I wish more Americans would treat their ruling elite like football fan bases treat their coaches. We love you if you’re performing well, but if the losses (in the analogy, lies and inaccurate predictions) and mismanagement pile up, the pitchforks come out.
Our ruling elite have been wrong about everything of importance this century, and usually lied about it to cover up their wrongness. They’re still coasting, decades later, on winning the World War II and Cold War Super Bowls, aided by a controlled press that refuses to ask the tough questions. Only now do people like Bill Gates and institutions like CBS start to try to cover themselves, knowing the winds have shifted.
Trump’s movement came along and is in the process of firing the old regime. From the medical/scientific establishment (RFK) to the IC (Tulsi) to academia (McMahon). Can they finish the job? Will we let them?
If I'm not mistaken, the One Big Beautiful Bill has some funds in it for some sort of school choice vouchers. And, many states, such as FL are already expanding school choice and home school options with growing numbers of families opting for those alternative choices. This trend will help diminish the power and influence of teachers unions.
You are right about funds that go toward vouchers. The School Choice movement began seriously in the late 90's and early 2000's. There are many charter schools and other alternative schools that have been successful, while some have failed. And although some parents do have choices, many do not, especially those in the inner city, such as Oakland, CA and similar cities. There the union rules and while there are always some stars in that sky, there are many teachers who do very little and who have no accountability.
I worked in the CA public schools for 26 years and watched how the union operated, protecting incompetent teachers. It seemed to me that a teacher had to commit a felony, go crazy, or molest a child before they could be fired. I worked through three teacher strikes. The loudest voices on the strike lines were the teachers who did very little.
Ultimately, I left public education and at the age of 48, founded my own after-school academy. In CA, the CTA (NEA) contributed to school children being kept at home during Covid when children in rural Montana never stopped going to school. California was draconian in dealing with Covid and the CTA was driving that bus. I don't think in my lifetime the union will be busted even it is at the fore of maintaining mediocrity. It is the most powerful union in California.
L.A. Teachers Union: Schools Can't Reopen Unless Charter Schools Shut Down, Police Defunded (7-13-2020, California Globe)
"In what appears to be a labor union power play, the United Teachers Los Angeles union announced Friday that Los Angeles Unified District schools effectively cannot reopen unless certain conditions are met: privately operated publicly funded charter schools are shut down, police are defunded, Medicare-for-All government-run health care is passed, a statewide wealth tax is implemented, housing for homeless is fully funded, financial Support for Undocumented Students and Families, and they want a federal bailout because the CARES and HEROES Acts provided funding for K-12, both fell far short of what would be needed to rescue districts and state and local governments.” The Chicago Teachers Union followed suit and issued similar "demands".
The teachers unions may not be "busted" in our lifetimes, but they continue to out themselves (similar to the legacy media as of late) and will lose influence and power as parents and voters continue to be exposed to their crazy.
Yes because more than any other factor, the manipulation and propaganda towards young minds has caused us the most harm. The wellspring of our ills as a society. Where kids learned about safe spaces, and to believe skin color or gender equaled victim class. Instead, simply teach reading, writing and arithmetic and the ability to think for oneself.
"Our ruling elite have been wrong about everything of importance this century, and usually lied about it to cover up their wrongness."
I always felt the lies were just part of the grifting game. We live in a time where everything is a market and whatever sales pitch works is the one that dominates. Even if the sales pitch is a blatent lie.
I stopped beleiving experts a long time ago, long before it became fashionable. Especially healthcare "experts" whose diagnosis almost always led to drug prescription.
Somewhere I read only 1 in 5 prescriptions do what the doctors want them to do. I mentioned this to several medical professionals, including doctors, doctorates of medicine, public health administrators, and none of them disputed it.
Medicine isn't a perfect science thus you have to be self-proactive.
I always used to note that diagnosis was all about the opinion of whatever doctor was responsible for your case. It was not about truth, necessarily, or getting it right. They could all have different opinions. And yet we were supposed to bow to each and every "diagnosis" as if it was the hard truth because it came out of the mouth of one's doctor . The doctor down the hall may have had a completely different "truth".
I’m not sure exactly sure what “diagnoses” you’re talking about. You’ve obviously had a tough time in a very compromised, fundamentally unsound healthcare system in Canada, I can tell you after my 37 years of practice while you could say my “opinion” was you have appendicitis or an acute abdomen from a perforated duodenal ulcer or you’re bleeding to death from a ruptured spleen you got from a motorcycle crash, questioning that and wanting to “go down the hall for another opinion” would be very bad for your health. Your generalized cynicism and ad hominem “opinions” about doctors and healthcare is not at all accurate!
BHS66. when the "renowned" Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NHS pulls the wool over the nation's eyes during a pandemic Psy-Op, and many other doctors go along despite the blatant contradictions in medicine.....I think what I said is accurate in many American cases as well.
Medical mistakes are rampant, both in the US and Canada. If the patient with the ruptured spleen were to die due to medical negligence....who would know? In Canada, if you have a rare disorder, there is no hope for you, because the system deals only in the common mid-range disorders. There is no doctor for you to see.
And clinical medicine is a well-paid job, let's face it.
I am sure that some dedicated doctors do still exist, but they are becoming few and far between.
I will not even get into the state euthanasia MAID program in Canada, where many doctors sign up gleefully to kill patients, as in the Nazi Aktion T4 program. Google Dr. Ellen Wiebe, who comes across to me as displaying psychopathic traits, and who is delighted the govt. is paying her to kill. On a daily basis. Cough, cough.
I am trained in research techniques, btw. I read the medical literature. Where you can see very clearly that doctors contradict and call-out one another, quite regularly. They want it known that they got it right and the other fellow's opinion on a certain medical issue was wrong.
Not to mention doctors who are proclaiming the wonders of transgender surgery on children these days. As if their minds and morals have dribbled out.
I recommend you might read "the Indoctrinated Brain" by Michael Nehls, MD, PhD. He is one of those double-credentialed clinician-researchers, from Germany.
Or closer to home, a few decades ago Dr. John Sarno wrote some excellent exposes on the medical approach, as in "The Divided Mind".
You may have been an honest and hard-working, moral doctor, my friend. But even you must know that you were in the minority in that sense. Especially by 2025.
I responded to your personal opinions you obviously based on your own experience. You took your own experience and generalized it to all of physicians and healthcare. Now you changing the argument and deflecting about Fauci(I couldn’t agree more about him), medical errors, the disaster That is the Canadian healthcare system, euthanasia, transgender medicine. Maybe you should have stated all these in your original post, it would have made much more sense than your initial personal opinion. Do you see what you did there??? I actually don’t disagree with your response, I disagreed with your very flawed ad hominem attack.
And what are you doing wasting your Saturday on social media? Surely you would use the time to catch-up on the medical literature? Even if you are retired? 😁
No one spends years “chasing mystery orphan diseases”, they spend years chasing zebras when they hear hoof beats. Every physician knows that. What’s your point?
But the medical profession sets-up doctors as gods. Who all know the answers, and may not ever be argued with. Even when they don't know the answers at all. Patients think this way because the profession and society have conditioned them to think this way. That doctors are the Wizard of Oz. And when the going is good, they promote this themselves.
So....if they want their godhood status and excellent income, there has to be a price for them to pay.
My comments were forged in hard experience, Ann. Some of it in the ever-downward Canadian socialized medicine system.
You may have had better experiences, and for that I am sure you are grateful. But what I say is what many people have been through. That the "experts" are not always expert or even moral.
People need hope. Eliminating this possibility let's in the charlatans. No charlatan/so called snake oil salesman will ever tell the blunt truth. The harmless inexpensive placebo is a kind way to soften the blow.
The Vioxx example Taibbi gives is a typical case of Pharma (Merck in this case) trying to make a useful, secondary drug into a blockbuster. Cox-2 inhibitors are much milder on the GI tract than typical NSAIDs, where ulcers can be limiting. But they increase the risk of cardiovascular side effects, which Merck tried to bury. Giving together with lower doses of the old NSAIDs, such as aspirin, minimized both GI and cardiovascular side effects (as a competing Cox-2 inhibitor Celebrex was marketed by Pfizer).
Similarly there was no good reason to push the Covid mRNA vaccines as a monotherapy when alternative drugs and supplements could be added on to substantially increase efficacy (some claimed such additions would invalidate EUA approval but that seems unlikely; the concern was that people would take the add on drugs as alternatives to the vaccines, which probably would have been better/ sufficient for many).
Clinical research deals with non-homogeneous populations requiring large numbers of subjects unless results are dramatic (they rarely are). That's why there is an emphasis (perhaps overemphasis?) on double blinded placebo-controlled "Gold Standard" trials with huge numbers of subjects (since the average age of Covid victims was 82 years old, the Elderly should have been the focus of those clinical trials but wasn't. The goal for Pfizer and Moderna and the government was inexplicably to vaccinate everyone. But if it didn't protect the target population why give to anyone else?)
Smaller pilot studies (we saw a lot of that during Covid) are only a starting point, but they can be valuable if reproduced by other groups. A good example was acute glucocorticoid TREATMENT for severe Covid which was forbidden by the World Health Organization for human respiratory viral infections. The Chinese published glucocorticoid steroid efficacy in March 2020 and the Brits in June 2020 claimed dexamethasone saved ~30% of lethal Covid cases (not citing the Chinese) and Americans slowly came around to its use after savaging early proponents of its use (it is Standard of Care in veterinary medicine for serious respiratory viral infections. It is also curative in most cases of Kawasaki's disease in children, which shared many parallels with Covid). The WHO finally backed off on verboten glucocorticoids in August 2020 (?), with caveats.
Another problem with reproducibility is lack of access to reagents and costs of replicating work (I had an unusual case where an older expired reagent worker better than fresh-- which worked well at much lower concentrations). Molecular biology reagents, transgenic animals and equipment are not cheap (although biowarfare is much cheaper than typical military materiel).
Ultimately for important work it is less expensive to show reproducibility than to build on faulty science (nowadays fraud can be a career move by unscrupulous researchers). But no one gets credit for replicating others' work.
The best “medicines” cannot be commodified: diet, exercise, humor, family support, sunny disposition. We are useful at times but there is much you can do to improve your own situation
Why are drugs almost always the answer from people in the medical field when they know they seldom work? Why do we continue, decade after decade, with this same ineffective model of healthcare? Money, money, money lining so many pockets. Doctors mostly treat symptoms and don’t look for underlying causes. No big picture, no comprehensive treatment. I only use a doctor to get tests run.
Per today's ATW look at the way the democrats, since the arrival of Trump, have chosen to rely on surveillance, prosecution, intelligence agencies, the justice system, all working secretly to try and fix it so that they can win elections. Like they recognized that these methods were their only hope for winning elections in the future
Trump is the New Boss, same as the old Boss. So called Western democracy is a scam designed to control you by convincing you that you have a choice within the system...you don't! To paraphrase George Carlin, "you don't, they own you", it's a Big club and you're not in it!"
Trump is the New Boss, same as the Old Boss? Hmmm... well that does not comport with the criticism from the establishment that he is a racist, Nazi, fascist, rapist, pedophile, misogynist, threat to democracy.
What would a New Boss different than the Old Boss look like if not like Trump?
They would exclude Wall Street parasites from the cabinet. In this, Trump is no different than Obama and Biden. They would put financial as an adjunct to real economy " of course you have to build a real economy again". The power of money creation would be changed to the state "like in China" and residential real estate would not be used for speculation. Corruption would be addressed aggressively. Production, not extraction would be supported. In other words, the system would be changed and it's the system that can't be fixed, certainly not by switching from Tweedle Dee to Tweedledum. I don't believe that the system will change without collapse and maybe not even then, the people are so indoctrinated in it.
Well Trump has a 30-year track record against the Wall Street Global Order and the PMC establishment. Scott Bessent is clearly not pulling that oligarch wagon. That is why they want to assassinate everyone in the Trump administration or that support him.
The problem Trump has to rewire the economy so it benefits the bottom 80% and not just the top 10% is that it has taken 80 years of the post Bretton Woods Global Order to fuck it up this much, and drastic change will destroy enough of the short-term economic situation that idiot people will vote for the Democrat Wall Street Oligarchs again to go back to benefitting the top 10%. So Trump has to ensure a strong GDP while working to reshore and end the $1.4 trillion trade deficit and the theft of industry from China. From you perspective and with the media pushing the Trump hate propaganda Trump is just part of that PMC establishment cabal... but he is not.
Current foreign policy is certainly different, and Trump's instincts in this regard have been much better than his recent predecessors' imo.
I'm not a big fan of un-targeted tariffs. They create a lot of unnecessary uncertainty, and any surplus money they bring in accrues to the treasury and enables upper income tax cuts. Meanwhile, the deficit keeps on growing.
I,m not seeing meaningful efforts to refocus the economy to benefit more than the top 1-5%. I,m certainly no expert, but a reasonably intelligent person might very well agree with Robert Hunter that the financial system, exactly as he describes it, can't be fixed without collapse, and maybe not even then. The people indeed have been indoctrinated to dependence. Their brains and energy have atrophied.
At least Trump is what he is and does what he does in plain view. That seems to me a major improvement over the pretense and deceit of rats scurrying behind the baseboards.
Let me use an example. The beef industry has 80% of its market share dominated by one Brazilian multi-national. This is the globalism outcome that Trump noted decades ago and has been against.
The challenge is how do you implement policies to reverse back to having many small beef producers and supply chain business without harming GDP by taking antitrust measures against that company? The market is wired for this situation today, and it has crushed many small ranches and other businesses that have supplied beef to the US consumer market. You have to implement incremental change, like reducing the EPA emissions that harm small ranchers, and other changes that help the smaller domestic business grow and better compete and take market share away from the big globalist corporations. Tariffs help with that too.
It is fascinating to me how dense people seem to be about the effects and intent of tariffs. Frankly, it has always been unfair for a low cost of living and low income country to take the jobs of a high cost of living and higher income country... and then turn around and sell those products back to the consumers in the high cost of living, high income country. We either need restrictions on business being able to offshore labor, which starts to get us into a Marxist approach, or we set economic policy that provides the right financial incentives to help motivate business behavior that benefits us.
If Trump actually wants to “drain the swamp” he needs to move on to the military-industrial-intelligence complex by ending the US participation in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and begin serious disarmament talks with Russia, China & the other countries with nuclear weapons.
Ann who do you know that was killed by Iranian's...they're a made up boggy-man. Made up by the Israelis that have captured our politicians via the large and powerful Israeli Lobby.
Like somebody who actually bucks the system instead of co-opting it and selling the same shit to his supporters that they were just opposing under Biden, like the Ukraine war, infinite money for Israel, replacing American labor with Indian low wage migrant labor, and endless military adventurism in the world generally as he’s doing against Iran and Venezuela.
If Biden were doing these things there would be massive opposition but Trump sells it to the suckers who then become pacified little toddlers listening to daddy. Daddy said Ukraine can win! Daddy Trump said Israel is our greatest ally!
The system uses Trump to put a fresh face on old policies. People eat it up. He’s very useful. Calling him a Nazi is the price of doing business. After all, the oligarchs can’t tell the other wing of the country they also control, the democrats, to pretend to like Trump. Much better to have a vicious opposition that actually falls in line and supports everything Trump does when it supports the establishment and then spends the rest of the time acting like they are fighting Hitler. It’s all a show.
I agree with you on the oligarchs embedded in the uniparty. I also agree that short of WWIII, and possibly not even then, Ukraine is the loser. It's already been reduced to rubble, at least from the published pictures. It's hard to keep up with Trump's train of thought, but my impression has been that essentially he thinks it's Europe's war to loose, not ours. I agree with that more than I don't but admit to being torn.
Who do you think is our greatest ally if not Israel? The Iranian terrorist structure is certainly our common enemy.
So Democracy is a scam. Right. So the alternative is what? Back to the era of kings? Communism? Based on how well those systems worked? Do a little checking, a capitalist free market society has led to the greatest spreading of wealth in the history of mankind. Of course it’s not perfect, far from it. It’s comprised of humans with human faults. We have lots of problems, division in our country, but I will take it faults in all over the alternative.
No kidding. And just as my beloved Detroit Lions finally become one of the best teams in the NFL, I find out it's all a farce. Can we just wait-a-bit before I admit reality.
Tulsi is feeding Trump the same false info that the previous admin fed Biden. That’s why Trump is still supporting the war in Ukraine and suddenly says they are winning. Israel owns our Middle East foreign policy.
What the fuck are you people talking about acting like Trump is a heroic renegade when he’s a conman getting people to support what they opposed ten seconds ago because he’s the one in charge now?
Populists who will erase the legacy of the old "ruling elite": Someone reckless enough to bring his grandchildren with him wading on Rock Creek,(I'm from DC, I know what it smells like) who backed a doctor who was treating measles with prayer while infected with measles himself. An intelligent woman who stuck to her guns about Snowden during her confirmation hearing, only to take part in an ill-advised signal chat (well probably no one got killed except Houthis and they were supposed to, and if they found our snitches on the ground and eliminated them, that's the fortunes of war?).
And someone with no educational credentials whatsoever., whose only qualification is her marriage to a professional wrestling magnate?(And campaign contributions) These people are supposed do anything other than screw things up worse? This is where skepticism comes into play, or at least should. But people are so happy about getting revenge against an establishment that was wrong, about some things that they are willing to wreck everything including the planet itself in the process, while jailing or killing anyone who gets in their way, as they have openly threatened to.
Interesting analogy. The football coach coming off a couple Super Bowls. For some reason our leadership was better, not perfect, but better when we dispatched Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. And perhaps most importantly, rebuilt both enemies. Setting forth the tremendous time of prosperity in the second half of the 20th century. That generation, my dads generation, are my heroes. And I can only wonder what they think of what we have done w the gift they handed us.
Can they finish the job? I wish. But if the p(l)andemic taught us one thing, it's that the old regime's groupthink model has metastasized into almost every institution on the planet.
Once the old regime realizes that it can't win, its messaging will quickly shift gears in order to insure survival in some form. Then its vestiges will lurk, hoping against hope for a way to divide the new regime and leverage at least some of their power back.
People don’t spend years chasing “mystery orphan diseases”, they spend years chasing zebras when they hear hoofbeats. Every physician knows that. What’s your point???
When you post unwarranted opinions on “social media” you can expect responses. You generalized your experience and then pontificated it about physicians and healthcare. You then deflected away from your experiences and gave decent examples of serious problems in health care. For some reason either you can’t see what you did there or you’re embarrassed by me pointing it out. This is “social media” after all, right?
The last two and a half decades of lies by the elite have added up and as a result, produced the MAGA movement. "They" (RINO's and Democrats) create the problem and then claim to have a solution.. Which becomes another problem.. Well, "they" can all fuck off because anything "they" say now is just a lie to cover a lie..
So, Gates claims he is giving away his fortune, that his kids won't inherit his billions. But the kids enjoy tremendous advantages provided by Gates now. I'm sure his daughter didn't incur loans to pay for medical school. They have enjoyed lavish weddings and live in opulent housing all on dad and Mom's(nice divorce$$) dimes. So much hypocrisy.
I don't believe a single word out of Gates' mouth. Not now, and not when he inevitably pushes his new mass-scam on the world. The scam to replace the "Climate Change" that he just denounced, because it will no longer work for his future power-needs.
10 years ago, I was working in an insurance brokerage that had a lot if high net worth people in the SFBay Area as customers. It was interesting to see how many people who had had "a liquidity event" insist they didn't want to make their kids rich. Except they weren't considering the fact they were raising them in an environment that was extremely rich. You can't expect a child who is taking private jets for a ski weekend in Aspen to automatically understand that.
The kids would be better off if you took them on a road trip to Tahoe, stayed in a motel on Highway 50 and got plastic sleds from Raleys to slide down the hill for 30 seconds only to hike back up the hill to do it over and over again and then get stuck in traffic on the way home. That was my childhood - and it was wonderful. Problem is, the parents want the other life.
As just pointed out last night in, of all places, “Jeopardy”, Gates is reserving 1% of his wealth for his kids, so the poor little lambs will only split up $1Billion.
I’m more worried about how the ex-wives of Gates and Bezos, as well as The baby moms of Elon will spend their dough
Why exactly do you care how much Gates' kids inherit? And how does their inheriting $1,000,000,000 cancel out the $99,000,000,000 earmarked for charity? It's like complaining that your friends set up dinner and drinks, and paid for it, but left paying for parking up to you. Actually, it's even stupider than that - Gates giving his kids any share of his money costs you nothing.
I was thinking you were a bot so I threw in some gobbledygook.
I stopped gratuitously insulting strangers when I got out of nursery school in the Kennedy administration but I guess that’s how you kids converse now.
"Denialism" is just our age's blasphemy/heresy charge delivered by our new priesthood of professors, dimwitted journalists and other moral entrepreneurs, who demand we bow down to their divine right, er, I mean, their "expertise" to tell us how to think, speak, live and what new sacred crusades we should devote our lives to if we want to get into Heaven, er, I mean be on the Right Side of History™.
Just as on one side of campus there are the Theorists who present their "critical consciousness" and devotion to egalitarianism as representing their right to rule, on the other side of campus are the STEMies who believe their degrees and their devotion to scientism provide THEIR right to rule.
The fun part of living in a secular age is watching how all the old patterns of religion repeat themselves, just in new clothes with new words. There are always many sheep and many others fighting to be proclaimed shepherd, where they get to be the first among equals. But nowadays the competition is so stiff that the only way to get ahead and get noticed is constant apocalyptic screeching, which repels as many as it attracts. And the kinds of people it attracts...it's not a coincidence that sad mad children like Greta Thunberg and Ella Emhoff look like Manson Girls or Puritan handmaidens. Nothing ever changes, except costumes and dogma.
Happy Halloween to Matt and all our fellow heretics, who keep getting (metaphorically) burned at the stake, only to be vindicated 5ish years later. It's dangerous to get too far out in front of the flock!
I agree with Michael Shermer, who describes humans as dominated by a believing brain. I will go further and say for most of us the need to believe is more important than the doctrine selected.
I guess constantly questioning is too uncomfortable. And also challenges another fundamental urge: tribalism.
I think we forget in our modern age of individualism that for the majority of human existence we were entirely dependent upon our tribe—being shunned or ostracized meant either loss of mating opportunities and/or ostracism, which essentially meant death.
It's very rare for someone to even consider an opposing viewpoint that the rest of our tribe considers dangerous (I'm 56 and just about all my friends are mostly smart, accomplished and educated and they pretty much regurgitate the NYT to me verbatim—seems to be a sign of the times.)
You have to be some kind of weirdo or an outcast by circumstance or choice to develop an independent mind (and spirit), which I think (like Shermer) is why many of our most incisive thinkers and critics have been Jews, the eternal outcasts.
I was criticized in grad school for "questioning EVERYTHING." This was said in a perplexed and somewhat accusatory tone, but it was helpful to learn that this was why I was targeted by so many of my peers. My side of the problem is that I can't understand why not everyone is like me. LOL!!
Okay, I've had enough of this... just because every other asshole in media pretends they know everything about everything doesn't mean I'm required to do the same thing.
I obviously have opinions about everything. If we were somehow at the same dinner I might say all sorts of things. But I don't put things in print until I'm 100% sure, not just so I don't have to spend my life apologizing for things I got wrong 20 years ago, but also so that my readers don't have to. You can infer from these articles that I think it was wrong to scare the crap out of people about this issue, and that Bill Gates sucks. I guess if you want me to, I can start writing columns about areas of non-knowledge. How about the Thai-Cambodian conflict? New treatments for autoimmune diseases? Australian rules football? Are there other subjects I haven't covered you'd like me to blather about?
Matt, the thing that makes you real is that you strive to be a journalist, not an op-ed talking head. Sure we all have opinions, but when the chips are down I trust you to offer a transparent view of the facts, reserving judgement until you have turned the last stone. Exhibit A for me was the beating you took from the Main Stream press for not falling in line behind the DNC propaganda like the rest of the ducklings. Chuck Todd couldn’t do it, he caved and still paid for being late to the party. The wannabes are just mad at you for having the balls to stand up for real journalism and succeed in spite of all the hate. Keep it real. You have a terrific win/loss record, not because you see the future, but because you can objectively and diligently unwind current events. Don’t let the bastards wear you down.
"...just because every other asshole in media pretends they know everything about everything doesn't mean I'm required to do the same thing." You mean like Walter Kirn?
imagine making this complaint when your podcast partner spends every episode pretending to be a Gypsy-blooded soothsayer who constantly brings up unnamed and unspecified “sources” that talk to him about inside baseball, info only he has.
And Matt just sits there like a drooling moron and never challenges or questions any of it, just nodding along like he’s recording the word of god on livestream.
And then they have the nerve to criticize mainstream media for their practice of citing unnamed sources.
Alright Matt, since you picked up the gauntlet, let’s go.
You have already beaten me to the punch by walking back your use of the term “optimism”, which is great, since you really worked overtime to ignore this portion of Gates “good news”:
“Even with these innovations, though, the cumulative emissions will cause warming and many people will be affected...Iowa will start to feel more like Texas. Texas will start to feel more like northern Mexico. ...most people in countries near the equator won’t be able to relocate—they will experience more heat waves, stronger storms, and bigger fires.”
That’s the rosy outlook that got you bubbling with excitement? The Global South will burn to a crisp while Iowa will soon only be hotter than Dallas in July??
Summers in upstate New York (where I live) have already turned oppressively humid over the past five years, and our famous white winters are increasingly brown and preceded by Autumn heat waves that I have never experienced in 54 years of living in this region, yet you still think the jury is out on this issue, and that the real problem is (of course) media sloppiness in not both-sides’ing this urgent topic with your level of equanimity.
Well, I’ve also “had enough of this”. Hop off your goddamn ivory fence and pick a side already. It is as though you have been handed a report on the severity of Climate Change and you can’t get past the fact that it wasn’t printed on recycled paper. (“Um, hello? Environmental Movement? When are you done putting Greta Thunberg down for her nap could you please take a moment to get your messaging straight? The crypto-bro contingent of my audience is giggling at you. How do you expect me to get them to accept .01% tax on Bitcoin mining of you aren’t really serious about saving the planet?”)
"Summers in upstate New York (where I live) have already turned oppressively humid over the past five years," You caugbt my eye with this since I grew up in upstate NY and my recollection is that summers were always oppressively humid, going back to the 1970s. Are you telling me (and others) you only noticed this in the last 5 years?
Your mileage may vary. I have lived in my current location for 5 years, and in another area of upstate for another 30. Ain’t seen weather like we’ve been having for most of that time.
I know it’s seemingly impossible to comprehend but weather varies in cycles completely independently of human life. You think weather gives a fuck what you remember from 30 years ago?
JFC you are completely clueless about what journalism is. You're one of the clueless droolers who like their opinions supported and their world view certified. A pround member of the punditocracy crowd where someone packages ‘the news’ for you.You expect your favorite hot topics to be covered and curse any who don't mirror your priorities. Please, just F-CAW-F.
Most of what Matt does these days is infotainment, not journalism. He shucks out red meat to partisan fools who watch Greg Gutfeld religiously at night.
The only reason I support his work is his looks into Russiagate. Beyond that he’s not a journalist but a partisan shill with a podcast.
Maybe it’s semantics on my part but i think we lessen our argument when we say “it’s all about money.” It’s about what money can buy and I’m not talking about luxuries. It’s all about Power.
Absolutely, nail on the head correct. Making more money can’t give Gates something he doesn’t have today, he already has access to all of the luxuries. Power is the fuel that needs to be injected into his soulless carcass as he approaches the end of his life.
It’s telling that Matt thinks the greatest sin regarding Global Warming would be to alarm people over it. I’d love to be in a room with this guy when a smoke detector goes off.
“1 out of 10 people in the room doesn't think the smoke detector means a fire. It’s a Deep State plot to turn us socialist. Has anyone checked the maker of that smoke detector? Huge contributor to the Democrats. Meet the censored, Jetfel Dusntburn.”
Instead of coat-tailing Matt, since you have no presence of your own, why don’t you work on something real, an\y\thing, and leave him alone? Maybe you will learn the diff between being a parasite and a producer.
I dunno champ… how many winters do you think I need to experience before I am free to observe that the snow has stopped arriving for the last seven? How many snowy Octobers do I have to have lived through before noticing how odd it is that now I’m running my air conditioner half way through Autumn?
Well, champ, how many years has this rock been spinning?? One Who in Whoville does not a study make, but keep proudly planting those flags and considering it a contribution. It’s human nature to seek meaning, after all.
Matt, relax. This is the same person who can't tell the difference between journalism and an op-ed. Quote from your last article comments "A reporter always leads his audience to the correct conclusion." - Slusa Secundus Snape. Clearly fucking nuts.
It is infantile to expect any journalist to express an opinion on every single issue. I watch Greenwald every night, and he freely admits that he is not comfortable expounding on economic issues, and prefers to have experts on to elaborate on such topics.
It’s painfully clear in comments sections around the world that to be considered a journalist these days, one must virtue signal, affirm, assert, browbeat - - all the things we used to think of as the realm of the editorial page.
Bill Gates changes his position, states humans will not go extinct from global warming, climate alarmist lose collective mind.
Matt does article pointing out the lunacy of it all.
Salusa points out it’s humid in upstate NY in the summer, which is proof we will all die from the climate and demands Matt take a side like all the kids (journalists) are doing these days.
We are doomed, but it’s surely from herd mentality level stupidity.
Did Gates ever say that ALL of humanity will “go extinct”? I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, what he is “saying now” does not seem to be any different than what he was saying all along: Our world will become increasingly hot, and our prosperous society will begin to decline precipitously (unless you don’t grok what a hellish Iowa implies for Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada).
You seem to have missed the point of both of Matt's pieces then, which is not surprising, since (as I stated) Matt is not actually concerned with the content of Gates' opinion, only the conversation surrounding it.
But Gates POV is actually consistent: he agrees that man-made Global Warming is occurring, and that it will have dire consequences guaranteed to downgrade our standard of living. If you actually read Gates' words, he says exactly that. The only difference between what he may have said before and what he is saying now is that he is now offering hope that if humanity gets its shit together in double-quick time, we may be able to roll with the changes. However, he offers no reason to believe that we will do this.
Bwah ha ha! I chose my comical, latin-ish name to make fun of people like Curtis Yarvin, Michael Anton... and now you!... who all choose nome-de-plums meant to pretentiously evoke the authors of the Federalist papers.
Oh come on. Taibbi has given his opinions all along. He might do a lot of research, but he's certainly giving more than just the facts. Just look at the first line of this piece, the one that everyone loves so much. And Snape is right about what Gates actually said, and about Taibbi's main concern being the media reaction to what he said, not its substance.
Yes, but his positions are always about the conversation *around* topics, while he refuses to plant his flag regarding the central issues themselves. It’s as though Godzilla were stomping Tokyo and Matt’s only takeaway is how the news networks covering it should really be examined for how they dropped the ball in their coverage of Tokyo’s last mayoral race.
Every opinion writer bases (or at least should base) their opinion on facts, as they see it. Matt is such an opinion writer. Even the title 'Racket News' is a statement of opinion.
Sometime in the late aughts, when everybody was freaking out about "global warming" and climate change, which has been occurring throughout millennia, I wanted to invest in solar panels and my husband said, there is only one letter separating green and greed. He knew instintively that it was a scam to create fear and separate more dollars out of our pay checks while we watched the worst offenders like John Kerry take their private planes to Davos.
And what about the “Carbon Credit” scam, in which you can pay someone to plant a tree and somehow assuage your guilt over flying private jets to Climate Armageddon conferences (always held in very posh locations)?
You're absolutely right. It was a way to allow corporations to pretend they were doing something without actually doing anything. I doesn't mean that global warming isn't happening, just that they didn't want to do anything about it.
Yes, but just because the hypocritical people in power sold us individual "solutions" while they and the corporations they serve did nothing, doesn't mean that global warming isn't happening. It just means that we were sold a bill of goods on how to fix it, one that absolved them completely and put the onus on us.
As a 62 yo physician many years ago I read Michael Crichton’s book State of Fear. Since then I have looked askance at each of the many crisis situations that we are told portend the end of the world and instead look for who benefits from the solutions. That usually means I realize these are just another scam.
Anyone who has done some Evolutionary Science will realize that enough fear will drive human beings into herds under authoritarian leaders....or at least those who think they cannot handle it themselves.
So if you are an authoritarian wanna-be leader, you simply induce believable fear in the masses in order to get your controllable serfs.
Corporations that manufacture useful things like ambulances, refrigerators, and air conditioners did not steal Greta's childhood. People like Gore, Mann, Hansen, deGrasse-Tyson, Nye, and Bill Gates stole Greta's childhood.
No doubt one of the great, mostly-untold story of the post-Cold War era has been the cataclysmic failure of American elites, from academia, media, business, the military, pharma, etc. And having recently been in the company of some of those said elites, I can tell you that they are a mix of being scared, mystified, and enraged at the loss of their prestige and status in American life. The profound status anxiety that elites are feeling is, in my view, a major part of what is fueling the anti-Trump/anti-populist rage we are seeing.
Oh Pacificus, it does my heart good to know that they are scared and mystified and want their status back! Because they’re never going to get it again.
Actually, losing decades of not really legitimate prestige and position, as our current elites are, is rather stressful. Their panicked reaction does not surprise me.
Could it be that they deep down always knew they were frauds but they collectively reassured each other. Now that everyone knows they are feaking out and rightfully so. As their grip slips more and more it would not be surprising to find "deaths of despair" among them becoming more frequent.
We need more denialism of "experts" and if you don't believe me, ask yourself - confess to yourself - whether you dutifully wore your mask when traversing the twenty feet from the restaurant door to your table, and then took it off to eat, laugh, and spray mist from your mouth for the next two hours. Do not get me started on vaccinating children for Covid or shutdowns or chasing people off the beach...
My favorite example was a few weeks ago when NYT asked a number of "experts on NYC" who should win the election for mayor. Like what makes someone an expert on NYC? Only the 7 or 8 million people that live there, close your eyes and pick a few.
A paper mask isn't magic, it's just hygeine. If toothbrushes were introduced today troglodytes like your honorable self would be crowing about how brushing your teeth is an evil plot and you'll never do it.
Except toothbrushes have been proven to work, paper masks haven't. Even a troglodyte who uses his real name to respond to anonymous keyboard jockeys knows that
I still think that climate change is a real thing, and it's not a good one. Unless we can somehow speed up our evolution as a species to adapt. My problem is with the hypocrisy of those plugging it. Call it the John Kerry syndrome if you want - "Someone like me can't fly otherwise than in this private jet to a climate conference." If you say we have to take in so many immigrants due to global warming south of the equator, it seems like kind of a doom loop, as they'll no doubt be hoping to acquire a motor vehicle and air conditioning and ultimately contributing to the problem. Etc.
I have asked the climate alarmists many times how it makes sense to transfer people from climate zones where energy demands are minimal to one with high heating costs, for example Somalians to Minnesota. Crickets.
And i forgot to add that I highly doubt that Gates's 180 is not because he's so much smarter than the rest of us, than as many commenters said in the last article, that position has become inconvenient for him.
You know why he has made the turnaround. AI needs energy... With Gates, it is always about the money. He couldn't care less about humanity..Only what he can steal from humanity..
Well, i'll give it to Gore that as i understand it, he lives off the grid. As does, of all people, Thomas Massie. Who took a couple of Tesla engines and set up his own energy rig.
You mean the Al Gore that lives in a 10,000 s.f. house with a pool that all use more electricity than a slew of houses? The one that flies on private jets? (just not his jet)? The one whose family made their money in mining, and he in giving lectures, books and films on the coming climate apocalypse? That Al Gore?
He got a big chunk when he sold Current TV to Al Jazeera. He also co-founded an Investment fund that focuses on "green investments". Plus, I think he was involved with Apple and Google to some extent. May be getting stock options there.
I don’t know, haven’t bothered to study his financial life. I would guess speaker fees, book royalties, service on corporate boards and the various sweetheart deals that ex politicians take advantage of.
One interesting thing about the multiple changes in climate endured by the Earth (and some by humans) over the centuries and millennia, is that the climate doesn’t change much between the tropics. I learned that the big changes are largely between the tropics and the poles.
I am certain that climate change and pollution are real things and are damaging the local and planetary environment. Locally, one can observe species of plants that have lived here for centuries retreating from microclimates where the hotter summers and decreased water cannot support their survival. The forest fires are larger, more frequent, and encroach now on the cities, and the argument that "better forest management" would resolve the problem is false. Individual trees that are centuries old are dying in large enough numbers to be noticeable. There are also species of plants that can be grown successfully here that just a few years ago would not have made it through one winter. Now they make it through at least a few winters, and are more likely to flourish during the summer. T
Denial is the most widely used and least effective of human problem solving strategies. It's usually the most comfortable one, apparently, because once people are in it they don't want to get out. Problems that are denied don't go away. Politicizing climate change is stupid. Attributing all climate change warnings to false beliefs and political manipulation is a variant on denial, in which the warnings can only be denied if the messengers are all false.
Humans are the most adaptable beings in the universe. We could adapt to weather increasing 2 degrees Celsius. In fact the weather increases by more than that between breakfast and lunch every single day.
MT- "If there’s only one legitimate “side” to report, then why bother to look for other opinions?" The media has been taken over by those who would advise on the consensus of experts. Not looking for other opinions is a political decision, completely unrelated to science. Here is a concluding thought to a post on Covid: https://billpound.substack.com/p/speculation-regarding-covid
"REFLECTION: As an American citizen, the fact I don’t know much about mRNA and gene function doesn’t absolve me from learning what I can, forming an opinion, and being willing to verbalize and vote on it. I may be wrong. I have been before. But my learning process holds for any subject of major human importance in America such as Anthropogenic Global Warming, 10 or 20 million illegal migrants entering the US, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Bitcoins or affordable housing.
Citizens, not just members of Congress, should have access, ability, and motivation to read and understand our nation’s laws and to “follow-the-money”. [Every Federal grant and contract should be traceable to a Congressional appropriation.] Experts should not be funded with my tax money if they can’t or don’t explain with reasonable accuracy the potential benefits [not just to themselves] and costs of their work to people of normal learning ability. Credentials mean little. I deliberately did not use any in this post, including my own. That is not disrespectful. People I look for are those with common sense, capable of being helpful. I try to be helpful to others."
And here is an example: The AP reported on a 2019 study in Catalonia (Spain) of more than 2 million seniors (50+), some of whom received flu shots. The AP reported that those who received the shots showed a reduced tendency for dementia. What they didn't report was that those who received flu shots had an 80% greater chance of being hospitalized for pneumonia compared to those not receiving flu shots. The AP could only see one legitimate part of the peer reviewed article. Thou shall not ignore large numbers of data, just as thou shall not rely on small numbers of data.
Bingo! Psychiatrist Arthur Deikman said years ago that un-addressed dependency needs drive people into cults. They want someone else to take care of that pesky freedom for them. They want a hive-mind to make all the decisions. Then all they have to do is obey.
In particular, phrases like "science denier" and "believe in science" drive me crazy. This is religious language. Anyone who uses these phrases doesn't understand the scientific method.
Exactly. As a retired medical research professional, during the COVID hysteria, I kept trying to explain to people how the scientific method works and that “the science” is not black or white.
Americans love a moral panic though so I just shut up about it.
Heck, I was a lit major, but I was still able to understand how herd immunity worked. This constant deferral to “experts” was one of the scariest things about the Covid era — particularly since so many actual experts were being silenced online, and even fired from their jobs.
It is religious, isn't it? I think it was Karl Popper who came up with the idea that if some idea isn't falsifiable, it's outside the realm of science (e.g. religion). The climate modeling certainly isn't falsifiable!
I believe the phrase was "Believe THE science." That's completely different, and I would hope that everyone here would believe the science, whether it comes to conclusions they want to agree with or not.
Assuming a study has been peer reviewed by independent experts who found that the methods were sound (and we can therefore trust the data), then beliefs don't play into it. All we can do is make data-informed decisions or not. We also need to recognize that science is an iterative process. We are always working with the best data we have at any given time, and what we know changes as we gather more data.
I was going to say, perhaps "believe" is a loaded word here in any case. But there is such a thing as a scientific consensus that holds sway within the scientific community...unless and until something else that challenges it comes along.
That was a theological consensus, not a scientific one. But you're right--and it should take scientific evidence to change the consensus, not cries of conspiracy.
There is great irony in your story as Whole Foods, Sprouts, any corporate "health food store" that orginally served the 'denialists' are themselves consummate scam artists just like bill gates, greta & the legion of human caused global warming change scientists.
How could cutting down all the forests and smoking tons of coal into the atmosphere al day every day for 200 years possibly affect the climate? MORANS amirite
The climate alarmists freaked out when National Geographic reported a decade ago there were 76,000 fires in the Amazon Basin during a 6 month period.
But then it turned out the fires were not caused by climate change, but by globalists to create farmlands, to feed the 100s of millions of Chinese who fled their small family farms to work in globalists cities. The climate alarmists lost interest.
Small segments of the population finally waking up and seeing more of the huge lies we’ve been fed for generations. FINALLY. Get on board. My favorite bumper sticker: Question Everything.
I wish more Americans would treat their ruling elite like football fan bases treat their coaches. We love you if you’re performing well, but if the losses (in the analogy, lies and inaccurate predictions) and mismanagement pile up, the pitchforks come out.
Our ruling elite have been wrong about everything of importance this century, and usually lied about it to cover up their wrongness. They’re still coasting, decades later, on winning the World War II and Cold War Super Bowls, aided by a controlled press that refuses to ask the tough questions. Only now do people like Bill Gates and institutions like CBS start to try to cover themselves, knowing the winds have shifted.
Trump’s movement came along and is in the process of firing the old regime. From the medical/scientific establishment (RFK) to the IC (Tulsi) to academia (McMahon). Can they finish the job? Will we let them?
Great comment flyoverdriver,
Until the teachers' unions are taken down, they haven't finished the job.
If I'm not mistaken, the One Big Beautiful Bill has some funds in it for some sort of school choice vouchers. And, many states, such as FL are already expanding school choice and home school options with growing numbers of families opting for those alternative choices. This trend will help diminish the power and influence of teachers unions.
Hi Adam,
You are right about funds that go toward vouchers. The School Choice movement began seriously in the late 90's and early 2000's. There are many charter schools and other alternative schools that have been successful, while some have failed. And although some parents do have choices, many do not, especially those in the inner city, such as Oakland, CA and similar cities. There the union rules and while there are always some stars in that sky, there are many teachers who do very little and who have no accountability.
I worked in the CA public schools for 26 years and watched how the union operated, protecting incompetent teachers. It seemed to me that a teacher had to commit a felony, go crazy, or molest a child before they could be fired. I worked through three teacher strikes. The loudest voices on the strike lines were the teachers who did very little.
Ultimately, I left public education and at the age of 48, founded my own after-school academy. In CA, the CTA (NEA) contributed to school children being kept at home during Covid when children in rural Montana never stopped going to school. California was draconian in dealing with Covid and the CTA was driving that bus. I don't think in my lifetime the union will be busted even it is at the fore of maintaining mediocrity. It is the most powerful union in California.
On COVID:
L.A. Teachers Union: Schools Can't Reopen Unless Charter Schools Shut Down, Police Defunded (7-13-2020, California Globe)
"In what appears to be a labor union power play, the United Teachers Los Angeles union announced Friday that Los Angeles Unified District schools effectively cannot reopen unless certain conditions are met: privately operated publicly funded charter schools are shut down, police are defunded, Medicare-for-All government-run health care is passed, a statewide wealth tax is implemented, housing for homeless is fully funded, financial Support for Undocumented Students and Families, and they want a federal bailout because the CARES and HEROES Acts provided funding for K-12, both fell far short of what would be needed to rescue districts and state and local governments.” The Chicago Teachers Union followed suit and issued similar "demands".
The teachers unions may not be "busted" in our lifetimes, but they continue to out themselves (similar to the legacy media as of late) and will lose influence and power as parents and voters continue to be exposed to their crazy.
Thank you for this expansive comment!
AMEN!
Yes because more than any other factor, the manipulation and propaganda towards young minds has caused us the most harm. The wellspring of our ills as a society. Where kids learned about safe spaces, and to believe skin color or gender equaled victim class. Instead, simply teach reading, writing and arithmetic and the ability to think for oneself.
The union has much more in mind than reading, writing and arithmetic.
I could not agree more.
"Our ruling elite have been wrong about everything of importance this century, and usually lied about it to cover up their wrongness."
I always felt the lies were just part of the grifting game. We live in a time where everything is a market and whatever sales pitch works is the one that dominates. Even if the sales pitch is a blatent lie.
I stopped beleiving experts a long time ago, long before it became fashionable. Especially healthcare "experts" whose diagnosis almost always led to drug prescription.
Somewhere I read only 1 in 5 prescriptions do what the doctors want them to do. I mentioned this to several medical professionals, including doctors, doctorates of medicine, public health administrators, and none of them disputed it.
Medicine isn't a perfect science thus you have to be self-proactive.
I always used to note that diagnosis was all about the opinion of whatever doctor was responsible for your case. It was not about truth, necessarily, or getting it right. They could all have different opinions. And yet we were supposed to bow to each and every "diagnosis" as if it was the hard truth because it came out of the mouth of one's doctor . The doctor down the hall may have had a completely different "truth".
But now, very helpfully to both patients and doctors, is ChatGPT.
You're joking, right? Forget not GIGO!
I’m not sure exactly sure what “diagnoses” you’re talking about. You’ve obviously had a tough time in a very compromised, fundamentally unsound healthcare system in Canada, I can tell you after my 37 years of practice while you could say my “opinion” was you have appendicitis or an acute abdomen from a perforated duodenal ulcer or you’re bleeding to death from a ruptured spleen you got from a motorcycle crash, questioning that and wanting to “go down the hall for another opinion” would be very bad for your health. Your generalized cynicism and ad hominem “opinions” about doctors and healthcare is not at all accurate!
BHS66. when the "renowned" Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NHS pulls the wool over the nation's eyes during a pandemic Psy-Op, and many other doctors go along despite the blatant contradictions in medicine.....I think what I said is accurate in many American cases as well.
Medical mistakes are rampant, both in the US and Canada. If the patient with the ruptured spleen were to die due to medical negligence....who would know? In Canada, if you have a rare disorder, there is no hope for you, because the system deals only in the common mid-range disorders. There is no doctor for you to see.
And clinical medicine is a well-paid job, let's face it.
I am sure that some dedicated doctors do still exist, but they are becoming few and far between.
I will not even get into the state euthanasia MAID program in Canada, where many doctors sign up gleefully to kill patients, as in the Nazi Aktion T4 program. Google Dr. Ellen Wiebe, who comes across to me as displaying psychopathic traits, and who is delighted the govt. is paying her to kill. On a daily basis. Cough, cough.
I am trained in research techniques, btw. I read the medical literature. Where you can see very clearly that doctors contradict and call-out one another, quite regularly. They want it known that they got it right and the other fellow's opinion on a certain medical issue was wrong.
Not to mention doctors who are proclaiming the wonders of transgender surgery on children these days. As if their minds and morals have dribbled out.
I recommend you might read "the Indoctrinated Brain" by Michael Nehls, MD, PhD. He is one of those double-credentialed clinician-researchers, from Germany.
Or closer to home, a few decades ago Dr. John Sarno wrote some excellent exposes on the medical approach, as in "The Divided Mind".
You may have been an honest and hard-working, moral doctor, my friend. But even you must know that you were in the minority in that sense. Especially by 2025.
I responded to your personal opinions you obviously based on your own experience. You took your own experience and generalized it to all of physicians and healthcare. Now you changing the argument and deflecting about Fauci(I couldn’t agree more about him), medical errors, the disaster That is the Canadian healthcare system, euthanasia, transgender medicine. Maybe you should have stated all these in your original post, it would have made much more sense than your initial personal opinion. Do you see what you did there??? I actually don’t disagree with your response, I disagreed with your very flawed ad hominem attack.
And what are you doing wasting your Saturday on social media? Surely you would use the time to catch-up on the medical literature? Even if you are retired? 😁
Acute care is one thing. Chronic disease is something else again.
Anyone who's spent years chasing diagnoses for their mystery orphan disease can tell you that.
No one spends years “chasing mystery orphan diseases”, they spend years chasing zebras when they hear hoof beats. Every physician knows that. What’s your point?
Well, since most patients want magic cures, what are docs to do?
But the medical profession sets-up doctors as gods. Who all know the answers, and may not ever be argued with. Even when they don't know the answers at all. Patients think this way because the profession and society have conditioned them to think this way. That doctors are the Wizard of Oz. And when the going is good, they promote this themselves.
So....if they want their godhood status and excellent income, there has to be a price for them to pay.
That seems a bit harsh. Maybe you need some new doctors?
My comments were forged in hard experience, Ann. Some of it in the ever-downward Canadian socialized medicine system.
You may have had better experiences, and for that I am sure you are grateful. But what I say is what many people have been through. That the "experts" are not always expert or even moral.
Tell them there aren't any?
People need hope. Eliminating this possibility let's in the charlatans. No charlatan/so called snake oil salesman will ever tell the blunt truth. The harmless inexpensive placebo is a kind way to soften the blow.
The Vioxx example Taibbi gives is a typical case of Pharma (Merck in this case) trying to make a useful, secondary drug into a blockbuster. Cox-2 inhibitors are much milder on the GI tract than typical NSAIDs, where ulcers can be limiting. But they increase the risk of cardiovascular side effects, which Merck tried to bury. Giving together with lower doses of the old NSAIDs, such as aspirin, minimized both GI and cardiovascular side effects (as a competing Cox-2 inhibitor Celebrex was marketed by Pfizer).
Similarly there was no good reason to push the Covid mRNA vaccines as a monotherapy when alternative drugs and supplements could be added on to substantially increase efficacy (some claimed such additions would invalidate EUA approval but that seems unlikely; the concern was that people would take the add on drugs as alternatives to the vaccines, which probably would have been better/ sufficient for many).
It's not an easy profession.
They work hard and have to deal with a lot.
Also, only 20% of experiments published in papers are replicable.
There are a number of reasons for that.
Clinical research deals with non-homogeneous populations requiring large numbers of subjects unless results are dramatic (they rarely are). That's why there is an emphasis (perhaps overemphasis?) on double blinded placebo-controlled "Gold Standard" trials with huge numbers of subjects (since the average age of Covid victims was 82 years old, the Elderly should have been the focus of those clinical trials but wasn't. The goal for Pfizer and Moderna and the government was inexplicably to vaccinate everyone. But if it didn't protect the target population why give to anyone else?)
Smaller pilot studies (we saw a lot of that during Covid) are only a starting point, but they can be valuable if reproduced by other groups. A good example was acute glucocorticoid TREATMENT for severe Covid which was forbidden by the World Health Organization for human respiratory viral infections. The Chinese published glucocorticoid steroid efficacy in March 2020 and the Brits in June 2020 claimed dexamethasone saved ~30% of lethal Covid cases (not citing the Chinese) and Americans slowly came around to its use after savaging early proponents of its use (it is Standard of Care in veterinary medicine for serious respiratory viral infections. It is also curative in most cases of Kawasaki's disease in children, which shared many parallels with Covid). The WHO finally backed off on verboten glucocorticoids in August 2020 (?), with caveats.
Another problem with reproducibility is lack of access to reagents and costs of replicating work (I had an unusual case where an older expired reagent worker better than fresh-- which worked well at much lower concentrations). Molecular biology reagents, transgenic animals and equipment are not cheap (although biowarfare is much cheaper than typical military materiel).
Ultimately for important work it is less expensive to show reproducibility than to build on faulty science (nowadays fraud can be a career move by unscrupulous researchers). But no one gets credit for replicating others' work.
The best “medicines” cannot be commodified: diet, exercise, humor, family support, sunny disposition. We are useful at times but there is much you can do to improve your own situation
Why are drugs almost always the answer from people in the medical field when they know they seldom work? Why do we continue, decade after decade, with this same ineffective model of healthcare? Money, money, money lining so many pockets. Doctors mostly treat symptoms and don’t look for underlying causes. No big picture, no comprehensive treatment. I only use a doctor to get tests run.
Per today's ATW look at the way the democrats, since the arrival of Trump, have chosen to rely on surveillance, prosecution, intelligence agencies, the justice system, all working secretly to try and fix it so that they can win elections. Like they recognized that these methods were their only hope for winning elections in the future
Trump is the New Boss, same as the old Boss. So called Western democracy is a scam designed to control you by convincing you that you have a choice within the system...you don't! To paraphrase George Carlin, "you don't, they own you", it's a Big club and you're not in it!"
Trump is the New Boss, same as the Old Boss? Hmmm... well that does not comport with the criticism from the establishment that he is a racist, Nazi, fascist, rapist, pedophile, misogynist, threat to democracy.
What would a New Boss different than the Old Boss look like if not like Trump?
They would exclude Wall Street parasites from the cabinet. In this, Trump is no different than Obama and Biden. They would put financial as an adjunct to real economy " of course you have to build a real economy again". The power of money creation would be changed to the state "like in China" and residential real estate would not be used for speculation. Corruption would be addressed aggressively. Production, not extraction would be supported. In other words, the system would be changed and it's the system that can't be fixed, certainly not by switching from Tweedle Dee to Tweedledum. I don't believe that the system will change without collapse and maybe not even then, the people are so indoctrinated in it.
Well Trump has a 30-year track record against the Wall Street Global Order and the PMC establishment. Scott Bessent is clearly not pulling that oligarch wagon. That is why they want to assassinate everyone in the Trump administration or that support him.
The problem Trump has to rewire the economy so it benefits the bottom 80% and not just the top 10% is that it has taken 80 years of the post Bretton Woods Global Order to fuck it up this much, and drastic change will destroy enough of the short-term economic situation that idiot people will vote for the Democrat Wall Street Oligarchs again to go back to benefitting the top 10%. So Trump has to ensure a strong GDP while working to reshore and end the $1.4 trillion trade deficit and the theft of industry from China. From you perspective and with the media pushing the Trump hate propaganda Trump is just part of that PMC establishment cabal... but he is not.
Current foreign policy is certainly different, and Trump's instincts in this regard have been much better than his recent predecessors' imo.
I'm not a big fan of un-targeted tariffs. They create a lot of unnecessary uncertainty, and any surplus money they bring in accrues to the treasury and enables upper income tax cuts. Meanwhile, the deficit keeps on growing.
I,m not seeing meaningful efforts to refocus the economy to benefit more than the top 1-5%. I,m certainly no expert, but a reasonably intelligent person might very well agree with Robert Hunter that the financial system, exactly as he describes it, can't be fixed without collapse, and maybe not even then. The people indeed have been indoctrinated to dependence. Their brains and energy have atrophied.
At least Trump is what he is and does what he does in plain view. That seems to me a major improvement over the pretense and deceit of rats scurrying behind the baseboards.
Let me use an example. The beef industry has 80% of its market share dominated by one Brazilian multi-national. This is the globalism outcome that Trump noted decades ago and has been against.
The challenge is how do you implement policies to reverse back to having many small beef producers and supply chain business without harming GDP by taking antitrust measures against that company? The market is wired for this situation today, and it has crushed many small ranches and other businesses that have supplied beef to the US consumer market. You have to implement incremental change, like reducing the EPA emissions that harm small ranchers, and other changes that help the smaller domestic business grow and better compete and take market share away from the big globalist corporations. Tariffs help with that too.
It is fascinating to me how dense people seem to be about the effects and intent of tariffs. Frankly, it has always been unfair for a low cost of living and low income country to take the jobs of a high cost of living and higher income country... and then turn around and sell those products back to the consumers in the high cost of living, high income country. We either need restrictions on business being able to offshore labor, which starts to get us into a Marxist approach, or we set economic policy that provides the right financial incentives to help motivate business behavior that benefits us.
Robert Hunter lived on Canyon Road in Santa Fe in the mid-1960s. Did you?
What does your comment mean? Was it good to live on Canyon Road in Santa Fe in the mid-1960s? Would you please explain your comment? tyia
If Trump actually wants to “drain the swamp” he needs to move on to the military-industrial-intelligence complex by ending the US participation in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and begin serious disarmament talks with Russia, China & the other countries with nuclear weapons.
Ann who do you know that was killed by Iranian's...they're a made up boggy-man. Made up by the Israelis that have captured our politicians via the large and powerful Israeli Lobby.
Oops! You’ve caught the morons in their own trap!
Like somebody who actually bucks the system instead of co-opting it and selling the same shit to his supporters that they were just opposing under Biden, like the Ukraine war, infinite money for Israel, replacing American labor with Indian low wage migrant labor, and endless military adventurism in the world generally as he’s doing against Iran and Venezuela.
If Biden were doing these things there would be massive opposition but Trump sells it to the suckers who then become pacified little toddlers listening to daddy. Daddy said Ukraine can win! Daddy Trump said Israel is our greatest ally!
The system uses Trump to put a fresh face on old policies. People eat it up. He’s very useful. Calling him a Nazi is the price of doing business. After all, the oligarchs can’t tell the other wing of the country they also control, the democrats, to pretend to like Trump. Much better to have a vicious opposition that actually falls in line and supports everything Trump does when it supports the establishment and then spends the rest of the time acting like they are fighting Hitler. It’s all a show.
I agree with you on the oligarchs embedded in the uniparty. I also agree that short of WWIII, and possibly not even then, Ukraine is the loser. It's already been reduced to rubble, at least from the published pictures. It's hard to keep up with Trump's train of thought, but my impression has been that essentially he thinks it's Europe's war to loose, not ours. I agree with that more than I don't but admit to being torn.
Who do you think is our greatest ally if not Israel? The Iranian terrorist structure is certainly our common enemy.
Yes, but if Trump hadn’t won, the southern border would still be wide open.
He really is the only politician in sight who cares enough about fixing problems to be willing to risk solutions.
That is true! It seems that it can always get worse than I believe. Kikocracy and kleptocracy are rampant.
So Democracy is a scam. Right. So the alternative is what? Back to the era of kings? Communism? Based on how well those systems worked? Do a little checking, a capitalist free market society has led to the greatest spreading of wealth in the history of mankind. Of course it’s not perfect, far from it. It’s comprised of humans with human faults. We have lots of problems, division in our country, but I will take it faults in all over the alternative.
NYT Walter Duranty Pulitzer Prize for denying Stalins Famine
"the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism."
No kidding. And just as my beloved Detroit Lions finally become one of the best teams in the NFL, I find out it's all a farce. Can we just wait-a-bit before I admit reality.
Yes, let's wait and see. I see the very rich getting very much richer at the moment.
Tulsi is feeding Trump the same false info that the previous admin fed Biden. That’s why Trump is still supporting the war in Ukraine and suddenly says they are winning. Israel owns our Middle East foreign policy.
What the fuck are you people talking about acting like Trump is a heroic renegade when he’s a conman getting people to support what they opposed ten seconds ago because he’s the one in charge now?
Populists who will erase the legacy of the old "ruling elite": Someone reckless enough to bring his grandchildren with him wading on Rock Creek,(I'm from DC, I know what it smells like) who backed a doctor who was treating measles with prayer while infected with measles himself. An intelligent woman who stuck to her guns about Snowden during her confirmation hearing, only to take part in an ill-advised signal chat (well probably no one got killed except Houthis and they were supposed to, and if they found our snitches on the ground and eliminated them, that's the fortunes of war?).
And someone with no educational credentials whatsoever., whose only qualification is her marriage to a professional wrestling magnate?(And campaign contributions) These people are supposed do anything other than screw things up worse? This is where skepticism comes into play, or at least should. But people are so happy about getting revenge against an establishment that was wrong, about some things that they are willing to wreck everything including the planet itself in the process, while jailing or killing anyone who gets in their way, as they have openly threatened to.
Interesting analogy. The football coach coming off a couple Super Bowls. For some reason our leadership was better, not perfect, but better when we dispatched Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. And perhaps most importantly, rebuilt both enemies. Setting forth the tremendous time of prosperity in the second half of the 20th century. That generation, my dads generation, are my heroes. And I can only wonder what they think of what we have done w the gift they handed us.
Can they finish the job? I wish. But if the p(l)andemic taught us one thing, it's that the old regime's groupthink model has metastasized into almost every institution on the planet.
Once the old regime realizes that it can't win, its messaging will quickly shift gears in order to insure survival in some form. Then its vestiges will lurk, hoping against hope for a way to divide the new regime and leverage at least some of their power back.
People don’t spend years chasing “mystery orphan diseases”, they spend years chasing zebras when they hear hoofbeats. Every physician knows that. What’s your point???
It's the end of Rome, with the idiots taking over and the beginning of the Dark Ages.
When you post unwarranted opinions on “social media” you can expect responses. You generalized your experience and then pontificated it about physicians and healthcare. You then deflected away from your experiences and gave decent examples of serious problems in health care. For some reason either you can’t see what you did there or you’re embarrassed by me pointing it out. This is “social media” after all, right?
The last two and a half decades of lies by the elite have added up and as a result, produced the MAGA movement. "They" (RINO's and Democrats) create the problem and then claim to have a solution.. Which becomes another problem.. Well, "they" can all fuck off because anything "they" say now is just a lie to cover a lie..
Please, no. Americans are already way too irrational in conflating sports, politics, and religion.
"As the Microsoft co-founder is a monopolistic reptile-whore of the highest order who smells money through his flickering tongue...."
This right here is why I pay to read your articles. This is the best description of him ever although it insults the innocent reptiles.
So, Gates claims he is giving away his fortune, that his kids won't inherit his billions. But the kids enjoy tremendous advantages provided by Gates now. I'm sure his daughter didn't incur loans to pay for medical school. They have enjoyed lavish weddings and live in opulent housing all on dad and Mom's(nice divorce$$) dimes. So much hypocrisy.
I don't believe a single word out of Gates' mouth. Not now, and not when he inevitably pushes his new mass-scam on the world. The scam to replace the "Climate Change" that he just denounced, because it will no longer work for his future power-needs.
He didn't denounce climate change. He just said that civilization won't fall apart because of it. That's also basically what Taibbi said.
10 years ago, I was working in an insurance brokerage that had a lot if high net worth people in the SFBay Area as customers. It was interesting to see how many people who had had "a liquidity event" insist they didn't want to make their kids rich. Except they weren't considering the fact they were raising them in an environment that was extremely rich. You can't expect a child who is taking private jets for a ski weekend in Aspen to automatically understand that.
The kids would be better off if you took them on a road trip to Tahoe, stayed in a motel on Highway 50 and got plastic sleds from Raleys to slide down the hill for 30 seconds only to hike back up the hill to do it over and over again and then get stuck in traffic on the way home. That was my childhood - and it was wonderful. Problem is, the parents want the other life.
As just pointed out last night in, of all places, “Jeopardy”, Gates is reserving 1% of his wealth for his kids, so the poor little lambs will only split up $1Billion.
I’m more worried about how the ex-wives of Gates and Bezos, as well as The baby moms of Elon will spend their dough
Why exactly do you care how much Gates' kids inherit? And how does their inheriting $1,000,000,000 cancel out the $99,000,000,000 earmarked for charity? It's like complaining that your friends set up dinner and drinks, and paid for it, but left paying for parking up to you. Actually, it's even stupider than that - Gates giving his kids any share of his money costs you nothing.
Because it spacklewonk makes a joke of his cauliflower altruism - see if you can mambo make sense of this 56;5 message, you bot
Whatever the fuck that means.
Rich people bad, charity bad if not all wealth given away, call person bot for pointing out absurd belief. Well played, douche.
I was thinking you were a bot so I threw in some gobbledygook.
I stopped gratuitously insulting strangers when I got out of nursery school in the Kennedy administration but I guess that’s how you kids converse now.
Ditto- 'Mattisms' - Matt is the king of snarky sentences.
He's not merely snarky. Those sentences are evocative and pithy.
I see them as witticisms rather than snark.
Snark-o-holic.
Absolutely! I smiled when I read that line. Brilliant!
Indeed! That line had delicious imagery that captured the essence of who this ghoul really is.
That was probably my favorite sentence of his this year 😂
Exactly this.
"Denialism" is just our age's blasphemy/heresy charge delivered by our new priesthood of professors, dimwitted journalists and other moral entrepreneurs, who demand we bow down to their divine right, er, I mean, their "expertise" to tell us how to think, speak, live and what new sacred crusades we should devote our lives to if we want to get into Heaven, er, I mean be on the Right Side of History™.
Just as on one side of campus there are the Theorists who present their "critical consciousness" and devotion to egalitarianism as representing their right to rule, on the other side of campus are the STEMies who believe their degrees and their devotion to scientism provide THEIR right to rule.
The fun part of living in a secular age is watching how all the old patterns of religion repeat themselves, just in new clothes with new words. There are always many sheep and many others fighting to be proclaimed shepherd, where they get to be the first among equals. But nowadays the competition is so stiff that the only way to get ahead and get noticed is constant apocalyptic screeching, which repels as many as it attracts. And the kinds of people it attracts...it's not a coincidence that sad mad children like Greta Thunberg and Ella Emhoff look like Manson Girls or Puritan handmaidens. Nothing ever changes, except costumes and dogma.
Happy Halloween to Matt and all our fellow heretics, who keep getting (metaphorically) burned at the stake, only to be vindicated 5ish years later. It's dangerous to get too far out in front of the flock!
"The fun part of living in a secular age is watching how all the old patterns of religion repeat themselves, just in new clothes with new words."
Bingo!
Yes, “denialism” is indeed the Newspeak for heresy.
No one expects the Inquisition!
lol and no one expects to become an Inquisitor!
oh, but wouldn't some like to!
many do, sadly
The medieval Spanish Inquisitors were roughly equivalent in totalitarian rightwing behaviour to modern Islam.
And also were originally a response to ancient Islam...
This is one of those comments that makes me oh so sad Substack does not allow images.
I agree with Michael Shermer, who describes humans as dominated by a believing brain. I will go further and say for most of us the need to believe is more important than the doctrine selected.
I guess constantly questioning is too uncomfortable. And also challenges another fundamental urge: tribalism.
I think we forget in our modern age of individualism that for the majority of human existence we were entirely dependent upon our tribe—being shunned or ostracized meant either loss of mating opportunities and/or ostracism, which essentially meant death.
It's very rare for someone to even consider an opposing viewpoint that the rest of our tribe considers dangerous (I'm 56 and just about all my friends are mostly smart, accomplished and educated and they pretty much regurgitate the NYT to me verbatim—seems to be a sign of the times.)
You have to be some kind of weirdo or an outcast by circumstance or choice to develop an independent mind (and spirit), which I think (like Shermer) is why many of our most incisive thinkers and critics have been Jews, the eternal outcasts.
I was criticized in grad school for "questioning EVERYTHING." This was said in a perplexed and somewhat accusatory tone, but it was helpful to learn that this was why I was targeted by so many of my peers. My side of the problem is that I can't understand why not everyone is like me. LOL!!
The collective mind (hive-mind) vs. the individual is the main theme. Tribalism vs. independence.
I could harp on it for hours. It makes the world turn.
Being lured into the collective mind under an evil medium was what Nazism in the WWII era was all about.
"his old firm will need the energy footprint of a small star" made me laugh out loud. So well put!
Can’t Bill just feed bugs to AI? Plenty of protein to convert into energy!
The guy can still turn a phrase! He just can't stake out a position.
Okay, I've had enough of this... just because every other asshole in media pretends they know everything about everything doesn't mean I'm required to do the same thing.
I obviously have opinions about everything. If we were somehow at the same dinner I might say all sorts of things. But I don't put things in print until I'm 100% sure, not just so I don't have to spend my life apologizing for things I got wrong 20 years ago, but also so that my readers don't have to. You can infer from these articles that I think it was wrong to scare the crap out of people about this issue, and that Bill Gates sucks. I guess if you want me to, I can start writing columns about areas of non-knowledge. How about the Thai-Cambodian conflict? New treatments for autoimmune diseases? Australian rules football? Are there other subjects I haven't covered you'd like me to blather about?
Smh...
Matt, the thing that makes you real is that you strive to be a journalist, not an op-ed talking head. Sure we all have opinions, but when the chips are down I trust you to offer a transparent view of the facts, reserving judgement until you have turned the last stone. Exhibit A for me was the beating you took from the Main Stream press for not falling in line behind the DNC propaganda like the rest of the ducklings. Chuck Todd couldn’t do it, he caved and still paid for being late to the party. The wannabes are just mad at you for having the balls to stand up for real journalism and succeed in spite of all the hate. Keep it real. You have a terrific win/loss record, not because you see the future, but because you can objectively and diligently unwind current events. Don’t let the bastards wear you down.
And I thank you for your approach. That's where you earn trust (mine, anyhow).
"...just because every other asshole in media pretends they know everything about everything doesn't mean I'm required to do the same thing." You mean like Walter Kirn?
imagine making this complaint when your podcast partner spends every episode pretending to be a Gypsy-blooded soothsayer who constantly brings up unnamed and unspecified “sources” that talk to him about inside baseball, info only he has.
And Matt just sits there like a drooling moron and never challenges or questions any of it, just nodding along like he’s recording the word of god on livestream.
And then they have the nerve to criticize mainstream media for their practice of citing unnamed sources.
Hypocrites on every level.
Alright Matt, since you picked up the gauntlet, let’s go.
You have already beaten me to the punch by walking back your use of the term “optimism”, which is great, since you really worked overtime to ignore this portion of Gates “good news”:
“Even with these innovations, though, the cumulative emissions will cause warming and many people will be affected...Iowa will start to feel more like Texas. Texas will start to feel more like northern Mexico. ...most people in countries near the equator won’t be able to relocate—they will experience more heat waves, stronger storms, and bigger fires.”
That’s the rosy outlook that got you bubbling with excitement? The Global South will burn to a crisp while Iowa will soon only be hotter than Dallas in July??
Summers in upstate New York (where I live) have already turned oppressively humid over the past five years, and our famous white winters are increasingly brown and preceded by Autumn heat waves that I have never experienced in 54 years of living in this region, yet you still think the jury is out on this issue, and that the real problem is (of course) media sloppiness in not both-sides’ing this urgent topic with your level of equanimity.
Well, I’ve also “had enough of this”. Hop off your goddamn ivory fence and pick a side already. It is as though you have been handed a report on the severity of Climate Change and you can’t get past the fact that it wasn’t printed on recycled paper. (“Um, hello? Environmental Movement? When are you done putting Greta Thunberg down for her nap could you please take a moment to get your messaging straight? The crypto-bro contingent of my audience is giggling at you. How do you expect me to get them to accept .01% tax on Bitcoin mining of you aren’t really serious about saving the planet?”)
"Summers in upstate New York (where I live) have already turned oppressively humid over the past five years," You caugbt my eye with this since I grew up in upstate NY and my recollection is that summers were always oppressively humid, going back to the 1970s. Are you telling me (and others) you only noticed this in the last 5 years?
You're brilliant! You noticed that weather changes! How can i nominate you for the Nobel?
You are confusing weather with climate. Just like all of the climatetards.
If this guy noticed some sort of weather change, it must be true.
Your mileage may vary. I have lived in my current location for 5 years, and in another area of upstate for another 30. Ain’t seen weather like we’ve been having for most of that time.
Myopic memories of regional weather and your own confirmation bias don’t require anyone to take a position. Sorry.
I know it’s seemingly impossible to comprehend but weather varies in cycles completely independently of human life. You think weather gives a fuck what you remember from 30 years ago?
JFC you are completely clueless about what journalism is. You're one of the clueless droolers who like their opinions supported and their world view certified. A pround member of the punditocracy crowd where someone packages ‘the news’ for you.You expect your favorite hot topics to be covered and curse any who don't mirror your priorities. Please, just F-CAW-F.
Most of what Matt does these days is infotainment, not journalism. He shucks out red meat to partisan fools who watch Greg Gutfeld religiously at night.
The only reason I support his work is his looks into Russiagate. Beyond that he’s not a journalist but a partisan shill with a podcast.
Yes, his research into the Twitter files was such "infotainment" he testified before Congress. As Greg Gutfield regularly does of course. /sarcasm
Gutfeld is funny 😂. If you watch him for news, you're an idiot
We have a winner!
Oh please. With Gates it is always about the money. Now, AI needs ENERGY...Lots of it. He knows his Green Scam can't cover it...$$$$$$
How are you still believing anything gates says. His take is always whatever makes him more money. That’s it.
Maybe it’s semantics on my part but i think we lessen our argument when we say “it’s all about money.” It’s about what money can buy and I’m not talking about luxuries. It’s all about Power.
though maybe that does not translate as well?
Absolutely, nail on the head correct. Making more money can’t give Gates something he doesn’t have today, he already has access to all of the luxuries. Power is the fuel that needs to be injected into his soulless carcass as he approaches the end of his life.
Always the case where power is the ultimate end game
He waits until he's 100% sure on a position, then proceeds to publish something in which he isn't 100% sure. LOLOL.
It’s telling that Matt thinks the greatest sin regarding Global Warming would be to alarm people over it. I’d love to be in a room with this guy when a smoke detector goes off.
“1 out of 10 people in the room doesn't think the smoke detector means a fire. It’s a Deep State plot to turn us socialist. Has anyone checked the maker of that smoke detector? Huge contributor to the Democrats. Meet the censored, Jetfel Dusntburn.”
Let it go already, you lost.
Ooh look, it’s Darth Vader! Or is it Sarris from Galaxy Quest?
“Texas will start to feel more like northern Mexico…”. It IS northern Mexico.
If you’re so sure of your predictions, please tell us who’s gonna win the Super Bowl.
According to Bjorn Lomborg, agricultural zones (in the Northern Hemisphere) are moving northward at the rate of 13 miles a decade.
That could get to be quite a problem — in a few centuries!
All the more reason to annex Canada and Greenland, eh??!!
That’s Gates’ quote, not mine. That’s the sunny news Matt Taibbi felt so “optimistic” about.
Hot humid Summers and cold winters in the mid Atlantic CONUS… Who’d’ve thunk? How old are you?
Instead of coat-tailing Matt, since you have no presence of your own, why don’t you work on something real, an\y\thing, and leave him alone? Maybe you will learn the diff between being a parasite and a producer.
Wow. 54 whole years? That’s so many. 😂
I dunno champ… how many winters do you think I need to experience before I am free to observe that the snow has stopped arriving for the last seven? How many snowy Octobers do I have to have lived through before noticing how odd it is that now I’m running my air conditioner half way through Autumn?
Well, champ, how many years has this rock been spinning?? One Who in Whoville does not a study make, but keep proudly planting those flags and considering it a contribution. It’s human nature to seek meaning, after all.
Even 54 years isn't climate, it's weather.
"Angry Salsa"...win! :)
I actually don't care if Matt voices an opinion on Climate Change that I disagree with, but for crissakes, actually have an opinion!
Why?
Matt, relax. This is the same person who can't tell the difference between journalism and an op-ed. Quote from your last article comments "A reporter always leads his audience to the correct conclusion." - Slusa Secundus Snape. Clearly fucking nuts.
Only the Pope and the President know everything and they pontificate about it! Thanks for the humility, it's a breath of fresh air.
This is a bogus issue.
It is infantile to expect any journalist to express an opinion on every single issue. I watch Greenwald every night, and he freely admits that he is not comfortable expounding on economic issues, and prefers to have experts on to elaborate on such topics.
Why does he need to stake out a position?
You nail it here.
It’s painfully clear in comments sections around the world that to be considered a journalist these days, one must virtue signal, affirm, assert, browbeat - - all the things we used to think of as the realm of the editorial page.
or a psychiatrists day bed.
Or a church service.
Protestant
'Cuz that guy said so!
That was a guy?
Bill Gates changes his position, states humans will not go extinct from global warming, climate alarmist lose collective mind.
Matt does article pointing out the lunacy of it all.
Salusa points out it’s humid in upstate NY in the summer, which is proof we will all die from the climate and demands Matt take a side like all the kids (journalists) are doing these days.
We are doomed, but it’s surely from herd mentality level stupidity.
Did Gates ever say that ALL of humanity will “go extinct”? I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, what he is “saying now” does not seem to be any different than what he was saying all along: Our world will become increasingly hot, and our prosperous society will begin to decline precipitously (unless you don’t grok what a hellish Iowa implies for Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada).
I see the constant invocations of disaster have had their intended effect on you at least.
I'm sorry... am I fantasizing that the Colorado River is drying up?
Nope, just who’s responsible
He may have a point. 50 years ago everyone in south eastern Pennsylvania was taller than me. Now they are mostly smaller. Something weird going on.
I suspect you don't want "a" position, you want your chosen position repeated.
But it's not really YOUR position is it?
“Snape” acknowledges Gates lied for years yet insists on believing what he says now. Sad!
I don’t recall saying at all that Gates was lying then or now.
It can’t be both ya lolcow.
You seem to have missed the point of both of Matt's pieces then, which is not surprising, since (as I stated) Matt is not actually concerned with the content of Gates' opinion, only the conversation surrounding it.
But Gates POV is actually consistent: he agrees that man-made Global Warming is occurring, and that it will have dire consequences guaranteed to downgrade our standard of living. If you actually read Gates' words, he says exactly that. The only difference between what he may have said before and what he is saying now is that he is now offering hope that if humanity gets its shit together in double-quick time, we may be able to roll with the changes. However, he offers no reason to believe that we will do this.
A grownup who cosplays Harry Potter. Somehow that isn’t the kind of person who should be making fun of anyone, ever.
Bwah ha ha! I chose my comical, latin-ish name to make fun of people like Curtis Yarvin, Michael Anton... and now you!... who all choose nome-de-plums meant to pretentiously evoke the authors of the Federalist papers.
The Federalist papers are more grownup than kiddie books, that's for damn sure.
I am staking out this position: you are an insufferable boob
You should probably look up the word journalism in a dictionary
Staking out a position is entirely optional for a journalist. We can conclude you want to play "Gotcha!"
Oh come on. Taibbi has given his opinions all along. He might do a lot of research, but he's certainly giving more than just the facts. Just look at the first line of this piece, the one that everyone loves so much. And Snape is right about what Gates actually said, and about Taibbi's main concern being the media reaction to what he said, not its substance.
You’re a chump. He shares all sorts of positions. Grow up.
Yes, but his positions are always about the conversation *around* topics, while he refuses to plant his flag regarding the central issues themselves. It’s as though Godzilla were stomping Tokyo and Matt’s only takeaway is how the news networks covering it should really be examined for how they dropped the ball in their coverage of Tokyo’s last mayoral race.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t think anybody does.
Here the thing, what you see as Godzilla stomping Tokyo, a vast and growing number of people have come to the realization it was all CGI.
It's called Racket News, not Matt's opinion.
Same thing
Not if you do it right, and Matt does a pretty good job.
He used to.
Every opinion writer bases (or at least should base) their opinion on facts, as they see it. Matt is such an opinion writer. Even the title 'Racket News' is a statement of opinion.
A position? Why don’t you say what you mean?
You’re so annoying
Patently false.
And if you actually believed in the courage of convictions, you would come out from behind a pen name.
Says KAM?
Sometime in the late aughts, when everybody was freaking out about "global warming" and climate change, which has been occurring throughout millennia, I wanted to invest in solar panels and my husband said, there is only one letter separating green and greed. He knew instintively that it was a scam to create fear and separate more dollars out of our pay checks while we watched the worst offenders like John Kerry take their private planes to Davos.
No denying that now!
Solyndra anyone?
And what about the “Carbon Credit” scam, in which you can pay someone to plant a tree and somehow assuage your guilt over flying private jets to Climate Armageddon conferences (always held in very posh locations)?
You're absolutely right. It was a way to allow corporations to pretend they were doing something without actually doing anything. I doesn't mean that global warming isn't happening, just that they didn't want to do anything about it.
You made the right decision avoiding those things.
Yes, but just because the hypocritical people in power sold us individual "solutions" while they and the corporations they serve did nothing, doesn't mean that global warming isn't happening. It just means that we were sold a bill of goods on how to fix it, one that absolved them completely and put the onus on us.
As a 62 yo physician many years ago I read Michael Crichton’s book State of Fear. Since then I have looked askance at each of the many crisis situations that we are told portend the end of the world and instead look for who benefits from the solutions. That usually means I realize these are just another scam.
💯💯💯 great book and exactly my mindset. One scam after another.
How have your autumns been these past few years? A little warmer than you remember them?
Great book.
Anyone who has done some Evolutionary Science will realize that enough fear will drive human beings into herds under authoritarian leaders....or at least those who think they cannot handle it themselves.
So if you are an authoritarian wanna-be leader, you simply induce believable fear in the masses in order to get your controllable serfs.
“They’re eating the dogs! They’re eating the cats!”
They’re eating beautiful white swans at the park as well.
Corporations that manufacture useful things like ambulances, refrigerators, and air conditioners did not steal Greta's childhood. People like Gore, Mann, Hansen, deGrasse-Tyson, Nye, and Bill Gates stole Greta's childhood.
Greta's parents stole Greta's childhood.
They certainly allowed her childhood to be "stolen".
Hey, give some credit to the idiot girl!
All part of the Thunberg Grift.
What kind of lame-o has Matt been reduced to if he is attacking Greta like some elderly Fox News chud?
And now it's up to Greta to grow up and deal with it.
No doubt one of the great, mostly-untold story of the post-Cold War era has been the cataclysmic failure of American elites, from academia, media, business, the military, pharma, etc. And having recently been in the company of some of those said elites, I can tell you that they are a mix of being scared, mystified, and enraged at the loss of their prestige and status in American life. The profound status anxiety that elites are feeling is, in my view, a major part of what is fueling the anti-Trump/anti-populist rage we are seeing.
Oh Pacificus, it does my heart good to know that they are scared and mystified and want their status back! Because they’re never going to get it again.
Agreed.
Poor babies. It's all so stressful.
Actually, losing decades of not really legitimate prestige and position, as our current elites are, is rather stressful. Their panicked reaction does not surprise me.
Probably all the more stressful since most of them don't have real jobs to fall back on.
The cataracts one must have to not see the billionaire class as “elites” must be awfully thick.
Could it be that they deep down always knew they were frauds but they collectively reassured each other. Now that everyone knows they are feaking out and rightfully so. As their grip slips more and more it would not be surprising to find "deaths of despair" among them becoming more frequent.
I think you are exactly right about this, esp how they knew, deep down, that they were frauds.
We need more denialism of "experts" and if you don't believe me, ask yourself - confess to yourself - whether you dutifully wore your mask when traversing the twenty feet from the restaurant door to your table, and then took it off to eat, laugh, and spray mist from your mouth for the next two hours. Do not get me started on vaccinating children for Covid or shutdowns or chasing people off the beach...
My favorite example was a few weeks ago when NYT asked a number of "experts on NYC" who should win the election for mayor. Like what makes someone an expert on NYC? Only the 7 or 8 million people that live there, close your eyes and pick a few.
I think the Covid-19 response lead to experts irremediably losing any credibility forever with 40% of the population.
A paper mask isn't magic, it's just hygeine. If toothbrushes were introduced today troglodytes like your honorable self would be crowing about how brushing your teeth is an evil plot and you'll never do it.
Except toothbrushes have been proven to work, paper masks haven't. Even a troglodyte who uses his real name to respond to anonymous keyboard jockeys knows that
The left lives in a river in Egypt. Can’t wait for the upside down animal farm review. Some animals are more in denial than others…
The contradiction of expertise.
The ability to rationally know who is an expert, requires the same expertise as the expert you are relying on.
Therefore expertise in this context is just a religious word.
Example, I assert I am an expert in computers--your ability to rationally challenge that assertion requires computer expertise.
Without any expertise, all we can do is look at non-rational ways to evaluate who is an expert--and in America that means cash money.
If I made a large amount of money with computers, then I am an expert in computers.
So when you break it down--the word "expertise" just means submit to money.
Which is how we got Gates running his mouth on so many things in the first place.
Your ability to know who is an expert is directly proportional to your ability to say an expert is full of shit.
I still think that climate change is a real thing, and it's not a good one. Unless we can somehow speed up our evolution as a species to adapt. My problem is with the hypocrisy of those plugging it. Call it the John Kerry syndrome if you want - "Someone like me can't fly otherwise than in this private jet to a climate conference." If you say we have to take in so many immigrants due to global warming south of the equator, it seems like kind of a doom loop, as they'll no doubt be hoping to acquire a motor vehicle and air conditioning and ultimately contributing to the problem. Etc.
I have asked the climate alarmists many times how it makes sense to transfer people from climate zones where energy demands are minimal to one with high heating costs, for example Somalians to Minnesota. Crickets.
And i forgot to add that I highly doubt that Gates's 180 is not because he's so much smarter than the rest of us, than as many commenters said in the last article, that position has become inconvenient for him.
You know why he has made the turnaround. AI needs energy... With Gates, it is always about the money. He couldn't care less about humanity..Only what he can steal from humanity..
An “Inconvenient Truth”?
Well, i'll give it to Gore that as i understand it, he lives off the grid. As does, of all people, Thomas Massie. Who took a couple of Tesla engines and set up his own energy rig.
You mean the Al Gore that lives in a 10,000 s.f. house with a pool that all use more electricity than a slew of houses? The one that flies on private jets? (just not his jet)? The one whose family made their money in mining, and he in giving lectures, books and films on the coming climate apocalypse? That Al Gore?
Ha, I believe you. I do have to wonder how he makes his money since out of office. Or is he just cruising on inheritance?
He got a big chunk when he sold Current TV to Al Jazeera. He also co-founded an Investment fund that focuses on "green investments". Plus, I think he was involved with Apple and Google to some extent. May be getting stock options there.
I don’t know, haven’t bothered to study his financial life. I would guess speaker fees, book royalties, service on corporate boards and the various sweetheart deals that ex politicians take advantage of.
One interesting thing about the multiple changes in climate endured by the Earth (and some by humans) over the centuries and millennia, is that the climate doesn’t change much between the tropics. I learned that the big changes are largely between the tropics and the poles.
Letting go of doom can bring about a sadness deeper than the doom itself.
Yup.
I am certain that climate change and pollution are real things and are damaging the local and planetary environment. Locally, one can observe species of plants that have lived here for centuries retreating from microclimates where the hotter summers and decreased water cannot support their survival. The forest fires are larger, more frequent, and encroach now on the cities, and the argument that "better forest management" would resolve the problem is false. Individual trees that are centuries old are dying in large enough numbers to be noticeable. There are also species of plants that can be grown successfully here that just a few years ago would not have made it through one winter. Now they make it through at least a few winters, and are more likely to flourish during the summer. T
Denial is the most widely used and least effective of human problem solving strategies. It's usually the most comfortable one, apparently, because once people are in it they don't want to get out. Problems that are denied don't go away. Politicizing climate change is stupid. Attributing all climate change warnings to false beliefs and political manipulation is a variant on denial, in which the warnings can only be denied if the messengers are all false.
Exactly.
Humans are the most adaptable beings in the universe. We could adapt to weather increasing 2 degrees Celsius. In fact the weather increases by more than that between breakfast and lunch every single day.
The human species will. Many individuals are already dying.
MT- "If there’s only one legitimate “side” to report, then why bother to look for other opinions?" The media has been taken over by those who would advise on the consensus of experts. Not looking for other opinions is a political decision, completely unrelated to science. Here is a concluding thought to a post on Covid: https://billpound.substack.com/p/speculation-regarding-covid
"REFLECTION: As an American citizen, the fact I don’t know much about mRNA and gene function doesn’t absolve me from learning what I can, forming an opinion, and being willing to verbalize and vote on it. I may be wrong. I have been before. But my learning process holds for any subject of major human importance in America such as Anthropogenic Global Warming, 10 or 20 million illegal migrants entering the US, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Bitcoins or affordable housing.
Citizens, not just members of Congress, should have access, ability, and motivation to read and understand our nation’s laws and to “follow-the-money”. [Every Federal grant and contract should be traceable to a Congressional appropriation.] Experts should not be funded with my tax money if they can’t or don’t explain with reasonable accuracy the potential benefits [not just to themselves] and costs of their work to people of normal learning ability. Credentials mean little. I deliberately did not use any in this post, including my own. That is not disrespectful. People I look for are those with common sense, capable of being helpful. I try to be helpful to others."
And here is an example: The AP reported on a 2019 study in Catalonia (Spain) of more than 2 million seniors (50+), some of whom received flu shots. The AP reported that those who received the shots showed a reduced tendency for dementia. What they didn't report was that those who received flu shots had an 80% greater chance of being hospitalized for pneumonia compared to those not receiving flu shots. The AP could only see one legitimate part of the peer reviewed article. Thou shall not ignore large numbers of data, just as thou shall not rely on small numbers of data.
Hey, man, what good is "freedom" if I have to make an effort to take care of myself?
Bingo! Psychiatrist Arthur Deikman said years ago that un-addressed dependency needs drive people into cults. They want someone else to take care of that pesky freedom for them. They want a hive-mind to make all the decisions. Then all they have to do is obey.
In particular, phrases like "science denier" and "believe in science" drive me crazy. This is religious language. Anyone who uses these phrases doesn't understand the scientific method.
Exactly. As a retired medical research professional, during the COVID hysteria, I kept trying to explain to people how the scientific method works and that “the science” is not black or white.
Americans love a moral panic though so I just shut up about it.
Heck, I was a lit major, but I was still able to understand how herd immunity worked. This constant deferral to “experts” was one of the scariest things about the Covid era — particularly since so many actual experts were being silenced online, and even fired from their jobs.
Unless by "the science," you're referring to Tony Faucci, in which case, he's white. 😀
Ha!
It is religious, isn't it? I think it was Karl Popper who came up with the idea that if some idea isn't falsifiable, it's outside the realm of science (e.g. religion). The climate modeling certainly isn't falsifiable!
Church Lady level scolding
My favorite was “climate denier,” used to disparage those of us who refused to clutch our pearls over Climate Armageddon.
I believe the phrase was "Believe THE science." That's completely different, and I would hope that everyone here would believe the science, whether it comes to conclusions they want to agree with or not.
Assuming a study has been peer reviewed by independent experts who found that the methods were sound (and we can therefore trust the data), then beliefs don't play into it. All we can do is make data-informed decisions or not. We also need to recognize that science is an iterative process. We are always working with the best data we have at any given time, and what we know changes as we gather more data.
I was going to say, perhaps "believe" is a loaded word here in any case. But there is such a thing as a scientific consensus that holds sway within the scientific community...unless and until something else that challenges it comes along.
Yes, but that last part is important. I mean, there was a consensus that the sun revolved around the earth prior to Galileo.
That was a theological consensus, not a scientific one. But you're right--and it should take scientific evidence to change the consensus, not cries of conspiracy.
There is great irony in your story as Whole Foods, Sprouts, any corporate "health food store" that orginally served the 'denialists' are themselves consummate scam artists just like bill gates, greta & the legion of human caused global warming change scientists.
How could cutting down all the forests and smoking tons of coal into the atmosphere al day every day for 200 years possibly affect the climate? MORANS amirite
The climate alarmists freaked out when National Geographic reported a decade ago there were 76,000 fires in the Amazon Basin during a 6 month period.
But then it turned out the fires were not caused by climate change, but by globalists to create farmlands, to feed the 100s of millions of Chinese who fled their small family farms to work in globalists cities. The climate alarmists lost interest.
Well yes. So they weren't caused by climate change, but the destruction of that much rainforest will certainly contribute to it.
Are you afraid of radio waves, too?
Small segments of the population finally waking up and seeing more of the huge lies we’ve been fed for generations. FINALLY. Get on board. My favorite bumper sticker: Question Everything.
The one on my 71 mustang read " question authority". Question everything is better.