Month: February 2020

‘Diamond Princess’ Reports 66 New Coronavirus Infections, Bringing the Total to 136

The Diamond Princess, the cruise ship that has been quarantined off the coast of Yokohama, Japan for roughly a week now, saw the total number of confirmed nCoV infections climb to 136 on Monday, cementing its position as the host of the largest outbreak outside China.

Japanese health authorities have been extremely careful in dealing with the ship, which has become a massive albatross for the government of PM Shinzo Abe. While Hong Kong let a cruise ship sail yesterday following a 4-day quarantine (the ship was reportedly found to be free of viral infections), the ‘Diamond Princess’, and the 2,500+ remaining passengers and crew, will be stuck in place until mid-February. The NYT chronicled the growing sense of unease and paranoia aboard the ship, which we cited yesterday.

The ship’s captain Stefano Ravera announced Monday that 66 new cases of the virus had been confirmed, bringing the infection total of passengers and crew to 136, roughly equal to all the other cases in Asia outside China. Media reports have claimed more than 2,500 passengers and crew remain aboard the ship.

Joy in the Wilderness

Of course, we know what transpired 4 years ago.

Twyla;
Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Requiescat in pace.
Amen.

In 2010 Jim and Twyla Taylor sold their small farm in Missouri, resigned the pastorate of the church where they had been for twenty years, sold most of their possessions, said goodbye to their family and friends, and moved halfway around the world to the nation of Mozambique, Africa.

There, in one of the poorer nations of the world, they began a new life.What would cause someone to leave everything they are familiar with and move from a comfortable life to the challenges of living in the Developing World?

As you follow their journey you will get a glimpse into the experience of making such a decision. You will also see what it is like to build a life in the Third World. And you will share in some of the many adventures they had. From visiting villages that white people had never visited to traveling bush trails and meeting some of the most beautiful people in the world, you will get a behind-the-scenes look at missionary life as it is lived day to day.

It is Jim’s prayer that some of you who have been feeling the urge to “go” will see that stepping out and actually doing it can be the adventure of a lifetime!

Will Somebody Please Hate My Enemies For Me?

Mr French is being sarcastic as he’s one of the big Never-Trumpers

“So my problem with David French’s claim that Christians shouldn’t vote for Trump is that if you take it seriously, Christians shouldn’t vote for anyone because no president in my lifetime was Christ-like enough to meet French’s standard. (No, not even Jimmy Carter, whose public piety is merely cover for a poisonous personality). Now if you want to argue for monastic exclusion from politics, that’s fine (though to my mind stupid). But if you want to argue for it only when Trump is president, then I question your sincerity, and French’s rather pharasaical tone doesn’t help.

But despite his argument, I think even a serious pro-life Christian might conclude that, given a choice between an un-Christ-like politician who is loudly and vigorously in favor of abortion (i.e. any Democrat these days), and an un-Christ-like politician who is without doubt the most pro-life president we’ve ever had, it’s okay to support the latter. French attempts to engage this argument but to my mind he is not successful. I doubt many will find the piece all that persuasive but I think that French’s main intended audience was David French, whose faith in neverTrumpism may need bolstering at this point. And I’m not sure it’s impossible to love your enemies while still trying to kick their ass.

On a broader note, so long as we’re talking about sin, I’ll note that pride and envy seem to play a major role in the NeverTrump movement in general: Pride in (self-proclaimed) moral superiority, and envy of Trump’s accomplishments, which make him by any reasonable measure the most conservative president of my lifetime. I’d suggest some self-reflection on this point'”–Dr Glenn Reynolds

Hate has no place in pro-life America. None. And embracing or defending hate—even hatred of the movement’s most vigorous opponents—for the sake of life contradicts the spirit of the movement and stands to do more harm than good to the political cause that so many Christians value the most.

American Evangelicals represent one of the most powerful religious movements in the world. They exercise veto power over the political success of any presidential candidate from one of America’s two great parties. Yet they don’t wield that power to veto the selection of a man who completely rejects—and even scorns—many of their core moral values.

I fully recognize what I’m saying. I fully recognize that refusing to hire a hater and refusing to hire a liar carries costs. If we see politics through worldly eyes, it makes no sense at all. Why would you adopt moral standards that put you at a disadvantage in an existential political struggle? If we don’t stand by Trump we will lose, and losing is unacceptable.

Auto parts store owner shoots burglary suspect near Katy (Texas)

The owner of a used auto parts store shot one of two burglary suspects he caught breaking into his business early Monday morning, police say.

The man was at the S&T Auto Body Services shop on Cinnamon Drive near the Katy Freeway when he spotted the break-in, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. At some point during the burglary, the owner pulled a gun and shot at the suspects, striking one of them.

The other suspect managed to escape. The condition of the suspect who was shot was not immediately clear.

More Arizona counties approve ‘sanctuary’ resolutions on gun rights

“I’m Bad….I’m Nationwide.”

PRESCOTT, Ariz. – Two more rural Arizona counties have declared themselves to be “Second Amendment sanctuary counties,” taking stances in favor of gun rights even as some supporters of the measures acknowledge they’ll have no or little real legal effect.

The unanimous votes by the boards of supervisors of La Paz County on Monday and Yavapai County on Wednesday follow a similar declaration by Mohave County supervisors on Nov. 4.

The Yavapai County board approved its resolution after previously hearing hours of testimony in December and January. About 120 people packed the meeting room and dozens more filled the lobby Wednesday as 25 people spoke in favor and three against, The Daily Courier reported.

Under the measures, the supervisors vowed to defend state and federal constitutional rights, including the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

The measure also said the supervisors won’t spend public money or use other government resources to enforce laws that unconstitutionally infringe on gun rights.

Many of those who addressed the Yavapai County board urged the supervisors to take a stand, arguing that laws in other states infringed on gun owners’ rights.

“We see this type of total disregard for our Second Amendment rights under attack. This is about our rights, protecting our freedoms and liberty,” Prescott resident Sherrie Hanna said.

 

Novel Coronavirus(2019-nCoV)
Situation Report – 20

SITUATION IN NUMBERS
total and new cases in last 24 hours
Globally
37 558 confirmed (2676 new)
China
37 251 confirmed (2657 new)
6188 severe (87 new)
812 deaths (89 new)
Outside of China
307 confirmed (19 new)
24 countries
1 death

Crisis mode’: Coronavirus disrupts the heart of electronics manufacturing in China

The point being that the economic effects – world wide – will probably be worse than the medical effects of the bug.

  • Factories in China, the center of the electronics industry’s supply chain, are expected to reopen on Monday after being closed for an extended Lunar New Year holiday.
  • The date is being closely watched because Chinese manufacturing is critical to the electronics industry.
  • Given travel restrictions and potential supply-chain problems, products scheduled for the holiday season months away are at risk of being delayed as well, experts said

Factories in China, the center of the electronics industry’s supply chain, have been closed for an extended Lunar New Year holiday and the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus. Most are expected to reopen on Monday, a week later than scheduled.

But quarantines and other measures put in place to stop the spread of the disease in China could continue to disrupt electronics manufacturing well into the 2020 holiday season, even if factories quickly return to full production, manufacturing experts said.

Andre Neumann-Loreck, founder of On-Tap Consulting, a Silicon Valley firm that specializes in advising hardware companies and start-ups building products in Asia, said his clients have been asking a lot of questions about how to deal with the epidemic and have actively made contingency plans.

“Companies that are building hardware or physical products are in crisis mode now, and that’s true whether they’re getting finished goods built in China or relying on China for components and sub-assemblies,” Neumann-Loreck said.

For example, Facebook warned on Friday that it was expecting the coronavirus to impact the production of its Oculus Quest virtual reality headsets.

How delays could cascade

The supply chain has already been disrupted with the week-long delay to factories reopening, said Sherina Kamal, risk analyst at Resillience 360, a logistics risk-management company backed by DHL.

“The ripple effect coming from one region in China is completely unprecedented,” Kamal said. “We’ve never seen anything like this.”………..

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proves why the American education system is broken

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is remarkably dumb but it’s not entirely her fault. She is the product of an education system that cultivate and rewards stupidity.

Over the years, there have been two constant themes in my posts: First, that public K-12 schools are awful and, second, that we should withdraw every penny of taxpayer money from colleges and universities (including private schools in the forms of grants and government back student loans) because they too are awful.

At the K-12 level, education is lousy for several reasons.

First, the education model is the worst way to teach children. Few students learn by sitting down, being lectured to, and then going home and struggling with homework. I highly recommend the Montessori approach, for Maria Montessori looked at how children learn, rather than how adults think they ought to be taught.

Second, K-12 education is bedeviled by every stupid leftist trend, from the “whole word” approach to reading that left a generation illiterate to the insistence on bringing transgender sexuality to kindergarteners.

Third — and there are wonderful and notable exceptions to this problem — women’s lib meant that women at the top of their class were no longer limited to teaching, nursing, and secretarial work. They went on to become high-paying professionals. Most teachers are now drawn from the bottom third of any college class.

At the college and university level, the problem is that these institutions are leftist indoctrination classes. They have little time to teach reasoning and knowledge. They’re too busy shaping little Marxists to go out into the world and support Bernie Sanders.

Which gets me to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whom Don Surber calls the face of the Democrat Party. According to Wikipedia, Ocasio-Cortez attended public school, did well, and then became involved in race-based activities:

Ocasio-Cortez attended Yorktown High School, graduating in 2007.[17] In high school and college, Ocasio-Cortez went by the name of “Sandy”.[18] She came in second in the Microbiology category of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair with a microbiologyresearch project on the effect of antioxidants on the lifespan of the nematode C. elegans.[19] In a show of appreciation for her efforts, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory named a small asteroid after her: 23238 Ocasio-Cortez.[20][21] In high school, she took part in the National Hispanic Institute‘s Lorenzo de Zavala (LDZ) Youth Legislative Session.

She then attended Boston University College [d’oh!], a private college that once had a reputation for excellence. On paper, Ocasio-Cortez was at the top of her graduating class:

Ocasio-Cortez graduated cum laude from Boston University College of Arts and Sciences with a BA in 2011, majoring in international relations and economics.[9][26][27]

Clearly, this girl is a brainiac, right? Or maybe not:

Any education system that can produce someone as staggeringly stupid as Ocasio-Cortez is doing something wrong. Taxpayers are paying good money and getting dismal results.

How Venezuela’s Good Citizens Were Disarmed is a Lesson For Us

When I was a little girl in the early 1990s, my father worked in the energy industry and often flitted off to South America. He brought us back postcards and chucherías from this faraway land of Venezuela, describing it as the most picturesque nation in Latin America. The nation was then awash in oil wealth, the highest growth rate in the region, boundless education opportunities, fine foods and world-class beaches.

It seemed a mystical paradise where nothing could go wrong. Until it did.

When I stepped foot into the embattled nation a year ago to cover the burgeoning humanitarian crisis, none of my experience in war zones prepared me for the calamity that seemed to get worse with every step across the Colombian border. Venezuela had sunk into a violent humanitarian crisis. There was next to no rule of law…….

Cúcuta, a city straddling the Colombian and Venezuelan border, had become the stuff of nightmares: a microcosm of the conflict burning Venezuela alive. Its citizens had become unable to defend themselves or their families from danger and economic ruin.

And the Venezuelans are the first to tell you that so many of them willfully surrendered their right to bear arms in the lead-up to the 2014 crackdown. They told me this as clear words of warning.

“Venezuela is paying the price for the gun ban. The civilians are unable to defend themselves from criminal actors and from this Maduro regime’s abuses,” activist and university teacher, Miguel Mandrade, 34, said from the fog-laden, barren city of San Cristobal. “The uprising would have taken a different path and a different result if civilians had the right to defend themselves with the firearms they once owned.”……..

Some 4 million have fled the profoundly impoverished nation that, as this was being written, was still led by socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro. Meanwhile, the millions left languishing inside Venezuela’s borders are starving and without critical services and medical care. Homicide and crime rates are escalating as the inflation rate soars. The government has unleashed its forces and proxy militias to wage war on a troubled and defenseless population.

But the trigger of gun prohibition wasn’t pulled in an instant. Over several years, Venezuelan authorities chipped away at individual gun rights.As they did so, crime rates crept higher and higher.

How They Lost Their Freedom
In 2002, Caracas enacted its first effort to restrict gun ownership, placing the National Armed Forces as the body to oversee the regulation of all firearms. In 2011, then-President Hugo Chávez launched a public disarmament campaign as part of his Presidential Commission on Disarmament, which was supposedly aimed at reducing gun violence. Resolutions were cemented to prohibit possessing guns during cultural and sporting events, as well as on public transportation and construction sites. A 12-month moratorium was also put in place with regard to issuing gun permits.

The following year, Caracas banned the commercial sales of guns and shuttered the doors of firearms stores across the country. It was mandated that only military, police and security forces could legally own and buy guns.

Then, in 2012, Maduro signed into law the Disarmament and Arms Munitions Control, which carried the explicit objective to “disarm all citizens.” Chávez initially ran a months-long amnesty program urging Venezuelans to swap their arms for electrical goods; however, only 37 surrenders were recorded, while more than 12,500 guns were seized by force.

The government held grandiose decimation displays in the streets by bulldozing firearms en masse in front of large crowds in a bid to demonstrate their commitment to supposedly end gun violence.

In 2014, a further 26,000 firearms were confiscated or crushed—coincidentally, Venezuela clocked in as having the world’s second-highest homicide rate that very same year. Each year that the gun-control reins were pulled tighter, murder rates increased.

In 2001, according to gunpolicy.org, 6,568 homicides were recorded in Venezuela. By 2014, that number had jumped to 19,030.

Not-so-coincidentally, the black market in weapons also began to boom, with an estimated 6 million illegal guns in the country.

“The market works through international borders, in maritime and land areas, and the government itself has been a gun provider,” said Walter Márquez, a Venezuelan historian and former National Assembly Representative. “The government took legal weapons away from private people, disarming all those who could oppose it.”……

Venezuela is a Lesson Americans Must Understand

Venezuela serves as a reminder that gun control can serve as a gateway to despotism. Some contend that not only is Venezuela suffering the consequences of failing to fight the ever-inching gun-control measures, but also of failing to create a culture that understood the importance of having a right to keep and bear arms.

“The Venezuelan population trusted the government at all times that it would always use its authority within certain boundaries, and whenever it got out, we thought it would be solved by democratic or legal mechanisms. Our political and public behavior confirmed our cultural naivety in this sense,” said Javier Vanegas, 29, a Venezuelan teacher. “We are paying the price of not having had a strong gun culture.”

Before the 2012 changes, there were only eight registered gun stores scattered across the nation of 31 million people. The process for law-abiding citizens even to obtain a legal gun permit and a firearm was a months-long ordeal hamstrung by protracted wait lines, high costs and demands for bribes. Only one department, which operated under the Ministry of Defense, had the authority to issue civilian permits.

The collectives ruthlessly oppress opposition groups, giving Maduro a cosmetic cover. When we saw them, we ran for cover.

In late 2017, when Venezuela was in the clutches of its spiraling economic catastrophe, Maduro announced he would distribute some 400,000 arms to his patriots—claiming a U.S.-led coup was coming—and the civilian population was left as sitting ducks. Since April of that year, hundreds of Venezuelans protesting the government, armed with little more than stones and paper signs, have been shot or have disappeared in retaliation.

“If citizens had access to guns, and if they had been armed since before the arrival of Chavez, it would have been, at least, a powerful obstacle to the socialist agenda,” said Vanegas. “Socialism thrives in chaos. The perfect tool for chaos in most of Latin-America is criminality. If the people had had the tool to defend themselves, instead of resorting to more state power to end the criminality (an end the government never intended to give), then, of course, it would have made a huge difference.”

In recent years, he said, the daily life of the unarmed Venezuelan has been shaped by crime.

“People have stopped going out. Businesses and businessmen and women went broke or closed shop and left. The youth began to be fearful of spending time out in the city,” Vanegas said. “I personally had one family member and two friends kidnapped for ransom.”

The stuff of nightmares quickly became normal to the likes of Vanegas, who reflected that his complacency has been shattered as his beloved country has fallen apart. Scores of ailing Venezuelans told me that even before the protests sparked five years ago, calling the police to report a crime entailed long wait times and pressure to bribe officers not only to come, but to process the case per the book. Now, even making such a call is basically useless.

One person I met on my travels in the region whispered in hushed tones that those who dare keep an old gun beneath their bed—or those who have the finances to find one on the black market—risk the punishment of 20 years behind bars. This person confessed that he kept an old revolver that once belonged to his grandfather. He worried that if he used it to save his own life, the Maduro regime would then come to take him away to prison.

Thailand Mall Shooter Broke Every Law Democrats Say We Need in U.S.

Thai Gunman Who killed 26 in Rampage Shot Dead in Mall,” the Associated Press reported Saturday. Another 57 people were wounded in a standoff at Terminal 21 Korat initiated by a soldier said to be “angry over a financial dispute,” who reportedly killed two people on a military base before driving to the mall. It took police sharpshooters 16 hours to put the killer down as terrified, unarmed shoppers fled, ducked for cover and “ran to hide in toilets.”

Television footage showed the attacker carrying “what appeared to be an assault rifle.” And it was the second “high profile mall shooting” in a month, the prior one committed by a masked  school director “carrying a handgun with a silencer [who] killed three people, including a 2-year-old boy, and wounded four others as he robbed a jewelry store.”

As the anti-gunners say here when such atrocities are committed, “something must be done.”

In the cases of the Thai mall shooters, something has been done, including everything Democrat politicians and gun-grab groups have been loudly demanding to be imposed on a state and national level here. Thailand’s got it all.

“The regulation of guns in Thailand is categorized as restrictive,” GunPolicy.org, a project of the Sydney School of Public Health advises. We need to stipulate up front that this effort is being bankrolled by globalist citizen disarmament interests, including the United Nations, but that doesn’t invalidate the reporting of restrictions, all backed with extensive source citations. Instead, it makes using the documentation “bullet-proof” from challenges by the antis, since we’re using their data.

So we find that “In Thailand, the right to private gun ownership is not guaranteed by law.” We find “In Thailand, civilians are not allowed to possess automatic and semi-automatic rifles,” that is, weapons the mall killer, being part of the government, reportedly had no problem getting his hands on.

If you want a handgun, a rifle or a shotgun, citizens have to overcome several prior restraints, including satisfying the government that they have a “genuine reason” for the license need to obtain a firearm and its ammunition (one license per gun). They need to pass a “universal background check” that includes “income” among its considerations (like “gun control” here, poorer citizens are most affected). And there are “red flag” disqualifiers like “domestic violence … Where a past history or apprehended likelihood of family violence exists, the law in Thailand stipulates that a gun license should be denied or revoked.”

“In Thailand, the law requires that a record of the acquisition, possession, and transfer of each privately held firearm be retained in an official register,” GunPolicy.org continues. We also find that in Thailand they have storage laws and transit laws. Open carry is banned, and if a citizen wants to carry concealed, they must “apply for permission to carry a firearm … to the officials who are competent to issue such license.”

Think of it as “Santa Clara carry.”

So leave it to the media to present Thailand as “awash with easily obtainable firearms, featuring one of the highest gun homicide rates in Asia.” To back it up they cite “the US State Department’s Bureau for Diplomatic Security wrote in its 2013 safety report for overseas staff: ‘Thailand has a fervent gun culture on par with the United States and has become a world leader in firearms-related homicides.’”

Who headed State back then?

With the headline and the lede having established that murder with guns is comparatively high, we have to venture deeper into the report to find that the violence is being perpetrated by those who ignore all those “restrictive” laws. Millions have said the hell with approvals and licensing and registration and permits. GunPolicy.org estimates there are over four million “illegal” guns in Thailand but admits it really doesn’t know for sure. Plus there’s a Malay-Muslim insurgency with armed rebels, “as well as the mafia syndicates across the country.”

And then there’s the proliferation “along the Thai-Myanmar and Thai-Cambodian border,” as well as the claim by “experts” that “military, police and paramilitary officials not only have easy access to such weapons but have also been known to sell these to non-state officials.”

In other words, “gun control” doesn’t and can’t work, because the bad guys will always find whatever workarounds they want. And it’s not hard to see the parallels here, especially with the way the Democrats, in addition to demanding disarmament, also ensure our borders remain porous and that foreign populations with priorities inimical to founding principle established in the Constitution are being brought in and embedded into communities throughout the Republic.

Just like our Democrats, Thai officials point to more measures that will have no effect on those causing the problems. They’re calling for more registration and “introducing so-called ballistic gun data.” When those don’t work, and they won’t, they’ll be back demanding more.

 

“No civilian needs…”

A common statement from the fans of government monopoly on force is: “no civilian needs such weapons”, with “such weapons” being whatever they are trying to ban. Let’s look at this statement more closely.

The Secret Service staff are civilians. Police officers are civilians. All government organizations other than the five branches of the military are civilians. Secret Service agents have access to submachine guns like the P90 above, as well as much more powerful weapons. Why? Such arms are useful in protecting lives of the people they are trying to keep alive. Quite a few regular Americans — such as stalking victims — face daily risks at least as severe as those faced by the political elite.

The same is true of Trump’s family members.

So we have plenty of examples of civilian government employees using modern guns unavailable to the rest of the population to protect themselves. In addition to government employees, corporations (“special occupational taxpayers”) can own guns denied to the general public.

These corporations are definitely civilian structures, yet they own all kinds of high-tech weaponry far exceeding mere small arms in scope. Apparently, lots of civilians have a use for modern guns. Why shouldn’t lawful individuals be able to exercise their rights the same way?

“WE’RE LOSING OUR **** MINDS”

What he seems to be saying is that the demoncraps should stop with removing their masks and showing that they’re actually commies.
Their problem with Bernie Sanders is that he’s so open with it.

Cast your mind back to 2009, when Democrats, coming off Barack Obama’s convincing victory in the 2008 election, had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a more than ample majority in the House. Happy days are here again! Here comes pro-union card check, higher income taxes, amnesty and open borders, sweeping climate change legislation, and universal health care! It was around this time that James Carville, the impresario behind Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign, confidently declared that Democrats were now set to rule for the next 40 years! He even published a book—40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation

Carville had drunk the Kool Aid of the liberal-Hegelian conceit that demographics and “the side of history” had delivered Democrats into the Promised Land, from whose commanding heights it was Progress as far as the mind’s-eye could imagine. Well, that glorious 40 years quickly became a fast one-way trip to the wilderness, as it didn’t even last 40 months. All liberals got out of that heavily Democratic Congress was . . . Obamacare? And oh what a success that was. No card check for labor unions, no amnesty for illegal immigrants, only a slight increase in income taxes for the very rich, while climate change legislation went down in fossil-fueled flames, as U.S. oil and natural gas production soared. Obama resorted to trying to get some of these things through executive action, but much of that was stymied in the courts or reversed by President Trump, who came to office and said, “Hey look—I found Obama’s pen!” In the 2010 election, the Democrats got creamed, with Republicans achieving their strongest position on all levels in 70 years.

All this came back to mind watching the Democrats’ debate in New Hampshire last night, which occurred conveniently during cocktail hour out here on the Left Coast, so in fact I literally ate popcorn along with adult beverages while I watched the Democratic field show once again that it is running to be president of Twitter more than President of the United States.

And this brings me to the angst of James Carville, who gave an extraordinary interview to MSNBC that has been transcribed by Vox: “We’re Losing Our Damn Minds.” Read the whole thing if your schadenfreude medication is at full strength. Here are a few excerpts:

Sean Illing: Why are you “scared to death” about the 2020 election?

James Carville: Look, the turnout in the Iowa caucus was below what we expected, what we wanted. Trump’s approval rating is probably as high as it’s been. This is very bad. And now it appears the party can’t even count votes. What the hell am I supposed to think? . . . And now it’s like we’re losing our damn minds. Someone’s got to step their game up here.

Sean Illing: Give me an example of what you mean by distractions.

James Carville: We have candidates on the debate stage talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration. They’re talking about doing away with nuclear energy and fracking. You’ve got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells. It doesn’t matter what you think about any of that, or if there are good arguments — talking about that is not how you win a national election. It’s not how you become a majoritarian party. . .

Sean Illing: So your complaint is basically that the party has tacked too far to the left?

James Carville: They’ve tacked off the damn radar screen. And look, I don’t consider myself a moderate or a centrist. I’m a liberal. But not everything has to be on the left-right continuum. . .

Here’s another stupid thing: Democrats talking about free college tuition or debt forgiveness. I’m not here to debate the idea. What I can tell you is that people all over this country worked their way through school, sent their kids to school, paid off student loans. They don’t want to hear this shit. And you saw Warren confronted by an angry voter over this. It’s just not a winning message.

The real argument here is that some people think there’s a real yearning for a left-wing revolution in this country, and if we just appeal to the people who feel that, we’ll grow and excite them and we’ll win. But there’s a word a lot of people hate that I love: politics. It means building coalitions to win elections. It means sometimes having to sit back and listen to what people think and framing your message accordingly. . .

James Carville: I want to give you an example of the problem here. A few weeks ago, Binyamin Appelbaum, an economics writer for the New York Times, posted a snarky tweet about how LSU canceled classes for the National Championship game. And then he said, do the “Warren/Sanders free public college proposals include LSU, or would it only apply to actual schools?”

You know how ****** patronizing that is to people in the South or in the middle of the country? First, LSU has an unusually high graduation rate, but that’s not the point. It’s the goddamn smugness. This is from a guy who lives in New York and serves on the Times editorial board and there’s not a single person he knows that doesn’t pat him on the back for that kind of tweet. He’s so fucking smart.

Appelbaum doesn’t speak for the Democratic Party, but he does represent the urbanist mindset. We can’t win the Senate by looking down at people. The Democratic Party has to drive a narrative that doesn’t give off vapors that we’re smarter than everyone or culturally arrogant.

But looking down on people is now a core value for the left, but I’ll need to write a separate post about the serious basis of this. (For academic readers, go back and find John Wettergreen’s dense but profound 1977 essay in the Western Political Quarterly, “Is Snobbery a Formal Value?” Short answer: Yes, yes it is.)

But finally, this:

Sean Illing: Buttigieg seems to model the sort of candidate you think can win.

James Carville: Mayor Pete has to demonstrate over the course of a campaign that he can excite and motivate arguably the most important constituents in the Democratic Party: African Americans. These voters are a hell of a lot more important than a bunch of 25-year-olds shouting everyone down on Twitter.

So he’s not happy. Democrats won’t like Carville when he’s not happy. I wonder if Carville was watching last night, and if so whether there are any un-smashed TV screens left in his house this morning.

Number of Professors Allegedly in Cahoots With Communist China Quickly Mounts

In recent months, U.S. authorities have discovered Chinese operatives scheming to compromise American interests through the university system, including plots to steal missile technology and cancer research.

Ye Yanqing used to be a student at Boston University until she chose to flee the country last month. The reason for her departure: an FBI investigation regarding her position as a Lieutenant in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), according to the Washington Times.

According to investigators, Ye was taking orders to gather intelligence from “senior leaders of the PLA while conducting research at Boston University,” according to the Washington Times. In addition to committing espionage, she also failed to disclose her position as an active-duty PLA officer, earning her charges of visa fraud in addition to charges of acting as a foreign government agent, making false statements to investigators, and conspiracy.

This sort of collusion isn’t limited to Chinese-born student-spies. Charles Lieber, the chair of Harvard’s chemistry department was taken into custody and charged Jan. 28 for making false statements to investigators about his financial ties to China.

Man Deliberately Crashes Van Into GOP Voter Registration Tent, Targeting Trump Campaign Volunteers

Law enforcement officials in Jacksonville, Fla., say a driver intentionally crashed a van into a tent where Trump campaign volunteers were registering voters Saturday afternoon.

Thankfully, no one was injured.

“We are investigating this as an aggravated assault,” Lt. Larry Gayle of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said. “Several people were in the area and could have been seriously hurt.”

According to Gayle, after plowing through the tent, the driver stopped, got out of the van, then took a video of the scene before flipping off the victims and fleeing the scene. Despite this, Gayle says they don’t know the motivation of the suspect, “but, we are just starting the investigation.”

Obviously they don’t want to speculate, but the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office should be treating this incident as a potential hate crime—just as they most certainly would be if the victims were minorities and the suspect was caucasian.

An Academic’s Proposal For Ending Climate Change: Human Extinction

Human extinction? Okay, see what she says when she’s told she goes first.

I came across this on Twitter today and at first suspected it was satire but so far as I can tell it’s not. An Australian academic named Patricia MacCormack
has  a new book out titled, “The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene.” The idea is that the earth would be better off without us and, therefore, it’s time to start an activism whose goal is our own extinction.

“The basic premise of the book is that we’re in the age of the Anthropocene, humanity has caused mass problems and one of them is creating this hierarchal world where white, male, heterosexual and able-bodied people are succeeding, and people of different races, genders, sexualities and those with disabilities are struggling to get that.”

“This is where the idea of dismantling identity politics comes in – they deserve rights not because of what they are, but because they are.

“The book also argues that we need to dismantle religion, and other overriding powers like the church of capitalism or the cult of self, as it makes people act upon enforced rules rather than respond thoughtfully to the situations in front of them.”

The central argument in The Ahuman Manifesto can be boiled down to this: mankind is already enslaved to the point of “zombiedom” by capitalism, and because of the damage this has caused, phasing out reproduction is the only way to repair the damage done to the world.

Here’s a further description of the book:

We are in the midst of a growing ecological crisis. Developing technologies and cultural interventions are throwing the status of “human” into question.

It is against this context that Patricia McCormack delivers her expert justification for the “ahuman”. An alternative to “posthuman” thought, the term paves the way for thinking that doesn’t dissolve into nihilism and despair, but actively embraces issues like human extinction, vegan abolition, atheist occultism, death studies, a refusal of identity politics, deep ecology, and the apocalypse as an optimistic beginning.

Some of this seems familiar. AOC has discussed whether it’s best that people stop having children in light of climate change and her view of capitalism probably isn’t all that different from MacCormack’s. But I do find it interesting that MacCormack seems interested in doing away with identity politics. From what I can tell, she sees this kind of hierarchy as inherently destructive because hierarchies of humans also extend to other living things. Her goal seems to be to flatten those hierarchies among humans and then between humans and animals.

That’s pretty extreme, obviously, but extreme is interesting in small doses. I do wonder what kind of mischief adherents to this new view of humanity might get up to at some point. The combination of human extinction as an end goal and a push toward real-world activism seems like a potentially combustible mix when it trickles down from academia to the streets.

We saw some pretty extreme behavior (blocking traffic and climbing on top of commuter trains) from the “Extinction Rebellion” crowd last fall. But MacCormack apparently sees the group as too tame because their activism is basically focused on saving the plant for people while she wants to save the planet from people. MacCormack told Cambridge News, “Everyone’s okay with the ideas in the book until they’re told they’d have to act on it. There is a lot of agreement that these changes might work for the world, but when it imposes on people, it becomes proactive.” I’d call that a hint, but what do I know.

MacCormack seems like a bit of a character. Her previous work has to do with sex, cinema, and occultism and she dresses like someone who’d fit in at a Cure concert more than an academic. To each his own. As I said, I find it interesting in small doses, but fringe academic ideas have a long history of spreading and having an impact on culture at large. Part of me does worry about what becomes of ideas like this if they start to catch on.

Victor Davis Hanson on Hubris, Nemesis in the Deep State

This interview with Dr. Hanson is just too long to post and even excerpts wouldn’t do it justice. Just ‘Read The Whole Thing™‘ at your convenience about the corruption, hypocrisy, mendacity and sheer idiocy that’s endemic in our current government, bureaucracy and higher ‘education’.

De Blasio admits NYC crime jump is linked to bail reform.

Bill DeBlasio is another Sandersesque commie. How these anti-American scum manage to get elected amazes me. They roll into office, and by the time they leave, their policies have increased crime, homelessness and drug use. The people scream for relief from their delusional acts, then scream about ‘social justice’ after the conservative they put in office to clean up the problems doesn’t do it to their liking. The people of Noo Yawk Citty must be mentally defective.

Guess he couldn’t find anything else to pin it on.

Mayor Bill de Blasio linked a recent crime surge in the Big Apple to the state’s controversial overhaul of bail laws Friday, after spending a week dancing around the matter.

“We had, for six years, steady decreases in crime across the board. There’s not a whole lot of other environmental things that have changed recently,” Hizzoner told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer on new CompStat data that shows crime has soared since the new laws took effect at the start of 2020. “It sort of stands out like a sore thumb that this is the single biggest new thing in the equation and we saw an extraordinary jump.”

“Of course there’s always a possibility this is plain statistical variation, that happens sometimes,” he added. “But I think it’s pretty clear that there’s only one new major piece in the equation.”

The controversial law bars judges from setting bail to hold criminal defendants for most misdemeanors and non-violent felonies cases. It’s come under intense criticism from law enforcement officials and prosecutors.

De Blasio again reiterated his support for giving the judges the power to lock up defendants they believe are a danger to the public while awaiting trial — a position that’s left him at odds with the bail overhaul’s top backer, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-The Bronx).

“I think judicial discretion should be clarified so that there are very clear checks and balances, so that we avoid any inkling of bias entering into the process, but I think a system predicated only on the question of flight risk misses the fact that there are some individuals who are just consistently, by their own actions, and by the proof of due process, consistently creat[ing] a threat to their neighbors,” de Blasio said on the show.

It’s a change in tune for City Hall from just Tuesday when de Blasio repeatedly dodged questions about the link between bail laws and a surge in crime stats that show auto thefts, robberies, burglaries, grand larcenies and felony assaults have all shot up since the start of 2020.