Slimy underbelly #1: Clay Travis

I’m stewing in my own juices here — crippled, homebound, going stir crazy — and one of the things driving me nuts is the state of American media, since I’m stuck watching so much of it. I have noticed that one of the drivers of bad media is these wankers that promote the worst of the underbelly of the country with panel shows, debates, interviews, and far more attention than they deserve, and I could criticize, for example, Piers Morgan, or Joe Rogan, who are constantly dredging up horrible people and propping them up on camera entirely because they have opinions that align with their own ghastly take on the world. I don’t want to waste time on all these horrible people raking in big money by finding equally horrible people to confirm their views.

What I find most appalling are these “experts” who are nothing of the kind, who get paraded about on television for being “authentic,” when they are clearly people prominent for being ignoramuses. I want to take a look at the slimy underbelly, the jumped-up pundits who get prominent airtime for being voices of True America, the dumbasses who are encouraged to express their worthless opinions, and are rewarded with excessive attention in the press.

First up, that extremely punchable face to the right belongs to Clay Travis, a goober I would never have gotten to know if he weren’t being repeatedly consulted as a smart guy on politics. He’s not. He’s a Trump fanatic, through and through.

He’s been frequently quoted for his grading of Trump’s performance.

What is my verdict on the first 100 days of Trump? This is what I voted for. I think if you were arguing, if you voted Trump, and I imagine a lot of you did, some of you did not, that’s fine, if you voted Trump, I can’t imagine you giving him anything other than an A or B. Right? I don’t see C, I don’t see D, I don’t see F.

He never gives specifics — he just gives him an A overall. As someone who professionally grades students on their performance, I am offended. You have to have rubrics and criteria that allow you to judge work, and to give productive guidance on improving it. Travis is a child who thinks a grade is just an arbitrary trophy you hand on someone because you like them.

His “grade” is also indefensible: how can you think a felon who repeatedly tramples on the constitution, who is shredding the social safety net, who is demolishing vital scientific institutions, who wants to destroy public and higher education, is doing good work? A wanna-be autocrat who is arresting and deporting people without due process does not deserve a good grade.

His reasons for supporting Trump are transparently stupid.

“Since we’re talking honestly about politics here, I have a question for you,” McLaughlin said. “My question is, and I want you to be really honest with me here, did you regret voting for Trump after his presidency ended in the January 6th riot?”

“No. I wish I could have voted for Trump ten times in 2020,” Travis replied.

“Really?” McLaughlin reacted.

“I think Joe Biden’s a disaster. And, I think one of the things that’s fascinating, you know, Ronald Reagan said he didn’t leave the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party left him,” Travis said.

Travis went on to explain that the crux of his current political ideology focuses on him being “anti-cancel culture.”

He’s a free speech warrior who supports a man who sues people who criticize him, who uses the power of his office to force conformity, and he doesn’t recognize that he’s a hypocrite. He’s obsessed with Colin Kaepernick, who dared to kneel during the playing of the national anthem at the start of football games, yet now Travis has the gall to claim that he is “anti-cancel culture.”

And now, as a reward, he gets invited to babble on Piers Morgan. He is invited to do an in-person interview with Donald Trump on Airforce One. You might wonder, what are his qualifications to opine on politics or economics or civil rights?

He’s a podcaster.

Nothing wrong with podcasting, but it is not sufficient to make you an authority on pretty much anything. Anyone can get a microphone and start pontificating on the internet.

He’s also sports podcaster, possibly the most useless kind of them all. He has a site called Outkick where he basically makes predictions for sports bettors, leavened with his reactionary takes on politics. Maybe he’s really good at calling the outcomes of football games, I don’t know, but nothing about his profession makes him qualified to talk about much of anything outside sports.

But now, his stupid punchable face and unsupported opinions pop up all the time on the internet.

He’s the kind of negligible, uninteresting slime who happily acts as a useful idiot for conservatives to bounce their bad ideas off of — he’ll just affirm any foolishness, because that’s how he gets paid in money and reputation. The A he gives to Trump is worthless, but audiences will lap it up and ask for more.

That’s our current problem. It’s not just that media will promote bullshit, but that there’s no shortage of people they can find to parrot it, and that the general public lacks the capacity to question anything.

I’m afraid I’ll never run out of these know-nothings to highlight.

Loon sighting confirmed!

I told you that Brian Lauer is an ignorant buffoon, but you shouldn’t trust my opinion alone. Last night, Mark Reid and Dr. Dan worked over the same presentation and came to the same conclusion, so it’s official: Lauer is a kook.

But perhaps you are cautiously skeptical. You need more evidence. You want direct evidence from Lauer himself. Here’s the introduction to a podcast on Real Science Radio (it’s not real science) which is just conspiracy theories stacked on conspiracy theories.

RSR host Fred Williams is joined by Brian Lauer to unravel the World Economic Forum’s “The Great Reset”, a consortium of wealthy and powerful evolutionists looking to use the pandemic as an excuse to push their worldview. On the surface, it’s just another socialist economic plan in a similar vein to FDR’s disastrous New Deal and LBJ’s failed Great Society, but this time it’s driven by the flawed science of materialism and climate change. Like its predecessors, the underlying false assumptions will end up hurting the economy and tearing away at the middle class, further dividing society and fueling class warfare. “The Great Reset” globalists have posted 8 predictions of what the world will look like in 2030 if governments buy into their short-sighted ideas. Better stock up on T-bones now!

But even more sinister are a litany of ideas hidden in the subterfuge of “The Great Reset”, such as biometric surveillance and transhumanism. A key advisor to “The Great Reset” is Yuval Noah Harari, a history professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While he warns that transhumanism can be pushed too far, such as digital dictatorships with total control over their population, his false worldview steeped in the fake science of materialism leads him to the silly belief that humans are “hackable animals” that can have their total consciousness manipulated such that “free will is over”. For more, check out this brief video Brian found and hear it for yourself! You can also hear more from his talk at a recent creation conference.

I choked and passed out at wealthy and powerful evolutionists, so the rest was just noise.

It’s the confidence, stupid

I ran across this ridiculous comment, and it struck me that the interesting thing isn’t that Joseph Martin is outright wrong, but that he presents his stupid ideas with such absolute confidence.

Men, even today, would rather marry a virgin than not, but a virgin woman today is like trying to find a needle in a hay stack. The reason why men would indeed prefer to marry a virgin woman is because when a virgin bride marries a man, a woman’s vagina is molded to the man to whom she married, and that is a virgin brides vagina is becomes a mold to her man’s penis, and if a woman then cheats on her husband, the husband of a virgin bride then knows her wife has cheated on him because that mold has been broken, lol. Although this is true, women can also do vagina exercises that strengthen their vagina muscles, and allow a women to then control her vagina in pleasing any man she may lay with, and if a woman trains and maintains the muscles in her vagina, she can then even pick up a pencil with her vagina from just having control of the muscles in her vagina, lol, and when a woman has such control of her vagina muscles, can fool any man with regards to her faithfulness to him.

Vaginas don’t “mold” themselves to a penis. They’re flexible and muscular, and they don’t conform permanently to the first object that enters them; they also don’t evert themselves to grasp things. This series of assertions is written by a man who has never been intimate with a woman.

The weird thing is the certainty. He has to know that he has no direct personal information about the subject, yet he goes ahead and says it in public. There’s a psychopathy here that I think is incredibly common — we live in a country tainted by the collective sin of certainty that people use to make decisions about everything, politics, religion, relationships, whatever. Have you noticed that this is Donald Trump strategy? Just state half-assed nonsense with blithe confidence, and then he finds willing believers who will follow him without question, simply because he said something they want to hear.

No pierogis for Mr Dershowitz!

This is a pathetic, pitiful performance. Dershowitz is basically begging for a token pierogi to demonstrate that he isn’t despised and ostracized.

Former Jeffrey Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz was yelled out of a farmer’s market in Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday after he again tried to convince a food vendor into selling him pierogies.

One week after he threatened to sue a “bigoted vendor” for refusing to serve him, Dershowitz returned to the scene on Wednesday in a second failed attempt at securing Polish dumplings.

“I’m here in an effort to try to restore community and to ask you to sell me pierogi in the interest of keeping the island together so we don’t have to have two pierogi stands: one for anti-Zionists and one for people who will sell to anybody,” Dershowitz told the vendor. “So I’d ask you to please just sell me any one of your products to show that you’re prepared to sell to anybody and not allow your anti-Zionism to decide which people you’ll sell to.”

That’s a standard bigot approach: you’re not allowed to protest against the Israeli genocide in any way, or that makes you an anti-Zionist (which is OK) or an anti-Semite (gross disgusting bigotry). As it turns out, Dershowitz isn’t just anti-Palestinian and pro-genocide — it’s fine to turn their rhetoric right back at them) but is also pro-sexual assault and anti-LGBTQ.

After Dershowitz then tried to hand the pierogi vendor a signed copy of his book, which was politely refused, the vendor said, “I am very surprised that you’re here because of the things that you’ve been saying about us and the business online… I really do not appreciate what you’ve been sharing in the last week.”

Dershowitz interrupted, “It’s true,” to which the vendor replied, “Is it true? You have proof that I am an anti-Semite?”

The conversation devolved further after Dershowitz used the wrong pronoun in reference to the vendor.

“My pronouns are they/them, and you’ve continued to misgender me,” protested the vendor.

More irony: the vendor, Krem, that Dershowitz claims is anti-Semitic, is Jewish themselves.

* I, Krem, am Jewish. Members of my immediate family live in Israel. I love Shabbat and baking challah. My friends call me “Rabbi Krem”, and I have personal relationships with both Rabbis on-island.
* We are proud co-owners of a Martha’s Vineyard business that deeply values its relationships with its partners, vendors, collaborators, and most importantly, its clientele.
* We are a minority-owned (LGBTQ+) operation. Krem is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.
* Prior to this incident, Good Pierogi had never refused service to anybody.
* We stand against those who harm or seek to harm others as well as those that would defend them.
* Finally, we don’t back down to bullies – no matter their size.

No one likes you, Alan Dershowitz. You’re a sad desperate creep.

It’s a circus all the way to the top

Speaking of incompetent clowns running major federal institutions, Linda McMahon was speaking at the National Conservative Student Conference. She was being interviewed by Scott Walker, the former governor of Wisconsin, a notorious anti-union conservative zombie, when students hacked the sound system and played insults, like that she was a corrupt billionaire, and pumped out calliope music over their conversation.

http://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1953149542456574062

Very appropriate. The name of the tune is, ironically, “Entry of the Gladiators.” I think it ought to be played for the entire collection of bozos Trump has jumped up to high office.

McMahon isn’t at all qualified to head the department of education, which is why she got the job — she’s supposed to wreck it from within.

P.S. Sorry, WordPress doesn’t handle Twitter links very well anymore. Try clicking on this: https://x.com/atrupar/status/1953149542456574062.

The lies will kill us all

Don’t you know? RFK jr is not anti-vax. He supports safe vaccines.

News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither. I am pro-safety, Kennedy said in his opening statement before the Senate Committee on Finance, prompting a protester to shout, “He lies!” Kennedy added that all of his children are vaccinated—a decision he has previously said he regrets—and said vaccines play a critical role in health care.

He lies! Those two words need to be written on his tombstone, preferably sooner than later.

We know he lies because he just slashed half a billion dollars from the budget of the department specifically tasked with developing and testing new vaccines.

The US Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday it would terminate 22 federal contracts for mRNA-based vaccines, questioning the safety of a technology credited with helping end the Covid pandemic and saving millions of lives.

The unit, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, helps companies develop medical supplies to address public health threats, and had provided billions of dollars for development of vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic.

HHS said the wind-down includes cancellation of a contract awarded to Moderna for the late-stage development of its bird flu vaccine for humans and the right to purchase the shots, as previously reported in May.

He basically wants to kill mRNA vaccine development, the technology that saved millions of lives in the recent pandemic. His excuse? In addition to his usual claim that the vaccines contain fetal tissue and DNA fragments — all false, and even if it were true, what does he think is present in the roadkill he eats? — he claims that mRNA vaccines are ineffective against viruses that affect the upper respiratory tract.

Kennedy said the HHS is terminating these programs because data show these vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu”, but did not offer scientific evidence.

“We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate,” Kennedy said.

COVID was an upper respiratory infection, and the mRNA vaccines seem to have helped protect millions of people against that, but RatFucker Jr is going to just ignore that. He lies, and is wrong.

KENNEDY: “As the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don’t perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract.”

THE FACTS: His claim is contradicted by scientific evidence. Countless studies show that vaccinated individuals fare far better against COVID-19 infections than those who are unvaccinated, while others have estimated that COVID-19 vaccines prevented millions of deaths during the global pandemic. The mRNA vaccines do not prevent respiratory diseases entirely, experts say. Rather, they can prevent more serious illness that leads to complications and death. For example, an mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 may prevent an infection in the upper respiratory tract that feels like a bad cold from spreading to the lower respiratory tract, where it could affect one’s ability to breathe.

While he’s cutting the budget for specious reasons, he’s also telling the scientists he doesn’t want to pay to pursue a new/old line of research.

He has also ordered a sweeping new study on the long-debunked link between vaccines and autism.

There is no link between vaccines and autism. There is a link between mRNA vaccines and preventing death.

He lies.

Avi Loeb makes stuff up about another space rock

3I/ATLAS

Avi Loeb, the ridiculous Harvard astronomer who claimed that the interstellar object ʻOumuamua was a technological artifact, has battened on a different rock that was discovered in July called 3I/ATLAS as the object of his alien fantasies. He’s published his explanation in an in-house journal (which is not peer-reviewed) in a paper titled Is the Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Alien Technology?. The answer is “no”, but Avi really wants it to be “yes.” To give him a chance to make his argument, here’s the abstract.

At this early stage of its passage through our Solar System, 3I/ATLAS, the recently discovered interstellar interloper, has displayed various anomalous characteristics, determined from photometric and astrometric observations. As largely a pedagogical exercise, in this paper we present additional analysis into the astrodynamics of 3I/ATLAS, and hypothesize that this object could be technological, and possibly hostile as would be expected from the ’Dark Forest’ resolution to the ’Fermi Paradox’. We show that 3I/ATLAS approaches surprisingly close to Venus, Mars and Jupiter, with a probability of ≲ 0.005%. Furthermore the low retrograde tilt of 3I/ATLAS’s orbital plane to the ecliptic offers various benefits to an Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (ETI), since it allows the object access to our planet with relative impunity. The eclipse by the Sun from Earth of 3I/ATLAS at perihelion, would allow it to conduct a clandestine reverse Solar Oberth Manoeuvre, an optimal high-thrust strategy for interstellar spacecraft to brake and stay bound to the Sun. An optimal intercept of Earth would entail an arrival in late November/early December of 2025, and also, a non-gravitational acceleration of ∼ 5.9 × 10−5 au day−2, normalized at 1 au from the Sun, would indicate an intent to intercept the planet Jupiter, not far off its path, and a strategy to rendezvous with it after perihelion.

The paper is full of the technical details about the orbital mechanics of this object. It’s unpleasantly dry and boring, with occasional insertions of his wild speculations. Fortunately, he also has a blog post titled Is the Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Alien Technology? which is enriched for the Loeb lunacy, so I’ll mainly write about that.

Finding a big rock or comet of interstellar origin is not a revolutionary discovery — it’s interesting, but not something that is necessarily indicative that aliens are hitching a ride on it. His justification for suggesting that it’s an alien artifact are tenuous and based entirely on speculations about its trajectory. For instance, it’s approaching on roughly the ecliptic plane.

The retrograde orbital plane (defined by the orbital angular momentum vector) of 3I/ATLAS around the Sun lies within 5 degrees of that of Earth — the so-called ecliptic plane. The likelihood for that coincidence out of all random orientations is 0.2%.

So it’s unlikely that a rock flying through interstellar space would have the particular approach angle that this one has. But wouldn’t any specific trajectory be unlikely? So what?

Another coincidence is that it’s going to pass sorta close to Venus, Mars, and Jupiter.

For its orbital parameters, 3I/ATLAS is synchronized to approach unusually close to Venus (0.65au where 1au is the Earth-Sun separation), Mars (0.19au) and Jupiter (0.36au), with a cumulative probability of 0.005% relative to orbits with the same orbital parameters but a random arrival time.

Therefore it might be a probe that’s sent here to inspect the planets. It’s checking us out!

You might be thinking that zooming by Venus, Mars, and Jupiter is fine, but what about Earth? It’s not coming anywhere near us, which is evidence that it is a probe.

3I/ATLAS achieves perihelion on the opposite side of the Sun relative to Earth. This could be intentional to avoid detailed observations from Earth-based telescopes when the object is brightest or when gadgets are sent to Earth from that hidden vantage point.

So it’s checking us out, but specifically avoiding being detected by us. Convenient.

But the aliens must be fascinated by us! So he postulates that 3I/ATLAS will fire up its engines and change its trajectory out of our sight, on the other side of the sun, so it can intercept the Earth.

The near alignment of the retrograde trajectory of 3I/ATLAS with the ecliptic plane offers various benefits to an extraterrestrial intelligence, since it allows a spacecraft to access Earth with relative impunity. The eclipse of 3I/ATLAS by the Sun at perihelion for observers at Earth, would allow a spacecraft to conduct a clandestine reverse Solar Oberth maneuver, an optimal high-thrust strategy for interstellar spacecraft to brake and stay bound to the Sun. An optimal intercept of Earth would entail an arrival in late November or early December of 2025. Detection of a non-gravitational acceleration could also indicate an intent to intercept Jupiter, not far off the path of 3I/ATLAS, and a strategy to rendezvous with it after perihelion.

Note that this kind of maneuvering would suggest that 3I/ATLAS is an alien artifact, but it has not been observed. He can’t use a hypothetical motion that has not been seen as evidence that the object is capable of maneuvering. All of his evidence that 3I/ATLAS is an artifact is about remarkable changes in trajectory that have not been observed.

He has NOTHING to support his hypothesis that 3I/ATLAS is alien technology! The idea is that if it suddenly changes its path and approaches Earth, then it must be driven by some novel propulsive force. And, yeah, if a bunch of little green men pop out of it and use flying saucers to visit us, then at last Avi Loeb will be vindicated.

But of course, he does not predict that.

Our paper is contingent on a remarkable but testable hypothesis that 3I/ATLAS is a functioning technological artifact, to which I and my two co-authors do not necessarily ascribe.

So he does not predict that, but if it happens, he’s staking his claim on it. Very cheesy. He’s going to have a future as a television psychic, vague and making predictions so broad that they can cover all eventualities.

But there’s more! He wants us to prepare for the alien invasion!

1. The consequences, should the hypothesis turn out to be correct, could potentially be dire for humanity, and would possibly require defensive measures to be undertaken (though these might prove futile).

2. The hypothesis is an interesting exercise in its own right, and is fun to explore, irrespective of its likely validity.

He doesn’t actually believe 3I/ATLAS is an alien artifact, but we’d better start preparing defensive measures (what would those be, I wonder? Like maybe back in the 15th century someone should have suggested to the native Americans to prepare defensive measures.)

And no, it’s not an interesting exercise. He also admits that his speculation are a pedagogical exercise, and that it is probably just a comet.

Our paper is largely a pedagogical exercise, with interesting realizations worthy of a record in the scientific literature. By far, the most likely outcome will be that 3I/ATLAS is a completely natural interstellar object, probably a comet, and we await the astronomical data to support this likely origin.

He went ahead and spread his unfounded hyperbole, though. The story has made it to the NY Post, and you can guess what the headline was: ‘Possibly hostile’ alien threat detected in unknown interstellar object, a shocking new study claims.

I have to give some credit to the NY Post, though — they actually talked to real astronomers and got their opinion of Loeb’s hypothesis.

“All evidence points to this being an ordinary comet that was ejected from another solar system, just as countless billions of comets have been ejected from our own solar system,” added Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada who studies solar system dynamics, Live Science reported.

“Astronomers all around the world have been thrilled at the arrival of 3I/ATLAS, collaborating to use advanced telescopes to learn about this visitor,” Chris Lintott, an astronomer at the University of Oxford who helped simulate 3I/ATLAS’s galactic origins, told Live Science. “Any suggestion that it’s artificial is nonsense on stilts, and is an insult to the exciting work going on to understand this object.”

That ought to be the take-away on this story, that it’s “nonsense on stilts,” and it ought to diminish Avi Loeb’s already tattered reputation.

Transvestigators are nuts

And Candace Owens is their queen. This is an unbelievable claim from a person who has been spiraling into lunacy for a long time.

In March, conservative commentator Candace Owens revived an absurd conspiracy theory with a YouTube video titled “Is France’s First Lady a Man?” according to the complaint.

Promoted widely on X, Owens said the conspiracy theory was, “likely the biggest scandal in political history.”

Wait, wait. I’m not giving her wacky claim an ounce of credibility — I’ll trust what Brigitte Macron and her husband say over a pronouncement from a notorious Internet wackaloon — but even if it were true, so what. There’s nothing criminal, scandalous, or illegal about a trans woman in politics. It is scandalous that Candace Owens is fine with making random accusations.

Since then, Owens has produced numerous videos about Brigitte Macron for her nearly 4.5 million YouTube subscribers, including a multi-part series called “Becoming Brigitte.”

The lawsuit further claims she has also sold merchandise promoting the claim.

She’s pumping out multiple videos on this topic? That’s a “you” problem, Candace, you’re obsessed.

The Macrons have already provided lots of evidence that Brigitte is a woman. Shouldn’t the fact that she gave birth to three children be enough to satisfy even the wackiest transvestigator? Time for a legal solution.

The Macrons are seeking punitive damages against Owens and her business entities for 22 counts of defamation, false light, and defamation by implication, the statement said.

Clare declined to say the amount of money the Macrons would seek but warned that if Owens continues to double-down on the claim, “it’ll be a substantial award.”

I hope this bankrupts Candace.