Pro Publica:: FAQ: What You Need To Know About NSA Surveillance Programs ( + Inchoate Thoughts)

link

Nothing new there, but a good summary, IMHO.

I still don't know what to think about all this. Input requested...

My hazy inclinations are similar to what they've been for awhile now, and can sorta be summarized as follows:

1. I don't like this excrement one bit.

2. I am not at all surprised by it; in fact, this is a foreseeable consequence of the "Patriot" Act, isn't it?

3. And, in fact, I expected it to be worse. (see 4)

4. I'm am far, far less concerned about metadata collection than I would be about actual spying on the content of communications. (But see 1)

5. I don't think we really know what's going on yet. The NSA has lied about what it's doing, and Greenwald is largely unreliable, and has misrepresented what's going on at crucial points. We know enough to be worried, but not enough to draw firm conclusions. Or at least I don't... (Note: I expect Greenwald to distort things if it make the U.S. and/or Obama look bad; I don't see any reason to tolerate this from the NSA, however.)

6. It's good that this is now a matter of public discussion. However, it seems to me that this could have been done without making the U.S. look worse than may be warranted vis-a-vis countries like, e.g., Russia...  But these thoughts are garbled in my wee noggin...

7. We need reliable cost-benefit analysis here. In the absence of really big benefits, there is no way I can see myself acquiescing to programs like these. I think Americans have a strong prima facie opposition to such programs. And we're right about that. The NSA has a very weighty burden of proof. Has this program, for example, prevented New York from being disintegrated? Well, New York... Has it prevented D.C. from being disintegrated? Is it likely to do so? If not, I'm still against it.

8. I'm not outraged in part because I have no doubt that these programs were put in place by well-intentioned people. It seems clear that there are lots of solid protections in place. It seems to me to be a plausible, if misguided, attempt to respond to the fact that we are at odds with some murderous psychopaths. Don't freak out. This is not an evil government plot. Just walk it back. Or so I'm currently inclined to think.

8'. I'm not outraged also because I'm not surprised. (see 2). But if these types of surveillance are permitted by the "Patriot" Act, and they are impermissible, then we have yet another fine argument for the repeal of the "Patriot" Act.

9. It actually sounds to me like the current privacy protections are great. But I'm still inclined against the program, largely because of the danger of abuse by a rogue future government. I trust the government we now have--even the lunatic Republicans, for the most part. But I don't trust every plausible future government. So I don't want this easily-abused capacity in place. That may not be a good reason, or it may not be the best reason...but to the extent that the reason is good, it has some pretty significant consequences. For example, it seems to constitute an argument against having a large military as well--talk about something ripe for abuse by a rogue government...  This coheres with my long-standing reason for wanting a smaller government army...though perhaps I'm confused on that score already.



For the lova God, somebody straighten me out on all this...it hurts my head...

Silva's Second Freakish Loss to Weidman

Wow, that was awful.

Both losses look a lot like flukes. It's too bad that we didn't get to see a full fight in which Silva was taking Weidman seriously, and it's really gut-wrenching that Silva's career will end like this. Weidman looks good, and he seems like a great guy. Of course he'll never be an Anderson Silva--who has a strong claim to being the GOAT--but he'll be interesting to watch. it seems that some people are asserting that the was good technique rather than luck...meh...seems very unlikely to me. Leg checks are perfectly legitimate techniques, of course, and Weidman might have reasonably aimed to minimize the effectiveness of Silva's leg kicks...but a broken leg is a fluke almost no matter how you look at it. (And I say this as someone who's not a fan of round kicks...)

Hoops: No Reinstatement for Hairston

Bye bye PJ

Ugh. A likely-to-be-tough season (despite the 3 big wins thus far) just got a lot, lot tougher.

Nobody knows the story yet, but, given Hairston's recent history, the part of me that doesn't care that much about winning is rather happy to see him go. I agree with Roy that, when a kid makes a mistake, it's not a good idea to summarily take away the one thing he's good at...but that point only goes so far.

PJ seems to have some pretty bad judgment, and he's brought shame on the program. Given that he was our leading scorer, this probably means another year of mediocrity... But, not yet knowing the whole story, I'm guessing that the university and the NCAA made the right call on this one.

Carolina's Free Throw Woes

As my buddy from grad school Earl "The Squirrel" used to say: It's immoral to miss your free throws.

Carolina in the past has, not that infrequently, averaged making more free throws than their opponents took. Not so this year...

Here's some advice for the Heels. My shot mechanics are shit, so it could be wrong for all I know...make of it what you will...

We've now beaten the numbers 1, 2 and 3 teams as ranked in pre-season polls, and lost to three unranked teams. We've got LMac back, which is something, but it's not at all clear what will happen with PJ. I'm happy to accept whatever the NCAA rules, since both those guys acted like idiots.

At any rate, it's likely to be a long year even under the best possible circumstances...  But hope springs eternal...

Reason: "Rape Crisis Feminism, "Rape Culture" and the Vassar Case

"Guilty Until Proven Innocent"

You may have heard about the following scary case:

One evening in February 2012, Vassar College students Xialou "Peter" Yu and Mary Claire Walker, both members of the school's rowing team, had a few drinks at a team gathering and left together as the party wound down. After a make-out session at a campus nightspot, they went to Yu's dorm room, where, by his account, they had sex that was not only consensual but mainly initiated by Walker, who reassured her inexperienced partner that she knew what to do. At some point, Yu's roommate walked in on them; after he was gone, Yu says, Walker decided she wanted to stop, telling him it was too soon after her breakup with her previous boyfriend. She got dressed and left.  

The next day, according to documents in an unusual complaint that Yu filed against Vassar last June, Yu's resident adviser told him some students had seen him and the young woman on their way to the dorm. They had been so concerned by Walker's apparently inebriated state that they called campus security. Alarmed, Yu contacted Walker on Facebook to make sure everything was all right. She replied that she had had a "wonderful time" and that he had done "nothing wrong"-indeed, that she was sorry for having "led [him] on" when she wasn't ready for a relationship. A month later Walker messaged Yu herself, again apologizing for the incident and expressing hope that it would not affect their friendship. There were more exchanges during the next months, with Walker at one point inviting Yu to dinner at her place. (In a response to Yu's complaint in October, attorneys for Vassar acknowledged most of these facts but asserted that Walker had been too intoxicated to consent to sex and had been "in denial," scared, and in shock when she wrote the messages.) 

Last February, one year after the encounter, the other shoe dropped: Yu was informed that Walker had filed charges of "nonconsensual sexual contact" against him through the college disciplinary system. Two and a half weeks later, a hearing was held before a panel of three faculty members. Yu was not allowed an attorney; his request to call his roommate and Walker's roommate as witnesses was denied after the campus "gender equity compliance investigator" said that the roommates had emailed him but had "nothing useful" to offer. While the records from the hearing are sealed, Yu claims his attempts to cross-examine his accuser were repeatedly stymied. Many of his questions (including ones about Walker's friendly messages, which she had earlier told the investigator she sent out of "fear") were barred as "irrelevant"; he says that when he was allowed to question Walker, she would start crying and give evasive or nonresponsive answers. Yu was found guilty and summarily expelled from Vassar.

If we're getting the straight story here, this sounds like a completely unremarkable case of consensual sex between adults. Vassar has a rather bad reputation for being a bastion of the loony academic left, and contemporary "rape crisis feminism" is one of the most central components of that toxic stew.

In my more cynical/pessimistic moments, I think:  it's proven fairly hard to catch and convict actual rapists and those who commit sexual assault...so the academic left has settled for convicting innocent people; hey, maybe that't not ideal, but it'll do in a pinch...

Much of this insanity is pulled along by various crazy aspects of contemporary radical feminist theory, include the astounding confused concept "*rape culture*". As with so many confused concepts, "rape culture" survives on vagueness, the passing reference, and the force of shrill dogmatism. It's common to see claims roughly of the form "Problems of x kind make it harder to combat rape culture, and this has led us to focus on blah blah solutions to these problems." "Rape culture" gets invoked in passing, and the claim that, for example, contemporary American culture is a so-called "rape culture" is simply assumed to be true without proof, nor even any clear explanation of what that phrase is supposed to mean.

But what makes culture C a rape culture? If C is a rape culture if and only if the rape-relevant aspects of the culture mostly or largely condone rape, then it is the most obvious thing in the world that e.g. contemporary American culture is not a "rape culture." The vast, overwhelming, almost exclusive attitude toward rape in the culture is that it s not only wrong but a heinous crime, often thought of as worse than murder. The only thing worse than rape is pedophilia...which is, of course, a form of rape... So no "rape culture" there.

OTOH, the idea might be that C is a "rape culture" if and only if there are some elements or other in the culture that condone rape. This would be an extremely uninteresting/unimportant concept...and, furthermore, if this is what the phrase means, then it's typically used by feminists in highly misleading ways... However it might be worth thinking about. Rape is primarily an act that hinges on individual choice and the individual moral responsibility of the rapist (though the lefter-than-liberal left tends to detest those notions)...but there may very well be minor aspects of the culture that are insufficiently anti-rape. For example, it used to be a common view that women often said 'no' when they meant 'yes.' Obviously that is sometimes true, or at least used to be, but the very fact that this was passed down as an aspect of conventional wisdom might very well be an aspect of the culture which--though in no way explicitly pro-rape in content--tended to promote sexual assault and rape. Certain sub-cultures, such as some fraternity "cultures" may very well promote rape. And so-called "pick-up artist" (PUA) culture clearly endorses actions which are largely indistinguishable from rape. So, in this extremely permissive sense of "rape culture," the U.S. might be said to have/be one.

However, the phrase is obviously highly misleading, suggesting as it does that the promotion of rape is a central feature of the culture, and/or that the culture condones rape more than it condemns it. Look we cannot call American culture an "intellectual culture" because there are some minor aspects of the culture that could be called intellectual; we cannot call it a "Hispanic culture" because there are Hispanic subcultures; we cannot call it a "cancer culture" because there are some common practices (e.g. smoking) that cause cancer. Any reasonable way you look at it, "rape culture" does not accurately describe American culture.

Bad theory and faulty concepts seem to be far from the more poignant practical concerns of people being falsely accused of rape, but I think it's fairly clear that bad theory is driving bad practice in cases such as this. Another bad contemporary feminist idea is that women can decide that they have been raped even if they apparenlty consented at the time, enjoyed the experience, continued to have contact (or even sex) with the alleged attacker, and gave no sign whatsoever during the encounter that they were unwilling to have sex. This is the sort of madness that generates policies like Vassar's. These are insane policies built on insane theories, and that is why they should be eliminated. However, even those who don't care about justice and reason should oppose the policies. Even those feminist who only care about (as some say) "power for women" should at least care that such policies infantilize women by treating them like perpetual, inveterate minors, people who are not sufficiently rational and autonomous to make their own decisions, take responsibility for their free actions,and live with the consequences. This view of women is the antithesis of everything old-school, admirable feminism fought against.

If we're getting the straight story about Mr. Yu and Ms. Walker, I sincerely hope that Yu sues both Vassar and Walker for a gigantic truckload of money.

Obenshain Concedes, McDonnell To Be Charged In Gifts Scandal

The good news: Herring wins, clean sweep for the Dems. 

The bad news: one of those Dems was Terry McAuliffe...

The other news: apparently McDonnell is going to be charged in the Star Scientific gifts scandal by the DOJ.

False Equivalence Watch: Bush and Obama

Ed Kilgore is on it.

(via Sullivan)

Night Film, Marisha Pessl

I'm a little less than halfway through this book, but I'm enjoying the hell out of it. It's creepy as hell and it really pulls you along. I've been staying up too late because I can't put the damn thing down. Sadly, I'm not that smart about literature, and pretty poorly-educated about it, so I can rarely say anything that goes very far beyond "I like it"...but I like it. Well-written, paced well, interesting characters that are developed in a way that kind of sneaks up on you...just a damn cool book IMHO.

Facebook "Hot Mom" Has Account Suspended on Bogus Charge of "Fat Shaming"

I really can't believe how damn stupid people seem to be getting about this sort of thing. Facebook, I'm looking at you.

Here's what she wrote:

The popular and unrelenting support received to those who are borderline obese (not just 30-40lbs overweight) frustrates me as a fitness advocate who intimately understands how poor health negatively effects

I have no patience for anybody who is an asshole to people on the basis of physical characteristics that they have little or no control over. But there is absolutely nothing in what this person wrote that can justify the suspension of her account. This kind of totalitarianism with respect to anything that might possibly hurt someone's fee-fees is absurd and people shouldn't tolerate it. I think that what she wrote is incorrect, but it obviously does not in any way approach anything that can justify the suspension of her account.

This is political correctness/"SJW" nonsense infecting organizations that ought to know better.

(h/t /r/TumblrInAction)

(Also: Ms. H. Mom is, indeed, super hot.)

[Update: Apparently Ms. Mom got her account reinstated.]

Carolina 82, Kentucky 77

The Heels have now beaten the #1, #2 and #3 teams in the preseason polls.

It's still likely to be a tough year, as I don't expect Hairston to return. But after the losses to UAB and Belmont early on, these big wins over MSU, Louisville and UK are welcome indeed.

3/4 TX Lt. Governor Candidates Advocate Creationism In Schools

LGF

All four men in the race said religion should play a larger role in public education when asked where they stood on the issue during the event hosted by the McClennan County Republican Party and broadcast by KCEN-TV. But only one, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, stopped short of endorsing creationism in the state’s curriculum.

C+=: A Feminist Programming Language and the Resulting Blacklist + Whining

Here's what seems to have got it started, a really, really dumb idea about writing a feminist programming language. This is mostly po-mo-inspired gibberish.

Here's the parody of that nonsense.

Here's a site associated with blacklisting anyone who follows the parody project. They've already had the parody removed from one site my whining about it.

Here's some puling and whining about the parody, including, of course, the de rigueur assertions that the parody is sexist, misogynistic, "transphobic," blah blah blah "rape culture" (an absurdly confused concept), blah blah blah how dare you mock "social justice warriors," etc.

Look.

It was a dumb idea. There is no such thing as an interesting or important "feminist critique of logic" on which to base "feminist programming." If anything ever deserved a parody, this did. In response, we get the typical types of responses that we have come to expect from humorless feminists and vindictive "SJW"s.

Normal, sane, rational, liberal feminists ought not to be putting up with this sort of nonsense. There's a reason that the vast majority of American's no longer identify themselves as feminists, despite the fact that most of them do identify themselves as egalitarians with respect to sex. And it's not "false consciousness" as a result of brainwashing by the "patriarchy," nor any other such nonsense that aims at deflecting the plain fact that too much feminist has moved too far left and too far down the po-mo rabbit hole. Extremist feminism is in a tailspin. It's a movement that deserves to be thought of contemptuously by reasonable people. And, though that should be enough to prompt outrage, as an added bonus, it's threatening to drag the remnants of sane, reasonable feminism down with it.

(via /r/TumblrInAction)

Social Construction Follies: Sex is a Social Construct

Wow, what a disaster.

You really can't have a serious discussion about this sort of thing if you use the term 'socially constructed', which is used to mean so many different things at different times that any claim involving it is too vague, ambiguous and otherwise unclear and slippery to evaluate.

This person wants to say--apparently, but God knows--that sex is real but created by society. This is, of course, false. Her reasons are of two types, basically: (i) there are several different, real biological distinctions that map onto sex, and (ii) male and female are vague categories admitting of borderline cases. It follows from neither of these that sex is a social creation. The universe generally and biology in particular is clumpy. That is, it is made up of natural kinds. Individuals strongly tend to fall into these kinds, but the kinds are fuzzy. As Peirce points out: it is characteristic of real kinds to admit of borderline cases. There are borderline cases of stars, for example (in which gas clouds have not yet become dense enough to generate fusion a their cores, though they're headed in that direction); and biology is permeated by borderline cases: borderline cases of life (e.g. viruses), borderline cases of species (e.g. ligers), borderline cases of organs (in which cells have just begun to differentiate into organs in fetuses), and so on.

The thing about real kinds is that you can make scientifically important generalizations about them. There is simply no doubt that this can be done with respect to male and female. As a matter of fact, there's a fair bit of science that you can't do unless you recognize these categories. Ideological blathering isn't going to change this.

Furthermore, real kinds can be identified by multiple different criteria. Dinosaurs, for example, are archosaurs with their limbs held erect underneath their bodies--and the criteria for belonging to archosauria is complex and multi-criterial.

Unsurprisingly, none of the arguments in this piece in any way show that sex--i.e. the distinction between male and female--is something we made up. Nor is it unreal. Nor is it any fuzzier than the other real biological categories and distinctions upon which the science of biology is built.

The real problem, however, is that no serious discussion can be conducted in which the central term "socially constructed." The term is not even close to being precise enough for serious inquiry. Any time you find yourself inclined to use that term, you should ask yourself what you really mean and what claim you are actually trying to make.

Delicate Flower Watch: Matthew Salesses, Racism in the Classroom

Wow, is this ever bad.

It's basically the story of how one kid said a rather mildly indelicate thing about the pronunciation of Hispanic surnames in a college class on day. This is supposed to show "racism in higher education."

The mind, it boggles.

Then we're treated to some whinging about the fact that some adoptive parents use the term "Gotcha Day" to refer to the day they adopted their adoptive kid(s). This, you see, is a horrific crime against humanity because it contains a word in common with 'gotcha journalism.'

Fortunately, most commenters on Salon seem to be calling out this bullshit.

This should go without saying: I'm not a fan of hurting people's feelings gratuitously or thoughtlessly.

However: for the love of God, toughen the fuck up. These sorts of minor incidents are the sorts of things that grownups just get over. Mr. Salesses, however, tells us that he has been:

...repeating this story to everyone I know, or everyone I know who doesn’t share this other student’s opinion—which, in truth, is everyone I know well enough to tell. And I have tried to own the story, too. I have tried to make it slightly different than it was, a story where we would all be outraged, where we would all have time to process and examine what happened. But in the classroom, this comment went otherwise unchallenged, and I left the class feeling completely undone, and blaming, no doubt unfairly, the entire state of Texas.

One really does have to wonder whether this is some kind of joke. How does this person get through life? This sort of thing wouldn't even register on my outrage meter. He was "undone" by this? He blamed the entire state of Texas? What madness is this?

But wait, there's more:

I didn’t know how to respond. I knew how I would have questioned this conversation as a teacher, how I would have shut it down before ownership of someone’s name was denied and then talked about the importance and implications of such a conversation, but I was not the instructor. I did not hold power in that classroom. What I did, which I hope was the right thing to do, was to say that “on the record”—I made a point of this—what this student had said made me extremely uncomfortable. I hoped that the instructor would take it from there, but he did not.

Jeez I hope this person never "holds power in the classroom." First, there is no such thing as "ownership" of your bloody name. But aside with that. Making someone "uncomfortable" is an insufficient reason for an instructor to shut down a conversation. A few sentences, in the case in question, would have probably been enough to make the student in question see that his point was fairly ridiculous. But if you think that an instructor should "shut down" a conversation because of such a peccadillo, you really don't belong in academia. 

This sort of nonsense seems epidemic to me. It's not just one or two people with overly-delicate feelings here or there. Rather, I think, it's a couple of theories, widely accepted on the lefter edges of liberalism and beyond. First, that being "offended" is a horrible injustice. And, second, that words matter a lot more than they actually do. This kind of nonsense is fairly widespread, and IMO it really ought to be addressed in a more systematic fashion, though I don't have any great suggestions about how to do so.

IPCC: Climate Change 2013

The summary for policymakers.

One major conclusion:

It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.

Douthat on Obama's "Failed" Presidency

He can barely contain himself at the thought.

(via Sullivan)

Can Obama Finally Close Gitmo?

Maybe.

(via Sullivan)

Truman: Nixon a "Shifty-Eyed Goddamned Liar"

Hoo hoo!

Give 'em you-know-what, Harry.

Turns out you were right.

(via Reddit)

The Decline and Fall of College Debate

I debated in high school, and was pretty obsessive about it. I did it for a while in college, too, but quickly realized that it was pretty loathsome. Debate is, in general, a two-edge sword in my view. It can help you gain certain intellectual skills--e.g. it can make you better at sticking to the point and relentlessly pursuing individual lines of argument. But it can also corrupt your mind by making you more sophistical, encouraging you to think in terms of winning or losing a contest instead of inquiring cooperatively in order to find the truth. I quit debate in college when it became clear that, even as a kind of contest, it had become a joke. Teams had prepared canned arguments that would purport to show, through long, improbable chains of "reasoning, that, basically, no matter what anyone did, it would lead to "GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR!!!111". I spent so much time arguing against the same patent nonsense over and over again that it stopped being interesting. (This only goes for certain types of debate...there's still Lincoln-Douglas, which is more sane. We used to make fun of it for being "soft" ("LD"--learning deficient LOL). But we were wrong...  Ah well...)

Furthermore, the activity become pretty repellent in other ways as well. I discovered that cheating (in the form of making up evidence) was, apparently, pretty common. And the participants would often speak so rapidly that they'd ostentatiously spit all over the podium. Bleh. I was fond of the rapid-fire style, but when I came to see how foolish it looked, that basically tore it.

Anyway, things have gotten rather worse since then. Here's some folks shrieking at each other in a championship debate about ten years ago... And, worse, apparently since then all sorts of postmodernist nonsense has creeped in, so that the long, canned, nonsense arguments now include a lot of fashionable quasi-philosophical nonsense to go along with the policy nonsense.

Ugh. I hear this has infected high school debate as well, which is too bad, since I have no doubt that high school debate was good for me. (Once, that is, I got over the asshole attitude that it can foster...)

Carol Hay: A Feminist Kant

Hey, this is pretty good.

I'm not sure why these are supposed to be particularly feminist points...but nevermind.

Hay seems to suggest disagreement with DFW's claim that "...on the East Coast, politico-sexual indignation is the fun." But he actually hit the nail pretty much on the head there...though I'm not sure how geographical that problem actually is. It's the fun on the leftier reaches of the left, that's for sure. So there's that.

There's no doubt that the carnies in the story are asking for a punch in the nose, and it's a sad story in that they didn't get one...but not every injustice gets its due...

Hay's point--not an esoteric one by any stretch of the imagination, but a good one--is that we can make the liberal/egalitarian/feminist points we need to make with Kant's conceptual apparatus.

And I'd add: there's no need for Continental/po-mo/Foucauldian/Judith-Butlerian gobbledygook. If the point is respectable, and in this case it is, we'll be able to make it without resorting to the buzzword salad so popular on the lefty-left.

Fever Swamps Watch: LGF on Breitbart.com On Obama Attending Mandela's Funeral

OBAMA SNUBBED THATCHER'S FUNERAL BUT IS GOING TO MANDELA'S!!!111

Well, Ben Shapiro is a nut, and nuts read him...I know that the web just allows crazies to congregate...  But some of this crap is still hard to believe.

College Football and Rape

MoJo has a sobering list of rapes and other sexual assaults (and some allegations) here.

WTF is going on?

Of course it's consistent with this list that college football players are no more prone to this sort of thing than the non-football-playing population of college males...though that would be even worse... I also don't know how many football players there are in D-IA (looks like the list is limited to major programs...), so there's no easy way to identify percentages here...and that's important information. (Though it's gut-wrenching to think of trying to put such acts "in perspective" with percentages, still, we'd need to know them to know whether this is something specific to football.)

This catches my eye in part because my own institution is thinking of moving to D-IA (or FBS, as I guess it's not called...I'm not a football fan...). This is probably a bad move financially, of course. College sports is a money-losing proposition for almost everyone. Unless you're up in the stratosphere near the Carolinas (in hoops) or Michigan (in football), you're losing money. But there are, of course, many other considerations that. Should an institution choose to support an activity that generates so many brain injuries, for example? If there's some link between football and assault, that'd, of course, matter a lot... One the one hand, you might think that football promotes aggression... On the other hand, such intuitive hypotheses are often (usually?) false. On the other other hand, it isn't at all clear that we should expect football to be that much worse than other sports...nor for DI-A status to make much difference as compared to DI-AA...

Well, that's all just babbling. I have nothing cogent to add to the MoJo piece.

RIP Nelson Mandela

Important to the world, of course, but that goes without saying. What I have to say is that he was significant to me personally, as a prominent figure in my moral/political/intellectual development. Were I in his place, I would not have had the moral fortitude to push for the truth and reconciliation commission. There is simply no doubt about that.

Impeachment Fever--Catch It!

These people are, perhaps literally, insane:

In recent days, Rep. Steve Stockman (Tex.), one of the more exotic members of the Republican caucus, has distributed proposed Articles of Impeachment to his colleagues. Last month, 20 House Republicans filed Articles of Impeachment against Attorney General Eric Holder. Around that time, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) accused Obama of “impeachable offenses.”

Rep. Trey Radel (R-Fla.), before his cocaine arrest and guilty plea, invoked the prospect of impeaching Obama over gun policy. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) raised the specter of impeachment over Obama’s threat to bomb Syria without congressional approval. Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.) said it would be his “dream come true” to write the Articles of Impeachment, and Rep. Bill Flores (R-Tex.) said that if “the House had an impeachment vote it would probably impeach the president.”

Sen. Jim Inhofe said Obama could be impeached over the attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, while fellow Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn said in August that Obama was “getting perilously close” to meeting the standard for impeachment (though he called Obama a “personal friend”). Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) thought it would have been an impeachable offense if Obama unilaterally raised the debt ceiling. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) branded Obama “lawless.”

On the House Judiciary panel, impeachment has been floated by GOP Reps. Jason Chaffetz (over Benghazi), Louie Gohmert and King (default on the debt), Darrell Issa (presidential patronage), Trent Franks (Defense of Marriage Act enforcement) and Lamar Smith (who said Obama’s record on immigration comes “awfully close” to violating the oath of office). Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) gets creativity points for proposing the impeachment of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Click through to Milbank's piece for all the links.

And remember: no Democratic president can ever be legitimate...

Stealing the 2016 Election: The GOP Is Already At Work

link

Last winter, shortly after President Obama won his second term in office, many Republicans rallied behind a pair of election-rigging plans to make it virtually impossible for a Democrat to win White House again. Though the two plans differ in important ways, the crux of both plans is to rig the Electoral College by requiring blue states to award a significant portion of their electoral votes to Republican presidential candidates — all while ensuring that red states will award 100 percent of their electoral votes to the Republican as well. Though these election-rigging plans appeared dead after a wave of Republican officials came out against them, one of them has just returned to life in California.

Props, incidentally, to Republicans who have opposed such efforts.

My view, FWIW, is:

We need to fight hard against this sort of thing now. If we wait until another election 2000 happens, it'll be too late. No matter how unfair the rules, the GOP will argue that they can't be changed retroactively. And they'll kind of have a point...

Marcotte on Bloom on Objectification

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/02/please-make-your-research-studies-in-response-to-real-people/

Oops, sorry, didn't mean to post this. This was just a reminder to myself to post on this.

As The Mystic points out below, no, Bloom in no way makes the assumption that Marcotte says he does, and, in fact, that was the main point I'd intended on making. I mean...he doesn't even come close to assuming that. That's a radically irresponsible reading. In fact, it borders on just plain making shit up.

It's kind of funny that one of her main points is that Bloom assumes that only women feel sexual desire, and one of her other main points is that you should address what proponents of a given view actually say...

I know I've been busting on feminism a lot, but I seem to just keep running into this stuff, and now it's in my head.

Occasional Johnny Quest Quotes

"I just found a potato chip in my pants!"

This...this is the kind of thing I have to put up with...

Prediction: ACA Website Relaunch Freakout

I haven't looked, but I'm willing to make this prediction:

Right-wing media is going to freak out about what a disaster it is.

That, of course, no matter what it's actually like.

Yeah...not exactly going out on a limb here...

Robyn Urback: No, Movember Is Not Misogynist

Obviously.

This is so obvious that, instead of discussing it in detail, it really ought to be an occasion for thinking about the derangement of the postmodern left.

More Anti-Movember Mumbo-Jumbo: Arianne Shavis in the New Statesman

Well, again, I think that Movember--and the word 'Movember', for that matter--is/are pretty dopey. No offense intended to anybody, but I just don't like mustaches. Not that that should matter a bit to anyone... Look, I'm pretty slack about shaving, and I'm sure that lots of people think that is pretty heinous-looking. And they're absolutely free to say so...

But anyway...

So I'm not wild about mustaches, though, even if I were, I'd still think that Movember was pretty goofy. However, some of the lefty/feminist/"SJW" responses to the thing are far, far stupider than Movember itself.

I discussed one idiotic criticism here.

Here's another one.

I don't see anything in there that's really worth wasting more time/energy on...though I will say:

It's true that people should think more about the fact that females are subject to greater social pressure to look a certain way than are males.. But that has virtually nothing to do with Movember. It's a separate problem that has only the most tenuous link to "Movember." Complaining about Movember on these grounds would be like complaining about, I dunno, that wedding dress show on cable on the grounds that males can't really get away with wearing dresses. The fact that somebody came up with a dopey group activity in which guys who want to participate grow mustaches has exactly zero "pernicious gendered and racial connotations." Not every activity has to be open to both sexes. If, say, some women wanted to...oh, God knows...have a multiple orgasm month or whatever, that would in no way be sexist. "Walk for the Cure" is in no way prejudiced against those who can't walk. People could round up participants in, say, Tanning Tuesday if they wanted, and this would in now way be "prejudiced" against people who can't tan. Prejudice (or bias) are simply not applicable to such cases. Not everyone needs to be able to participate in every activity. Bar someone from voting on inadequate grounds and there's a problem. But not every goofy activity everyone thinks up needs to be equally open to everyone. Hold a slam dunk contest if you like--I have no grounds for complaint simply because I can't dunk. (Though I used to be able to. Well...you know...almost...) If an activity were permissible only if every human being could participate in it equally, then basically no human activity would be permissible. Even eating--and activities which involve eating--would be impermissible on the grounds that some people must receive nutrients through a tube. Breathing would be out, because some people are in iron lungs. And so on.

But this is all too stupid even to discuss really.

The root of all evil here, really, is the sloppy, hyper-political ways of thinking (and I use the term loosely...) that prevail on what we might call the postmodern left. Influenced by sloppy thinkers like Foucault, Derrida, Lacan et al., the po-mo left has largely abandoned actual reasoning in favor of throwing around half-baked charges of prejudice. Bad theories make you stupid, and bad theories of how you ought to reason make you really, really stupid. And the po-mo left is afflicted by a terrible theory of how one ought to reason. Until the left shakes this stuff and at least tries to start genuinely reasoning again instead of relying on a barrage of  buzzwords and canned accusations of prejudice, it will continue--and deserve--to be a laughingstock.

Averting Genocide In The Central African Republic

link (Washington Post)

Right, so we can't seriously say "never again" anymore...  How about: "Sometime not"?

I suppose I'm not too optimistic about talking the GOP into supporting a humanitarian mission of this kind...though we could play up the Muslim/Christian angle, I suppose.

I'd like to see us make it easier for people from war-ravaged places like the C.A.R. to immigrate to the U.S....something akin to amnesty, but which didn't require refugees to get here before invoking it. (We would, in my opinion, need to make sure that such a policy didn't worsen the population problem...but we could implement such a policy without increasing the total number of annual immigrants.)

Herring Wins AG Race In The OD By 165 Points

link

Getcher recount goggles on, boys and girls.

The Iran Deal

Notably good news, unless I'm missing something.

Am I missing something?

As you've already seen, there are challenges...

I'm hardly part of the Blame America First crowd...and Iran's hands are far from clean... But it seems difficult to deny that the U.S. has inflicted more undeserved harm on Iran than Iran has inflicted on the U.S. The 1953 coup seems to me to be the root of all evil with respect to U.S.-Iran relations. We (and the Brits) did that. Without that, not only would the Iranian people subsequently have suffered much less, but Iran would have been far less anti-U.S.

At any rate, any thawing of relations is a good sign, isn't it?

And, though getting Netanyahu's panties in a bunch is not an infallible indicator of correctness, it's not evidentially valueless either, in my current book.

Goodbye Dan Perdue

Goodbye to my dear friend Daniel Perdue.

I've never known anyone else loved so deeply by so many people.

Dan deserves a proper eulogy here, but words fail me utterly. It's a bitter, bitter thing.

Richard Cheese / Down With The Sickness

There's no turning back now...

(NSFW, obviously)

Oldest Known Big Cat Fossils Found

link

Big cats similar to today’s snow leopard have prowled the Himalayas for the last 6 million years, an analysis of newly described fossils reveals. The remains of Panthera blytheae extend the known lineage of pantherine cats by at least 2 million years and bolster the notion that this group of carnivores originated in Asia.

Male and Female Crazy, In a Nutshell

25 year old woman claims marriage to Charles Manson.

The most paradigmatic type of male crazy: dudes be killin'. The most paradigmatic type of female crazy: swooning over said dudes.

One important way to divide up the world: its us vs. the crazy violent dudes and the women who long to bear  their more-likely-than-average-to-be crazy violent offspring, thus perpetuating the cycle.

Needless to say, this theory might need a bit of fine-tuning...

The Population Problem: Time's China Cover Story Edition

CNN link/summary

I try not to think about the population problem too much. It's a huge problem, and discussions of it are almost invariably infuriating.

To mention just a few infuriating things about the discussion:
Although IT IS VERBOTEN TO SAY THAT OVERPOPULATION IS A PROBLEM BECAUSE IT IS RACIST TO SAY THAT AND ANYWAY THE REAL PROBLEM IS OVERCONSUMPTION!!!111 (false, of course, on both counts), as soon as there is any even vaguely plausible case to be made that there are any adverse consequences whatsoever of reducing population...bam...Time cover story...

Liberals now often refuse to discuss overpopulation because concerns about overpopulation conflicts with their view that illegal immigration is not a problem. Those on the far left cry "racism!"...well, about everything...but often, in this context, because population growth is a bigger problem in less-developed nations, and criticizing anyone but the U.S. is verboten. Also, they basically refuse to discuss anything but American overconsumption--ever--in this topical vicinity. Then there's the right, which thinks we can and must grow the economy forever, and that TEH MUZLIMZ WILL OUTBREED US!!!1111  Oh, yeah: and then there are the radical right racists, who do, in fact, decry overpopulation, and actually do so because it's an opportunity to criticize Africans and Asians, and to push an anti-immigration agenda. And of course that helps a lot...

So basically all the major regions of the political spectrum refuse to discuss overpopulation in a sensible, objective way.

So we now have what is, in effect, a one-way valve regulating any discussion about population: discussions in which it is argued that overpopulation is a problem are shut down, but any evidence that a reduced population might cause any problems in any way is catapulted to the forefront of the public consciousness. This prejudices the discussion in a way that serves not only to ignore the overpopulation problem, but to actually encourage overpopulation.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The Nuclear Option Debate In Two Charts

link

Somehow I wasn't actually aware that the Republicans had any case to make here. Seems like the total record with respect to accepted vs. rejected judicial nominees is one reasonable measure of what's been going on. But that doesn't mean that it's not important to look at the comparative number of filibusters of nominees across administrations. That is to say, I don't see how the case associated with Republican's chart does much to mitigate the case represented by the Democrats' chart.

Am I missing something here?

Are Liberals More Intelligent than Conservatives?

I doubt it, but...wait...am I really about to link to Psychology Today? Oh ferthelova....this blog really is going to shit...

Anyway: Analyses of large representative samples, from both the United States and the United Kingdom, confirm this prediction. In both countries, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to be liberals than less intelligent children. For example, among the American sample, those who identify themselves as “very liberal” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 106.4,whereas those who identify themselves as “very conservative” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 94.8. Even though past studies show that women are more liberal than men, and blacks are more liberal than whites, the effect of childhood IQ on adult political ideology is twice as large as the effect of either sex or race. So it appears that, as the Hypothesis predicts, more intelligent individuals are more likely to espouse the value of liberalism than less intelligent individuals, possibly because liberalism is evolutionarily novel and conservatism is evolutionarily familiar.

 Most of that is interesting...That last bit, however, seems to refer to "the savanna IQ interaction hypothesis"...and it is not at all clear that the hypothesis in question actually makes the alleged prediction. But the stuff about childhood IQ is interesting.

[via Reddit]

Cambridge Feminists Freak Out Over Butt Contest

Well, since we've been on the topic of why I don't really think of myself as a feminist anymore (despite the fact that I am, of course, an egalitarian with respect to the sexes, and despite MK's best efforts and cogent arguments...)

Apparently the Cambridge Tab is having a "rear of the year" contest, in which readers are asked to vote on the best butt, from a selection of pictures of nekkid and partially clothed male and female butts:

NSFW, naughty butt pix (also: Daily Mail)

From the story:

However, not everyone is supportive of the competition, which is being run for the second time despite strong opposition from women's groups last year.

Lauren Steele, Women's Officer at Cambridge University Students' Union, has condemned the online poll as 'irresponsible'. 

In a joint statement with Anija Dokter, from Cambridge Feminist Society, she said: 'This is an example of immature, blind and irresponsible behaviour on the part of The Tab editors.

'I sincerely hope they will take responsibility for the harm caused, not only to the women depicted but also to the broader community, for reinforcing sexism and exclusion.

'The Tab should immediately remove the photos, publish an apology and mandate that all future publications cannot include the misuse and appropriation of women's and other minorities' bodies.'

Right then. So, to review: [submittingh] some pictures of butts--both male and female--voluntarily, by the possessors of said butts, is "irresponsible," "immature" (ok,well, they maybe have a point there...), "blind" (???), have somehow caused "harm to the women depicted [and] also to the broader community," reinforce "sexism and exclusion," and, apparently, involves the "misuse" and "appropriation" of "women's and other minorities'" [sic] bodies...

Honestly, this kind of abject nonsense has become more-or-less par for the course in academic feminism. We could go through this pointing out all the errors, but, well, why bother? There's basically no way to make them more obvious than they already are...

There is just no way that I can think of myself as allied with a movement that routinely tolerates this kind of idiotic cant. And it's not merely tolerated...these silly buzzwords and incoherent, boilerplate objections are like shibboleths of contemporary academic feminism. To try to have a discussion with such people is like stepping through the logical looking glass.

Oh, and don't forget the puritanism! I really love me some fear and loathing of sexuality...  That's a great way to win me over to your side.

Anyway, I haven't given up on the egalitarian project...but I just can't have anything to do with such people. If this were rare...or if sane, liberal feminists challenged this kind of thing more regularly, that'd be the kind of thing that would likely make me think of myself as a feminist again. But, as it stands, I feel as if I'm standing on the shore watching feminism sink in a whirlpool of incoherent, po-mo inspired gobbledygook and conceptual confusion.

IMO, either liberal feminists need to seize the helm again, or there needs to be some kind of successor movement that goes back to the enlightenment-inspired, egalitarian roots of old-style feminism. Otherwise, people like me are going to continue to abandon ship.

George Zimmerman Answers All The Questions

Well, at least this pretty much settles the debate about the Zimmerman-Treyvon Martin confrontation...

Coyne: No Faith In Science

I disagree with Jerry Coyne about this.

I'm not sure that faith in science is on par with the kind of faith that most people seem to have in mind when they assert that science and religion are on par--they seem to be talking about "blind" faith. (Of course, many religious folks treat faith as if it were magical--as if it conferred all the advantages of knowledge onto their preferred beliefs, without requiring any of that pesky proof...)

For some time now I've been pretty interested in Richard Smyth's interpretation of Peirce with respect to the justification of the logic of science. In short, that does involve a kind of appeal to Kantian rational faith. The argument begins with the recognition that we (currently) have no non-circular justification of the types of inference requried by science (and, since circular justifications don't work, we can just leave out the 'non-circular' in that sentence; it's superfluous...) Most notoriously, we don't  know how to justify induction. Coyne makes an appeal to Dawkins--always a mistake in these matters--who writes:

There is a very, very important difference between feeling strongly, even passionately, about something because we have thought about and examined the evidence for it on the one hand, and feeling strongly about something because it has been internally revealed to us, or internally revealed to somebody else in history and subsequently hallowed by tradition. There's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority, or revelation.

But this won't work. The problem at the end of this trail is that we don't know how to justify the principles we use in our inferences. Sure, we can look at the evidence, but if we don't know how to justify induction--for example, we don't know how to show that it's more rational to reason inductively than to reason counter-inductively (though you don't have to make the argument that way)--then we seem to have no rational grounds for doing what we do with that evidence instead of something else.

Coyne writes:

What about faith in reason? Wrong again. Reason—the habit of being critical, logical, and of learning from experience—is not an a priori assumption but a tool that’s been shown to work. It’s what produced antibiotics, computers, and our ability to sequence DNA. We don’t have faith in reason; we use reason because, unlike revelation, it produces results and understanding. Even discussing why we should use reason employs reason!

 This, however, doesn't seem to work either, for well-known reasons. Think again about induction. The claim that we are justified in reasoning inductively because it works is patently circular, even on the best reconstruction of it--all we know is that induction has worked well so far. To conclude that we should reason inductively tomorrow is (apparently) to reason inductively: induction has worked in the past, so it will work in the future. Circularity, again. (Note: I don't think the past-to-future characterization of induction is right...I'm just employing it here for brevity.)

Coyne also writes:

Finally, isn’t science at least based on the faith that it’s good to know the truth? Hardly. The notion that knowledge is better than ignorance is not a quasi-religious faith, but a preference: We prefer to know what’s right because what’s wrong usually doesn’t work. We don’t describe plumbing or auto mechanics as resting on the faith that it’s better to have your pipes and cars in working order, yet people in these professions also depend on finding truth.

But a mere preference does not constitute a justification. So, though it's right to say that this appeal can't prove the conclusion that science is based on faith, that's a hollow victory. This response says that science is based on something exactly as irrational as faith. But, of course, Coyne tries to slip in proof to bolster preference at the end of the argument: we just prefer it...but we prefer it because it works...circularity and other nastiness threaten again...

Honestly, I don't see why glib, unsound defenses of science are much better than glib, disingenuous attacks on science.

The Ramones: Spiderman Theme

So much awesome.

(via Reddit)

[Edit: From what looks like it could be the greatest album of all time: Saturday Morning Cartoons Greatest Hits.]

CBS: No Transparency With Respect To Benghazi Story

Drum

Wow, this all really stinks...

White Supremacist Gets Results of Genetic Analysis of His Ancestry

The short video

(via Metafilter)

Herring Takes The Lead in AG Race

Herring now up over Obenshain by 117 votes.

"Cuccinelli Actually Won Virginia"

You won't hear about this in the lamestream media...

(Via someplace or other on Reddit, I think.)

Virginia AG Count Down To 17 Votes

link

N.b.:

And the results are likely to continue shifting, with provisional ballots unreported in one large locality, Fairfax County, and possibly incomplete in another, Richmond. No matter what, the race — with a margin smaller than 0.001 percent of the vote — is almost certainly headed for a recount that won’t be decided before December.

Fairfax County and Richmond, as you may know, are dark blue.

Sounds promising.

Joss Whedon's Awful Speech on 'Feminism'

link

Wow. I love me some Joss Whedon...but that speech is really terrible. Just godawful.

I'm not going to waste time on it, I'm just going to point it out and move on.

But I will say: eventually, feminism is going to have to admit that not everyone who is hesitant to identify himself/herself as a feminist is a Neanderthal. A fairly large percentage of college females no longer do so. The radical vanguard of feminism makes up stories about false consciousness or whatever...but the fact is, feminism is no longer unequivocally a liberal, egalitarian movement.

It pains me--oh, God how it pains me--to paraphrase Ronald Reagan approvingly...but I didn't leave feminism, feminism left me. I'm still an egalitarian about the sexes, I still think women are significantly discriminated against in the U.S. and outright oppressed elsewhere...I still believe everything that the liberal, egalitarian feminists of my youth believed. But the academic vanguard of feminism no longer clearly believes those things. I can't whole-heartedly identify with a movement that has so significantly identified itself with the radical, illiberal left politically, and the irrationalist intellectual left,to boot. I wish that liberal feminists would stand up to the nutty wing of the movement... But, until they do, I'll continue to be an apostate, at least nominally.

But, anyway...don't quit your day job, Joss.

A History of Political Correctness: 20 Years After Penn's 'Water Buffalo' Incident

link

Sadly, this kind of madness seems to be on the rise again, though this time it's inaccurately called the "social justice" movement. 

I continue to hope that American liberals will some day come to understand that the extreme left is just as illiberal as the extreme right. The PC days were an embarrassing episode in the history of American universities. (Weirdly, the nuttiest stuff seemed to be strongest at more elite institutions..I still don't understand why that was...) It's a scandal that universities are susceptible to such insanity.

Man Set On Fire For Wearing a Skirt

link

Yeah, I really need to stop being surprised by how evil and stupid some people are...

So, 18-year-old Luke (aka Sasha) Fleischman was apparently set on fire by a 16-year-old male because he was wearing a skirt:

Fleischman was apparently asleep on the bus, heading home to East Oakland, when the suspect set fire to a skirt the victim was wearing, his mother said. The victim, a senior at Maybeck High School in Berkeley, does not identify as male or female but rather as nonbinary gender, an umbrella term covering any gender identity that does not fit within the gender binary.

"My son considers himself agender," Debbie Fleischman said. "He likes to wear a skirt. It's his statement. That's how he feels comfortable dressing."

So, basically, he didn't look like some 16-year-old jackass thought he should look...so said jackass set him on fire.

Look, I do understand the power of tradition. It has a hard grip on people's minds. The natural, incidental behavioral differences between males and females have been exaggerated by the culture and turned into categories of dress and behavior so ubiquitous and in some respects involable that they almost seem natural. For all my contempt for this sort of thing, even I find it rather off-putting when males dress in the way normally associated with females.

However...imagine what your mental life has to be like to think that it's ok to basically try to burn someone to death for not looking like you expect them to look. That's just flat-out psychotic.

Hoops: Still No Decisions from NCAA on Hairston and LMac

link

Gosh, Carolina just seems to have been snake bit subsequent to the 2009 title. It just seems as if, at every fork in the road, things have gone down the less-good of the available paths for them...

This Hairston situation (weed, possibly a gun, possible impermissible benefits (driving a rented car paid for by an unapproved third party)) is unprecedented in the history of Carolina hoops. There's nothing wrong with weed, of course, but it looks likely that somebody in that car had a gun. Hairston may not have known about it, of course...  But you've got to draw the line somewhere, and that's a pretty good place to draw it...

McDonald had some association with a "designer mouth guard" company, but it doesn't seem to be clear whether he approved their use of his image.

Jesus, guys, this stuff simply doesn't happen in this program...

I don't understand the NCAA, the decisions of which seem largely arbitrary to me. The Carolina football scandal--and I'm not a football fan, so I don't have the ordinary dog in the fight--didn't seem to me like a football scandal at all. It was really an academic scandal--much, much worse IMHO--that the football team took the fall for.

Other teams, of course, get away with impermissible benefits all the time, with a slap on the wrist or less... Needless to say, part of me roots for Carolina to dodge any sanctions...it's going to be a mediocre enough year as it is. But I'd rather see college sports cleaned up. Of course I'd rather it be uniformly cleaned up...but waddaya gonna do?

Needless to say, the best outcome will be that both P.J. and LMac are innocent. That'd be great, and it's the verdict I'm hoping for. But if they aren't, then so be it.

UVa Business Professor Charged With Distributing Child Porn

link

(h/t The Mystic)

Obamacare: Were the Infamous Cancelled Policies "Junk Insurance"?

Granted, Obama said something false--and may very well have lied--about something important when he said You can keep your current policy. Period.

However, it seems that the now-unavailable policies may have all been junk. This seems to me to be a decent defense. It wouldn't fully exonerate Obama for his false statements, but it's a good reason for the policies to be eliminated.

Not to play Obama apologist here, but I do think that this mitigates the error.

VA Attorney General Race: Brace for the Recount

VPAP has Obenshain up by fewer than 500 votes with 100% of precincts reporting.  

Tune in in December to see who our new AG is...

Post: Democratic Coalition Defeates Cuccinelli

Looks like the Obama coalition hung together for this one.

SBOE has Herring up by about 500 votes!

link

It ain't over yet!

OD Update: McAuliffe, Northam Projected To Win; Herring Trails

According to VPAP.

Well, the two crazy people lost, but not by nearly as much as they should have...looks like we're on a trajectory to lose the AG race, and lose at least a seat in the HoD.

Dems Still Looking Strong in 2 of Top 3 VA races

link

When I heard that McAuliffe was the likely Democratic nominee for governor, I said I'd never vote for him, and furthermore, that he could never win... 

...then the VA GOP gave the Dems the gift of Ken Cuccinelli, and that was enough to make a liar out of me and lots of other semi-Dems... 

Fortunately, McAuliffe's lead remains comfortable, and Northam is going to trounce Jackson. Herring-Obenshain is close, with PPP putting Herring up by 2 (via Blue VA).

Keep your fingers crossed on that last one.

House Republicans Skip Obamacare Briefing They Themselves Demanded

link

Not such a big deal in the overall context of their crazy...but I find it amusing and telling, so there it is.

What Exactly Do Student Evaluations Measure?

Well, not the right things...:

According to two of the best studies we have on the matter:

Teaching effectiveness, as measured by subsequent performance and career success, is negatively associated with student teaching evaluations

Stupidity On Parade: Why Movember is Offensive

Quite possibly the stupidest article ever written:

Sarah Sahagian: Why I Think Movember is Offensive

This article really is off-the-scale stupid, even by the standards of the internet.

First sentence:

First, Movember is gender essentialist. What of men who have a hard time growing any facial hair at all? - See more at: http://commentsenabled.ca/opinion/item/84-why-the-movember-campaign-is-offensive-to-me#sthash.YIJsQRo0.dpuf

First, Movember is gender essentialist. What of men who have a hard time growing any facial hair at all? - See more at: http://commentsenabled.ca/opinion/item/84-why-the-movember-campaign-is-offensive-to-me#sthash.YIJsQRo0.dpuf

First, Movember is gender essentialist. What of men who have a hard time growing any facial hair at all?

No, I did not make that up. 

There are almost too many inanities there to refute.

First, that has nothing to do with essentialism. Unfortunately, the academic po-mo left cannot use terminology precisely to save its life. Furthermore, the folks over there understand approximately no philosophy whatsoever. They throw around the term 'essentialism' because they seem to like the way it sounds...but they have no idea what it means. Essentialism is the view that some things have some of their properties necessarily. There is absolutely nothing about Movember that has anything whatsoever to do with essentialism, gender or otherwise. There is absolutely no suggestion whatsoever that the ability to grow facial hair is an essential characteristic of males. None. Nada. Zip. You've got to be utterly clueless to suggest such an argument. We're talking 'F' on an introductory philosophy quiz clueless. The suggested argument above simply does not make any sense whatsoever.

Second, this has nothing to do with gender whatsoever; it has to do with sex. This is a distinction that was central to old-school feminism...contemporary feminists of Ms. Shagrian's sort, however, seem incapable of understanding even this simple, useful distinction. To the extent that Movember is about either sex or gender, it's about the former not the latter. Though...:

It's really not about either. It's all about a bunch of people who want to grow mustaches and who can do so growing mustaches. If some female out there wants to and can grow mustaches, then more power to her. But the fact that this is mostly going to be something that males do is no more "gender essentialist" than is breast cancer awareness month. Just because activity X is an activity that one sex is more likely to engage in in another does not mean that that activity involves any theory about the essential properties of sexes or genders.

And that's just part of what there is to say about the first two sentences of this ode to idiocy.

Look, I think mustaches invariably look terrible. I've occasionally grown a winter beard, but I'd never grow a mustache by itself (plus, it's one of the very few things JQ has forbidden...so we're on the same page there...). I have no interest whatsoever in defending Movember. But I do have an interest in attacking stupidity... 

This is, sadly, just one tiny example of the enormous tangle of confusion and stupidity that infects the Tumblr left (the "SJW"s, the radical parts of academic feminism, and so on). Fewer and fewer people take feminism seriously as nonsense like this becomes more and more prominent there. Personally, it's this kind of stuff that pushed me away from identifying myself as a feminist. It's not that I am any less committed to the equality of the sexes than I used to be...it's rather that feminism seems to be. Instead of working from clear liberal principles toward real change in the world, feminism has become more and more of a postmodern circlejerk pervaded by nonsense like that in the Sahagian article. I get tired of hearing people suggest that the reason to oppose the sexism and stupidity that seems to have become so common on the extremes of feminism is that it hurts feminism generally. Nonsense. The reason to oppose sexism and stupidity is that sexism and stupidity are bad, no matter where they show up. However, it's also true that feminism is making a mockery of itself by going down this road--the farther it goes down it, the less it warrants respect.

Somebody really needs to make it clear to these people that you can't simply repeat mantras about "essentialism," "privilege," "objectification" and so on and deserve to be taken seriously.

Oh, and, haven't even gotten to the hilarious third sentence:

Movember is also gender essentialist because our social construction of femininity is in part embedded in the "masculine sign" of facial hair.

If it were possible to make less sense than the first two sentences did, this sentence would do it. First, "social construction" is a radically ambiguous, unclear, and defective concept. But let's just pretend we can make sense of it here...  Let's say it just means socially created. Now...is femininity  (per se) a social creation? No, it is not. Femininity is simply a property that some people have more than others. Society has in no way invented femininity. It's just a fact that some people tend to be more feminine and some tend to be more masculine--and females tend to be the former, while males tend to be the latter. Society does not create any of this--what it does do is exaggerate and normativize it. So, we have a kind of cultural lore or habit that pushes males to exaggerate their innate tendency to be more masculine, and females to exaggerate their natural tendency to be more feminine. Furthermore, we have a weird collective belief that males ought to be masculine and females ought to be feminine. That just seems like bullshit to me...but what society gets the blame for here is not somehow "inventing femininity" (whatever that could mean), but exaggerating a statistical regularity, and then turning women tend to be more feminine than men into women ought to be more feminine than men. You'd think that people who allegedly specialize in understanding this stuff would, y'know, understand this stuff...  But, furthermore, even if any of what we've seen so far were coherent or true, none of it has anything to do with "gender" "essentialism"... None of that says nor suggests that facial hair is a necessary condition for masculinity. But, oh God, this thing just keeps going...and, believe it or not, it actually gets worse...:

We pretend that facial hair is only something that happens to men (even though it does not happen to all men)...

Again, we're talking about 'F' material on an intro philosophy quiz here...  What she actually seems to mean is not 'we pretend that facial hair is only something that happens to men,' but, rather, 'we pretend that facial hair is something that happens only to men'--which is entirely different (though, incidentally, false: we don't pretend that, actually...). But "even though it does not happen to all men"????  For the love of God...that something does not happen to all men in no way indicates that we should not think that it happens only to men... I mean, we don't pretend that it happens only to men...but if we did think that, the fact that it does not happen to all men would not constitute a reason for us to change our view. Happening to all men and happening only to men are entirely different things. The fact that not all As are Bs casts no doubt whatsoever on only As are Bs. The two claims are perfectly consistent. (Note that the As can be a proper subset of the Bs.)... It's as if the author had said:

We pretend that cancer happens only to men, even though not all men get cancer...

For the love of Pete...that's just embarrassing...

But listen, I've already wasted a half an hour of my life, that I'll never get back, on this. 

You might think I'm being a little hard on the thing--not because the criticisms aren't justified, perhaps, but because the tone is harsh. But we need to put our collective foot down about the proliferation of these moronic attempts to manufacture sexism (not to mention fictional, incoherent charges like "gender essentialism") where they don't exist. It contributes to the moronification of the culture, it involves false accusations against people and organizations, and, finally, it drags down legitimate feminism. 

There's really just no excuse for this kind of crap.

Bad News

"Sarah Palin is Not Going Away" (CNN)

Well, probably good news for purely utilitarian reasons...but bad for our collective blood pressure...

Light Posting

Not much posting of late, basically because my mother died.Weirdly and unfortunately this is just one chapter in a larger disaster ripping through the remnants of my family, and all because my so-called father is an evil, violent psychopath.

Anyway, the upshot for blog purposes is: posting will be light for awhile.

Supremes Reject Cuccinelli's Attempt to Revive VA Anti-Sodomy Law

link

More Viral BS from the Fever Swamps: $4,000 ACA Opt-Out Fine

Pants-on-Fire

(h/t S. rex)

Are Gay People Smarter Than Straight People?

Meh. Maybe. 

Just a sketchy overview...but you probably wouldn't find this kind of dispassionate discussion at places like Slate if the hypothesis were reversed, or if it concerned different groups. 

It's not that I don't understand people being touchy about such questions--I do, I do. But I suppose it does rather surprise me that everybody seems to lose their shit so profoundly about the matter.

Faux News's Loony New Newsroom

LOOOOL @ Fox "News"

The--and I want to stress that I am not making this up--"news deck" is, we are told, for viewers who like their news "nonlinear"...

Whelp. They're watching the right channel, I reckon...

(via Reddit)

Possibly the Stupidest Video Game Article Ever: Zelda, OoT is "Sexist, Racist, Classist"...and...Animalist...or Whatever...

Link  (har har)

Wow. This is an incredibly stupid article.

Like, off-the-known-scale, this-dumbassery-goes-to-11, hyperbolically dipshit stupid.

Sadly, Salon.com is publishing more and more heinous nonsense from the "SJW" left.

This is just a warmed-over rehash of some Anita Sarkeesian nonsense. A.S. has just about one true point, and that point is so obvious that it's hard to believe that anyone needed her to point it out: it's kinda sexist to have the dude save the chick...over and over and over...

Here's my favorite bit of nonsense from this piece of crap:

Some may interpret the fate of the wealthy family, who are transformed into spiderlike creatures, in the House of Skulltulla as a condemnation of an exploitive class system, but that would be a mistake.

“Folks around here tell of a fabulously rich family that once lived in one of the houses in this village,” an elderly character in Kakariko confides. “But they say that the entire family was cursed due to their greed! Who knows what might happen to those who are consumed by greed.”

By focusing on the greed of individuals, the game ignores how private property incentivizes and even mandates such behavior. And with this moralizing focus comes a belief that society’s economic ills are intractable because of humanity’s flawed nature.

Riiiight.... Z:OoT is all pro-greed and shit...buuut...the rich people get massacred because of their greed...but that's not exactly the right theoretical pitch that a certain brand of lefty wanted...sooo...doesn't count...  If you don't explicitly condemn capitalism in your video game, you are an oppressor, Jack. And if there is any hint that personal responsibility is a thing...well, you know we don't cotton to that shit....  JFC. The game is not explicitly Marxist, ergo it's "problematic" (the uber-lefty's favorite word of the moment...) What an unmitigated load of abject horseshit.

Then there's the bit about how Z:OoT is horrible on account of not mentioning animal rights when farms come into the picture...

Seriously...this is approximately the stupidest damn shit I have seen on the internet. And that, my friends, is saying something.

(For more--and more detailed--ridicule of this bullshit, see Reddit/r/TumblrinAction's comments on this crap...)

I'm An Outlaw/First-World Anarcy: Gubmint Shutdown Edition: Hiking SNP

I am bad to the bone...

I went running up the Madison Run fire road in the Shenandoah National Park yesterday. Oh yes I did.

Did I see the small laminated sign nailed to a tree saying that the park was closed? I did. But your "rules" have no authority over me, man. I make my own rules, see?

I did run into a cute, off-duty rangergirl in her SUV, and she tried to convince me to give up my life of crime.

Cute Off-Duty Ranger Girl: Park's closed, buddy.
Me: [Thinking: 'buddy'? That's the most confrontational thing a ranger in the SNP has ever said to me...]
Me: [Saying]: Yeah, I know, but I figured it wasn't a big deal.
CODRG: [pause] They're giving out tickets.
Me: Yeah...but is it a hassle for the rangers? I mean, I'm willing to pay the fine, but I don't want to seem disrespectful or anything.
CODRG: Well... [obviously not wanting to say "I know this is all bullshit"] There's one guy being a real hard-ass about all this. He's, like, giving tickets for rolling stops on Skyline Drive...
Me: I'll be careful...
CODRG: Don't go up past the chain at the gap...just stay on the fire road.
Me: Will do. Thanks for the warning.
CODRG: [Drives off]

Obviously she was drunk on authority.

But seriously, I love the rangers.

Anyway, despite the great beauty of the day, I wasn't having a great run, and ended up turning back sooner than normal. I ran into another scofflaw who was hiking up.

Me: Greetings, fellow outlaw.
Him: Hey, this off-duty ranger just told me that they were giving out tickets up to "several hundred dollars"...
Me: Dang, she left out that detail when I talked to her.
Him: Yeah, I'm just going to hide in the woods if I hear another vehicle.
Me: [Looking down at my florescent orange shorts] Damn. Incorrect fashion choice.

Hundreds of dollars seems excessive to me... But I realize they've got to do their jobs.

Ran into a group of Germans who were hiking up. They didn't realize the park was closed.

Me: Hey, you guys realize the park is closed?
Them: Gott im Himmel!
Me: Seriously.
Them: But...zey tell us in der Harrisonburg dat zis is hokay?
Me: Well, word on the fire road is that they might be giving out tickets of several hundred dollars. That's like...at least five Euros...
Them: [disappointed, indecisively wondering what to do]
Me: If I were you I'd probably just hike and then pretend I didn't speak English. I'd be pretty surprised if they'd ticket you.

Also ran into some folks getting their horses ready to ride up, and told them what the what was.

"Call your Congressman" seemed to be the consensus...

Too bad my Representative is this fellow...

Obamacare: At Least It's Not Obamacare...

Johnny Quest is interested in the Obamacare debate--way more interested than I am, I have to admit. So when she was at the mall the other day, she--as she puts it--was blatantly eavesdropping on a conversation at a kiosk giving out information on Virginia's new Health Insurance Marketplace--our instantiation of the ACA.

A middle-aged couple got a bunch of information, then the following exchanges occurred:

Middle-aged couple: [roughly, to the kiosk person, and while walking away] This sounds pretty good--better than Obamacare, that's for sure!
Kiosk person: [smiles and waves]: 'bye!
JQ: [walking over to the kiosk]: Um...just to be completely sure...this is Virginia's Obamacare exchange, right?
Kiosk person: [smilling]: Yup

Well...what they don't know...will still get 'em cheaper health insurance...

They Hate Obama. They Really, Really Hate Him.

A word cloud derived from conversations among Republican voters: here.

The crazy, it is strong in these ones...

GOP Gets More Blame for Shutdown

WSJ

A quarter of Americans would blame the Republicans for a government shutdown, 5% would blame the Democrats and 44% would blame everyone, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. A total of 14% of people put blame on President Barack Obama, Reuters reported.

People are not entirely immune to truth.

How Do We Reduce Gun Violence?

Sullivan summarizes a new book of summaries...

Drum: The Shutdown In Ten Infuriating Sentences

God bless Kevin Drum.

link

WWII European Theater Day-By-Day Map/Video

This is freaking cool.

(via Reddit)

The Republican Temper-Tantrum

Wow, these people are going to hold their breath until those poopy-head Democrats give up on that poopy-head Obamacare...  They really have fetishized that law. Their hatred for it is out of all proportion to the hatred that any reasonable conservative could possibly have for it. Of course their hatred of Obamacare is not independent of their hatred of and contempt for Obama. Some of this, it seems, really is personal with them. (Though, on the other hand, they have frothing-at-the-mouth hated the last 2-3 Democratic presidents...)

Too bad they have the power to hold the whole country's breath, too...

What's the cost of all of this, other than to our national pride? Apparently something on the order of $2-3 billion per day.

(Oh Douglas Holz-Eakin...is there any sophistry too sophistical for you? He seems pleased with the claim that a shutdown might cost, per day, about what it costs to keep the government open anyway...  Buuut...in one of those cases we get something for that money, no? Or am I missing something here?)

And what's the cost of ending the shutdown? John Boehner's job, maybe.

My fellow Americans...that is a price I'm willing to pay...

Mark Boardman: Why Both Sides Are Wrong In the Race Debate

link

This starts off pretty good, but crashes and burns in the end. Boardman tries to spin things too hard for racial antirealism. He also doesn't quite get the question right. Still, a decent sketch of some of the arguments early on.

The right way to ask the question is: are racial distinctions biologically significant? The answer is: sometimes yes, sometimes no. Race is a weird and sketchy concept, but it isn't pure fiction from a biological perspective. It's fashionable on the left to assert that race is "socially constructed"...but since "socially constructed" is a term too laughably confused to be a part of any serious discussion, we won't countenance it around these parts...

Race is obviously not just made up--many racial divisions are grounded in biological realities. It's just not a terribly important concept; racial differences aren't very important as biological differences go. Look, even the blond/brunette distinction is a real distinction. It isn't fictive, it isn't "socially constructed" nor any such nonsense. It just isn't important. Many racial distinctions are more important than the blond/brunette distinction...but none are anywhere near as scientifically important as, say, the male/female distinction. We know that (some current lefty madness to the contrary) the male/female distinction is a real one...and we don't think that acknowledging this is fatal to the egalitarian project...so we shouldn't freak out about the reality of certain racial differences.

It's tempting to try to deny that race is real as a tactical move against racists--but it's a bad move. It might be rhetorically effective, but it isn't true. There's simply no need to hang the fate of the egalitarian project, even in part, on such a shaky hook.

UW-Madison TA Rebels At Leftist Indoctrination Sessions

link

Wow, good for this guy.

Of course, his academic career is over...

But good for him...

My current academic institution is far enough down the academic ladder to be largely immune to this kind of madness...  True, students are basically brainwashed with mantras about diversity and global warming...but we usually get a watered-down version of the cutting-edge craziness from ten years ago or so, not raw, uncut, up-to-the-minute crazy...

(Incidentally, in responding to a recent series of thought-experiments, my freshman students revealed that more--many more--of them thought that they had an obligation to protect the environment than thought that they had an obligation to save a person dying in front of them. When I pointed out to them that this didn't seem to make much sense, they quickly became extremely defensive, and blurted out a bunch of terrible arguments. So I let them calm down, and then brought up the subject again, whereupon they admitted--in so many words, though after I suggested it--that they had basically been brainwashed about the environment. We had a nice talk about that, and I allowed as how I thought that protecting the environment was, indeed, a good thing...but that brainwashing is a bad one... It actually turned out to be a really good discussion.)

It really is unacceptable that universities have become loci of liberal and leftist indoctrination. Even though I think that liberals are right about most things, that doesn't mean that we get to brainwash our students about them. I think that conservatives overestimate the severity of this problem, but liberals underestimate it. The tale from Madison in the link seems to confirm my concerns...

I mean, the very fact that you have to worry about ending your academic career by objecting when someone calls you a racist means that something has gone very, very, very wrong...

Fallows: The Two Basic Facts That Should Be In Every Shutdown Story

link

quote:

1. If the House of Representatives voted on a "clean" budget bill--one that opened up the closed federal offices but did not attempt to defund the Obama health care program--that bill would pass, and the shutdown would be over. Nearly all Democrats would vote for it, as would enough Republicans to end the shutdown and its related damage. (and of course it...already passed the Senate, repeatedly,...and would be signed by the president.)...

2. So far House Speaker John Boehner has refused to let this vote occur. His Tea Party contingent knows how the vote would go and therefore does not want it to happen; and such is Boehner's fear of them, and fear for his job as Speaker, that he will not let it take place.

(h/t S. rex)