Open Thread

Mark Noonan

Big Q1 2023 layoffs are coming for the Washington Post – word is they’ve lost half a million subscribers. This is good on so many levels.

And I think it is just the start – when Musk bought Twitter it had 7,500 employees. From what I can tell, he’s down to less than a hundred now and the thing is running just fine. These employees were being paid San Francisco wages – so, you gotta figure even the mail rook clerk (do they still have those?) was making north of 50 grand a year. The cost savings are immense. Additionally, there is rumor than Musk will move it to Texas, thus saving massive amounts in taxes and other fees. Other companies will be looking at this and wondering just how much they can cut.

To be sure, any of us who have ever lost a job knows that it is devastating. You suddenly don’t have assurance of paying the bills and with that worry, you scramble for another position. On the other hand, the bloat in corporate America is massive. Huge numbers of people are employed doing nothing that produces the product sold, whatever that may be. Empire building doesn’t just happen in government bureaucracies – it is a disease of all bureaucracies. The most positive aspect of this is that the people most likely to be fired are those who pester the American people the most: the woke with useless degrees are going to find that the 200 grand a year job attending a couple half hour meetings per day is gone for good.

As I’ve said before, a huge amount of America’s workforce is employed in useless jobs – and it wouldn’t be so bad if they were just useless, but these people also use their positions to push ever more wokeness on us…because that is their bread and butter. The more DEI you get, the more money you make.

Until, of course, there is no more money to make. We can’t sustain a pack of parasites. We need our workers to produce useful product.

I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t think we realize just how malevolently insane the United States has become. We are no longer the good guys in the world. We’re funding the war in Ukraine when that could have been almost immediately settled by Ukraine giving up the ethnic Russian territory. We’re refusing to produce our own oil and natural gas while pressing foreigners to ruthlessly exploit their own resources and workers so we can have energy cheap enough to keep political damage to democrats to a minimum. We’re arguing over whether or not a healthy 14 year old should have a double mastectomy. We’re allowing what amounts to a new slave trade to operate on our southern border. On and on it goes like that – not just bad policies which could result from mistakes, but directly baleful actions which hurt our own people and people all around the world…all the while with an MSM lauding our leadership and everyone passing out awards to each other for doing it. A reckoning will come for this – and I do believe that in God’s mercy we will have to pay a high price for it all.

But there is some good news – the Temecula Valley (CA) school district has banned critical race theory. This is in California. And this shows just how crucial things like school board elections are. Just put a few sane people into office and, presto, the hate-filled insanity stops. I hope we can get more and enough of this soon enough to avert total disaster.

Donald Trump is not having a good time – ignoring polls (most are created to manipulate rather than inform), he’s just not gaining much traction for 2024. His core supporters are still with him, but it looks like enough other GOP voters are out there to deny him the nomination if they can swiftly coalesce around one candidate (more tricky than it seems). Now he’s saying he has a big announcement coming tomorrow. I guess we’ll see if he’s got something that will restore his fortunes.

25 thoughts on “Open Thread”

  1. Retired Spook December 14, 2022 / 5:21 pm

    Other companies will be looking at this and wondering just how much they can cut.

    Sounds like the unemployment rate might bump up a skosh early next year.

  2. Cluster December 15, 2022 / 10:18 am

    I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t think we realize just how malevolently insane the United States has become. We are no longer the good guys in the world.

    I’ve been thinking this same thing since 2020. My opinion of the United States of America has done a 180. We are the most corrupt country in the world and inflicting major damage. Illegal immigration, encouraged by our ruling class, is another major disruption to the world and it’s intentional. Think about all the human labor and resources Central America is losing. A good majority of all of their young people are migrating to the US because of promises made to them by Democrats, leaving those countries decimated. These beautiful cultures and traditions just going away because Americas ruling class needs political fodder. They are sick evil people.

    And honestly how can anyone spend 5 minutes with Mitch McConnell and not realize he is a complete loser. Same can be said for a lot of them; Lindsay Graham, AOC, Pelosi, Maxine Waters, etc.. These people are losers and we need to start being more critical and judgmental of them. In other words, stop being so civil. Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice.

  3. Cluster December 15, 2022 / 10:24 am

    How long before the American people just get tired of this bullshit??

    ‘We’re not asking, we’re telling you:’ Business owner demands black people receive $350,000 EACH in reparations since ‘we worked for free’ during slavery – at California’s public reparations committee hearing

    • Amazona December 15, 2022 / 11:15 am

      I’m fine with giving money to people who were enslaved here in this country. So far, none have stepped up.

      • Retired Spook December 15, 2022 / 12:56 pm

        The real problem is that many blacks in this country, even ones who are direct descendents of slaves, have allowed themselves to be enslaved all over again. Just a different kind of plantation.

        These two photos say it all.

        And just like during the slave trade, current blacks have largely been sold down the river by other blacks like the ones who make up the Congressional Black Caucus.

      • Cluster December 15, 2022 / 4:13 pm

        As long as black people operate as a monolithic group, they will always be taken advantage of by others. They are told, and they believe that because of their skin color, they are different than the rest of us, so they are their own worst enemies. They haven’t learned that yet.

        And that’s a great depiction spook

  5. Retired Spook December 16, 2022 / 11:09 am

    Regulars here will likely remember some of the spirited global warming/climate change “discussions” we used to have back on the old Blogs for Bush in the early 2000s. The fall-back for alarmists was that a study was “peer-reviewed,” and if it wasn’t, it just wasn’t true, or at the very least, not credible. Then in 2009 and again in 2011 prominent climate change “scientists” had their emails hacked in which they bragged not only about manipulating data but also about perverting the peer-review process. Suddenly “peer-review” was not mentioned much any more. Fast forward to C&C this morning in which Jeff Childers really lays into peer-review as it pertains to medical science. Grab some popcorn and sit back and enjoy.

    To celebrate the release from Twitter jail of Doctor McCullough, the most-cited and most censored covid doctor in the world, and Dr. Malone, the actual inventor of mRNA tech, I’m going to write a little about the so-called “peer-review” process. I have personal experience with the phenomenon, since I was forced to fight in court about studies that either were or weren’t peer-reviewed.

    The whole process was a painful ordeal. What should a judge do with claims that studies are better or worse because of peer review? Is one mask study better because it IS peer-reviewed? Should another mask study be completely ignored because it WASN’T peer-reviewed?

    For a long while, judges were mostly deferring to peer review. But did that make any sense?1

    On this blog I have often alleged there are many scientists who are not scientists at all, but prostitutes, white-coated pretenders servicing big government and big pharma, happily supplying studies to satisfy eager institutional customers’ needs; always for a fee, euphemistically called “grants,” which of course must be paid in advance.

    I didn’t just read that somewhere. I watched it happen with my own eyes, in real time. There were zero covid mask studies when I started litigating the mandates. Then the studies started coming out. We carefully reviewed every single one. None of the real studies could get peer-reviewed. Only the garbage, fake pro-mask studies showed up peer-reviewed in the journals.

    It was vexing.

    You can’t believe how horrible most of the pro-mask studies were. Every time the NIH stuffed grant money into their mouths, fake scientists excreted another “study” purporting to “prove” that cut-up t-shirts somehow filtered a nanoscale virus and stopped transmission.

    In one study that was widely feted in corporate media and used against me in court, the “scientists” took a styrofoam head, stuck a plastic tube in its mouth, jetted air through the tube, and then measured the air velocity coming out — with and without a cotton mask strapped onto the dummy head.

    Because they found air velocity reduced with a cotton mask on, the scientists, employing a tortured chain of reasoning comparable to an excited teenager arguing for a later curfew, concluded that masks must also reduce covid spread BECAUSE the cotton mask reduced the amount of expelled air. (Two masks reduced it even more!)

    The problem was, the moronic fakers only measured air velocity right in front of the dummy head. They ‘forgot’ to measure the air flowing UP, DOWN, and SIDEWAYS. They lied. The airflow wasn’t “reduced.” Of COURSE the air came out. It had to go somewhere! The masks didn’t ABSORB the air! In other words, the masks didn’t change the AMOUNT of air coming out; only its direction. And worse, masks didn’t even reduce the expelled air’s speed; although forward air velocity was reduced, the velocity to the sides, up and down was INCREASED when wearing a mask.

    Masks actually INCREASE the spread of viral particulate. But it passed peer review!

    Allegedly, peer-review is a quality certification process. Studies are ranked and rated whether they have been reviewed and blessed by an anonymous panel of scientists in the same discipline. That’s supposed to be how to tell if the study is any good. Recently, for example, the State of Florida studied its medical data, finding jabs increased myocarditis in young people under 40. Critics whined that Florida’s research project wasn’t peer-reviewed, and therefore it was useless.

    Do the critics have a point?

    Probably not, according to Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton, who in a brief flash of honesty said out loud what a lot of other scientists have been thinking for a long time. That is: peer review is not in fact a quality control; it is just a way for establishment scientists to police and enforce orthodox narratives.

    Specifically, Dr. Horton wrote:

    The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability—not the validity—of a new finding…We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.
    In 2015, Dr. Horton even dared to criticize science itself, because the scientific literature — and he should know — has become UNRELIABLE:

    The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.
    But why? In 2014 — well before the pandemic — Editor-in-Chief Horton admitted that “Journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry.”

    Isn’t that interesting. Who would have ever thought.

    But HOW does the pharmaceutical industry launder false information through the journals? Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Marcia Angell was the Editor-in-Chief at the New England Journal of Medicine for 20 years. After twenty years of editing and publishing scientific papers, she has become deeply skeptical, not only about peer-review, but about the entire process of journals and even about “experts.” She said:

    It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.
    Read that again. The former chief editor of the New England Journal of Medicine said it is NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO RELY ON THE JUDGMENT OF EXPERTS.

    She said it, not me. I’m just a lawyer.

    But WHY is science broken? Dr. Marc Girard, a member of the editorial board of the journal ‘Medicine Veritas,’ explained that science is broken because of MONEY:

    The reason for this disaster is too clear: the power of money. In academic institutions, the current dynamics of research is more favourable to the ability of getting grants—collecting money and spending it—than to scientific imagination or creativity.
    The problem isn’t new, either. Back in 2005, Dr. John Ionnidis — an early and important member of Team Reality who experienced censorship and cancellation firsthand — said “Most scientific studies are wrong, and they are wrong because scientists are interested in funding and careers rather than truth… Claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”

    It’s a club. A well-paid club.

    The point is, all these criticisms of science and peer-review were well-known within the scientific community long before the pandemic hit. But those lying liars gaslit us, and told us WE were crazy for not blindly relying on their feckless, brokered opinions and judgments. Opinions and judgments which quickly turned out to be wildly wrong, not that any of them are admitting it.

    In the words, or lyrics, of my favorite covid artist, Dr. Doctor McHonkHonk:

    Science lies, mate
    That what its’ always done, is doin’, and always will do
    It’s more dangerous than any disease
    Time to rise, eh?
    I’d rather die while standing up than live on my knees
    We’ve got to walk away now
    It’s over.

    I’m not happy about any of this. It’s not my new hobby to attack science or anything. But science needs to clean up its own house, and get out of our hair.

    Anyway, Twitter is better now because the heterodox scientific voices are back. Much better.

    • Cluster December 16, 2022 / 12:44 pm

      Human nature NEVER changes. Money and power seduce and corrupt everything. Be highly critical of everybody and that will serve you well.

      • Cluster December 17, 2022 / 8:04 am

        The Covid virus has a 97% survival rate … even for those unvaccinated like me. Now those are good odds.

      • Retired Spook December 17, 2022 / 8:14 am

        From the Daily Mail article:

        For example, a stroke patient who goes to the hospital with dizziness has a 14-fold increased risk of being misdiagnosed compared to more common signs like numbness and speech problems.

        My wife had several minor strokes over a decade ago. Last summer she woke up with paralysis on the right side of her face, and I thought she might be having another stroke, so I took her to the ER. They ran a bunch of tests, bottom line – no stroke, but the doctor said (and I’m not making this up) “don’t repeat this, and if you do I’ll deny it, but her condition is probably a side effect of the Covid vaccine.” The paralysis went away in a week or so, and I hadn’t thought anything more about it until reading your linked article.

      • Cluster December 17, 2022 / 11:10 am

        Prayers for the Mrs.

      • Retired Spook December 17, 2022 / 3:16 pm

        Thanks.

  6. Cluster December 16, 2022 / 12:50 pm

    Look what Democrats have done

    ‘Comply or it’s going to be a serious backlash:’ Activist demanding $800,000 for every black resident threatens California’s reparations task force … Protest political candidate and civil rights advocate Deon Jenkins warned California’s reparations task force that there will be ‘a serious backlash’ if they do not comply with his demands for hundreds of thousands dollars to be handed out

    This is not going to end well. Thanks to Democrats. Maybe the nuclear war they almost have us in will save us from racial violence they are stoking.

    • Jeremiah December 16, 2022 / 7:29 pm

      What would you suppose, Cluster, speaking of violence, which, this generation has ever seen, true violence that is. Suppose the people rioting and looting and burning were Conservatives? In the same areas as those who burned and looted in Minneapolis or Los Angeles, with the same people in charge of those cities? How much would you want to bet that those people would tell the National guard to fire on and kill the rioters?
      But, because they were their own in Minneapolis Los Angeles etc, they told the National Guard to stand down. Am I right?

      Anyway, I grow ever more pessimistic about the prospects of any true reckoning ever happening in America. The longer time goes on, the less good people there are in this country, and the more bad people there are.

      The men of today have made a mockery of our Founding fathers. When we had the American revolution and the Civil war there were no questions, they just did. When they fired the cannons they didn’t have long discussions for weeks on end about it they Just did. When they buried their fellow soldiers, they didn’t ask why, they just did. When they buried the bayonets in the enemy’s side, they didn’t ask should we, they just did. When Washington travelled to Valley Forge in the deep snow on horseback, he didn’t ask “should I?” He just did.

      Sadly, we don’t have men with that testosterone this day and age. It’s awful men have been feminized and enjoy the comfort and pleasures of their labor, rather than try to preserve their children’s and grandchildren’s future. And their grandchildren and children, many who will be taken away and put in death camps to starve and breathe their last.

      There’s a very bleak future for America. The young people are going to be the ones who suffer the most because of the false visions that they’ve been given by their professors.

      • Cluster December 17, 2022 / 8:14 am

        I agree with you on the current condition of men. There are just too many complacent and confused men in America, but that again is by design. Large governments do not want strong, educated, independent men – they can become a threat to government control.

        That being said, I am beginning to think that what is playing out is larger than one or two generations. I think this is the larger arc of humanity. Strong men create good times wherein weak men rise and bad times follow. I think you can look back throughout history and see this pattern.

  7. Cluster December 16, 2022 / 12:53 pm

    Oh and the CIA killed JFK.

    • Amazona December 17, 2022 / 6:44 pm

      Read “The Men On The Sixth Floor” and tell me what you think

  8. Cluster December 17, 2022 / 9:08 am

    Will people ever acknowledge the fact that electric vehicles are much more harmful to the environment than fossil fueled cars?? Or do you ever think people will admit that electric cars are desired by governments because they can be controlled? And shut down. The truth is, this EV obsession by government and “saving the planet” … is just another lie.

    It is now more than twice as expensive to charge an electric vehicle in Norway’s capital, Oslo, than to fill up a gas-powered vehicle.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/electric-vehicle-charging-oslo-norway-now-twice-expensive-filling-gas-powered-vehicle/

  9. Cluster December 17, 2022 / 9:30 am

    So John Bolton was just on MSNBC talking about his potential run for President – and now I’ll give you time to laugh about that

    But he said something that caught my attention – Bolton said that he is a “mainstream conservative” like Goldwater and Reagan … and now I know why we lose. The GOP elite has no connection with, and no longer represent the conservative movement. There are still too many big business, neo hawks in the GOP ie; Romney, McConnell, Bolton, Murkowski, etc. and they still control the purse strings. Time to purge.

  11. Jeremiah December 17, 2022 / 1:58 pm

    Here is the CEO of Gab’s take on Musk taking over twitter…

    “Elon Musk is in over his head when it comes to free speech.

    Musk is quickly learning that in order to run a free speech platform you need two things: thick skin and a fanatical commitment to free speech, even when being pro free speech is bad for business, and even when being pro free speech means tolerating the most excoriating criticism of yourself.

    Elon’s “free speech” saga at Twitter is really nothing of the sort. He’s treating the product, and his users, as his playthings. Flailing, hyper-feminine emotional outbursts are a substitute for a “leadership style.” All told, he has revealed that he has no interest whatsoever in bringing actual free speech to Twitter.

    Twitter was, ironically, more measured and free when there were thousands of mentally ill blue-haired Communists with their fingers on the ban hammer. At least the Communists tried to come up with an objective and consistent rationale for their actions. Contrast with Elon, who waved the flag of free speech as soon as he took over but immediately began compromising on that promise for the sake of business expediency.

    When it came to Alex Jones being reinstated, Elon had an emotional reaction and invoked the loss of his child. When it came to Kathy Griffin impersonating him, Elon had an emotional reaction and swung the ban hammer on anyone in his way. When it came to Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, posting a symbol of a French UFO cult which combined a swastika and a Star of David, Elon had an emotional reaction and banned him so as to be hip with all of the other California types who were throwing Ye to the wolves.

    Now with the ElonJet and journalist ban situation, where constitutionally protected information which is publicly available is being removed from the site (despite being massively available practically everywhere else on the Internet) Elon is once again “leading” with his emotions and treating Twitter not as a product, not as an essential and vital publication utility for the entire world, but as a toy, and one controlled by a petulant child at that.

    Men who lead do not make decisions and dictate on the whims of their emotions. Weak, hyper-effete men “leading” with emotions instead of reason and logic is a big reason Western society is crumbling. Given Elon’s Reddit-tier political takes and patchy soy beard, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that he is low on the testosterone side. But I digress.

    Gab is for free speech. The lefty journalists recently banned from Twitter might not believe it but when they find that they get zero engagement on Mastodon and are looking to join a serious social media platform again, but Gab will be here waiting for them – and we will protect them from all censors, foreign and domestic, to the greatest extent possible, as long as their speech is lawful.

    Some of these journalists who were banned last night, like Matt Binder, have been extremely critical of Gab and our users in the past. I don’t like Matt. He’s been unfair to Gab in the past. But Gab exists for him. Gab exists to provide a home and a megaphone for viewpoints that don’t have a home anywhere else. Until Elon took over Twitter, that meant we were a home for the right and center-right. After Elon took over, we are ready, willing, and able to provide that home for the left and center-left, just as we are prepared to host anyone who agrees that they will not violate U.S. law in the use of our service.

    We can no longer afford to give any power whatsoever to petty tyrants who think themselves to be god-kings. This is the outcome when emasculated emotional losers “lead” our society: chaos, hypocrisy, destruction, and censorship.

    Twitter is a big corporation and it has big corporate baggage. It needs huge quantities of advertising dollars from all over the world, including the most censorial European countries, just to survive. When EU bureaucrats tell him to censor Americans he has to obey. Last week the EU asked us to censor some Americans – citing no law that had been broken, simply saying that certain users were posting “propaganda” – and we told them to pound sand. No US court will ever enforce an unconstitutional European rule. If we never sell a dollar of ads in the European Union, that’s perfectly fine with us.

    The reason I run Gab because I believe that protecting freedom of speech is a divine command. We must refuse to be “led” by anyone who is not themselves led by Jesus Christ. We deserve strong God-fearing Christian leaders in media, business, technology, culture, education, and government.

    I may not agree with your beliefs. You may not agree with mine. You may think my belief in God is a backward superstition. I may think your atheism is corrosive. None of that matters. Whoever you are, wherever you are, I, and this company, will defend your right to speak freely on the Internet as long as we are able to do so.

    Andrew Torba
    CEO, Gab.com
    Jesus Christ is King of kings”

    • Cluster December 17, 2022 / 2:52 pm

      Free speech is not absolute. In the public arena, you can not threaten anyone, you can not incite violence, and you can not intimidate so there are limitations. I would also say that identifying someones real time location with the intent to intimidate would also be off limits. Other than that, Twitter is a private company, so they have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. And so can Gab. Just like the NYT can pick and choose their editorialists and content, so can Twiiter and Gab.

      I was permanently suspended from Twitter for constantly mocking and ridiculing Democrats and you know what? I’m fine with that. They have a right to ban me. If I were them, I would probably ban me too.

  12. Cluster December 17, 2022 / 2:23 pm

    This is just the beginning for California. I’ve read the entire State now is in the red too.

    Go woke, go broke! San Francisco mayor warns crime-ridden city now faces a $728m budget deficit over next two years as remote work caused property taxes and public transit ridership to slump

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