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Home » Open thread 8/22/22

Open thread 8/22/22

The New Neo Posted on by

This guy not only has a gift for languages – lots of languages – he also has a gift for making friends:

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Open thread 8/22/22 — 90 Comments

  6. Kurt Schlichter takes a flamethrower to Mike Pence for his Garlandesque defense of the FBI:
    _________________________

    You just can’t accept what time it is. The FBI, Crusty Joe’s personal Stasi, invades President Trump’s home – they rifle through his wife’s panty drawer — and …

    Mike Pence then tells us we need to go easy on the Bureau flunkies who did the deed because, after all, the institution is full of good apples. Yeah, good apples.

    https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/08/22/wake-up-flaccidcons–its-not-2005-anymore-n2612038
    _________________________

    Lately I’ve been seeing that “What time it is” meme. It’s a good one. I’m not sure who started it. Here’s Dave Reaboi on the matter:
    _________________________

    There’s an essential question many friends and I ask, when discussing a potential ally: “Does he know what time it is?” That is, does one have the ability to be unsentimental and realistic in assessing our current situation. Does he understand the predicament we’re in, with a left that’s already marched through the institutions? Does he accept the impossibility or the extreme unlikelihood of “returning” to anything resembling even the America of the 1990s?

    https://davereaboi.com/what-time-is-it-the-claremont-institute-alumni-interview/
    _________________________

    This is exactly the problem with the NeverTrump cons.

  7. I think I have seen videos with same guy speaking Mandarin. Incredible talent and learning discipline.

  8. Well, the issue of scientific dogma came up on an earlier thread. It is a little difficult to disentangle real dogma from what the popular press would like you to believe is dogma. I really don’t know how pervasive this is in the real sciences. I know there are plenty of climate/environmental scientists who routinely challenge climate models and conclusions. For what it’s worth, it doesn’t really surprise me that 1000 scientists might sign that.

  10. I guess the those on the Left have come to the conclusion that, since they have infiltrated, taken over, and “fundamentally transformed” every major center of power in the U.S., they can new openly declare their real aims.

    Thus, this Op-Ed in the New York Times by two Ivy League Professors titled, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed”

    See https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/08/22/ivy-league-professors-reclaim-america-from-broken-constitution/

  11. I know there are plenty of climate/environmental scientists who routinely challenge climate models and conclusions.

    Mike Plaiss:

    What matters is the degree of challenge. Sure, the boys at RealClimate will debate a few percentage points here or there, but watch how they treat Judith Curry or Bjorn Lomborg.

  12. carrying over, if we had institutions which were not corrupted root and branch, if the military staff was not at war with the people, if the schools did not teach children to hate their country, their very biology, then we could prevail,

  14. Kate, thanks for that link. Not surprising Lindzen is in the lead. I signed a similar effort about 12 years ago, but of course it had no effect. I’ve asked to sign this one also, but I fear the effect will also be the same.

  15. The Euro cracks through parity, only worth 99c. One analyst quoted by Reuters suggests 95c as a stable spot shorter term.

  16. Some related points:

    1. The corrupt and incompetent climate science is just a subset of the corruption and incompetence that afflicts all of academia. E.g. the same issues that made Covid science worthless and destructive infect climate science and make it worthless and destructive. It’s even worse in the social sciences. And it reflects the corruption and incompetence that permeate our universities.

    2. This corruption and incompetence afflicts most of our institutions — government, law, medicine, military, news media, churches, etc. And the affliction is made much, much worse for all of us because we have a fetish for embracing “experts” and expertise that isn’t.

    3. We shouldn’t be surprised when several generations of professors and students have been taught that there is no such thing as truth.

    4. A big casualty in all this is an understanding of the importance of process and the diminution of the importance of humility (personally and institutionally).

    We could write several books on all this. But …

    — The vast majority of science studies are flawed. John Ioannidis does a good job of explaining all the reasons why we know this. The important one to focus on is the lack of any quality process. Peer review is not a quality process. Never intended to be and never has been. Understand this because it is crucial — no one ever checks anyone else’s work. There’s no grant money for it and science is nothing but a grant-seeking business.

    If you aren’t familiar with how awful science is check out the Bayer and Amgen replication horrors involving studies from the top two science journals in the world, Nature and Science. Or check out the Fraser Institute report by McKitrick and McCullough. If you have no familiarity with this mess, it will make you sick. Or read the old posts on Climate Audit by Steve McIntyre.

    We have a huge replication scandal in academia. Even worse, the supposedly intelligent academics have been swimming in a river of incompetence and corruption for so long they don’t seem to be able to understand it fully. The hockey stick by Michael Mann botched every aspect possible. He used data he knew was bad. He used some of it upside down. He botched the programming of the principal component analysis he did. His results failed verification stats. He basically pasted on different data to his graph and erased a key part of the graph that contradicted the story he wanted to tell. And no one, not even his co-authors, ever checked any of his work until years later when a non-scientist became curious about what all the Hockey Stick hype was about. The most prestigious science institutions around the world endorsed the hockey stick and encouraged governments to mandate trillions in costs and spending on the basis of “science” that is complete garbage because no one could be bothered to check the work.

    The problems with the Hockey Stick exist for the temperature data sets, the climate models, the brain dead stupid polar bear study that the EPA relies on for so much of its damaging regulation, and all the rest of climate science. Covid science is just as bad. And the censorship, cancel culture, and propaganda machine just ratchet up the mess exponentially.

  17. A critical issue for any who want to expose and cleanse this rot is the reality that so many of us make a living and derive our sense of self-esteem on our status as educated “experts”. We don’t want to turn over the rock because doing so would also cast doubt on our own credentials.

    We went to school and ingested what we were taught. We excelled at puking it back up and getting our pats on the head for being brilliant. All we really knew was whatever the “experts” told us was fact. Few of us ever do the actual work of discovery. We merely ‘know’ what we’ve been told.

    If what we’ve been told is wrong, what value do we add? What value do we have? Once you become aware of the problem, you can see it everywhere. The data is generally awful. In most fields. I have a friend who loves to parse through political polls. His expertise has provided work for him in some campaigns. For years he resisted acknowledging what has become obvious — the vast majority of political polls are corrupt and/or incompetent. If his raw material is bad, his product is bad. Hard to swallow. You can see this same dynamic play out every day in the financial markets. It’s everywhere.

    Most psych counseling is awful. Some is counterproductive. Same with medicine. Our doctors just prescribe drugs and perform surgery when the problems continue to get worse. We don’t address the causes. We just apply ever more expensive band aids. A whole lot of financial advice is far more expensive than it’s worth. Same for law. Or journalism. Or most other fields. And none of the people who profit from the mess have any interest in improving it.

    Our society has an extremely unhealthy fetish for expertise. Our “best and brightest” have no interest or motivation to call out the scam.

  18. Learned pig Latin and Double Dutch languages in 7th grade.
    Had a beautiful, large breasted Puerto Rican Spanish teacher in 8th grade. spent more time fantasizing about her than paying attention.

  19. 5/21/2021, interview, Michael Millerman of Alexander Dugin (1:39:05), target of assassination yesterday who lost his 30 yr old daughter to a car bomb: Interview

  20. they told the epidemic tracking team had been disbanded, they didn’t tell us they were on the ground floor, of designing the virus through gain of function, they said there was a plan for afghanistan, well where did it go, they told us of ephemeral bounties, as if the taliban, needed incentive to kill us,

  21. BTW, they make a big deal of the guy speaking Yoruba.

    Not to say it’s not good, but there is a reason that College Football players who need a language credit (and aren’t enamored with learning a new language) go with Yoruba. It’s supposed to be the very simplest of all the “commonly available academic languages”, e.g., it is by far the easiest, with the simplest grammar and vocabulary.

    I suppose many don’t know this any more.

  22. This guy reminds me of my son X-boy. He has a real talent for speaking languages. He was speaking Georgian in 2 days having mastered the alphabet in one day. Chinese, Japanese, Russian and a multitude of others. He has a real knack for languages and as Neo infers is a doorway to making friendships. You should see the pleased look on those who are addressed in their native languages. One of his best friends is Nigerian – I will ask him how his Yoruba is coming along.

  24. I did look for your name, physicsguy, and nice to know if I check again in a few days, it will be there.

    This is similar to the Great Barrington Declaration coming from physicians and epidemiologists. Its approach has proved to be better than what most places in the US did, and more and more people are realizing that.

    With the very sad examples of Ghana, Sri Lanka now showing how bad this Zero Carbon movement is for actual people, and with the Netherlands and Canada beginning to follow suit, to their great detriment, what I hope is that this time around a declaration of common sense and good science about climate may gain some traction.

  25. Dr. Fauci will leave his government posts, including the White House, in December, the Epoch Times reports.

  27. Very well put, Stan. The question is, how do we change? 1000 scientists signing a declaration that climate change is not a crisis is a start. But if the MSM won’t t publish it, will anyone know or care? Polls show that climate change is way down on the average person’s list of, priorities, but it makes no difference. The so-called Inflation Reduction Act will spend many billions of near-worthless renewables and propaganda about climate change

    Few people seem to have open enough minds to question everything – especially what we’ve been taught. Our society has become so complex that few people have knowledge of many issues. Thus, the tendency to look to experts for guidance.

    I understand the greed involved in scientists looking for grants. Certainly, there would be more money available issues that are threatening all of humanity. So, hyping your area of research pays off.

    The Covid response is, IMO, a n example of how things go off track. Yet, even today, with a lot of real-world experience and data, the experts are still touting vaccinations and masks and totally ignoring therapeutics. Today, there are 70 people in my county hospitalized with Covid with 4 on ventilators. My question is how this happens when we have proven therapeutic treatments? I would expect more like a half dozen people in hospital with our present knowledge and experience. The MSM goes along and never questions the obvious inconsistencies and fallacies that the experts put out.

    Very frustrating.

  28. Dr. Fauci will leave his government posts, including the White House, in December, the Epoch Times reports.

    Unless my source is bad, Fauci was born on 24 December 1940 and has been employed by the federal government since July 1968, bar one year.

    In a sensible world, he would have been eligible to retire and draw on his pension in December of 2006 and mandated to retire and do so in July of 2009. He should have been compelled by law to relinquish his position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases no later than 2 November 1996.

    And the quantum of grant money he’d have had a franchise to distribute during his decades of federal employment should have been nil.

    And the number of patents for which he was due royalties would also be nil.

    Our government is not run on sensible principles.

  29. }}} Our society has an extremely unhealthy fetish for expertise.

    The problem is not with expertise. It’s with Credentialism.

    The idea that “I have this piece of paper that certifies that I know what I am doing.”

    This is an issue when much of the nature of things has to do with applying that book learning in the Real World. THAT is where true expertise comes from, not the pieces of paper alone.

    And that is what is missing in the world, a recognition of experience applied to the credentials.

    The credential merely says, “I have mastered the base principles of my field.” It says nothing about your mastery of the actual practice of those principles in the field.

    This is why doctors don’t hang up a shingle right out of med school, but need to do internships for years after, and even then often spend still more years working with a mentor.

  30. Sundance continues to make the case that the GOPe isn’t interested in winning.

    […] “the GOP (club) would rather lose to Democrats than lose control of the [club] to it’s base.” Electability boils down to the right kind of approved candidate.”

    I would imagine many here have already been drawn to this conclusion, that the GOPe does not have the interests of middle Americans at heart. Now is the time for a new Contract With America. A pledge by Republican congresspeople and candidates to promote legislation that will continue the policies of the first term of President Trump– fiscal responsibility, controlled immigration policies that stop illegal immigration, trade policies that recognize reciprocal trade is in the best interest of both parties, and restoring the federal government to it’s constitutional role and allow state governments to flourish. Now is a time from a leader like Newt Gingrich to come forward in congress.

    “….In the biggest of big pictures, the important issues for the club to control surround trade, finance and economic policy. There are trillions at stake. The multinationals and Wall Street in general would both benefit from the elimination of a political movement based on America-First national economic policy (ie. Main Street USA).

    The common bond amid all of the diversity within the Trump coalition is the working-class economic connection. No other republican politician of significance has any national economic outlook unfavorable to the multinational corporations who finance the club priority. The only economic nationalist in the republican party is Donald Trump. Remove him and the America-First policy is removed with him.”

    “Let us also not be naïve or intellectually dishonest with each other. The decision on whether to indict or not indict Donald Trump is going to be made by Democrats and Republicans alike.”

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/08/22/a-potential-republican-club-midterm-strategy-nationalize-the-january-2021-georgia-outcome/#more-236807

  31. Thus, this Op-Ed in the New York Times by two Ivy League Professors titled, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed”

    The constitution has its problems. The authors have no interest in addressing the problems incorporated within its architecture, much less undertake the necessary co-operation with others to do so. They just want to stomp on other people and dislike the legal impediments. I suppose it is jejune to point out that you throw out the rule book, you’re gonna have to mix it up.

  32. }}} Our government is not run on sensible principles.

    Not sure it has ever been, nor was it intended to be “sensible” (in terms of efficiency, anyway), but yeah, it’s been severely out of whack since 1900-1910.

  33. Both Doerfler and Moyn are contributors to The Nation and Dorfler has had as a co-author the ruined fellow named Elie Mystal. Both are tenured, one at Harvard, the other Yale. Would the commonweal be worse off if the Air National Guard in Massachusetts and in Connecticut reduced Harvard and Yale to parking lot status?

  34. Not sure it has ever been, nor was it intended to be “sensible” (in terms of efficiency, anyway),

    Are you ever sober when you post?

  35. Brian E:

    Sundance plays right into the left’s hands.

    I’ve written about this phenomenon over and over again. If a person wants to criticize a list of particular GOP members and to primary them, fine. But this lumping the whole party together with general terms and basically saying they’re all duplicitous cowards in league with the Democrats is both garbage and highly counter-productive. It leads to a lot of people on the right concluding there is no difference between the parties and therefore there is no point in voting.

    A GOP party composed purely of appropriately conservative members will be a minority party with little to no power.

    By the way, I would like to see McConnell replaced in his leadership position. Others such as Romney need to leave GOP politics, as far as I’m concerned, and that’s realistic because he is from Utah, a red state, and would almost certainly be successfully replaced by a more conservative candidate. That is not the case for a lot of GOPe members.

    Sundance’s prescription is a recipe for a powerless but more pure GOP. We don’t have time for that.

  36. I join in being a fan of Stan. Well said. The pattern of top down insistence of realities which don’t make sense but are curated by “experts” is spreading farther and farther. Every piece of our lives is politicized.

    Here’s one that is sure to come to your neighborhood sooner or later
    From my garbage company:
    “We are reaching out to you to let you know about a new law, SB 1383, that requires all California residences and businesses to recycle their food scraps and yard trimming beginning 2022. The purpose of this state law is to help keep organics out of the landfill which reduces the impacts of methane gas on climate change.”

    There will be new bins delivered and “billing changes” later in the year.

    For reasons I don’t understand there will be separate containers for food scraps and yard waste.

  38. “I understand the greed involved in scientists looking for grants. Certainly, there would be more money available issues that are threatening all of humanity. So, hyping your area of research pays off.”

    JJ, I don’t think it’s greed on the scientist’s part. It has much more to do with the academic system, especially at any university. All scientists at any university must do research AND support graduate students in order just to retain their job, ie tenure. Fail to do that, and after 6 years you’re gone. Don’t continue to do that after tenure and there will be no promotion and a lot of pressure to “move on” to a different school.

    So how did this happen?? I blame it entirely on two things: the government funding agencies allowing “indirect costs”, and then administrators discovering those indirect costs as a cash cow that doesn’t require any effort on their part except to pressure the sciences to “pay up”. My God, even at my small New England undergrad college it evolved. When I first started, there was no research required, just excellent teaching. Then the administration heard about the money involved in science research, and by the time I retired, every scientist was required to at least get some funding, and to support a few students. And I know many people at the university level who have to play this game, or the only other option is a government lab for physics.

    The schools “negotiate” indirect costs with the funding agencies, and can amount up to 60-70% of the total. For example, a physicist needs say $300k for equipment and supplies for 4 years, and $600k to support 5 grad students for those years. the school then adds in, say, another $630k (70% IDC) for a total grant of $1530k. That IDC of $630k just rolls into the school’s coffers and the administrators are thrilled.

  39. Sundunce says …. a lot. Some like him, IIRC about 5 years ago Mark Levin took Sundunce to the woodshed.

    Some don’t like Mark Levin but he has never been GOPe or shy about being a conservative or a champion for the Constitution.

    People who live in treehouses, may be a bit nuts.

  40. Dr. Fauci will leave his government posts, including the White House, in December, the Epoch Times reports.

    Can we count on him staying retired?

  42. PA Cat, he says he’s moving on to the “next phase” of his career, which should cause all of us to worry.

  43. Neo @ 2:49pm:

    Like others, including perhaps you as well (I think), I lost interest in the Conservative Treehouse, and finally just deleted it from my Bookmarks. His purity will defeat us all, and when he turned on DeSantis recently because DeSantis wasn’t fire and brimstone enough for him about Mar-A-Lago I just washed my hands of Sundance. Even though perfection, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, has he never heard that the perfect is the enemy of the good?

  44. Telemachus; om:

    Yes, I wrote about his DeSantis attack in comments to this post. There was a fairly lengthy back-and-forth there about it.

    I never was a sundance fan, however. I actually forget why, but something seemed off to me at that site and I never became a regular reader.

  45. Neo,
    Sundance does call out McConnell and the Republican leadership.
    Would his argument be more palatable if he called out the Rockefeller Republicans, or Country Club Republicans?

    The name has changed over the years, but populist conservative values have been given only lip service by the Republican party, while the agenda of the Chamber of Commerce/Wall St. favoring cheap labor/cheap stuff continues to advance.
    Remember the lip service the Republican congress made to building a border wall in 2006, ironically named the Secure Fence Act of 2006? Much like the current “Inflation Reduction Act” of 2022, it was typical political gamesmanship.

    Social conservatism/free trade corporatism tension has always been a feature of the Republican party.

    Then President Trump came along with his populist agenda, upsetting the tension, and the CoC/Wall St globalists are fighting back. While there is now a natural affinity between the CoC/WS globalists and the left, the struggle remains in the Republican party. Does that mean holding your nose and voting for a candidate that doesn’t represent your ideal? Yes. But at least we need to be honest with one another, or as Sundance puts it not naive or intellectually dishonest.

    And he puts DeSantis into that camp. Which, I suspect, rankles you as much as anything he said. I’ve made my position clear on that, which I will repeat.

    It’s too early to jettison President Trump. If he chooses to run, he will be the Republican candidate for 2024. If he is indicted for a political showtrial and runs, he would probably still be the Republican candidate for 2024.
    In either case, can he be elected? We’ll have a better sense of that after the midterms. If candidates endorsed by Trump, especially in the battleground states, do well I would suggest that’s a proxy for Trump’s favorability in 2024.

    As to why Sundance is coming down hard on DeSantis– it’s just politics. If you listened to his speech in Arizona, it’s pretty obvious he’s laying the ground work for a run, and at this point, Sundance is making sure some of the support for Trump doesn’t peel off to DeSantis. Especially given the uncertainty (which Sundance doesn’t think is uncertainty) to where DeSantis stands on key economic and foreign policy issues.

    I like how Sundance attempts to connect the dots. Do the dots always paint a picture or just random scribbling? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

  46. That video was great. I was amused to note that a common reaction of the Nigerians he spoke to was to pull out their phones and start recording him. I think they felt that if they did not have him on video no one would believe them when they told their friends about him.

  47. Telemachus,
    Even if Sundance doesn’t draw the proper conclusions, I would suggest he is always entertaining, and most often informative.

    I still read Hot Air and Allahpundit and Ann Coulter, among others. If we don’t read those we disagree with, how do we form arguments to their POV?
    I always read Christopher Hitchens, even though I disagree with 95% of what he wrote.

    Speaking of good writing, I always enjoy David Warren at Essays in Idleness.

    “In the future, unless you are a member of the ruling class, you will surrender your home and move into an apartment; you will give up your car and take buses and trains; you will stop eating meat and begin eating insects (and highly-processed vegetable matter for a treat). You will submit to rationing for water and energy. And you will be happy.
    For only if you can present yourself as delighted with the imposition of green fascism, will your bank account not be cancelled, and all the government’s “gifts” taken back. As in the heroic age of communism, you will have only one human right. That is the right to be annihilated when you step out of line.”

    https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/

  48. I suspect that the nigerian immigrants are a bit less surprised that he speaks their language than that a white american would trouble themselves to learn nigerian.

  49. that a white american would trouble themselves to learn nigerian.

    There is no such language. I think about 2/3 of the population speaks at home one of the four or five leading languages.

  50. I never was a sundance fan, however. I actually forget why, but something seemed off to me at that site and I never became a regular reader.

    Ditto

  51. Huh.. this declaration has Ivar Giaever as a lead signatory. He was a professor of physics in the next building over from where I was doing my rather half-hearted PhD work.

    Xylourgos, will your boy be an X-Man when he grows up?

    JimNorCal, don’t ban Stan’s fans, man. Jan and Nan can tan.

  52. Miguel cervantes,
    “You get the notion they want to extinguish all life on this planet.

    Not at all. Its just to both save the planet and save humanity, the world’s population must be brought down to a sustainable level. Which we’ve been told by the WEF ‘experts’ is in the neighborhood of a reduction to 500 million.

    As otherwise, “what shall we do with all of these (soon to be) useless people?”

    From your link.
    “In 2019 Rollins made headlines as District Attorney. The Soros-funded radical announced new orders for police officers who are no longer allowed to arrest people for shoplifting, for breaking and entering, for destruction of property/vandalism, for resisting arrest, for disturbing the peace, and for drug offenses.”

    A corrupt judicial system refuses to hold these ideological fanatics accountable for what they enable. Which ensures that, sooner or later they will be held accountable by ‘extrajudicial’ parties. Do on to ideological fanatics, as they do on to you.

    JimNorCal,

    I expect the euro to fall much more when winter arrives. Those who short the euro are likely to do very well indeed.

    Art Deco,

    “Our government is not run on sensible principles.

    The majority of humanity has yet to conduct themselves upon “sensible principles”. Sensible governance must account for that reality. The reponsiveness of the House, the deliberative nature of the Senate is a brilliant balancing in accounting for humanity’s lack of sensibleness. Our tripartite coequal branches, when adhered to have yet to be surpassed. Not satisfied with the best that pragmatic considerations allow, the left’s true believers would discard it and roll the dice in a bid to achieve utopia. Of necessity, attempts at utopia end badly. This time in the aftermath, all that assisted in the attempt must be held to account.

  53. https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/21/the-worst-and-the-stupidest/

    VDH nails it.

    “money and education certification were no longer synonymous with any sense of competency or expertise. Just the opposite often became true. Those who thought up some of the most destructive, crackpot, and dangerous policies in American history were precisely those who were degreed and well-off and careful to ensure they were never subject to the destructive consequences of their own pernicious ideologies.”

  55. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/aug/21/all-republicans-are-now-terrorists/

    “A free society that remains silent while George Orwell‘s “1984” unfolds before its very eyes will not remain free.”

    “Dietrich Bonhoeffer once warned that “silence in the face of evil is evil is evil itself.” Half of the American people have just been told we are a “domestic terrorist cell.” Silence in the face of this oligarchical power grab is complicity in our demise as well as our country’s. “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless.”

  57. neo correctly states a grim truth, “A GOP party composed purely of appropriately conservative members will be a minority party with little to no power.”

    Which leaves the consequential reality that truly meaningful cultural and political reform hasn’t the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of prevailing.

    America: 25% progressive, 25% useful idiots, 25% sheep and 25% patriots.

    Leaving the only hope that the left’s ‘progressive’ policies will so wreck the country that they condemn themselves to permanent political irrelevance. Personally, I think that unlikely. As socialism’s seductiveness rests upon getting a ‘free’ lunch.

    If so, it begs the question; is life so precious that the loss of liberty is preferable to having “to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”?

  58. The majority of humanity has yet to conduct themselves upon “sensible principles”. Sensible governance must account for that reality – and everything that came after… yes, yes, and more yes.

    All very Augustinian, and the older I get the more I recognize his brilliance. Humans suck, thus restrict their power over you. This is the trick. And the constitution has done that better than anything else yet.

  59. I don’t read much of Sundance’s work either, but my take is slightly different. I don’t think his intention is to be de-motivational, I think he is actually trying to accomplish the opposite – to get people energized enough to do something. Unfortunately, although he is far from being right all of the time, he is correct about pessimistic outcomes a substantial portion of the time and can be valuable at identifying unfolding circumstances before they become common knowledge.

    I think he hopes that voters will apply pressure to wavering Republicans to keep them on the straight and narrow. That is the losing battle in these times, unfortunately. Although we live in the information age, nobody has the time to sift through the data overload, reading bills before they are brought to a vote (for instance), or alerting the public to other chicaneries that take place in Congress. But Sundance’s fait accompli outlook on matters sours me enough to where I just don’t follow him very much.

  60. Thanks for the explanation of the grant game in academia, physics guy. Would it be possible if the government wasn’t flinging all that money around? Shades of Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex. Now it’s also the government academia complex.

    That said, I still think the Warmers have overhyped their “science” mostly for financial gain. Hopefully, they will have to live with rationing of electricity and other energy juts like the rest of us when the Biden energy policies kick in. May they freeze their butts in their dimly lit academic offices and have to burn their cash grants for heat. 🙂

  61. By the way, this is the Republican leadership that Sundance is so incensed about.
    Karl Rove. Fast forward to about 4:30.
    Karl Rove has all but convicted Donald Trump of illegally taking classified documents, blaming any problems Republican senate candidates have had on gaining traction on the President. It’s on Fox, which has mostly become the anti-Trump Republican channel.
    One of the first things you had to learn about media accusations of wrong doing by Trump– wait a few days and the facts slowly drip out.
    A WSJ opinion piece today– “The Trump Warrant Had No Legal Basis “

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edTFpFjejbY

  62. And Karl Rove was significant and relevant to the Republican party in 2012, at least when I consider it. But that’s just me, I’m not Sundance or Somedunce (harsh and exaggerating 😉 ).

  63. Geoffrey Britain @ 5:03pm,

    I think you have the most of it. I have worked in many foreign countries and always learn some of the local language (more on that later), but in several of the countries the locals were less impressed by my efforts than completely dumbfounded. In some non-economic powerhouse countries all the locals were putting efforts into learning English and could not fathom why a native speaker like me would bother with their language at all.

    And, although I find foreign language learning fun, I could understand their point. I’ve noticed a huge difference, even in my short lifetime. English is such a Universal language. The Internet states it’s the most common “second” language by country. It’s the second language in 55 countries and French is next with 14. But if one includes third or fourth language, English must be even more dominant. I can’t recall the last time I met a non-native English speaker who knew a foreign* language and did not include English in their quiver.

    *And I mean “foreign.” Not one of the many Hindi or Farsi or Chinese dialects. I’ve met people who claim to know dozens of those. By that measure I suppose I also speak British, New Zealandish, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Australian and maybe Texan and Bostonian.

  64. When I married my wife I put a lot of effort into learning her and her family’s native tongue, German. This was in my late 20s. I finally made it, but there were a lot of mis-steps along the way. I had also had some Spanish, Latin and Italian instruction prior. Once I finally cracked the code with German and started traveling to foreign countries I found those missteps and eventual success equipped me with a pretty quick short-hand to crack the code on most languages, rather quickly. I’ve even written it out for several friends who were trying to learn foreign languages.

    There are a few pages of rules I codified, too many to list here, but not really too overwhelming. The three most important things are; 1: completely ignore/forget any dignity, self-respect or embarrassment. It’s like playing an instrument or making love, the more nervous you are the worse it’s going to go and the longer it will take for you to get good. 2. learn the alphabet and learn how to pronounce the letters and read every word you encounter. Unlike English, most all languages are phonetic. You’re on an elevator. You’ll see a word next to a two digit number. Spell out it and say it. Congratulations! You just learned the word for “occupancy.” You’ll recognize so many words from context on subways, in grocery stores, hotel lobbies, street signs. If you can pronounce the alphabet you can learn the words and you can increase your vocabulary very quickly. 3. speak to native speakers every chance you get and use as many words as you know as often as you can. You see the guy in the video doing this and his conversation partners help him remember words he has forgotten and learn words he doesn’t know. Conversing with locals is an exponential boost to learning a foreign language as opposed to silent study and reading.

    I have a list of verbs, nouns and helper words that are super essential and I look up the foreign equivalents before my plane lands. About 15 verbs and 100 nouns go along way, along with adjectives and a few adverbs. I memorize basic adjectives in opposite pairs; high/low, expensive/cheap, fat/thin… It’s very easy and natural to memorize them in pairs like that. And then some key phrases; how much does this cost? do you know where…? Basic weather phrases, days of the week and numbers. Counting is typically quick to learn and comes in super handy.

    And then, just like the guy in the video, get out there and talk to people! Make mistakes and learn.

  65. JJ and physicsguy,

    About 10 – 15 years ago I read an interview of a STEM professor (I think at Purdue) who was trying to get a journalist to understand the negative changes he was seeing on campus. He walked the journalist around and pointed to the STEM buildings and facilities, which hadn’t changed much in his time there, including academic staff, then he pointed to row after row of new, administrative buildings. He said, none of these buildings or functions were here when I started and I have no idea what these people do, but we taught Science and Engineering just as well then as we do now.

    His point being that administration had grown exponentially and he didn’t understand why, or what role they played in the education of students.

  66. Re: “Do you know what time it is?”

    That took me back to Chicago, the band, when they were first known as Chicago Transit Authority. (Wiki tells me they shortened their name to avoid a lawsuit from the real CTA.)

    “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” was a single of their first album, and quite a lovely song it was too.

    –“Chicago Transit Authority – Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” (1968)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uy0ldI_1HA

    There’s a longish classical piano intro but about 90 seconds in it cranks up the the patented Chicago horns-rock-vocal recipe.

    Boy. Hard to beat that early Chicago sound!

    However, in my mind that linked to a cut several down on the LP — straight off the bleeding front page of that bloody year.

    –Chicago Transit Authority, “Prologue, August 29, 1968 (2002 Remaster)”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6uvdRsiTMs

    08/29/68 was the date of the infamous clash between the Chicago police and the anti-Vietnam-War protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which selected Hubert Humphrey to run against Richard Nixon and lose by a tiny margin.

    Some say the horror of that riot on the front pages lost Humphrey the election and backfired terribly on the anti-war movement.

    In any event “Prologue” isn’t really a song. It’s from the news recording of an anti-war chant at that Dem convention:
    _________________________

    The whole world is watching…
    The whole world is watching…
    The whole world is watching…
    _________________________

    I thought of that song on J6. Though I didn’t believe the whole world was watching. But it was a feeling I remembered.

    Do you know what time it is?

  68. As a child raised by beatniks, then turned hippie, then leftist activist, I know the feeling of being a member of an embattled minority persecuted by an unprincipled federal government.

    It’s weird to be on the conservative side. It’s deja vu all over again!

    I don’t know what to tell you. Not much of what I learned as a beatnik/hippie/leftist applies well to conservatives.

    Except — have faith, stick to your principles, things change and maybe faster than you expect.
    _____________________________

    Be fearless and undaunted, for go where you may, Yahweh your God is with you.
    –Joshua, 1:9

  70. huxley:

    Kind of like my real estate history: buyer in a seller’s market, seller in a buyer’s market. 🙂

  71. Griffin:

    So what do you think?

    My bet is Russia will take Ukraine and be devastated by sanctions and its own contradictions.

    Those outcomes are not contradictory.

  72. neo:

    I think you are a person of faith in your own particular way as I am.

    I do appreciate that you have made your journey and have created a national forum in which you shared it.

  73. Thanks for the anecdote, Rufus T.

    When I was in Geology school, my profs all did research for mining and oil companies. Practical, meaningful research that helped America find and recover our natural resource wealth. Without which we would not have the standard of living we have today.

    I read the newsletter from my old geology school and none of the profs are doing research for private companies. It’s all government funded research into climate – glaciers, deserts, atolls, and the environment. It may be interesting, but it’s not going to put food on the table or electricity in your home or fuel in your car. And we’re footing the bill.

    The universities have become captured bureaucracies that are feeding at the government trough while the leftist denizens work to destroy the republic.

  74. huxley,

    I don’t know. As long as India and China prop it up it seems like Russia can hang on economically. That article talks about how the goods of some of these companies are still finding their way into Russia despite the sanctions all the while Europe is going to be in dire straits come this winter because of the sanctions.

    This strategy of all or nothing has seemed bonkers to me from the start.

    The fact that nobody seems to be asking leaders here or in Europe why all these sanctions have seemed to have little effect is also pathetic. But they got their Ukraine flags still so there is that.

    Are there any grown ups who are willing and able to bring the pressure to end this at the negotiating table or does it just go on indefinitely while the West struggles and Ukraine slowly withers?

    But Vanity Fair and Hollywood actresses are there to cheer them along on the way to their destruction.

  76. “Are there any grown ups …” ask those who are fighting and dying if grown ups started this war or those were wise who sent his armed forces to attack.

  77. om,

    So it just goes on forever?

    Or just til Ukraine loses?

    Negotiated ends to wars is a pretty common thing, even when one side is the clear aggressor, so what makes this different?

    At some point it doesn’t matter who started it but how is it going to end and what will be left of Ukraine.

  79. Or what will be left of Russia?

    How inconvienient.

    Ask the Ukrainians, or just sell them out?

    Short attention span; 13 minutes. Look squirrel!

    Come now you might as well quote Hillary while you are at it. How inconvienient that the Ukrainians didn’t just agree to be de-Nazified. Oh itvwas the daughter that paid forbthe sins of papa.

  80. Griffin:

    Not that Vlad would off a formerly usefull toady Dugin or Ms Dugin. That’s the trouble negotiating with a Vlad, expiration dates, on papers and on persons.

  83. We have been looking at 6 months and 60 billion dollars the progressive emptyng of the Wests military stores the sellimg off our petroleum reserve. Thats the cold schwabian reality

  84. Brian E,

    I saw that ad and literally cringed. Not my cup of tea. DeSantis and his team have been pretty good at PR thus far but that ad came across poorly to me. Way too on the nose. DeSantis seemed two-dimensional. It seemed cheaply made and a cheap ploy to grab some of the Cruise mystique. At least DeSantis was actually in the military.

  86. Oh well, let lying dogs lie….
    (In any language….)
    https://instapundit.com/538492/
    https://althouse.blogspot.com/2022/08/at-zuckers-trump-baiting-cnn-stelter.html
    File under: “Forgive them, Lord, for they…know not [how to tell the Truth]”…(?)

    + Bonus…
    More…CH-CH-CH-CHANGES…
    “Leftist-Turned-Conservative Podcasters Unapologetically Question Pervading Progressive Ideologies;
    “‘I’m just trying to be a voice of reason’ ”
    https://archive.ph/4QNc7
    H/T Blazingcatfur blog.
    Key names:
    Amala Ekpunobi
    Judith Rose
    Prager U.

  90. Rufus T. Firefly

    re: DeSantis ad

    Dukakis in a plane.

    It needed to be more tongue in cheek. While I suspect it’s targeted at perceived low IQ Trump supporters, would it do anything to appeal to independents who are looking for low confrontation politicians, according to the media.
    It’s going to be played during Carlson and Hannity, who still have a loyal Trump supporting following.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epwnsVTM-YA

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