Is this the Democrats’ next move in their pro-transgender, anti-parent crusade?

The New Neo Posted on by

So reasonable:

A Virginia Democrat lawmaker says she will introduce legislation to have parents criminally prosecuted if they do not “affirm” their child as transgender. Teachers and social workers would report parents to Child Protective Services under the bill envisioned by state Delegate Elizabeth Guzman (D-Fauquier).

Guzman told WJLA that “It could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor, but we know that CPS charge could harm your employment, could harm their education, because nowadays many people do a CPS database search before offering employment.”

Guzman, a social worker, went public with her plans to introduce the bill a week after The Daily Wire reported that a National Association Of School Psychologists official named Amy Cannava boasted that she was working with an unnamed state delegate matching Guzman’s description to craft such legislation. “I want to see a kid in a home with food and shelter and insurance and support, but I also don’t want to lose kids to death,” Cannava said, adding that “I will not deny the fact that I have put parents in their place in my office or at school.”

The talk of losing kids to “death” is a reference to the idea that untreated trans kids will be committing suicide in significant numbers, and that treating them medically by transitioning them will stop this from occurring. This is a very common argument of pro-child transition advocates (and in fact, online pro-trans groups often counsel minors to say they are suicidal even when they’re not, because then transition will happen), although it’s based on faulty data (see this as well as this).

The Virginia bill won’t be passed. But that’s because the House of Delegates in Virginia is presently controlled by Republicans. I can well imagine that in a blue state, such a bill might succeed in the future. And most social workers – who are largely on the left – would probably have no objection to carrying it out.

Money magazine has an interesting way to rate the best places in the US to live

The New Neo Posted on by

Apparently, “diversity” ranks high, which makes Atlanta the best place to live in the US:

Money Magazine recently released its list of the best places to live in the U.S. It is riddled with pompous virtue-signaling and plagued by diversity-induced myopia that skews rankings to fit a progressive, multicultural agenda. Indeed, the magazine admits that it “gave preference toward places with populations that were less than 80% white.” Many places probably are, but why propagate such bias instead of applying the criteria (education, jobs, housing, quality of life, etc.) objectively?

Because we all know that way too many white people make a place less desirable live in.

More:

Constrained by its contrived diversity data, Money Magazine proclaims crime-infested Atlanta, Georgia as the best place to live in the U.S. in 2022. The reason: its booming jobs market and “eye on equality.” Unfortunately, the politicians in Atlanta, and other liberal enclaves, often conflate equality with equity, going beyond equal opportunity to ensure equal outcomes.

Pollsters may include crime and safety as one metric to measure voter concerns, but the perverted ranking methods used by Money Magazine use “health and safety” as a criterion, perhaps in an effort to dilute the weighting of crime. And yet, the magazine speciously claims that “we look at the things that matter most to people.”

It makes more sense that health — including access to clinics and hospitals — be considered separately from safety, which is more related to crime stats. And according to those numbers, Atlanta is a very unsafe place. “With a crime rate of 45 per one thousand residents, Atlanta has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes.”

And remember, this is in Money magazine, not the Social Justice Warror Weekly (yes, I made that second periodical up, but I think it has a certain euphonious ring). It’s also an interesting example of how “diversity” has been elevated as a transcendent good in and of itself, and how the word is now defined almost solely as being racial. Not even ethnic diversity matters – for example, if a city was over 80% white but those white groups were very ethnically diverse, that wouldn’t qualify for the label. And diversity of thought, as in political thought? Not desirable or perhaps even undesirable, I guess.

NOTE: Here’s a link to the Money article.

Roundup!

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Seven times supposed “disinformation” was the truth.

(2) The Saudis say that Biden tried to pressure them to delay cutting oil production for a month, till after the midterms.

The statement comes a day after Biden threatened Saudi Arabia on CNN, telling anchor Jake Tapper that the Kingdom will face “consequences” if it moves to cut oil production…

The bad blood between Biden and the kingdom go back to the 2020 presidential election, when the then-Democrat candidate vowed to treat the kingdom as a “pariah” state because of its alleged involvement in Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018.

It worked against Corn Pop, didn’t it?

(3) It should come as no surprise that Mayorkas was knowingly misleading about the “whipping” by the border agents:

The media screamed that the men on horseback were “whipping” the poor defenseless undocumented future welfare recipients. ..Mayorkas repeated after Jen Psaki (remember her?) and said he found the pictures “horrifying.”

“Horrifying!”

The trouble was, however, there were no whips. What might have looked like whips to people innocent of the art of horseback riding were actually reins, items to control horses, not wayward aliens attempting to cross our southern border illegally…

And here’s the cherry on top: Mayorkas knew that the media narrative was, if I may so put it, horseshit. This just out from Fox News’s Bill Melugin: “Mayorkas was alerted by DHS’s top public affairs official that the ‘whipping’ narrative behind horseback BP photos wasn’t true, but at a WH press conference 2.5 hours later, he didn’t refute that narrative, instead calling the images ‘horrifying.’”

Notice that I didn’t write that Mayorkas lied. That’s because, as with so many creative liars, he didn’t exactly lie but said something that was designed to lead the listener to an incorrect conclusion. Apparently, many ignorant people had found the photos “horrifying” because they had no idea what was being pictured, and the Democrats and the MSM were leading them by the use of propaganda to incorrect conclusions. Mayorkas was doing his bit to do the same.

(4) Nury Martinez’s exit from the LA City Council doesn’t contain much of an apology.

Martinez bad-mouthed so many groups in her secretly-recorded remarks that one thing you can say for her is that she’s an equal-opportunity bigot.

(5) On the recent Ken Burns documentary about America and the Holocaust:

Jewish parents should be aware, for example, that those are not proto-Nazis making college life hell for their children from Berkeley to NYU. In the U.S. Congress, those are not proto-Nazis fomenting hatred of Israel. In the State Department, it is not neo-Nazis who are urging treaties and amity with an Iranian regime that has vowed to exterminate the Jewish state and its people. Nor is it neo-Nazis assaulting Jews in Brooklyn, or neo-Nazis at the New York Times maligning the Jews and their homeland. Yet sadly among those last-mentioned maligners are, to repeat, American Jews and even some who pride themselves on repairing the world.

All of this is known to the filmmakers to PBS, which is why they and others have taken such care to redirect any potential anxiety about the precipitous rise in anti-Jewish politics away from such threats toward the more convenient and already disparaged far-right.

Russia the humiliated

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Bauxite” has some interesting things to say:

Russia is what it is. It’s a big mess, and it has been a big mess more often than not for most of its history.

I have no argument with that.

Next:

But, at least because of its natural resources and its nuclear arsenal, Russia is still a major power.

I agree as well. However, the Ukraine war has so far given evidence that Russia’s conventional military forces are not as good as originally thought, although its nuclear arsenal still gives it enormous power to threaten.

More:

Russia also found itself in a situation after the Cold War where many long-time regions of the Russian empire became independent neighbor states. This includes Georgia and especially the Ukraine.

“Found itself”? I don’t think that phrasing quite covers the fact that the USSR collapsed internally after many years of corruption, tyranny, and aggression, and lost some of its empire, as has happened from time immemorial to once-powerful nations.

By the way, Crimea was only annexed in 1783 into the Russian Empire, when the Ottoman Empire of which Crimea had been a part since the mid-1400s was defeated. As far as Ukraine goes, I wrote about its history in this post as well as this.

Bauxite goes on to add:

You can talk about NATO or the EU, but the bottom line is that western policy over the last 20+ years has been to pull former long-time pieces of greater Russia out of the Russian orbit and into the western orbit.

I would amend that this way: “…the bottom line is that Russian policy over the last 100 or so years has been to push former long-time pieces of greater Russia out of the Russian orbit, and later they leapt at the chance to voluntarily become part of the far more attractive the western orbit.”

More:

It is virtually impossible to do that without humiliating Russia.

Russia has humiliated itself. And it goes on doing so.

Furthermore:

That’s not to say that the Ukrainians wouldn’t be better off in a western oriented country. I have no doubt that they would. That’s not to defend Russian action in any way at any point in history. There are myriad reasons to criticize Russian policy going all the way back to the Czars.

Agreed.

And then:

What I’m saying is this – Humiliating a major power is very risky. If one decides to pursue a policy that involves humiliating a major power, one had better have a very good plan. A humiliated major power is an immensely dangerous thing.

Indeed, a humiliated major power is an immensely dangerous thing. But there are really only two choices in dealing with an aggressive and tyrannical power – appeasement or opposition. Russia’s own internal horrors as the USSR helped lead to its defeat and dissolution, and its external aggression and tyranny helped lead many of its former possessions to not want to be part of it.

Russia actually was welcomed into the economic sphere as a friend when western Europe became dependent on it for fuel. But Russia – led by Putin – has responded by reverting to aggression and tyranny towards its now-sovereign neighbors. The west’s helping Ukraine to oppose that successfully might indeed result in more “humiliation” for Russia, but the alternative to that is to allow Russia to swallow up other sovereign nations in Europe. That is also immensely dangerous, as appeasement usually is – and as a failure to stand up to nuclear blackmail also is.

The situation is intrinsically dangerous.

RIP Angela Lansbury

The New Neo Posted on by

Angela Lansbury has died just a few days shy of her 97th birthday. The linked article goes into a long list of her many accomplishments and roles, but it leaves out my personal favorite, in one of my favorite movies. In case you haven’t seen “The Court Jester,” here Danny Kaye is under a hypnotic spell that transforms him from meek into bold, and the trigger for the changeover is snapped fingers. Lansbury plays his royal love interest, when he’s in the bold state:

Women in academia and their effect on the university

The New Neo Posted on by

This is a fascinating article that discusses the effect of high numbers of women in academia. It’s something I’ve thought about quite a bit, and I had already come to some reluctant conclusions that are in line with the conclusions of the authors.

It’s not that only women exhibit the described tendencies, but they are setting the tone and driving the woke revolution. I first noticed it myself when I was in graduate school in the 1990s, and it got more noticeable when Larry Summers was forced to leave Harvard (I wrote about that in many posts, for example this ancient one). It’s only gotten more extreme since.

Some excerpts from the Quillette article:

Today, an institution once led and populated almost entirely by men, is increasingly led and populated by women. Because men and women (on average) have different traits, tendencies, and priorities, this change in sex ratios has changed and will continue to change the nature of the modern university…

…It is increasingly evident that men and women view the purpose of higher education and science differently, and that many emerging trends in academia can be attributed, at least in part, to the feminization of academic priorities…

A 2017 YouGov survey of 2,300 US adults on issues related to free speech and tolerance on college campuses (weighted to be nationally representative) found that:

56 percent of men said that colleges should not protect students from offensive ideas; 64 percent of women said that they should.
When presented with a variety of controversial claims made by speakers (e.g., men are better at math, all white people are racist, police are justified at stopping African Americans at higher rates), a majority of men supported nine of the 11 speakers’ right to speak on campus, and a majority of women opposed all 11 speakers’ right to do so.
51 percent of men said colleges should not disinvite speakers if students threaten violent protest; 67 percent of women said they should.
58 percent of men opposed a confidential reporting system at colleges which students could use to report offensive comments; 54 percent of women supported it…

A 2021 survey of 3,772 academics and PhD students at universities in the United States, Britain, and Canada conducted by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology found that:

66–76 percent of men support intellectually foundational texts above diversity quotas on reading lists; 44–66 percent of women support diversity quotas above foundational texts.
Female academics report a greater willingness than their male counterparts to support dismissal campaigns against a colleague who has conducted research that reached a controversial conclusion.

The article goes on to cite similar research and many similar findings, and summarizes them this way:

The overall theme of these differences is that men are more committed than women to the pursuit of truth as the raison d’être of science, while women are more committed to various moral goals, such as equity, inclusion, and the protection of vulnerable groups. Consequently, men are more tolerant of controversial and potentially offensive scientific findings being pursued, disseminated, and discussed, and women are more willing to obstruct or suppress science perceived to be potentially harmful or offensive. Put more simply, men are relatively more interested in advancing what is empirically correct, and women are relatively more interested in advancing what is morally desirable.

That’s being kind. Actually, the function of a university is not to proselytize or to make people feel good, or to suppress the truth, it is to seek the truth. The idea is that this is a good in and of itself, a sort of secular “the truth shall make you free” philosophy. Other institutions – the church, the family, the therapy profession – are the ones to deal with the rest. But apparently more women than men wish to remake the university in order to have it take on those tasks, and for the most part it’s already happened.

I am a woman, but I certainly do not agree. And if you look at the figures, it’s hardly a straight man/woman split. But it is just as obvious that the tendency to want such a transformation is more pronounced in women, or certainly in women who pursue careers in universities.

More from the article:

Women evolved, as Anne Campbell memorably put it, to survive so they could nurture their vulnerable offspring. Thus, women are more likely to experience self-protective emotions such as anxiety and fear, to be more harm- and risk-averse, and to have more empathy and desire to protect the vulnerable. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to take risks and to endorse hierarchy and support for conflict.

Yes, but. I’m a fairly risk-averse and pretty consistent worrier myself, but I’ve never made the error of thinking a university should either share or support those qualities. How hard is it to separate one’s own emotions from the agenda you think an institution ought to have? I don’t think it should be hard at all – but apparently it is, for many people. And the more people (women or men) who have decided these are perfectly valid functions for universities, the more people they will hire who feel the same way, and the more they will teach their students that this is the way it should be. Therefore the phenomenon will grow and grow, until perhaps some backlash causes it to reverse itself.

NOTE: Of course, leftism and post-modernism enter into this a great deal, in particular the idea that there is no objective truth. Once a person believes that, then of course it would follow that there’s no point in seeking it.

About testing vaccines to see whether they stop transmission of the disease – and about COVID propaganda

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a big brouhaha about the admission by Pfizer executive Janine Small that the vaccine was not initially tested to see whether it prevented the transmission of the virus to others.

I have to say that the admission doesn’t bother or surprise me. I’ll explain why in a moment. But first I’ll explain what does bother me, which is that the vaccines were propagandized about in a mendacious way and used in order to control and subdue people and persecute the unvaccinated, and the effects of that were pernicious and continue to be pernicious. It was partly the health authorities that did this, partly the central and state government officials, and partly the media (including social media).

From the first, I was aghast at the lies told and the poor coverage, as well as the nefarious uses made of the pandemic itself to control people. I’m also angry that the vaccines were never explained properly, because they are not traditional vaccines but more like preventative treatments – although that fact only emerged over time.

But I’m not aghast at Small’s admission, and this is why. It is my understanding that vaccines ordinarily are developed to prevent contracting a disease, or to reduce symptoms markedly if it is contracted. It is also assumed that if a disease is not contracted by a person, then it is also not transmitted by that person. But that’s an inference. Initial testing ordinarily has to do with contracting the disease or reducing the symptoms of the disease. In the case of the COVID shots, it was made clear that they were not a complete preventative even to catching the disease, with figures of effectiveness that ranged from (I’m doing this from memory) something like 60% to 85% effectiveness. So the assumption was that it would reduce the spread but certainly not eliminate it, and it was an assumption only (as with most vaccines).

I’m not even sure how transmission would have been tested initially with COVID vaccines, prior to them being given to huge numbers of people, except through testing the viral load in vaccinated people who did contract the disease or who ended up testing positive for it. That’s not directly testing transmission, however; it’s just an inference about transmission based on viral load, which may or may not be correct.

If you want to see how vaccines are usually tested, see this. I skimmed it and it doesn’t mention testing for transmission. If there’s someone reading this who’s on expert on vaccine development and knows differently, please describe.

However – and I think this is the far more valid reason for anger – that was not explained properly to the public, probably because the government wanted people to be vaccinated and feared that if vaccines were sold merely as preventing illness or reducing the severity of illness for the individual and perhaps reducing transmission, vaccination rates would be lower. But the governments seemed to emphasize the reduction in transmission instead, the better to control people and in particular to persecute those who would not obey and get vaccinated.

NOTE: Here’s an article from January of 2022 that sheds some light on the fact that transmission rates were unknown when the vaccine was developed:

In April 2021, Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla said early trial data showed its vaccine “was 100 per cent effective against severe Covid-19”.

“Did you expect the vaccines to be better at preventing transmission than they were?” host Freddie Sayers asked Prof Cohen.

“Yes … especially based on what we had seen in March, in April,” he replied.

“The feeling we had in Israel last Spring, we were after a deadly month of January with more than 4000 people that died, we were after our third lockdown, and suddenly we were opening and opening and opening, and cases were going down, hospitals were getting empty. I’m not joking, my colleagues, doctors were dancing in the corridors out of joy (thinking) it’s over.”

Prof Cohen said he and his colleagues “did believe at that time that vaccines can prevent transmission”.

“What we believed is that vaccines can prevent transmission perhaps shortly after (being administered) but not over a long period of time, and therefore yes, we were surprised to discover at the end of the day that no, the vaccines are not protecting us, they are not causing what we call sterilising immunity,” he said.

Health officials in countries including Australia now say that although the vaccines to not prevent the spread of Covid-19, they reduce the severity of the disease and so ease the strain on hospitals.

In particular, once variants came into play, the reduction of transmission that was initially observed pretty much ended.

In Newsom’s California, Big Brother is getting into the act between doctors and patients on conversations about COVID

The New Neo Posted on by

Very Soviet of Newsom, and of the California legislature that passed this bill:

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed California Assembly Bill 2098, making it the first state to attempt to censor what physicians can say about COVID-19 to their patients. This is a dangerous, and likely unconstitutional, effort that other states must resist…

The statute instructs that “It shall constitute unprofessional conduct for a physician and surgeon to disseminate misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.”

California law requires the Medical Board of California to take action — up to and including license revocation — against any licensed physician charged with unprofessional conduct. But under the First Amendment, content-based speech regulation by government entities is presumptively unconstitutional and may be justified only if the government proves that it is narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.

A 2018 Supreme Court case, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, held that professional speech — speech by licensed practitioners based on their expert knowledge and judgment — is protected by the First Amendment.

The court, though, did suggest that regulations of professional conduct that incidentally burden speech might be allowed. Speech that is part of the practice of medicine has historically been subject to reasonable licensing and regulation by states.

There is nothing reasonable about this law, and that includes the fact that it is solely about COVID, a disease that is now no more a problem than others such as pneumonia (which also can kill the vulnerable), and about which the science is hardly “settled.”

The Medical Board of California should protest, but my prediction is that, like the good apparatchiks they probably are, there won’t be any objection to this pernicious law.

…[T]he statute clearly has constitutional problems in defining COVID “misinformation.”

The law’s definition is “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.” This is ridiculously and likely unconstitutionally vague.

As the Supreme Court noted, “Professionals might have a host of good-faith disagreements, both with each other and with the government, on many topics in their respective fields.”

But in California they are not allowed to have a disagreement about COVID – at least, not a disagreement with the state authorities.

When I called this a Soviet type of bill, I was referring not just to the attempt to control people’s communications, but also to the idea that the state can establish a politics-based scientific truth that denies and negates the disagreement that is part of the quest for scientific truth. The Soviets actively squelched science that contradicted certain political messages they wished to get across.

Here’s an overview of that history. Science in the US is rapidly going in that direction.