WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 2024
...if you read the New York Times: Kevin Drum is more sanguine about tomorrow's debate than we are.
(Important note to the New York Times. The debate is scheduled for tomorrow night. It won't take place "next week.")
Kevin has a prediction about tomorrow's event. At this site, we don't. We aren't saying that his prediction is wrong.
For the record, though, here it is:
My prediction for Thursday
Oh, you'd like a prediction about Thursday's debate? Happy to oblige. I predict that it will go normally. Trump will blather and lie while Biden will answer questions coherently with occasional enunciation problems. It will not swing voting intent by more than 1% or so.
Also, the moderators will ask at least one question about whatever the Supreme Court did that morning. I'm hoping it's about Chevron so we can find out if Trump has any idea what Chevron deference even is.
That prediction was posted on Monday. It could turn out to be right.
For ourselves, we're much less clear about what's going to happen. We do know this:
Neither one of these horrible candidates ought to be on that stage. Also, there will be nothing "normal" about a debate in which these are the two major candidates.
More on that ugly assessment tomorrow. For today, let's look at a news report in this morning's New York Times—a news report which mistakenly says that the event in question will take place "next week."
Can anyone here play this game? Last Friday, the report to which we refer appeared online at the Times. As of that time, tomorrow's debate was indeed slated for "next week."
This morning, the report has finally appeared in print editions, lacking an adjustment to that scheduling note. Everybody makes mistakes, but the New York Times has been making this type of mistake with some regularity of late.
According to the Times web site, the report appears in today's print editions, though only on page A14. In our general view, it concerns the major topic in play at tomorrow night's event.
We refer to endless, around-the-clock claims that President Biden is in the grip of "senility" or "dementia." As of this morning, the New York Times seems to be saying that such claims are false.
Headline included, the Times report starts as shown:
How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts
President Biden has many adversaries in this year’s election. There are his Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, and the independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And then there is the distorted, online version of himself, a product of often misleading videos that play into and reinforce voters’ longstanding concerns about his age and abilities.
In the last two weeks, conservative news outlets, the Republican National Committee and the Trump team have circulated videos of Mr. Biden that lacked important context and twisted mundane moments to paint him in an unflattering light.
The report then cites three video clips which do, in fact, seek to "paint [President Biden] in an unflattering light." According to the Times report, the videos are "misleading." They've created a "distorted" picture of the president.
Those assessments by the Times may be accurate. Meanwhile, sad:
According to the Times report, the videos have been circulated by "conservative news outlets, the Republican National Committee and the Trump team" itself. After describing the video clips, the Times offers this comical account of what is being claimed about President Biden:
A New York Times review of these videos found that some scenes were cut short and taken out of context, while other clips were cropped in a way that omitted crucial details when compared with additional footage.
Campaigns and political groups have long disseminated damaging videos of their opponents, sometimes misleadingly edited ones.
But the flurry of clips released this month is a fresh reminder of the steep, multifront and evolving challenge that Mr. Biden, 81, faces in convincing voters that he is spry enough to serve another term. As polls show a close race, many Americans harbor doubts about his fitness—and selectively sliced snippets from his routine public appearances are fueling those worries and sending conspiracy theories spiraling across social media.
According to the Times report, President Biden faces the challenge of convincing voters "that he is spry enough" to serve another term.
That's comical, but also sad. Citizens, can we talk?
The entities which are pushing those clips aren't claiming that President Biden isn't sufficiently "spry." But so it goes as Blue America's most famous upper-class newspaper tries to avoid the aggressive, around-the-clock challenge emerging from below.
According to the Times report, the videos have been circulated by "conservative news outlets, the Republican National Committee and the Trump team" itself.
Along the way in the Times report, the New York Post is cited by name, several times. Meanwhile, how strange:
No other "conservative news outlet" is cited by name at all.
No other "news outlet" is ever cited by name! That would include the Fox News Channel, which has been broadcasting aggressive attacks about the president's supposed senility and dementia through such gruesome broadcast vehicles as the primetime Gutfeld! program.
The channel has been pushing these claims day and night. But only the Post is named.
Long ago and not so far away, sacred Nietzsche described the so-called "slave revolt in morals." As a mere freshman in college, we were assigned to read the texts in question.
The leading authority on the gentleman describes this matter as shown:
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy...
Nietzsche's work spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favor of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master–slave morality.
[...]
Slave revolt in morals
In Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche's genealogical account of the development of modern moral systems occupies a central place. For Nietzsche, a fundamental shift took place during human history from thinking in terms of "good and bad" toward "good and evil."
The initial form of morality was set by a warrior aristocracy and other ruling castes of ancient civilizations. Aristocratic values of good and bad coincided with and reflected their relationship to lower castes such as slaves. Nietzsche presented this "master morality" as the original system of morality—perhaps best associated with Homeric Greece. To be "good" was to be happy and to have the things related to happiness: wealth, strength, health, power, etc. To be "bad" was to be like the slaves over whom the aristocracy ruled: poor, weak, sick, pathetic—objects of pity or disgust rather than hatred.
"Slave morality" developed as a reaction to master morality. ... [Nietzsche] associated slave morality with the Jewish and Christian traditions, as it is born out of the ressentiment of slaves.
Etcetera, and so forth and so on. As we said, we were assigned those difficult texts. We're fairly sure we read them, or at least that we tried.
You can't blame us for having perused those tests. You'll have to blame Stanley Cavell.
(For the record, we prefer the "slave morality"—until it spins out of control.)
At one point, we thought of the furious "slave revolt" as we watched Gutfeld! last night. It came to mind as the horrible Charly Arnolt spoke—but then too, there was comedian Rich Vos, a good guy who we knew a tiny tad at least three decades ago.
This afternoon, we'll show you what those warriors said on last night's Gutfeld! program. For now, we'll only say this:
True to the ways of the aristocratic class, the New York Times is refusing to report the fury of the assault on its sector—the fury of the assault from below on grotesque programs like Gutfeld!
The Times is willing to name the New York Post. It seems to believe it can run and hide from the Fox News Channel.
With respect to President Biden, we will tell you this:
We regard hm as a terrible candidate—as an insult to the tradition, such as it ever was. We regard the other candidate as apparently (severely) mentally ill—but that's a matter the New York Times and other such orgs have agreed we must never discuss.
The Times won't mention the one possibility. Today, it glosses the other.
Most strikingly, it refuses to name the Fox News Channel. This is the way aristocratic elites have tended to crash and burn.
Will President Biden "answer questions coherently" during tomorrow night's debate? We aren't entirely sure that he will. We can't predict that he won't.
For whatever it may be worth, we regard that as the primary question which will be answered tomorrow night. That said, we regard this debate as an abomination—as a rank imitation of life, not unlike the Gutfeld! program.
We'll offer more on that ugly viewpoint tomorrow. For now, we'll assure you of two key facts:
First, the imitation of life in question will not take place "next week."
Also this:
When the event in question takes place, a furious assault will ensue—a relentless assault from below.
This afternoon: Night after night after night
My NY Times ran two articles about Biden's age this morning. One compared him to Betty White and suggested he follow her advice on how to be an elderly celebrity. The other called Biden an Old-School politician in a New-School Era.
ReplyDeleteHow did Somerby miss these two articles and why is he not discussing the vendetta against Biden that the NY Times seems to have been pursuing?
There were no similar articles about Trump's age, despite the fact that Trump is only 3 years younger than Biden.
Somerby refers to the NY Times as: "Blue America's most famous upper-class newspaper." But the NY Times is clearly not owned or operated or even writing on behalf of so-called Blue America. When the NY Times can find nothing positive to say about the Democratic party's putative nominee, the incumbent president, it cannot be called an organ of Blue America at all.
The NY Times appears to be pursuing its own interests, whatever those might be. I doubt that it is pursuing American interests, because Biden has been doing well for the American people and does not deserve this age-obsessed focus designed to give Trump a political advantage. This is no different than when the NY Times was obsessed with Hillary's emails and her supposed crookedness, printing excerpts from right wing propaganda, such as Clinton Cash, and rushing to print with accusations from Wikileaks and the Trump campaign.
A newspaper that devotes so much time, effort and space to emphasizing Biden's age without mentioning Trump's age, cannot be considered a Blue newspaper, simply because it avoids conspiracy theories. It is still clearly working to elect Trump, and that is not only bias but not the kind of bias Somerby attributes to the paper. And that makes me wonder whether Somerby is actually paying much attention to the NY Times, so that he is just mistaken, or whether he is actively working to further a false image of the paper so that readers will think the nation's Blue American paper is against Biden due to his age. And if Democrats are not supporting Biden, then who is left?
It's a battle over what kind of articles will the NY Times publish, between articles criticizing Biden for his age vs. articles written about why people are concerned about Biden's age.
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The Times carrying the Fox agenda.
ReplyDeleteSomerby is carrying the Fox agenda too.
DeleteThose corporate taxes aren't going to cut themselves.
DeleteSomerby complains because the NY Times does not list ALL of the conservative sources who are spreading those edited videos. The NY Times appears to have tried to list the original source, the folks who created them or first published them. To list ALL of the conservatives who have spread such videos would take up too much room. It is sufficient to say that they are being widely distributed.
ReplyDeleteBut that wide distribution is true for everything the right says on any topic. The right, unlike the left, has a system for spreading memes and talking points and articles that does not exist on the left. Anything that appears anywhere on the right will quickly be picked up and appear everywhere. And Fox is not the only right wing source. There are hundreds of them, and when the word goes out, it goes out everywhere.
It is silly for Somerby to complain because the NY Times does not list everywhere on the right where memes are created, spread and discussed. That is not the NY Times failure -- it is Somerby's pretense that there is no such thing as a right wing noise machine whose job is to get that negative stuff out there, so that the MAGAs can feed on it. It is what they do about every message, not just these edited videos which are FAKE, not just deficient in context (or whatever lame phrase is used to minimize the deception involved). Every one of these videos is labeled to make it clear that Biden is senile and wandering or bumbling or pooping or trying to sit in an imaginary chair. It isn't as if readers are being left to decide for themselves what is being depicted. The video might be "misleading" but the intent of those circulating it is plain from the captions.
Last week Somerby uncritically posted a report about Biden "wandering off". When Somerby made his post, that "wandering off" had already been debunked - Biden walked over to talk to the paratroopers, yet Somerby went with the fake story.
DeleteSomerby is a right winger out to muddy the waters, to manufacture ignorance, and he will happily put his thumb on the scale towards his empty goal.
Bob hates himself because he's programmed by religion to hate himself, especially his own body. He then projects this onto the crazy people in power, that he hopes should also hate themselves. It's psychology, not politics.
Delete"With respect to President Biden, we will tell you this:
ReplyDeleteWe regard hm as a terrible candidate—as an insult to the tradition, such as it ever was. "
Somerby thought Hillary was a terrible candidate too. This is why I don't regard Somerby as any kind of liberal.
Biden is the Democratic candidate. There is not going to be a replacement for him. Democrats can get behind Biden and help secure four more years of competent government, or they can put Trump back into office. Those are the choices. In the face of that reality, Somerby has chosen to bash Biden today, in advance of tomorrow's debate. That is not what liberals do and it is not what Democrats do. It is what Republicans do.
Eric Hazan and Russell Morash have died.
ReplyDeleteSomerby makes a fuss over the NY Times saying the debate will be next week. That is like ragging on someone for a typo. The article was clearly written in advance and someone forgot to update it, after it was pushed to a later edition of the paper. Such things happen. They are clerical errors -- no one at the NY Times is actually confused about when the debate is happening, although some reader might be (due to the error).
ReplyDeleteIt is right to point out such an error, in passing, but to repeatedly mention it and pretend it means something important makes Somerby seem ridiculous. But that isn't hard to do these days. It just doesn't deserve as much attention as Somerby has given it, and it signifies nothing except that someone at the NY Times is human and made a trivial mistake.
Joe is spry.
ReplyDeleteTrump isn’t.
DeleteTrump is spry when he waves to no one, like he did again the other day getting off a plane, waving heroically while in reality there was no one there.
DeleteIt is a huge and ridiculous insult to Biden to characterize his presidency as an imitation of anything. Biden has solid accomplishments that deserve positive notice in this election race. The denigration of his work, because he is old, neglects the good he has done for the American people.
ReplyDeleteAt Daily Kos, there is a regular series highlighting Biden's accomplishments. Today's says:
"Biden-Harris Administration Proposes First-Ever National Standards to Combat PFAS in Drinking Water"
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/26/2208622/-Dark-Brandon-Is-Replacing-Dirty-Water-with-Clean-Water-Boosting-Biden-Day-122?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
This is #122 on an ongoing list of important things Biden has done during his current term. But there are the major things as well, including effectively responding to covid, keeping our economy on course, dealing with the border crisis, creating jobs, and dealing with two international wars (involving Gaza and Ukraine, not US troops).
Perhaps Somerby doesn't know about the positive achievements of Biden's administration, or perhaps he is so busy watching Fox News that he doesn't hear anything good about Biden. If so, that is on Somerby, for behaving like a MAGA and not paying attention to Biden's good work. It isn't as if no one is talking about it over here in the so-called blue media. A so-called liberal (as Somerby claims to be) would make a point of finding out about the strengths of our candidate for president. Somerby could have been using this blog to tell others about them too, instead of bleating about Troy and how they were such losers back in the day, and we are supposedly the Trojans (who decided that?).
Biden has earned a second term by doing an excellent job, beginning with defeating Trump in 2020. And Biden is demonstrably an effective campaigner, based on the 2020 results. Trump is weaker now than in 2020. Why should Biden not win again and what makes him all of a sudden no longer competent? Nothing. His State of the Union Address was inspiring, and his debate performance will be too. And Trump will be lucky if he is not defeated in a landslide in November, based on trends and past experience.
And Somerby has proven by today's claims about Biden's qualifications that he has no idea how to assess today's political scene and nothing to say to his readers any more. If anyone is too old, it is Somerby. But Somerby's problems are not shared by Biden, but by Trump, who is declining sufficiently that it would make sense to call for him to leave the campaign. Crickets from Somerby on that one.
"That said, we regard this debate as an abomination—as a rank imitation of life, not unlike the Gutfeld! program."
ReplyDeleteI regard this statement by Somerby as an attack on our traditions and institutions during the voting process, the means whereby we decide who will govern our country.
Trump is an abomination. Biden is not. Trump will pretend to debate while interrupting, ranting, clowning and lying. Biden will take the debate seriously and present his plans and ideas and accomplishments to the American people. Trump may not even show up. It is unclear whether Biden will be allowed to answered questions in that case, but he will be available to do it, if permitted. Trump will attack the moderators. Biden will conduct himself with dignity and respect for the process and the American people.
Debates are one way voters gain information about the candidates. A democracy relies on informed voters. It is wrong for Trump to make a debate into a circus, but it is more wrong for Somerby to claim that Biden is to blame for Trump's idiocies.
I am voting for Biden and do not need a debate to confirm my choice. There are undecided and Independent and Third Party and swing voters who may be helped by the contrast between Trump and Biden. That may be why Somerby is assisting the Republicans in invalidating the debate, making it appear to be rigged or inconsequential or unnecessary to our election. Whatever Somerby's reasons, the impact of this statement today is to assist the efforts of the right wing to spin Trump's inability to compete.
How can Somerby claim the debate will be an abomination without mentioning the name of the person who will make it farcical? That is Donald J. Trump, not Biden.
Meanwhile, today's essay here is an abomination.
Does anyone see Somerby ever forgiving Joe Biden for the lowest unemployment rate in over half a century?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"I predict that it will go normally. Trump will blather and lie while Biden will answer questions coherently with occasional enunciation problems."
Question: is Kevin Drum one of those who concoct these idiotic talking points, or is he one of those who receive idiotic talking points from the Democrat politburo, for further dissemination?
I suspect it's the latter. What do you think, Bob?
Bob reads replies to his post, but he doesn't think about them.
DeleteMAGA tears are kind of funny.
DeleteThere is no "Democrat politburo". That is one of those made up terms that the right wing invented to terrorize its own voters. It is a useful term, however, for recognizing right wing trolls, because no sane person not indoctrinated by Republican propaganda ever uses that phrase. This isn't Russia, yet.
DeleteI used to like Kevin drum because he provided a reasonable center-left perspective. But of late, he has become an unseemly apologist for the Biden regime. He is constantly producing pretty charts to claim everything is great. He keeps saying this economy is in the best shape in a while, but that’s not “my lived experience”, if I can appropriate some leftist language. GDP growth of 1.5% when the Federal deficit spending is more than 6% of GDP does not point to a healthy economy. Made up crime stats are not comforting if your fear is random attacks, like being pushed on to the subway tracks by a violent criminal wantonly let loose by thug prosecutors like Alvin Bragg.
ReplyDeleteStatistics are a way to generalize from many people's lived experiences to make an overall statement about what is happening in a given domain, whether the economy or educational performance or market trends. Statistics are useful because individual experiences may not be representative of any larger group.
DeleteIf you are really concerned about the deficit, do not vote for Trump, since his massive tax cut for the wealthy is what blew up the deficit to the numbers you decry. Local crime stats support the national claims, and do not support your belief that they are made up. If your fear is "random attacks," which do happen but are so infrequent and unlikely that you may as well worry about lightning strikes, then you should stay home and never expose yourself to the world at all. Even Republicans cannot guarantee safety under all circumstances. And yes, as you suspect, your greatest threat is not the people supposedly set loose by Bragg (following New York state law), but the one convicted by Bragg who is still unaccountably loose to terrorize our society with his threats of becoming a dictator and rounding up people and putting them in camps.
You are worrying about the wrong things.
"GDP growth of 1.5% when the Federal deficit spending is more than 6% of GDP does not point to a healthy economy."
DeleteWhat do you mean? These numbers are similar to Reagan's "Morning in America", which the media cheer-leaded.
Re: the deficit problem.
DeleteI'll pay you good money to anyone who can convince defense contractors the deficit is the reason the government won't be purchasing any of their products/ services for the foreseeable future.
1. Without the excessive deficit spending, the economy may be contracting now.
Delete2. Trump was terrible on deficits. But Biden and Dems are worse. They poured gasoline on an economy recovering hot after Covid and created the inflation monster. Very little of the new spending is for infrastructure and other things that benefit everyone. Most of it was unproductive and went to Democrat interest groups, grants to states so that they can pad public employee pensions, endless wars and loan forgiveness for students who got useless degrees in some variation of Marxist studies.
1:34, that's odd, I wonder why repubs who voted against the infrastructure bill keep showing up at the ground breaking ceremonies to take credit for it.
DeleteThe difference between the data and your perception is exactly the reason for Drum's "pretty charts." We're endlessly bombarded with anecdotal accounts of economic difficulty, crime, and government spending. Drum offers a more data-driven perspective.
DeleteAlso, the increase in GDP and the percentage of GDP represented by government spending don't actually have anything to do with each other. A comparison of those rates doesn't tell you much of anything about the health of the American economy.
Mary Todd Lincoln and Abe Lincoln have died.
ReplyDeleteThis is what Simon Rosenberg (admittedly an optimist) says about our current status and the upcoming election:
ReplyDelete"My bottom line take - we have a better candidate, better arguments and a far better political machine underneath us. Polling has improved for us in recent weeks, and we have momentum now. Polling in the Senate and House remains encouraging. We’ve had weeks of good news here in the US - inflation was zero last month, prices on many things are falling, the economy is booming, flows to the border and crime rates are way down. It all reminds us that Joe Biden is a good and successful President. In an Ohio special election for the US House last week, as we’ve done in elections all across the country since Dobbs, we dramatically overperformed expectations - our party is strong, fighting, determined, resolute. The President has stood up for our values and interests abroad with grace, dignity and power, and keeps fighting for us every day, with extraordinary vigor for a man of any age, here at home.
We’ve also had weeks of news reminding us that the other guy is ugliest political thing any of us has ever seen - a rapist, fraudster, traitor, felon - his dangerous plans will do even more harm to our country, and his party is far more a raging dumpster fire than a well oiled political machine. The far fight had a disappointing election in Europe, and MAGA continues to exhibit electoral weakness and struggle here in the US (Trump endorsed candidates had a bad night last night)."
Donald is dead.
ReplyDeleteSomerby talks about Nietzsche and his warrior morality versus a slave morality (later associated with Judaic and Christian morality). He says the warrior morality grew out of the Homeric traditions and the desire to avoid the weakness inherent in slavery. He also says that he himself prefers the slave morality of Christianity and Judaism, "for now" (whatever that means).
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, today's alt-right is as enamored of Nietzsche as the Nazis were under Hitler.
https://www.vox.com/2017/8/17/16140846/alt-right-nietzsche-richard-spencer-nazism
The source of many of Somerby's current preoccupations can be found in Nietzsche. It is a bit disappointing but also explains his recent dysfunction and why his fanboys flock to his defense.
The linked article calls Spencer someone who only reads the first chapter of the books he touts. I said that about Somerby myself, since he shares that propensity. The remaining question is whether Somerby has swallowed all of the white supremacy dogma along with the Homer-worship. I thought Somerby had gone Republican and MAGA, but I see from today's admissions that he has gone full alt-right and is saving up for his own tiki-torch. Too bad but not surprising.
So now Somerby is not just a racist, but a white supremicist to boot. And yet you keep coming back for more of his white supremicist screeds!
DeleteIt’s taken me awhile, but finally I get it. All you Somerby-haters are addicted. You crave your daily Two-Minute Somerby Hate, you just can’t let it go. You have my pity.
More 'a pox on both their houses' bullshit.
ReplyDeleteYep. All he has to say is both candidates are "horrible," as if there's any real comparison between the two . . . based on nothing more than the fact that Biden is old and garbles his words sometimes. As if that makes him as bad as Trump. Biden will likely go down as one of our greatest presidents -- he saved the country from another Trump term, threw America's considerable support behind western free society's fight against tyranny, upheld the rule of law, restored normalcy to the presidency, and has a solid domestic policy record. Trump on the other hand will undoubtedly go down as one of our worst presidents, if not the worst. I think Somerby is suffering from some kind of mental health issue due to age, isolation, and his decades-long mission of fault-finding and nit picking.
DeleteTwo staunchly conservative Republicans do a better job than Somerby of meeting the historical moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGa0n9nS67k
DeleteHere's a discussion of Clarence Thomas's jurisprudence:
ReplyDeletehttps://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/06/supreme-court-opinions-clarence-thomas-dissent-tax-mayhem.html
Thanks for the link, @1:15. I don't have time to fully understand right now. It's worth thinking about and reading in conjunction with Thomas's opinion.
DeleteIt does point out that Thomas thinks for himself and argues his POV effectively. That's praise, even if the discussant disagrees with Thomas.
My impression is that it revolves around the definition of "income". I can appreciate that people might define the term more or less strictly.
When I was young, the NYTimes was virtually error-free. A mistake like getting the wrong week for something would never occur.
ReplyDeleteAbout 30 or so years ago, there was a book pointing out that the quality of the Times had dropped and blaming affirmative action. I suspect that this book was right, and that the situation has only gotten worse.
go fuck yourself, you racist bastard. you get 2 or 3 things catastrophically wrong just writing in this blog every day.
DeleteDavid, a book every thirty years is a good start. Keep it up!
Delete"About 30 or so years ago, there was a book pointing out that the quality of the Times had dropped and blaming affirmative action. I suspect that this book was right,"
DeleteReally, David? "The blacks" are to blame?
QiB and @3:01 -- There are only so many qualified black Americans. Fewer than, say, qualified Asians, because blacks lag Asians by 4 or more years in school. If organizations hired only qualified blacks, there would be no drop in standards. But organizations are choosing or are forced to hire equal percentages of blacks. That means some blacks will be hired who don't meet the usual standards.
DeleteYou both know this. I can recall when liberals insulted Clarence Thomas by calling him an "affirmative action" hire. Surely you're aware that lower percentages of black college students are majoring in STEM fields, because many of them don't have the same qualifications as their classmates.
So, why do you assert that I said something racist by mentioning something so long known and understood? Are you just looking for a way to insult me? Are you unwilling to think anything that might be regarded as criticizing blacks?
Chances are pretty good that it was one of Thomas Sowell's 50 or so books.
DeleteSources cited: David's crack pipe
DeleteYeah, that's the ticket, 30 years ago I read a passage in a book that was overtly racist, and without a shred of data to support its legitimacy, I feel quite comfortable agreeing with it in this comment section.
DeleteThe book was
DeleteWilliam Mcgowan
Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America
So how many editorial positions at the Times do you believe are filled by "affirmative action" hires, David? Based on what evidence?
DeleteAnd how do you measure the supposed decline in editorial quality at the Times? Finally, how do you make the connection between hiring policy and the change in quality?
If you suppose a decline in quality and attribute it to the presence of "unqualified" black employees without evidence, how is that not racist?
Let's have some data supporting the assertion that organizations are choosing or forced to hire "equal numbers of blacks". Blacks are roughly 15% of the US population. Roughly one in seven. So DIC is saying here that organizations have a seven to one fold bias towards hiring blacks over others. And unqualified to boot, resulting in NYT errors that absolutely never happened back in the day; the editors of the NYT never had to publish corrections to their reporting thirty years ago, says DIC. "Virtually error-free" is the quote.
DeleteI yearn for bygone days, when organizations like the NYT were virtually error free since they weren't forced to hire the blacks. Somebody needs to inform the NFL owners about this. Maybe there are too many black head coaches.
Reasoning from test means to individuals in inappropriate when selecting people for jobs. David knows this but he continues to pretend that if the black average score is 4 years behind the Asian average score, it means there are no blacks with scores much higher than any Asian person.
DeleteDavid says he was an actuary, which means he should understand statistics, but the mean does not characterize any single individual in a sample. It is a measure of central tendency for a group of scores and it describes the group (the data set), not any of the people who were measured. This is a beginner mistake, so I assume David has made it because (1) his racism causes him to make weird arguments, or (2) he is not really an actuary with statistical training, (3) he thinks he can convince other ignorant readers that he is right and all black people are incapable of holding high level jobs.
Please be nice to David. This is the one place nobody tells him he's going to be deported for killing the Savior of Mankind. This is his safe place
DeleteA quick search on Amazon tells me that this book was published in November, 2010. So, not quite 30 years ago, eh?
DeleteReading a bunch of reviews of this book, it turns out the book is a screed whining about the liberal bias of the NY Times, something I have been hearing conservatives cry about since the '60s.
Combining original reporting, critical assessment and analysis, McGowan exposes the Times’ obsessions with diversity, “soft” pop cultural news, and countercultural Vietnam-era attitudinizing, and reveals how these trends have set America’s most important news icon at odds with its journalistic mission and with the values and perspectives of much of mainstream America.
I haven't read one review or summary even mentioning affirmative action hiring by the NY Times.
Mind you, this screed that DiC loves, was published 10 years after the NY Times ended their war against President Bill Clinton and their embarrassing continual Whitewater bullshit reporting. Liberal bias my ass.
Delete"I haven't read one review or summary even mentioning affirmative action hiring by the NY Times."
DeleteIn practice, "diversity" tends to mean that affirmative action was used.
There is a general principle that when factors other than merit are used, then merit goes down. Suppose you're selecting the Olympic miler team. The obvious method is to choose the fastest milers. But, suppose your criteria are partially speed and partially some other factors. Clearly, the second method will result in a team that's not as fast.
Delete@8:52's thoughtful comment would be applicable if blacks were hired based on the same merit standards as everyone else. Then, the blacks chosen would be equally able.
The problem is that there aren't enough blacks of equal merit to fill the need. All the employers are striving to hire well-qualified blacks. So, some employers wind up hiring less-qualified blacks.
You would have the same problem is basketball if teams were required to hire 50% whites. Without such a requirement, teams hire white players who are just as good as others. But, if teams were required to hire more white players than the number who meet the standard, then standards would go down.
You want a merit-based society, David?
DeleteGreat. Bring on the 100% Estate Tax rate.
Let your lazy, good-for-nothing, free-loading kids get a job, like I did.
If you assume, a priori, that blacks cannot be equal to white workers, there is no way to prove otherwise. I personally assume that any white worker is less competent than a black one, because any black person must be 5 times more qualified just to get hired in the same job, and that is the guy I want working on my stuff.
DeleteDavid, the people who write for newspapers don't do it to tell you the truth. They do it because they get to meet famous people and feel important and sell ads to rich yuppies.
DeleteThis imaginary would of perfection in journalism doesn't exist and never has.
The so called bad writers at the new York times are actually incredibly skilled at playing the same culture war you do.
DeleteThere is no use reminding the people they're being robbed so they argue about civil rights only.
The game is to never say capitalism is bad. Everyone who wanted to say that was shot in the 60s/70s.
Anon @11:18 - what you wrote was true 50 or 60 years ago. Today, the reverse is true. The less-qualified black person is generally preferred over the more qualified white person. One could easily provide many examples.
DeleteWithin my own career, I was ordered to hire a black assistant actuary. There were no such applicants. I was chewed out when I hired a very capable Chinese-American woman.
Next time y'all hear people crying about black racism just remember how bad the older Jews still want to say the word that rhymes with bigger.
Delete"We find evidence of lower educational qualifications among women and minorities hired under Affirmative Action. However, we do not find evidence of weaker job performance among most groups of minority and female Affirmative Action hires."
Deletehttps://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/209930
Damn looks like David didn't do any research past "affirmative action exists"
DeleteWhen even the most capitalist university in the country doesn't agree with your anti woke take. Maybe time to question your dogma, David.
Delete"Now, my school had non-Jews. Not as in high school. You’d never know it because it was so internally segregated. It was all the honor or what were called, back then, honor and honor bright classes were all Jewish without exception. All right. There were two exceptions. In any event, getting back to the point, the Jewish community was so racist. Now, in retrospect, it’s mind bugling but nobody ever accepted my family, nobody ever referred to black people as N*gros, which was the proper term back then. It was always ***rs, c***s, and Schwarzes. That was the Jewish community. Now, it’s all been forgotten. They talked about in Ocean Hill-Brownsville the black anti-Semitism, but what’s completely left out was the Jewish racism, which was so thick in the Jewish community. That was my neighborhood. That’s what it was like. All of the hatred loathing animist towards African-Americans was now after ’67 displaced on Arabs. "
Deletehttps://therealnews.com/nfinklestein0601part2
Gota admire David in Cal not a racist who has repeatedly stated that out of tens of millions of African Americans in this country, only self hating Thomas Sowell and comically corrupt and self hating Clarence Thomas meet his definition of intellectual black men. (No black women are intellectual dontcha know.) His admiration of these two intellectual creeps proves he is obviously not a racist.
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Pretty sure you can thank the German settlers of America for everyone who thinks we'll just invent a device that fixes pollution.
ReplyDeleteHans Smith from NASA will save us by inventing a rocket that sends pollution to the moon
Delete"No water in your faucets. You ever try buying a new home and you turn on. You want to wash your hair or you wanna wash your hands. You turn on the water and it goes drip, drip the soap. You can't get it off your hand. So you keep it running for about 10 times longer. You trying, the worst is your hair. I have this beautiful luxuriant hair and I put stuff on. I put it in lather. I like lots of lather because I like it to come out extremely dry because it seems to be slightly thicker that way. And I lather up and then you turn on this crazy shower and the thing drip, drip and you say I'm gonna be here for 45 minutes. What? There's so much water. You don't know what to do with it. You know, it's called rain. It rains a lot in certain places. But, now their idea, you know, did you see the other day? They just, I opened it up and they closed it again. I opened it, they close it, washing machines to wash your dishes. There is a problem. They don't want you to have any water."
ReplyDeleteThat’s right Quaker. Now post the Biden quote that proves Biden is the equal of Trump, that shows he to has NO BUSINESS being on that stage. Since Bob now has unequivocally taken the view that they are equal.
DeleteToday Bob tells us that Biden is a terrible candidate who should not even be on that stage. The comment section is certainly taking that in stride. Which leaves me scratching my head.
ReplyDeleteTo me it sounds like Bob finally had that extra rum and coke with his fruit loops and told us what he really thinks.
So Pied, can Bob really still claim that he
is with “us in the blue tribe?”
Is that still credible when he has unequivocally
equated Biden and Trump?
Can we now look away from the way Bob had bought into and tried to build up every Republican talking point, from Hunter to immigration?
After this startling admission, Bob flounders around with the usual babble. But he has told us all we really ever needed to know, or rather, he has finally admitted it.
Somerby blew his cover and the fanboys don't know how to defend against that, so they are absent. Just lonely David carrying the torch.
ReplyDeleteI miss Cecelia.
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