Follow the science

Of course, it’s a big tent, with room for all

Scientific Study Points to Liberal White Women Being the Craziest

Have you ever been called a racist or a bigot–or worse? Was the ad hominem attack made by a white liberal? It’s not their fault. Science suggests that they are nuttier than squirrel droppings. Especially the women.

A 2020 study from left-leaning Pew Research tells us what we’ve all known: Liberals suffer from mental illness more than conservatives do.

According to the study, liberal white women are diagnosed with mental illnesses more than any other group. White women, ages 18-29, who “identified” as liberal were diagnosed by medical professionals with a mental health illness at a rate of 56.3%, compared to 28.4% for moderates and 27.3% for conservatives.

Zach Goldberg, a Ph.D. candidate in political science, recently consolidated the study’s data in a set of visuals and posted them on Twitter.

Coming to Take You Away, Ha-Ha

The report suggests that the more liberal the respondent, the more cray-cray they are.

Goldberg also stated that liberal white women score higher on neuroticism and lower on life satisfaction/happiness.

Don’t Deny the Science

The study found that 62% of white women and men who consider themselves “very liberal or liberal” have been told by a doctor they have a mental health condition. Only 26% of conservatives and 20% of moderates have been diagnosed with a mental malady.

Dr. Lyle Rossiter, a board-certified psychiatrist with over 30 years of experience treating mental disorders, agrees and further suggests that white liberalism thrives on supposedly championing “workers, minorities, the little guy, women, and the unemployed, whom they continuously see as wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited, and victimized with little to no agency of their own [a view that often mutates into the infantilizing and patronizing of certain groups within a narrative].”

My own take on these people is similar to Dr. Rossiter’s comments regarding their championing of causes of people they have no relationship to, or with. Our white Antifa rioter, or white, child of privilege BLM supporter leads an otherwise empty life, either in their parents’ basement, or poolside at the Belle Haven Club, and, like all humans, longs for meaning and purpose. Having rejected traditional religion, they seek something to fill that aching void. Championing George Floyd, an individual who, if he showed up poolside would be hauled away by security before the sunbathers could finish their first martinis, is a safe way to create an artificial purpose and fit in with the cool kids; a win-win, but ultimately a path to an empty neurosis or even, in the case of the Antifa basement dwellers, full-blown psychosis.

Oh, really

Green energy jobs: Congolese cobalt minors extract fuel for American Tesla owners

LA Times and even — gasp — the NYT are discovering the environmental costs of going to an all-electric fleet.

Nothing that hasn’t been known and pointed out by practical people for years.

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air:

“Two months ago, the New York Times and CNN raised warning flags on the environmental costs of transitioning to electric cars. Last week, the Los Angeles Times followed suit, although in this case it’s the California dog that doesn’t bark that should be of greatest interest to that question. Even without the obvious questions about energy for recharging, however, the LAT raises a series of environmental issues with the necessary mining to sustain production of EVs.

The platform is as notable as the reporting in this case:

The drama playing out in the deep sea is just one act in a fast unfolding, ethically challenging and economically complex debate that stretches around the world, from the cobalt mines of Congo to the corridors of the Biden White House to fragile desert habitats throughout the West where vast deposits of lithium lay beneath the ground.

The state of California is inexorably intertwined in this drama. Not just because extraction companies are aggressively surveying the state’s landscapes for opportunities to mine and process the materials. But because California is leading the drive toward electric cars.

No state has exported more policy innovations — including on climate, equality, the economy — than California, a trend accelerating under the Biden administration. The state relishes its role as the nation’s think tank, though the course it charts for the country has, at times, veered in unanticipated directions.

“Ahem. Other parts of the country have their own thoughts on “Californication,” including my newly adopted state of Texas, which are nowhere near as positive as this suggests. That is, though, one reason why it matters that the LA Times makes this deep dive into the adverse environmental and national-security impacts of EVs. They are more inclined to cheer on such “policy innovations” rather than think deeply about their implications, and this bracing look at the environmental toll of necessary mining probably comes as a surprise to a significant amount of their readership.

The “point of pride” that the LAT describes next is somewhat debatable in context:

The success of electric cars is a point of pride for not just California, but the Biden administration, which is trying to meet the commitments in the Paris climate accord. But it is also a point of panic. The administration warns the transition threatens to leave the nation vulnerable to the whims of countries that control supply chains. President Biden in June ordered the Departments of Energy and the Interior to help industry bolster mining and processing of battery materials.

China controls most of the market for the raw-material refining needed for the batteries and dominates component manufacturing; industry analysts warn the monopolization presents not only an economic risk, but also a national security one.

The cost of finding new sources for raw materials and loosening China’s grip on the supply chains is large. That much is clear in Thacker Pass, a windswept pocket of northern Nevada where the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe has for centuries hunted sage grouse, collected plants for medicine, and gathered for ceremonies. It is also the largest reserve of lithium in the United States.

More on that Alabama liar, courtesy of Reader Wendy

https://uploads.disquscdn.c... This is why she is a liar. Very few are dying of Covid in the entire state of Alabama, never mind in her hospital on her watch and none of them are 'young', unless you are counting those spring chickens in the 50 - 64 year old category (which of course I think are pretty young). I pulled this from the CDC just now, so you can go in and do so yourself, if you think I might be pulling some funny business. Her whole story is entirely made up to feed the vaccine narrative. Or as Chris says, liar, liar.

Public Servants

You don’t really need more, but America’s Paper of Record has the details

And to think that just yesterday I was chiding readers for not picking up on the piscatorial reference to "Cobia"

How do you keep a blogger happy in his old age? Tell him jokes when he’s young

I now have to make my second apology to commenter “James Taggart”. The first came some months ago, after I realized that I’d been mistaking the new commenter’s posts for genuine wokeness, and missing the sarcasm while scolding him and shunting him off into the “bad boy” folder.

But this is worse; reading his latest this morning, the dime finally dropped: James Taggart! Dagny’s awful, horrible brother! Sheesh.

Sorry again, Mr. Taggart

Given what I've seen of eduction majors over the decades, I'm surprised the pass rate's so high

Only 45% of would-be teachers pass licensing tests on first try

Only 45 percent of would-be elementary teachers pass state licensing tests on the first try in states with strong testing systems concludes a new report by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Twenty-two percent of those who fail — 30 percent of test takers of color — never try again, reports Driven by Data: Using Licensure Tests to Build a Strong, Diverse Teacher Workforce.

Exam takers have the hardest time with tests of content knowledge, such as English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies.

California has the proper response, naturally:

California, which refused to provide data for the NCTQ study, will allow teacher candidates to skip basic skills and subject-matter tests, if they pass relevant college classes with a B or better, reports Diana Lambert for EdSource.

The California Basic Skills Test (CBEST) measures reading, writing and math skills normally learned in middle school or early in high school. The California Subject Matter Exams for Teachers (CSET) tests proficiency in the subject the prospective teacher will teach, Lambert writes.

Nearly half of California’s potential teachers struggle to pass the four standardized tests required to earn a credential, according to data from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Nearly 66 percent of the people who took the CBEST in 2019-20 passed it on the first try and 83 percent passed after multiple attempts, according to commission data. The CSET, which is actually a suite of tests, had a first-time passage rate of about 67 percent in 2019-20. About 81 percent of the teacher candidates who took the test multiple times passed.

Mary Vixie Sandy, executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, said the changes will “allow a broader and more diverse array of people to make a career out of teaching.”

Commenters on the story are divided between those who think the state is compromising on teacher quality and those who claim they’d be excellent teachers if not for the tests, which they argue do not predict teaching ability.

The consensus is that CBEST is incredibly easy (most say it’s at the eighth-grade level), CSET is harder and RICA is the toughest to pass.

Of course, the talent pool from which teacher applicants are drawn is a shallow one:

In a New York Times column, Thomas Edsall cities studies on low-skilled college graduates.

“More than one in five adults with a bachelor’s degree have literacy skills below level 3 (basic) and one in three have low numeracy scores,” estimate researchers from Drexel University’s Center for Labor Markets and Policy.

Colleges and universities expanded enrollment and lowered requirements to meet demand, admitting poorly prepared students, they tell Edsall. Many quit. Others earned a degree without mastering college knowledge, skills and abilities.

As if to prove Edsall’s point, One EdSource commenter writes of her woes:

I have my BA in Psychology, Masters in History, Masters in English Literature, now I am working for my Masters in Sociology, and also, most of my credential classes from National Universty. Have tried 3 times to pass the CBEST and I cannot. My GPA in all Universities has been from 3.5 to 3.94.
My question where it leaves me to have my own classroom?

If your reading comprehension is a bit higher than hers, you’ll remember that the CBEST hurdle she can’t get over is “incredibly easy”, and set at “the eighth-grade level”. Three degrees, a fourth on the way, and this poor aspiring pedagogue’s skill set is still stuck in grammar school. She’ll be in your child’s classroom soon anyway, I predict, because wow, just look at her grades!

Another COVID fatality

After sheltering in place for months, woman finally goes for a stroll but, distracted by her face mask, walks behind reversing truck and dies.

It’s always something, in’t?

A sale above ask, but with a catch

36 Copper Beech Road was listed at $2.595 million and closed yesterday at $2.620. The “catch” is that the sellers paid $2.9 for it in 2004.

On the other hand, the house was put out for summer rental for many years, and has been under long-term lease for at least the past two years. Rentals tend to be ridden hard and put away wet, and that opening listing price probably reflected that.

(Link goes to RedFin, which I understand requires a one-time sign-in, and readers object to that, understandably. But Zillow has already pulled the listing photos — and while I don’t know how long they’ll stay up on RedFin, they’re there as I write, so I’ve gone with that.)

Liar, liar, facemask on fire

I call bullshit

“One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”

Young, unvaccinated patients are begging for the COVID-19 shot as they fight for their lives at an Alabama hospital.

But Dr. Brytney Cobia has to deliver a heartbreaking dose of reality, instead.

“One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late,” Cobia, who works at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday.

Cobia said she has been forced to turn down the desperate pleas from coronavirus patients about to be placed on ventilators.

“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” she wrote.

The doctor’s account has drawn scrutiny by skeptics, who have pointed out online that the number of deaths in the state is far below last spring. 

Author Jeffrey A. Tucker described Cobia’s post as “just too perfectly crafted in some way. It tells a story that fits a prevailing narrative in every respect, but leaves out any details about age and health of severe effects. And it ends predicting ‘impending doom’ for maskless kids in school.”

While Alabama has the lowest percentage of fully vaccinated people in the country – just 33.7 percent of the state’s population – the seven-day average of coronavirus deaths stood at eight as of Tuesday, far below the peak of 154 deaths that was reached in late January.

Putting people on ventilators is a desperate, last-gasp (so to speak) measure that has been found to cause far more harm than good in most cases; if a patient is well enough to speak to her at all, whether to discuss the weather, Meghan and Harry’s woes, ask for a bedpan, or a Trump shot, that patient is not a suitable candidate for a ventilator. Better Doctor Fish Tale try snake venom, or aspirin, or bleach.

Over at Twitchy, others are doubtful, too. One person asks if the patient was Jessie Smollett, which is a very good question. I particularly like these three:

(10:00) PSAKING BACK: Okay, I’m just a little disappointed with you readers here. This post on Dr. Cobia’s been up for 90 minutes now, so where are the puns? “Something’s fishy”, “On a scale of one to ten …”, and so on. I gave y’all a start with “fish tale”, but surely there’s more to be had, and I’m not going to let you off the hook. And yes, I’m trying to gillt you.

Did you sleep peacefully last night? Wake up with renewed optimism for our country? Here's 40 seconds of worry to cure that

Good morning, or I think it’s morning, or, oh, you know the thing

Crushing it pic.twitter.com/DI21CUSp7k

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 22, 2021

If for some reason you’re a glutton for punishment, here’s a minute-and-a-half of Biden demonstrating that he knows as much about economics as the shame of Boston University, Economics/Bar Tending major Kampallawlla Ding Dong

Biden, who is vowing to raise the corporate income tax rate, boasts that Delaware — where there is no corporate income tax for most businesses — has more registered corporations "than all the rest of America combined. Combined. Combined." pic.twitter.com/q31vzlsQsm

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 22, 2021