UPDATE III (8/13/022): TAKE NOTE: “The American Gestapo A.K.A. FBI” by Paul Craig Roberts: DOJ, Judiciary, FBI: “…none of these people are good people. They are not people we can have any confidence in. These are not people we would let our sons and daughters marry. These are very bad people. Yet these very bad people are in control of our lives. ..”

****************
08.08.22 @ 9:21 pm:
Ashleigh Banfield of News Nation, ACTUALLY covers the raid of Trump’s Florida mansion, whereas other leftist channels are lying low. Waiting to have the matter focus-group tested given the impending primaries? I bet they are.

Banfield lets a conservative radio mouth, one Bill Cunningham, roar about 4th Amendment violations and the revolt the raid will ignite among Deplorables, all crucial points.

News Nation clearly provides more substantial coverage than does Fox News, which, unlike Cunningham, hardly mentions the Constitution, and only rabbits on about how unprecedented the raid is and about logistics, such as:

“If only the FBI coordinated better with Trump”.

Fox is also indulging in “what aboutism”, namely, “If this were Hillary Clinton… blah, blah”. As I said, nothing substantial. These people aren’t smart. Tucker excepted, Fox News is about ratings, not deep reflection.

Violations of due process, in the case of the Mar-a-Lago raid today, in search of classified material and presidential records removed, have become more common in police state America than in Apartheid-era South Africa, which, as chronicled in Into The Cannibal’s Pot, was unsurprisingly legalistic and by-the-book. But then, rooted in Roman-Dutch law, South Africa was a minority ruled, first world civilization at the tip of Africa.

UPDATE II (8/9/022): Fox News continues to voice support for the “men and women of the FBI.” It’s only those at the top who stink, said a guest agent. Speechless. The FBI is among the most corrupt government agencies.

When in recent memory has the FBI stopped an attack on the homeland other than attacks originating in its own entrapment schemes, where a low-IQ Abdul is persuaded to purchase explosives from the FBI “for Jihad” and then is “caught” in the act. A presser follows. (HERE)

The FBI is progressive to its core. And Trump hired the last of its major swamp creatures. President Trump hired Christopher Wray, whose heroes, as stated in his confirmation hearings, are Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey. How did Trump imagine Christopher Wray, who looks up to the two and swam in the same polluted waters, would reform the FBI? (“Hiring Another Swamp Creature For The FBI“)

Michelle Malkin offers an excellent summary of FBI depredation in “FBI: Feds Behaving Incorrigibly.”

Notes in the margins:
RIP Olivia Newton John. She had had breast cancer. It always comes back to claim its victims, eventually. “Seize the day” has become a cliché, but it should not be. The passing of a vital, rather young woman is a reminder of how often we squander the gifts and opportunities we are afforded, because we would rather play it safe than experience life to the fullest.

I loved this one: Olivia Newton John, 1974, “I Honestly Love You”:

So-called musicians today lack the emotional depth, the facility with language and the skill (for chord progression) to compose a love song. When we were growing up, these kinds of aching tunes were in abundance.

UPDATE (8/9/022): Another youngish woman felled, aged 64: veteran anchor Uma Pemmaraju. Time is something we run out of fast.

NEW COLUMN: Conservation IS Conservative: BLM? Black-And-Yellow Lives Matter

Argument, Conservatism, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Reason

Black-And-Yellow Lives Matter: On Driving Your Local Liberal More Loco

Comedy & Humor, Conflict, Culture, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

4 Replies

Context: Our mountain neighborhood is blessed with a unique layout. The lower-neighborhood stretch faces green embankments, angled at approximately 60 degrees. This lovely midsection is abutted each side by the road.

I like my incline to be natural, which means that now, the embankment is supposed to be blanketed with wild flowers. But not if the local, progressive, statist tyrant has his way, and he always does.

It has been decreed that a close shave of the neighborhood embankments be the rule, for fear of … as Basil Fawlty would screech, “Fa-Fa-Fa-fire.” That is ridiculous, because the grass is predominantly green, and, you know, … the asphalt. It acts as a firebreak.

But progressive statists are not good at loving a neighbor as thyself (one of the Ten Commandments), which means practicing the live-and-let-live motto. Neither are progressives environmentalists. When it comes down to brass tacks, they don’t much like the natural world.

But I do.

So mow we do. But we leave the lovely embankment dotted with little alien-like crop-circles of wild flowers and grasses. And, I had a signpost made to place alongside my wild flower crop-circles. It reads:

“HELP THE BEES POLLINATE
BLACK-AND-YELLOW LIVES MATTER”

In one fell-swoop, the local progressive vigilante is being taunted for his lack of brotherly bee love. Mocking the Black Lives Matter catechism is a heresy that drives this progressive prototype more loco than he already is.

Mental Maladies: Tucker And Mainstream Discover What Thomas Szasz Explained In 1960

Argument, Logic, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Science, The Therapuetic State

2 Replies

About the lack of empirical evidence for so-called organic nature of “mental disease,” Tucker Carlson said TODAY, 07.25.22, (well, almost) what this column wrote first in 2002 and countless times since, in titles archived under Psychiatry and The Therapeutic State category:

“Cruise And The Psychiatric Shamans,” (2005) “EVIL, NOT ILL” (4/2007), “Conservatives For Abolishing The Fact Of Evil (2015),” “School Shootings: A Moral-Health, Not Mental-Health, Problem” (2018).

Tucker discovers what we wrote in “Broken Brains?” (January 16, 2002):

“… Consider also that there is no credible, scientific, peer-reviewed evidence for the organic basis of aberrant behavior, and you grasp the chicanery that surrounds the claim that strange or bad conduct is caused by ‘chemical imbalances’ in the brain. …”

The more rigorous and honest clinicians will concede that drawing causal relationships between “mental illness” and “chemical imbalances” is impossible. That prescription medication often helps misbehaved or unhappy individuals is no proof that strange behavior is an organic disease. One can chemically castrate a pedophile. But does this demonstrate that molesting kids is an organic disease? Never. It proves only that chemical castration can at times reduce recidivism in people who have chosen to victimize children.

Clear analytical thinking is at the root of solid science, it precedes empiricism.

Roughly 75 percent of the value of “antidepressant” drugs is due to the placebo effect. And talk therapies—cognitive-behavioral therapy in particular—can have equal or better results. Veracity permits only that we limit our causal conclusions to saying that assorted treatment modalities sometimes help people with behavioral problems, nothing more.

MORE.

My mentor, the great Dr. Thomas Szasz, wrote and proved all this analytically in the Myth of Mental illness, 1961. His books I studied at university, back when thought was taught. Both Tom Szasz and I lauded Tom Cruise when the actor attacked psychiatry so very cogently.

See “Cruise And The Psychiatric Shamans” (2005):

The psychiatric peanut gallery has blasted actor Tom Cruise for insisting correctly that there’s more voodoo to the profession than veracity. Cruise’s instincts are good: “Psychiatrists don’t have a test that can prove that a so-called mental illness is actually organic in origin, I wrote. Rigorous clinician —members of the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology come to mind —concede that drawing causal connections between “mental illness” and “chemical imbalances” is impossible. That prescription medication often helps misbehaved or unhappy individuals is no proof that strange behavior is an organic disease —placebos or cognitive-behavioral therapy, for example, are as effective.

Tucker Carlson had summoned some limey, a quick-fix popularizer, to speak to these issues.