Author Archives: perrinlovett

A Most Interesting-Sounding Book

30 Wednesday Dec 2020

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American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time by Joshua Mitchell may be worth reading. Here’s a summary.

America seems to have gone mad. It still is the world’s richest and most powerful country, with the oldest continuous government on earth, yet it is in deep crisis and divided between hostile camps that reject each other’s legitimacy. Paradoxically, what made America strong also makes it inherently fragile. Joshua Mitchell, a professor of government at Georgetown University, presents a cogent diagnosis of America’s dark night of the soul in a remarkable new book that should be required reading for anyone who wants to make sense of today’s United States.

A Chinese acquaintance quips, “Now you are having your own Cultural Revolution.” In fact, the criticism and self-criticism sessions imposed on corporate employees and school personnel to root out hidden racism recall Mao’s Red Guards. But America is not China, and this is not a Cultural Revolution; it is an eruption of Christian religious feeling channeled into secular obsessions.

Asia Times’s review presents a somewhat jumbled but still compelling portrait. I may just pick this one up and report back in a while. If you’d like to beat me to it, check here.

Atlanta: Race to the Bottoms

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

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I’m surprised such a strong gurrrl power(!) leader is making such a shocking request. Maybe Creepy Joe put her up to it?

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a rising star in the Democratic Party who was recently considered for a position in President-elect Joe Biden’s cabinet, is coming under fire for her administration’s handling of a surge in violent crime in her city.

Saying she was ‘open to suggestions’ on stopping the crime wave, the mayor was on the defensive over the holiday weekend after three people were fatally shot in the city, bringing Atlanta’s homicide count to its highest in more than two decades.

Now, before you go off and say something like, “how about arrest criminals instead of the police officers trying to contain them?!,” just remember that we have the great strength of diversity now. Furthermore, defund the police! Murder is an ideology, not an organization. Etc.

My suggestion? Call Bill Sherman.

Please Let This Be True

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

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It’s going to work out like this anyway. So why not add the suspense and drama?

Believe me or not it doesn’t matter. The 6 January elector ‘ballot’ count is going to go down as the greatest troll of all time.

You may or may not know, but the Vice President gets to count the electors. That’s the one thing the Constitution makes crystal clear. Apparently the plan is for Mike Pence to roll in a Dominion voting machine (or a knock off that looks like one). He’s then going to pull out a USB drive, update the software just before the count, and use the machine to count the elector ballots.

Remember, this will be on national television. The count will not only come out fractional, but it will result in more votes than actual electors AND result in Trump winning more electors than Biden.

The chamber is expected erupt in chaos. Obviously the count will be challenged. Pence will then conduct a ‘recount,’ but he will use the machine to print the recount ballots and then hand count those. The recounted number will be similar to the original count, only changing by a couple votes, but it will result in Trump winning by even more than before.

Dems are expected to cry “fraud” and Pence will object and call for order. He will tell them that it’s too late to challenge because it’s already done. The count is finished. He will then deliberately wipe the machine’s software.

Then, just to make sure all laws are fully complied with, Trump could march in with a battalion of MPs and round up all the enemy combatants present. We’ll see. As I keep telling the FP faithful, January is going to be fun!

National Average IQ is Real

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

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And it really matters. Survey says:

Abstract and Figures

Patient people fare better in life than impatient people. Based on this and on economic models, many economists have claimed that more patient countries should fare better than less patient countries. We utilize cross-national data in non-cognitive traits measured in the Global Preference Survey (GPS). This survey measured six non-cognitive traits — risk and time preferences, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust — across 76 countries in about 80,000 persons. As such, it provides the best current database of economics-focused non-cognitive traits. We combine this database with existing estimates of national intelligence (national IQs) and model country outcomes as a function of these predictors. For outcomes, we used the 51 national well-being indicators from the Social Progress Index (SPI) as well as the composite extracted from this, the general socioeconomic factor. We find that non-cognitive variables, time preference included, are only weakly predictive of national well-being outcomes when national IQs are also in the model. The median β across the indicators was 0.11 for time preference but 0.39 for national IQ. We replicated these results using six economic indicators, again with similar results: median βs of 0.15 and 0.52 for time preference and national IQ, respectively. Across all our results, we found that national IQ has 2-4 times the predictive validity of time preference. These results are fairly robust to inclusion of a spatial autocorrelation control, alternative measures of national IQ and time preference, or no controls. Our results suggest that the importance of national non-cognitive traits, including time preference, is overestimated or that these traits are mismeasured.

As a nation like the US continues to lose national average intelligence, through internal and external actions, it will necessarily decline. The US is maybe 5 to 10 years away from breaking below the barrier whereat any assurance of societal stability vanishes. That’s why one hears so many Demopublicans talking about the issue. (Eye strain from roll…)

There Goes Herschel

28 Monday Dec 2020

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Winners like to win. Herschel Walker:

After reading @SidneyPowell1’s 270 page report, any person that certified Votes for their state when their state may have had voter fraud but they turned a blind eye and did no research and certified anyway, they need to go to JAIL ASAP. Our Country was built on LAW AND ORDER.

You’d have to lure him back from Texas. But listen, Georgia GOP, for the next gubernatorial election, if you had any intelligence at all … nevermind.

I’ll Add This

27 Sunday Dec 2020

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A warning I delivered at FPC yesterday.

ALERT: More about this on the news Monday, but a preview for you guys and gals. In re Nashville, I’m not sure about “Mr. Warner” or anything else yet. The RV (or one very similar) was pictured at 115 Bakertown Rd. However, the duplex (maybe the RV?) was sold on Nov. 25th (to someone from guess where??). I have a developing theory about this episode and it is not necessarily good (bombing = hot war). At any rate and under any circumstances, in the near future, residents of the US please prepare for (temporary):

Comm and utility disruption;

Possible curfew and travel limitations;

Alternative heat (it’s winter, kids);

Food shortages;

“Peaceful protests;” and,

More incidents and retaliation (get out of the cities).

Of course, I have since learned more, but the above is still valid. Hopefully, it is an unnecessary precaution.

Lot of 5G Haters in Tennessee

27 Sunday Dec 2020

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Better check this copycat’s property transfers too.

A box truck playing audio similar to what was playing before the Nashville explosion has shut down a highway in Wilson County.

Sheriff’s deputies in both Rutherford and Wilson counties are investigating the box truck parked at a convenience store.

Rutherford County authorities said the the driver traveled from their county to Wilson county and have been detained.

Is this incident a part of the greater plan?