Incompetent or Irrelevant?

A commenter at Dominick Cummings substack points out something obvious that the UK media, despite the massive coverage it has dedicated to the Conservative Party’s leadership battle, has not even mentioned:

Implied odds from bookmakers

Liz Truss – 75.8%

Rishi Sunak – 23.8%

Seems to be bearing out exactly as anticipated with Sunak popular among MP’s but quite unpopular among party members due to his high taxation, high spending HMT record plus a slice of members feel some loyalty to Boris.

The real contest was always who made the final two with Rishi. Curiously the MP’s never seemed to realise this?

The smart play for any Tory MP’s was to form a small block and support Rishi up to the penultimate round and then switch support as a block to another candidate in exchange for some future power.

But none of them did anything like that, those supporting Rishi assumed he could win the members vote.

It was the Mordaunt / Truss camps arm wrestle over Kemi Badenoch’s supporters that happened last week, that decided the next PM.

Badenoch to Mordaunt is a weird move from right the centre. The more natural switch was Badenoch to Truss. Mordaunt really needed to pick up some of Sunak’s supporters but the Mordaunt camp, nor the Sunak supporters seemed to figure this out.

The delta was 8 MP’s. So a block of ~10 MP’s could have negotiated quite a lot of power for themselves. If they played this contest correctly. But we just don’t see that kind of decentish competence anywhere in contemporary politics, it’s really weird.

Now Sunak gets to lose to Truss instead of Mordaunt. We could speculate that Truss will probably put Sunak to the sword, whereas Mordaunt would probably have had Rishi in government.

Rishi Sunak is the new David Miliband.

Truss is the new PM.

Alarmingly the Conservative Parliamentary party hasn’t got a single competent politician in it, not one, not one MP who can navigate a simple leadership contest by forming a small block and negotiating power.

Incompetence… or irrelevance? I would argue the latter.

Mordaunt was well ahead of everyone in the one-to-one polls, including Truss, until the media began hammering her for her very questionable flip-flops on trannyism. This is why, despite her support for Brexit, the MPs began leaving her in favor of Truss, despite Truss being a lunatic neocon-controlled Remainer.

But how did that happen? WHY did it happen? Because the globalists needed Truss to win and they control the UK media. Mordaunt was the potential danger, because being a fame-whoring, post-ideological populist, she would almost certainly have reduced Britain’s support for the only globalist program that now matters, the war in Ukraine. Losing Britain meant losing Italy, Spain, France, and probably Germany as well, leaving only the USA, Poland, and the Baltics to fight Russia, China, and the rest of the world.

Sunak is a globalist creature through-and-through, but he was never going to win because he’s Indian, he’s not British.

Modern politicians are incompetent – see Creepy Joe Biden – but more importantly, they are entirely irrelevant. This is not merely a post-ideological age, it is a post-political one.

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So THAT Didn’t Work

Sri Lanka’s plan for economic development, VISION 2025, didn’t even survive the summer of 2022:

Our economic policy, Vision 2025, is firmly embedded in several principles, including a social market economy that delivers economic dividends to all. In the first place we need to ensure we have a skill pool that matches the job market’s demands. Sri Lanka’s education system is being transformed through progressive and important policy reform: the minimum length of schooling has been increased to 13 years, while better education is being brought to rural areas through the Nearest School Is the Best School programme, and Sri Lanka is investing in more teachers and better training. Also, opportunities for vocational training in selected areas during school education will be introduced. Further, we have taken action to empower new and innovative ideas by strengthening the intellectual property regime in Sri Lanka. The plan for an “Empowered Sri Lanka” identifies the priorities of raising incomes, ensuring employment and housing for all, and improving the quality of life for all citizens.

The plan is delivering impressive results. The current government has created over 460,000 jobs and helped more than 260,000 families secure a home. Strong progress is being made on plans to bring opportunities to rural communities by building necessary infrastructure such as roads and bridges, connecting rural and urban areas and linking Sri Lanka’s economic hubs. A programme, Enterprise Sri Lanka, has been launched to encourage young and educated entrepreneurs, who will receive loans to start SMEs. The government has also invested in some mega projects, including the Colombo Megapolis constructions – to build a city of the future – and irrigation projects including the Moragahakanda-Kaluganga Dam, to generate green energy and provide water resources for agro-production.

For the first time, Sri Lanka has now been linked to the large ASEAN region by entering into the free trade agreement (FTA) with Singapore. To have struck its first comprehensive trade agreement (including not only goods but services and investment) with a country like Singapore, regarded as one of the most open economies, with high-quality institutions, is an important milestone for Sri Lanka, and a major achievement for the current government. The Singapore FTA is a strong step towards closer integration with ASEAN, and in fact was signed in the same month that Singapore took over the chairmanship of ASEAN for the year 2018. It signals to ASEAN that Sri Lanka is interested in the region, and signals to the world that it is serious about reform.

It only took FOUR YEARS for Sri Lanka’s embrace of free trade to lead to massive riots and politicians being forced to flee the country. This should cause even the most intrepid supporter of the Comparative Advantage concept to consider the possibility that Ricardo is indeed Retardo.

The Unvaxxed Will Inherit the Earth

Strong evidence that the unvaccinated are more fertile than the vaccinated.

Interesting news on the birth rate drop front! It turns out that the highest vaccinated counties of Hungary have the worst drop in birth rates in 2022! This is a within-country comparison, comparing Hungarians to Hungarians, for the same time period.

You can see that the five least vaccinated counties experienced only a 4.66% drop in birth rates between Q1 of 2021 and Q1 of 2022. At the same time, five most vaccinated counties experienced a 15.2% drop in birth rates!

This is a tremendous 10.5% difference between birth rate outcomes! Put in other words, the birth rate decline in most heavily vaccinated Hungarian counties was THREE TIMES greater than the decline in least-vaccinated counties!

This is evidence, not conclusive proof, but the conclusive proof should not be long in arriving.

The Washington Post Defends Grooming

It’s fascinating that the media is so shook by the right’s opposition to child-molesting that they’re retreating right to the “no scientific evidence” about something to which science, even in its retarded narrative-defending form, cannot possibly apply.

Last year, when the state board of education proposed new sex-education standards for teaching about issues such as sexual orientation, gender identity and consent, a retired pediatrician in this central Nebraska town reached out to Gov. Pete Ricketts and state lawmakers.

“This is NOT Sex Ed as anyone knows it,” Sue Greenwald wrote in a July 16, 2021, email obtained by The Washington Post. Lessons that met these standards, she wrote, would be “ ‘grooming’ children to be sexual victims.”

It was a shocking claim, and it was catching on — repeated by Greenwald, by members of the Protect Nebraska Children Coalition, a group she co-founded to oppose the standards, and embraced by Ricketts (R) himself. The message also spread through screenings at libraries and churches of “The Mind Polluters,” billed as an “investigative documentary” that “shows how the vast majority of America’s public schools are prematurely sexualizing children.”

Grooming erupted as a national issue earlier this year, but this state in America’s heartland has been roiled by that attack on comprehensive sex education since last spring, providing a unique window into a newly inflamed debate. The unsubstantiated claim helped activate an army of self-described Nebraska patriots who rose up against the standards, took over the local Republican Party and propelled a wave of far-right candidates for local and statewide school boards, a Post examination found. Earlier this month, these activists were part of a broader, anti-establishment insurgency that toppled leaders of the state Republican Party.

The term “groomer” has become a catchall epithet hurled by the right wing against the left, particularly against advocates for LGBT people, who have become the target of a recent surge in violent threats and attacks. The Post’s examination focused on the specific claim that modern sex education — including lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity — makes children more vulnerable to pedophiles.

Greenwald and others who have endorsed that claim acknowledged to The Post that there is no scientific body of research that shows such lessons make children more likely to be victimized.

They’re leaving out the reason the “grooming” rhetoric was so effective – parents were appalled to find out exactly what the “sex ed” their young schoolchildren were receiving. The usual bait-and-switch was exposed, as parents discovered that what they believed was nothing but the basics of the birds and the bees was actually a pedo-tranny strip show.

Remember, there is no depth to which the wicked will not sink. Because millstones don’t float.

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Monkeypox Joe Defends Homogamy

When, oh when, will conservatives learn that their newly converted darlings from the Left are not, and will never be, on their side:

On the Saturday episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the comedian and massively successful podcast host pushed back against critics who have accused him of being a “secret conservative,” citing GOP opposition to gay marriage as one of many reasons he is not, nor has ever been, a Republican.

“It’s not just abortion rights, but now they’re going after gay marriage too, which is so strange to me,” Rogan said while interviewing comedian Andrew Schulz. He brought up how Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) reportedly said he will not vote in favor of a bipartisan bill that would codify same-sex marriage into federal law to protect that right from being revoked by the Supreme Court.

Lawmakers have put forward a bill that would ban state governments from recognizing the traditional definition of marriage in what supporters argue is a needed protection for marriage equality. But some Republicans say the bill is unnecessary because the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015 and no one reasonably thinks the court will reverse that decision. Rubio reportedly called the bill a “stupid waste of time.”

“Marco Rubio is saying that it’s like a silly thing to argue about, to be concerned about, and some other senator, a gay woman, confronted him and she was furious at it. ‘Cause gay marriage is not silly, it’s marriage. It’s marriage for people that are homosexual and for them it’s important,” Rogan said, referring to reports that Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) confronted Rubio about his opposition to the bill.

“Gay marriage is not silly. It’s marriage — it’s marriage from people that are homosexual and it’s, for them, it’s important. They want it,” Rogan continued. “They want to affirm their love and their relationship. And the fact that they’re going after that now almost makes me feel like they want us to fight. They wanna divide us in the best way they can. And this is the best way for them to keep pulling off all the bulls*** they’re doing behind the scenes is to get us to fight over things like gay marriage or get us to fight over things like abortion. It’s just like, why are you removing freedoms?”

“Yes,” Schulz said. “If you are gonna say that marriage is an important cultural institution to the fabric of America, you can’t remove it from Americans.”

“It’s so homophobic,” Rogan declared. “Because you’re saying there’s something wrong with being homosexual by saying that you are opposed to gay marriage. You’re saying you’re opposed to gay people.”

I think having a social safety net is crucial. We should help each other. We’re supposed to be one big community. I’m a bleeding-heart liberal when it comes to a lot of s***,” Rogan emphasized.

Monkeypox Joe is pro-sodomy, pro-falsehood, and pro-ritual satanic prenatal murder. He’s not one of the good guys. He’s NEVER been one of the good guys; he’s a Hellmouth denizen and a ticket-taker par excellence.

FFS, stop falling for these gatekeeping charades. They’re not only worse than you think, they’re usually worse than you imagine.

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The Abyss Stalks Back

AC explains this is what the stalker state in action looks like. Seeing how obvious it is, I’ve never understood how the Secret Stalkerazi has any hope of avoiding eventual exposure in the era of the Panopticon and the digital camera. Literally everyone now has the ability to film and take pictures of those who are following and photographing and filming them, so logic dictates that everyone who is involved in the physical surveillance will inevitably be recognized, if not identified.

Stalk the Abyss, and it’s only a matter of time before the Abyss stalks back.

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On Awards

Keep this in mind if you’re ever inclined to feel that you haven’t been properly recognized for your achievements, whatever they might be.

Nolan Ryan has more strikeouts than any pitcher in baseball history and has thrown more no-hitters (Ryan has seven, Sandy Koufax is second with four) than any pitcher. He had seasons of 383, 367, 341, 329 and 327 strikeouts. He had nine complete-game shutouts in 1972, and two seasons of 26 complete games.

Ryan never won the Cy Young Award.

Awards used to be popularity contests. Now they’re just Narrative Approval contests. In either case, they are entirely irrelevant with regards to actually recognizing genuine accomplishment in a field. They mean literally nothing, as the Puppies demonstrated when Space Raptor Butt Invasion and Alien Stripper Boned By The T-Rex were both nominated for Hugo Awards, and as the SF-SJWs conclusively proved when they tried to claim, with a straight face, that a black female performance artist had written the best novel in science fiction for three straight years.

For crying out loud, Paul Krugman, who is RELIABLY wrong and has just released yet another mea culpa, has been given numerous economics awards. And do you know who never won a

This isn’t sour grapes. In addition to my many Puppy-powered Hugo Award nominations, I have been received various academic awards, athletic awards, and music awards – not too many people can say they beat out Prince himself for a music award for which he was also nominated – and have absolutely no idea what I did with any of them. I did find two Hugo rocket pins in a Euro change box the other day, though, for whatever that’s worth.

Achievement speaks for itself and should be pursued for its own sake. Merit is not determined by those who are established in their industry and seek to control it.

UPDATE: It’s worth noting that JRR Tolkien never won a Hugo Award or a Nebula Award, and never even made the shortlist for one.

Although certainly not obscure on release, it [The Lord of the Rings] was not immediately regarded as a classic and the American WorldCon attendees (the two ceremonies were held in Cleveland, Ohio and New York City, respectively) seem to have pretty much ignored it. The 1955 Best Hugo was instead given to Mark Clifton and Frank Riley’s They’d Rather Be Right and the 1956 award to Robert A. Heinlein’s Double Star.

In 1966, the Hugo Awards introduced a one-off “Best All-Time Series” category. It was widely assumed by many (but most notably Isaac Asimov) that the award was introduced solely to reward The Lord of the Rings and to make up for the book’s initial publication being overlooked. Surprisingly, the award went instead to Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, as it then was.

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