The phsycho ward takes over government

Biden’s Education Secretary Nominee: Biological Males Have a Right to Compete Against Girls in Sports

“…President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Education, Dr. Miguel Cardona, said he will work to protect a new executive order that mandates biological males be allowed to compete against biological females. Specifically, he will work to make sure the practice is allowed in high schools, where female athletes are often stripped of scholarship opportunities and athletic titles after being forced to compete against biological men.

“What do you think in general about boys running in girls track meets, like they’ve been doing in Connecticut?” Republican Senator Rand Paul asked during Cardona’s confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill.

“I think it’s critically important to respect the rights of all students, including students who are transgender, and that they are afforded the opportunities that every other student has to participate in extracurricular actives,” Cardona responded.

“Does it bother you that the top 20 percent of boys running in track meets beat all of the girls in the state? And that it, you know, will completely destroy girls athletics? The girls are being pushed out. If they don’t make the finals in the state meet, they don’t get college scholarships, that it’s really detrimental to girls sports. Do you worry about having boys running in girls track meets?” Paul followed up. “Do you think it’s fair?”

“I recognize and appreciate the concern and the frustrations that are expressed,” Cardona said. “I think it’s appropriate for, it’s the legal responsibility of schools to provide opportunities for students to participate in activities and this includes students who are transgender.”

“So you don’t have a problem then with boys running in the girls track meet, swimming meets, name it. You’re okay then with boys competing with girls?” Paul asked.

“I believe schools should offer the opportunity for students to engage in extracurricular activities, even if they are transgendered. That is their right,” Cardona said…”

Democrat governance – Long Beach style (unanticipated effects of good intentions edition)

California City Raises Wages for Grocery Workers, Grocery Chain Responds Predictably

“…The City of Long Beach, California has been among the hardest hit in the country as a result of COVID-19 restrictions placed by both the state and the City of Long Beach.  Lots of small businesses continue to remain closed and those lucky enough to be open are struggling for business.  Among the businesses that never closed, grocery stores have been exempt from most, if not all of the government-imposed restrictions.

There’s an old saying about the road to hell, and it definitely applies in this case.  In order to reward the work of grocery store employees, Long Beach passed the “Hero Pay” measure, which increased the pay of grocery store employees by four dollars an hour.  While the measure seems like it was well-intentioned, good intentions don’t balance budgets nor make the availability of products any more diverse.  Long Beach officials were looking for a positive moment in the press, however, the Kroger grocery brand quickly put that to rest, by announcing that they were closing two grocery stores in the city, a Ralph’s location as well as a Food4Less store.

In an interesting development, Kroger tied the decision to close the stores directly to the ordinance.  Most of the time, companies are less likely to wag their finger at the government as they don’t wish to draw the regulatory ire of elected officials.  In this case, Kroger didn’t hold back.  When people (who obviously don’t understand how business works yet continue to opine about it) began to attack Kroger about the decision, Kroger doubled-down to respond to those critics:

…Imagine being as insane as to watch a policy literally backfire, which will lead to the layoff of dozens if not hundreds or thousands of grocery workers, reduced hours for the workers who are not laid off (with greater responsibilities), the reduction of accessibility of products (because of the likely closing of other stores) and other horrible outcomes, and still enacting the policy anyway.  When I have said for a long time that liberalism is a mental disorder, I mean it.  Their policy proposals are so divorced from reality that when the chickens for their horrible policies come home to roost, they have yet another policy in the hopper ready to wreck business or industry…”

Imbeciles run our government

Biden White House gets backlash for dismissive response to question on U.S. military’s Space Force

Space Force was created under the Trump administration and put in place by Congress.

Can you imagine media response if a Republican press secretary was this clueless about some issue? Ms. Psaki will have to “circle back.” The militarization of space is not something that Ms. Psaki considers worthy of her time, apparently.

Headline of the day.

Grenell congratulates Buttigieg on becoming second openly gay Cabinet member

If you get your news from MSM, you’d think Buttigieg is the first.

Lawyer who falsified documents to FISA court to spy on Trump Campaign officials not disbarred. The justice system is a politicized joke.

Rules and laws are for Republicans. Democrats who break the law obviously did it for the right reasons so they are not held to account or they get a slap on the wrist.

The wacky left has captured our education system and destroyed it

San Francisco school board declares — ‘Acronyms are racist’

“…First the San Francisco School Board decided to rename 44 schools because they are named after people with ties to racism or slavery. Now the Arts Department has taken a bold move by changing its name, “VAPA” because they say, “acronyms are a symptom of white supremacy culture.”

Schools have yet to reopen in San Francisco, but their Arts Department has continued to work toward ensuring that all students have access to quality arts education.T

he director of that department said, “We are prioritizing antiracist arts instruction in our work.” So they got rid of the acronym “VAPA,” which is short for visual and performing arts.

From now on, they’ll simply be called SFUSD Arts Department.

“It is a very simple step we can take to just be referred to as the SFUSD Arts Department for families to better understand who we are,” explained Sam Bass, Director of the SFUSD Arts Department…”

What a bunch of nitwits. You can’t make this stuff up.

Ron DeSantis is one of the Republican governors leading state attempts to combat social media censorship of conservatives.

The Democrats in power in Washington will do nothing. The censorship is all in their favor. I have not heard any Democrat on the national level speak out against censorship of conservative speech. Maybe there has been one or two and I just missed it. I have heard numerous Democrat calls for additional censorship of conservatives. State action is the only possible response at this point. DeSantis is one of the leaders in this effort.

On the divergence between climate research and reality

The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science

Roger Pielke Jr.:

“…A 2015 literature review found almost 900 peer-reviewed studies published on breast cancer using a cell line derived from a breast cancer patient in Texas in 1976. But in 2007 it was confirmed that the cell line that had long been the focus of this research was actually not a breast cancer line, but was instead a skin cancer line. Whoops.

Even worse, from 2008 to 2014 — after the mistaken cell line was conclusively identified — the review identified 247 peer-reviewed articles putatively on breast cancer that were published using the misidentified skin cancer cell line. A cursory search of Google Scholar indicates that studies continue to be published in 2020 mistakenly using the skin cell line in breast cancer research.

The lesson from this experience is that science has momentum, and that momentum can be hard to change, even when obvious and significant flaws are identified. This is particularly the case when the flaws exist in databases that underlie research across an entire discipline.

In 2020, climate research finds itself in a similar situation to that of breast cancer research in 2007. Evidence indicates the scenarios of the future to 2100 that are at the focus of much of climate research have already diverged from the real world and thus offer a poor basis for projecting policy-relevant variables like economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions…

…As a result of the growing recognition of the divergence between scenarios and the real-world, the climate research community is in a similar place to where the breast cancer research community was in 2007. Evidence is now undeniable that the basis for a significant amount of research has become untethered from the real world. The issue now is what to do about it.

The challenges for climate research are significant. Consider that in contrast to the 900 articles that misused a skin cancer line as a breast cancer line, our literature review found almost 17,000 peer-reviewed articles that use the now-outdated highest emissions scenario. That particular scenario is also by far the most commonly cited in recent climate assessments of the IPCC and the U.S. National Climate Assessment. And every day new studies are published using outdated scenarios.

The elevated role of scenarios across climate research means that there is a huge momentum behind their continued use. A research reset would be a massive endeavor and would require essentially writing off the policy, economic or other real-world relevance of thousands of studies, and perhaps even their scientific utility. Though to be fair, there are reasons to use exploratory scenarios in modeling or theoretical studies, but such uses shouldn’t be confused with practical relevance — just as studies of skin cancer lines should not be confused with breast cancer lines…”

Related:

Uncomfortable knowledge: the social construction of ignorance in science and environmental policy discourses

Qasem Soleimani redux. Reaper drone over the safe house right now?

Acquitted killer of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl transferred from death row to Pakistani safe house

Her expertise is victimhood…

Ocasio-Cortez says she’s a sexual assault survivor, suggests Capitol riot compounded earlier trauma

The New York congresswoman compared her experience after Jan. 6 to that of being told by an abuser to ‘move on’ after sexual trauma.

Maybe she is a sexual assault survivor. So many liberals make up stories about personal victimhood, that I would like to see proof before I accept that claim.

Conservative Momma parodies Jen Psaki and the liberal White House press corps

Hat tip to Conservative Momma

Related:

Ms. Psaki does not like being ridiculed in the press and social media. The “circle back” phenomenon has apparently resulted in this:

White House Reporters: Biden Team Wanted Our Questions in Advance

It’s not fair. How can the White House Press Secretary be prepared for all the questions?

Gender identity. We live in the age of stupid.

Female athlete speaks out against new Biden executive order on gender identity

Idaho college runner says it’s ‘frustrating’ to compete against biological males.

Democrats are more concerned with the small fraction of the population that suffers from transgenderism than they are with normal women. I feel for the the people who suffer from transgenderism. It must be terrible. However, I don’t view them as heroes to be emulated, or special people to be put on a pedestal above others. Why should the unusual needs of a few override the normal needs of the many?

Democrats.

We live in the age of stupid.

At the intersection of a military coup and the imbeciles that run our government

At the intersection of liberals and political power

On climate religion and the madness of crowds…

The 19th century author Charles McKay had thoughts relevant to today’s climate religion. In his 1841 book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” McKay writes:

“…In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do.

We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.

We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple; and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity. 

At an early age in the annals of Europe its population lost their wits about the sepulcher of Jesus, and crowded in frenzied multitudes to the Holy Land; another age went mad for fear of the devil, and offered up hundreds of thousands of victims to the delusion of witchcraft. At another time, the many became crazed on the subject of the philosopher’s stone, and committed follies till then unheard of in the pursuit…”

Hat tip to Willis Eschenbach

Doug Santo