Awesome message. One that can't be stated enough. I'm glad more and more people are joining #walkaway. I've been following this since its inception and I think Brandon Straka did his compatriots a great service starting this up.
I can't handle the NBA anymore. It's a cess pool of wild, faux-righteous virtue signalling stupidity.
The last straw for me was the league changing the word 'owner' to governors to describe, well, the owners who own the franchises.
All because another phony and bastion of intellectual thought Draymond Green thought the word 'owner' conjured up images of slavery.
It's all so sophomoric and preposterous.
Governors, as you know, are elected officials just to further cement the idiocy of it all.
No NBA. They're owners.
Oh. And in case this pointless exercise (which literally advances nothing) in empty language manipulation wasn't enough, take a gander at Green's own bio on Twitter:
"Forward for the Golden State Warriors by way of Michigan State and Saginaw Michigan... Owner of Performance Inspired Nutrition" Furthermore, and more dear to me as a committed student of history, I was particularly annoyed by Greg Popovich's facile 'we are now Rome' quip after Trump's election. If I were a reporter I would have asked how exactly? I would have pressed and asked how a country that was often compared to Rome going back years and years could suddenly become 'Rome'? And what part? Was he focusing on a narrow prism to fit his narrative say from the point of Nero on? Really wasn't impressed because anyone with a grasp of Roman history wouldn't have made such an obviously politically motivated comment. It's similar to the persistent nonsense of Trump being Hitler and America becoming Nazi Germany. Every single time I demand someone explain and back up their assertion with specifics they never do. Know why? Because a) most are just repeating stupid talking points and b) there are no examples to cite. Moving on to Lebron James. The poster child for SJW on the sports landscape, it seems he's catching some flack for him mimicking a Mexican accent while telling about his taco Tuesdays in his home.
Here's the problem with this. It was innocuous. Fun even. But these are times where the Twitter mob (who do not represent the thinking of any nation on any level) will take a fun thing and turn into a festival of outrage. And Lebron played his own role in fostering this atmosphere. Remember his anger about Jackson's 'posse'? How offended he got? James is always making sure he defends blacks. He may have even orchestrated a hoax about racism soon after Trump's election when racist graffiti was said to have been found at his home. We never got the full story on that and it was eventually memory holed. Given the precedence he helped set, this was not only tone deaf but displayed some cognitive dissonance. Put it to you succinctly. If a white or Hispanic NBA player went on Twitter and spoke Ebonics about eating fried chicken and water melon with their 'posse', how would Lebron react? I think we all know. That's the point of the push back.
The NBA, of course, would suspend that player and who knows? May force them to recant and apologize. Lebron? Nah. He gets to do whatever the fuck he wants. Which brings me to his antics at his son's basketball game. I don't care about that so won't talk about it. I just want to respond to a comment Nick Wright on Mad Dog Sports made about it. I think the vast majority of people, whether they think it was over the top or not, can live with it. It's a silly basketball game. Most would just conclude a father was celebrating his son and move on. They have every right to also feel it was exaggerated and particularly so for someone of James' stature. Decorum matters for some. But when Wright argues along the lines of 'he's Lebron and he can do what he wants so too bad, too sad deal with', I disagree completely. What is it with sports writers and commentators and their constant giving of passes to celebrity athletes for actions and behaviours that can be perceived to be excessive? You think it was okay? Do so but spare us this double standard rubbish. I don't accept he gets to live by another standard than the rest of civil society. He then completely lost me when he cited Nye and De Grasse-Tyson. I don't understand how anyone who pays close attention hasn't realized these two are just pop culture faces.
Progressives and liberals and the 'I fucking love science' crowd can't seem to scratch the micron-thin surface and see that Nye and Tyson are pseudo-intellectuals simply used as cudgels for their willingness to parrot the party line.
Nye in particular is an odious character given a) he's an engineer and b) called for the imprisonment of 'deniers' who are skeptical of the whole climate change narrative which is pretty much a cult in disrepute.
Gee, the tolerant left looking to silence people through imprisonment.
How else to interpret the way they talk in the debates?
Just depressing their message.
****
Things Trump has forced the Democrats into defending bad open secrets:
1) Defending corruption and the mess that is Baltimore.
2) Trashing America on the 4th.
3) Defending the far left in the DNC
4) MS-13.
5) Open borders and illegal immigration.
6) The corporate media and its defence of the DNC.
Among other things. He's getting them to defend policies and ideas that run contrary to the American spirit and experience. Which is why he's forcing them to pull more and more left. It's simply not a winning strategy.
He's basically shoving a mirror in their faces.
Also. I can't believe Elizabeth Warren - with all that inauthenticity and baggage - has survived this long.
****
Lemon asked, “Senator Klobuchar, what do you say to those Trump voters who prioritize the economy over the president’s bigotry?”
Remember folks. This is an employee of CNN who thinks himself a 'professional and objective' journalist.
ZERO proof of Trump's racism and they simply run amok with the lie.
It's beyond astonishing.
This is how insipidly, immature, and absurd they are:
Maddow and Lemon tag team to ask this question: With this President literally being unstable and a narcissist and a literal Hitler who doesn’t care about children and clean water and National Parks, hates Jews, undocumented citizens, women, cripples and puppies and a literal racist who will literally start WWIII, a financial collapse and let climate change kill us, while forcing us to become a satellite of Russia and to speak Russian, what will you do about his dark psychic powers and whether it’s time to call He-Man to fight Darkseid.
It's a baffling indeed and reading the judges reasoning, all I can do is shake my head and wonder about the horseshoe the Post has up its ass.
Obviously I'm not legal expert let alone a Kentucky legal expert (I play one on the Internet!) but nevertheless his explanation seemed like a stretch to me.
That the Post didn't specifically name Sandman in their article (s) is a technicality because they clearly were aiming to single him out. The whole 'smirk' thing and kids 'swarming' pretty much shows the Post was looking to sheep a narrative to any reasonable person.
Plus the judge shut this down before all evidence could be adduced. Worse, the judge seems to be using the article (s) itself as evidence!
It's like you suing a company for a faulty product and the judge using the company's handbook about the product as evidence it wasn't faulty. Or something like that.
How pathetic are you that an established paper that goes around throwing its weight around about 'democracy' can't even do its job right? Still more, the Post pulled a 'I'm just a comedian' stunt. Whenever a comedian was forced to substantiate a specious claim to score a cheap political point, they'd answer 'I'm just a comedian!". Until they're not and they want to be take seriously.
The Post wrote a 'news' piece like it was an opinion. Sold it as news but then sleazed ball their way back into 'it's an opinion' position.
My advice? If you read legacy media, go in eyes wide open and understand their feeding you a narrative on events. They know how to manipulate words, form phrases and paint imagery so as to sculpt an answer before you arrive at it yourself.
They're linguistic alchemists. Narrative constructing troubadours and you're their target.
Personally, I don't even read the Post or Times because their writers are predictable, boring, partisan hacks.
In other words, it's fake news.
Hopefully Sandman's lawyers don't give up despite the judge dismissing it with prejudice. Which essentially tells them 'end of the road'.
The Post should face some kind of consequence for what they did in treating those boys the way they did. Therein lies my final point that needs to be said. Sandman was a minor and not only did The Washington Post (and other outlets) engage in what I think is public child abuse, the judge basically said 'open season' on the kids!
We hear the terms 'for the children' and the need to 'protect our children' a lot. In this case, the Post couldn't care less about minors because they were in the way of a narrative and that's the simple, hard truth.
If you notice, more and more kids are being used as pawns in political games.
Which spawned a new term, 'leave the kids alone!'
Unfortunately, they won't and I wouldn't hold my breath media will be held accountable.
My position is the government isn't compassionate when it legislates laws that enable such people.
To me? He's a mentally ill man who will overplay his hand and card. That he's being ignored actually damages transgenders and the LGBTQ community as he sheds an unnecessary negative light on them.
One would think they'd want him to be investigated.
Consume the mainstream press cautiously my fellow Canadians.
I'm not so sure they have the nation's interests at heart.
But Ocasio-Cortez said you had to be a fool to have taken her '12 years' claim literal and here is this McGrath fool inserting it.
At this point it's astonishing these pimps are willing to stake their reputations on repeating fear-mongering prognostications.
The last straw for me was when my daughter and her friends were filled with anxiety after that illiberal buffoon Ocasio-Cortez made that comment and I had to quell the angst.
The left use kids as weapons to further their agenda and seize more power and control.
People have quibbled that climate alarmists aren't saying the world will end in such and such a date but that we have by said time frame to do something before it's too late.
Sounds like nitpicking to me.
Either way, it's disingenuous and self-serving, and still a special claim.
And just to stick it to people filled with TDS rage, Obama did it too to sell gun control and public education. Use kids as an appeal to emotion. Though I wonder just how effective it is. People should be wise to this shtick.
In any event, climate change is about system change. It's settled - to borrow their term.
They've lost the plot.
It's not science. Nor is it journalism.
It's just narratives. Hysterical polemics.
Enough of this horse shit.
Notice, like with Politifact's ridiculous AOC fact check, the NYT attacking Rubin and conservatives with specious 'alt-right' connections, and The Daily Beast pointless and shameless attack of Mariano Rivera, the people are having none of it.
Modern media is garbage.
See you in 18 months McGrath where Al Gore will be 18 months richer and I will reserve to call you a fear-mongering climate cultist scaring little children.
“It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?” Krugman said in his post. “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”
“We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight,” he added. “I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened.”
Holy moly. In an age where it seems like 90% of all 'news' and news stories seem contrived and outright pointless this one has to rank among the most useless.
It's the story of one Democrat retard attack another remedial Democrat.
A retard or cripple fight if you will.
Timmy vs. Jimmy.
It's straight outta South Park.
Speaking of which, they may just about overwhelmed choosing stories to parody for their show. Worse, I don't know how they separate real from parody anymore as both have crashed into one another.
Before I begin, I loathe people who have items that exceed the limit in grocery lines. Sometimes it's the stores fault as they never seem to have enough cashiers or lanes open but most of the time it's just inconsiderate twits just being selfish twats.
So on some level I sympathize with the guy. But mostly, he strikes me as just a pain in the neck, self-righteous control freak progressive who should learn the concept of pick your battles.
Berating someone in a grocery line isn't one of them. Just curse under your breath or in your head and move the fuck along.
99% of people are decent and sane enough to calculate as much.
But not left-wing Democrats plagued with TDS they don't.
Turns out, the man is an anti-Trump Democrat of Cuban descent.
Just came back from a lovely trip in New England. First it was New Hampshire to visit (and drive up) Mount Washington and then we headed to Providence, Rhode Island to visit a friend.
Wow is Providence Woke Town USA or what? I wanted an espresso and found a coffee shop in The Arcade but passed when I saw some 'safe space' BS sign.
Providence, of course, is home to Brown University. One day these wokester-hipters will realize these institutions favor the Democrat elites and their sometimes remedial offspring.
We did some outlet shopping In North Conway where I bought two pairs of New Balance shoes. As if I didn't already like the company a couple of slogans further cemented my loyalty to them (and I'm hard brand loyal).
One was 'Be your own hero'. Absolutely.
I take that as a good shot at Nike and their demand consumers bow before false idols like Kaepernick and their anti-Americanism.
The other is 'Blessedly independence'.
Indeed. To be independent is to be blessed.
Or else you end up like Nike.
Force to engage in empty virtue signalling.
****
I watched The Magnificent Ambersons for the first time in over 25 years. There was a scene where George shouted, 'Get a horse!' to Eugene and his engine powered wagon (a precursor to the automobile).
Reminds me of modern media and how dead it really is. New media has already passed it by. This is why they're lashing out against it. They're skillfully using the illiberal dopes who run tech companies to do their dirty work. CEO's like Zuckerberg, Dorsey and Conte are too ignorant of history to know they're being played.
They'll get their come uppance in some form or another.
Truth prevails.
****
Won't be long before idiot progressives demand America change its name.
This one touched a nerve. My niece was bullied for being an English speaker on her basketball team. It crushed her and quit.
Rapinoe exhibits all the traits of a faux-righteous bully. But Bill Simmons foolishly thinks she's a role model for his daughter.
Basketball Quebec is a parochial outfit and it wasn't until 'foreigners' came in did the more talented players (who weren't Quebecois) got a fair shake. You only expand your ideas (and with it the success of your program) when you operate outside of your provincial prism. The Montreal Impact is another organization that exudes this provincialism. But that's another for another post.
Talk is cheap Megan. Less emotion and more action. Want love to conquer?
Go the White House. That's real leadership.
That takes courage.
Everything else is just noise.
It's easy, if not cowardly, to just talk 'bad ass' from a mic in a 'safe space'.
Come out of that bubble.
Actually engage Trump.
I bet you anything he'll listen.
Want us to think of you as a champion?
Act like one.
****
Last week, in an effort to reign the far left running amok and seeking to usurp power, Pelosi was called a 'racist' by the leader of the the so-called 'The Squad" (more like The Twats) faction led by illiberal ignoramus Ocasio-Cortez. I feel little pity for the DNC and Pelosi.
They courted and flirted with saw rhetoric letting the wolves into the tent. Funny thing about wolves is they like to hunt, kill and conquer.
There's a ciivl war in the Democrat party and Trump knows it. Hence his 'racist' tweet. That was all calculated designed (Axios discusses it here) to force the DNC to 'defend' those four progressive buffoons in all their inglorious illiberalism.
Won't be long they'll use their victim status to game the system like First Nations band chiefs do here.
“....No one is afraid of those nerds,” the source said, referring to the Justice Democrats.
"...That organization entered the fray on Friday as well, firing back at an aide who had told The Hill Ocasio-Cortez is a "puppet" and the group is funded by "white liberals."
As for Ilhan and Rashida. It's all projection. By the content of their character and comments, they're anti-Semitic and anti-American in my view. Omar is particularly an odious political character. They deserve all the scorn hurled their way. Last, a quick comment on Saikat Chakrabarti. He may cause some disruptions and even gain some victories. But in the long run? His group will end up like the rest of the evil communists, socialists and Marxists in history. Saikat reminds me of Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky in Dostoevsky's Devils. Driven by a nihilistic false sense of right. His Green New Deal isn't about climate. It's about usurping capitalism. It's mayhem for its own sake. His is an anti-humanist world view. That he's dangerous should be evident to a sober mind. There won't be a 'this time we'll get it right'. And never will be. ****
But even by her standards the claim of calling someone a communist is 'rooted in white supremacy' is comically disturbing.
At this point, people who truly face discrimination and racism are not being served well by the progressive left. A despicable bunch of narcissistic, faux-outraged twits and twats projecting their own racism onto others while debasing it in the process.
Oh how I loathe the modern progressive left.
****
I thought being woke is just about virtue signalling! I didn't think I had to do something!
In San Francisco, this is the rule and not the exception.
"The wealthy San Francisco residents who launched a crowdfunding campaign to block construction of a new homeless shelter in their waterfront neighborhood are employing a new tactic: arguing that homeless people are bad for the environment."
Keep it up Shit Francisco.
When it comes down to it, progs are the biggest practitioners of NIMBYISM.
****
Free form though: I'd absolutely worry about China.
The left have been fed a bunch of bunk about Russia for domestic political expedience courtesy of the DNC but in reality, China is a hostile authoritarian state.
Them with Internet power is not a good thing.
****
Canadian governments past and present like to talk up our founding role in NATO. But that rings hollow now. If you want serious Canadians to care or respect these proclamations, bring up our fair share of the costs to the agreed threshold. Something we have not done. In fact, we among the lowest contributors to NATO.
Talk is cheap.
We've shamelessly hid behind American protection.
****
Justin chimed in about Trump's tweets.
Aside from the arrogance of him offering his useless two cents, how wise is it for him to keep poking Trump in the eye? Justin should focus less on American affairs and consider how his actions can impact Canadian interests when negotiating with the United States.
A more thoughtful person would have calculate, 'If we both win our respective elections, I may have to deal with Trump for another four years. I don't want to rock the boat with stupid virtue signalization.' Even more, 'if I don't win, I want to make sure Canada-U.S. relations remain cordial and strong.'
Alas, this is Justin who we're talking about. King of Clown World.
The left and antisemitism go hand in hand. So it's no surprise in the ranks of say, Quebec Solidaire, New Democrat Party, even the Liberal party here in Canada, the DNC or as it happens, Labour in the UK. They always were.
And always will be.
Not sure why this is a shock.
Reminds me of the building on Park ave. and Pine ave. in Montreal (overlooking McGill - aka McWoke - university - with a Palestinian flag prominently painted on it. I'm sure the many Jews who live around the area and have been great contributors to McGill appreciate having to look at that everyday.
I had this video teed up but YouTube took it down. Pretty ominous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3QB4WLPUuo
What a bunch of pezzi di merdi they are.
****
If you have a blue check on Twitter you should get a Blue cap with that.
*To you millennial Bernsters Blue caps are what the officers who ran the gulags wore. Get with it kids.
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”
- Isaac Asimov
****
My Lord, the miseducation of students is troubling. There's literally no excuse for their ignorance here. If I'm Canadian and aware of this, there's no damn good reason college students shouldn't be also.
Movie critics clearly lean left. Notice how Michael Moore propaganda films always garner great reviews and ratings. Conservative ones usually get hammered.
I highly doubt it has anything to do with the artisanship.
I've noticed a trend where RT's scores are polar opposite to the audience score.
One of the most sophomoric movies that took itself way too seriously I ever saw was Maher's Religulous.
It was an atheistic mess of faux-intellectual rubbish and that got a score of 70.
In any event, I don't care as I plan to watch 'Unplanned'.
I like different views and it's time we revisit this whole abortion thing since NY's infanticide laws.
Largely ignored by the mainstream media and whatever CNN is these days.
Washington state escaped a terrorist attack as police kill left-wing nut.
Just last year he was arrested but the legal system essentially left him off the hook. Had he successfully completed his attack, those prosecutors would have to answer for doing so in my view.
You can't mess around with these people. They're criminals.
Some say the media lies or is the enemy of the people.
Looking at these clips of Trump's 4th of July speech I can see why people do.
A couple of thoughts.
Man, did the media disingenuously over play the military angle. It wasn't bad at all.
Also, around the 15 minute mark. Most racist President evah!
Notice how the NBC doesn't ever pan from the crowd. It stays fixated on Trump. The C-Span version reveals more.
Particularly with the size of the crowd. I don't believe any official numbers were published but according to the Washington transit system over 400 000 commuters used the system that day. The pics and images of that day do show the number to likely be well over the one hundred thousand mark if not more.
On rainy day to boot.
If you recall up to the 4th, the media speculated The White House feared for 'an embarrassingly small turnout'. Just like they thought Hillary would have won the election, correct?
After the celebration the narrative moved to 'people were divided' over it.
Plenty of academics have lost their bearings. A former history professor from my university days is now retired and all he does is inexplicably rant at Trump using tactics and arguments that he would fail students for.
Anyway....from that bastion of liberalism The Washington Post:
Liberalism is not a dogma: It is a set of dilemmas about how to balance freedom and the common good, economic liberty and social fairness, the search for meaning and the desire to be left alone. ….It is true, for one thing, that all the forms of liberalism so far have gravitated sooner or later to economic libertarianism. Indeed, in modern history, they have created larger gaps between the rich and the rest than the Christians and kings liberals once denounced for imposing dehumanizing feudalism did.….Iconic liberals such as John Stuart Mill — by the end of his life a socialist who indicted economic inequality — insisted that a society that permitted free self-creation must avoid descending into conformity and materialism. Liberals must relearn that lesson. Mill today would be appalled, not by the supposed depredations that liberal society visits on the religious (which are minor) but by the ways rampant consumerism for those who make money, and penury for those who don’t, obstruct the possibility of the creative lives liberals once promised.
Liberalism’s main problem is that its vision of a life well lived has been corrupted — not by too much license and self-expression, but by an overemphasis on economic freedom that has undercut its own promise.
The right strategy for liberals is therefore to own their failure to make their ideals of self-creation a reality. They must assert not merely that their tradition coexisted with and even promoted religious values — as it undeniably did — but also revive their proposals for meaningful life in the absence of divine superintendence. Liberalism can thrive because it is the only worldview so far that does not try to resolve the eternal debate over whether to orient oneself to the divine, but allows either bet to be made, and creative and meaningful lives to be led either way."
Lots to dissect here and I won't get to it since I'm on vacation. But I'll offer some quick thoughts.
Invoking JSM and his classical liberalism is interesting given modern liberals are basically progressive. Not classical liberal. Classical liberalism is all but dead in the West and I think the author is actually reminding us why.
Modern liberals are about as connected to JSM as I'm to a black American slave.
Don't believe me? Try and run on classical liberal principles. For the love of God, Hickenlooper said socialism isn't the answer for America and was booed by the Democrat faithful.
If you want classical liberalism, you go to libertarian sites or even conservative ones.
I'd also like to point out it's interesting he pulls out classical liberalism when this is the very ideology the modern left is at war with. Dead whypippo slave holders and all that. I rarely see (especially far left) progressives ever cite Enlightenment philosophers. I do tend to think we over venerate them (a little to hyper-secular and hostile to Christianity for its own sake) while we've come to under appreciate classical conservatism and Christianity but this is a matter of intellectual observation on my part.
I digress.
They pick and choose their arguments which makes it very hard to follow their thinking which really has degraded itself into sophistry.
The author - Samuel Moyn - then chimes in with this gem:
"...It also, many conservatives say today, promotes hedonism, nontraditional sexuality, abortion on demand and an unhealthy focus on self-expression.”
This is a rather astonishing statement from a professor. Is this not precisely what the modern left promotes? The cognitive dissonance, aside from the pointless passive aggressive attack on conservatives (who are absolutely correct in their assessment), is rather disappointing if not downright dismal.
How are they going to 'save' liberalism if they continuously misdiagnose it? Worse, stay in denial?
We knew it was a matter of time when Democrats would stop fiddling around attacking the 1A and 2A and go straight to the source: The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.
After all, the nation is inherently unholy and its history is to be forever chastised and sanitized forever more by illiberal ideologues who couldn't hold a sippy cup to the Founding Fathers.
It's an obscene state of affairs within the left-wing flank of the DNC and its supporters.
The abject ignorance, self-loathing and illiberal mind set most make for a most miserable existence.
They really are anti-American.
They hate America.
Simple as that.
****
Liberals take something tangental analogous to the past and immediately connect to the present.
Example: 'Tump is literally Hitler'.
Aka a false equivalence.
The modern left will cynically and ignorantly take something they know little of from the past and tag it to some contemporary issue. It's exactly how you usher in a dark age.
They also have a terrible habit if imposting modern sensibilities on the past. For example, this is how Mark Twain suddenly becomes a racist. Sure, according to today's madness laced with vapid terms and definitions, anyone born pre-1990 qualifies as some sort of 'white supremacists' if we take their sophist rhetoric at face value and apply it vigorously.
And no. Conservatives aren't anywhere near as bad. Not even close.
In the last week, we received thousands of calls/emails and countless social media comments (largely from out-of-state) about the most recent protests. The majority of the communications were filled with hate speech, abusive language, and expressed violent intentions.
You mean, the situation City Hall allowed to fester and grow to the point of violence?
I wish she'd direct her anger more to where it belongs: Antifa and the violent left.
The detachment from citizens and refusal to accept responsibility is absolutely stunning. That they'd paint themselves as victims all the more crude. Did Eileen get her head smashed in?
Here are some climate change and science articles that should make us all wonder in sad amazement about the state of science in the West. How it has been politicized and hijacked by opportunists and charlatans. One in which politicians have all too readily jumped on in a cynical play to be recognized and perhaps even profit off.
In one of the articles over at Glibertarians.com the writer put it best describing climate science as 'bad conjecture'. What's 'settled science' (science is never science nor is it formed on the basis of 'consensus') is actually junk science.
"Drivers will be forced off the roads in Ireland and the population packed into “higher density” cities under a long-awaited climate plan which will ‘revolutionise’ people’s lifestyle and behaviours, according to local media.
“Nudge” policies such as huge tax hikes, as well as bans and red tape outlined in the plan, will pave the way to a “vibrant” Ireland of zero carbon emissions by 2050 according to the government, which last year committed to boost the country’s 4.7 million-strong population by a further million with mass migration."
Nudge is a good way to describe it. Here in Montreal, that's pretty much how it's happening as the city is slowly ceding its streets to cyclists. They also insist people use public transportation. We're a granola city now.
You can't drag me into the city anymore and I sure as hell ain't interested in crampy public services.
As if the political elites use them. That's for the icky people.
****
Canada is planning to coordinate with California on how to combat climate change.
What can possibly go wrong with a Democrat dominated legislature and Justin?
Maybe California should focus a tad more on their negative net migration flow, homeless crisis and the grotesque passing and shitting fest in San Francisco.
"...And yet, Nordhaus’ own work—not shown in the figure above, but I spell it out here—clearly concludes that such an aggressive target would cause far more damage to humans in the form of reduced economic output, that it would be better for governments to “do nothing” about climate change at all."
Basically, the cure is worse than the disease.
"....Americans, especially students, are being whipped into a panic over the allegedly existential threat of climate change. Yet the actual research, summarized in the UN’s own periodic reports and in the research of a Nobel laureate in the field, shows that at best only a modest “leaning against the wind” could be justified according to standard economic science.
By their own criteria, the alarmist activists are admitting that political measures are nowhere near achieving their goals. Their own rhetoric says that these activists are wasting everyone’s time pushing solutions that will end in catastrophe. Occasionally they slip up, as for example when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez admits that her “we have 12 years left” was not to be taken literally."
It's one of the things I despise most about the climate change cult. I listen to my teenage daughter and her friends talk about it. They're filled with anxiety and it's all by design.
I had to talk them 'off the ledge' so to speak a couple of months back knocking all that Ocasio-Cortez poison out of their preciously vulnerable minds.
But leftists know darn well that's when you strike. When they're young.
It's up to us to deflect it and chart a proper course for our children.
D.C. says businesses can use bamboo, hay, steel or glass -- or no straw at all. Just not plastic.
Straws may be only a small percentage of the plastic waste we dump. But millions already pollute our waterways."It doesn't disintegrate in the water," said Benjamin Gildea, 8, sipping guiltily on a soda with a plastic straw. "So it gets in turtles' noses, so I really believe that these straws should be banned."
Here's one more wrinkle. Businesses are still required to keep a few plastic straws on hand for people with disabilities who find it tough to use any other kind."
This in a nutshell reveals how bad science leads to bad policies and outcomes.
"I’m going to begin with two claims about the state of #science in the United States. I use the hashtag advisedly because one of my assertions is that the majority of what passes for science in the current zeitgeist is generally non-science, or, most charitably, bad conjecture, if we’re properly classifying some of the current crop of pop-culture fads attempting to pass themselves off as real Science (yes, I’m looking at you AGW). To begin with, here are my two claims..."
From the comments:
"Just look at the language and tactics they use to sell climate change starting with climate change itself. Climate changes….duh. This term evolved from ‘global warming’ probably because the predictions they made weren’t panning out and in fact trends were going against their claims. Right off the bat the term is enough to raise a skeptical eye. Never mind, as we know, the endless failed prognostications going back to the late 60s. At the same time, like good little totalitarians, they had to attack the skeptics and not the assertions. This is where we get ‘deniers’ and calls for imprisonment. How dare they bring consensus into disrepute! 97% consensus to be exact! Do they not realize they act more like witch hunters than scientists when they behave like this? I’m a simple man. So may say a simpleton even. But gosh I can spot bull shit from miles away and this whole movement is nothing but a cynical political power play.
And dummies eat it up."
"I noticed the rather blatant (to me) drop of “anthropogenic” from “global warming” early on. It’s intermediate phase before settling on the non-falsifiable “climate change.” I mean, holy shit. How much more obvious can you be? It’s a religion and has all of the same components, right up to and including punishment for heretics, now laughably called “deniers.” It’s just… I don’t even know. I could not have imagined I would see this in my lifetime. No way – not in a thousand years would I have believed I would see something like this."
Yup and yup.
"You used to be so amused At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal"
Bob Dylan, Like A Rolling Stone.
****
Bonus!
Meet the Illiberals!
On this Independence Day enjoy this precious things called liberty.
Ot what's left of it because one day the Democrats will take over again and they're gonna keep chipping away at it.
All these proposals will accomplish one thing: Make citizens slaves of the state. Democrats are the party of slavery after all. Now they just want to put everyone in shackles and chains.
The Democrats are demanding reparations. I propose only registered Democrats pay for it since their party represented the institution.
Why should Republicans pay for it? They abolished it.
Fair is fair, right Dems?
Anyway....look at these sociopaths promising stuff they can't possibly deliver on pretending to care about people. All they want is power. Simple as that.
Notice how the party started in the median in 2008 and that by 2012 it was going left under Obama. Transformational change was under way and Limbaugh was right all along. Obama set the party on a socialist track.
The Republicans are the centrist party. As they always tended to be.
And if anyone bothered to plot how the Liberals have fared, we'd observe the exact trend pulling left as the Democrats.
Putin's words describing what's happening in America (and Canada) and Europe.
"The so-called liberal idea has outlived its purpose."
Well, he's 120 years to late on that one. His own brethren like Dostoevsky warned against the strain of nihilism present in liberalism.
It has reached its maxed out point. What we think of as 'liberalism' in the West is not liberalism at all. It's progressivism and progressivism itself is now nothing more than socialism.
It's not surprising Putin would think this but he's not entirely wrong.
Look at the Democrats and Liberals in Canada. Examine their positions. It's socialism by other means or just rehashed progressive ideas from the early 20th century.
Liberalism is classical liberalism and even when the classical was long gone after the WWII it still maintained some semblance of dignity. But that was once and for all obliterated once the progressives set their teeth into liberal institutions including academia.
Spreading their poison.
Result? Social justice and all that nonsense that while seemingly preposterous has the ability to 'burn the whole thing down'.
"the policy of multiculturalism (through the migrant policies) is not effective"
Western governments do in fact understand they made a calculated error here. But rather than side with the people and cease the policy they've inexplicably chosen to double down and challenge their own respective populations directly. After all, you already opened the doors and safe outright expulsion, what is there to do?
The wisdom of our policies was rooted in the idea of letting in people from cultures outside the West in small numbers so as to permit them to acclimatize themselves in peace and harmony. We've thrown this out the water by letting in large numbers and when people come in large groups they don't feel the need to assimilate. This is why Trudeau's immigration policy is heavily criticized.
So what you have is a situation where citizens feel alienated and are angry the politicians they elect would act as enemies. They choose narratives over common sense.
Hence, countries like Hungary and Italy electing 'populist' governments seen as 'dangerous' by dead men walking liberals and the journo-class.
Had political leadership acted responsibly in the first place, there would be no populist backlash.
People want less Sweden, Belgium, France and Germany and more USA, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Italy.
In Canada, we made multiculturalism a part of our Charter. We're already seeing cracks in that armour and over the long-run no matter how much progressive propaganda is rammed down the throats of people, they will eventually want to protect their flock. This is not racism; it's normal.
We spent 3000 years going back to Athens and Rome establishing our collective legal, moral, and cultural structures, values and mores cemented by Christianity.
Now we're being asked to not only ignore this fact of our existence but to eradicate it.
The progressive will say 'well, it was imperfect to begin with and our ideals are better.' That ours is rooted in bigotry, colonialism and hate. The only way to cleanse us of our sins is to blend our blood and souls with other races and nationalities.
They've over reaching in my view.
****
Journalist: "Did Merkel make a mistake?" "Putin: Yes, cardinal mistake."
Again, I can but concur. Germany, in its compassionate open border policy, is causing tension within the EU. Its NGOs illegally pick up migrants in Africa and dump them off the shores of Italy despite warnings from them asking the NGOs to cease their operation.
At some point, they will have to simply outlaw rogue NGOs who flout a nation's sovereignty in this manner.
Think of it. They pick up people in another country and dump them onto another nation. Rinse and repeat.
How is this compassion?
The Merkel government has been strident in its commitment to mass migration to the point of, as noted, of willing to fight with fellow EU nations.
Not wise on the part of the Germans. ****
Putin then goes on to impart rather stoic and sober takes on America's border problem. Where he asks 'what is Trump to do?' with such an obvious crisis. 'At least he's trying'.
Indeed, and without much help from Democrats who, I surmise, are all too willing to score cheap political points regarding conditions at detention centres.
"The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population."
I tend to agree with this. Even if it comes from the mouth of a frightening autocrat like Putin but we should caution against shooting the messenger.
The worst part about modern progressives? They will destroy and blame everyone else. In fact, they blame everything and everyone for their own failures.
This is why everyone at this point is a white supremacist, bigot, rapist, racist, Nazi.
It's a pretty sad state of affairs among the modern left when Putin is the voice of reason. A former KGB operative in one of the most secretive agencies on the planet while later amassing billions as pretty much a gangster. He's easy pickings that's for sure. No wonder the left wants to believe Trump is connected to him.
Other quick take aways:
Towards the end, the journalists - if you weren't sure before - begin to really flex their liberal bent. First when the second fellow (in the red socks. He wore red socks to face a man like Putin?) insinuated Bannon and Trump are illiberal and then when the first interviewer said, 'you really are on the same page as Trump.' No doubt leaving him perplexed.
I suppose a case can be made Bannon is illiberal so that will have to be left for another discussion at another time.
They're likely the very liberal elites Putin is chastising in the interview - and he probably knew it.
The only illiberal people I see are the left. I would have liked to hear his response but couldn't find the rest of the interview.
Above all, I really like what he had to say about the Roman Catholic Church. Specifically when he asserted liberals want to take problems in the Church and use it as an excuse to destroy the Church as a whole.
I've been of that opinion for about 20 years now. Their hostility to the Church is plain and obvious. And to me, very much misguided and over blown.
Lost in all this hate for Christianity is the good it did in the arts, literature and science as well as caring for millions of people. Alas, again, this is not the topic of the discussion here.
