Utopia, you are standing in it!

Before you call me an “alt-righter” because I criticize Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, let me point out that both the Washington Post and PolitiFact—hardly right-wing sites—have called out the new Congressperson for her repeated misstatements and/or lies. I prefer to think that she’s just ignorant rather than mendacious, but her combination of persistent uninformed claims and overweening love of the limelight reminds me of a combination of Sarah Palin and Bill Nye.  Ocasio-Cortez is also beloved by Linda Sarsour and HuffPo, which should make us at least a bit wary.

Truly, I don’t understand why Ocasio-Cortez has become a hero of progressives, unless it be that she’s a “woman of color” (she’s Hispanic) and does have a progressive agenda, though she advances it with claims that are palpably false. If we’re to have a Democratic Leader of the Future, let it be one who learns rather than spouts nonsense. I…

Evolutionary biology gets squeezed from both the Right (many of whose adherents simply deny evolution) and now from the Left as well.  A moiety of the Left, as I’ve written here frequently, has ideological reasons for attacking parts of evolutionary biology, especially those parts that involve genetics and behavior.  So, for example, we see these kinds of views:

1.) Psychological and behavioral differences between men and women are culturally based without evolutionary underpinnings. This view, of course, comes form the mistaken notion that if you admit genetic and evolutionary differences between the sexes, it could buttress sexism. But that needn’t be the case, especially because morality and “rights” shouldn’t rest heavily on biology. The view of equal psychology and behavior in men and women is palpably foolish in view of the physical differences between them that surely reflect evolution in our ancestors. Why would bodies evolve but not brains?

Yet…

While capitalism is the only system to produce mass prosperity, I actually support free enterprise more because it is a moral system based on voluntary exchange. The various forms of statism, by contrast, are based on government coercion.

But non-coercion not the only moral reason to support capitalism. I also applaud that free markets penalize racism and sexism. Simply stated, narrow-minded people are going to lose business to ethical competitors and forego income if they make choices based on animus rather than what makes economic sense.

This doesn’t mean an end to racism and sexism, but it certainly suggests that systemic and pervasive discrimination is very unlikely without government intervention (such as the Jim Crow laws that created government-enforced racism).

This is why I’m naturally suspicious of the claim that there’s a gender pay gap.

Mark Perry and Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute summarize the issue, pointing…

The Medieval Warm Period – A Global Phenomenon

“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart,
fmr Canadian Minister of the Environment

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.“
– Timothy Wirth,
President UN Foundation

***

WHEN prosecuting the case for “unprecedented” man-made Global Warming, the first thing you need to make sure of is that no recent climate era was as warm or warmer than the present, even if that means having to rewrite the past to fit your narrative.

THE Medieval Warm Period, also known as the Medieval Climate Optimum (due to conditions favoured for…

British media reports about economic problems in Gaza are as predictable as they are ubiquitous, with most outlets attributing the Palestinian controlled territory’s poverty – and the slow pace of reconstruction – solely to Israel’s “crippling blockade”.  We’ve often noted that this myopic Israel-centered explanation denies Palestinian agency, and conflates the true cause of Gaza’s woes (Hamas’s decision to use scarce resources to import weaponry, produce rockets, build attack tunnels and launch terror) with the effect of that decision (the Israeli and Egyptian blockade).

This narrative has been woven into coverage of the weekly border riots known as The Great Return March. Despite the fact that stated goals of the Hamas organised violence is to achieve the Palestinian ‘right of return’ to Israel, more often than not reporters tell news consumers that the unrest is driven in large measure by opposition to Israel’s blockade.

The following paragraph, in…

If you were to believe this headline at the Independent (of a story cross posted from the Washington Post), you’d believe that CNN fired political commentator Marc Lamont Hill merely for criticising Israel and calling for a ‘free Palestine’.

As we’ll soon explain, this isn’t even remotely accurate.

However, even if you were to click the link and read the full article, you’d come away grossly misled.

Here are the relevant paragraphs from the Nov. 1st article on Hill’s speech at the U.N. – given on the annual ‘International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People’:

CNN fired Marc Lamont Hill on Thursday after the longtime contributor made comments about Israel during a United Nations speech.

Hill, a media studies professor at Temple University, had drawn scrutiny for calling for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea.” The words drew criticism from some conservatives and staunch…

Since Andrew Sullivan has moved to New York Magazine, I find him more liberal, more tempered, more rational, and more readable. His three-part essay this week is notable for what he says in the first part: “#MeToo and the Taboo Topic of Nature” Don’t be put off by the title: it’s really a discussion of evolutionary psychology infused with Sullivan’s experiences as a gay man.

A measles outbreak has occurred in Europe and it is being attributed largely to the influence of information spread by the anti-vaccine movement. Sadly, the information the anti-vaccine movement is spreading is proving influential that it is even causing deaths in the United States as well.

Never forget that the anti-vaccine movement is an environmentalist front that seeks to kill off humans by infecting people with diseases (like smallpox or lyme disease) so people can die slow, painful deaths. Undermining vaccines by lying about them and celebrities who embrace anti-vaccination helps undermine medical science and helps accomplish human extermination a lot faster. Below is a news report done by the BBC about the situation in Europe.