousand years ago. Theologically, it could have been Eve eating from the tree of knowledge. This view is dangerous, as it might make many of today's 8 billion people not fully human.

Turning Runaway Kids into Trannies

Daily Stormer:

Remember when I told you they were going to kidnap your kids and turn them into trannies?

It’s just like the deadly vaccine thing and the out of control black crime thing.

I said all of these obvious things were going to happen, now they’re all happening.

Sounds like hyperbole, but it is happening:

America First Legal is suing Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) to stop a law allowing children to get genital mutilation surgeries without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

AFL, headed by former Trump administration policy adviser Stephen Miller, is challenging Senate Bill 5599, which Inslee signed into law in May and allows shelters to house runaway children and provide them with genital mutilation and chemical castration interventions if they are struggling with gender dysphoria.

“The recently signed legislation creates a dangerous incentive for minors who disagree with their parents on ‘gender-affirming care’ to run away to a shelter or host home,” the group argues.

S.B. 5599 strips a requirement to notify parents of a runaway child and allows them to pursue transgender medical procedures.

No info about runaway children should be kept from the parents. The kids should be returned without any medical treatments.

It is amazing to me that the Democrats are in favor of holding runaway kids and not telling the parents where they are.

School upset by Instagram Postings

The NY Times has a long article on The Instagram Account That Shattered a California High School. I tried to read it, but I don't get it.

Who cares about a private account with a handful of followers?

Apparently it expressed some racist opinions. I did not find exactly what. How could this be an issue? Don't kids have the right to express opinions, whatever they are?

Crime to suggest watching TV

The Atlanta Trump indictment charges:

Act22: On or about the 3rd day of December2020, DONALD JOHN TRUMP caused to be tweeted from the Twitter account @RealDonaldTrump, “Georgia hearings now on @OANN. Amazing!” This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy”

So Trump's crime was, in part, posting a public tweet to watch tv news!

This is crazy stuff. There was no conspiracy. There were no secret deals to do anything illegal. Everything Trump did was in the open, public, and in pursuit of lawful remedies.

NPR Radio reported last year:

The omnibus spending bill includes a section that would reform the Electoral Count Act, a 1887 law that governs the counting of Electoral College votes in Congress.

For years, legal scholars have worried the law was poorly written and in need of clarification, and former President Donald Trump and his allies targeted the law's ambiguities in their attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

So all the Democrats agreed that the Electoral Count Act had a loophole. So how can it be illegal for Trump to have tried to exploit that loophole?

Chosen One accuses Christian of Bigotry

The Federalist:

“There’s no hope for any of us outside of having faith in Jesus Christ alone,” wrote Lizzie Marbach.

[Congressman] Miller, who is Jewish, took offense.

“This is one of the most bigoted tweets I have ever seen,” Miller wrote, demanding Marbach “Delete it,” because she had “gone too far.” ...

Miller didn’t stop there.

In the replies to Marbach’s post, Miller wrote, “God says that Jewish people are the chosen ones, but yet you say we have no hope.”

Miller has apoligized. I post this to point out Jewish thinking. Here is an elected politician who is used to being careful about what he says. He says he is part of an ethnic minority that is God's chosen people, and yet he accuses a Christian of being bigoted for expressing Christian beliefs.

Oppenheimer Was a Communist

From a Jewish Commentary article:

… Chevalier also identified Oppenheimer as the author of two 1940 pamphlets put out by the “College Faculties Committee, Communist Party of California.” Oppenheimer, who was the scion of a wealthy New York family, had also paid for the printing and distribution of those pamphlets. Herken interviewed Philip Morrison, a former Oppenheimer graduate student and then Communist, who claimed that he, Morrison, had taken to the printer a third pamphlet written by Oppenheimer justifying the Soviet invasion of Finland.

The movie was supposed to be factual. It portrays Oppie as a Commie fellow traveler.

A reviewer notes:

But there are also flaws [SPOILERS FOLLOW]:

1. Stuff that never happened. Most preposterously, Oppenheimer travels all the way from Los Alamos to Princeton, to have Einstein check the calculation suggesting that the atomic bomb could ignite the atmosphere.

2. Weirdly, but in common with pretty much every previous literary treatment of this material, the movie finds the revocation of Oppenheimer’s security clearance a far more riveting topic than either the actual creation of the bomb or the prospect of global thermonuclear war. Maybe half the movie consists of committee hearings.

3. The movie misses the opportunity to dramatize almost any of the scientific turning points, from Szilard’s original idea for a chain reaction to the realization of the need to separate U-235 to the invention of the implosion design—somehow, a 3-hour movie didn’t have time for any of this.

Einstein was also a Commie fellow traveler, and was beyond the point where anyone would trust him to do a physics calculation. Igniting the atmosphere was a minor worry.

Obviously bringing in Einstein and igniting the atmosphere was done to overdramatize the movie. But why? They were inventing the A-bomb. They were fighting World War II. Isn't that enough drama? It damages a true story when it is overdramatized with absurd fictions.

Why make a $100M A-bomb story, without telling any of the technical difficulties? What is the story?

This is baffling. Presumably the movie makers will say that the audience is mostly non-physicists, and may not understand or appreciate a detailed physics lesson. But it could tell the basics in a way that most could understand.

Finally the security clearance story is an obscure historical footnote of no particular interest or importance. It was the Cold War, and he should have lost his clearance years earlier. It used to be something leftists would complain about, but the case against him was pretty strong.

The movie would have been better with more war and bomb stuff, and less political drama about trivialities.

Fictitious Atlanta Document Charges 13 Felonies

NBC News reports:

A docket appeared on the Fulton County court website shortly after noon, the news agency Reuters reported, indicating that Trump had been charged. The document was quickly removed from the site, Reuters reported, and the news agency then changed its report to say Georgia was "set to charge" the former president. A representative for the Fulton County prosecutor's office called the report inaccurate, and the county clerk's office later issued a statement calling it a "fictitious document that has been circulated online."

Really? Here is the list of 13 felonies.

So the Democrat prosecutors are using a fictitious document to charge Pres. Trump of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings! The pot is calling the kettle black.

Also racketeering and some other crazy charges. We shall soon see. All Trump did was call an election official to see if there were enough votes to contest the election.

Update: Here is the indictment. Yes, 13 felonies. The prosecutor's office was lying about it being fictitious.

Ethnicity in the Ancient World

Book review:

Ethnicity in the Ancient World — Did It Matter?
Erich S. Gruen

“The idea of an immutable character determining the nature of a people or an ethnic group finds few takers today,” he tells us. Never mind, of course, that to be a “taker” of this view is to be exiled from modern academia, which might explain why there are “few.”

Gruen says his purpose is to demonstrate that “ancient societies generally shunned the sense of ethnicity as an undeviating marker of distinctiveness stemming from descent, and that they were therefore open to change, adaptation, intermingling, and incorporation. In our contemporary age when ethnic identity has become increasingly fraught and divisive, those characteristics can offer a salutary corrective.”

In other words, the ancients were woke.

The review goes on to point out that ancient Greeks kept barbarian slaves, and that the Bible speaks favorably of killing for miscegenation. Many noticed ethnicity:

Herodotus, sometimes known as the “father of history,” is often described as the world’s first ethnographer. Indeed, his writings are replete with his observations — sometimes first-hand, other times heard from others — about the races and ethnicities of the world.

And, as Guillaume Durocher notes:

Herodotus’ world certainly featured peaceful commerce, cultural exchange, and ethnic intermarriage among these peoples — the historian is quite broad-minded and free of chauvinism in this respect. But, as Herodotus makes clear, this was also a world of extreme ethnocentrism and brutal wars.

So why would a Jewish professor be so eager to write a book denying obvious facts about ancient ethnicities?

The review does not say, but the obvious inference is that the Jewish religion is based on extreme ethnocentrism for the Jews, while denying it for anyone else.

Sex, defined by doing dishes

Found this:

Sexism: “The woman must do the dishes”
Feminism: “Anyone can do the dishes”
Gender ideology: “Whoever does the dishes is the woman”

This summarizes the last 50 years of sex politics.

ESG Leaves Africans in the Cold

Newsweek essay:

The continent of Africa stands as a stark reminder of what we stand to lose by embracing erroneous ESG standards. As more African nations and people strive for a path to sustainable development and flourishing, international treaties and alliances threaten to rob them of their opportunity for growth. All developed nations have relied on cheap and abundant energy to achieve economic growth, but they are now threatening to close the door behind them and leave Africans in the cold. Climate activists argue that because Africa is at greater risk of climate-related events, it is in their best interest to forgo abundant energy sources.

I did not know that. ESG is all a plot to cheat Africans out of energy.

Of course Africa has still benefited enormously from Western economic development. Even if they could not burn their own oil, they are still getting modern food, medicine, technology, and everything else.

Psycho Therapy makes the World Worse

Quillette essay:

the sentiment is ubiquitous: We all need therapy. You’ll find article after article after article that says this explicitly. The media champion the notion daily.

A lot of people say that therapy is generally beneficial, as if it good for everyone. It is not.

It should be obvious that it is harmful to some people, in some cases.

I suspect that it is harmful in most cases, if not all cases. I have never known it to benefit anyone. There are studies by psychologists that claim to show some benefit to what they do, but the evidence is very weak. The alleged benefits are usually for some narrowly focused cognitive behavioral therapy, or something like that. Other types of treatments are much less effective.

Covid Vaccines saved 748,600 Lives

New research paper:

…I find that vaccines saved 748,600 lives through June 2023. That is, without vaccines, cumulative mortality from COVID-19 would have been closer to 1.91 million over this time period. In answering the second question, I find that behavioral efforts to slow the transmission of the virus before vaccines became widely administered were critical to this positive impact of vaccines on cumulative mortality. For example, with a complete relaxation of these mitigation efforts, vaccines would have come too late to have saved a significant number of lives. Earlier deployment of vaccines would have saved many lives.

I am not sure I believe this, but assuming it is right, what do we learn?

I do not think that this justifies the vaccine mandates, or the school shutdowns.

Explaining IQ Tests

Here is a good new video on What Does IQ Actually Measure?

It explains some limitations of IQ tests, and how it is the best predictor of success in a wide variety of areas.

For example, the USA military cannot make use of recruits with IQ below 80. they are unable to do anything productive, and get in the way of everyone else. It makes me wonder how they find a place anywhere else.

People are scared of IQ tests, and do not like to talk about them. there is pressure not to use them. For example, colleges might use them to identify students with the potential to do well in college, even though their records may have shortcomings. But racial politics have caused colleges to reduce their use of standardized tests.

Califonria Democrats want Judicial Reparations

The California legislature has passed this:

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:

SECTION 1. Section 17.3 is added to the Penal Code, to read:

17.3. (a) It is the intent of the Legislature to rectify the racial bias that has historically permeated our criminal justice system as documented by the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans.

(b) Whenever the court has discretion to determine the appropriate sentence according to relevant statutes and the sentencing rules of the Judicial Council, the court presiding over a criminal matter shall consider the disparate impact on historically disenfranchised and system-impacted populations.

So California Black criminals are going to get light sentences because some other Black was denied the right to vote in Alabama a century ago?

That California Task Force is a joke, and did not show any Blacks were harmed.

Best Hope of the White Christian Nationalists

Michael Wolff writes a NY Times op-ed:

Mr. Trump’s unmediated fire hose of verbiage, an unstoppable sequence of passing digressions, gambits and whims, more attuned to the rhythms of his voice than to any obligation to logic or, often, to any actual point or meaning at all and hardly worth taking notice of.

Does Mr. Trump mean what he says? And what exactly does he mean when he says what he says? His numerous upcoming trials may hinge on these questions. ...

It is precisely this behavior, unconcerned with guardrails or rules, unmindful of cause and effect, all according to his momentary whim — an overwhelming, almost anarchic instinct to try to invert reality — that prosecutors and much of the political establishment seem to most want to hold him accountable for. The chaos he creates is his crime; there is, however, no statute against upsetting the dependable order.

It is baffling to me how the Jews at the NY Times have so much trouble understanding Donald Trump. He is the most transparent politician. Do they all have low IM? Are they just pretending to be stupid?

Here is an upvoted comment:

Since Trump continues to remain the best hope of the white Christian nationalists of flipping the US into white Christian nation he retains support no matter what he does and when he can play the victim of the "deep state" as he can with these indictments that just increases his support as it confirms the Republican base's suspicions about what they call the deep state. It is pretty much impossible to deal with the underlying problem which is white Christian superiority. It is as deeply rooted as about anything can be and goes back at least 2000 years to the beginnings of Christianity. It has spawned antisemitism throughout its long history and over last several hundred years racism. Last century the Catholic church made some significant progress in addressing this problem, but it appears to be completely unaddressed in the evangelical community. This problem pretty much guarantees serious conflict in the United States for many years ahead but maybe with enough effort it will eventually be overcome.

Here we go. Jews hate Trump because he represents the White Christians they have hated for 2000 years. Thay is what I learn from the NY Times, anyway.

Dawkins is not a Transphobe

Dima the Show posted a video claiming that Richard Dawkins got the science of sex wrong. When the comments pointed out that he failed to show any errors, he posted another video reciting the scientific consensus. Or so he claims.

I did not see anything erroneous, or even transphobic, in Dawkins' remarks, so I watched the video.

He cites six sources for the scientific consensus, but none are scientific studies or statements. They are all opinions by folks who make money treating gender dysphoria. So of course they favor insurance companies paying for treatments of related illnesses.

These people are triggered by these facts:

Sex is biological, innate, binary, and immutable.

Homosexuality and gender nonconformity have long been considered mental illnesses.

Transgenderism is just a linguistic fantasy.

Pandering to crazy delusions usually makes the condition worse.

His sources do not really refute any of these things. He mainly argues that there is a consensus among the organizations that those treating the transgendered are in favor of transgender rights. I do not doubt that.

For example, his first reference is from the American Medical Assn, and is titled "Advocating for the LGBTQ community". It opposes the use of therapy to change sexual orientation or gender identity. It pointedly does not say whether such therapies work.

Then it says it wants insurance companies to pay, and that transgender individuals should be able to use opposite sex restrooms. Okay, that is just an opinion.

The transgender advocates have become the world's most unreasonable people. And they have taken over the Biden administration and the courts and the medical associations, so they have the power to punish us all. For example, the courts:

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that transgender students in Indiana must have access to the bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identities.

The opinion is filled will silly arguments, such as a school girl being irreparably harmed by not using the boys rest room, and that the definition of sex has changed. It interprets a law saying that schools can separate sexes for bathrooms, and then says they cannot. It is all so stupid that I do not believe that the judges believe it. The judges are ideologically committed to forcing a transgender agenda on us all.

The Political Marriage Gap

Wash. Examiner op-ed:

What would it look like if a major publication decided to produce a feature on masculinity but then assigned all the articles to women?

Well, it would look a lot like Politico’s The Masculinity Issue, which did exactly that.

Politico’s aversion to asking men to write about masculinity aside, one theme throughout the feature was that, in Katelynn Fossett’s words, over the last few decades, “women are voting for Democrats more, and men are usually sticking with Republicans.”

No, as the article explains, married men and women vote Republican.

Single women are single-handedly saving the Democratic Party. By a 37-point margin (68% to 31%), single women overwhelmingly pulled the lever for Democrats.

This is why when President Barack Obama ran for reelection, his agenda was promoted through a slideshow that followed the "Life of Julia," documenting how Democratic programs protect and provide for her throughout her life, without a father or husband ever in the picture.

It’s why President Joe Biden followed suit with his own Linda slideshow, depicting, again, how Democratic programs protect and provide for women throughout their lives, without a father or husband ever in sight.

It is in the Democrats' political interest to destroy marriage, and make single women dependent on the government.

Three AI Doomsday Scenarios

Anonymous online comment:

There are several AI doomsday scenarios:
1. singularity theory, where AI gains super powers and humans can't stop it.
2. AI as a tool is used to make bad things
3. AI is used for good. It replaces all jobs and humans can just eat all they want and do all they want. There are no wars or crime as everyone has everything. It might sound strange, but according to rat tests, this kind of scenario leads first into overpopulation and then into people not wanting to have or take care of kids, which causes sudden and total collapse in population.

So I think we can be pretty sure that we are doomed, so matter what happens.

It is referring to this:

"Behavioral sink" is a term invented by ethologist John B. Calhoun to describe a collapse in behavior which can result from overcrowding. The term and concept derive from a series of over-population experiments Calhoun conducted on Norway rats between 1958 and 1962.[1] In the experiments, Calhoun and his researchers created a series of "rat utopias" – enclosed spaces in which rats were given unlimited access to food and water, enabling unfettered population growth.

Here is his article, describing how the population eventually went extinct.

Trump is Indicted Again

I tried reading the latest Donald Trump indictment, and it is just as ridiculous as the previous ones.

It just complains that Trump decided to contest the election.

There are no big revelations. There is no hard evidence. Just claims that Trump pursued a legal strategy that some said would fail.

Meanwhile Pres. Biden's family took millions of dollars in bribes that got us involved in the Ukraine War.

Biden and AG Garland personally signed off on these bogus prosecutions. Biden will go down as one of the worst Presidents in American history.

I am looking for any legal explanation as to how Trump was doing anything criminal, as opposed to exercising his free speech and carrying out his duties.

Russian (and anti-American) law professor Ilya Somin writes:

Trump's most obvious defense to these charges is that he didn't engage in fraud and deception because he honestly believed he hToday’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.ad won the election, and that the Democrats had "stolen" it from him. ...

But the indictment recounts extensive evidence indicating that Trump in fact knew he had lost.

No, Trump's obvious defense is that the election had not been decided yet, and he was carrying out his rights and duties to make sure all his votes were properly credited.

Also notable is that the DoJ apparently determined that Trump was not responsible for any insurrection. The second impeachment was for "incitement of insurrection", and the DoJ spent 2.5 years examining the evidence to try to support such a charge, and failed.

Update: Mike Pence says:

Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.

Then Pence should not be running for President. Pence now attacks Trump for Jan. 6, 2021, but listen to what he said on Jan. 4.

Vice President Mike Pence said that he understands that many people are skeptical about the election results, and promises they will "have their day in Congress" on Wednesday when the results are set to be finalized.

The indictment has a few paragraphs blaming Trump for what he said to Pence, but Trump was only holding Pence to his promise.

It appears that Pence was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony against Trump.

Update: Comments:

I can’t believe I have to explain this to supposed adults including professors but here goes.

Its a crime if you rob a bank with a gun for 1 million dollars.

Its not a crime to go up to the bank manager during business hours demand that you get 1 million dollars because you claim to believe that space aliens siphoned money from your account. Then leave peacefully.

No matter how wacky Trump’s claims and efforts supposedly are he did it within the legal framework of what was allowed. Until the Dems retroactively reinterpreted it to be illegal. ...

A better example is disputing the balance of a checking account.

It’s not fraud if you claim they made a mistake, nor do you have to prove that you honestly think they did.

Should every candidate demanding a recount go to jail?

Schools are Sinful and Tyrannical

NY Times op-ed:

Something deeply un-American is underway in the state of Oklahoma.

In June, Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved the nation’s first religious public charter school. The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa were given permission to open St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in August 2024. ...

Indeed, it’s hard to think of a clearer violation of the religious freedom of Oklahoma taxpayers and public-school families than the state establishing a supposedly public school that is run as a religious school. Forcing taxpayers to fund religion, let alone a religion not their own, violates the Oklahoma Constitution’s explicit command that no public money or property “shall ever” be used to benefit or support religion. It’s exactly what Thomas Jefferson labeled “sinful and tyrannical.”

That is why the organization I head, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, together with the A.C.L.U., the Education Law Center and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, filed a lawsuit on Monday in state district court in Oklahoma to prevent the school from operating as a charter school.

Here is the Jefferson quote:

That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical

We are way beyond that already. Public schools teach all sorts of stuff with which I disbelieve. Wokism. Rainbow flags. George Floyd. Environmentalism. Immigration. Preferred pronouns. Trump hatred.

This lawsuit is driven by Christian-hating Jews and others. It keeps complaining about Christian nationalists, whoever they are. This is one Catholic school in Oklahoma.