Fire Hydrant of Freedom

And those screen will be AI searchable. Some days I’m really freaking glad I’m an Apple products user:

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2024/05/27/oh-gawd-windoze-11-to-record-all-your-screens-are-belong-to-us/

2nd post. LawDog is a well regarded former LEO, publisher, and to my mind something of a renaissance man. To his list of abject doomstruck prophecy failures I’d add “peak oil,” “silent spring,” and of course everything associated with the Church of Anthropomorphic Climate Apocalypse:

BECAUSE WE’RE HERE, LAD
26 MAY 2024 LAWDOG 11 COMMENTS
In the classic 1964 film ‘Zulu’, there is a quietly moving scene where a junior soldier, realizing what is coming for them, plaintively asks, “Why is it us? Why us?”

Colour-Sergeant Bourne, ever-stoic, simply replies: “Because we’re here, lad. Nobody else. Just us.”

Rita is fond of quoting one of my own aphorisms back at me:
“Things never turn out as good as the optimists hope, nor as bad as the pessimists say.”

These two quotes are oft on my mind these days.

I tire of the doomsayers; of the “black-pilled” “prophets” who have been wrong at every historical and political turn in my lifetime, yet whom do not allow their past total abject failures at soothsaying deter them from once more forecasting of  Doom! And Gloom!

“Worst economy EVAH!” Well, it’s not good, but does no-one else remember stagflation in the 1970s?

“Worst political climate EVAH!” Not happy about it, but the America of the 1860s would like to have a word.

“World turmoil!” Yeah, that’s what the world does. Anyone else remember those decades where we were all going to die in atomic hellfire, with the few survivors being chased through a nuclear winter by mutant cockroaches the size of Volkswagen Beetles?

“Waaa-aaar!” I was raised in Africa. I have yet to see a decade, hell, a year, in which the Red Horseman isn’t plying his trade on at least one continent somewhere. I was a soldier during the era of Ronald Reagan, whose brash braggadocio and jingoistic rhetoric were “sure to start World War 3”; and I understood — and accepted — that my fate was to be a speed-bump, to die slowing down Soviet tank columns long enough to allow the Abrams crews to wake up.

Yet … here we are.

Remember the folks who wrote giant walls of text about how aeroplanes were going to fall out of the sky, cities would go dark, and the Internet crash, leaving all of us at the mercy of warlords ruling a post-Y2K apocalypse? Does anyone actually remember Y2K these days?

Remember That Guy who talked your ear off about how Carter, err — Clinton, err — Obama was going to declare martial law so he could stay in office after his mandated terms were up? (Insert Reagan, Bush, Bush, Trump for the other side of politics.) And — so far — wrong every time.

And probably the same guy who has a quick-draw dissertation on how — via some United Nations shenanigans and a convenient spouse or family member — the same aim would be achieved. And how many decades has that one come up wrong?

Sigh.

Are things great?

Oh, I didn’t say that. Politicians are lying, self-serving bags of o-rings, morally bankrupt; and greedy beyond any fevered dream of Mammon could have hoped for.

But … is anyone actually surprised by this?

The media are hypocrites, who dissemble with pious expressions or noble brow, all the while shrouded in cloaks of sanctimony and mendacity; safe and happy in the knowledge that they will never be held to any sort of account for their lies, perfidies, and libels.

No, you don’t hate journalists enough. You think you do, but you don’t.

Again, though:  Is anyone actually surprised that the Legacy Media has returned to their roots with William Randolph Hearst and Yellow Journalism? Were they ever actually that noble, or are we looking back through rose-coloured lenses at a carefully-curated image?

I realize that the afore-mentioned media has a vested financial and political interest in keeping the very worst of news up under your hat with you; that their profit margins require that they keep smacking us in the face in a 24-hour cycle of doom, gloom, and despair …

… But we don’t have to listen. We don’t have to watch.

I understand that social media has a vested financial and political interest in bringing the absolute worst that we as a species do on the regular as a barrage into our phones, and computers, and homes …

… But we don’t have to access social media.

Are things right now as good as the optimists claim? Hell, no. Are things as bad as the pessimists are dooming about? Also, hell, no.

Is it comfortable, nay, reassuring to be alive during this time? No. God, no.

But we’re here. Nobody else. Just us. And we can weather Teh Stupid that pretty much is the Sum Total of Human Existence (just writ large on Social Media and a 24-hour news cycle) with calm, confidence in our neighbors, and honest preparedness …

… Or we can run around with our hair on fire, listening to every kook who hasn’t been correct since Christ was a corporal, spewing panic, and just generally making things worse (as well as looking like a complete oik, historically)*.

I know which path I’m going to take. I invite you to take the same one.

LawDog

*Having seen how fast the average person panicked during the Recent Covid Unpleasantness™, I have my doubts, but I’m trying to  not to be a doomer here. Give me a break.

https://thelawdogfiles.com/2024/05/because-were-here-lad.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=because-were-here-lad

Gawd, the thought of this trafficker in serial falsehoods impacting the lives of hundreds of millions or more addressing future MDs is galling in the extreme:

Anthony Fauci Tells Columbia Medical Students to Lie Just Like Him
They would do better to follow the rule of “first do no harm.”
May 28, 2024
By K. LLOYD BILLINGSLEY
NIAID / Flickr
Also published in The American Spectator Fri. May 24, 2024
Speeches by Joe Biden and Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker gained widespread media coverage. On the other hand, the speech given last week by Dr. Anthony Fauci at Columbia University failed to get the attention it deserved.

Fauci spoke of “egregious distortions of reality” and told the students: “Sadly, elements of our society are driven by a cacophony of falsehoods, lies, and conspiracy theories that get repeated often enough that after a while, they stand largely unchallenged, ominously leading to an insidious acceptance of what I call ‘the normalization of untruth.’ ... And we as much or more than anyone else need to push back on these distortions of truth and reality.” Critics were quick to push back.

“Everything he just accused all of us of is the stuff that he and his cadre of lunatics have been doing,” said Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report. Fauci, longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), maintained that he had not funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to perform dangerous gain-of-function research. On May 16, the day after Fauci’s speech, Lawrence Tabak, former acting director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), testified that NIAID did indeed fund gain-of-function research at the WIV through the EcoHealth Alliance.

Sen. Rand Paul, a medical doctor and author of Deception: The Great Covid Cover-up, accused Fauci of lying to Congress about that funding. That didn’t come up in Fauci’s speech, and neither did the 6-foot social distancing rule, which Fauci now acknowledges “just sort of appeared,” without any scientific basis. Also missing was Fauci’s claim to represent science, and the former NIAID boss left out details that would have been of particular interest to his audience, the students of Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Born in 1940, Anthony Fauci graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1962. In 1966, Fauci earned a medical degree from Cornell University, but he didn’t practice medicine for long. The government was then drafting physicians to treat wounded American soldiers in Vietnam, but the Cornell MD opted for a different path.

In 1968, Dr. Fauci took a cushy “yellow beret” job with the NIH and decided to stay. In 1984, the NIH made Fauci head of NIAID, and, for some medical scientists, that was a problem. Fauci had obtained no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry. Kary Mullis, who had a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and won a Nobel Prize for “his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method,” considered Fauci unqualified for the NIAID job.

“This man thinks you can take a blood sample and stick it in an electron microscope and if it’s got a virus in there, you will know it,” Mullis said. “He doesn’t understand electron microscopy and he doesn’t understand medicine. He should not be in a position like he’s in.” But he was—and with serious consequences for AIDS patients.

Fauci’s preferred cure was AZT, also known as azidothymidine and Zidovudine. The highly toxic drug failed to prevent or cure AIDS, but Fauci inflicted the drug on foster children in New York City, with disastrous results. He also branded critics “AIDS deniers,” a tactic he would repeat during the pandemic.

Instead of debating critics such as the scientists of the Great Barrington Declaration—most if not all of whom are more qualified than himself—Fauci branded them conspiracy theorists, fringe epidemiologists, and so forth. As with AZT, the COVID vaccines failed to prevent infection or transmission, but Fauci recommended them even for children, the least vulnerable group.

This is what happens when a medical doctor opts for a career as a government bureaucrat and remains in power for decades with no accountability. The Columbia students would do better to ignore Fauci, become practicing physicians and surgeons, and follow the rule of “first do no harm.” More doctors and fewer government bureaucrats should be the rule moving forward.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14940

The $25/hr chickens come home to roost in CA. WSJ editorial:

California’s $25-an-Hour Minimum-Wage Boomerang
Gov. Newsom now says the law he signed last October would add to the state’s fiscal woes. He ignored warnings at the time.

Progressives in Sacramento rarely think twice before burdening businesses. But lo and behold, they are having second thoughts about California’s new $25-an-hour minimum wage for healthcare workers. Why? Because its burdensome budget costs are threatening liberal programs.

California’s Democratic Legislature is scrambling this week to delay the state’s higher healthcare minimum wage, which is scheduled to take effect on June 1. It’s not uncommon for politicians to reverse themselves, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom is walking back a law that he signed only last October. What’s changed?

The state’s budget deficit has ballooned to $45 billion. Mr. Newsom projects that the new healthcare minimum wage would cost the state $4 billion more a year owing to higher Medicaid costs and compensation for workers at state-owned facilities. Legislative analyses warned about these costs, but Mr. Newsom signed the law anyway.

Thus the minimum wage for healthcare workers is set to rise to between $18 and $23 an hour this Saturday, depending on the type and size of healthcare provider. California’s current minimum wage for all workers is $16 an hour. Nearly all workers at healthcare facilities including janitors will have to be paid at least $25 an hour by 2028.

Democrats shrugged when healthcare providers warned that the wage mandate could force cuts to patient services. Who cares if Californians wait longer before being seen at the ER? But now Democrats worry that the state’s higher health costs could force bigger government spending cuts. Oh no. Californians may have to wait even longer for their bullet train to nowhere.

Mr. Newsom is proposing to tie health worker minimum-wage increases to the state’s general fund revenue and to exempt state facilities. But once capital-gains revenue picks up again, California’s private healthcare providers will be stuck paying for the wage mandate, which they will ultimately pass on to patients. Far better to repeal the $25 wage minimum en toto.

As usual, Democrats don’t want to eat their own lousy cooking. Gov. Newsom this spring also signed legislation to carve out fast-food restaurants on government property from California’s new $20-an-hour fast-food minimum wage, which kicked in last month. Democrats don’t want the mandate interfering with government concession licenses.

California’s wage minimums are another illustration of how progressive mandates boomerang. Average weekly earnings for leisure and hospitality employees in California have declined by 2.6% over the last year owing to a steep drop in hours worked. By contrast, those average weekly earnings rose 3% nationwide, 3.2% in Florida and 5.2% in Texas.
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Average hourly earnings for California leisure and hospitality workers have also increased more slowly—2.1% compared to 3.8% nationwide—no doubt partly because the state’s softer labor market has reduced competition for workers.

When government raises wages above what the market commands, employers will increase prices and reduce labor. California, QED.

https://apple.news/A5Ap8FcbLSa6ci4OIWLpiGQ

I find this post interesting. Not only is there a lot of gamesmanship (‘scuse me “Progressives,” gamesfeatherlessbipedofallpossibleclaimedgendersship) but often it seems there is a race to be the first to assign a negative connotation to a meaning. Strikes me that this might rise to the level of being inducted into the fallacy of argument hall of fame:

Our Strange Politics of Meaning Assignment
The Volokh Conspiracy / by Orin S. Kerr / May 27, 2024 at 9:40 PM
[A thought.]

Recent stories about flags at the residence and vacation home of Justice Alito and his family remind me of something broader I'd been meaning to blog about: It's depressing, in our era of polarized politics, how much political attention focuses on interpreting the meaning of phrases and symbols that the other side uses.

The Alito flags raise one recent example, but I see this as a recurring dynamic. What does "from the river to the sea" mean? What is "critical race theory"? What does "all lives matter" mean? A surprising amount of politics ends up being channeled through contested meanings of used phrases and symbols.

I'm sure there's an academic phrase that already describes this.  But in the absence of knowing it, I will call this the strange politics of meaning assignment.  Here's the idea.  In a polarized political environment with little communication between the two sides, you can easily rile up your side by providing an uncharitable interpretation to the other side's symbols or phrases. This is what that means, you announce. Now you can see the real them. Finally, they are saying the quiet part out loud. This is who they are.

Sometimes that assigned meaning is correct, and being uncharitable is just being accurate.  In that case, fair enough. But, often enough to matter, meaning might be contested. A particular symbol or phrase may have different meanings to different people.  A particular use may be innocuous or in a context where the meaning is uncertain.  In that setting, assignment of meaning can cause a lot of trouble.  It can effectively create a meaning that isn't what those who use that symbol or phrase mean.

I have no personal knowledge of what particular flags mean, so I have no idea to what extent the Alito flag stories reflect this dynamic.  But it seems to me that a lot of attention in our politics raises this concern. A phrase or symbol is noted; someone on the other side will declare that this is what it means; and off the two sides go, with completely different understandings of the facts because they have assigned different meanings to symbols or phrases.

None of this is to doubt that there are real differences in political opinions, or that some symbols and phrases are profoundly disturbing.  But I wonder if something is lost when we focus on the symbols and phrases rather than try to address the underlying disagreements directly.

https://reason.com/volokh/2024/05/27/our-strange-politics-of-meaning-assignment/