Getting woke?

This is interesting:

Voters overwhelmingly believe “fake news” is a problem, and a majority agree with former President Donald Trump that the media have become “the enemy of the people.”

A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports finds that 58% of Likely U.S. Voters at least somewhat agree that the media are “truly the enemy of the people,” including 34% who Strongly Agree. Thirty-six percent (36%) don’t agree, including 23% who Strongly Disagree. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Is this a different type of “woke” spreading across the nation?

We live in interesting times.

Simplistic thinking

When I read stuff like this it is like I’m reading something written by an eight grader:

It’s Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income in Washington State

With basic incomes, more people are able to afford food and housing, pay off debt, get full-time jobs, save for emergencies, and get the physical and mental health support they need. Cash payments dramatically improve the lives of our neighbors and communities. That’s a source of hope. Unfortunately, the very need for GBI also reveals just how many of us are close to losing everything; even people working multiple jobs that offer little security for workers.

There is no hint of appreciation for the glaring problems of costs, fraud, and demotivation. I was reminded of what I posted about The Communist Manifesto:

Assumptions critical to the reasoning which followed were unsupported and, at least to my present day perspective, either blatantly wrong or highly suspect. Even conceding the authors their assumptions without contest the conclusions reached with such confidence were as unstable as any house of cards.

And yet, these people, with such simplistic thinking, are making progress.

No thank you

Via email from Gerald F.:

‘Morality pills’ may be the US’s best shot at ending the coronavirus pandemic, according to one ethicist

It seems that the U.S. is not currently equipped to cooperatively lower the risk confronting us. Many are instead pinning their hopes on the rapid development and distribution of an enhancement to the immune system – a vaccine.

But I believe society may be better off, both in the short term as well as the long, by boosting not the body’s ability to fight off disease but the brain’s ability to cooperate with others. What if researchers developed and delivered a moral enhancer rather than an immunity enhancer?

Moral enhancement is the use of substances to make you more moral. The psychoactive substances act on your ability to reason about what the right thing to do is, or your ability to be empathetic or altruistic or cooperative.

And what is the morality of forcing others to adhere to a version of morality different than their firmly held belief?

And of course some (most?) would refuse which the author suggests isn’t that big of an obstacle (apparently oblivious to the practical problems of dosage, secrecy, and costs with this sort of scale):

administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply

And if you follow the link you will discover the “moral reasoning” of the author is somewhat twisted (highlighting added):

My argument for this is that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration is a matter of public health, and for this reason should be governed by public health ethics. I argue that the covert administration of a compulsory moral bioenhancement program better conforms to public health ethics than does an overt compulsory program. In particular, a covert compulsory program promotes values such as liberty, utility, equality, and autonomy better than an overt program does. Thus, a covert compulsory moral bioenhancement program is morally preferable to an overt moral bioenhancement program.

I find it very telling the author values “utility” and “equality”. And dares to suggest a covert program of forced “bioenhancement” is consistent with “liberty” and “autonomy”.

No thank you.

I want an underground bunker in Idaho.

Quote of the day—dittybopper

The only real difference between Communism and Naziism is that when you point out the millions who were killed by the Nazis, no one ever says “Well, real Naziism has never been tried”.

dittybopper
January 29, 2022
Comment to Quote of the day—The Socialist Party @OfficialSPGB
[There are many other differences of interest to historians, sociologists, and psychologists. But in terms of what you need to know to make appropriate decisions in response to them this is correct.—Joe]

Quote of the day—The Socialist Party @OfficialSPGB

There have been no “failures”. To fail it must first exist. Which country’s population has managed to free themselves and create a class-free society where the PEOPLE collectively owned the natural resources, industries etc? Most people don’t know what socialism / communism is.

The Socialist Party @OfficialSPGB
Tweeted on January 21, 2022
[If it has never existed then all the millions of people who died in the failed attempts surely must be considered “a clue”. But that they persist tells us one, or both, of two things:

  1. They are totally without a clue.
  2. Killing tens or hundreds of millions of people is intentional.

Therefore, if they persist, we should just say, “No!” until we run out of ammo, then affix bayonets and continue with hand-to-hand.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brandon Smith

The political left is now the side that is most appealing to narcissists, sociopaths, the emotionally unstable, etc., and this attraction is forming a mob that can be easily exploited by the establishment.

Brandon Smith
January 13, 2022
For Leftists, Your Freedom Is Their Misery – Your Slavery Is Their Joy
[There is more than a little truth in this.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Justice Sonia Sotomayor

the issue is [in] no other constitutional right do we condition on permitting different jurisdictions to pass different regulations…

Justice Sonia Sotomayor
November 3, 2021
What Will the U.S. Supreme Court Decide?
[With Justice Sotomayor pointing out the error of their ways it is no wonder New York is taking defensive action.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Victor Davis Hanson

Our journey toward systems collapse isn’t due to an earthquake, climate change, a nuclear war, or even the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, most of our maladies are self-inflicted. They’re the direct result of woke ideologies..

Victor Davis Hanson
January 19, 2022
Is America Heading for a Systems Collapse?
[If you want to include unsustainable social programs as “woke ideologies” then I could see that being true enough that I wouldn’t quibble with him about it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Stilettos & Shotguns (@thereal_SnS)

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but there is no such thing as freedom with strict oversight.

Stilettos & Shotguns (@thereal_SnS)
Tweeted on January 21, 2022
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

What are you thinking?

I’ve been busy recently and haven’t posted some things I wanted to weeks ago. It has come to the point I’m irritated so much that I have to say it. I’m withholding names to protect the guilty. Please don’t take offense if you decide I’m talking about you. I could be, but just because I am does not mean that I am going to shun you or am deliberately shaming you. That’s not my intent.

I’m pretty open minded about a lot of things. Reality is hard. I know that. Can we still keep things friendly even though I think you might have a circuit or two crosswired in your brain?

God? Gods? Pro-Life? Pro-Choice? I can probably argue four or more different sides to each of those questions and be reasonably convincing to the average person even though I am pretty sure which is the correct answer. Believe what you want as long as you don’t insist everyone conform to your beliefs and as far as I’m concerned we’re all good.

There are things which are less certain. Some of the UFOs (currently called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena–UAPs) are alien craft? Global warming/cooling/climate-change? The 2021 presidential election was totally rigged? Bitcoin will replace the U.S. Dollar in the next ‘N’ years? Bitcoin is a great/terrible investment? I just don’t know. I suspect the general public does not have enough information to determine an answer with a high degree of certainty to any of these questions. Again, I can probably be convincing to the average person no matter which side I wanted to take.

There are other things which are more clear cut. Actual moon landing or faked? Flat earth or spherical? 9/11 was an inside job? Sorry. You don’t get any slack from me if you start trying to convince me we don’t actually have satellites in orbit or that because steel doesn’t melt at burning jet fuel temperatures the WTC collapses had explosive help.

Let’s think about the claim all test animals for the mRNA “vaccines”* died. I first heard this several months ago and went looking for the research papers. It turns out that, at least in the papers I saw, this was true! Damning evidence, right? No.The animals died because the researchers performed necropsies on all of them. The results, that I saw in the papers I read, were that everything looked normal.

It is as if someone was trolling the general population to see how many people would draw the incorrect conclusion from factual data. Good joke! I actually laughed at the cleverness. But why would anyone persist in believing that even if they didn’t find the research papers and read them? Think about it some!

Suppose all, or even 10% of the test animals, died from the mRNA vaccine. How many researchers are going to go before their human subject testing review board** (sample of what is involved here) and say, “All the test animals died. We are going to test it on humans next.”?

Sure, there are people that think people are a plague on the earth and all humans (except perhaps others like them who are sufficient “woke”) should be exterminated. They don’t convince tens of thousands of other people to work on their project, get billions of dollars to produce and deliver their product without someone getting cold feet about the prospects and delivering overwhelming evidence to the general public of the impending doom of half the human population. Even small religious cults have people leaving and telling the dark stories from the inside.

After giving this a little thought, if you actually believe the whole mRNA “vaccines” are “Going to kill 100s of thousands (or more)” and people knew this all along, I have to ask, “Really? What are you thinking? How do determine truth from falsity? What color is the sky in your universe?

You want to talk about VAERS data? Okay. Let’s talk about it.

You might claim there is a huge increase in adverse reactions to mRNA “vaccines” compared to all other vaccines. Yup, it’s right there for everyone to see. But, there are some things to take into account before you reach valid conclusions. Unless you received a COVID-19 immunization you probably did not know people who received the “vaccine” were encouraged to sign up to receive and fill out a survey every day for a week, then once a week for several weeks, then another after a few months. They would send a text message to (IIRC) the CDC. Then they would receive text messages with links to the surveys. They would be asked how they were feeling. They were encouraged to report even very mild stuff, like a headache or muscle stiffness. Anything that might be considered an “adverse reaction”.

Suppose, they had a headache or some stiff muscles a month later; was it because they drank a little bit too much the previous evening or were hunched over the reloading bench all afternoon? Or was it because of the vaccine? They didn’t ask about those possibilities. The CDC just wanted the “adverse reaction”. I expect the noise was to be filtered out by looking for correlation with reports from other people at week ‘N’. To the best of my knowledge this has never been done with other vaccines. If you are looking at the raw data, without the noise filtering, you are going to see a lot of noise. And the number of reports are going to be much larger than with other vaccines because maybe 100x more people received the COVID-19 shots than your normal flu, MMR, and/or tetanus vaccinations. This combined with the encouragement and easy reporting of trivial “adverse reactions” results in the raw numbers being huge.

I’ve heard things to the effect of “Bill Gates is behind it and he is evil.” Gates was ruthless as a business man. I would have had serious moral qualms doing many of the things he did to competitors. He was good to his employees. When I worked at Microsoft I had numerous people who know him far better than I do say things to the effect that he would be more than fair to employees in situations where he had no obligation to be so. I’ve know people who talked to Melinda Gates about the work done by the Gates Foundation. I know people who worked on the Gates house and had long term personal contact with Bill and Melinda. I know one woman who went on a date with him. I know a woman who volunteered at the same charity has Bill’s mother and worked with her frequently. None of them even hinted at any dark side with him or his family. He was sometimes a little odd, but this was in a geeky rather than evil genius or creepy way.

Could Gates be bankrolling the deliberate extermination of millions? The odds are extremely low. He couldn’t hire enough guards or pay them enough money to keep the angry mobs at bay once it was discovered. He is not stupid. He is not suicidal. I believe the Gates Foundation really is intended to make the world a better place for humans. There is no intent to make the world a better place without humans. It is inconsistent with everything I know about him, his family, and the foundation. I think there is enough public information for anyone to arrive at a similar conclusion without many reservations.

Do I agree with all his politics and projects? No, but I think they are well intentioned even if they are misguided or flat out wrong.

On a different tangent maybe we can work out some answers on our own without relying on information from questionable sources like random podcasts, YouTube videos, word of month, memes, and worst of all, the CDC and other government sources.

Let’s run a little statistics experiment. In the comments or by sending me an email tell me how many people you have personally met*** which meet one or more the following criteria:

  1. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in an ER visit and/or hospitalization.
  2. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in long term (two or more months) adverse effects.
  3. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in death.
  4. Had COVID-19 which which resulted in an ER visit and/or hospitalization.
  5. Had COVID-19 which resulted in long term (two or more months) adverse effects.
  6. Had COVID-19 which resulted in death.

Don’t double report anyone. For example, if the person died don’t also report them as having long term adverse effects.

Here are my answers:

  • One person for item 1.
  • One person for item 4. (Added on 1/25/2022 after I remembered someone else).
  • One person for item 5.
  • One person for item 6.

Please be honest. “Stuffing the ballot box” isn’t going to change anything beyond a tiny corner of Joe’s world. And, almost for certain, the statistics will point you out as being a liar.

Next weekend I’ll collect the data and make a short report. My guess is that this little experiment will be more “interesting” than most people think it would be.


* Quoted as a deliberate concession because I don’t think that point is particularly important one way or the other.

** I had to do this for one project I worked on. I was gathering anonymous data from computers about the movement of the mouse. I was not gathering any information about what applications they were using or even if they clicked the mouse. I only collected timestamps and the position of the mouse at that time. It took weeks and answering lots of questions to get approval.

*** This needs to be carefully defined to get valid results. Consider “personally met” as meaning you were, at least once, in the same room/location as them and there is a good chance they would remember you as well as you remembering them. My brother’s niece, on his wife side of the family, who I have never met, having serious complications from COVID-19 linger after a year doesn’t count.

Quote of the day—Keith Powers @KeithPowersNYC

We owe every New Yorker a promise of a gun free city.

Right now, we are failing at this mission.

I am ready to work with any leader that believes — like I do — that the presence of illegal or legal guns is an existential threat to the safety of others.

Keith Powers @KeithPowersNYC
Majority Leader – NYC Council
Representing Manhattan’s East Side
Tweeted on January 21, 2021
[There are no illegal guns. There are only illegal politicians.

Enjoy your trial Mr. Powers.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Cody J. Wisniewski

Politicians and anti-gun activists will keep up their familiar refrains, which have long been staples of the left-wing establishment. But street-level attitudes are changing in favor of the natural right of self-defense. That may prove to be the ultimate legacy of two very violent years.

Cody J. Wisniewski
January 20, 2022
The Tide Is Turning On Gun Control
[There is evidence to support this. The polls don’t look good for Democrats:

Republicans currently hold a never-before-seen double-digit lead on a generic ballot according to the latest CNBC poll – meaning voters who would prefer any Republican to any Democrat.

In fact, the numbers are equal parts historic and devastating as the 2022 midterms approach.

“In the past 20 years, CNBC and NBC surveys have never registered a double-digit Republican advantage on congressional preference, with the largest lead ever being 4 points for the GOP,” CNBC reports.

The defund the police movement and the pandemic, which correlates with the huge increase in violent crime, was a big motivator in the massive gun sale numbers, ammo shortages, etc. All those new gun owners have to be looking back and forth between their ballot and their gun. Who is saying they will defund the police and take their guns? It doesn’t take much brain power to make the decision to vote for anyone except that evil SOB.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jason Rantz

With the new year, comes New Year’s resolutions. For many, they’re finally taking their mental health care seriously. Or, at least, pretending to. Some Seattleites are complaining they can’t find therapists who meet their woke requirements.

The new requirement for some is that their mental health care provider shares their “intersectional identities.” But some are speaking out after not being able to find a therapist with the same gender identity and race.

Welcome to the burgeoning woke movement of segregated health care.

Jason Rantz
January 3, 2022
Rantz: Seattleites complain they can’t find woke therapists for segregated health care
[Remember all the strife about desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s? As a reminder here is what Senator Joe Biden said about school busing to achieve desegregation in 1977:

My children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point.

There were court battles for many years to force men only organizations to accept women (most recently, you should remember the Boy Scouts were forced to accept girls).

The political left has now changed their minds. Now they want segregation by race and gender with “gender identity” thrown in as a bonus. As I have said before, people can be very creative in the justification of their irrationality.

It doesn’t take much imagination to assert the hypothesis they are doing this to create divisiveness and destruction rather than expecting there to be some societal benefit to their demands.—Joe].

End crossbow violence now!

In Seattle:

Police are gathering information after a man was shot in the chest by a crossbow in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

The Seattle Fire Department said the man, who is in his 30’s, was in critical condition when crews rushed him to the hospital.

If you get rid of all the guns you will still have knife and crossbow violence problems. If you get rid of the violent criminals you won’t have gun, knife, or crossbow violence problems.

Quote of the day—Isabel van Brugen

Almost half of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.

Isabel van Brugen
January 19, 2022
Nearly Half of Democrats Would Back Temporary Detention for Unvaccinated: Poll
[It looks to me like nearly half of Democrats are at risk of prosecution for violation of Federal law.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Chris Knox @ChrisKnox_AZ

The minimum wage is a subsidy to the robotics industry.

Chris Knox @ChrisKnox_AZ
Tweeted on January 16, 2022
[That a great way to put it. And that subsidy is getting larger every day as the price/performance tradeoff keeps dropping.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Liel Leibovitz

The turn is the moment when you kind of begin to understand, a little bit like that movie The Matrix, that everything you assumed was the very fabric of reality, it’s not just politics, it’s the entirety of existence, may be called into question.

Liel Leibovitz
January 11, 2022
Long-Time Democrat Liel Leibovitz Finds Himself ‘Politically Homeless’
[Observing the awakening is fascinating.

I suspect Leibovitz is not an outlier:

After winning more votes than any presidential candidate in American history, Biden is now – just 12 months later – one of the country’s most unpopular presidents.

For months, Biden’s approval ratings have languished in the mid to low 40s, with an average approval rating of 42%. ​​A Quinnipiac poll released last week found him at a dire 33%.

When cornered and faced with severe injury or death animals are extremely dangerous. The political left is currently in that situation.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jeff @jeffcampbell64

It appears his empathetic and angry subroutines were out of phase and that caused his algorithm to move to the confused and exit subroutine.

Jeff @jeffcampbell64
Tweeted on December 21, 2022
[Regarding a video of President Biden.

That’s one hypothesis. I’m certain there are others which have a higher probability of being correct. Still, I LOL’d.

Quote of the day—Michael Anton

Blue America offers to Red nothing but scorn, contempt, hatred, insult, humiliation, calumny, outsourcing, open borders, layoffs, lower wages, opioids, losing wars, censorship, trumped-up treason accusations, surveillance, anarcho-tyranny, pre-trial detention, mask mandates, lockdowns, Critical Race Theory, and cancellation. And then not only gets enraged when Red America objects, but demands Red reverence and gratitude in return.

Michael Anton
Blue America’s Messaging Problem
January 4, 2022
[There is more than a little truth in this.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Peter Schiff @PeterSchiff

The real problem with #Bitcoin isn’t volatility. Volatility means Bitcoin can’t function as a currency, but it makes it very appealing to traders and speculators. The real problem is that Bitcoin has no underlying value to support its price, making a terminal collapse inevitable.

Peter Schiff @PeterSchiff
Tweeted on January 10, 2022
[That is what I believe too. I mentioned the volatility, appeal to traders, and no underlying value in a discussion with a coworker last month after he told me about setting up the server rack in his garage to mine Bitcoins. My coworker wasn’t accepting my arguments. I tried comparisons to other mined products such as gold and silver. He seemed to understand what I was saying but could not be convinced Bitcoin is a high risk investment.

Schiff claims the following credentials:

Chief Economist & Global Strategist: http://Europac.com, Chairman: http://SchiffGold.com, Founder: http://EpacFunds.com , Host: http://SchiffRadio.com

That Schiff sells gold probably gives him a blinding bias but he, and I, may still be correct. I just don’t know. And that I, and apparently Schiff, cannot make an accurate prediction as to when the demise of Bitcoin occurs gives me concern that we are mistaken in our belief.

I’m more confident in prediction about the financial collapse of the U.S. government than I am of predicting about the demise of Bitcoin. Yet, I still believe.—Joe]