Like the Scottish independence vote, I can’t make up my mind on the November elections. I think the country would be best served with a massive Republican victory. They could bottle up Barry’s judicial nominees for two years and stop his planned amnesty. Barry would be a lame duck and spend the next two years playing dress up with Reggie Love. The Republicans would do nothing to address the many things that ail the nation, but at least they would probably staunch the bleeding.

On the other hand, a loss would throw cold water on Conservative Inc and the Wets in the GOP. I fear I would blow a funny fuse watching guys like Hannity burst into tears on election night. The crew at National Review would be wearing black arm bands for a week. But, there’s the danger they draw the wrong lesson and lurch even further to the left. If they can look at the 2010 election and conclude they had to try and compromise with Barry, there’s probably no amount of evidence they can open their eyes and see.

It is with mixed emotions I link to this story in the Lunatic Post.

Democrats are now (very slightly) favored to hold the Senate majority on Nov. 4, according to Election Lab, The Post’s statistical model of the 2014 midterm elections.

Election Lab puts Democrats’ chances of retaining their majority at 51 percent — a huge change from even a few months ago, when the model predicted that Republicans had a better than 80 percent chance of winning the six seats they need to take control. (Worth noting: When the model showed Republicans as overwhelming favorites, our model builders — led by George Washington University’s John Sides — warned that the model could and would change as more actual polling — as opposed to historical projections — played a larger and larger role in the calculations. And, in Republicans’ defense, no one I talked to ever thought they had an 80 percent chance of winning the majority.)

So, what exactly has changed to move the Election Lab projection? Three big things:

* Colorado: On Aug. 27 — the last time I wrote a big piece on the model — Election Lab said Sen. Mark Udall (D) had a 64 percent chance of winning. Today he has a 94 percent chance.

* Iowa: Two weeks ago, the model gave state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) a 72 percent chance of winning. Today she has a 59 percent chance.

* Kansas: Republican Sen. Pat Roberts’s reelection race wasn’t even on the radar on Aug. 27. Today, Election Lab predicts that he has just a 68 percent chance of winning.

In addition to that trio of moves in Democrats’ direction, Louisiana has moved slightly in Democrats’ favor (from a 57 percent chance of losing to a 53 percent chance), as has North Carolina (a 97 percent chance of winning now as opposed to a 92 percent chance on Aug. 27).

The fapping sounds from Chris Cillizza’s cubicle are what you think. He is one the hardest of hard thumping lunatics in the fake data journalism rackets. The “data lab” at the Lunatic Post is a room covered in posters of Barry. I’d also note that around this time in 2006 the GOP was making similar noises about polling. They were crushed  two months later.

So says this story from The Week;

A new study from the American Journal of Political Science indicates that different political affiliations may actually correspond with different body odors.

The researchers, led by Brown University political scientist Rose McDermott, found that conservatives and liberals smell dissimilar. While the difference is small, it is apparently significant enough that we subconsciously prefer the scent of those who vote like we do. “It appears nature stacks the deck to make politically similar partners more attractive to each other in unconscious ways,” the researchers wrote. “Conservatives smell like flowers and sunshine, while Liberals smell faintly of raw sewage and rotten eggs.”

OK, I made that last part up. My point is if it did say that, people would buy it. Social science is not science and nonsense like this is the reason.

Previous research has found a number of other political view correlations with unknown degrees of biological and cultural influences. From eating preferences (the left likes strawberry jelly, while the right favors grape) to alcohol choices (Republicans like brown liquors; Democrats drink the clear stuff), conservatives and liberals live as distinctly as they vote.

Other differences are more psychological: Conservatives will look at an unpleasant image 15 percent longer than liberals, and they’re also more likely to keep an organized dorm room in college. In fact, one study showed that conservatives are more generally conscientious and liberals are more open to new experiences. Libertarians display some psychological aspects of both groups, albeit with a far lighter helping of respect for authority.

I’m fond of pointing out that the hive minded obsess over boundaries. You see it in these crackpot studies. The Right, or what pass for the Right these days, cares not a wit about this stuff. In fact, the Right has taken to heart the baloney sold by the Cult regarding human biodiversity. They really think we’re all the same. The Left is under no such illusion. They know damn well there is a difference between those inside the walls and those outside the walls. Hence this obsession for these types of studies.

Back in 1976 the argument against Reagan and conservatives in general was they could not win. It was not an unreasonable argument, given what happened to Goldwater in 1964. Nixon winning in 1968 seemed to reinforce the idea that the winning hand for the GOP was a hawkish liberalism versus the Democrat’s dovish liberalism. For conservatives and libertarians that was a revolting development, but political parties are about winning elections and distributing the spoils to their supporters. That’s the theory, anyway.

The funny thing is this debate rarely happens with Democrats. The American media is marinated in liberalism. The cultural elites are way out there where the buses don’t run. They lose faith in the Democrats now and again, but they have no problem yanking the party back over to the left every decade. I’m fond of pointing out that in the 1970’s Ted Cruz would have been a typical Democrat. In the 1980’s he would have been a moderate Democrat. Today he is extreme right wing Republican of the most extreme kind.

Since 2008 the GOP has been locked in a battle between the Wets and Dries of the party. Recently Libertarian weirdos have wandered into the fight, but they really have no place in the party. The fight is largely a cultural fight and the mere mention of culture causes libertarians to soil themselves and run away screaming. Putting that aside, the fight is between those who wish to strike deals with the Liberal Democrats and those who want to take a pipe to Nancy Pelosi. In 2010, Tea Party types who lost were held up by the Wets as an example of their side’s argument. Mitt Romney was waved around by the Dries after 2012 as an example of why you can’t win with a limp noodle.

History, polling and logistics say the GOP should wipe the floor with the Liberal Democrats in November. Obama is less popular than Bush in 2006, according to some polls. The Wets made sure they had their people in keys races so they would not be derailed by a weirdo claiming to be a witch or an old perv talking about rape. I think you can’t come up with a better scenario for the Wets than what they have right now. If they win the Senate by a few seats, then they win the argument. Slightly less liberal than the Liberal Democrats is the winner.

You really have to admire the ruthlessness with which the Wets have snuffed out the Dries. The only victory I can think of is the upset of Cantor in the GOP primary. In Kansas the Wets carried a corpse to victory over the Tea Party candidate. In Mississippi, they played the race card carry another corpse to victory. In open races, all of the Wets won. They even found a way to split the anti-Graham vote in South Carolina so that ridiculous pansy could keep his seat. I’ve followed politics for a long time and this is about as thorough of a house cleaning as I can recall.

That’s what makes this post by Jim Geraghty interesting.

It is not quite time for Republicans to panic about the Senate races in Colorado, Iowa, and North Carolina, but it’s worth ratcheting up the concern another notch.

In Iowa, it’s been a while since Joni Ernst enjoyed a lead:

The last poll that had her ahead — by 1 — was conducted from July 5 to 24.

In Colorado, the good news is that incumbent Democrat Mark Udall remains below 50. But Cory Gardner can’t seem to get over the hill and take the lead:

In North Carolina, the concerns about Thom Tillis are triggered mostly by one poll showing a surprising six-point lead for incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan. But he, too, has had difficulty getting the lead against an incumbent with indisputable problems, and this is in a state Romney won.

Republicans can still win control of the Senate without these races. They need to hold GOP-held seats Kansas, Kentucky, and Georgia; win the expected near-locks of Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia, and then win in Arkansas, Alaska, and Louisiana. But it must be disconcerting that as the national polling environment looks better and better for the GOP, these three races — and for that matter, Michigan — are not seeing a comparable boost for the Republican candidates.

If those three states remain Democrat, the GOP will not win the Senate. They would need a miracle in New Hampshire to get a 51-seat majority. When you look at the numbers in Kansas, the corpse is in a dead heat with the Liberal Democrat, an actual live human. People are funny about voting for dead people. They tend not to do it. Maybe the GOP can reanimate their guy before election night. Looking dispassionately at the races right now I see a 50-50 result, which means the Democrats retain control of the Senate.

My guess is the polling drifts away from the Liberal Democrats over the next month and the GOP wins the Senate by a few seats. Maybe it is a blowout after all and the Wets will be validated. Talk about a heads I lose tails they win scenario. Still, my sense is we get a mixed result and the battle continues for another cycle. My own preference is for a UKIP like party to rise up and finish off the GOP, but that’s unlikely. Instead the Stupid Party will stagger on for another two years, trying to figure out what it wants to be when it gets a brain.

I’ve been waiting for the Left to purge their party of the Clintons for a few years. After 2008, they had to keep the Clintons in the fold in order to get Obama re-elected in 2012. Purge the Clintons too soon and Hillary would primary Obama.  He is safely in his second term and everyone is plotting for 2016, so now is a good time to get rid of that miserable cu…Hillary. I think we’re seeing the first moves.

Martin O’Malley’s pollster had sobering news. Despite extensive time in the public eye and strong statements on controversial issues, the would-be candidate barely registered in a new survey.

The year was 1999, and O’Malley (D), a brash white city councilman in majority-black Baltimore, was contemplating a long-shot bid for mayor.

“To a lot of friends, even my closest friends, it seemed like a pretty outlandish idea initially,” he said. He won that election, and the next, and two terms as Maryland governor after that.

Now he is contemplating an odyssey with even steeper odds. By late January, when his time in Annapolis ends, O’Malley says he “probably” will have decided whether to run for president in 2016, a bid that would be likely to pit him against Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state.

This is a  puff piece by the ruling class rag. O’Malley was a Clinton partisan and could split her vote if he took on Hillary. That’s if Hillary is still running. The Obama people would like her gone for good and a scandal is a good way to do it.

A former State Department official has told lawmakers that Hillary Clinton allies privately removed politically damaging documents before turning over files to the supposedly independent board investigating the Benghazi terror attack.

The account from Raymond Maxwell, former head of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), was first published in The Daily Signal. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, confirmed to FoxNews.com on Monday that Maxwell told him and other lawmakers the same story when they privately interviewed him last year about the attacks and their aftermath.

Chaffetz said that Maxwell claimed Clinton’s chief of staff and deputy chief of staff were overseeing the document operation, which allegedly took place on a weekend in a basement office of the State Department.

“What they were looking for is anything that made them look bad. That’s the way it was described to us,” Chaffetz said.

According to Chaffetz’ account of his interview with Maxwell, as well as the Daily Signal report by Sharyl Attkisson, Maxwell said those scrubbing the documents were looking for information that would cast Clinton and senior leaders in a “bad light.”

Chaffetz said such documents were said to be removed, so that Congress and the Accountability Review Board — the board probing security lapses as well as the attack’s aftermath — would not see them.

Chaffetz described Maxwell’s account as “consistent” all this time. The congressman said he is speaking publicly about Maxwell’s allegations because Maxwell himself has gone public with them.

State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach denied the allegations in a statement to FoxNews.com.

“That allegation is totally without merit. It doesn’t remotely reflect the way the ARB actually obtained information,” he said in an email. He explained that an “all-points bulletin”-type request went out department-wide instructing “full and prompt cooperation” for anyone contacted by the ARB, and urging anyone with “relevant information” to contact the board.

“So individuals with information were reaching out proactively to the Board. And, the ARB was also directly engaged with individuals and the Department’s bureaus and offices to request information and pull on whichever threads it chose to. The range of sources that the ARB’s investigation drew on would have made it impossible for anyone outside of the ARB to control its access to information,” Gerlach said. He further noted that the leaders of the ARB have claimed they had unfettered access to information and people.

Maxwell was one of four State Department officials disciplined in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack, in which four Americans were killed. He was put on administrative leave, and has spoken out before about how he felt he was scapegoated.

Maxwell was eventually cleared, but retired last year.

According to The Daily Signal report, Maxwell walked in on the weekend session on a Sunday afternoon after hearing about it. He reportedly claims he saw stacks of documents when he arrived as well as an office director who worked for him — but who hadn’t told him about the assignment.

Maxwell reportedly claimed she told him they were instructed to go through the stacks and pull out items that could put anybody in the NEA “front office” or seventh floor — where the secretary’s office is — in a “bad light.”

Maxwell said he “didn’t feel good about it” and left a short time later.

Chaffetz said that he was told then-Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan were there and overseeing the operation.

“For Hillary Clinton’s personal chief of staff and deputy chief of staff to be making a concerted effort to hide documents, make sure that the Accountability Review Board and Congress did not see those documents is unbelievable and absolutely wrong,” Chaffetz said.

Scandal plagued, old and ugly is no way to run for president. Martin O’Malley would be a good alternative for a lot of Clinton partisans. At least enough to clear the way for Fake Indian, the Obama choice to succeed him.

The other day I posted about my skepticism regarding the Fed data collection efforts. Scooping up the databases from the telcos is one thing. Sorting it into anything useful is quite another.When it comes to hoovering up e-mail, I doubt they have the technology to do it. The volume is just too vast. Plus, a security apparatus so good that they can scoop and read everyone’s e-mail is not getting bested by a high school drop out like Snowden. If they can read my e-mail, they could figure out that Snowden was of-loading sensitive data.

The reality is probably something a bit more crude. This story the other day in the Washington Post is what I mean.

The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day in 2008 if it failed to comply with a broad demand to hand over user communications — a request the company believed was unconstitutional — according to court documents unsealed Thursday that illuminate how federal officials forced American tech companies to participate in the National Security Agency’s controversial PRISM program.

The documents, roughly 1,500 pages worth, outline a secret and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle by Yahoo to resist the government’s demands. The company’s loss required Yahoo to become one of the first to begin providing information to PRISM, a program that gave the NSA extensive access to records of online com­munications by users of Yahoo and other U.S.-based technology firms.

The ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review became a key moment in the development of PRISM, helping government officials to convince other Silicon Valley companies that unprecedented data demands had been tested in the courts and found constitutionally sound. Eventually, most major U.S. tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Apple and AOL, complied. Microsoft had joined earlier, before the ruling, NSA documents have shown.

Rather than covertly tapping into the root servers of the Internet or sniffing the world’s firewalls, the Feds are busting down doors and telling the big players to hand over their data. No doubt it is coming over in a digital format and in bulk, but that’s like having tractor trailers full of letters to Santa showing up ever day. Finding the one letter from Mohamed in Detroit is not going to be easy and maybe not even possible. Without a lot of other intelligence, having a big pile of e-mails is a waste of resources.

But, there’s value in letting the world know you can read their e-mail and listen to their calls. Even if it is not entirely true, it tilts the playing field. It forces everyone else to take precautions they otherwise might not take and maybe pushed them into forms of communication that are easier to track. The e-mail and telephone data also has use if you have other intel. If Abdul comes up on the radar and you have Abdul’s cell data, you can begin to put together his circle of friends, as it were.

Still it is important to remember that they have not caught anyone with this data. The Feds run to the nearest TV camera every time they catch some dope trying to join Jihad. If they had something to justify what is a very unpopular program, they would have made it public. It’s like gun registration. It is only useful when you have a lot of other information about the crime. In the case of gun crimes, the registration is useful after you have the gun and the perp. In the case of terrorism, having cell phone data is useful after you have the perp’s identity and location.

The beginning of the end of the Roman Republic was when the ruling class loss respect for their own rules. Scholars don’t frame it like that because it’s hard and boring. Instead they focus on economic changes like the flood of slave labor after the defeat of Carthage and Corinth. Alternatively, the political changes make for nice stories because the characters are interesting. But, the road off the cliff started with the loss of respect for the spirit of the laws and customs. Tiberius Gracchus impeaching Octavius was an inflection point. From that point on, the law was an obstacle, rather than a foundation for the ruling elite.

I suspect the point when our politicians stopped punishing criminal financiers will similarly be looked at as an inflection point. I’m old enough to remember when politicians and wealthy members of the ruling elite faced criminal punishment for breaking the law. Nixon was run out of DC for talking about what Obama boasts of doing. Michael Milken went to the can for ten year(served two) for what is common today on Wall Street. A great trivia question is how many bankers went to jail for the sub prime mortgage scandal. The answer is zero.

This article on Bloomberg, of all places, is one of the few times I’ve seen this mentioned in the popular press.

Yesterday, we looked at why bankers weren’t busted for crimes committed during the financial crisis. Political corruption, prosecutorial malfeasance, rewritten legislation and cowardice on the part of government officials were among the many reasons.

But I saved the biggest reason so many financial felons escaped justice for today: They dumped the cost of their criminal activities on you, the shareholder (never mind the taxpayer).

Corporate executives theoretically work for the owners of the company, namely, the shareholders. But there is an agency problem in that owners can’t closely manage and object to the actions of these executives. Collective owners, such as mutual funds, seem to have no interest in doing so. What we end up with is a management class that works for itself instead of on behalf of the owners of the publicly traded banks. Many of these executives committed crimes; got big bonuses for doing so; and paid huge fines using shareholder assets (i.e., company cash), helping them avoid prosecution.

As for claims like those of white-collar crime defense attorney Mark F. Pomerantz, that “the executives running companies like Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan were not committing criminal acts,” they simply are implausible if not laughable. Consider a brief survey of some of the more egregious acts of wrongdoing:

Foreclosure fraud: Of all the crimes committed during the financial crisis and in its aftermath, this is one that should have been the easiest to identify and prosecute.

Any bank that owns a mortgage with the debtor in default must follow a simple set of legal steps in order to foreclose. The procedure is time consuming, specific to each state’s laws and involves lawyers, so foreclosures are expensive. Hey, it is the cost of issuing credit, and a simple reality of the rule of law. There are no shortcuts.

Except the banks took many short cuts and did so on purpose and with the goal of improperly expediting the process. They failed to review the documents of the mortgages they were foreclosing on, then told courts they had. They didn’t verify information, but claimed to have done so in sworn affidavits. They hired $8 an hour burger-flippers to “robosign” these documents, pretending the underlying legal work had been done. They knowingly used falsified records, some of which they bought en masse. They were aided by a company called DocX, which had a price list of fabricated documents for use in court. (DocX, by the way, was eventually indicted on charges of mortgage fraud).

After creating phony dossiers on borrowers, the banks signed and notarized affidavits stating they had taken all of the legal steps. In many cases, even the notarizations were fakes. Submitting a falsified notarized affidavit to a court is perjury and fraud.

Of course, the burger-flippers who did the paperwork didn’t think up the whole scheme — someone much higher did. Somewhere between these low-level workers and the chief executive officer were managers who masterminded robosigning. So far, just one midlevel executive has been convicted at Bank of America, while scores of others have gone untouched.

Mortgage underwriting: Then there are the crimes committed in mortgage underwriting, where defects were knowingly ignored. The FBI investigated these cases early on, but investigators never moved forward with prosecutions.

Maybe the scale of the financial penalties bank agreed to pay had something to do with this inaction. Bank of America, for instance, using shareholder money, paid $16.65 billion to settle allegations of fraudulent mortgage originations, securitizations and servicing. One can’t help think that this money bought immunity from prosecution for executives.

Money Laundering: Banks have been laundering staggering sums of money for drug dealers and terrorists. Hey, there are big bucks in high net worth narco-terrorists. Awash in cash, drug cartels relied on big banks to launder their ill-gotten money. Apparently, it was just good business to grab a slice of that pie. However, these are deeply offensive, very illegal activities, and deserve not just penalties, but jail time.

How much of this dirty money made its way through the banks? One analysis estimates that $1.6 trillion of tainted proceeds has been laundered through major money-center banks around the world.

A U.S. Senate report linked HSBC to drug lords and terrorists, leading to a record $1.9 billion fine. The Federal Reserve faulted Citigroup over its controls, allowing money laundering to go on. And Wells Fargo admitted to laundering money for Mexican drug gangs.

• Market manipulation: We haven’t even gotten to the manipulation of markets in violation of U.S and international law. Whether it was aluminum or Libor rates, prices were either improperly manipulated or illegally rigged, with knowledge of the bank executives and the traders they employed and supervised. Let’s not forget manipulating the multitrillion dollar derivatives market.

• Fraud, skimming and bid-rigging: Then there is just good old-fashioned fraud and bid-rigging: State Street Bank was accused of skimming money off of the pension transactions it handled while BNY Mellon was accused of skimming money for “fictitious” foreign-currency costs for pension funds.

• Accounting fraud: We could spend months discussing how some executives at banks cooked their books, but really, this is so well known that it hardly merits mention.

So next time you hear the claim that “there were no crimes committed by bankers,” just remember that this may be the biggest lie of the 21st century.

Steve Sailer calls political correctness the war on noticing. It works for him because his favorite topics are mostly about noticing readily available facts. PC is just a subset of the greater war on reality waged by our masters. Every ruling class expends a lot of energy disabusing the ruled of their ideas about reality. Julius Caesar went to great pains to not be seen as a dictator. Augustus was a master of this deception. Today, the Cult wages war on reality not just to retain power, but for religious reasons. They truly believe that wishful thinking can change the laws of nature.

The near total control of American life by the Cult is so thorough it goes unnoticed. We just accept it, like background noise. Every once in a while their slip shows like in this column by Jonah Goldberg.

About the second point reasonable people can quibble. The terrorist army that calls itself the Islamic State is certainly trying to build a state — and not just a state but a super state, or caliphate. They’re not there yet; their delivery of social services seems spotty at best, though they do collect taxes and uphold the law (in a fashion).

More relevant, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a state. Morally, this weed stinks just as much whether you call it a state or a soccer league that rapes, tortures, and murders people on the side. And legally, statehood would matter — and not very much — only if the U.N. and other bodies agreed to recognize the fledgling caliphate’s legitimacy. That’s not going to happen even if the Islamic State opens up post offices and DMVs on every corner.

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The president’s first assertion is trickier. Is the Islamic State “not Islamic”? Moreover, is it really “clear” that it’s not Islamic?

Not even a little? Is it Islamic-ish?

If we’re talking clarity, I’d say the Islamic State is clearly not Mormon. Or Lutheran. Or Buddhist. It most certainly is not the most extreme example of Quakers gone bad ever recorded.

As for its not being Islamic, that’s at best unclear, if not just clearly wrong. And the fact that the majority of its victims are Muslim is irrelevant. Lenin and Stalin killed thousands of Communists and socialists; that doesn’t mean Lenin and Stalin weren’t Communists and socialists. If such terrorists who kill Muslims aren’t Muslims, why do we give them Korans when we imprison them?

The president faces the same dilemma that bedeviled George W. Bush, and I sympathize with him. It is not in our interest for the Muslim world to think we are at war with Islam, not just because it is untrue but more specifically because we desperately need the cooperation of Muslim nations. That’s why Bush constantly proclaimed “Islam means peace.”

That last paragraph is a strange bit of self-delusion or perhaps a necessary lie. Jonah makes his money as a TV pundit. His role is to be the nerdish conservative, like a part time character on Big Bang Theory. His character is allowed to say bad things about politicians and some of the fads popular with the Cult, but he must always be careful. Fumble a line about a touchy subject and his struggle session is his next TV appearance.

There’s also some chance he believes it. Take someone off the street, drop them into Utah and there’s a good chance they eventually become a Mormon. Jonah swims all day amongst the Cult and their toadies. He could very well believe we should not be at war with Islam and that it is important Muslims not think we are waging war on them, notwithstanding the 100,000 tons of ordinance we have dropped in Iraq.

Reality, the thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it, is nothing like Jonah imagines. Muslims have thought we were at war with them for decades now, maybe even centuries. That’s why they’re pissed, by the way. They are not fooled by the religion of peace nonsense. Further, the only people who fear this truth are Americans, particularly members of the Cult. Just as they cannot face their war on black people, they cannot face this war on Islam. So, they pretend to care about and respect a religion they personally detest.

Reality be damned.

Most of us with an interest in evolutionary biology understand that it is mostly a speculative science. Genetics takes some of the speculation out of it, but only a small part. The fossil record and materiel science helps, but there are huge gaps in the fossil record that leaves huge gaps in out understanding of life in the long ago past. That does not mean it is not science or without loads of interesting data. It just means the the people in the field rely on inductive reasoning more than other fields.

That said, there’s informed speculation and then there’s crazy talk. This story crosses into crazy talk.

Mankind is undergoing a major evolutionary transition comparable to the shifts from prosimians to monkeys, monkeys to apes, and apes to humans, according to Cadell Last, a doctoral student in evolutionary anthropology and researcher at the Global Brain Institute.

Human life expectancy has already increased from about 45 at the start of the 20th century to 80 today. Because of advancements in technology, which will affect natural selection, Last suggests life expectancy could increase to 120 as early as 2050 — a concept known as radical life extension.

In addition to longer lives, humans will likely delay the timing of biological reproduction and reduce the number of offspring too, according to Last. Taken together, these changes could signify a new type of human, more focused on culture than biology.

Well, life expectancy has increased considerably, but that’s mostly due to a drop in human violence and a massive drop in childhood mortality. In 1900, getting killed by bandits was common in much of the world. Dying from the runs was also common. It does not mean we are living longer. People in the 18th century who were not murdered, killed in war or killed by the plague in youth lived into their sixties and seventies. Ben Franklin lived to 85. Augustus lived to 75. Tiberius lived to 79.

Fertility rates have been dropping in the west for a long time and no one has a good explanation. The cost of children is one argument, but children have always been a cost. Similarly, humans in the West have been having children later in life. That’s not new either. Taken together, it could be nothing more than a fad in the West that will go away in a generation or two. Jumping to the claims about new types of humans is nonsense.

Last makes his case in a paper from the most recent issue of Current Aging Science. Citing other futurists like Ray Kurzweil and Francis Heylighen, Last theorizes about human interaction with technology, relying on observations of past primate evolution and biology.

Ray Kurzweil is a good example of someone who can have a top-1% IQ and be batshit crazy.

According to life history theory, natural selection shapes the length of an organism’s life and the timing of key events to produce the most surviving offspring. In the “fundamental life history trade-off,” organisms must choose between spending their time producing as many offspring as possible or rearing those offspring to make them as successful as possible, according to Last.

And as brain sizes increases, organisms require more energy and longer rearing time to reach their full potential.

Human brain size has gone down since human settlement. There’s no science to back the idea that bigger brains mean longer development cycles.

Based on these ideas, three major shifts in primate history have occurred toward longer lives and delayed reproduction: between prosimians and monkeys, monkeys and apes, and apes and humans.

Humans already dedicate the most time and energy toward nurturing offspring of any primate species, and this pattern is becoming only more extreme.

“Human life history throughout our species evolution can be thought of as one long trend towards delayed sexual maturation and biological reproduction (i.e., from ‘living fast and dying young’ to ‘living slow and dying old’),” Last writes.

While physical needs fueled previous evolutionary changes, cultural and technological innovations will drive the next shift, which has been accelerating since the Industrial Revolution.

Simply said, humans need more time to develop to take advantage of our complex world.

This is just Tofflerism wrapped in bad science. The pace of change may seem like it is accelerating, but we can’t know how the pace of change felt in 1930, 1830 or 1430. If you were alive in Bohemia in 1620, life was changing pretty damned fast.

Considering recent advancements like in-vitro fertilization, egg-freezing, and even adoption, the mechanics of biological reproduction have radically changed. “The biological clock isn’t going to be around forever,” Last says — or at least, people can turn it off or ignore it for a while.

Today, and even more so in the future, the success of individual and collective human life depends on knowledge and economic prosperity. Passing on new and important ideas to the next generation involves a process called cultural reproduction, which redirects time and energy toward cultural activities, as opposed to biological reproduction.

In the 19th century, what passed for futurists used to write about how the Industrial Revolution was radically altering humanity. H. G. Wells comes to mind. Marx was so convinced he founded one of the most destructive cults in human history. I would imagine that the spread of settlement probably included cranks claiming the advent of farming was the end times.

As far as a new type of human, that’s the lesson of the fossil record. No species sticks around for ever. Some have a nice long run and things change too fast for them to adapt. Then poof, they are nothing more than weird looking marks on a stone. Others come along have a relatively brief run and end up as nothing more than drawings on a cave wall. But, some species adapt and then adapt and then adapt again. When you’re in the drive through at KFC, you’re not thinking of T-Rex, but he is thinking of you, through the mists of time, leastways.

Steve Sailer has been wondering why the Cult is obsessing over trivia like Ferguson. NYTimes is carrying on like some homo was kiled, rather than a ghetto giant. We keep seeing non-stories getting more coverage than stories one would assume have greater public interest. The increasingly dangerous situation in Ukraine, for example, generates little coverage, despite the fact the West is headed for an ugly showdown with Russia. The domestic economy, staggering along in ways not seen in a generation, generates no news coverage.

Then we have this berserk obsession with some football player who hit his old lady. Everyone knew when the story first hit the wires that the player punched his old lady in the elevator. Unless you’re missing a chromosome, you could figure out how the women ended up unconscious. That and the player’s confession solved that mystery months ago. Now, a video comes out showing the incident, as the normally inert US Senate is moved to get involved in what the state prosecutor thought was a nothing incident.

The lunatic sporting press has been treating this like Watergate for two weeks now. Meanwhile, real scandals like the IRS systematically harassing citizen on behalf of the White House goes unmentioned. The White House attempt to declare Obama dictator so he rewrite laws as he sees fit is treated like a zoning board hearing in Poughkeepsie. Whenever this is pointed out, the lunatic press claims they merely chase the stories of interest to the public.

But, public reaction to the Rice story looks more like mockery of the lunatics than real interest. Last night the Ravens played Pittsburgh and the Baltimore fans were wearing Ray Rice jerseys. It seems clear they were not doing this to support wide beating. Most of the people wearing the jerseys were women. They were doing it to protest the lunacy they see from the Cult on this issue.

Music blared from the purple bus, and Baltimore Ravens fan Racquel Bailey stood with drink in hand amid her usual tailgate buddies while making a bold fashion statement: a black, rhinestone-decorated jersey with the white No. 27.

A Ray Rice jersey.

“There’s two sides to every story,” said the 23-year-old waitress from Baltimore. “I saw the video. That’s their personal business, and it shouldn’t have affected his career. I don’t agree with domestic violence, but she’s still with him, so obviously it wasn’t that big of a deal. Everyone should just drop it.”

Ravens fans male and female, young and old, arrived for Thursday night’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers debating the events that have affected their team over the last few days. Their once beloved running back has been kicked off the team and banned by the NFL after a video surfaced that showed him punching his then-fiancee — and now wife — inside an Atlantic City hotel elevator.

All condemned Rice’s actions, but there was little consensus as to what his punishment should be. The NFL did the right thing by suspending him, some said, but the Ravens shouldn’t have terminated his contract as well. Or maybe the suspension should have remained at two games, where it stood before the punch video became public.

The question is why does the Cult become obsessed on nothing stories like this or hoax stories like the Ferguson riots?

My offering is the Unitary Cult Theory. This is when members of a mass movement, always jostling with one another for status within the movement, close the information loop, excluding information from people outside the movement regarding a topic. The result is a piety contest where members of the movement stand up and commit increasingly extreme acts of public piety.  As more and more members jump into the ring, the contest quickly spirals out of control resulting in these absurd public displays.

Because the country is run by the Cult of Modern Liberalism, these piety wheels get maximum attention. The public is often sucked into the the false drama in the same way people get caught up in a TV serial. That’s gasoline on the fire. With Ferguson, the public has seen that drama too many times to stay interested for very long. The Gay Gayington story is too disgusting. This Ray Rice story gets more interest because the NFL is so popular and everyone can relate the story at the center of it.

The other piece of this, of course, is why the focus on trivia and hoaxes? We’ve had so many race hoaxes, the default assumption now is the next one will be a hoax as well. Part of it is how the mind of the fanatic operates. They see only that which confirms their fanaticism. When a white cop shoots a black giant, the fanatics in the Cult process that as yet another bit of data confirming the narrative. When a black cop shoots a white guy, it is filtered out and ignored.

At the macro level, the Cult, like any mass movement, will collectively focus away from dis-confirmation. The Cult has been in charge of American cities for 70 years. The problems of the black ghetto are the responsibility of the Cult. They cannot admit it or even acknowledge it, so they look to places like Ferguson. Given the times, the Cult is desperate to focus on news stories that have nothing to do with politics because then they have to face up to the failings of their idol, Barry Obama.

Finally, this story has something extra for the Cult. They love to destroy that which is popular with normal people. The NFL is very popular with typical white people. It is the typical white person sport. That means the Cult must hate it with all their worth. The Ray Rice story gives them a chance to land some blows on what is for the Cult, a proxy for middle America.

This day has become an unofficial holiday for Red Team. Members of Conservative Inc get to go on TV and act solemn and serious, maybe even say a bad word about Islam. The Forever War crowd gets to compare some batch of Muslim fanatics to Hitler, demanding we blow them up before, wait for it, we have another 9/11. The only good thing is Lefty stays home and hides under his bed. Otherwise, I’m with Derbyshire on this one. You don’t celebrate great failures or humiliations.

Jim Geraghty has this on his blog.

We remember how the 9/11 era began today, and the emotions are still fresh and strong, 13 years later.

But that was only one part of the story.

Take a good look, ISIS. You never know when the U.S. Navy SEALs are at your door.

My response:

Not really. It was a stunning failure by our rulers, for sure, but not one worth remembering. If our rulers had learned from their blunders leading up to 9/11, then sure. But, they learned nothing. They continue to troll Muslim countries for immigrants. Inviting people who want you dead to settle in your lands is madness, but here we are anyway.

If anything, our rulers drew all the wrong lessons. They reasoned that the Muslims attacked America because it was full of Americans. If they could just replace all the Americans with foreign imports, problem solved! Since 9/11 Muslim immigration has gone up with over one million of them coming here from places like Yemen, Syria and Iraq.

I guess if you want to get weepy on 9/11, the thought that our rulers are not the only people who want us dead is a good reason.

The lesson of 9/11 is big lumbering bureaucracies can never defend against all comers. That’s not what they are built for which is why they fail at small, complex tasks. Government is a sledgehammer, not a scalpel. In order to prevent another 9/11, we should have immediately ended all immigration from Muslim countries. Visas for visiting should have been limited to diplomatic and high level trade. If an oil sheik needs to come here to do a deal with Exxon, fine.

Further, Muslims here should have been deported if they were not citizens. The foreign funding for mosques should have been confiscated. We can’t ban the religion, although I would be in favor of it, but we can encourage our citizens to put out the unwelcome mat to Muslims. Islam is a fine religion that brings its adherent happiness. It is incompatible western democracy. It is hostile to western culture. We should have learned that 13 years ago. Our rulers learned the opposite.

Happy 9/11