Tards – Page 26

Meatless makes morons

Posted on January 30, 2020January 30, 2020 by Mike

Well, DUH.

The vegan diet is low in – or, in some cases, entirely devoid of – several important brain nutrients. Could these shortcomings be affecting vegans’ abilities to think?

Hrmmm…let me see…since veg-head types seem to be overwhelmingly liberal/Left, I’m gonna have to go with “Oh HELL yes!” on that one.

The idea that avoiding meat is bad for our brains makes some intuitive sense; anthropologists have been arguing about what our ancestors ate for decades, but many scientists think that there was a lot of bone-crunching and brain-slurping on the road to evolving these remarkable 1.4kg (3lb) organs. Some have even gone so far as to say that meat made us human.

One reason is that intelligence is expensive – the brain devours about 20% of our daily calories, though it accounts for just 2% of our body weight – and what better way to find the enormous array of fats, amino acids, vitamins and minerals these fastidious organs require, than by feasting on animals which have already painstakingly collected or made them.

But though it’s hard to imagine our ancestors choosing turnips over tuna, today it’s a different story. According to the latest statistics, there are around 375 million vegetarians on the planet. In the West, veganism has ditched the hippie stigma to become one of the fastest-growing millennial trends; in the United States, it grew by 600% between 2014 and 2017. Meanwhile in India, meat-free diets have been mainstream since the 6th Century BCE.

Might at least partially explain why most of India is such a horrid, back-asswards dump, no? And why average IQ scores are declining, abruptly reversing a steady, 3-points-per-decade increase throughout the 20th century?

Ideally, to test the impact of the vegan diet on the brain, you would take a randomly selected group of people, ask half to stop eating animal products – then see what happens. But there isn’t a single study like this.

Instead, the only research that comes close involved the reverse. It was conducted on 555 Kenyan schoolchildren, who were fed one of three different types of soup – one with meat, one with milk, and one with oil – or no soup at all, as a snack over seven school terms. They were tested before and after, to see how their intelligence compared. Because of their economic circumstances, the majority of the children were de facto vegetarians at the start of the study.

Surprisingly, the children who were given the soup containing meat each day seemed to have a significant edge. By the end of the study, they outperformed all the other children on a test for non-verbal reasoning. Along with the children who received soup with added oil, they also did the best on a test of arithmetic ability. Of course, more research is needed to verify if this effect is real, and if it would also apply to adults in developed countries, too. But it does raise intriguing questions about whether veganism could be holding some people back.

In fact, there are several important brain nutrients that simply do not exist in plants or fungi. Creatine, carnosine, taurine, omega-3, haem iron and vitamins B12 and D3 generally only occur naturally in foods derived from animal products, though they can be synthesised in the lab or extracted from non-animal sources such as algae, bacteria or lichen, and added to supplements.

Others are found in vegan foods, but only in meagre amounts; to get the minimum amount of vitamin B6 required each day (1.3 mg) from one of the richest plant sources, potatoes, you’d have to eat about five cups’ worth (equivalent to roughly 750g or 1.6lb). Delicious, but not particularly practical.

And though the body can make some of these vital brain compounds from other ingredients in our diets, this ability isn’t usually enough to make up for these dietary cracks. For all of the nutrients listed above, vegetarians and vegans have been shown to have lower quantities in their bodies. In some cases, deficiency isn’t the exception – it’s completely normal.

For now, the impact these shortcomings are having on the lives of vegans is largely a mystery. But a trickle of recent studies have provided some clues – and they make for unsettling reading.

Well, unsettling if you’re a vegan, that is. Seeing as how there isn’t the slightest chance of me ever willingly making that switch, pas de sweat over here, thanks.

All my snark aside, this is actually a pretty interesting read.

Everything not forbidden is mandatory

Posted on January 29, 2020January 29, 2020 by Mike

Okay, I couldn’t keep myself from laughing out loud at this one.

Here is a story that shows progressive policies to be not only destructive, but also depressingly stupid. New York State recently passed a law requiring citizens to obtain a permit if they wish to gaze at the stars in public parks. No, really. You read that right. In New York, you must pay for a license to look at the freaking stars.

The Free Thought Project first reported on the story, explaining that “If citizens of the state wish to look up at the sky and view the stars at one of New York’s public parks, they will first have to obtain a ‘Stargazing permit.’” The site pointed out that pollution in the sky makes it more difficult for New Yorkers in “highly populated areas” to see the sky at night, so they travel to remote areas, many of which are located in state parks.

The state is charging residents $35 to become a fully-licensed stargazer allowed to view the stars between January and December of the year. If you are not lucky enough to be a New York resident and you are just visiting, you will have to fork over $60 for the privilege of admiring your favorite constellation in the night sky.

“Lucky”? For certain values of the word lucky, I suppose. The more ironic ones.

The other problem is that there does not seem to be any real rationale behind the policy. Stargazing isn’t exactly known to be a dangerous pastime. Moreover, it does not cause any discernible inconvenience for anyone else. So why would they enact such a measure? The answer is simple: It is nothing more than a brazen money grab designed to separate New York residents from more of their hard-earned cash.

In other words, New York’s government is needlessly restricting the liberty of its citizens to make a quick buck. The same folks who claim capitalists are evil are willing to use cynical political means to amass funds. Of course, requiring silly permits for activities that do not warrant them is the progressives’ bread and butter. It’s become an ingenious way for local and state governments run by far leftists to raise money while asserting their dominance over the populace.

That last is the one that really matters. Granted, the Left does love itself some money-grabbin’. But even their blatant thievery is in service to an all-encompassing desire to control absolutely everything. Which, in turn, makes it necessary to constantly remind the serfs of just who is in charge around here, lest they begin to get…ideas about certain things.

Know what, though? I can’t really find it in me to get too exercised about this. Such demeaning, grubby nonsense is precisely the sort of thing one must expect from absolute Democrat-Socialist rule, which liberal New Yorkers have endorsed with their votes a bazillion times over, for decades. So now let those “lucky” New Yorkers enjoy the inevitable, predictable fruits of their own stubborn idiocy. Let them crawl on their knees to their masters to beg official permission to raise their heads and look up, ferchrissakes. Let them waste their hard-earned money to purchase this extravagantly generous boon from the Noble Ones upon whom they themselves foolishly bestowed such excessive power.

Maybe someday they’ll learn.

The looking glass, darkly

Posted on January 28, 2020January 28, 2020 by Mike

Steyn says Trump is the consequence of YOU.

For three years the question absorbing Swamp-dwellers has been: How did Trump get elected? According to Adam Schiff, the answer is the Russians. According to Hillary, the answer is sexism and/or Macedonian content farmers. According to the media, Trump “tapped into” a large segment of the American electorate’s ingrained sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia and other assorted bigotries. If these fine fellows were genuinely interested to know how Trump got elected, the quickest way to the answer would be for them to look in the mirror: Trump is the consequence of you. No Russians or Macedonians are required: it’s because of you – the permanent governing class. If the only alternative to Hillary is Jeb, it’s hardly a surprise that there’s a stampede to the “Neither of the Above” box. And, if the only fellow waiting over there is Donald J Trump, so be it: that’s on you.

As I put it just shy of two decades ago:

If the political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising certain topics, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable politicians.

And, when they do, it’s a conscious choice: they know what they’re doing. So, when the respectable class whines that “a real conservative walks with us” and therefore Trump can’t be a conservative because he doesn’t, they fail to grasp that that’s all the more reason to back him.

I understand that National Review has suffered somewhat since its “Against Trump” issue. That’s because, to reprise another old line of mine from four years ago, it’s always easier for the base to get itself a new elite than for the elite to get itself a new base. Given that the horrors they predicted failed to come to pass, and that the crisis of the republic these last three years has been the refusal of the permanent state to accept the result of the election, you might think, having hoist themselves on their own petard, National Review might wish to de-hoist and admit they were wrong. But, apparently, changing your mind is the ultimate no-no.

From that first (National Review) headline “Witless Ape Rides Escalator”, much of the conservative establishment revealed its fundamental unseriousness. Most dismal of all, they failed to realize that it was they who were on the downward escalator – and still are.

Yeah, well, just wait till they see how very far down that thing actually goes. And suddenly I’m reminded of a classic AC/DC lyric from the Bon Scott days:

Come on honey gotta change your tune
Cause it’s a long way down

A DAMNED long way, bub. Ain’t no coming back from there, either. But maybe their mulish insistence on Resistance™ is an indication that they know that already. The ticket was bought, paid for, and punched a long time ago; might as well ride it on out to the bitter end.

Hirono speaks

Posted on January 23, 2020January 23, 2020 by Mike

Hilarity ensues.

On Tuesday, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told quite the whopper by claiming Republicans have been spreading a “weird conspiracy theory” that Democrats wanted to impeach Donald Trump since he was inaugurated.

“What I found astounding was they’re still saying that we were out to get the president from day one, some sort of a weird conspiracy theory that I have to say, even [Supreme Court Justice Brett] Kavanaugh brought up,” Hirono said on MSNBC.

For Mazie Hirono to claim Democrats haven’t been out to get Trump from the earliest days of his presidency is just bizarre, especially given the evidence.

Margolis lays out only the tip of the evidentiary iceberg; contra the idiot Horino, said evidence is plentiful, and utterly indisputable—except by lying and/or moronic Democrat-Socialist hacks trying to score a few cheap political points with an end-run around the truth, natch.

They hate us! They really, really hate us!

Posted on January 22, 2020January 22, 2020 by Mike

That’s okay, we hate them right back.

A significant new book by Andrew Marantz, a staff writer at the New Yorker, has reinvigorated the gatekeepers’ efforts to censor the internet. Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation is an account of our ongoing democratic revolution, a historical moment that brings into relief two realizations for Marantz: (1) conservative influencers are now able to out-compete legacy media outlets, and (2) it was this that lead to the election of Donald J. Trump. “[T]hey helped propel their man to the presidency,” he writes.

For Marantz, these two realizations justify all-out censorship of the internet. But his extremism comes as little surprise when you recognize that, from start to finish, Marantz’s argument is grounded in his contempt for the intellectual and moral capacities of ordinary Americans.

At one point in the book, Marantz recalls an encounter with a friend who saw little problem with politically compromising clickbait: “Look, we happen to live in a free country. People can click on terrible links if that’s how they want to spend their time.”

“I made counterarguments,” Marantz writes. “Those terrible links influence what people think, how people behave, who people vote for.” He means, of course, that we can’t trust citizens to choose their own sources of information. So it’s not enough for Marantz to lay the blame for Trumpism on an intellectual deficit; he also blames the “techno-utopians” who fed their terrible information consumption habits.

According to Marantz, a techno-utopian believes that the American people are wise and moral enough to make those distinctions for themselves. They can thus be trusted with an open internet. They have faith that truth and virtue will eventually win out in the open marketplace of ideas. They think that “getting rid of informational gatekeepers” is a victory for democracy. Recall that Reddit’s motto was once “freedom from the press.” Techno-Utopians want to use technology to “democratize [and] give the power to the people.” They might even believe that “the freedom to share opinions online was akin to a human right.” Note the implicit assumption here: that the popularity of some political content is some indication of its moral or intellectual value.

Marantz’s book is a frontal attack on all these beliefs.

Of course it is. He’s a weedy, wormy little twerp whose bloated ego isn’t strong enough to tote the load of his crushing inadequacy. His bilious contempt for the bovine lackwits who refuse to duly acknowledge his self-proclaimed superiority is based mainly on pure envy, as is so often the case. The whole mess of soggy neurosis drives him to reject the very idea of human freedom itself, along with the existence of any “rights” a godlike being such as himself is bound to respect. The stupid, blundering sheep must be herded, for their own good; who better than an enlightened über-shepherd like himself to lead them along the proper path?

This miserable worm is nothing less than the living embodiment of Progressivist ideology and attitudes, on both the micro- and macro-levels. The obnoxiousness; the shameless, completely unjustifiable arrogance; the narcissism; the grandiose self-dramatization; the unshakable belief in the neccessity of a wiser, more capable “elite” class to supervise and manage the affairs of a hapless sub-order dependent on their guidance—this is a pretty good summary of the original mission statement of early-20th-Century Progressivism. Latter-day Progressivists have trimmed these roots only slightly by dropping their progenitors’ open embrace of eugenics as a means of culling the undesirables from the flock, deciding it might be best for all concerned if nobody brings that embarrassing little chapter up anymore, thanks.

The title of Marantz’s book is where the sad irony really lives and breathes. It isn’t any “hijacking of the American conversation” that so frustrates and enrages him; it’s having the ignorant serfs speaking up without permission he finds so damned galling. Unapproved views are now being freely expressed, rather than all and sundry listening in enraptured silence to his exalted pontification, as he so much prefers. Oh, there’s a conversation going on all right, but he’s not invited. Nothing has been “hijacked,” but a few things have been left behind. People like Marantz have nothing new to say, nothing to contribute but more of the same-old same-old. Is it any wonder that fewer and fewer of us seem interested in hearing their tired, century-old lecture recited all over again, only louder and more spitefully this time?

Getting what you voted for

Posted on January 16, 2020January 16, 2020 by Mike

My heart bleeds.

California has overreached in its effort to address the challenges in today’s tech platform gig-work economy.

The live music sector, the progenitor of the term “gig” work, is being swept up by this law. The irony would be comical if it were not such a serious problem.

There are some worthy arguments to be made for Assembly Bill 5 by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, San Diego Democrat.

Like hell. There really is only the one argument, explicitly made by some Cali congresswoman or other when, in a rare burst of accidental candor, she complained that the state wasn’t glomming enough in tax dough off of rideshare drivers. Despite the property tax they pay on their cars, the fees for their license plates, the tax on every set of tires or quart of oil they buy, the tax on every gallon of gasoline, and their own yearly income taxes, they weren’t paying “their fair share,” see.

Funnily enough, though that revealing statement was fairly prominent in the reportage I saw at the time, it now seems to have vanished down the ol’ memory hole for some reason. I can’t imagine why.

Anyways, the writer quoted above is a California musician who feels “there are some worthy arguments to be made” for letting goobermint’s grubby thumbs dig deeper into any and everything it wishes, as long as they just leave him alone. His evident shock over this bit says it all:

However, the law has created a tangle of red-tape and administrative expense for large portions of California’s cultural sector.

NOOOO! Why, I can’t believe it! I WON’T believe it! Fret not, though; I’m sure things can all be ironed out with even more legislation, right? Right?!?

Under AB 5, we will be required to inform all U.S.-based musicians that they must now become employees of San Jose Jazz, or incorporate themselves before they will be allowed to perform for us.

If band leaders choose to pursue incorporation, they will then need to take on the responsibility of payroll and HR administration for the rest of their band.

In many performing arts disciplines, such as jazz, musicians are constantly reconfiguring line ups, performing as sidemen in various bands, and as one-time special guests for specific performances.

We will now be obliged to devote tremendous time and resources to constantly hiring, managing and tracking of musicians through this cumbersome process.

AB 5 unnecessarily complicates other work arrangements found in community cultural programming such as small festivals, neighborhood street fairs, parades and summer music series in our local parks.

San Jose Jazz is best known for producing our large Summer Fest which brings tens of thousands of visitors and requires hundreds of temporary roles to execute.

The vast majority of previously contract work roles will now be required to be employees.

Tough noogies, pal. You voted for it, by electing nothing but Democrat-Socialists in your state for years and years. As the old saw has it, sooner or later they always get around to something you DO care about. And now they have. More SHOCKING yet:

Typical of such legislation, AB 5 comes with a hefty list of exempted categories that are a Who’s Who of the politically connected and well-funded: lawyers, doctors, accountants, brokers, builders, and others.

Actors, choreographers, dancers, directors, producers, and musicians are among numerous roles in the performing arts that exhibit a multitude of contract work arrangements. None of these are exempt from AB 5’s rules.

So? If there are indeed “worthy arguments to be made” for handing government the power to make workplace rules of all sorts, why should performing artists be exempt from them, pray tell? Why should ANYBODY be? And can you really be so impenetrably naive as to find it surprising that the wealthy, powerful, and connected exempted themselves from the wonderful benefits of the law? Y’know, just like US Congresscritters routinely exempt themselves from having to comply with any and every piece of burdensome bushwa they roll downhill onto the rest of us?

Personally, after reading this whiny, clueless twaddle it would be a-okay with me if every last theater, concert hall, arena, neighborhood dive bar, and neo-hippie coffee house featuring annoying solo-acoustic singer/songwriters on the Left Coast closed up shop for good tomorrow as a result of this law. Voting the most intrusive, power-hungry nanny-staters extant into office again and again ought to be painful—not just for Uber and Lyft drivers struggling to eke out their meager living, but for everybody, right down the damned line. The lesson will be learned only after the misery is spread around widely enough for all to suffer. Let elections have consequences at last, I say.

Predictable as the sunrise

Posted on January 13, 2020January 14, 2020 by Mike

In an otherwise good piece, Roger Kimball whiffs bigly on one important thing:

The disaster of Flight 752 took place in the context of the liquidation of the terrorist mass-murderer Qasem Soleimani last week by the United States on the order of President Donald Trump. But that courageous and far-seeing act itself took place in the context of Iran’s decades-long assault on American and, more broadly, on Western institutions that promote a culture of tolerance and religious freedom.

The fact that many U.S. news outlets and Democratic politicians instantly coalesced around Soleimani as a “revered” military leader tells us what great inroads Stockholm Syndrome has made among American elites.

Sorry, Rog, it does no such thing. What it actually tells us is just how low those treasonous blackguards are willing to stoop to attach themselves to true, real-world evil if they think they might somehow grub some cheap political points from it; how reflexively they will always side with America’s enemies, no matter what; how deeply, deeply desperate they are to somehow hold onto power and position by attacking Trump; and how there can be no more fitting, just, or accurate a condemnation of them than to simply name them as traitors, the unabashed enemies of this country.

Last week, Donald Trump eliminated one of Iran’s most potent emissaries of death and destruction. All the beautiful people huddled together and wailed that Trump had just “destabilized” the Middle East (had it been stable beforehand?), that his “unilateral” action was illegal, counterproductive, immature, that, ultimately, he may have started World War III.

That was then. Now it looks as though he may have sparked the great unraveling of theocratic totalitarian control in Iran. And this just in: the Iranians apparently have just arrested the British ambassador. Arrested. In civilized countries, if there is an issue with a diplomat, one expels him. In civilized countries. But this is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Someday, the world will stand back and applaud Trump for his canny and farseeing statesmanship. I do not assert that that recognition is coming any time soon. But come it will.

Most likely, yeah. But not from the Treasoncrats and Enemedia—not unless and until they can use Trump as a weapon for dishonestly smearing some future candidate as the new Second Coming Of Literally Hitler, they won’t.

Update! Schlichter calls ’em out.

You spent the last three years babbling like idiots about “traitors” and “treachery.” Well, head docs call that “projection.” You are siding with the enemy in a war against the United States. And yeah, Iran has been at war with the United States for 40 years, ever since your peanut-farming, half-wit fellow Dem handed over the keys to the country to a bunch of Seventh Century Pennywises. The least you could do is show a little respect to the people trying to clean up your party’s mess.

Your party’s latest triumph is blaming Donald Trump because these drooling morons shot down a passenger airliner the night they launched missiles at our American soldiers. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you sick? Are you stupid? Are you huffing that funny powder you found in Hunter Biden’s medicine cabinet? What would ever have possessed you to start making excuses for people trying to kill Americans?

It’s nothing new for them. After all, it was, what, like two days after 9/11 before they all started preachifying in their oh-so-superior way that we had that coming too? They can’t help themselves; it’s who they are, it’s what they do. They’ve been this way for far too long already, and couldn’t stop now if they tried. Go ahead and ask the scorpion not to sting the frog while you’re at it, you’ll end up with the same result.

HOW DARE YOU!!!

Posted on January 12, 2020January 12, 2020 by Mike

Yeah, great, we’ll get right on this. After we do some other things first.

The Guardian has published an open letter from teen climate alarmist Greta Thunberg and 20 other children in advance of the World Economic Forum in Davos listing their demands of the world’s leading countries.

She also notes that “many of us who signed this are children,” so “do not make up your own quotes or twist our words.” We’ve read the whole piece and can guarantee it wasn’t written by a 16-year-old, and we were a little disappointed that it wasn’t a list of demands, but rather just one:

We demand that at this year’s forum, participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.

We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021, we want this done now – as in right now.

Kids often want things right now.

To twist a favorite retort of my dear old maternal grandma’s: “Demand” in one hand. Shit in the other. See which one gets full the quickest.

Greta is fastly evolving from a clueless, obnoxious, but still only moderately annoying little brat into a slightly more annoying little brat. Next time she decides to throw another tantrum like this, she needs to be sent straight up to bed without any dinner, made to stand in the corner for a couple hours, or bent over a knee and spanked. She “demands” a world without: transportation more efficient than horses or walking; anything made with plastic, which would necessarily include iPhones, computers, essential medical devices, many types of clothing, and way too much more to list; indoor lighting and heat; and oh, so very much more.

In other words, she demands that we revert to a way of living so primitive, so uncivilized, and so just plain miserable it’s too overwhelming to even contemplate for long. Average lifespan would go back to about 35 or so; starvation would again be the rule rather than exceptional; diseases once very nearly eradicated will once again be rampant. Tainted or spoiled food will become common thanks to the loss of modern vacuum-sealed packaging, which seals out bacteria and delays spoilage and rot. Speaking of food, everyone will pretty much be limited to whatever we can grow or hunt ourselves, without the variety, quality, and convenience of fully-stocked grocery stores and restaurants.

Yeah, no, Greta. You and all your moronic Green confreres are free to give up all that health, happiness, and ease to live the Cro-Magnon dream yourselves if you like; have at it, and best of luck to you. The rest of us like modernity just fine and will carry on as we were, thanksverymuch. We don’t intend to sit still while you regress the world into the savage, deadly conditions we spent thousands of years evolving our way out of.

STOP THE PRESSES

Posted on January 12, 2020January 12, 2020 by Mike

AOC is (gulp) right?

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has already topped the fundraising charts in her short time in Congress, but the liberal darling won’t donate a cent of her millions to Democrats’ House campaign organization — a position that has rankled some of her colleagues, Fox News has learned.

Instead, Ocasio-Cortez is building her own fundraising operation for fellow progressive candidates to bypass the official Democratic Party infrastructure. Already, she’s actively funding primary challengers to oust certain Democratic colleagues.

“Sometimes the question comes: ‘Do you want to be in a majority or do you want to be in the minority?’” Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., told Fox News, when asked about AOC’s stance. “And do you want to be part of a team?”

Another Democrat was less diplomatic: “Deadbeat Cortez should pay her bills,” complained the Democratic source. “She’s always whining about people paying their fair share and here she is leaving her friends with the bill.”

Their gripe is that Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t given any money to the DCCC, the party arm with the sole job of electing Democrats to the House. Records obtained by Fox News show the New York Democrat has failed to pay any of her $250,000 in “dues” to the DCCC.

Her goose egg of a contribution is no accident. Ocasio-Cortez says she has beef with the DCCC and she’ll withhold her money in protest of how the Democratic Party won’t back insurgent progressive primary candidates, like herself, in the name of protecting incumbents.

Sandy from Westchester has, incredibly enough, come up with a reasonably smart strategy for promoting her communist ideals. It’s a bold move she’s making, particularly for a newly-elected rookie: she’s rejecting the crusty establishment to build a less-compromised, more radical organization, one she can control herself. Her end-run around thw world’s sleaziest, most dishonest political party is nothing less than a direct challenge to its powerful puppeteers, backroom deal-makers, and geriatric career campaigners whose commitment to hard-Left principles she considers to be much too soft.

Know what, though? I wouldn’t at all mind seeing a similar trend develop in the GOP, frankly. But there’s always risk involved in trying to force real change on any corrupt, ruthless, and firmly entrenched organization:

The problem is that progressives like AOC and the Squad want the benefit of the broad party apparatus and name recognition without having to worry about appealing to a broad section of voters, which has been the primary concern of Pelosi and other members of leadership. They are well aware that around half of Democrats describe themselves as moderates or conservatives. And those voters are overrepresented in a lot of the Trump 2016 voting, Democrat 2018 voting districts which are key to the current House majority.

AOC doesn’t seem to particularly care about that. Nor does she care about the optics of which voters she would want to boot out of the tent in order to achieve her aims. Just as in DeMint’s case, where he was arguing for the priorities of conservative primary voters taking precedence over the general election gaming of the consultant-donor class, AOC wants the progressive activist core – 42 percent of the party – to drive Congressional selection. That requires ignoring the priorities of general election moderate voters.

But unfortunately for AOC, that’s a lot of voters. “CNN data guru Harry Enten observes, contra the conventional wisdom, moderates and conservatives still make up roughly half of Democratic voters, while only 19 to 25 percent consider themselves “very liberal.” Moreover, “Millennials and Generation Z voters (roughly those younger than 40)… made up just about 29% of all Democratic voters in the 2018 midterm, per Catalist [a firm that maintains a voter database for Democratic and progressive causes].” Voters over fifty constituted 56 percent of Democratic voters in 2018.”

So this raises the obvious question: who does AOC not want in the tent? Older voters, working class men, and voters of color all skew more moderate within the Democratic coalition – they also favor Biden, who AOC doesn’t even think belongs in her progressive party.

Actually, she isn’t entirely wrong about that either. Her full statement made an unflattering-by-her-lights comparison between Greasy Gropey Joe’s hackish and incompetent maneuvering, his willingness to make deals with the Republican devil when he must, which does indeed make him a “moderate” when stacked up against, say, European politicians, for whom “conservative” shakes out as “slightly less radically Left than Stalin or Marx. VERY slightly.” If Toothy McBigtits can pull off either remaking the Democrat-Socialist Party in the AOC mold or replacing it outright, the resultant dog’s breakfast of hard-left fanaticism will indeed have no place for an old-fashioned horse-trader like Uncle Gropey in it.

If AOC sticks her neck out too far with her purity purge, though, she may learn that those old-guard powerbrokers still have plenty of dirty tricks up their sleeves yet—and that they didn’t gain and hold onto power for so long by being easy marks for every wet-behind-the-ears Young Turk to come down the pike toting more ambition and ego than intelligence.

You broke it, you bought it

Posted on January 11, 2020January 12, 2020 by Mike

The government you deserve brings you the lifestyle you voted for.

The presence of fecal bacteria in water is usually the result of problems with sewer systems and septic tanks. But water quality officials agree that the source of at least some of the fecal bacteria is California’s growing homeless population, most of whom don’t have reliable access to toilets.

“I’ve carried 5-gallon buckets that were unambiguously being used as toilets,” said David Gibson, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, describing his experience cleaning up homeless encampments. “They were taking it to the San Diego River, dumping it there, and rinsing it out there.”

Fecal contamination of waterways is a widespread problem and becoming more urgent in states with large homeless populations. In Seattle, homeless people living in RVs are accused of dumping raw sewage straight into storm drains, which flows directly to local waterways. In Oregon, workers cleaning up homeless camps along the Willamette River in Eugene routinely find feces and needles.

In Sacramento, regulators have been measuring elevated fecal bacteria levels in the lower American River for more than three years. Located near downtown Sacramento, it is a popular destination for water sports, even as hundreds of homeless people camp nearby.

Some recreational areas, including Tiscornia Beach, where families picnic, BBQ and wade in the river, had E. coli levels so high in the past year that they hit the upper limits of what the water board’s laboratories could measure — more than seven times higher than the state standard, said Adam Laputz, assistant executive officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Trump needs to continue that Big Beautiful Wall of his right up Cali’s eastern border and all the way north to Canada, so as to ensure that West Coast liberals fully enjoy all the amenities of the shitholes they created for themselves, instead of fleeing to more livable places to fuck them up too.

(Via Gateway Pundit)

Category: Tards

Meatless makes morons

Everything not forbidden is mandatory

The looking glass, darkly

Hirono speaks

They hate us! They really, really hate us!

Getting what you voted for

Predictable as the sunrise

HOW DARE YOU!!!

STOP THE PRESSES

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