Little Oaths Of Loyalty

Remember the Whiz Quiz? They still do that don't they? You know, all that drug-free workplace stuff government funded and business implemented. What Fourth Amendment?

Then came wave after wave of progressive dogma. Safe spaces. Trigger warnings. Pronoun of the moment (smart folks settled on "it"). Political correctness. Heckler vetoes. The chill of self-censorship. All leading to universal, mandatory diversity statements to ensure fealty, the bending of all sheaves to a god of the established elites' making. 

And now we have an administration, an executive branch, demanding loyalty to that administration to retain or obtain a job. They are even checking prior social media activity. Sounds familiar doesn't it? It is more than just the similarity to the academy, but to prior administrations. The tools of that trade are no more different today than four years ago. The similarities are frightening and any differences seem manufactured, and only important to boo-birds. 

What would have been nice, what could be, are voices from the Fourth Estate that decry suspicion-less pre-employment drug testing, mandatory diversity statements, and pledges of political loyalty with equal fervor.

Flailed Authority

Stephen Sackur, host of the BBC's Hard Talk, recently interviewed Martin Baron, the (fairly) recently retired editor of the Washington Post. Just when we thought the chicken littles had been served up as chicken dinner with media pundits pivoting towards the durability of our constitution and away from chimerical existential threats, Baron parrots the pre-election punditry served up by jurassic "journalists." Between decrying all the bad things the prez-elect will do, he belabored the loss of "authority" by the dying media that was his livelihood. And how does he know what T2 will do? Because Trump said he would. Anyone who's been paying attention for the past ten years has heard many prevarications, seen enormous amounts of "fact checking," and been told time and again, by dinosaurs like Baron, that "he's a liar." But Baron, and only those like Baron, can tell his truths from his lies. There, according to Baron, lies journalistic "authority" as in authoritative, not authoritarian. Yet.

But dino-media have lost this authority with many in the public no longer seeing them as purveyors of fact and objectivity, of truth. Critics of last generation media see them as politicized propagandists, but since almost no one under the age of forty even consumes legacy "output" their ability to move the needle has gone the way of their authority. Their transition to biased influence and prevarication is being "fact checked" in the courts. George Snuffleupagus stepped in it when he declared, on air, that Trump had been found guilty of rape. Fact: he was found, in a civil suit, liable of sexual abuse. As a "journalist" Snuffleupagus should, and probably did, know better. ABC, knowing the only defense against libel is the truth, wisely dodged their day in court by agreeing to pay up $15M. Of course this further convinced the public of ABC's devotion to the left at any cost. No authority, just politics. 

Now, tee up the Des Moines Register. And their recently retired pollster. Seems the pollster, in the week before the election, concluded that Iowa flipped from Trump to Harris with Harris commanding a three point lead. The Register dutifully printed it, after all it was what they wanted to believe. The pollster was only off by about fifteen points. Now she and the Register are facing their own fact checking. In court. Accused of election interference. By the winner. They didn't lose their authority, they threw it away. Of course Baron sees this as an illegitimate attack on the Fourth Estate, wants to hide behind the First Amendment and claims the court case is an existential threat to American democracy.  Almost as if he is crying lawfare.

Sackur challenged Baron on key points, but more importantly suggested that maybe, just maybe, the media empire of the previous millennium has fallen. And it can't get up. The cause of death? Suicide. Like the dinosaurs of yore, they did not adapt to a changing environment, they pretended that their business model would endure. It didn't. So what did they do? They doubled down. When that didn't work, they decided to pick a team, a political team, one they thought would align with them, support them, giving up a broad fan base for a smaller group of fervent followers. It isn't clear it ever did work, but it certainly has failed. Perhaps having a media star, like Snuffleupagus, lie about someone he has consistently called a liar, just doesn't play well in Peoria. The Fourth Estate had become accustomed to thinking of themselves as king makers, but they have not been very good at it. Had they been, we would be seeing the close out of Hillary's second term and not T2. The media not only gave up on facts and objectivity, they replaced introspection with arrogance. After all, they are the only ones claiming media authority is even a thing. They had no clue their transparent partisanship would backfire. Maybe telling voters that their candidate is in the lead isn't the best way to get out the vote, at least not for their candidate. 

They knew what they were doing, or wanted to do, they just didn't know how to do it.

But How Do They Know?

Shortly after the election you probably  heard from CBN (Click Bait News) about the text messages sent to big b Black folks. Messages they, rightly, found offensive. Now CBN is reporting on offensive text messages being sent to italic l Latinos. Reactions range from disgust to "something must be done" even if that undermines our democracy. No one, definitely not CBN, is asking a key question.

How do they know? They being the folks sending these text messages. How do they know that a phone number is for a big b Black or a italic l Latino? Is there a directory with demographics somewhere? Is it on the dark web? Really? Do we have to fire up TOR to find out? Probably. No one in the fourth estate is going to tell us.

It could be something else. Maybe little w whites are getting these texts and just concluding: wrong number. Maybe CBN feels there are no clicks in reporting everything so they've selectively reported only those things they find profitable. 

So how do we find out? We probably can't and we'll probably never know.

Artificial Intelligence?

Natural stupidity? Core ignorance? [D|M]isinformation? Maybe all of the above? 

We're in the midst of one of the most objectionable election seasons in a lifetime, even Biden's long, long lifetime, and it comes with Helene-ic floods of blather that are just plain wrong. Only thing worse is the pushback with the Biden/Harris tribe branding anything they don't want to hear as "disinformation." Even when they are legit questions with actual, factual answers. Just answers they don't want to say out loud. 

How did we get here? 

Probably started with the wordsmiths, the purveyors of news, olds, the finders of facts and liars of lies. Yep. The media. And they've been subtle, which makes them incredibly dangerous. We've been given this almond-scented dose from the left-leaning Huffington Post:

"a Food and Drug Administration-approved update to the Mammography Quality Standards Act"

Why is this dangerous? Because it is either profound, entrenched ignorance from those who should know more and better, or it is intentional subversive propaganda. And it has been going on for so long that most folks don't even see it for what it is. Do you? You see, the FDA is a federal administration and part of the executive branch. As such, the FDA does not create congressional acts, and congress neither seeks nor needs the FDA's approval because it is the FDA's job to establish regulations conforming to the MQSA. The MQSA passed by congress. Who knew? Apparently NOT the fourth estate, the self-appointed, self-proclaimed defenders of our democracy. 

We're in trouble comrades.

Where Were You?

This is a party game: where were you when <fill in the blank> happened? You know, like 9/11, the shuttle disaster, the Kennedy assassinations, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, or the fall of Saigon (or Kabul). But that's not today's diatribe. Today's question is put to the Fourth Estate: where were you, where the hell have you been and what have you been doing?

The AJC, given cover by the Grey Lady, is spilling ink ostensibly editorializing that Biden should step aside because of sudden onset age. Yep, he's an overnight octagenarian. To hear these two pontificate you'd think Biden went from the vim and vinegar of a mid-life crisis (he does own a Corvette) to full blown old-age senility. And the Fourth Estate? Well, they didn't see that coming. Really? 

To be kind, the AJC opinion piece is filled with merde de cheval, and predictably so, as it is consistent with previous behavior. By headline this is billed as a call for Biden to step aside. For the good of the country, wink, wink. But, as they always have, they digressed into a hit piece on Trump. This harped on the only thing the debate offered: CNN fact checkers accuse Trump of thirty prevarications. Not noted by the AJC are Biden's nine lies or his long history of a strained relationship with the truth. Not that one liar is better than another, but in their partisanship it seems the editorial board would have you believe one, their one, is better. Their argument against Trump is nonsensical and arrogant. Nonsensical in that they characterize their enemy as a pathological liar yet quote him suggesting those quotes are gospel truths. Arrogant in that they believe, and expect us to believe, that they are somehow the sole arbiters of truth, when all they really have is what we all have: an opinion. 

But they simply could not leave bad enough alone, they had the chutzpah to bring up George Washington's "farewell address," specifically in regards to partisanship. The AJC editorial staff is unashamedly leftist, AKA Democrat, and they are unrelenting in bashing Republicans. Exclusively. This is an Orwellian level of propaganda born of intense hubris. They claim to be our source of real news, of objective information, yet their leftward tilt leads them into biased reporting replete with misleading language and disinformation. 

And if we are to believe they are so damned knowledgeable how could they be blindsided? How could it be that they were surprised? Or, maybe they weren't. Maybe they knew all along, after all, anyone watching the D-Day ceremonies witnessed this same senility on parade. If they didn't know they should have. Either way they have violated a public trust and maybe, just maybe, they are the ones who have finally stepped aside.

AJC Confession

In their explanation of their change to editorials, which they imply are only in the editorial pages, they acknowledge polarization. In politics. And they attempt to dodge, unsuccessfully, their responsibility for this divisiveness. The editorial staff are perforce describing their previous preferred "fair and balanced" approach of offering a (curated) platform for those they, the AJC editorial staff, consider adequately "from the right" to give the appearance of offsetting their deeply entrenched leftist dogma.

Too little. Too late.

When Things Don't Add Up

Inconvenient inconsistencies are squizzing out about the whole SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We have some Emory prof enjoying his 15 seconds of fame with a model that shows Georgia peaks on 23 April a day which will see 84 deaths. Assuming we do as we're told so as to flatten the curve.

Then there is that whole curve thing. Based on data that are suspect to say the least. Severe screening for access to tests skews any data with a label resembling "confirmed case." What of all those cases where the high standard of symptoms is not met, yet the candidate carries, and likely transmits the virus? And which test and why? Why is the USA exclusively focused on the RT-PCR and not also performing serological testing? How can modeling be done in the absence of  broad and deep data? When we see the curve we are asked to flatten is the hockey stick a representation of actual cases or is it a representation of increased availability of tests? You might think that deaths are difficult to bury under political spin but how many have died without a conclusive RT-PCR or serological test? Very likely deaths are under reported though not as severely as infections.

Then there are those statements that when taken together, though never presented together, just do not make sense. Models showing a peak in late April with an apex just coincidentally matching hospital capacity do not align with the kudos given Ford (well deserved) for committing to 50,000 ventilators by July. A normal production profile will include a production ramp-up thru April with a majority of production (and delivery) occurring after the peak predicted by the model(s). This seems to suggest that the commonly shown bell curve is not the real profile that is expected. There is also little said about how flattening the curve extends the duration of calamity. No one is discussing what impact this has on total illness or death.

There are suggestions of recurrence when sequestering ends and we expose previously isolated populations to the remaining virus harbored in those remaining ill or simply asymptomatic. Ebola moves into animal reservoirs. Is there any reason to believe this virus will not survive beyond the immediate crisis in a natural reservoir? Based on what exactly?

We were not told the truth when we were told to not wear masks or gloves. But yet, these were important, even critical, for health care workers. Why would they only work for them and not us? They work equally well, but the "speakers of truth" wanted supplies reserved for one group and not the other. We haven't been told the truth and it isn't likely this will change anytime soon.