Chicago Vs. Smith College | Power Line "As is well known, you aren’t allowed to criticize Black Lives Matter (still less say anything as offensive as “All Lives Matter”), Critical Race Theory, or any aspect of transgenderism.
And it seems increasingly difficult to criticize the orthodoxy of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) in any way. Witness the case of Dorian Abbot, a professor of geology at the University of Chicago, who has criticized the DEI orthodoxy.
He’s spoken out about it, offering some presentations complete with slides, which you can find here, here, here, and here.
Here are four of them as a sample if you don’t have time to chase down these links:
And Prof. Abbot’s three-page account of the matter is here. You can guess what happened next...Read all!
UN Admits CO2 Cuts Have Been Futile In War On Climate Change | Climate Dispatch
"From a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) press release titled “Carbon dioxide levels continue at record levels, despite COVID-19 lockdown,” comes this statement about the effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) reductions during the COVID-19 lockdown:
"...This means that on the short-term, the impact [of CO2 reduction] of the COVID-19 confinements cannot be distinguished from natural variability…”
Let this sink in: The WMO admits reduced carbon dioxide emissions are having no effect on climate that is distinguishable from natural variability.
The WMO acknowledges that after our global economic lockdown, where CO2 emissions from travel, industry, and power generation were all curtailed, there wasn’t any measurable difference in global atmospheric CO2 levels.
"The earth came very close to that point not long ago during the Ice Ages (20,000 years ago). Then the planet warmed naturally, and an increase in atmospheric CO2 to over 200 ppm followed (new study here).
The earth saw CO2 levels of close to 8000 ppm in the past, i.e. about 20 times more than today. The following chart shows the earth’s atmospheric CO2 concentrations for the past 600 million years.
Today, thanks in large part to mankind, concentrations have risen to over 400 ppm, yet historically this remains at the very low end of the scale compared to the thousands of ppm seen naturally earlier in history.
Thanks to CO2 fertilization
For the welcome trend, scientists attribute the surprising development on “a mixture of factors”, foremost the recent increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, which plants thrive on and humans have been mislead into believing is a “pollutant”.
SAN FRANCISCO -- City officials in San Francisco have banned all tobacco smoking inside apartments, citing concerns about secondhand smoke.
But lighting up a joint inside?
That’s still allowed.
The Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 Tuesday to approve the ordinance making San Francisco the largest city in the country to ban tobacco smoking inside apartments, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The original proposal sought to ban residents from smoking marijuana in their apartments, but supervisors voted to exclude marijuana after cannabis activists said the law would take away their only legal place to smoke.
It’s illegal under state law to smoke cannabis in public places...Read all.
"There has been massive media attention on Covid-19 deaths – and there have been a lot of them. The CDC as of noon on 26 November 2020 was reporting that there have been 259,005 total Covid-19 deaths in the United States.
Yet anyone who reads widely is aware that there have been reports of a motorcycle accident victim being reported as a Covid death. There are many who correctly report that all people dying from or with Covid and even suspected of dying from-or-with Covid-19 are all being counted as certified reportable must-make-the-headlines Covid-19 Deaths.
[Note: This is a long and rather detailed explanation of what leads to the situation in which we find ourselves regarding Covid-19 Deaths reporting. Those who want a better understanding of the issue should continue reading. Readers with no or little interest can just accept this brief synopsis: “It’s Complicated” and move on to other posts. ]
...Reporting of Covid-19 Deaths
Here’s the pivot point on Covid-19 Deaths:
This is from the CDC’s weekly Covid report. See the Column 2 heading? It says “All Deaths Involving Covid-19 (U07.1)1”. The keyword is INVOLVING.To be perfectly clear, what is being reported by the CDC, as collected by the National Center for Health Statistics, are All (every one) Deaths (people dying) that Involved Covid-19. See the little footnote indicator “1”?
Footnote 1 says: “COVID-19 deaths are identified using a new ICD–10 code. When COVID-19 is reported as a cause of death – or when it is listed as a “probable” or “presumed” cause — the death is coded as U07.1. This can include cases with or without laboratory confirmation.”
Not just verified cases in which Covid-19 was the immediate cause of death. At least, to be even clearer, not necessarily what you, the average reader, would consider THE cause of death.
So, what exactly are they counting when the CDC and WHO report Covid-10 Covid-19 Deaths? The World Health Organization’s official guidelines are:
2. DEFINITION FOR DEATHS DUE TO COVID-19
A death due to COVID-19 is defined for surveillance purposes as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness, in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease (e.g. trauma). ….
A- RECORDING COVID-19 ON THE MEDICAL CERTIFICATE OF CAUSE OF DEATH
COVID-19 should be recorded on the medical certificate of cause of death for ALL decedents where the disease caused, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death.
Note that the Death Certificate — Cause of Death Part II is “Other significant conditions contributing to…”. So, there is where Covid-19 (ICD code U07.1) would be written for any death in which Covid wasn’t “caused, or is assumed to have caused” but only contributed to the death. If the decedent was a “Covid case” then he/she becomes a “Covid Death” if they die. Read on . . .
For the general public, who want to know “How many people are being killed by the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic?”, this definition does not supply the answer to their question. The vagueness and breadth of these definitions is exacerbated, in this “possibly-too-broad” sense, by the definitions being used to define “What is a Covid-19 case?”. We see that the WHO definition of a Covid death includes “a probable or confirmedCOVID-19 case”.
So, how do WHO and the CDC define or advise doctors how to define/determinea Covid-19 case?
Clinical Criteria
At least two of the following symptoms: fever (measured or subjective), chills, rigors, myalgia, headache, sore throat, new olfactory and taste disorder(s)
OR
At least one of the following symptoms: cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing
OR
Severe respiratory illness with at least one of the following:
Clinical or radiographic evidence of pneumonia, OR
"George Orwell pointed out that one of the first casualties of socialism is language.
The damage is not collateral, it is deliberate—designed to numb minds and render critical thought difficult or impossible.
The instrument of this dumbing down in Nineteen Eighty-Four was Newspeak, the official language of the English Socialist Party (Ingsoc).
Newspeak was a sort of Totalitarian Esperanto that sought gradually to diminish the range of what was thinkable by eliminating, contracting, and manufacturing words.
New words had a “political implication” and “were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them.”
The meaning of words was often reversed, as was most starkly emphasized in the key slogans of Ingsoc:
Nineteen Eighty-Four was written in 1949.
Its nightmarish fictional world is now 36 years in the past, so one might reasonably conclude that Orwell was far too pessimistic, but his great book was less a prediction than a warning, and above all an analysis of the totalitarian mentality.
...the UN’s “Global Governance” agenda, which seeks nothing less than to oversee and regulate every aspect of life on the basis of a suite of alarmist projections.
The main existential threat is claimed to be catastrophic man-made climate change.
...In a video lecture to Chinese students earlier this year, UN Secretary-General António Guterres claimed that there was “No excuse” not to meet the Net-Zero emission target by 2050.
“The time for small steps has passed,” he said.
“What is needed now is transformational change.”
For “transformational” read “revolutionary;” change that would involve the destruction of Western industrial society and freedom.
In fact, there is no climate “crisis” or “emergency.”
However, as Orwell noted, the language of fear and panic is one of the main instruments of political control...Much here, read all.
Ira Gershwin 1896 - Lyricist, brother of composer George Gershwin
1735 - In London, French surgeon Claudius Amyand peformed the first successful appendectomy at St. George's Hospital. The patient was an 11-year old boy that had swallowed a pin.
1774 - Austria became the first nation to introduce a state education system.
1865 - The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The amendment abolished slavery in the U.S.
1877 - Thomas Edison demonstrated the first gramophone, with a recording of himself reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb.
1921 - The Catholic Irish Free State was created as a self-governing dominion of Britain when an Anglo-Irish treaty was signed.
1926 - In Italy, Benito Mussolini introduced a tax on bachelors.
1973 - Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as the vice-president of the United States after vice-president Spiro Agnew resigned.
1994 - Orange County, CA, filed for bankruptcy protection due to investment losses of about $2 billion. The county is one of the richest in the U.S. and became the largest municipality to file for bankruptcy.
1998 - In Venezuela, former Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez was elected president. He had staged a bloody coup attempt against the government six years earlier.
Indeed, something profoundly fishy happened in the 2020 election...
What happened in 2020 is something more fundamental and profound.
What happened in 2020 is cultural and systemic, and sadly, generally legal.
Until Republicans, and more importantly Trump supporters, understand what happened to them this year, it will happen again.
Two things happened in 2020.
First, COVID led to a dismantling of state election integrity laws by everyone except the one body with the constitutional prerogative to change the rules of electing the president – the state legislatures.
Second, the Center for Technology and Civic Life happened.
...The Center for Technology and Civic Life and allied groups are responsible for building an urban get-out-the-vote-machine of the sort that Democrats could only dream up on a bender fueled by jugs of Merlot and all the legalized pot they could smoke.
The Capital Research Center has this deep dive into what the Center for Technology and Civil Life did in just Georgia.
It starts with this"
This year, left-leaning donors Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan gave $350 million to an allegedly “nonpartisan” nonprofit, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which in turn re-granted the funds to thousands of governmental election officials around the country to “help” them conduct the 2020 election...Read all.
Whitmer administration asks Michigan legislature for $400 million to fund COVID-19 response - mlive.com
"Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration is seeking additional state dollars...
In a supplemental budget request submitted to lawmakers Thursday, State Budget Director Chris Kolb recommended roughly $300 million in state spending, $192 million of which would go to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services for
testing,
contact tracing,
food assistance for children and
continuing a $2-per-hour wage increase for direct care workers.
The request also includes specific funding for managing administration of a COVID-19 vaccine in coordination with healthcare providers and local health departments.
That’s in addition to a previous ask made by Whitmer for a $100 million economic stimulus package to support families and small businesses hard-hit by the pandemic...Read all.
The California Employment Development Department approved around 20,000 unemployment claims from prisoners at local, state, and federal institutions, leading to improper payments of at least $400 million, Fox Business reported Wednesday.
"...The best way for Biden to appreciate the new Middle East is to study what happened in the early hours of Sept. 14, 2019 — when the Iranian Air Force launched 20 drones and precision-guided cruise missiles at Abqaiq, one of Saudi Arabia’s most important oil fields and processing centers, causing huge damage.
It was a seminal event.
The Iranian drones and cruise missiles flew so low and with such stealth that neither their takeoff nor their impending attack was detected in time by Saudi or U.S. radar. Israeli military analysts, who were stunned by the capabilities the Iranians displayed, argued that this surprise attack was the Middle East’s “Pearl Harbor.”
They were right.
The Middle East was reshaped by this Iranian precision missile strike, by President Trump’s response and by the response of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to Trump’s response.
...First, how did Trump react?
He did nothing.
He did not launch a retaliatory strike on behalf of Saudi Arabia — even though Iran, unprovoked, had attacked the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure.
A few weeks later Trump did send 3,000 U.S. troops and some antimissile batteries to Saudi Arabia to bolster its defense — but with this message on Oct. 11, 2019: “We are sending troops and other things to the Middle East to help Saudi Arabia. But — are you ready? Saudi Arabia, at my request, has agreed to pay us for everything we’re doing. That’s a first.”
It sure was a first.
He was reflecting a deep change in the American public.
His message: Dear Saudis, America is now the world’s biggest oil producer; we’re getting out of the Middle East; happy to sell you as many weapons as you can pay cash for; but don’t count on us to fight your battles. You want U.S. troops? Show me the money...Read all, much more.
SAN FRANCISCO -- City officials in San Francisco have banned all tobacco smoking inside apartments, citing concerns about secondhand smoke.
Ira Gershwin 1896 - Lyricist, brother of composer George Gershwin
They were right.