The Post-Partisan Emporium

Thanks to Saint Jimmy (Russia American) for bringing this article to our attention... MOCKING THE MEDIA There’s a truck outside the Desmarais Building at the University of Ottawa, where I work, which has the words ‘Main Stream Media’ painted on its side, with a big red cross through them. The truck’s part of the so-called ‘Freedom Convoy’ that has been occupying much of our downtown for about three weeks now. I can’t say that I support it, and like most people I know I think it’s high time that the truckers drove off back to wherever it is they came from. But the truck I mentioned raises an important question – why the distrust of the ‘mainstream media’? If you want to know the answer, you have only to look at this week’s coverage of all things Russo-Ukrainian. Take, for instance, this picture I took yesterday of the website of  The Sun  newspaper – not exactly highbrow, I know, but popular and thus influential. First off is a decidedly precise prediction of when Russia would ...

THE NICE REVOLUTION CANADA’S (SECOND) POPULIST MOMENT? The Evolved Psyche In recent years, there has been the Velvet Revolution, the Orange Revolution, the Cedar Revolution, and even the Singing Revolution. 1  Leave it to Canadians to create the Nice Revolution. As though driven to live up to their national stereotype, the Canadians who have gathered in Ottawa to protest their government’s draconian COVID measures have displayed a massive outbreak of niceness, kindness and hugs. As some of the signs say, it has been the winter of love. Yes, this is what a populist insurgency looks like in today’s Canada. Now, it hasn’t always been quite like that. As it happens, I wrote my doctoral thesis (for all the good it did me) on the Canadian populist movement of the early 20th century. In large measure beginning as a spillover event from the U.S. populist insurgency of the late 19th century. That was a movement fueled by farmers, rather than truckers. And when I pick up the occasional signa...

If This Is How America COMPETES, We're Going to Lose Plus: College students and speech, state-funded pre-K fail, and more... ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN   |   1.26.2022 The America COMPETES Act of 2022 is a sprawling mess of spending and nonsense. House Democrats are rallying behind a 2,912-page bill that's allegedly concerned with addressing supply chain issues and keeping U.S. manufacturing and technology competitive. But like anything Democrats do these days, the bill can't simply address one main issue or a few critical needs. Instead, it tries to insert the government into every aspect of all sorts of industries and markets and pretend that bureaucrats can solve complex social and cultural issues. For instance, this bill addresses everything from "combating sexual harassment in science" to seeing that more science grants go to people with caregiving responsibilities; retention and advancement of women and minorities in science and tech careers; subverting censorsh...

How the CDC Abandoned Science Mass youth hospitalizations, COVID-induced diabetes, and other myths from the brave new world of science as political propaganda BY VINAY PRASAD T he main federal agency guiding America’s pandemic policy is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which sets widely adopted policies on masking, vaccination, distancing, and other mitigation efforts to slow the spread of COVID and ensure the virus is less morbid when it leads to infection. The CDC is, in part, a scientific agency—they use facts and principles of science to guide policy—but they are also fundamentally a political agency: The director is appointed by the president of the United States, and the CDC’s guidance often balances public health and welfare with other priorities of the executive branch. Throughout this pandemic, the CDC has been a poor steward of that balance, pushing a series of scientific results that are severely deficient. This research is plagued with classic errors and biases, and do...