Immune Reaction of the Deep State

When our bodies are invaded by a virus we rarely experience its direct effects. The virus attacks our tissues directly, but everything we suffer: runny noses, itchy eyes, congestion, coughing, sneezing, headache, fever, body aches; result from the responses of the immune system. Each ailment plays some role in fighting the infection and keeping additional pathogens out.

[As as aside, to me this is all biological proof that we are genetically disposed to be assholes. Think of what happens when you're sick and you sneeze. Is that sneeze more likely to prevent additional infections from entering through your respiratory system, or to spread the illness you already have to the people around you?]

We are witnessing an analogous process in the political realm, as the deep state unleashes all sorts of ailments on the body politic to rid itself of what it perceives to be a great threat to either (a) itself or (b) the nation overall. (The answer is a but they'll always pretend it is b). The reactions range from irritating to harmful. From a complete loss of professionalism by the media to promotion of outlandish conspiracy theories against our nuclear rival, none of their responses could be remotely labeled as beneficial.

You might note that I include the media as part of the deep state. That they carry water for the deep state is nothing new and has been well documented by Noam Chomsky and others. Also this was confirmed from the DNC leaked emails that showed numerous news organizations were meeting in secret with Hillary Clinton just before she announced her candidacy. This is exactly what media collusion with the political side of the deep state would like.

Make no mistake there is a war brewing in our government, and numerous entities will stop at nothing to undermine the new leadership. How far will they go? When the body marks an antigen as an existential threat it will similarly stop at nothing to eradicate it. A peanut is not harmful. Quite the opposite it is a nutritious food. But if the immune system rejects peanuts it will mount a response so severe that it can even kill the body it is fighting to defend.

Stop Global Warming in Three Easy Steps

Feeling bummed because John Oliver told you climate change is a fact? That's okay, there's plenty that you, yes you, can do yourself to end the ravages of CO₂ emissions on our planet. It won't be easy, but heck, if saving the planet was easy everyone would be doing it, right?

Stop driving

Personal vehicles are not only the most convenient mode of transportation, they are also the least energy efficient. There is simply no way one can be a credible advocate for the destruction being caused by CO₂ emissions if they are using an automobile for their own transportation. Resorting to mass transportation and ride sharing are much more efficient. But really these still have their own carbon emissions. To really fight climate change one must accept the challenge of walking to all destinations. One exception might be to ride a horse, but make sure it is pasture-fed. No cheating with tractor-rolled hay bales or farm-grown grains!

Stop heating and cooling your home

Central heating for homes generally runs directly off gas, which directly creates CO₂ emissions, or off electricity, which indirectly creates even more CO₂ emissions. Even worse is air conditioning, which is even less efficient than electrical heating. Consider alternate modes of regulating the temperature of your house. Open windows in summer, and lots of blankets in winter. Planting decidious trees on your souther exposure will help with temperate regulation. If you do need to heat your home, only do so by burning wood harvested locally without CO₂ emiting devices such as chainsaws.

Stop consuming products shipped by truck, rail, ship, or plane

The global economy is a massive polluter. Fight back by buying only local products that you acquire on foot. This means all your food will be sourced from the local farmers' markets! Be careful though, as they tend to transport to town by truck. You'll need to journey to the farms yourself to make sure your food sourcing does not leave a carbon footprint. Similar conditions apply for clothing, medicine, shelter, and other necessities of life.

John Oliver is a Moron: John Oliver is a Moron

John Oliver is a Moron

Tenet 1: John Oliver is a Moron

Tenet 2: John Oliver is wrong on virtually every subject.

Tenet 3: If you find yourself agreeing with John Oliver, you are probably wrong.

John Oliver is a Moron

My apologies for the uncreative title, subtitle, and section headings, but sometimes these things just write themselves. Here's a John Oliver meme I recently encountered which reminded me of my long-held belief that John Oliver is a moron. (Apologies to all morons out there of the more benign variety).

John Oliver is a Moron

Here we see Oliver stumble gracelessly into the dual subjects of climate change and public opinion. First we are told that the opinions of 25% of the population are simply irrelevant. Trenchant commentary if he was talking about a country that is not a democracy. Looking at our handy list of dictators and focusing on the Americas, that would limit him to Cuba (whom he defends) and Venezuela (whom he doesn't defend yet can't bring himself to properly criticize either). In those countries, and many of the other dictatorships throughout the world, popular opinion is very unimportant. However the United States is governed by a democracy (link provided for John Oliver). Under a democracy policy decisions are ostensibly made with large input from the governed citizens. Thus 25% of the population doubting climate change does in fact matter. It matters whether you agree or not, because those people have input into policy making. Granted it might be true that the US is not in fact all that democratic and people don't actually have that much input in policy. Or it might be the case the democracy is an institution doomed to failure because people on the whole are not rational. But Oliver is not making commentary on the principles of democracy: he is just ridiculing rubes for chuckles.

John Oliver is a Moron

Second, you have to love this sentence:

You don't need people's opinions on a fact.

And this is where we really dive into the depths of his moronity, or perhaps just the shallowness of his understanding of the domain in which is he is ridiculing people for their beliefs. (Aside: I've still never had a debate with one of these climate change fanatics who could share even basic details about the climate science they're so sure of.) So why is it that Oliver can be so sure climate change is a "fact"? What they will always respond with is: the scientific consensus. Yes the consensus, or the opinions of experts, is all the proof you need. So Oliver's stance on climate change is driven by the two following premises.

1. You don't need people's opinions on a fact.
2. Climate change is a fact because of people's opinions.

The only thing proven here is that Oliver is highly immune to cognitive dissonance, drawn from the observation that his head has not exploded (unfortunately). Although another explanation is that he has so little intellectual curiosity that he doesn't realize that consensus is the key argument supporting his assertion that "climate change is a fact". This kind of protection from the trivial nuances of the domain should be generally true in any field of knowledge. We shall henceforth refer to it as the Oliver Effect: when one's understanding of a subject is so shallow that the fundamental contradictions of their opinions on that subject are hidden from them. But this is just what we all know colloquially as "being a moron."

He lists a number of facts to compare to. Let's see if we can prove those things.

Which number is bigger, 5 or 15?

You can't really prove this as it is practically axiomatic.

Are there owls or hats?

Pretty easy to prove by providing an example of either.

Climate change cannot be similarly proved! For reasons I previously explained, we can't actually prove anything about a theory given a single chaotic instance of the phenomenon in action. We can't prove it won't rain tomorrow. We've all seen downpours on days forecasted to have 0% chance of rain. That 15 is larger than 5 is a fact. That owls exist is a fact. That it will rain tomorrow is a model-driven probability, not a fact. "Climate change" is not a fact, or even a statement. Scientific fact requires reproducible experimentation. Blind faith in the academy is exactly what science is designed to avoid.

John Oliver is a Moron

In conclusion, with one bumbling statement Oliver has negated the fundamental bases of both democracy and scientific inquiry in his zeal to paint other people as morons so as to take some pressure off of himself. He's like the kid in class who couldn't read well so he made fun of the teacher's shirt to make everyone else laugh. Granted he is funny. So laugh at him, not with him. And for the love of god please don't be making political or scientific opinions based on the quips of a comedian so lacking in knowledge that the phrase "the Oliver Effect" was named after him. 😄

Chicago Public Schools CEO Receives F for Letter Writing

In Chicago, those who can't do, write angry political letters. The CEO of Chicago Public Schools sent a letter home with all 381,000 students, blasting Gov Rauner and President Trump for budget reductions to CPS. The letter made no mention to the fact that Chicago has been run by Democrats for decades and schools have failed under heavy funding. Chicago schools are funded 40% higher than the OECD average. (here and here). US schools still fall at the back of the pack in science and math scores (here) despite borderline obsession with those subjects, and Chicago falls well short of state and national levels.

If you're a rational thinker you'll realize the problem with Chicago schools is not funding. However if you're an administrator accustomed to free and nearly unlimited resources from the state and federal governments, then any threat to funding hits at a level so personally enraging it drives one to send home a highly unethical (and possibly illegal) letter with half a million kids, the same ones the the administrators have been routinely failing.

In response to budget cuts schools administrators will typically act first to defund in areas that have the most impact on parents. Buses will be reduced, classrooms supplies won't be provided. How often do you hear complaints of the form teachers shouldn't have to be buying supplies for their classrooms. In principle no, but let's look at those teachers. In Chicago, the median teacher salary is $78,169 (source)*. That's pretty good, don't you think? This is in a city where the median income is $38,625 (source). They make over twice what a typical Chicagoan makes. But mostly they only work 9 months of the year. Pro-rated that's the equivalent of making $104,225, if they worked through the summer. (I would love to make 80Gs and get summers off). And that ignores their highly generous benefits and pension packages**, which are estimated at a median $27,564, bringing the total pro-rated benefits package to over $130K. (These number may skew high because some of them probably do work summers).

While the state's decision to defund public schools does put the CPS CEO in quite a bind, the truth is that teachers are well-paid and the schools are if anything overfunded to begin with. And while it may be therapeutic for him to lash at any convenient government official with an R next to his name, it totally ignores the reality that both the CPS budgets and the heavy liabilities of generous pension programs were done under Democrat leadership. Now of course it's hard to attack those Democrats when they've long retired, but the Republican lead state apparatus is trying to keep from being drug under by Chicago's spendy ways, so they make a convenient scapegoat for all the problems CPS has brought on itself. I propose that every state pass a law to the effect of: no deferred employee reimbursements. No pensions, only cash payment. It is far too easy for the politician of today to gain power by taxing the people of tomorrow. It is extraordinarily unethical and the practice must be ended.


* Granted this is the highest median salary listed. The numbers provided range from $57K to $78K depending on the source. I didn't dig into to finding out an explanation for the large discrepancy. However if you use the low end the pro-rated total benefits package still amounts to over $100K.

** For more on what pension liabilities are doing to Chicago, see Stefan Molyneux's podcast on the subject.

It's a War of Pyschologies, not Ideologies

The Anonymous Conservative made a post today that reinforces a recent post of mine. Quoting from the Chicago Tribune:

As he did last month at an event in Washington, D.C., the mayor expanded on what he believes is the road map back to power for his party — putting moderate candidates such as veterans, football players, sheriffs and business people up in Republican districts, picking battles with Republicans, exploiting wedges within the GOP and fighting attempts to redistrict Congress on partisan grounds.
But this time he didn’t hold back on his frustration with some of his fellow Democrats.
“Winning’s everything,” he said…
Instead, he said, Democrats should focus on the GOP. “Wherever there’s a disagreement among Republicans, I’m for one of those disagreements,” he said. “I’m all for it. The president’s with Russia? I’m with John McCain and Lindsey Graham, I’m for NATO! Why? (It’s a) wedge. Wedges have to be schisms, schisms have to be divides.”

From AC's commentary:

All of politics is r vs K. It is a battle of reproductive strategies. r-strategists want to destroy K-strategists. There are no morals, no ideals, no greater goals, no compassion, no decency – nothing else. This is about destroying what the left views as a hostile species they do not like. This is a war, every bit as real as the Allies vs the Axis, or radical Islam against the unbelievers.

His viewpoint is that politics is downstream not just of culture, but of deeply rooted psychologies, dubbed r and K from biological reproductive strategies. This isn't a battle of ideologies. The sides are drawn up at a deeper level, and the politics follows after. The left does this better (in a sense of the word better) than we do. I noticed this in one of my earliest blog posts. The left is unprincipled. Surely they'd say the same about us, but I counter they are objectively more so. In a political war that is an insult, but in a war of psychologies that is the strategy of fluidity. They don't care about principles, they care about damaging the other side, and making gains for their side.

Here Rahm says it openly. Winning is everything. Principles be damned. Ideology be damned. Logical consistency be damned. Whether or not we choose to be principled or consistent is our own choice, but know this: it won't matter to them. They won't be impressed with our logic and they won't respect our principled approaches. It is a war being fought with sides drawn based on subconscious psychological drives.

Remember, when they go low, we go low. To them nothing matters besides winning. Nothing matters besides political power. And there is a lot of reason to be very afraid of what will happen when/if they regain political power. They've already determined violence is okay if they call us a fascist first. What will be next? These people must be kept in check with whatever means is available. Not for any principles, but because we are their enemy, and they have no principles.

How to Dismantle the "It's My Body" Argument

I mention here a lot that the abortion debate is like a war where both sides are fighting different battles. The left sees it as a women's rights issue. The right either sees it as a moral argument that abortion is murder (has nothing to do with women as a political entity) or that Roe V. Wade is an unconstitutional ruling and is judicial overreach (again has nothing to do with women as a political entity). While I have my own reasons for supporting legalized abortion the pro-abortion arguments I hear tend to be illogical. Here is a simple way to dismantle one of the more common arguments you'll encounter.

After they make the claim of "my body, my right", ask them if they support partial-birth abortion. If they do, that's fine. They win the logical debate. They'll ultimately lose the battle for hearts and minds of the public if ultimately they advocate that women can interrupt the birthing process to stab the almost-infant in the head and suck out its brains.

If they don't support partial birth abortion, then the contradiction is this: if the woman can't choose to terminate the fetus while it's still inside her, then they must not actually care about the rights of her body. Prod for the point at which abortion becomes wrong. They'll usually say the third trimester. (Most European countries ban after the first trimester). Ask why body rights don't apply during the 3rd trimester. The abortion advocate won't be able to give a good answer, because there is not one.

If women's "rights to their bodies" is in fact a valid argument, then it must apply all the way until the bodies of mother and fetus are separated. That is, up to childbirth and the child's first breath. The abortion advocate must decide if they advocate the argument in full or not at all. Positions of the type "well it's her body except at the third trimester it suddenly becomes not her body (plus or minus two weeks)" are ultimately indefensible.


Here are some questions & quips you can make which will be effective, especially if there are observers to the interaction.

• How many heartbeats does a body have? 
• How many fingers and toes does a human body have?
• How many blood types can a body have?
• How many sets of DNA does a body have?
• Is it wrong when women say the baby kicked? Shouldn't they say, I kicked?
• Can mothers say the fetus is a boy when it's just part of the female body?
• Why are people convicted of murder if they use force to kill the fetus? Shouldn't these crimes be prosecuted as some sort of bodily harm?

Calexit: Sorry Liberals It's Not What Your Elites Want

I'm a sucker for secessionist movements. I supported Brexit and Texit. I support Hawaiian independence, a unified Ireland, and the free state of Bavaria. I want to see downstate Illinois divorced from it's Chicago overlord and I once advocated for my own Illinois county to secede from the union and align with Bavaria because of their superior beer laws and culture. Naturally I support Calexit, for reasons stated before.

However Calexit seems doomed to fail. And not just because of public polling that would seem to suggest little public support. The odds aren't that awful when you consider all the "Don't Knows" are open to persuasion. The problem is there is little energy behind the movement. Look at their subreddit. Only 2K subscribers and not much activity. Why is it that liberals are able to organize for national marches and riots but can't even get a small amount of energy for Calexit? It seems to me that those operations had support from the leftist establishment. Those activities are funded to the tune of millions of dollars and are given organizational support. Why doesn't Calexit get the same treatment? Obvious enough: the liberal elites don't want it.

I'm tempted to say the left has no grassroots action at all. The obvious counter example is Bernie. But even Bernie was initially propped up by the media, to try to counter accusations that Hillary was running virtually unopposed for the nomination. Sure he because so popular that they then had to rig the election against him, but one wonders where he'd be if the media had initially ignored him as they typically do with anti-establishment candidates. So the closest thing to a grassroots on the left is Bernie, but even he may have needed the establishment bump to get traction, and the establishment still nixed the movement when they had to. Everything else, the marches, riots, even the pipeline protests had organizational backing. Calexit does not.

The liberal elites don't want states' rights and they don't want geographical balkanization. They don't want an environment where people can live in areas that suit their culture and personal preferences. They want to dictate their vision for the perfect society to everyone. They want centralization of power, and to be the ones dominating it. So sorry liberals who support Calexit. As much as I like seeing so many of you coming around on states' rights, it won't happen because nothing in the left happens from the grassroots.