Scattershots – 3jun20 (updated 4jun20)

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George Rebane

Worldwide lockdowns were triggered by panicky politicians who listened to the ‘eminent epidemiologist’ Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London. He came out with a slew of mortality predictions almost every country of note by monkeying with his models. Trouble is that none of them came anywhere near true, but politicians were reluctant to let go of the new dimensions of power they had appropriated. So most of the world shut down economies and also caused untold more deaths and morbidity (as many of us then predicted). Now Ferguson, with stiff upper lip firmly in place, admits to having observed these “interesting” realworld results, perhaps starting with the admission, “Without instituting full lockdown, Sweden is essentially getting the same effect.” (whouda thought? H/T to reader and more here) And here is a confirming update on the C19 stats from Sweden (H/T to reader). Consider this report in the context of my 16may20 commentary that also appears in today’s 3jun20 Union (here).

My ‘Unsettling ‘Settled Science’’ was published in today’s (3jun20) Union. As expected, it drew a lot of ire from our local leftwingers. Almost all of it was hard to connect with the points I made in the commentary. Some even rejected my propositions on the basis of their similarity of what they may have heard from Limbaugh, or that it “was written by a staunch trump supporter”. But a comment from George Boardman, one of our liberal thought leaders and intellects, piqued my interest. He asked why Jo Ann and I “have been sheltering in place for 70 plus days”, since my “oft-expressed skepticism of the conventional scientific wisdom”. To start with, Mr Boardman apparently is not a very careful (or comprehending?) reader of RR. From the body count alone, no one should doubt that the elderly are in the most vulnerable group. So there was no point in our going out just to solicit the infection - after all I am a Bayesian. But the main reason is that all of our outside activities were canceled and many brought online, not by us, but by the government – in short, there was no place for us to go, save to run the usual store errands which we did. However, undeterred we continued seeing our family and Nevada County friends on a regular basis – e.g. we had an ‘essential’ dinner party at our house last night – during this months-long interval of insane and conflicting dicta issuing from various government offices (see the latest from Neil Ferguson above). Boardman, flying hot, true, and normal with his fellow progressive pundits, evinces no capability of nuancing anything he sees. I have found people like that to operate in what we control engineers call ‘bang-bang mode’, their needle gets pegged at either end with no readings from the middle. But perhaps I too am missing something here. I’d like to lunch with George Boardman and have each of us really get the cut of the other’s jib.

This is what we see on the streets, and what the Democrats and the lamestream refuse to denounce.

[update] Yellow journalism on Bret Baier’s FN program. For the program’s panel tonight, Baier had assembled Ari Fleischer (Bush2 press secretary), Mara Liaisson (NPR political correspondent), and Mo Elleithee (Georgetown Institute of Politics) – a laudible 2-to-1 in favor of leftists. Subject: Trump’s threat to use military against rioters if states can’t control them. In his comments Elleithee said, “(Trump) authorizes militarized law enforcement to use excessive force against peaceful protesters.” We all expect that kind of crap out of leftwing ideologues like Elleithee and Liasson, but since Trump said no such thing (it was just one more in the Left's daily avalanche of uncounted lies), the ‘fair, balanced, and unafraid’ Baier’s next question should have been, ‘Mo, what evidence do you have that the President said any such thing? Please share it with us.’ Instead the network’s flagship anchor again showed his lily liver, and let the whole statement slide as if it were a commonly known truth. Back in older days FN journalists would not have allowed that kind of crap to just float out there unchallenged. Today their lead correspondent has taken the knee on truth, and has yet to update his closing line to ‘Feebly balanced and scared shitless.’ FN is rapidly becoming a CNN-in-training outlet.

[4jun20 update] Apropos to ‘settled science’ (here) and making decisions on the basis of ‘science not politics’, we now read the WHO has flipped on their hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) admonitions cum screed. The widely cited study ‘disproving’ the effectiveness of HCQ turns out to have been badly flawed, as attested to by 120+ scientists who examined the record. (more here) So now they’re going back to square one and resuming the trial that they prematurely aborted. And, of course, we’re all familiar with the field day the Democrats and their lamestream lackies had when during the early days of the pandemic President Trump suggested that HCQ might be something we should also examine. Don’t expect any of those sumbiches to show any remorse at their TDS-powered hipshot remonstrations.

Common Core curriculum fans rejoice. One of your aims was for the new educational initiative to “narrow the performance gap” between the high-end students and those at/near the bottom. According to both the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) the gap is being closed, not by boosting the academic performance of the low achievers, but by dumbing down the high achievers. We have reported on this many times, and now Union columnist Terry McLaughlin writes in the 3jun20 edition of the newspaper, “After decades of slow and steady improvement, reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have seen historic declines in the six years since most states implemented national Common Core English and math curriculum standards”. (more here) Bill Gates’ sponsorship of Common Core did immeasurable damage and played right into the progressives’ agenda to dumb down succeeding generations of American voters. As a humorous footnote, RR’s spam folder correctly trapped a well-known leftwing local who sought to comment on ‘Returning to Race-based College Admissions’ by declaring his ignorance of the legislature's initiative to repeal Prop209 that prohibits race-based state contracting, hiring, and admissions.

Comments

re: “This is what we see on the streets, and what the Democrats and the lamestream refuse to denounce.”

Denounce? Heck, they are all in with both feet. Imagine a post law enforcement world. Cue John Lennon’s Imagine. Imagine no thin blue line, imagine all the people...

HOW CRAZY ARE THE DEMOCRATS? THIS CRAZY

“So we see no criticism of any of the public officials who are responsible for the Minneapolis Police Department, nor do we see any acknowledgement of the fact that changing the department’s culture would require taking on a public sector union, the sanctity of which is a pillar of left-wing ideology. Instead, Gomez tries to take DFL politicians off the hook by proclaiming that improvement is impossible due to Minnesota’s history as–I take it–a slave state.

Even in the corrupt world of politics, we don’t often see dishonesty of this breathtaking magnitude.”

Posted by: Bill Tozer | 03 June 2020 at 10:22 PM

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/06/how-crazy-are-the-democrats-this-crazy-2.php

Posted by: Bill Tozer | 03 June 2020 at 10:30 PM

My my. Let’s pull the top bun up and see what’s in another Leftinista nothingburger, shall we? Oh goodness, lookie what we have here:

‘Nets Ignore Lauded Anti-Hydroxychloroquine Study Getting Shot Down’

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2020/06/04/nets-ignore-lauded-anti-hydroxychloroquine-study-getting
———
‘CNN Gave Over 90 Minutes in One Day to Now-Retracted Hydroxychloroquine Study’

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2020/06/04/cnn-gave-over-90-minutes-one-day-now-retracted-hydroxychloroquine

Psst. Mums the word. Let’s keep it our little secret.

Posted by: Bill Tozer | 04 June 2020 at 09:17 PM

International Systemic Racism is the card thrown down on the table. The trump card.

7 minutes of Dan Bongino, pretty good. What are you knelling for?