Boots & Sabers

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Category: Culture

Government Response Harmed Kids More than Virus

by | 2046, 8 Mar 21 | , , | 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.

Making Harassing a Referee a Misdemeanor

by | 0750, 6 Mar 21 | , | 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.

Biden Needs Perpetual State of Fear to Advance Agenda

by | 2205, 3 Mar 21 | , | 2 Comments

Uh huh… bless his heart.

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.

Hitchens Submits to the New World

by | 2136, 1 Mar 21 | | 1 Comment

Heh

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.

Bias On Display

by | 0755, 25 Feb 21 | , , | 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.

The Victims of False Accusations of Racism

by | 0733, 25 Feb 21 | | 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.

Racine’s Sheep

by | 0639, 25 Feb 21 | , , | 5 Comments

This made me roll my eyes.

“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.

Ending Humanity

by | 1459, 19 Feb 21 | | 0 Comments

I wonder if some snarky bloke at BBC had fun with the placement of these stories.

US Life Expectancy Drops

by | 0636, 18 Feb 21 | , | 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.

Rush Limbaugh Dies of Cancer at 70

by | 1324, 17 Feb 21 | , | 52 Comments

RIP

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.

War of Identity

by | 0938, 13 Feb 21 | , | 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.

Ranking Presidents

by | 1446, 12 Feb 21 | , | 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.

On the need for government

by | 0942, 11 Feb 21 | , | 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.

 

Our Evolving Mask Culture

by | 2150, 10 Feb 21 | | 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.

On the need for government

by | 0732, 9 Feb 21 | , | 3 Comments

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. When I get really frustrated with government, my habit is to retreat into first principles to center myself. Go pick up a copy. Here’s a part:

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.

Governing Without Consent

by | 1825, 7 Feb 21 | , | 6 Comments

 

If the laws are made by one man, or a junto of men in a state, and not by common consent, a government by them does not differ from Slavery. In this case it would be a contradiction in terms to say that the state governs itself.

 

— Richard Price

Censoring the Internet

by | 1029, 6 Feb 21 | , , | 1 Comment

Since we’re on the topic, this guy has some interesting thoughts.

In fact, focus on censorship and “cancel culture” actually distracts from solving the problem of disinformation — and all the chaos and confusion and real-world harm it brings with it — in a way that preserves free speech, Pomerantsev said.

 

“A lot of the virality is amplified artificially. That’s kind of how a lot of these platforms were designed,” he said. “That kind of artificial amplification I think really has to end.

 

“Fake amplification — everything from gaming algorithms and search engine optimization through to amplification through coordinated inauthentic activity — I think that probably has to end if the internet is going to be a just reflection of society and not this kind of weird funhouse mirror that distorts everything,” Pomerantsev said.

 

One of the first steps toward reducing disinformation is algorithm transparency: revealing how the social media and Big Tech companies engineer which information rises to the top and is seen by large numbers of people. Google, Facebook and TikTok have all taken some recent steps in this direction, Axios reported this week, but it was voluntary and most experts think this issue needs to be overseen by government regulators.

Class Warfare on Wall Street

by | 1915, 28 Jan 21 | , | 3 Comments

What an interesting story… and rather scary.

Amateur investors are responding with outrage after trading platforms curbed buying of shares in the US games firm GameStop and other companies.

The moves by Robinhood and Interactive Brokers follow days of frenzied trading that led to massive gains for some stocks.

Shares in GameStop dived by as much as 55% after the restrictions.

It is the latest twist in a battle that has pitted amateur investors against Wall Street giants.

Major hedge funds had bet billions of dollars that GameStop’s shares would fall.

But they have faced major losses after amateurs, swapping tips on social media sites such as Reddit, drove up the share price by more than 700% in a week.

What we have is a bunch of basement day traders who are telling each other to buy a stock to drive up the value and then try to get out before it crashes. It’s risky, but as far as I can tell, there’s nothing illegal about it.

In the mean time, you have some large investment firms and hedge funds who are losing their shorts because they shorted the same stocks. Again, it’s risky, but nothing illegal about it.

But since those large investment firms and hedge funds are run by powerful people, they have managed to freeze trading, silence the boards, and intimidate them with threats of investigations and whatnot. We have the powerful people and insiders are manipulating the legal and market systems because the little guys found a way to make a few bucks.

Scary stuff.

San Francisco Schools Remove Washington, Lincoln, Feinstein, etc.

by | 2113, 27 Jan 21 | , , | 8 Comments

It was just about the Confederates, they said…

The San Francisco school board has voted to remove the names of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Dianne Feinstein and a number of other politicians, conquistadors and historical figures from public schools after officials deemed them unworthy of the honor.

After months of debate and national attention, the board voted 6-1 Tuesday in favor of renaming 44 San Francisco schools with new names with no connection to slavery, oppression, racism, genocide or similar criteria.

Coming to a school district near you.

 

California Transplants Infect Red States

by | 0923, 26 Jan 21 | , | 4 Comments

This is a rather amusing story about an entitled jerk who moved to Austin and discovered that it wasn’t San Diego, but this stat stood out:

For every one person that moved out of the Texas state capital, 1.53 people moved in, according to the data.

 

Even before the pandemic, 687,000 Californians have relocated to Texas in the last ten years.

 

US Census Bureau data from 2010 to 2019 showed Californian transplants made up about 13 per cent of the entire population that has moved to the state since the beginning of the decade.

That’s like the entire populations of Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, and West Allis moving to Texas in a single decade – with most of them being liberals. No wonder some of these conservative states are tinging purple lately. Lefties are fleeing the states they destroyed (California, Illinois, etc.) and spreading like locusts across the nation.

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