Quick Jots: December 2022

Kanye West, Milo, Fuentes sit down with Tim Pool
#freespeech
On an episode of Timcast, Kanye West rambles incoherently for a few minutes and says some weird positive things about Hitler. Like that he invented the microphone??? Then Tim Pool, who had shown utmost respect, asks one follow-up question and Ye bails on the conversation. This is why censorship and de-platforming are weak and counterproductive. You give people with dumb ideas a platform and show what a little bitch they are as they run away, pouting. The only bigger bitch move is by people who go for the de-platforming route because they can't even handle a conversation with people like this.

A few days later, Kanye went on Alex Jones's show and Alex Jones was the one after the show thinking the other was a kook. What a weird world we live in. We can't all be a gay fish and be married to a hobbit.

California State Capitol construction halted due to CEQA violations
#architecture #governmentabuse
California state politicians, seemingly tone deaf to the suffering residents of the state struggling with housing costs, decided to go ahead with plans to build a Taj Mahal for themselves, with a Capitol expansion costing $1.2 billion. The project would expand the existing annex's 325k square feet to 525k square feet, with no new employees needing the space. The average commercial construction cost is about $500 per square foot. With that consideration, the project should only cost $262.5 million. Since the politicians are using not their own money but taxpayer money, they appear to think that a price tag 4.5x higher than average is supposedly a good deal. 

Well, a court recently found the project in violation of CEQA, the law that has been weaponized to limit housing projects. Now, I don't even think CEQA should exist, but this just showcases the richness of California politicians. Regulations for thee, but not for me.

China loosens COVID restrictions!
#chiina #covid19
Holy hell, they did it! In what at first glance, seemingly appears to be the CCP caving in to protesters, COVID restrictions have been loosened. Soon afterward, COVID cases skyrocketed and this was widely reported. But we know that the numbers were manipulated before. Why would we expect these numbers are real? Did COVID cases go up? Maybe. Or maybe they're just not quite fudged as much. Maybe both. Many journalists had their heads up their asses about the numbers the whole way through, thinking Beijing would report accurate numbers. But it's interesting that some people who previously did not believe the numbers when they were suppressed, now believe the numbers when they went up. In reality, we have no idea what the numbers are at or trending. While it may be a conspiracy theory, I don't think this one is particularly tough to believe: the CCP is probably now more comfortable revising the numbers up because now they have the protesters as a scapegoat. The CCP can now point to the numbers and say that they were just protecting the people, and now that they gave the populace what they wanted, people are dying of COVID left and right. So maybe next time, you sit there, isolated in your own room or quarantine area, and take it.

I have no proof of this. I could be wrong. But it's a more probable explanation, given the CCP's past, than them just flat-out caving in and then accurately reporting COVID numbers. If for no other reason than, in order for them to show accurate trends, they would have to revise their previously reported numbers to more truthful numbers. And they will never do that.

Bernie Sanders caves in on resolution to abort the war in Yemen
#berniesanders #war
I hope the Bernie Bros get disappointed in Bernie over this. But I doubt it since many of them continued to line up to support him even after he endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016, one of the people that his supporters should despise the most, given his positions. Given his penchant to cave in to entrenched interests, it should be no surprise he caved in on this one. As always, the positions he is actually good on are the ones he is the most wish-washy on. His plan to force a vote to end the war in Yemen had the votes. His reasoning: "the Biden administration agreed to continue working with [his] office on ending the war in Yemen." Bull. Fucking. Shit. Biden was the Vice President when the US helped launch the war. He campaigned to end it and has had two years now to fulfill his promise. He hasn't lifted a damned finger and threatened to veto the resolution. So force him to veto it! Don't settle for politicians' promises. Go DO IT! Of course Biden pressured Sanders to pull the resolution because he doesn't want to veto it to put on record what a liar he was on this subject. What likely happened was that Sanders pulled some political cache to leverage the blood of Yemeni children to gain support for some of his horrible ideas, like higher education for the rich and middle class paid for by the poor. 

Jane Coaston leaves the Libertarian Party
#libertarians #libertarianparty
Jane Coaston, the host of the podcast The Argument with the New York Times, a libertarian, completed her final episode in December. Somewhat fitting of a podcast that markets itself as an exploration of differing ideas, the final episode was her announcing she changed her voting registration from Libertarian to non partisan, inviting Justin Amash on. As far as I know, Coaston was never a registered member of the Libertarian Party, just registered as such. Her beef with the party was primarily the Mises Caucus taking over the party over the summer and the edgelording posts on Twitter from select members. It was odd that she invited Justin Amash on. While Amash is great, if her complaint is with the Mises Caucus, calling them "the worst people in the history of time" when really, the vast majority of what she has a problem with comes from one Twitter account with the New Hampshire Libertarian Party run by Jeremy Kauffman, why didn't she invite someone involved with the Mises Caucus? She doesn't have to invite Kauffman. But why not Michael Heise or Angela McArdle, like Reason has done (edit: and with Heise in January)? Maybe Dave Smith is out of reach. Doesn't that seem like the most logical pick if she really wanted to get down to the core of it? I mean, keep Amash, fine, but add a Mises Caucus member since the topic will revolve around the Mises Caucus, so you can actually have an understanding from all positions. If it's actually a podcast to explore ideas, that would have been the only rational move for a guest list.

Even in her introduction, it was pretty clear she did not understand what the point of the Mises Caucus really was. She said that their goal is to "court people who were really attracted to Trump". No, generally, the people in the Mises Caucus hate Trump. Their primary motivation is to get the people who were involved and inspired by Ron Paul to be reinvigorated again. She later states that the Mises Caucus doesn't seem to be interested in doing anything than tweeting. On the contrary, the Mises Caucus so far seems to have done more than any time in the past that I've been involved, making a huge push for the 1-833-STOPWAR campaign to end the war in Yemen. The LP has never done anything really like this in its recent past that I can think of. There is also a specifically outlined plan to push for getting people elected at the local level, swaying elections to force Republicans and Democrats to be more libertarian at the national level, and introducing libertarian ideas at the Presidential level, which appears to me to be a very good approach. Another fallacy came in when talking about removing a post about the Defense of Marriage Act, which Coaston incorrectly construed as the Mises Caucus thinks her marriage should be invalid (she is gay), but rather, it had more to do with the Defense of Marriage Act being more of a virtue signal and a waste of time since gay marriage is already legal (for the record; I disagree with this; I think it's valid for it to be codified into law, though I would rather it state that the government may not have an opinion on marriage). Yeah, I don't like the edgelording either, but it doesn't mean that's all the Mises Caucus does or is even a big part of what they do.

Amash, to his credit, defended the Mises Caucus, saying those people tweeting are in the vast minority, though he thinks the strategy of tweeting extreme cultural issues is not a winning one. He says to let them give it a shot and see what the results are. Amash is generally correct in his assessments, though he was not able to articulate it nearly as well as an actual MC member would have been able to. Ultimately, Coaston remains an adherent to the libertarian philosophy, and asked what happened with the Mises Caucus takeover. Well, maybe she should have been an actual member of the party and gotten involved.