What Democrats have done and why

Liberal Cities, Radical Mayhem

Democratic mayors and governors seem unable to stop the destruction of their own cities.

This isn’t merely about damage to property. It’s about destroying the order required for city life. Non-criminals are afraid to go into these cities to make a living. The police pull back from active policing, which creates more opportunity for criminals, especially in poor and minority neighborhoods. Businesses that are finally starting to emerge from government lockdowns have new costs to absorb and more reasons for customers not to return.

What all these cities have in common is that they are led by Democrats who seem to have bought into the belief that the police are a bigger problem than rampant disorder. They are either cowed by their party’s left, or they agree that America is systemically racist and rioting is a justified expression of anger against it. They offer pro forma disapproval of law breakers but refuse to act to stop them.

The Left Couldn't Care Less About Blacks

The left-wing mantra of “America is racist” has little to do with caring for blacks; rather, it is indispensable to bringing America down.

Second, without a lopsided black vote for the left-wing party, the Democrats, no Democrat could get elected to national office. It is therefore imperative to repeat as often and as vociferously as possible how anti-black America is. The angrier a black person is at America, the more likely he or she is to vote Democrat. Some years ago, after talking to listeners of every race on my radio show for decades, I came up with this riddle:

“What do you call a happy black person?”

Answer: “A Republican.”

To the left, blacks are not real people as much as they are an electoral bloc. How else to explain Joe Biden’s recent comment, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” The contempt for blacks — from the sentiment that one is “not black” unless one is a Democrat to his use of the word “ain’t” — is obvious to any nonleftist.

Here's the Real Story on George Floyd, Police Abuse, and Racism, and What You Should Do About It

While police abuse is not necessarily a racial problem, it is nonetheless a big problem. Derek Chauvin, the man who killed George Floyd, had a long record of complaints. Gregory McMichael was not immediately arrested. The men who killed Breonna Taylor entered her house in plainclothes without announcing their presence. These facts should make Americans’ blood boil, and they should lead Americans to demand concrete action.

I don’t always agree with former President Barack Obama (okay, I almost never agree with that scandal-plagued president), but I agree with his basic advice on police reform. Obama encouraged activists to develop concrete demands and to focus on achieving change at the local level.

Police unions often protect bad cops who pose a danger to the community. In some cases, police have effective “get out of jail free” cards that they hand out to their family and friends. This institutionalizes an “old boys club” culture.

I did not kill George Floyd
The attempt to hold all whites responsible for the death of Floyd shows what a dead-end woke politics is.

There’s a new sin. Forget gluttony. Forget sloth. The great moral error today is whiteness. To be white is to be fallen. Whiteness has become a kind of original sin, an inherited moral defect one must atone for throughout one’s life. In the wake of the brutal execution of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, this almost religious treatment of whiteness as an existential flaw has gone uber-mainstream.

We Don't Have a Racism Problem, We Have a Deep State Problem: The Hideous Police Killing of Duncan Lemp

That tiered justice system that black activists talk about is real. The people pulling the strings who revel in all this chaos never pay for their massive crimes. They get away with treason, presidential coup attempts, mishandling of classified documents, child trafficking, insider trading, and even murder (Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself) while the cattle are thrown into prison for twenty years for petty drug offenses or shot dead in their beds with no explanation. We are not who we should be mad at. We are in the same herd of oppressed and abused livestock. Some of us get abused more regularly than others but we’re still locked up in the same rancid farm. It’s time to act in unison and break out of the prison they’ve built around us.

Read all of each one.

Update: Professor Alex Tabarrok on Police Union Privileges Revisited, read all of it, too. It's not long.

The state of "settled science"

In just the past week one of the nation's leading climate scientists, Judith Curry, resigned her tenured professorship at Georgia Tech because, she says, climate science is no longer an honest, truly scientific endeavor. She explains:



On her blog Dr, Curry explained her resignation this way (in part):

A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.

How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus career suicide (I have worked through these issues with a number of skeptical young scientists).

Let me relate an interaction that I had with a postdoc about a month ago. She wanted to meet me, as an avid reader of my blog. She works in a field that is certainly relevant to climate science, but she doesn't identify as a climate scientist. She says she gets questioned all the time about global warming issues, and doesn't know what to say, since topics like attribution, etc. are not topics that she explores as a scientist. WOW, a scientist that knows the difference! I advised her to keep her head down and keep doing the research that she thinks interesting and important, and to stay out of the climate debate UNLESS she decides to dig in and pursue it intellectually. Personal opinions about the science and political opinions about policies that are sort of related to your research expertise are just that – personal and political opinions. Selling such opinions as contributing to a scientific consensus is very much worse than a joke.

Understand also that Dr. Curry had served as the chair of the university's department on climate science. She was atop her field, professionally, but her field became a political rather than scientific one over the past several years.

The "President Schultz" meme grows

Boston Herald:

Has President Nixon been replaced by Sergeant Schultz? 

The “Smartest President Ever” has disappeared. The Barack Brain Trust long-touted by liberals is gone — replaced by hacks whose rallying cry is straight from Stalag 13—“I know nothing. Nothing!”

You know, like this:

I see nuttink! I hear nuttink! I know nuttink! 
I am only der president!

The BoHerald is right, though, in setting aside the Obama-as-Nixon meme. For all Nixon's faults, he was in charge of his administration. Nixon was a man in command and everybody knew it. Not 
like President IDK: