“More than 230,000 people have died from COVID! I hope everyone remembers that on Election Day!”
“Are you suggesting Trump is responsible for the 230,000 deaths? He’s kept you alive. A dubious achievement, I grant you. But there’s about 330 million people in the US, so why not look at it that way? He’s kept almost 330 million people alive.”
“I’ve kept myself alive. I wear a mask, wash my hands, social distancing . . .”
“Sure, sure . . . are you saying we can choose whether or not to be infected? Everyone knows what’s safe and unsafe. Did the 230,000 people choose to get sick and die? Or did everyone who’s still here take care of themselves but all the deaths are on Trump?
“And by the way, your death count is too low by about a million people. You’re citing the death count for one country. It’s a global pandemic. I understand you haven’t figured out how to blame the rest of the deaths on Trump, but what is your position here? It’s bad when Americans die and everyone else can go to hell? What a humanitarian you are.”
California judge tosses extortion charges against megachurch leader; child rape and human trafficking counts left in place — OC Register
Who would you trust: a child rapist, a human trafficker or a church leader? The good news is you don’t have to choose because they’re all the same person.
Steve Scully was going to be the moderator of tonight’s now-cancelled presidential debate.
I know a lot of people who think President Trump’s “fake news” feud with the media is based largely on his own paranoid imagination.
But is a guy who has publicly stated that Donald Trump should never be president really a good choice to moderate a presidential debate in which one of the participants is Donald Trump? There wasn’t anyone a bit more impartial available?
Wait, it gets better. While in college, Scully served as an intern for — wait for it — Sen. Joe Biden.
I’ve been trying to get down to the heart of the matter but my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter, but I think it’s about . . . forgiveness . . .forgiveness . . .
Between games, [Willie] Mays came over to me and said, ‘Now, in the second game, you’re going up against Bob Gibson.’ I only half-listened to what he was saying, figuring it didn’t make much difference. So I walked up to the plate the first time and started digging a little hole with my back foot…No sooner did I start digging that hole than I hear Willie screaming from the dugout: ‘Noooooo!’ Well, the first pitch came inside. No harm done, though. So I dug in again. The next thing I knew, there was a loud crack and my left shoulder was broken. I should have listened to Willie.
Forty years ago, @mickfleetwoodofficial, @stevienicks, and @lindseybuckingham presented the USC Trojan Marching Band with a platinum record for “Tusk.”
The convenience store where I buy sodas in the morning has literally four signs at the entrance saying wear a face covering if you come in the store.
This morning a guy comes in with no face covering and a cup. The girl at the register says to him, “You can’t come in without a face covering.”
“I’m just going to get a cup of water,” he says. So there’s another problem, which is that nobody knows the provenance of that cup and he’s going to push it into a public water dispenser.
“You can’t be in here without a face covering,” the girl says a little more loudly.
“I said I’m just going to get a cup of water!” Which he does.
When I get to the register, I say to the girl, “I don’t think I could run a store because I would pick up the gun that I keep behind the counter, stick it in that guy’s eyeball and say ‘I’m going to count backwards from two, and when I get to one, you better be out of the store. Thank you.”
“You’re going to kill a guy for not wearing a mask?!”
“No, not the mask. I don’t care if he wears a mask or doesn’t wear a mask or shoves a mask up his ass. I’m going to kill him for breaking the rules. That’s law and order, baby. Although I expect the deterrent effect would be enough to avert the loss of life.”
Here’s a fun experiment you can try out yourself . . .
Pull up a Google search bar and type “does joe biden have dementia.” Of course you know Google has an autocomplete feature to fill in common searches. Here’s what happened when I started to type “does joe biden have dementia”:
According to Google, the top search starting with “does joe biden have” is “does joe biden have a dog”! Are people making decisions about presidential candidates based on whether or not they have a dog?!
Here’s the result when I type in the whole search phrase:
There’s no autocomplete at all! Apparently I’m the only person in the entire universe to enter the search phrase “does joe biden have dementia.”
Now switch search engines. I switched to DuckDuckGo and started typing the same search phrase. Here’s the result:
With DuckDuckGo, I only have to type three letters to get an autocomplete for “does joe biden have dementia”!
I’m not even sure what the right word is for what Google is doing here. “Dishonest” is not strong enough and I don’t think “sinister” is either. Maybe “corrupt” or “malignant.”
They buried that search. And there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the organization who cares or feels safe in saying “That is some bullshit right there and regardless of political persuasion, I’m not going to be part of it.”
A Judge Asked Harvard to Find Out Why So Many Black People Were In Prison. They Could Only Find 1 Answer: Systemic Racism
The author of the article is someone named Michael Harriot, whose bio describes him as a “world-renowned wypipologist.” (Look it up.)
The section that caught my attention was where the author proposes and rejects other explanations for the number of black people in prison. An excerpt:
“White people make up roughly 74% of the Massachusetts population while accounting for 58.7% of cases in our data,” the study explained. “Meanwhile, Black people make up just 6.5% of the Massachusetts population and account for 17.1% of cases.”
Of course, that could only mean that Black people commit much more crime, right?
Nope.
That’s it. No further explanation. No link to relevant data. Just “Nope.”
I added a comment to the article:
“Of course, that could only mean that Black people commit much more crime, right?
Nope.”
According to the FBI statistics, black citizens commit about half the murders in the United States (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls).
Maybe Harvard could do a study on why there are so many men in prison. Systemic sexism, probably.
My comment went into moderation, from where it quickly disappeared completely. Throw a fact at these fools and you immediately become persona non grata.
Did you suffer at the end
Would there be no one to remember
Did you banish all the old ghosts
With the terms of surrender
And could you hear me calling out your name
Well I guess that I will never know
Michelangelo
Last night I dreamed about you
I dreamed that you were weeping
And your tears poured down like diamonds
For a love beyond all keeping
And you caught them one by one
In a million silk bandannas that I gave you long ago
Michelangelo
We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers.
—Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
When I was younger (we’re all very well-behaved now 🙂 ), I had several friends and family members who had unpleasant run-ins with police, where they were cuffed or arrested or beaten, the common thread being not that they were black (they were all white), but they were all wise-asses who didn’t respect authority and couldn’t find it within themselves to be compliant to a police officer.
One day my 9th-grade gym teacher told us (again, all white boys) to be excessively polite to police officers — yes sir, no sir — have your day in court if it came to that, but better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
In my experience, the narrative that only black citizens have run-ins with cops and have no agency over whether the encounter escalates is quite wrong.
I say this as background to a conversation I had recently with a local lunatic regarding race . . .
“Are you scared of dying every time you get pulled over?” she asked. “And would you, without reservation, be a black person in America right now?”
“Good question . . . my family would be in for quite a shock. A ‘black person in America’ . . . who would I be? Barack Obama? Lebron James?
“There’s a model for being successful in America, even as a member of a marginalized group.
“On the traffic stop, I’ve heard that cops pull over motorists just because they’re black, so I always wonder why they’re pulling me over. But I’m not scared of dying.”
“So your answer is no, whether you realize it or not. And every black American is scared of dying at a traffic stop. Every. Black. American.”
“Why? People of all races are killed at traffic stops.” I knew that introducing a fact would be the knockout blow. “And do you mind if I ask how many black Americans you talked to before reaching that conclusion?”
“I researched it as part of my PhD studies. I’ve seen Chris Rock on Comedians in Cars . . .”
“You did your PhD studies by watching comedy shows on TV?”
“I’ve read at least 7 books on the subject. I listen, I observe. I’ve read and listened to Donald Glover.”
“Aren’t all the people you’ve mentioned still alive? Maybe this ‘dying at traffic stops” thing is not a rational fear.”
“So if you want to say something stupid like ‘People of all races die at traffic stops’ . . . I’m not going to waste my time on white men who don’t want to learn anything.”
“What is your issue with ‘People of all races die at traffic stops’? It’s an indisputable fact that blows up the whole fake narrative. I’m a scientist. I deal with facts and rationality. You deal with anecdotes, emotion, urban legends, some kind of mind-reading trick that allows you to see inside the head of ‘every black American,’ and you assume that if anyone sees the world differently than you do, it’s because they have something to ‘learn.’
“You want to teach me something? How many Americans die annually at traffic stops, broken down by race?”
“I don’t know that. I’d have to look it up.”
“The number is about 100. It breaks down pretty evenly by race: 30 black, 30 white, 30 Hispanic. Only the black deaths make the news, but even without looking case by case at how many had open warrants, how many had weapons in the car, how many resisted arrest, the probability of being killed at a traffic stop is extremely low. It’s not a rational fear. It’s just something that’s pumped up by hustlers in exchange for money and votes from gullible people like you, and to advance an anti-cop agenda.
“I read a while back that about 50 people a year are struck by lightning. Are you scared of being struck by lightning? I’m not. It’s too rare. But it’s almost twice as common as a black motorist being killed at a traffic stop.”
“I can also tell you that about 100 black Americans a year die in swimming pool accidents. Can you peer into the minds of ‘every black American’ and tell me if they live in fear of swimming pools? 100 is still a very small number but it’s a far more common cause of death than traffic stops.
“Maybe we can defund the police and invest in swimming lessons.”
Joe Biden has emerged from his basement to blame President Trump for riots carried out by people who hate President Trump.
Bear in mind that these are liberal groups, rioting in liberal cities, with liberal mayors, and liberal city councils, promoting radical liberal causes, and supported by liberal money.
Amidst sinking poll numbers, Joe, the media and others on the left have pivoted from months of “Violence? What violence?” to “Rioting is terrible but it’s all Trump’s fault.”
