Category: folly

Looting Is a Bad Thing

“Don’t you think you’ve gotten more conservative?” HBO comedian Bill Maher says he has been asked.

“No, I haven’t,” he replies. “The left has gotten goofier.”

“Yes,” podcaster Joe Rogan agreed.

“It’s not me who has changed. I feel I’m the same guy,” Maher told Rogan. “But five years ago, we hadn’t spent six trillion dollars to stay home. Five years ago, no one was talking about abolishing the police. There was no talk about, you know, pregnant men.

“Looting was still illegal,” added Maher.

“If someone had said 20 years ago, I’m not sure looting is a bad thing,” he offered, “I would have opposed it then.”

While it’s great to see someone confront extremist nonsense when it rears its ugly head — notably, in his own tribe — it is worth noting that none of this came out of nowhere. The official, public debt of the federal government was just under $20 trillion right before the Trump era. Now it’s over $30T. Throwing money at problems was a standard Democratic mode of politicking for decades. (One embraced by Republicans, too.) And throwing money at everybody in the form of a “Universal Basic Income” was advocated for at length by Democratic candidate Andrew Yang on Maher’s own show — a mere four years ago.

Democrats also have long been accused of being “soft on criminals.” But “abolishing the police”? Sure, it’s nutty, especially as advocated by Marxists, but such notions have been percolating on campuses for 50 years.

Still, Maher sees what his fellow “liberals” cannot — that absurdity remains absurd, and funny,even when perpetrated by one’s own side. Derisive laughter usually directed at Republicans must be welcomed when aimed at the bozos in the Biden Administration — not least of whom is our befuddled Bozo-in-Chief.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly ideological culture

Stop & Go on Crime

In last week’s news conference, President Biden seemed to wave a green light to Vladimir Putin: Russian military forces may make a “minor incursion” into neighboring Ukraine. Was Biden applying to diplomacy, I wondered, the permissive posture so many other Democratic officials have taken, domestically? Crime’s fine, if small enough.

If so, Biden’s not leading — Democrats around the country are changing direction.

“We are in a crisis,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced last month, declaring a state of emergency. “Too many people are dying in this city. Too many people are sprawled all over our streets. And now we have a plan to address it.”

Her approach? Simple: End the “reign of criminals” by taking “the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement . . . and less tolerant of all the bullsh*t that has destroyed our city.”

The New York Times called it “a sharp break with the liberal conventions that have guided her city for decades.”

“About time,” was California Governor Gavin Newsom’s response.

When Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner responded to questions about rising crime by arguing, “We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence,” former Mayor Michael Nutter expressed incredulity.

“How many more Black and brown people, and others,” Nutter wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “would have to be gunned down in our streets daily to meet your definition of a ‘crisis’?”

Still, upon taking office weeks ago, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg “ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences for hordes of criminals and to downgrade felony charges in cases including armed robberies . . .” the New York Post reported.

“The identical platform,” noted a police supervisor, “has not worked out in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore.”

Or anywhere else. Ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags California, crime, Democratic Party, law enforcement, Los Angeles, San Francisco

folly insider corruption national politics & policies

Vax Con?

Is the mRNA “vaccine” push a “con job”?

“‘Confidence games’ (or ‘cons’)” are, according to scholars Barak Orbach and Lindsey Huang,* “a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct” perpetrated “to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial.”

In their paper, Orbach and Huang list a number of typical cons, noting that many “cons succeed by inducing judgment errors — chiefly, errors arising from imperfect information and cognitive biases.”

This is not an extended analysis of how a major con could be pulled off, but inducing a “mass formation psychosis,” which I’ve talked about before, is key. Government lockdowns and mask mandates have been very effective in creating pandemic hysteria, leading to government vaccination mandates.

But perhaps it is how government officials deal with data that we most clearly see the confidence game aspect.

The province of Alberta has just been caught using misdirection and disinformation to keep up the fear levels, distracting us from considering the negative impact of the vaxxes. Government officials “claim very impressive vaccine effectiveness by following the fraudulent standard set by the drug manufacturers in the pantomime clinical trials,” as the Metatron Substack page explains, “to ignore the adverse outcomes in the first two weeks post administration.”

The beneficial effects of the vaxxes, we are told, take a fortnight to go into effect. But when governments place all hospitalizations and deaths for those 14 days under the rubric of “unvaccinated,” they misinform — effectively burying negative side-effects of the promoted therapeutic. And the switcheroo is not insignificant: Alberta had counted more than half of its vaccinated deaths as unvaccinated.

Tellingly, the province took off its website the data that showed all this.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “Con Men and Their Enablers: The Anatomy of Confidence Games,” 85 Social Research 795 (2018), Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 18-27).

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Tags covid, hysteria, propaganda, psychosis, PSYOP

Accountability folly national politics & policies political economy

Whip Producers Now

The Biden administration is siccing agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Agriculture, and the Federal Maritime Commission onto the producers of stuff who have recently dared to raise prices.

Stuff like gas. Higher prices at the pump must be an oil-company conspiracy.

It has nothing to do with (and don’t even think it!) governmental actions that impede production, including shutting down the Keystone oil pipeline on Biden’s first day in office or calling a halt to new oil leases on public lands. Etcetera.

Nothing to do with mammoth expansion of the supply of money and credit to facilitate trillion-dollar government spending sprees.

In case you hadn’t noticed, meat costs more, too. So obviously that must be the fault of malicious meatpackers. Rest assured that beef price inflation is utterly unrelated to pandemic-policy-induced labor shortages and delays.

Or to any recent increase in efficiency-impairing trucking regulations.

Same with sundry supply-chain problems, like the ships and crates piling up at ports. Greater consumer demand, new pandemic-induced screening protocols, union rules that prevent ports from operating 24/7 or improving automation — all irrelevant.

Must be. That’s the script from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, anyway.

But if companies can hike prices at will, ignoring whether regulations ease or obstruct production, why doesn’t the meat industry, for example, charge a thousand dollars per pound of flesh?

Well, we know why.

Demand for a pound of ground beef would slide to zero, or close to it.

If only the government people knew!

Or would stop pretending they don’t know.

A consistent recognition of the laws of economics would sure make a great gift — in any season. Instead of bullying and making things worse, government could get out of the way.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags economics, inflation

folly general freedom nannyism national politics & policies

Faucists on the March

While many experts, including Southwest Airline’s CEO, think that the air filtration systems on jetliners are so good that wearing protective face coverings (“masks”) is pointless, our Doctor Anthony Fauci will have none of it.

When the National Institutes of Health head honcho and Big Pharma Pusher No. 1 was asked about whether we can ditch masks on airplanes, he responded predictably: no. “I think when you’re dealing with a closed space, even though the filtration is good, that you want to go that extra step. . . .” He says that even with first-rate filtration systems, “masks are a prudent thing to do, and we should be doing it.”

This was on ABC News’s This Week on Sunday.

“As Christmas approaches, COVID-19 again threatens to upend American life, driving the spread, Omicron,” ABC’s Jonathan Karl narrated. “At least 43 states now have confirmed cases of the latest and by far most contagious variant yet. On Saturday alone, New York state reported nearly 22,000 new COVID cases, breaking a single-day record set just the day before.” And then Karl mentioned total COVID deaths in the United States — but not the number of Omicron deaths.

See how the propaganda is pitched? The breathless relaying of statistics, but nothing like a sense of the science.

Contra Fauci, these once-discouraged and now-forever-exalted masks are not nearly as effective as made out. And they have severe “unintended” effects.

I put marks around “unintended” because for some people in power, the psychological effects of mandatory masks in a situation of perpetual or seasonal alarm might be the whole point: the inducement of a mass delusional psychosis. How very fascist.

We can appreciate the name “Fauci” both by rhyme and reason: Faucism is medical fascism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags authoritarianism, Dr. Fauci, fascism, masks

deficits and debt folly national politics & policies responsibility

Biden Blames Business

Inflation’s up, and President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., thinks he knows why.

Economist Bruce Yandle, famed for his “Bootleggers and Baptists” theory of regulation, reports in Reason that the aging president blamed “the country’s three largest meatpackers” for contributing to July’s CPI rate of 5.4 percent, and the fuel industry for its part in August’s 5.3 percent annualized rate.

Profiteering!

I’ve always wondered how anyone can get away with this tired old accusation. Businesspeople aim to profit at all times and in every place. Profit is why they go into business. Are they making too much inflation-adjusted profit during an inflationary period but not when inflation is low? Seems unlikely.

But Biden’s looking into it! “There’s lots of evidence that gas prices should be going down,” the prez claimed, “but they haven’t.”

What evidence? Biden presented none.

After throwing so much money into the economy to “stimulate” it after the big hit commerce has taken from state-perpetrated lockdowns, what could we expect but rising prices? “Inflation is always and everywhere,” a great economist has said, “a monetary phenomenon.”

Bruce Yandle is on that same page. Referring to Mr. Biden’s bizarre blame game, Yandle suggested that maybe — just maybe — Biden “should look inside the halls of the West Wing.”

Specifically at all the spending, like the current “$3.5 trillion spending package.” The puppet masters pulling Biden’s strings must, Yandle asserts, “be aware that calling for more spending to calm inflation is like pouring gasoline on an already smoldering fire.”

The real problem is “too much printing-press money” backing deficit spending.

Blaming excess profits? A distraction.

A big lie.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags debt, inflation, responsibility, spending

deficits and debt folly national politics & policies

Catastrophic! Calamity! The Debt

Post author By Editor
Post date September 28, 2021
2 Comments on Catastrophic! Calamity! The Debt

“Once again, the stability of the U.S. financial system is at risk,” warned CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper, “thanks to political brinksmanship in Congress.

“If lawmakers do not act, the federal government will shut down this week. And, next month, the Treasury secretary says, the U.S. will not be able to pay its bills . . . which . . . could be catastrophic for the U.S. economy.”

Incredulous, Tapper further bemoaned, “that has not convinced a single Republican lawmaker to get on board to raise the debt ceiling.”

But he made the mistake of inviting retiring U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) on the Sunday program.*

“[O]n combining the debt ceiling increase or suspension with the continuing operations of the government,” Toomey declared his vote is NO.

“And there is no calamity that’s going to happen, Jake.”

Toomey explained that “after Republicans vote no, Chuck Schumer is going to do what he could have done months ago, what he could have done weeks ago, what he could do tomorrow, and that is, he will amend the budget resolution so that Democrats can pass the debt ceiling all by themselves.”

Noting that Democrats were “in the midst of an absolutely unprecedented, very damaging spending spree on a scale that we have never seen,” Toomey emphatically refused to “authorize the borrowing to help pay for it.”

Over the weekend, a Washington Post editorial attacked Republicans for being “unwilling to lift a finger to avoid financial calamity,” while excusing Democrats.

“For their part,” The Post justified, “Democrats . . . want the same political cover they gave Republicans during Mr. Trump’s presidency by raising the debt limit in a bipartisan fashion.”

The nation’s newspaper of record in full-throated advocacy of political cover.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Sen. Toomey has been a stalwart term limits supporter in Congress. He leaves having kept a pledge to serve only six years in the House, left the Congress for six years before winning a Senate seat and now stepping down after two terms in the U.S. Senate.

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Tags budget, Pat Toomey, Senate, spending

folly general freedom media and media people

Where We Are Now

Two young people, a high school girl and a college man, have two very different COVID stories, but both reveal where we are right now in the pandemic.

“Abby Chenoweth was a healthy 16-year-old,” writes Emily Walker for MSN. “The Titusville teen took virtual school classes and wore a face mask when she left the house. Her mom said she didn’t have pre-existing conditions, and she didn’t go out often.”

The report goes on to focus on her horrific COVID case, and readers’ hearts go out to her. But that opening paragraph is bald-faced lie.

Or at least a “white lie.” You decide.

You see, Abby Chenoweth is obese. She is obviously so in the photos provided by her mother. And not merely a “little bit” overweight.

Our hearts break all the same, but her obesity is a “pre-existing condition.” We knew early on that COVID can be devastating for the overweight.

The article does not once mention her corpulence. Were it not for the photos, readers wouldn’t have a clue. They would read Abby’s mother’s mask apologia at the end as an earnest and honest plea.

Next to Ms. Chenoweth’s harrowing story, and the see-through propaganda made out of it, 22-year-old Logan Hollar’s story is comic. The title delivers the punch line: “Rutgers student says he’s being stopped from taking virtual classes because he’s not vaccinated,” Karen Price Mueller’s piece summarizes.

“I believe in science, I believe in vaccines,” cautions Mr. Hollar’s stepfather, “but I am highly confident that COVID-19 and variants do not travel through computer monitors by taking online classes.”

Do the professors and administrators at Rutgers know that?

COVID craziness seems more infectious than COVID itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo Credit: crazy person

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Tags covid, hysteria, pandemic, panic, vaccine

folly international affairs

Done to the Dogs

It shouldn’t have happened.

Shire councils should not be killing dogs “to prevent volunteers at a Cobar-based animal shelter from travelling to pick up the animals.”

But that’s what happened. The Bourke Shire Council in the New South Wales region of Australia shot and killed several dogs, including a new mother, that were about to be picked up and taken to an animal shelter.

An Office of Local Government reported that the council did this “to protect its employees and community, including vulnerable Aboriginal populations, from the risk of COVID-19 transmission.”

We all know that shelters sometimes put down animals when the shelter cannot find a home for them.

This wasn’t that. The council’s action wasn’t a reluctant last resort. It was a first resort.

It was, the argument runs, about preventing volunteers from going from here to there in the ordinary course of their work, work that has not been discontinued for the duration of the pandemic.

The council’s action is an example of what happens when fear displaces common sense. The thwarted shelter volunteers, who love animals and volunteer precisely to prevent needless killing, are distressed. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that they had safety measures in place to deal with the pandemic while getting the dogs.

This isn’t the worst kind of thing going on in this world, obviously.

But you don’t have to be an animal rights activist to be appalled by the viciousness of the conduct.

And it does serve as a marker for the callousness and crazed panic of politicians in the current crisis. What else might they do?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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shelter dog

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Tags Australian, covid, hysteria, panic

folly ideological culture

Peak Absurdity

We have gone on beyond nonsense. Theodore Geisel — Dr. Seuss — whimsically drew and rhymed his way into our hearts. But owners of his copyrights and trademarks have announced that they will no longer keep in print a handful of Seussiana, including And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, and On Beyond Zebra!

“These books portray people,” says a press release from “Seussville,” “in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”

The objection appears to be that caricatures of Chinese and Africans and others are based on stereotypes and, therefore, “hurtful.”

After retrieving your rolled eyes from deep within their sockets, recognize that cartoons and caricatures rely upon stereotypes. Which is why I still own copies of the first two books on the list and will not hesitate to read them and show the pictures to any child of any race or ethnicity who might be interested.

While the woke guardians of the Seuss brand have every right to cease publication — just as eBay, the trading platform, possesses the right to prohibit sale of used copies — this is historic. The woke social justice crowd have pushed their mania past absurdity.

Not, alas, a funny, Seussian absurdity.

His very liberal voice, favoring individuality, diversity and just being nice, was utterly at odds with the implied calumny from the corporation that bears his pen name.

But I do hear chanting in the background: “boil that dust speck!” (A great line from Horton Hears a Who.) Seuss developed his case against intolerance and mob mania in a number of works, most of them not deprecated by his heirs, thankfully.

Kids who read them possess the tools to understand the whys of woke nonsense.

Pity that the adults in charge do not.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags cancel culture, censorship, Dr. Seuss, free speech