Category Archives: Uncategorized

Election post-mortem

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Democracy is not necessarily the best, fairest or most effective form of government. Bear in mind that two and a half millennia ago in the first democracy, Socrates was sentenced to death by 500 Athenians.

In our own representative democracy, we just had an important election. Here are some observations on the state of our democracy. Spoiler alert: It’s better than in Athens, then or now.

First, most of the media and pollsters are both biased and incompetent. This is a very serious problem. If people don’t trust the media, and they don’t, for good reasons, where are they supposed to get the news? If they don’t get the news, on what basis are they supposed to vote?

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Trump will win again, then comes the hard part

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The polls are wrong again, and this time we have advance evidence beyond Trump’s say-so.

Polling has always been an inexact science, and now it’s harder than ever. It’s hard to get a representative sampling of actual voters by making random telephone calls to people whose willingness to participate and trust of media pollsters are skewed politically.

Look at an example separate from the presidential race. In Maine, four-term Senator Susan Collins is up for re-election for her fifth term. In her last two elections, she won by 23 and 37-point margins. Yet polls show her behind this time by about 5 points.

Those polls cannot be right. She’ll win by at least 4 points, suggesting a huge error in the polls – an error of at least 9 points.

Other factors are uniquely Trumpian. First, Trump’s approval ratings are higher than his polling numbers. If both are accurate, then many people who approve of his job performance nonetheless want to fire him.

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The triumph and tragedy of Trump

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First, the triumph. Against all odds, he won the presidency with promises to shake up a sclerotic Washington establishment. He did that and more.

He moved the U.S. embassy to the ancient capital of Israel over objections from the establishment who predicted a violent reaction from the culture of complainers that passes for Palestinian people. That move proved the first step toward an outbreak of Mideast peace.

Along the way, he put out of business the beheading barbarians called ISIS, cancelled the agreement that would have made Iran a nuclear power within a few years and coordinated with our ally Israel in thwarting belligerents throughout the region.

While the left was figuratively canceling good Americans who said politically incorrect things decades ago, Trump was literally canceling terrorists who were torturing, raping and murdering Americans.

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Jeffrey Toobin is the face of modern journalism

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There once was a man named Toobin,

Whose fondest delight was in Zoomin’,

As he wiped off his screen,

After makin’ a scene,

He asked, “How did you like my oozin’?”










The New Yorker has or had a “legal analyst” named Jeffrey Toobin. He was a participant in a recent Zoom videocall with several other people. The conversation evidently didn’t interest him. He pulled his pants down and found something that did. A lot. 




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“Cheyenne Mountain Indians” is the PC wokesters’ latest scalp

			
						

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Cheyenne Mountain High School near Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs where I grew up has a mascot, or did. Since, well, forever, they were the “Cheyenne Mountain Indians.” The mascot’s depiction is a respectful image that could have come out of an Edward Curtis lithograph. It’s not a caricature.





The wokerati recently demanded that the Indian mascot be changed and that the word “Indian” be canceled. They have not demanded that the Indian tribe “Cheyenne” be canceled. Yet.





Over the objections of at least 2,000 alumni and other petitioners who asked that the Indian stay, the school board gave in to the bullies and expelled the Indian. They’re changing the mascot.





What next, will the bullying PC crowd shake down the school board for their lunch money?




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In rooting for the virus, the Left is just like Hitler

			
						

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The Left has embraced cop killers, rioters, arsonists, avowed Marxists, voting frauds, cancel culture and censors. They justify their accessory to crime and their trampling of Constitutional and human rights on the grounds that it serves a greater cause – the defeat of people who disagree with them.





This ends-justifies-the-means approach to morality – or to put it more simply, this abandonment of morality – is progressing inexorably to its natural conclusion. The Left now actively roots for the virus to kill people they don’t like, such as President Trump.





Drunk on their fantasy, they hope that his death is painful and humiliating and that his wife dies too.  





They express their sick sentiments not just in the dark recesses of their troubled minds and not just over bad frou-frou coffee at Starbucks. They boast of their wicked wish openly to the world. They tweet it, for God’s sake.




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Is Judge Barrett too Catholic for Pope Francis?

			
						

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First, there’s economics.  I wouldn’t call Pope Francis the “Commie Pope,” as some do, but it’s a fact that his admirers have included Cuban communist dictator Raul Castro and self-described American socialist Bernie Sanders who implied that the Pope is a socialist.





Understand that this former Argentine priest named Jorge Bergoglio was shaped by Argentinian economics and politics. In the early 1900’s, Argentina was wealthier on a per capita basis than Canada or Australia – it was about the tenth wealthiest country in the world.





But political instability and recurrent bouts of socialism and oppressive regulations choked off the economy. Argentina has now deteriorated to the status of an undeveloped country. Inflation runs rampant, politics are unstable and corruption is everywhere.





This is what shaped Bergoglio’s views. The form of capitalism he saw was something we would describe as, at best, “cronyism.”




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Mad Max and the Democrax

			
						

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The best of the “Mad Max” movie series is the second, called “Road Warrior.” In a post-apocalyptic Australian desert, a former cop named Max, played by a young and buff Mel Gibson, drives around with a sawed-off shotgun in a tricked-out American/Australian muscle car wearing tight black leather and a large chip on his shoulder.





The reason for that chip on Max’s shoulder – the reason he’s mad – is that he was such a good cop in the first movie that a bunch of weirdo thugs sought to defund him. Max was too tough for them, so they settled for his wife and infant son.  





Max brought justice to those bad guys, and I don’t mean the social kind.




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In the name of anti-racism, we’ve declared white people racist on the basis of their race

			
						

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Young black men in America are eight times more likely than young white men to commit murder and five times more likely to commit other violent crimes. On the basis of that data, is it fair for me to conclude that a young black man standing in front of me is a mugger and murderer?





No, of course not. The vast majority of black men are not violent. Logically speaking, general information about a group is unreliable evidence about an individual. Legally speaking, it’s inadmissible as evidence in court. Morally, it’s racist.  





Racism is hard to overcome because in an anthropological sense it’s quite natural. Our DNA has programed us to be wary of unfamiliar faces. Back on the savanna, unfamiliar faces were from other tribes, many of which were unfriendly. Hominins whose DNA did not include this programing tended not to propagate it.





You can see the wariness of unfamiliar faces in infants. The first few times they see a person of another race, they’re confused. In immature minds, and many mature ones, confusion produces fear. That’s instinctive.  




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If Jefferson, Churchill and Gandhi were racists, shouldn’t you be too?

			
						

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Well, no, you shouldn’t. But here’s my point in asking the question.





These were great people. In launching the best nation in the history of the world, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”





He served as the third president of that nation, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, sent Lewis and Clark across the continent and put the nation on a path to become a beacon of freedom to the world.  







Yes, he owned slaves, as did many people throughout the world at that time. But in his intellect, his morality and his words, he set the stage for the abolition of that ancient heinous practice four score and seven years later.




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