The PC Cult Controls Ed Schools, Administrations, and Your Kids' Education

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Your kids are being indoctrinated by the moral and intellectual equivalent of Scientology.
Maybe complaisance isn't the very best orientation you can come up with under such conditions.

Matt Welch: Democrats Are Conjuring Up New 'Rights'

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The First, Second, and Fifth Amendments are, needless to say, anachronistic and need to go. You have no right to freedom of thought, let alone speech, let way alone self-defense, bigot.
But you apparently do have a right to change your physical characteristics merely by saying so, to "free" college, to live in somebody else's neighborhood whether you can afford it or not, and...to live close to work? Seriously? Where do they come up with this shit? There's really not much further to go, and they show no sign of slowing down. Soon enough they may discover a right for other people to live in your house. Which...blows right past the Third Amendment, actually. Loopy tyrannical government: it's not just for quartering soldiers in your digs anymore...
I swear to God the Democrats did not used to be insane.
Why is everybody acting like this is normal?
We are way, way, way beyond $%&@ing normal. At some point even progressives are going to have to acknowledge the giant jackass in the room. And I don't mean Trump. Different jackass completely.

Sully Is On-Target, As Per Usual

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Honestly, how much crazier can progressivism get?
Unfortunately, I predict: probably significantly crazier.
When even the more independent-minded people I know are willing to mumble and hand-wave and talk themselves into basically ignoring stuff like this...well...that is not what you'd call a good sign.
Trump 2020 might slap some sense into them...or it might just make them crazier. God knows.

"Transgender" Mythologists Flip Out At Hillary

She didn't genuflect at their alter, so they lost their shit.
   It annoyed me that she used that ridiculous "life experience" line. "Life experience" has nothing to do with whether you are a woman or not. If it did, then e.g. Wonder Woman wouldn't be a woman. And, as I've pointed out many times, if you try to build experiences of discrimination (or "oppression") into the essence of womanhood, it means that feminism is trying to rid the world of women. Which isn't the crux of the problem, it's just a consequence of it.
   This stuff is completely batty and everyone who isn't brainwashed by the left knows it. Perhaps some men feel like women--it seems possible (though it's unlikely to be widespread). But feeling like x doesn't make you x. How is it that things like this even have to be said? When did things become so unhinged that it has become necessary--not to mention impermissible--to note that thinking doesn't make things so?

Rabid Anti-Barr Stuff

Wow, this is just nuts.
They seem to be spazzing out about the whole thing. Some of it I don't understand, but some is really obvious. E.g. this is one of the passages to which they object:

Unfortunately through the past few years we have seen these conflicts take on an entirely new character. Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called ‘The Resistance’ and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the executive branch and his administration. The fact of the matter is: that in waging a scorched earth, no holds-barred war of resistance against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in the systemic shredding of norms and undermining the rule of law.

But Barr is right on the money there, and I'd think you'd have to be pretty far gone not to see that. What the hell is even the objection? The unitary executive stuff may be wrong, but it's hardly some nutty theory out of left field--so far as I can tell, anyway.
   Progressivism has totally lost it. They seem to think they get to get rid of anybody they want to just by screeching impeachment!
   Also, I have to say, it's pretty amusing to hear progressives accusing the Federalist Society of being "radical." They're too far right for me. But, again, at least they're still engaged in the same basic project, unlike the contemporary left.

Obama Warns Dems About Their Extremism

Help us, Obi-Wan Obama, you're our only hope.

Barr's Comments To The Federalist Society

Historically, of course, I haven't been to wild about the Federalist Society...but since the radicalization of the Dems, they look like saviors now. I've also never been naturally inclined toward a more powerful executive...but I don't know enough about it to deserve an opinion. Barr's comments are extremely interesting...but see previous comment. He's certainly right about the contemporary left, though.
   Apparently progressives were up to some of their antics outside, dressing up like their favorite teevee shows, giving out bitchy "menu"s, and playing Christine Blasey Ford's testimony on a jumbotron...which I guess means they can watch it more than once and still believe it...which...freaky...
   I might not agree with the Federalist Society about a lot, but at least we're still playing the same game, living in the same world, working for the same general ends. They may be wrong, but at least they're not nuts. Sad days when that's something to be grateful for, but here we are.

Pr0n: Either (a) Evil or (b) Noble

Once again the loony left somehow manages to make the loony right seem basically reasonable by comparison.

Benghazi Benghazi BENGHAZI11111111

[1]
Man, the right just cannot unflip its shit about Benghazi. They are still riding that horse.
[2]
Also, apparently Benghazi (had it gone down as the right thinks it did) would make any lesser alleged mistreatment of an ambassador inconsequential. Not that I think that either of the ambassadors in question was mistreated by the administration, since I don't think Stevens's death was the administration's fault.
[3]
Also, is Trump suggesting that Yovanovich is responsible for things being shit in Somalia and kinda shit at least in Ukraine? What am I saying? Of course he is. How long have things been shit in Somalia, anyway? Forever, I guess. But maybe not.

Peter Boghossian: "Welcome To Culture War 2.0"

Obviously I'm in the vicinity of Boghossian on this stuff.

   There are details with which I'd quibble, though I'm not sure he's wrong. Does the progressive left--the NPCs / SJWs / illiberal left...whatever we call them--reject the correspondence theory of truth? Well, they sort of reject realism, and the relationship between realism and CTT is tight enough to make his way of putting it reasonable. Not sure disagreement on that score wouldn't be quibbling. 

   I hesitate to identify the other side mainly with "intersectionality." Intersectionality seems to me to constitute a rather minor plank in their platform. And it's a plank that doesn't fit very tightly into the platform. There's no doubt in my mind that they themselves will jettison it at some point. In five or ten years the wokest among them will proclaim that this or that pet oppression is first among equals; it will become chic to say that feminism is fundamental, or that racism is the foremost of all the -isms, and intersectionality will become passe. When your view makes no sense, it's all about the fads and fashions. And really: there's absolutely no reason to think that someone who's concerned about racial discrimination should pretend that being overweight is just as tough as being black, nor that you can't address race without addressing weight. Anyway, there's no good name for the crazy left--I myself prefer 'neo-PC' (which also has the advantage of being abbreviated NPC). But that's a barely-consequential terminological matter.

   As for Boghossian's more substantive point: I absolutely agree and have said so many times, for a long time, and I've believed it since the paleo-PC outburst of the late '80s: the PC left is less-liberal than most of the American right. The American right, including the religious right, doesn't reject liberalism broadly construed, and doesn't reject realism nor reason. Political correctness and the anti-liberal left are extremely radical. Their philosophical views are cracked, and their political views are on a fairly short and direct road to tyranny/totalitarianism. Which is why it drives me crazy that liberals flock to the PC left whenever it rises (awakes?) from its grave to...I dunno, stalk the land and feed on the flesh of the living or whatever. I'm not interested in making this into a working metaphor.

   Anyway, the point is: those guys are really, really crazy.

Scott Jennings: "Day 1 Of The Impeachment Hearings Was A Lost Day For The Democrats"

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The opposing teams are seeing all this very, very differently.

Politicizing Medicine and Psychiatry: Commuinism and Transgender Ideology

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The first error: accepting patent falsehoods as truths (or pretending to do so...or half-doing so...)
The second error: dogmatically refusing to honestly question those beliefs.
The third error: institutionalizing your dogmatism by trying to stop others from questioning them.

NPR Soft-Peddles Aztec Human Sacrifice

Because, y'know: non-Western indigenous culture 'n' stuff...
Using pronouns correctly: the moral equivalent of genocide. Actual genocide: not for us to judge about, really...

Transgendered Athletes Joined Her High School Track [Team]

Not actually her team, it seems. Rather, they began competing in her events--and, of course, they can't be beat...because they are dudes.
Notice how we went from "transgender women" to "transgender females" which is, if anything, even more patently false than the first thing.

Boy, it's really weird that institutionalizing patent falsehoods, dogmatically insisting that they're true, and deploying unhinged social pressures to semi-criminalize dissent would lead to bad consequences.

Is Trump Catching On With Suburban Women?

Meh.
Could be.
But presumably what matters most is that the Dems collectively are kicking his ass with that demographic group. How much of Buttigieg's support is going to go to Trump when he drops out? I'd guess it'll basically all go to whoever the blue team's front-man ultimately turns out to be.

Hanson on the Orwellian Jacobins

Victor Davis Hanson, one of many dudes I used to deride, at American Greatness, one of many publications I used to deride:

  We are also well beyond even the stark choices of 1972 and 1984 that remained within the parameters of the two parties. In contrast, the Democratic Party as we have known it, is extinct for now. It has been replaced since 2016 by a radical progressive revolutionary movement that serves as a touchstone for a variety of auxiliary extremist causes, agendas, and cliques—almost all of them radically leftwing and nihilistic, and largely without majority popular support.
   When Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and a number of Democratic presidential candidates sympathize with the New York subway jumpers who openly threaten the police, then what or who exactly is the alternative to such chaos?
   When the media proves 90 percent partisan according to its own liberal watchdog institutions, or reports things as true that cannot be true but “should” be true, what are the forces behind that?
   When the violence of Antifa is quietly—or sometimes loudly—condoned, who are those who empower it and excuse it?
   If a late-term abortion results in a live baby exiting the birth canal only to be liquidated, who exactly would say that is amoral?
   If the leading Democratic presidential candidates openly embrace the Green New Deal, reparations, abolishing the Electoral College, welfare for illegal aliens, open borders, amnesties, wealth taxes, a 70-90 percent income tax code, Medicare for all, and legal infanticide—what is the alternative vision and who stands between all that and a targeted traditional America? [my emphasis in bold]

Someday, I expect them to get back between the ditches. But as for now, they're a crazy, hard-left, Orwellian, antirational cult that advocates policies that will wreck the nation. You've gotta be absolutely batshit crazy to make Donald Trump, narcissist and reality-show con man, into the least catastrophic of the available options.
   Davis nails the terminology: they're Orwellian Jacobins.

Right And Left Live In Different Worlds: Impeachment Edition

On the left, as always, the walls are closing in...
On the right, it's a laughable cringefest of a show trial that's already basically failed, and will probably throw 2020 to Trump.
Honestly, the annoying "different worlds" locution really is apt here. As I think it's become in general.

Realistic Idealism

For the record, I haven't given up most of my central ideals. But I've come to see the contemporary left as even more opposed to them than the right. For example, I think democracy needs reasonably open, honest, and rational public discussions of policy-relevant issues. I think the liberals, when we had them, were less inclined to lie and distort the issues than the right--especially when the religious right was ascendant. But I think that the vanguard of the contemporary left includes an influential intellectual sector that rejects both truth and rationality as Western, male, white, etc. And I think that contemporary progressives live in a web of fantasies and myths (as I often say). The center and center-right is where, IMO, rational discussion and open inquiry is happening currently. It hasn't always been that way. It won't always be that way. But if you think that the left is somehow, magically, always right and always rational and always best...well, that's delusional. There's absolutely no reason to believe that the left is always the more rational faction. It's no coincidence that the end of the spectrum that's most radical at a given time is also most irrational.
   Progressives, for example, have convinced themselves that immigration--no matter how much and no matter what kind--is pure win for everyone involved. Only conservatives are willing to admit that immigration comes with costs and risks. You don't have to give up your vision of America as a place that welcomes immigrants...but you do have to be realistic about the costs and risks, for the love of God... It's insane to risk the nation--our nation--that's the best hope of the world because you are too politically correct to face the fact that massive immigration comes with costs and risks.
   They've also convinced themselves of that about "diversity" generally. That goes hand in hand with their refusal to face its costs, and that with their refusal to permit criticism of the idea.
   You can be idealistic, and keep certain ideals as long-term goals...but that doesn't mean it's rational to ignore their costs and risks. Not every ideal can be rationally implemented immediately. Sometimes a long-term goal would be disastrous if implemented immediately. Or unthinkingly.
   Blah, blah, blah.

"Bernie Sanders' Immigration Plan: What Happens On Day 2?"

This seems reasonable to me.
I'd more concerned about the expansion of DACA and TPS than Lester is, but I'm sure he knows about 1,000 times more about it than I do. And I'm all for making the system more humane--though I disagree that Trump has made it inhumane.
   I agree that an end to deportations would be insane. (Lester says something weaker than that.) And bringing in "climate migrants" is total lunacy--two insane progressive causes intersecting. Presumably those are people who have been displaced by AGW...of which we could identify about zero currently, and for however long a Sanders administration might last.
   To my mind, the main point is a bigish-picture one: the Dems have succumbed to progressivism, and progressivism is committed to basically taking down all barriers to immigration. The particular contours of Bernie's plan doesn't matter all that much--we know that the goal will basically be increasing mass immigration, both legal and illegal.
   It barely matters who the Dem candidate is going to be. We already know, basically, what the platform is going to be like. And if you look at it at all objectively, you should be able to see that it will be disastrous. You may think that Trumpo the Clown is worse--that's largely a "judgement call." But if you don't see how daft the Dems have become, you're missing basically the biggest political development in a generation.

Daniel Henninger: "The Take Down Trump Project"

In my current view of the matter, this is basically right on target.

Taibbi: The Ukraine "Whistleblower" Isn't A Real Whistleblower

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Is Stephen Miller A White Nationalist?

Not likely, but possible.
   The SPLC is, of course, a perfectly unreliable source. And AOC's opinion counts for almost exactly nothing. But even still, it's a reasonable question.
   Basically nothing that's blared from the MSM yet proves the case--nor does it come close to doing so. The Pope has, basically, called for open borders. And that would be a catastrophe for Europe and the U.S. I haven't read Camp of the Saints, but it's actually pretty highly-regarded just as dystopian sci-fi. I ought to (and might) read it, just to see what's really up with it. Referring to it while making the case against open borders is, obviously, not inherently bad nor racist. And Miller makes a perfectly reasonable point about the Soviet flag. As for the point about TPS, I suppose I don't see what the fuss is about that.
   Remember, progressives think that anyone who is in any way against any form of immigration, legal or illegal is racist. This is well-established. Also beyond doubt is the fact that progressives will spin anything as racist that can possibly be spun that way--unless it's said by someone they have an interest in defending.
   And: every one of their accusations against Trump that he said something racist have turned out to be bogus.
   But, again: none of that shows that Miller isn't a white nationalist.
   However, none of the evidence proffered shows that he is, and that's what's decisive. It doesn't even come close. Everything he's said is perfectly consistent with him basically being Trumpian--roughly, a civic or constitutional nationalist who believes that open borders would be disastrous, and that many aspects of the current system are being abused.
   And, of course: the way the progressive game is played is: if they want to get you, they go through everything you've ever written, including outliers, including in anger, and they find anything that can be spun as racist (etc.). Of course, there will always be something for anyone. Then they declare that even the most outlandish interpretations are basically incontrovertible evidence.
   We absolutely, positively, can't have actual white nationalists in power. There's no disagreement about that. But the left's strategy on this is beyond any doubt: anyone who wants any sort of immigration controls of any kind--by Western countries, anyway--will be portrayed as a virulent racist.
   Honestly, given how utterly disastrous that view and the attendant rhetorical chicanery is, I think we should be a lot more worried about that than whether Stephen Miller has unimpeachable attitudes. Immigration insanity is real, it's being pushed hard by progressives, it would lead to catastrophe, and like the rest of progressivism, it comes along with a kind of self-sealing defense tactic: no one is permitted to disagree with it nor criticize it. Anyone who does is a racist.
   If Miller's a racist, get rid of him. But also absolutely, positively oppose progressivism with all your might as well. Miller's the smallest of potatoes compared to the other guys.

Sanders Panders To AOC Crowd

cringe

"Schiff's Lead Witnesses Have No Real Evidence--And Neither Does He"

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A Second Phone Call Suggests Possible Trump Shenanigans

The Post is a propaganda organ for progressivism at this point, giving a wildly spun version of events at the Democrats' entirely one-sided show trial...or show pseudo-trial. But this pattern--carefully-selected though it is from the available mass of dots--doesn't look good. I can't tell what to think really because the process is so rigged, and the media is so partisan. I guess all of this is supposed to fire up the base and persuade the uninformed...but what it means for me is that evidence that might convince me were it the output of a good procedure (and objective reporting) is, instead, suspect to the point of being almost valueless. The rightosphere's version of what's going down is exactly the opposite of that of the leftosphere...but the latter includes the mainstream media, so its megaphone is an order of magnitude louder.
   What we're getting is an extremely partisan spin on a carefully-selected subset of dots, and we're being told that we need to connect them in a pre-determined way. The diagram that emerges from that isn't nothing...but any such diagram has to be viewed with extreme skepticism. Until we get fair hearings and an objective investigation, I gotta say, I'm not sure any of this, bad as it sounds, ought to persuade us.

Is E-Verify Ineffective?

Well, Politico says so. But, OTOH...it's Politico...
Also, as one commenter points out: the argument of the piece largely depends on evidence from states where its use isn't mandatory.
On the one had, this provides part of another argument for more border barrier.
Politico argues:

   E-Verify simply does not work. Its systematic design flaws make the program destined to fail. Congress has never seriously debated E-Verify – its reauthorization by this November provides a golden opportunity to reexamine this program in light of all of its failures. Fixing the legal immigration system by allowing more low-skilled workers on temporary visas and green cards will remove the need for E-Verify entirely. After all, if workers can come legally then they won’t come illegally.
   That’s the only way for Congress to permanently fix the problem of illegal immigration. In the meantime, Congress should scrap E-Verify, stop pretending the system could ever work and go back to the drawing board.

That's way too hasty, and in line with Politico's general bias. They certainly don't establish that E-Verify can't work, especially if it's mandated nationwide. Nor do they in any way show that more temporary visas and green cards are the only ways to fix the problem--not even close. But it's one option worth considering--and it's in no way inconsistent with more border barriers and/or E-Verify.

NYT On The Impeachment Hearings

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   On the bright side, at least they do--seemingly grudgingly--represent the GOP's side of the argument, to some extent. It's not terribly complete nor objective, but they sketch it, at least. Objectivity's hard, and I don't blame them for not getting it exactly right...right (objective) by my lights, anyway...
   But they always err on the same side of things...well...since they helped herd us into the Iraq war, anyway...
   I haven't gone back and gone through the Ukraine call transcript with the care I ought to have. But I think it's fairly clear that:
1. It sounds terrible when (dishonestly) edited in the way we first got it.
2. It sounds waaay less terrible--but still not great--when read in full.
My own new-ish view of these things (adopted during the Clinton email scandal) is less clearly right: I don't think laypeople are in a very good position to judge these things, because we just do not know what such calls and such diplomacy are normally like. It doesn't look great to me--though it also doesn't look obviously damning (as the dishonestly-edited transcript did). But for all I know, diplomats with hundreds or thousands of hours worth of this sort of thing under their belts might say That's outrageous!...or might say...Meh...more-or-less bidness as usual.
   And, of course, both sides are bloody awful.
   Trump is...Trump. With all that entails. He's both sloppy and clueless enough to make such an error inadvertently, and loony and crooked enough to do it on purpose. Or so it seems.
   And the Dems have completely lost their goddammn minds, and have already cooked up one entirely fabricated, fantabulous, conspiracy theory that rabidly consumed them for two years. And did it for blatantly political reasons. And as soon as that turned out to be 100% hoaxtastic, they spit out this one without even missing a beat. I almost think we should laugh this one out of the room without even thinking about it, just because of that. Well, if it weren't so important, anyway.
   And the Trumpistas think that this is mostly a distraction to draw attention away from the fact that the DoJ is about to drop a bomb by revealing how dirty Russiagate: Origins really was.
   My guess, at this point, is that, basically, the conservatives are right yet again. Which should come as no surprise, given what we've seen over the past 5-ish years. Progressivism is unhinged--and now it's taken over the Democratic party. Why would it surprise anyone if they're wrong yet again? At any rate, I rather suspect that the red team is also right that this is largely intended to distract from the firestorm that's going to result from the Barr investigations. It sounds like there may be criminal charges against Comey and at least one other person.
   But obviously I could be completely wrong. If Trump hasn't done anything incredibly stupid and impeachable yet, I'd be pretty surprised.
   I do think it's pretty significant that Pelosi seems to be laying low on this one.

Is this right?

  Representative Adam Schiff said in a press conference, “These open hearings will be an opportunity for the American people to evaluate the witnesses for themselves and also to learn firsthand about the facts of the president’s misconduct.”
   There are several problems with this statement. First, Schiff is already characterizing the outcome of the investigation. As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he serves as a key arbiter of the inquiry under the resolution. As such, he is in a position that demands an unbiased irreproachable ethic in evaluating requests for subpoenas and testimony. Any judge in a similar position would be required to recuse himself with even a hint of the pure bias Schiff has displayed, including coordination with the Ukraine whistleblower and other actions.
   The Democrats do not even pretend that their impeachment game is fair or actually about fact finding. This is simply about using a grant of power in the Constitution arbitrarily and politically, outside the bounds of due process and the purpose of that authority. Although the House does have the “sole power” of impeachment, that is a grant of jurisdiction, not a license to proceed on purely partisan motivation. Article One must work coordinately and not inconsistently with Article Two, which provides the legal basis upon which a sitting president may be impeached.
   Second, Schiff demonstrates this is all about media play in the court of public opinion. Americans have no power or role in an impeachment proceeding. The drafters of the Constitution intended the impeachment and removal process to be exercised only when there was sufficient evidence that the subject of the impeachment had committed a legally qualifying offense. This is not about whether impeachment is popular in the polls or whether a majority of Americans prefer it. Transparency in the context of this quasi judicial process is to provide fundamental fairness and due process for the president. Why are the Democrats so hellbent on blatantly refusing to allow Republican subpoenas and witnesses?
   It is because it is a sham. Yet the Democrats are openly admitting that their goal is to try this in the media and attempt to dishonestly convince us that somehow we too should hate Donald Trump. They are hoping to convince us not to vote for him. That is not a legitimate or constitutional purpose of an impeachment.

The Deep State Is A Conservative Conspiracy Theory ----> The Deep State Is Heroically Saving Us From Trump

This Is Progressivism: Nuremberg Trials For "Climate Criminals"

She's just an actress, but there's little doubt that quite a few on the left would agree.

If They Don't Believe Their Own Climate-Change Hysteria, Then We Don't Have To Believe It Either

Ahnohd / Scoldilocks edition

A Tectonic Demographic Shift Is Under Way; Can America Hold Together?

On the bright side, I guess this means that some progressives are admitting this is a big damn gamble. On the not-bright side, the author seems to have convinced himself that the only danger springs from conservative bigotry and petulance. On a different kind of not-bright side, he doesn't even consider the possibility that gambling with the very existence of the nation might be a really #$%&ing stupid thing to do. But that is, of course, one of the biggest kinds of rational blind spots of progressivism (and, to a slightly lesser extent, liberalism). If you recognize that a certain course of action could lead to disaster, then for the love of God, throttle back on it at least temporarily, at least until you have a better understanding of the risks. Don't just plunge on, dogmatically, full speed ahead. This really isn't rocket science.

The Deep State Is A Conservative Conspiracy Theory --> The Deep State Is Heroically Saving Us From Trump

Boy, that was fast:

Fascinating to watch much of media’s quick turn from mocking notion of deep state into a full throated “Hell yes there’s a deep state and it’s the only thing we have to protect us from the American people and who they elect.” Points for honesty?

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) November 12, 2019

There May Be Nearly 30 Million Illegals In The U.S.

2-3 times the most commonly-reported number.

Orwellian Left Flashback: Prosecuting Climate-Change "Deniers"

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"Researchers Say"...

...WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!11111ONEONEONE

Former Chair Of Earth And Environmental Sciences At Penn: Climate Change Hysteria Is A Bogus Semi-Religion

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Geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack - Former chair of Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania:
Giegengack laments "the enormity of the hubris that leads us to believe that we can 'control' climate by controlling anthropogenic emission of CO2."
"If anthropogenic CO2 is contributing to climate warming now under way, nothing we are doing, or contemplating doing, can have any measurable effect on that warming."
Global Warming/Climate Change has evolved into "a semi-religious campaign advanced by well-intended people who feel, deep in their hearts, that they are 'saving the planet.'"
"It beggars the imagination to assert that the natural factors that drove the warming trend from 18,000 years ago to ~300 years ago (with some unexplained temperature reversals) abruptly stopped operating at the end of the Little Ice Age to accommodate our political need to attribute climate variability to human industrial activity."
"Today’s climate is close to the coolest it has been in 540,000,000 years, and the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is close to the lowest it has been."
"Climate models are instructive, but they lead to scenarios, not predictions. They can be manipulated to yield desired outputs."

Lots Of Income Inequality, Little Consumption Inequality

Important if true.
But how much of this is due to less saving by the less-wealthy?

You'd Think That "National Period Day"...

...would be run by people who at least knew the bare minimum about menstruation.
E.g. that men don't do it.
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Supreme Court Seems Inclined To Let Trump End DACA

I'm not in favor of ending DACA--though maybe it can be used as a bargaining chip. And so long as progressives keep pushing more and more irrational immigration policies, we might have to fight back however we can.

Bernie: "Mandatory Buybacks" = Confiscation ---> Unconstitutional

Bernie again makes a case that he may be the least-cracked of the blue options.

George Lakoff: "Why Hate Speech Is Not Free Speech"

This is amazingly bad even by Lakoffian standards.
And needless to say, reading Lakoff's post had some kind of effect or other on my brain. And that may have some kind of bad consequences or other--who knows? Ergo his post should be illegal.
   And, as always: "hate speech is not free speech" is solecistic...or involves something like a category mistake or something. It's analogous to "hateful action is not free action." Or, well maybe it's just false.

Jennifer Rubin: Ukrainegate Is The Biggest Scandal Since Russiagate!!!111

So far, it mostly sounds like blue-team hysteria and wishful thinking yet again. But I'm happy for there to be an investigation. It's not going to surprise me a whole lot if Trump actually did something wrong at some point. Thus far we seem to basically just have Vindman reading something in the NYT and then telling Ciaramella about it. Maybe they should see whether Christopher Steele can dig something up...

Eugene Linden: "How Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong"

Everybody panic, we're all going to die right away.