Ruminations – 4nov18 (update 5nov18)

“If it’s not falsifiable, it’s not science.” Karl Popper

George Rebane

A regression function does not a theory make.

Climate change: A regular reader and avid follower of climate science Russ Steele sent me a couple of links that I’d like to share with our True Believers (the rest are “deniers”).  The first is a comprehensive yet compact analysis and refutation of the Left’s climate science hysteria (here).  The second is an analysis of ‘CO2 driven warming’ that again puts a lie to the whole thing (here).  Both pieces have solid assertions that can be refuted (i.e. they are falsifiable) with countering science and argument.  I invite our leftwing readers to respond with something more than another performance of their sophomoric Consensus Cantata.  In the meantime, meditate on the above two shibboleths now out of fashion with our progressives.

The definition of ‘nationalism’ is on the slippery slope, being shoved into politically correct meaningless verbiage that is appended with everything the Left dislikes.  I ask readers to give us an English word that means “a political, social, and economic system characterized by devotion to the interests or culture of a particular nation-state. The belief that nations will benefit more from acting independently rather than collectively, and the promotion of the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining sovereignty over the homeland”, and nothing more or less.  What should be the label for such a sentiment shared by billions across the globe?

Midterm Election MABs.  Only three of us cared to offer their MAB distributions for the outcome of the House elections.  I have computed the MABs shown in the upper left of the above figure, along with the plots of the discrete MAB probabilities for each outcome for the number of House Democrats who will be seated January 2019.  Recall, of the 435 seats a majority requires at least 218.  The figure shows the definite and confident party biases of Messrs Steele and Frisch, with Moi the Chickens#!t timidly sneaking in there with a 0.5 confidence for my most likely (ML) of 220 seats for the Dems.  It is clear that RussS will win with the best prediction if the Dems get less that 219 seats, and StevenF will win if the Dems get more than 219.  And 219 happens to be the ONLY number of Dems that will make me the winner - very sad.  However, if we consider the 'wisdom of crowds' as the shown group average, then I am the closest to the common mind in this little prediction derby.  Alas, this is a position of which I have never been a proud resident.  Oh well, we'll see next Wednesday morning how it all shakes out.

Hate speech??  Hate speech is used a lot by progressives to describe stuff they don't want to read or hear.  Can anyone give an operational definition of 'hate speech' that can be used to categorize it?  Or is it a gift leftwingers are blessed with - something like 'I really can't define it, but I sure can tell when someone uses it.'?

[5nov18 update] Sen Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has issued a massive report documenting interviews with dozens of witnesses and accusers of Justice Kavanaugh, and his alleged sexual misconduct.  They have found “found that no witnesses could provide evidence to substantiate their claims”.  Instead, many of those who came out of the woodwork have now recanted their accusations – example, “the evidence appears to support the position that Julie Swetnick and Mr. Avenatti criminally conspired to make materially false statements to the Committee and obstruct the Committee’s investigation.”  For some odd reason the Dem sleazebags on the committee – those led by Sen Feinstein who conspired to torpedo Kavanaugh’s nomination through last minute political theatrics, are silent on the matter – no report contending the committee’s findings is forthcoming.  Should the Dems take the House tomorrow, the same troupe of sleazebags will resurface to up the ante on the crap they will manufacture in the attempt to impeach SCOTUS’s newest justice.  In the meanwhile, crickets.  (more here)

Bloomberg drops $5M in last minute appeal to bipartisanship by urging a Democratic vote tomorrow.  The former mayor of New York is confident that his audience is sufficiently dimwitted to believe his claim that he is not being political, but instead calling for us to come together under the magnificent plan forward for the nation as promised by the Left.  Let your search for common ground begin here.

Honduran and Guatemalan flags are in very obvious display in the columns of migrants headed for the US.  You would think that they would be carrying the flags of the country into which they wish entry, into whose society they intend to assimilate.  What are we missing here?

And speaking of everyone coming together to become one happy American family - here's the latest from our Muslim immigrants.  Get any of this from the lamestream?

Comments

[The Estonian Fox]

1st comment:
Here is the one English word you are looking for - ISLAM. It is a social, political, economic, religious, military, and legal system employed in numerous countries worldwide. It sure indicates devotion to the interests or culture of not just 'a', but many, nation-states. And it is a sentiment shared by billions across the globe.

2nd comment- see either of these 2 websites:
(1) earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1.shtml
(2) http://www.pnas.org/content/99/7/4167 "Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for the last 500 million years", Daniel H. Rothman, PNAS April 2, 2002. (Figure 4).

Each contains a graph showing the CO2 levels going back not 500 years, not 500,000 years, but 500,000,000 years. Yes, that's millions. Today's levels of CO2 are the LOWEST, yes, that's lowest, levels of CO2 in 500 MY. As you can determine for yourself, those outlandishly high ancient CO2 levels killed all life on earth, including our own ancestors. So sad.

Please scientists, spend your time and pick something else that you can save us from, that will likely kill us. Maybe pass a law that forbids establishing autocratic governments on earth or something.

[George Rebane]

EstonianF 1253pm - Close, but no cigar. First, Islam is a specific socio-theocratic ideology that cannot be applied to people who do not accept its theocratic foundations. Second, Islam teaches global collectivism (abrogating the sovereignty of all nation-states) as the ultimate mission for its earthly adherents.

[Russ]

Nate Silver on Drudge:

Democrats take the House 86%

Democrats take the Senate 15%

Time for a reality check:

Nate Silver Admits He Doesn’t Know What’s Going to Happen With Midterms. “Both outcomes ‘extremely possible’.”

https://pjmedia.com/election/nate-silver-admits-he-doesnt-know-whats-going-to-happen-with-mid-terms/

[Don Bessee]

Then there is this, blue wave seems to have crested -

The final Rasmussen Reports Generic Congressional Ballot before Election Day shows Republicans edging ahead by one point, but in essence, the two parties are tied. The survey has a +/-2 percentage point margin of error.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds that 46% would choose the Republican candidate if the elections for Congress were held today. Forty-five percent (45%) would vote for the Democrat.

;-)

[Don Bessee]

More complications for team lefty -

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/severe-weather-heading-east-election-day-approaches-123103721--abc-news-topstories.html

;-)

[Bill Tozer]

Re: Dr
Ford

Guess Grassley did not get the memo from the Democrats that women do not lie and should always be believed. Guess who has all these book offers now? What the heck is she going to write about? She, as well as the other accusers, can't remember squat.

[Gregory]

Don B 647am

If that tie is true of the Generic Ballot, there could be a Red Wave in the House. An even outcome of Congressional seats is thought to be at about 7% in favor of Dems due to the clumpiness of Democrats in big cities.

In other words, Pelosi's cruise to victory with 81% of the vote in 'frisco (the 2016 election result) has consequences. The Democratic Party birds of a feather choose to flock together.

[Gregory]

I'm going to put this into this ruminations as the best fit. Thie video is from a year ago, a Joe Rogan podcast with Jordan Peterson (I hope everyone has at least a cartoon knowledge of Dr. Peterson, a very smart guy more or less hated on the left but self identifies as a centrist classic liberal, my kind of guy) and another fellow less well known... Bret Weinstein, the leftist evolutionary biologist who wasn't left leaning enough for the Evergreen State kids who roamed the campus wielding baseball bats looking for him.

I listened to this a few days ago and was chilled to the bone from Peterson's remarks about Adolf Hitler's "Table Talk", ramblings of Hitler at mealtimes for a few years. The Nazis weren't scared of people they didn't know, the others... they were disgusted, and disgust is not at all the same.

This starts at the 16:00 mark, I suggest watching through to the 29"00 mark. It is well worth the time...
https://youtu.be/6G59zsjM2UI?t=960
Of course, starting at the beginning is also well worth the time but the whole thing is nearly three hours without a break.

Why was I chilled? Because disgust is what I've gotten from some people when I disagree openly about climate change. Pelline is only the most recent... going back a number of years from an old friend, coworker and drinking buddy from Denmark who said his stomach turned even thinking about disputing climate change.

This is how Naziism started... wanting to cleanse their land of an infectious agent. Of thought or deed.

[Don Bessee]

Ah ha -

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/joe-closer-race-thought-041312166.html

;-)

[Bill Tozer]

Hate speech? Some things sound eerily familiar.

Have you ever noticed how viral outrage regularly rips through social media? Pity the poor individual or group who suffer the burning heat of the public’s wrath. Yet, as quickly as it comes, it’s over. Then there’s a lull for a few days, and then we’re on to the next outrage.

If it troubles you, as it does with us, you might find comfort and terror in George Orwell’s “Two Minutes Hate” created in 1984. It’s not hard to see the parallels. Perhaps the most disturbing line in the whole piece is the following:

“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in.”

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/heres-original-two-minutes-hate

[Steven Frisch]

I think Gregory just forever lost his privilege to invoke Goodwin's Law.

[Gregory]

Thank goodness there is no such thing as "Goodwin's Law", and that wasn't a Nazi Analogy... that was a psychologist's take on how Nazis were made from ordinary Germans, and my experience with being labeled an outsider by a number of (former) friends and acquaintances.

Perhaps you can answer the question Peterson asked of his students, Steven... could you have ever become a death camp guard?

[Steven Frisch]

Goodwin, Godwin, whatever. It was a stupid "Law" to begin with.

But of course your comment was a Nazi analogy.

The fact is it was your reference to the specific portion of Petersen's comments, you comparing your experience of friends and acquaintances rejecting your analysis with Jews being scapegoated by ordinary Germans, and you who seem to be equating the persecution of the Nuremberg Laws and final solution to rejection of your views.

You are not persecuted Greg, you are simply incorrect in your beliefs about climate, and rational people reject your opinion. No one is throwing you in Auschwitz Greg, they are simply recognizing you're and idiot and avoiding you.

I can almost guarantee you that, as Petersen stated, there are very few people who could not become concentration camps guards or some other embodiment of evil if put in the wrong environment and under certain conditioning.

(It is ironic that Petersen's conclusion is exactly the type of behavioral psychology that would be rejected by everyone here if applied to the conditioned outcomes of poverty or prejudice.)

But I can also guarantee you that the people with the quickest path from seeming civilization to the guard at the Gulag or Treblinka are right here.

They are the ones who scapegoat people already, who harbor racists and supremacist ideology already, who demean and insult on a daily basis, who engage in hundreds of fat jokes, or "whitey' jokes, or regularly retreat to blathering self gratification from like minded sycophants, the ones who embrace a racist misogynistic serial liar as a leader...just like the crew of 10 people who post here.

But the good news is at least you don't disgust me. You merely remind me how low a seemingly civilized mans mind can go given the right circumstances.

[L]

Frisch, ever notice how the people here with the STEM chops are those who most firmly insist that climate alarm is a hoax? Not it isn't happening, but it isn't a problem. Those with the least science in their c.v's are the truist of the true believers? Now why would that be?
L

[L]

full disclosure- I'm also a science nerd via UCLA
L

[George Rebane]

It appears that no one wants to tackle 'hate speech' and the flag displays of the migrants. I'm really anxious to hear our progressive friends weigh in on those. Remember guys, according to your own assessment, no one (at least of any importance) reads RR, so it's OK to let your hair down in these comment streams and tell everyone what YOU really think (instead of always telling the rest of us what we are 'really thinking').

[***M***]

Achtung!!! Nazis also held big rallies,,,just like trumpski!!!

https://mashable.com/2016/07/27/nazis-madison-square-garden/#C4DWEOb3jaq3

[***M***]

,,,the first fascist,,,

https://timeline.com/nazis-america-camps-rallies-4fc6dfe5e3b3

[***M***]

'''In the 1930s, fascist ideas were increasingly accepted. This was reflected in the energetic growth of Nazi organizations. Ku Klux Klan rallies were common and numerous; Trump’s own father was arrested at one such rally, reportedly while wearing a Klan outfit. A 1941 book found that more than 100 such organizations had formed since 1933.'''

[Don Bessee]

A little not so subtle push for the socialist or just exposing their bias?

https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2018/11/06/msnbc-andrew-gillum-fake-graphic-florida-vote-results/

;-)

[George Rebane]

Ahh yes, now ferreting out the real background of Trump's big rallies. What were the big rallies that Obama held here and overseas? that FDR assembled? that Teddy Roosevelt was able to attract? ...

[Bill Tozer]

Historically, the Left has always been the violent ones in this country. If memory serves me correctly, one of biggest Klan rally ever held was in 1913 or 1921 or something. Held in NYC had huge march down the Main Street with ten to twenty thousand hooded Klansmen leading the procession of the big ole Democrat Party rally. In fact, in many locales, the Democrat Party rallies were Klan rallies. Thousands of Klansmen leadingthe Democratic Party marches.

Historically, the Left has been the scaremongers. Ever heard of Mediscare? All my adult life. The Republicans are going to take away your Medicare! And snatch food out of the mouths of babies.

In one of Saul Alinsky’s chapters in his book, he talks about any means to justify the ends. Means and ends. Says put morality aside in politics. Political achievement is to have absolutely no morality in the equation. Get it out of here. One can see Al Capone’s top lieutenants influence on Saul when he was in Chicago and how he admired them so much.
Judging by the Left’s historical record from the past, through the Kavanaugh Confirmation hearings, to today, I need not wonder where all the hate out there coming from.
—————————————
Dr. Rebane. Flags? All I got is bumper sticker stuff. “Invaders wave their countries’ flags. Immigrants wave the American flag.”

[Gregory]

Not a hoax, L. Just bad science, driven by groupthink and powered by government grants. Driven underground by people like Frisch who already play the part of camp guards.

I stopped one local Al Gore partisan in her tracks, full of herself as a Harvard PhD, with a simple question: Anna, what is temperature? Outside of 'it's the numbers on a thermometer', she didn't have a clue.

[Gregory]

“Invaders wave their countries’ flags. Immigrants wave the American flag.”

Good one, Toes!

[Gregory]

Frisch 747am

"you comparing your experience of friends and acquaintances rejecting your analysis ..."

It wasn't the rejection of an analysis, Frisch, it was an outright disgust before even considering it.

Unclean.

[Todd Juvinall]

Did not Obama actually have a huge rally in Germany? Looks like he may be the fascist. Bu to compare the regular folks of America at these Trump rallies as nazi's is over the top. But we all know the "M"'s and "L"'s and Frisch's are total cowards and would never say that to the face of a hard-working Trump supporter. Chicken shits all.

[Bill Tozer]

Topic: Nazis among us.
Ok, I did not want to spill the beans just yet, but here goes. Remember when the Popinjay was all upset about Nazis in Nevada County? That house 16 months ago in Nevada City and that Hitler B-Day Party going on in a house in GV 10 years ago or so?
Well, that got me thinking. Where are the Nazis, the Klan, the White Supremists in these parts? Where?. Put out some feelers and got the answer. The Ridge, NSJ and especially Comptonille. Ridge mentioned first. They really say the n word out loud and often, just to scratch the surface.

Bottomline: the Nazis/White Supremists/Hooded Knights most likely live in M’s precinct. ;)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10101863715950566&set=gm.508491999666304&type=3&theater

———————————-

Gregory. Good Jordan link. Listened to it late last night and dozed off Heard most of it, and woke up about 4 this fine morning listening to a long Jordan video with the same two guys on a different topic: IQ. Good stuff, Maynard.

[George Rebane]

In America, it has always been the Left (aka Democrats) who have massed to promote collectivism and autocracy. The historical record of this was most recently compiled by Dinesh D'Souza in his Death of a Nation, which again illustrates why the Left has rewritten the history that our public schools teach today. (BTW, that book is full of falsifiable factual references and citations, should any leftwinger care to dispute its contents. So far, none have, save by attacking D'Souza and the tenets of conservative/libertarian ideology, and then claiming such vitriol to be a rational refutation.)

[Gregory]

Tozer, so happy you found the Rogan/Peterson/Weinstein youtube interesting.

So many of the Jordan Peterson links are snippets by folks with no attention span titled "Jordan Peterson DESTROYS some feminist patsy"... ones like this, getting two guys with very interesting points of view backed by significant knowledge and insight, and a host like Joe Rogan who, at least here, does a great job of not getting in the way but still managing to interject insights of his own.

I was particularly interested in the designated evolutionary biologist in the room, Bret Weinstein. My prejudgement of him was that of 'how deep would he be as a state college professor in a nuthouse campus, Evergreen', but I found him as insightful as JP.

[George Rebane]

House prediction competition, as seen from the above chart, was summarily won by Steven Frisch. The latest House count for Dems is 224 at which number the probabilities for each were - Frisch 0.099, Rebane 0.049, Steele 0.010, with the crowd-sourced average at 0.052. Good call Steve.

[Steven Frisch]

Posted by: George Rebane | 07 November 2018 at 11:09 AM

It appears that assuming everyone currently leading in races that are still too close to call there will be 230 Democrats in the House which was actually at the high end of my prediction. Since I was being intentionally conservative in my estimate I am not surprised.

On to retaking the Senate in 2020...at a minimum.

[Gregory]

Science!... and why the federal benchwarmers matter, they have power...

From Nymag:

A judge halted construction on the Keystone XL pipeline, saying the Trump administration can’t just pretend climate change isn’t real

A federal judge ordered both the Trump administration and TransCanada to stop any work on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline on Thursday, saying President Donald Trump’s approval of the project last year violated several key environmental and administrative laws by ignoring facts about climate change.

Judge Brian Morris of the U.S. District Court for Montana ruled that the Trump administration almost completely ignored climate change in its analysis supporting the pipeline’s construction, a shift that unlawfully reversed the Obama administration’s 2015 decision rejecting the pipeline’s cross-border permit.

Morris, an Obama appointee, directed the Trump administration in his ruling to prepare a new environmental study before the pipeline can resume construction, leaving the door open to a renewed approval in the future.

[Gregory]

No bites on my 833?

So, was the judge who stopped the Keystone XL following Science!?

Climate science has essentially been falsified, so no, he was not. "Because... climate change!" is essentially a faith based commandment.

[George Rebane]

Gregory 833am - Thanks for pointing that out. Climate change has been faith based for years since none of them want to do an open debate on the matter with qualified skeptics. (I had a busy morning doing damage control on my emails.)

[Steven Frisch]

Looks like even I was a little too conservative in my estimation....I pulled back at the last minute not wanting to appear too confident from topping out at 40 seats gained and it looks like it will be 39. In the end, this was a pretty resounding defeat for Trump who had nationalized the election.

[Todd Juvinall]

Still better by 24 than your pal Obama. About the average loss in the House but Trump kept the Senate from switching. Clinton and Obama were unable to stop that. So a mixed bag. The Senate being the most important as to Judges and other appointments. Those will kick the left's ass for many years to come.

[Steven Frisch]

Yes Todd, of course I have seen your comments making a silk purse out of a sows ear. You are simply incorrect. This was a world class thumping. I think you may find that even conservative judges love the United States and its institutions more than they love a wanna be dictator.

[Todd Juvinall]

Obama is a wannbee dictator? I thought so. Thanks. Thumping? Nope, just a small setback. The House will get zip while Trump will get all his appointments that will last beyond your 60 years of grief. So take your thumping and your medicine and stop with the fibbing to yourself. Not too healthy.