Recently in Politics Category
The Sociopaths Among Us--And How to Avoid Them - The Atlantic
Arthur Brooks writes: "You may be allowed a measure of schadenfreude--without being accused of sadism--to learn that Dark Triads are usually not particularly successful in life. They are not, in general, capable leaders; they don't have close friends; they report lower-than-average life satisfaction. If you are worrying about whether you qualify, then, for your own happiness's sake, seek help. Well-designed Dark Triad tests can guide that decision.
"More useful for the other 93 percent of us is advice on how to identify and avoid Dark Triads. The traits to look for are self-importance, a sense of entitlement, vanity, a victim mentality, a tendency to bend the truth or even openly lie, manipulativeness, grandiosity, a lack of remorse, and an absence of empathy. Probe for these characteristics particularly when on first dates and in job interviews. You might even want to take that test imaginatively on behalf of someone you suspect may have Triad traits and see what result you get."
MORE: Jordan Peterson interview with Del Paulhus about the Dark Tetrad (the Triad of narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy, plus sadism).
Professional Wrestling For Reactionaries | AntiDem
A humorous glossary of professional wrestling jargon, with application to politics.
The Most Dangerous Bill of Our Time: The So-Called "Equality Act" -- Robert A. J. Gagnon
Gagnon, a professor of New Testament at Houston Baptist University, explained in 2019 how the Democrats' proposed Equality Act endangers religious liberty, opens the door for excluding Christians from the professions, and eliminates any protection for women's private spaces against men who claim to be women. This same bill was blocked by Republicans in the Senate and White House in 2019, but now, barring a successful filibuster or the defection of centrist Democrats, is apt to pass.
Proportional representation has trapped Israel in a ghost story - The Post
Chris Medlock used to make the point that in America, coalitions are formed before the election, while in countries with proportional representation, they happen after the voters have had their say. Giles Fraser considers the UK's December election and Israel's third election in a year and explains why the UK and US's approach produces more stable and decisive governments.
"The two main parties -- Blue and White and Likud -- are virtually equal, and not terribly different ideologically, with a whole host of smaller parties making up the difference. In Israel, and because of Proportional Representation, politics is all about the coalitions, with the smaller parties having a disproportionate influence on the makeup of any future government. The names of these parties may change a lot, but no amount of reincarnation can shift the underlying stalemate. And no one is confident that after another electoral cycle that things can change this time either.
"Back in the dark days of Autumn 2019, when Brexit was stuck, neither able to go forward or backwards, I flirted with proportional representation as a way to break the log jam. I should have known better. For it was First Past the Post that finally delivered a much needed verdict.
"For all its various faults, FPTP has the virtue of forcing different political temperaments to enter into coalitions with each other before elections rather than after them. And this means two things: 1) that we have a clearer view of the alliances we are voting for and 2) that the winning side is more likely to have the freedom to take politics forward. Stuck politics is a ghost story, unable to achieve anything, neither alive nor dead."
Elizabeth Babade, a Brexit Party candidate, said at the Change Politics for Good conference on Saturday that she no longer supports proportional representation
. She believes it produces weak parliamentary institutions that are dominated by the permanent bureaucracy. Instead, she says, "The focus should be replacing the present ineffective opposition with a more focused party that is ready to properly scrutinise the Tory government not spitefully, hatefully or maliciously but dispassionately & competently. @UKLabour is not up to the task at hand.
James Heartfield tweeted in reply: "Under FPTP parties have to convince a large body of voters their plan is good. Under PR they have to convince a minority to back them; and then they have to convince opponents to compromise. PR tends to encourage 1. Posturing in elections 2. Opportunism in coalitions."
The Importance of 'No-Men' - Daily Signal - Cal Thomas
Cal Thomas writes of a meeting with disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker after Bakker's release from prison:
"'When did you start to go wrong?' I asked Bakker.
"His answer was instructive: 'When I began to surround myself with people who told me only what I wanted to hear.'...
"The key to great leadership is to not overly regard yourself, to understand you don't know everything, realize that, like everyone else, you are flawed and can make bad judgments, and to surround yourself with people who think well enough of you to tell you the truth from their perspective, even when it disagrees with yours.
"As long as the objective is to help you succeed with your agenda, such advice can be valuable and even humbling, humility being one of humanity's better characteristics and a grace that appears in short supply in Washington."
Plastic bag bans can backfire if consumers just use other plastics instead
Rebecca Taylor, economics lecturer at the University of Sydney, writes: "A U.K. government study calculated that a shopper would need to reuse a cotton carryout bag 131 times to reduce its global warming potential - its expected total contribution to climate change - below that of plastic carryout bags used once to carry newly purchased goods. To have less impact on the climate than plastic carryout bags also reused as trash bags, consumers would need to use the cotton bag 327 times....
"...My results showed that bag bans may not reduce total plastic usage if people begin purchasing trash bags to replace the carryout bags they were previously reusing for their garbage. As this finding shows, well-intended product bans can have unintended consequences....
"In particular, my results showed that bag bans caused sales of small (4 gallon), medium (8 gallon) and large (13 gallon) trash bags to increase by 120 percent, 64 percent and 6 percent respectively. "
Ken LaCorte: I Stopped the Stormy Daniels Story at Fox News. Here's Why.
"It lacked: any mention of payments, a hush money contract or any corroborating evidence beyond the two secondhand accounts.
"On top of that, Stormy Daniels herself had publicly denied the whole thing, a denial she would maintain for another year.
"The story wasn't close to being publishable, and my decision to hold it was a no-brainer. I didn't do it to help Trump and never said nor implied otherwise. It was such an easy call that I never even informed my direct boss or anyone in management about it....
"In her 11,635 word piece, [Jane Meyer] didn't find room to mention the paucity of evidence we had, the conflicting statements nor the other outlets which responded exactly as we did.
"The New Yorker piece couldn't have been more successful for them. In a media world where criticizing Fox News is an industry staple, the piece was picked up by almost every major outlet and Jane Mayer was feted throughout journalism.
"My non-quote quote and wrong story appeared everywhere from cable news to Jimmy Kimmel to the news outlets that re-wrote the story, including The Washington Post, Guardian, Newsweek, The Hill, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and at least 70 others.
"I say 're-wrote' instead of 'reported' because not a single reporter reached out to me. None.
"I'm an easy guy to find, especially since I'm in the process of launching a startup news site intent on bringing fairness back to journalism. This whole episode is an example of why the media has a credibility crisis.
"The ultimate irony is that in its zeal to hang Fox News for journalistic malfeasance, the media tossed journalistic standards in the trash can and gave readers the 100% wrong impression of Fox and the Stormy Daniels story.
"Journalists: these are the reasons why half of America believes Donald Trump when he calls us 'fake.'"
Quick Silver P51 Mustang - Federal Business Opportunities: Opportunities
Volumes of federal acquisition regulations exist to ensure that federal contracting is fair to every business that seeks to do work for the government. But sometimes only one company can do the job, and even then, there's a process that has to be followed, forms to be filled out, notices to be posted, even to bring in a historic aircraft for an air show flyover. Fair contracting isn't cheap.
"The 11th Contracting Squadron at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland intends to award a simplified acquisition on a sole source basis to Quick Silver P-51 Airshows for an aerial demonstration with a North American P-51D Quick Silver Mustang for the 2019 Air Show, in accordance with FAR 6.302-1(a)(2), Only one responsible source is capable of responding due to the unique or specialized nature of the work."
America's Signature Mode of Transportation Is High-Cost Rail - Hmm Daily
"American infrastructure is this costly because of immense, endemic, universal public-private corruption--systems of both direct and financialized graft at every stage of infrastructure development, from the planning to the ribbon-cutting to the use of deferred maintenance to ransack public transportation budgets for cash, year after year, after which the responsible authorities claim that fixing the century-old signals is just too damn pricey. This system of legal fraud begins with the bevies of project consultants, continues through ludicrous private contractor and labor costs, and continues when, years later, high-paid administrative fixers and new armies of consultants and contractors arrive to fix what broke because it was never maintained. It is a system of tolerated kleptocracy that may be the only thing that America still does better than anyone else in the world. It is baked into every assumption about building for the public benefit." (Hat tip to Dustbury.)
owen cyclops on Twitter - fairies, alien abductions, psychedelics, and the demonic
A fascinating but long and winding twitter thread in which the author (now a Christian) sees patterns and parallels between the stories told by people on psychedelic substances (with which he has extensive experience), and alien encounters, mysterious disappearances, demonic encounters, folklore about fairies and djinns, and fallen angels. In the end he provides a plausible explanation for why the word pharmakeia means sorcery, linking it to a passage in the apocryphal Book of Enoch.
