by Owen | 0714, 18 Mar 21 | Culture, Politics | 19 Comments
Geez, the media sure went from “racist sex addict nut kills 8 people” to “all of America is racist” at lightening speed. The way they all darted that direction like a flock of Starlings means that there is a reason. They must need to stoke a story to distract from something else. The border? Giant tax increases? The president’s weak mind? COVID getting better? All of the above?
by Owen | 2209, 15 Mar 21 | Culture | 1 Comment
On this day, Washington saved our nation again. Truly the Indispensable Man.
And here, on March 15,1783, Washington’s officers met for what the historian James Thomas Flexner saw as “probably the most important single gathering ever held in the United States.” That gathering involved mutiny. Mutiny by Washington’s officers.
Some historians call the incident the “Newburgh Addresses”; others know it as the “Newburgh Conspiracy.” Simply stated, it was a chain of events culminating in a meeting to decide whether the officers would trust Congress to redeem overdue pay and pension claims or whether they would open the national treasury with the army’s bayonets. In every successful armed rebellion the generals eventually must decide whether to yield to civil authority or opt for military dictatorship. The choice they make frames that country’s future. For America the hour of decision fell in the last, bitter winter of the war.
Washington’s concern for his camp’s appearance was not for aesthetics alone. Having commanded the army for more than seven years—outlasting three British counterparts—he knew his regiments well. And he sensed that the army’s morale, particularly that of its officers, was as low now as it had been at any other time during the war—even the dark winter days of Valley Forge. He expected trouble. Keeping everyone busy might help.
[…]
He rode to the cantonment. All seemed calm, but a sixth sense sharpened by many crises warned him that it was not. Long-shared camaraderie seemed strained. Officers swept off their hats in salute but avoided his eyes and did not smile. This was new. An unmistakable hostility lurked near the surface. The officers seemed almost embarrassed by his presence.
[…]
Washington shuffled his papers. He had labored over his speech. But it held long, involved, cumbersome sentences. When spoken, the muscle was lost in the flesh of ornate composition. Washington could not match Brutus as a writer.
In desperation he took a letter from a pocket of his regimentals. In it Congressman Jones praised the army and pledged his support. Perhaps this would help. As Washington opened the note, there was a murmur among his officers. Washington took that as impatience. He cleared his throat and attempted to read.
He could not. The script was too small. His eyes could not focus. The dim letters blurred. Helplessly he fumbled in another pocket for his spectacles. As he donned them, the murmur increased. Again he thought it impatience. He adjusted the spectacles. “Gentlemen,” he said, “you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind.”
It was enough. They’d not been impatient. The murmur was one of sympathy, understanding, affection. In their eight years together they had never seen Washington wear spectacles. He had seemed tired and worn before. Now he seemed older and vulnerable. He was only fifty but had aged this week. He had problems they didn’t even know about. If he still trusted the Congress, they could do no less.
Few heard as Washington haltingly read from Jones’s letter. No matter.
When he stopped, the officers crowded about him in reassurance and contrition. Some wept. Others simply stood, stunned and silent, as the general left the room.
by Owen | 1809, 14 Mar 21 | Culture | 0 Comments
Mission head Victor Ghica said “19 structures and a church carved into the bedrock” were discovered in 2020, according to the statement.
The church walls were decorated with “religious inscriptions” and biblical passages in Greek, revealing “the nature of monastic life in the region”, Ghica said.
It clearly showed that monks were present there since the fifth century AD, he added.
The remote site, located in the desert southwest of the capital Cairo, was occupied from the fourth to eighth centuries, with a likely peak of activity around the fifth and sixth centuries, according to the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, in charge of the mission.
by Owen | 1800, 14 Mar 21 | Culture | 1 Comment
Enough already. We have seen these dire warnings for a year now and almost all of them have proven to be wrong. Stop lecturing people about having some fun. They know the risks and are free Americans. Let them be.
Massive crowds of St. Patrick’s Day revelers have descended on Savannah, Georgia, leading the city’s mayor to call it a ‘recipe for a superspreader event’ amid efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic.
Savannah, long known for hosting the largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the South, cancelled its parade for the second year in a row, but the city still expected up to 50,000 out-of-town visitors to arrive over the weekend.
On Saturday night, huge crowds were seen swarming the Plant Riverside, a new $375 million hotel and nightlife development whose owners are promoting a six-day festival with live music, a large fountain synchronized to Irish music and green lights illuminating the complex built from a shuttered power plant.
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said the festival plans were ‘a slap in the face’ to the city’s efforts to curb coronavirus infections by foregoing events that draw big crowds.
by Owen | 1008, 14 Mar 21 | Culture, Foreign Affairs, Politics | 38 Comments
Comedian and late-night host Bill Maher said the United States has “lost” to China in the “battle for the 21st century.”
During “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, Maher argued that China was becoming more dominant on the world stage as the U.S. argues over “culture wars.”
“You know who doesn’t care that there’s a stereotype of a Chinese man in a Dr. Seuss book? China. All 1.4 billion of them could give a crouching tiger flying f—,” Maher said, referencing the controversy surrounding six of Seuss’s books that were pulled by Dr. Seuss Enterprises over racist imagery.
“If anything, they are not a silly people. They are as serious as a prison fight,” he said
Maher criticized China’s authoritarian government over controversies surrounding Hong Kong’s autonomy and the nation’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims. However, the host went on to argue that China is able to quickly develop and solve problems as the U.S. debates partisan issues.
“On a national level, we’ve been having infrastructure week every week since 2009, but we never do anything,” Maher said.“Half the county is having a never-ending woke competition deciding whether Mr. Potato Head has a d—, and the other half believes that we have to stop the lizard people because they’re eating babies.”
by Owen | 0741, 11 Mar 21 | Culture, Education, Politics - Wisconsin | 18 Comments
A letter to the Washington County Daily News complains about my use of the phrase “government schools.”
To the editor: Language and the meaning of words are important. Among many other disagreements I have with Owen Robinson regarding political philosophy and policy, an important pet peeve of mine is the distorted use of language and adjectives used for propaganda purposes. There is no such thing as “sanctuary county.” The term should not be used by the public, by the media or the propagandists. There also is no such thing as “government schools” in our nation. The correct term is “public schools,” financed by taxpayers, locally overseen by an elected school board, with more oversight by the elected Legislature, the governor and the superintendent of Public Instruction. Suggest not using the propagandist language and calling it out when heard.
Stephen Roberts
West Bend
Who gets to decide what the “correct” term is? Isn’t “public school” just as much propaganda (if you want to use that word) as “government school?” The word choice conveys a message and carries a different connotation even though both are accurate.
I choose to call them “government” schools because I think it is more accurate. There are many things that are “public” that are not owned and operated by the government. For example, grocery stores and restaurants are open to public access, but not operated by the government. Utilities are considered a public entities, but not owned and operated by the government. Even some prisons are public institutions, but not owned or operated by the government. So for me, “public school” is too broad a definition. It could include Choice schools and even some Charter schools – institutions that are funded by taxpayers, but not operated by the government.
“Government” schools, however, is a more precise definition for what I am talking about. I’m talking about institutions that are owned and operated wholly by the government. All of the employees are government employees. And it is governed by an elected body. I prefer this more accurate characterization than the gauzy term “public school.”
by Owen | 2046, 8 Mar 21 | Culture, Education, Politics | 2 Comments
This.
As time has gone on, evidence has grown on one side of the equation: the harm being done to children by restricting their “circulation.” There is the well-documented fall-off in student academic performance at schools that have shifted to virtual learning, which, copious evidence now shows, is exacerbating racial and class divides in achievement. This toll has led a growing number of epidemiologists, pediatricians and other physicians to argue for reopening schools as broadly as possible, amid growing evidence that schools are not major venues for transmission of the virus.
As many of these experts have noted, the cost of restrictions on youth has gone beyond academics. The CDC found that the proportion of visits to the emergency room by adolescents between ages 12 and 17 that were mental-health-related increased 31% during the span of March to October 2020, compared with the same months in 2019. A study in the March 2021 issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, of people aged 11 to 21 visiting emergency rooms found “significantly higher” rates of “suicidal ideation” during the first half of 2020 (compared to 2019), as well as higher rates of suicide attempts, though the actual number of suicides remained flat.
Doctors are concerned about possible increases in childhood obesity — no surprise with many kids housebound in stress-filled homes — while addiction experts are warning of the long-term effects of endless hours of screen time when both schoolwork and downtime stimulation are delivered digitally. (Perhaps the only indicator of youth distress that is falling — reports of child abuse and neglect, which dropped about 40% early in the pandemic — is nonetheless worrisome because experts suspect it is the reporting that is declining, not the frequency of the abuse.)
Finally, the nationwide surge in gun violence since the start of the pandemic has included, in many cities, a sharp rise in crimes involving juveniles, including many killed or arrested during what would normally be school time. In Prince George’s County, Maryland, a Washington, D.C., suburb where school buildings have remained closed, seven teenagers were charged with murder in just the first five weeks of this year.
by Owen | 0750, 6 Mar 21 | Culture, Politics - Wisconsin | 4 Comments
Pass.
That’s why the WIAA is pushing to make harassment of sports officials a misdemeanor, punishable with up to a $10,000 fine to nine months in jail. Currently, it’s up to NASO or the WIAA to take care of officials in Wisconsin.
There is definitely a problem with referees being harassed, but we don’t need to criminalize it more. If a parent actually assaults a ref, that is still a crime. The fact that a game is going on is immaterial.
What we need is more civility. The fact that more people are being jackasses to refs is a manifestation of the larger decline in civility in our society.
by Owen | 2205, 3 Mar 21 | Culture, Politics | 2 Comments
Some 78 million vaccine doses have been administered but Mr Biden said this was not a reason to end public health measures.
“The last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime everything’s fine, take off your mask, forget it,” Mr Biden said. “It still matters.”
Senior health officials in his administration have warned about the continued spread of the virus – and highly contagious variants of it – hampering the progress of the country’s vaccination programme.
“Now is not the time to release all restrictions,” Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said.
Have you noticed that the “senior health officials” have not been able to give any actual guidance on when things can open? What is it? Herd immunity? X% vaccinated? Hospitalization rate? Death rate? What do we have to do before they give their blessing to open?
The truth is that Biden and the Democrats need the fear and uncertainly to ram through their radical agenda. They will never bless reopening completely. There will always be another strain or a spike. If we leave it to them, we will be wearing masks and killing ourselves alone in our homes forever.
Meanwhile, some governors (not Wisconsin’s) are trying to balance public health with other priorities – economic, educational, cultural, societal – to make decisions.
by Owen | 2136, 1 Mar 21 | Culture | 1 Comment
For me, the vaccination was a gloomy submission to a new world of excessive safety and regulation. I’d tried to fight against it but I lost.
The New Jerusalem, in which we allow the state to boss us around even more, in the name of our own good, is now coming into being.
And so we are just going to be under surveillance a lot more, recorded a lot more and bossed about a lot more. I’m reminded of the great Edwardian satirist Saki’s bitter 1913 novel When William Came about an imaginary German invasion of Britain.
Its hero returns to a transformed homeland from a long expedition to Tsarist Siberia (during which a fierce marsh fever has laid him low and left him in a coma for weeks).
When he finally reaches his London home, his wife apologises that she has to fill in a long police form to report his presence, explaining that it is ‘a stupid form to be filled up when any one arrives, to say where they come from, and their business and nationality and religion, and all that sort of thing. We’re rather more bureaucratic than we used to be, you know’.
Well, and so are we, and it will now get worse, because we have been through a revolution, in which we gave up real freedom for the illusion of safety. For me, almost all I need to know about it is that Mr Blair likes it so much.
by Owen | 0755, 25 Feb 21 | Culture, Politics, Politics - Wisconsin | 6 Comments
From the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Two stories with the exact same context. One group of legislators proposing legislation for one thing. Another group of legislators proposing legislation for another thing. Yet the newspaper felt the need to call out that “Republicans lawmakers” are proposing something they disagree with but “Wisconsin lawmakers” are proposing the thing they like.
It is almost a meaningless exercise to point this out anymore. It’s blatant. They don’t care.
by Owen | 0733, 25 Feb 21 | Culture | 6 Comments
And the related shame that people are less likely to believe stories of actual racism.
An elite Massachusetts liberal arts college has quietly conceded that there was no truth to allegations of racism made by one of their students that ‘ruined the lives’ of numerous campus workers.
Oumou Kanoute was in the canteen at Smith College on July 31, 2018 when she claimed she was profiled for ‘eating while black’ after a security guard asked her what she was doing.
Kanoute, a psychology undergraduate student, posted video of the incident on social media and claimed that she was the victim of racism.
Kanoute had named staff online, causing one to be hospitalized with stress and another, a janitor who was not present, forced from his job.
Kanoute said the security guard may have been carrying a ‘lethal weapon’ when, in fact, he was unarmed.
As a result, Smith forced employees to attend seminars about unconscious bias.
by Owen | 0639, 25 Feb 21 | Culture, Education, Politics - Wisconsin | 5 Comments
“I would equate it to the Wild Wild West of Wisconsin,” said Angelina Cruz, Racine Educators United president. “There’s no clear rollout plan anywhere that I know of.”
[…]
Cruz said the Racine Unified School District has not shared a formal plan to get teachers vaccinated, so she’s advising teachers to call their doctors.
Are Racine’s teachers so inept that they need their employer or their union boss to tell them to call their doctors to get a vaccine? Were they really sitting around doing nothing waiting for the school district administration to make a “rollout plan?” Why would anyone even think that’s the district’s responsibility? If an adult can’t manage to figure out how to get in line for a vaccine somewhere without their employer or union boss telling them too, then they are too stupid to be teaching.
by Owen | 1459, 19 Feb 21 | Culture | 0 Comments
I wonder if some snarky bloke at BBC had fun with the placement of these stories.
by Owen | 0636, 18 Feb 21 | Culture, Off-Duty | 2 Comments
This makes sense since COVID disproportionally impacts old people. If it had an even distribution, the average would be the same. So it is not really indicative of the severity of the pandemic, but on the age distribution of the death toll.
Life expectancy in the United States dropped a staggering one year during the first half of 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic caused its first wave of deaths, health officials are reporting.
Minorities suffered the biggest impact, with Black Americans losing nearly three years and Hispanics, nearly two years, according to preliminary estimates Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This is a huge decline,” said Robert Anderson, who oversees the numbers for the CDC. “You have to go back to World War II, the 1940s, to find a decline like this.”
Other health experts say it shows the profound impact of COVID-19, not just on deaths directly due to infection but also from heart disease, cancer and other conditions.
by Owen | 1324, 17 Feb 21 | Culture, Politics | 52 Comments
Rush Limbaugh, the controversial US radio personality and political commentator, has died aged 70.
His wife Kathryn Adams announced his death on his radio show on Wednesday. He had been suffering from lung cancer.
Best known as the host of the long-running talk radio programme The Rush Limbaugh Show, he was a towering figure in the conservative movement for years.
Three presidents appeared on his show, and he received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020.
He was a towering figure who changed media and the conservative movement forever.
by Owen | 0938, 13 Feb 21 | Culture, Foreign Affairs | 17 Comments
When we have set up an entire infrastructure that favors people based on things like race and gender, there is an incumbent constituency that will defend the status quo. Perhaps if we just do away with all of that and treat people equally, we would reduce strife.
A new law proposed by the far-left party in Spain’s coalition government would make it easier for residents to change genders for official purposes. A bill sponsored by Equality Minister Irene Montero aims to make gender self-determination — no diagnosis, medical treatment or judge required — the norm, with eligibility starting at age 16. Nearly 20 countries, eight of them in the European Union, already have similar laws.
Factions of the Catholic Church and the far-right have focused their opposition to the bill on the fact that it also would allow children under 16 to bypass parental objections and seek a judge’s assistance in accessing treatment for gender dysphoria, the medical term for the psychological distress that results from a conflict between an individual’s identity and birth-assigned sex.
Less expected has been the fierce resistance from some feminists and from within Spain’s Socialist-led government.
“I’m fundamentally worried by the idea that if gender can be chosen with no more than one’s will or desire, that could put at risk the identity criteria for 47 million Spaniards,” Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, a veteran Socialist and women’s rights advocate, said last week.
Opponents argue that allowing people to choose their gender eventually would lead to “erasing” women from the public sphere: if more Spaniards registered male at birth switch to female, they say, it would skew national statistics and create more competition among women for everything from jobs to sports trophies.
by Owen | 1446, 12 Feb 21 | Culture, Politics | 13 Comments
Do you know what this poll tells us? That we have utterly failed at education and far too many people are just woefully ignorant of our history.
A poll from YouGov and The Economist has found that former President Obama was named the best U.S. president while former President Trump was named the worst.
Obama barely beat Abraham Lincoln as best U.S. president with 18 percent. Trump was at 13 percent with people naming him the best president.
Among the worst, Trump got the highest percentage at 46 percent while Obama got the second highest at 24 percent.
by Owen | 0942, 11 Feb 21 | Culture, Politics | 0 Comments
Here is my full column that ran earlier in the week in the Washington County Daily News.
As power continues to drift toward centralization in both Madison and Washington, the reader will forgive the writer for briefly waxing philosophic before wading back into the mire of contemporary politics. What is, after all, the purpose of our civic arrangement? Why do we even have government? While the strictures of this column are too constraining for a full examination, we can, at least, begin to sketch an outline.
Born into what John Locke called a “state of nature,” all people are endowed with intrinsic rights that are part of our human condition. Among those rights, as our Declaration of Independence points out are the rights of, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” While a complete catalog of our natural rights is innumerable, they are best encapsulated within the happy bubble of “liberty,” assuming that we are alive to exercise it.
Liberty in one’s person is the freedom to think and act according to one’s own will and direction without being constrained by any other person. Liberty is spontaneous thoughts and actions without having to ask anyone’s permission. It is the inherent ability to direct one’s body and mind without any restriction whatsoever that is not imposed by the natural world or one’s own conscience. In this state of pure liberty, a person gains all the benefits and all the consequences of their thoughts and actions.
Of course, that perfect state of liberty can only exist when one is perfectly alone for ever since two humans have existed together, conflict was inevitable. As humans gather in families, then bands, then communities, then nations, our perfect liberty unavoidably conflicts with the perfect liberty of others. Where conflict exists, there must be a means to resolve that conflict.
In a perfect world where all people are wise, just, fair, and equally endowed with physical gifts, these clashes of liberties would be resolved through mutual agreement. Two people would meet and resolve their differences according to their own self-interest without further encroaching on the other. In the real world, however, people are subject to avarice, cruelty, selfishness, rage, stupidity, and all the other failings that are integral to the human condition. In such a real world, the strong and violent prey on the meek and docile and individual liberties are drowned in oceans of blood and tears.
We take it as a matter of principle that all people are created equal. Whether one considers that equality to spring from God, nature, or some other ethereal font is immaterial. We take our equality as fact. That is not to say that we are all equal in physical condition or material circumstance, but that we are equal in terms of our individual liberties and right to exercise thereof. As we are all equal, then all our individual liberties are equal and must be equally defended irrespective of our physical, mental, moral, or pecuniary strengths.
Without equality and individual liberty, we would not need government. We would be merely pigs in need of a good swineherd. If we had no inherent rights to self-determination of our bodies and our minds, then there is no need for any collective power to protect those rights. When conflict arises between two pigs, the swineherd does not dwell on the just cause of the afflicted or on the encroachment of rights. He simply slaughters the fatter pig to maintain order.
If we are to accept that we are not swine and, in fact, are human beings with inherent individual liberties, then we must accept that we must have civic order to coexist. That civic order must be enforced by someone or something. Without civic order, each human is left to defend his or her liberties from the onslaught of those who would take them by force. It is from the friction of grinding conflict that we generate the heat to forge government as a collective shield to protect our individual liberties.
The primary function of government is to define and enforce a civic order for the purpose of protecting our individual liberties from within and without. While our society has stretched the purpose of government into a means of concentrating power and wealth for use in advancing the collective will of the people, that is not the fundamental reason for government’s existence. When any government — whatever its composition — ceases to defend and protect our individual liberties, then it is no longer a legitimate government. It is an instrument of tyranny.
by Owen | 2150, 10 Feb 21 | Culture | 2 Comments
Rumor has it that if you hold your breath, it reduces virus spread by 96%. Further tests are needed.
The research suggests that when a person “double masks” — wearing a polypropylene surgical mask with a cloth mask on top — and the people around them did the same, the risk of transmitting the virus falls more than 95%.
Researchers, who used two mannequin-like forms to test exposure, found a similar benefit with tightening a single surgical mask around the ears to improve its fit. Using a hack known as a “knot and tuck,” the researchers ensured the surgical mask fits closely around the face without gaps.
The benefit, though, fell to 80% if only one person wore the double mask and 60% if only one person knotted their surgical mask for a tighter fit.
