Conservative follies #2
1. Breitbart reports that in the past year, 15 border patrol agents have died in the line of duty. They don’t say that 13 of them were killed by illegal viruses.
2. The wisdom of the House GOP.
3. Amy Vax on why Asians are bad for America.
4. Vaccines violate the Christian religion, but killing people does not.
5. Ron DeSantis is now so afraid of his fellow conservatives that he refuses to say whether he got the booster.
6. A prominent Utah Republican suggests that vaccines are a Jewish conspiracy:
“I believe the Jews are behind this. For 300 years the Jews have been trying to infiltrate the Catholic Church and place a Jew covertly at the top. It happened in 2013 with Pope Francis. I believe the pandemic and systematic extermination of billions of people will lead to an effort to consolidate all the countries in the world under a single flag with totalitarian rule. I know, it sounds bonkers. No one is reporting on it, but the Hasidic Jews in the US instituted a law for their people that they are not to be vaccinated for any reason,” he wrote in the email.
I completely agree with the fifth sentence in that quotation.
7. January 6, 2021 is often viewed as one of the darkest days in America history. Here I’d like to suggest that it was also one of our best days. For one brief shining moment in an otherwise endless sea of lies, politicians were willing to speak truth to power. Here was Mitch McConnell:
The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people…They tried to disrupt our democracy, they failed…This failed insurrection.
And here was Kevin McCarthy:
The violence, destruction, and chaos we saw earlier was unacceptable undemocratic and unamerican. It was the saddest day I’ve ever had as serving as a member of this institution…We saw the worst of America this afternoon…
And McCarthy a week later:
last week’s violent attack on the Capitol was undemocratic, un-American and criminal…those who are responsible for Wednesday’s chaos will be brought to justice…The President bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.
And Lindsey Graham:
Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he’s been a consequential president, but today, first thing you’ll see. All I can say is a count me out. Enough is enough.
Of course soon after they lost their courage and resumed the position of obsequious subservience to the Great Leader. The GOP will nominate Trump in 2024 and he’ll probably win, as I predicted on the day after the election, when most of you thought Trump was finished.
To be a democracy it’s not enough to have elections. The outcome of elections must be trusted by the public. We are half of a democracy.
Trump could drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow and nothing would change. The Republican Party of the 20th century is gone, and it’s not coming back regardless of who leads the party. It’s a personality cult. Please follow Argentinas “Peronists” and relabel it the Trumpian Party.
As Francis Fukuyama recently suggested, we are a banana republic:
Conversely, losing candidates in elections in new democracies have often charged voter fraud in the face of largely free and fair elections. This happened last year in Peru, when Keiko Fujimori contested her loss to Pedro Castillo in the second round of the country’s presidential election. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been laying the grounds for contesting this year’s presidential election by attacking the functioning of Brazil’s voting system, just as Mr. Trump spent the lead-up to the 2020 election undermining confidence in mail-in ballots.
Before Jan. 6, these kinds of antics would have been seen as the behavior of young and incompletely consolidated democracies, and the United States would have wagged its finger in condemnation. But it has now happened in the United States itself. America’s credibility in upholding a model of good democratic practice has been shredded.
And this fact fills Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping with “unconstrained glee”:
If momentum had built in the Republican Party to renounce the events of Jan. 6 the way it ultimately abandoned Richard Nixon in 1974, we might have hoped that the country might move on from the Trump era. But this has not happened, and foreign adversaries like Russia and China are watching this situation with unconstrained glee.
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7. January 2022 at 11:20
For people who are interested in the truth, and who are avid readers instead of movie watchers, I suggest reading “Virus Mania”. It is only 350 pages. You can download it for free on PDFdrive.
You can also follow Dr. Peter Mcullough and Dr. Robert Malone, two individuals who are at the apex of their profession. There have been 946K adverse reactions to the vaccine (globally). Yesterday, the World Council for health called for an immediate stop to mRNA vaccine manufacturing, distribution, and promotion. A UK technical briefing, published on Dec 31st, shows that the most effective product against delta and legacy strains is now near zero. In another study titled: “Omicron variant (B.1.529) Infectivity, Vaccine breakthrough, and antibody resistance”, shows that the efficacy is about 12%. In yet another study, we see that 95% of Omicron patients are vaxxed.
The CDC and Big Pharma were also vehemently opposed to Silent Spring, and the countless academics through the 40’s and 50’s showing the ill-effects of DDT.
They both have a lengthy history of promoting unhealthy products.
Anything to earn a buck.
7. January 2022 at 14:08
More ranting and raving from Sumner – I love the illogical posts.
1. Libertarians and conservatives don’t care if Ron DeSantis is vaxxed. Whatever choice DeSantis makes is one we respect, because we believe rational people have the capability to choose what is best for them. His choice is not violating anyone elses inalienable rights.
2. SOME christians, not all, don’t want to take the vaccine because it uses fetal cells. When you say “the chirstian religion”, I presume you mean “christianity”, is opposed to vaccines you are simply WRONG, AGAIN, AS USUAL. These people are not “groups”. They are individuals. Clearly excessive hubris and narcissim, two diseases you suffer from, make it quite difficult for you to respect someone elses viewpoint. Religious exemptions have always been protected, because Americans have – until recently – always been tolerant of others. Whether one rejects on the basis of religious doctrine or is simply a conscientious objector, the constitution doesn’t give you the power to force others to take a vaccine because “YOU BELIEVE”, contrary to the evidence published in Lancet, that the vaccine is a risk-free magical solution. It’s not! A rational human being that is free from tyrannical “Sumner’s”, ought to be able to evaluate the data, determine one’s risk, and come to a conclusion.
Each morning when you drive to your poor man’s office, with an extremely low paying Ph.D. salary, you are taking risk. When you cross the street – if your old man knees can still make it – you are accepting risk. When a young man is sick at the supermarket with the common flu, your weak and frail body is at risk. Your immune system, from no doubt years of eating poorly and never working out – is old and frail. But because you are weak and old you now apparently want all young, fit, healthy people to uncessarily vax themselves – a risk that the WHO and many others don’t recommend – because you reached an age where the fatality rate from the common flu is about 3-4%?
No. Of course, not. If you recognize that you are now old and weak, and if you are horribly afraid of death, perhaps because you never truly lived, then I suggest staying home or living in a nursing home. Order delivery, stop working (your salary is incredibly low anyhow), and perhaps get an online job that pays more. Or you can look in the mirror, face reality, and recognize that you will die soon. Anything can kill you, because you are OLD! And maybe go out there and LIVE A LITTLE.
Selfish, intolerant, totalitarian pricks are historically unamerican. Nobody in the libertarian/conservative parties are coerecing old elderly & poor losers like yourself to stay at home. You have a choice. But with that choice, and with that freedom, comes risk.
Don’t like my tone? If you want respect, you have to respect others. If you don’t respect others, don’t expect them to respect you.
3. The sole purpose of government is to secure the inalienable. The 2020 election was not the first election to be challenged on the basis of affidavits, statistical anomalies, and fraud. The vast majority of people in Washington on January 6th were peaceful. About 100,000 people were standing in the cold, laughing with each other, singing the national anthem, and were listening to what Trump and others had to say about the election fraud. Elections are not infallible. A book written as far back as 2002 called “black box voting”, along with hundreds of computer experts, not to mention former President Jimmy Carter, say we should be skeptical of mail in voting, and the soliticiation of votes. 6000 affidavits of fraud is not insignficant. Videos of woman paying elderly workers $100 to vote “democrat” is not insignificant. Dead people voting and out of state voters shouldn’t be “ignored”. Statistical anamolies should be reviewed. Anyone impartial would want to follow up, and take these allegations seriously. Four swing states shutting down the vote count in the middle of the night is also odd. Could it be coincidence. Of course, it could. It could also be fraud. Furthermore, the only death was a former army veteran who was unarmed and apparently shot for no reason whatsoever.
You shouldn’t call yourself a libertarian. You are a liberal, in the same mold as John Rawls. Just admit it!
7. January 2022 at 14:11
@ssumner:
To be fair, you thought Trump would beat Biden too so your prediction for 2024 might not happen…
7. January 2022 at 15:17
Msgkings, Yes, it’s possible that my prediction won’t come true.
7. January 2022 at 15:34
Some of those Republicans that you mention have shown some degree of vacillation over the past year, but others have demonstrated their unequivocal devotion and loyalty to the Cause. Good folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley, and Matt Gaetz have been consistent–they are the future leaders of the Republican party. And let’s not forget that rock of a man, Ron Johnson! Talk about solid, even if he is the old guard. Wisconsin has always produced the best Senators.
7. January 2022 at 17:49
If a person wants to refuse the vaccine because of stem cells, they should have to renounce use of all medicines with any stem cell use or research in their past.
8. January 2022 at 00:38
I’d point out that Schumer now also says the elections are rigged and is 100% prepared to take the bold step of criticizing Manchin about the filibuster. Schumer said this while explaining that reforming the ECA alone is out of the question, on the grounds that it is possible that a Republican senator would support that.
+1 on the Trumpian party renaming. No longer Grand nor Old, it is now the TP. By the same token, the title of the post should be “Trumpian” or “Republican follies.” Conservatives were not involved, not either one of us.
8. January 2022 at 07:46
Rinat,
Interesting to read this excellent post on a blog that offeres mainly boring economics material. You deserve the Nobel Prize for medical science and yet you are very discreet about yourself and the people that assist you. Thanks!
8. January 2022 at 08:09
#4- They are only pro-life until the baby is out of the womb.
3 and 6 should go together. Generating fear of the “other” has been an i portent motivation for the base of the GOP. There are occasional attempts to chase it out like when Buckley and others pushed to have the John Birchers made irrelevant, bu tit always comes back. This is a big part of the alt-right and Qanon appeal.
Otherwise, I think you get some entertainment out of provoking the crazies but you are also performing a public good here. You do seem to draw a different kind of crazy than I normally deal with so I get to hear new names. I was well aware of Malone, a crackpot who is definitely not at the apex of anything (LOL) but had not heard some of the other names. It helps to read the latest crazy ideas so when patients ask I am better prepared to respond. I have to admit it is probably wasted effort. I still have the occasional person who thinks we are putting chips in her IV meds to transmit info about her on the Chinese 5G network. Being a nerd I used to try to explain that the laws of physics just wouldn’t let this happen but now I just tell them we filter all of our meds.
Steve
8. January 2022 at 09:10
Is Sumner really trying to give investment advice? This is the same guy who thinks that fiscal policy, i.e., budgeting, is unecessary.
According to the most “brilliant” (possibly mentally retarded) theorists, all my clients need to do to increase business growth is to max out their credit cards and take as many loans as possible, lol.
You’ve got to love these “modern” economic theorists. Brainwashed dummies who are permitting banks to lend without risk. A loan goes bad, no problem! Just ask the Fed for a bit more at zero percent interest (i.e, more american tax payer dollars).
The banks laugh. There is no better investment than riskless loans.
8. January 2022 at 09:12
Sumtard propoaganda
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/how-google-manipulated-mass-formation
8. January 2022 at 09:28
OMG, little dick, and old man Scott Sumner is crying because Ron Desantis wants to keep his health care information private.
What a sick, twisted, wierdo.
Since you have a sick mind, and are so interested in other people’s health choices, why don’t you post the results of your medical records over the last twenty years. Let’s all spend our days analyzing and making wild assumptions about your health.
8. January 2022 at 10:40
Not just DDT, but also AZT.
Fauci has been wrong so many times, and the CDC has been caught fudging numbers so often, that nobody knows what to believe.
8. January 2022 at 12:00
Thug boy Sumner killing more people with his anti-science.
https://www.newswars.com/shock-video-qatari-soccer-player-collapses-from-heart-attack-on-field/
8. January 2022 at 18:32
#3) Here is the complete context of Amy Wax’s defense of her views on Asian immigration: [https://glennloury.substack.com/p/amy-wax-redux]. Mind you, this is her response to critics, *after* she has had time to carefully consider what would be the strongest way to state her arguments:
“Numbers matter, a lot!…Asians in the U.S….overwhelming…vote Democratic….the Democratic Party is a pernicious influence….It…demands equal outcomes despite clear individual and group differences….We can speculate (and, yes, generalize) about Asians’…conformity,…indifference to liberty, lack of thoughtful and audacious individualism…as long as most Asians support Democrats…I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”
So, Democrats demand equal outcomes over acknowledging individual differences. That’s why she wants to exclude Asians as a group: because they don’t produce equal outcomes in supporting Democrats and Republicans. Also, it doesn’t even matter if individual Asians support the “right” (or Right) policies; it’s group characteristics that matter. What better way to fight “conformity,…indifference to liberty, lack of thoughtful and audacious individualism” than by demanding that immigrants not support a particular political party? True liberty is when government policy discriminates based on political views.
9. January 2022 at 10:07
BC, Yes, her comments were so bizarre it’s hard to imagine she’s a professor at a top university.
Oh wait . . .
10. January 2022 at 16:21
thugboy sumtard kills bob saget with the tripple vaxx.
arrests djokovich again because his american losers cannot compete with the genius tennis player.
10. January 2022 at 21:29
I imagine if two columnists wrote two separate columns, one berating Trump for being too short, the other for being too tall, you’d enthusiastically quote both in agreement without irony. So are you a foreign policy dove who thinks America is the world’s biggest bully and we should stop being so paranoid and confrontational about China and Russia? Or are you a neoconservative who is worried America might lose its some of its ability to engage in international bullying? ‘I like any take that’s anti-Trump, regardless of which direction it’s coming from’ isn’t an intellectually cogent position. You have to pick a direction.
Some recent news perhaps relevant to this asymmetric take though: the Republican senate leader has recently said he’s open to reforming the Electoral Counts Act, and prominent Democratic politicians, including Harris and Schumer, replied: ‘we support doing this, because we’re the only sane party left, the one that cares about democracy and thinks Trump is a serious threat to its existence.’ Kidding; they said they’d oppose McConnell’s efforts to reform the ECA, even at no compromise to their agenda. Turns out they, as much anyone, will hold anything (including the very existence democracy in America, which I’m told is at stake) hostage to appease their base.
11. January 2022 at 05:49
Leftist Follies #2
1. Over the past 2 years CNN/MSNBC/ABC/NBC have all reported on COVID deaths as if COVID were responsible for all of the 838K deaths to date… Interesting now that it’s politically inconvenient for the continuation of draconian policies, the CDC recently announced over 75% of the deaths associated with COVID occurred in people with at least FOUR co-morbidities. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad…
2. See Mark Z’s point above regarding reform for the Electoral Counts Act.
3. Nick Cannon on why Jewish and white people are bad for America. https://www.xxlmag.com/nick-cannon-calls-jewish-white-people-true-savages/
4. Many Christian people believe abortion is the most horrific form of genocide to ever occur- they don’t believe vaccines violate their beliefs, but the promotion of abortion does. This should be abundantly obvious to anyone looking at this objectively. Also, your implication that people join the armed services to kill people is pretty pathetic- I would venture a guess that almost all of these Christian service members would say they join to protect not to kill.
5. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spent almost 2 years disparaging Florida, Ron Desantis, “Red States”. Now she goes to Florida, parties with massive groups of people, gets COVID… If you could put a face on IRONY it would be Elizabeth Warren, but AOC is definitely getting close lol!
6. The entire Democratic elite has now compared January 6th to Pearl Harbor and September 11th… literally the top members of the party. This is absolute insanity and its sick. The democratic party and MSM rammed down our throats the idea that Donald Trump was illegitimately elected and was a Russian operative for four years. The Clinton team TOLD the Biden team to NOT ACCEPT THE RESULTS OF THE ELCTION IF THEY LOST.
7. January 6th was objectively a horrible day, all of the people who broke into the capital should go to jail. But I would like the same standard to apply to anyone that is rioting. The democratic party actively funded and promoted riots and looting for months in the summer of 2021 even bailing out people involved in rioting…
I do like how the Jan 6th committee basically found that all major republicans, conservative news outlets, and figures actively reached out to Trump to try and get him to stop the rioters… clearly wasn’t what the democratic party was hopping for lol.
I see a lot of posts from you focused on the conservative side of the aisle and almost none focusing on the liberal side. For someone who claims to be objective, it really doesn’t seem that way.
11. January 2022 at 06:42
lol it’s a banana republic all right, they murdered Ashli Babbitt in broad daylight then gave her killer a medal
and it’s pretty clear at least one protester was beaten to death in a tunnel
then a Soros DA charged Rittenhouse with murder for failing to allow rioting leftists to kill him
as VDH has pointed out, if the standards of Jan 6 were applied to BLM riots, most of the senior leadership of the Democratic Party would be rotting in jail right now
some people learned nothing from the collapse of the Russia collusion hoax, and are barely aware the Whitmer hoax is collapsing and taking the Jan 6 hoax with it
honestly, just stop and think for a moment… Dick Durbin calls the Capitol a “murderous mob sent by Trump” but won’t release his email correspondence with the guy who ***actually shot GOP legislators***? does that world make ANY sense?
rowdy DC protests are hardly unusual, lol do these people not realize left-wing climate protesters barricaded the White House just this summer, to much applause?
sadly most TDS will probably never even know who Richard Trask was, let alone Ray Epps
the age of reinforced ignorance is upon us
11. January 2022 at 07:31
as VDH asks, what if?
“What if from January to May 2021, 120 days of looting, arson, and violence had followed the killing of the unarmed Babbitt by a policeman whose identity federal police would not divulge? As a result, what if right-wing thugs and criminals for four months in late spring and summer of 2021 had engaged in rioting, arson, and looting that resulted in over 30 deaths and $2 billion in property damage, flame-seared police precincts and torched federal courthouses, and caused 2,000 police injuries?
What if red state governors gave the rioters and protestors a pass to violate quarantines, given the outrageous killing of an unarmed woman? What if national figures such as a Republican vice presidential candidate bragged of contributing to bail funds for any rioters and looters and arsonists who were arrested?
Yet what if most of those hypothetical right-wingers in 2021 reacting to the Babbitt killing and responsible for trying to burn down government buildings were either not arrested, or subsequently released after being arrested, or had their charges dropped? And imagine if such exemptions accorded to right-wing thugs and miscreants stood in contrast to the hundreds of summer 2020 rioters still sitting in jail—often in solitary confinement, without recourse to bail—and watched by abusive right-wing deplorable guards?
What would be the reaction if local law enforcement were ordered by red state mayors not to stop such post-January 6 violence, as governors refused to call out their National Guards? What if the top retired military echelon in 2021 had libeled a Democratic president for even suggesting that federal troops were necessary to reestablish calm? What would happen if for days on end, zany armed right-wingers carved out a swath of downtown Phoenix, declaring it their own autonomous zone, and warned police not to dare enter their domain?”
tactical nuclear weapons, probably
11. January 2022 at 13:14
Trumpies cry more than Tammy Faye Bakker (yes I’m old)
11. January 2022 at 13:14
Everyone, Enjoy your epistemic bubbles.
12. January 2022 at 10:04
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/12/politics/trump-mcconnell-2022/index.html
Yeah… GOP really seems to be subservient lol
14. January 2022 at 12:55
How does Scott not see the blatant propaganda? Let’s look at a few comedic examples that should be obvious, even to those who are a bit obtuse.
1. Roger Stone lives in a house by himself; he’s over 70; he’s not a fugitive nor did he ever resist arrest, yet for some reason the FBI felt it was necessary to bring a helicopter, boat and a small army to his house in a surprise raid at dawn. Additionally, he was so dangerous they called CNN to let them know in advance so that journalists could arrive alongside the bureau at 4:00 a.m., and take a live video of the raid. There was of course, as we have found out since, no evidence of collusion. No crime was committed. It was all a movie scene, an act, a play, all designed to sell the illusion of a horrid crime, of tremendous guilt.
2. The January 6th protesters, currently sitting in a prison, have not been charged. Despite no charges, no trial, no due process, one of the country’s political parties claims they are “insurrectionists”, “guilty of treason”, “terrorists” and should be “killed for treason”. Video clip after video clip of pandering democrats talk about this psuedo “threat to democracy” from the arbitrarily defined “hard right”, which, today, apparently means anyone who disagrees with the “hard left”.
3. Media organizations that have signed onto the WEF’s “trusted news intitiative” all say the same thing. Notice how those signatories all use the same terminology, often times the same titles, and notice how they move in unison, together, invariably at the same time. And notice how they all attack, again together, anyone who says anything different. Dissenters are often called “conspiracy theorists”, “disinformation peddlers”, “extremists”, and the less vehement “not an expert”, despite many of them having very accomplished backgrounds. Dr. Malone, the inventor of PCR is now Mr. Malone, a guy who “claims to have invented PCR”. Notice the subtle way they attack these individuals, the studies they refer too, who funded these studies, etc, etc.
4. Anytime the CDC refers to independent studies as “wrong” on the basis that it wasn’t a CDC funded study, the red flag could not get any larger.
5. When mothers are investigated for speaking out at school board meetings; and when these mothers are called terrorists, the red flag could not be much larger.
6. When BLM burns cities and shoots people, and the “trusted news intitiative”, in unison, says they are “peacefully protesting”, the red flag could not be any larger.
7. When a hundred thousand trump supporters sing the national anthem and wave the American flag on the senate building, while a small handful break an enter (all of them were unarmed), are called “terrorists” by the trusted news intiative, then the red flag couldn’t be any larger.
Who is the more dangerous terrorist? BLM and ANTIFA punching old ladies, kicking and beating a young doctor, throwing rocks at journalists, burning libraries, looting stores, shooting at police officers and business owners, harrassing people at restaurants while eating – or a bunch of people running around the Senate building unarmed, taking pictures while placing their feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk?
You are not thinking clearly, and you are playing into the propaganda, Scott.
14. January 2022 at 19:39
Johannes, “The January 6th protesters, currently sitting in a prison, have not been charged.”
Not sure if you are dishonest, or just in a giant epistemic bubble.
And defending Roger Stone? There are 400,000 Americans in prison for drug “crimes”, and you are defending that jerk?