A Decade Of Failed Climate Predictions

It's settled science, bigot.
Disconfirmation is for people who don't run the culture, and for politically incorrect theories.

Progressives Declare Bret Stephens A Racist For Agreeing With Cognitive Science That Jews Are Smart

The party of science decrees that if you accept the conclusions of cognitive science you are racist, racist.
To be a progressive you must be willing to reject science as well as your own experience. Such is the price of salvation.

Left-Wing Media Concerned About Media Bias...On The Right

Surprise!
   I have no doubt that this is a problem on the right...though Todd's chart seems pretty nutty / ill-informed to me. 4Chan isn't really a source of crackpot right-wing stories so far as I know. It's, rather, mostly a source of anti-left trolling. And Drudge doesn't really seem to be so much in the loop anymore. Gateway Pundit was, indeed, an absolutely loony source of intentional distortions...though it seems to have improved a lot. I don't watch cable news nor do I use Facebook, so I don't know anything about those.
   Seems like the most salient points here are:
(a) The MSM still seems to view itself as reasonably unbiased and evidence-based.
(b) Nutty stories on the right don't seem to have much impact, because the right isn't culturally powerful; nutty stories on the left are treated as indisputable (or barely-disputable) fact, and alter the trajectory of the culture.
Relatedly:
(c) The "ecosystem" of right-wing mythologies and distortions includes nodes like 4chan and Gateway Pundit. The ecosystem of left-wing mythologies and distortions includes The New York Times, The Washington Post, academia, both the other cable news networks, Vox...basically everything else. And, of course: Meet The Press.
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What Happened To Comments?

What happened is that I decided--months ago--to finally shut this blog down. The comments were what I enjoyed about it--the rest is just blowing off steam. So I just kinda stopped reading them. This was made easier by the fact that Blogger stopped sending proper notice that comments had been posted. But as crazy as Our Current Situation is, I just kept posting screeds. So now it's the worst of both worlds: my screeds, no comments. Of course I've chased off most long-time readers by now anyway. But that's probably better for everyone concerned, when you think about it...
   Anyway. That's the story.

Defining "Trans" "Accurately" Now Gets You Banned From Twitter

What's actually meant is: (i) even if you define (ii) transgenderism in a way that's (iii) in accordance with Orwellian leftist orthodoxy, you can (iv) still be banned from Twitter.
   That's to say: even if you write as if the current transgender mythology of the left were true, they can ban you anyway.
   Of all the lunacy on parade here, one of the most glaring is the demand that we use 'transgender' or 'trans' where what's called for is 'transgenderism.' Even where English grammar* clearly calls for nominalizing the term, the Orwellian left has demanded that we ignore the rule...because it sounds "too medical." Or, at least, that was the last version of the demand I read. This isn't terribly substantive, especially compared to their other diktats. But it's notable in that it illustrates how micro their linguistic management can become. The fact that they've been able to force such an inane demand onto even those who are calling bullshit on them shows something about their social power--and something about the derangement of our public discussions and reasonings. This is of a piece with the imaginary sins of "deadnaming" and "misgendering."
   So here's a true sentence: "For sixty years, Bruce Jenner was known as 'Bruce Jenner'; later, he elected to misrepresent himself as a woman, changed his name to 'Caitlyn,' underwent cosmetic surgery (e.g. received breast implants), and asked people to refer to him with feminine pronouns ('she', etc.)."
   Apparently you aren't permitted two write that perfectly true sentence on account of "deadnaming" Jenner by using the same name he used for the first sixty years of his life, and "misgendering" him by using English correctly when referring to him. That's to say: though Big Tech still permits people to criticize transgender mythology in certain ways, one must speak as if TM is true while criticizing it.
   As we all know--and as progressives gleefully remind us--Big Tech is permitted to censor. They aren't constrained by the First Amendment. I don't dispute that. However:
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Gene Healy: Don't Freak Out About Impeachment

He thinks they ought to be easier so we can have more of them.
I think that's a pretty interesting suggestion...but I don't think anybody who takes it seriously now would have taken it seriously during the Obama administration. More to the point: given the life-or-death nature of contemporary politics, opening up another avenue for winning/losing is just going to make things worse. Not that things were better in the early national period...

Michael Moore: White Guys Who Voted For Trump Are Not Good People--Be Afraid Of Them

This view is clearly widespread among the progressive vocal vanguard.
How widespread is it in general?
I'm guessing: pretty widespread.
   At this point, there's virtually no chance of me voting for the blue team regardless of who their frontman is. It's that whole end of the spectrum that's flipped its shit. I doubt even Obama or Kerry could save them now. But will I vote for the red team? Well, I swore not to after the recount debacle of '00-'01. Then I swore not to again after they lied us into Iraq. But talk is cheap, no? And the left is now dangerous as hell. Will I vote for Trump? I'd say that currently there's somewhere around a 50/50 chance. Antipresidental + good policies + not a swamp creature...vs. an Orwellian cult.
   So what's my point? Yo, it's my blog. Since when do I have to have a point?
   Oh yeah: even if I do vote for the guy...I'm not sure I'd put a Trump sign in my yard. First, JQ put up with a lot, but that may be a bridge too far. I expect our front yard to be a neutral zone this election cycle. But even if that weren't so...and even as loud-mouthed as I am...I'm not sure I want anyone knowing I (hypothetically) vote for that guy without hearing at least a 5-minute explanation. Because I'm way under the impression that the nutty Trump-supporter=racist equation is extremely widespread on the left. I do not think it is by any means isolated to the vocal vanguard.

"We Support Jussie"

There are close to 40 people in this picture:

So...not one of them had the bullshit-detector that God gave a goose? Not one of them even thought he or she should suspend judgment with respect to a patently, laughably false story? 

Of the five or ten most significant facts about contemporary progressivism, here's one: early on, it works to disable people's bullshit-detectors. Why? Because it can't survive otherwise. Unlike centrist liberalism, centrist conservatism, and libertarianism, it isn't a view that has a lot going for it. Or, rather--some of it's early, fairly low-grade insights may have some natural appeal. But it's so extreme and loony in its most prominent current manifestations that it can only appeal to people who have been primed by having their rational faculties dulled. Once you disable someone's bullshit-detector--or at least decrease its sensitivity--you can put a lot over on them. Add in tribalism, groupthink, noble cause corruption, and fear of ostracism and, man...you can get people to believe the absolute craziest shit.

WaPo Editor: Trump Wants Press Percieved As "The Opposition Party"

facepalm
Honestly?
You think this is Trump's fault?
   You think Trump is the guy who...what? just made up the idea that the press is biased against Pubs in general and him in particular?
   Trump's largely--though by no means entirely--full of shit. (He also speaks un-PC truths in areas where most people fear to tread.) But the MSM is biased as shit. Anyone who observes it objectively should be able to see that. As for its fact-checking: I don't consider it entirely worthless, but I just consider a "fact"-check by the Post to be another Post article. Maybe a little less overtly biased...but pretty much an expression of the Post's view. Sometimes they proffer useable evidence that Trump has lied, sometimes not. I do think they're probably being on their more-or-less best behavior in the Fact-Checker...but their more-or-less best behavior turns out to be not all that good. Some of the shit they say there is just unbelievable crap.
   In conclusion: the Washington Post is basically the anti-Trump/anti-GOP opposition. That is: it's basically a mouthpiece of progressives/Democrats. I'm sure Trump wants that to be the perception...but it should be the perception. Because it's true. I check in with the Post occasionally...but God, it's just awful. I don't understand how the once-great paper has come to this. Well...TDS is a helluva drug. I guess I do--sorta--understand.
   Of course the other possibility is that it's always been like this, and I was just too benighted to realize it before. I suppose my guess is that it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. I have no doubt that I was more locked into the leftist mindset than I realized. And it wouldn't surprise me if I were exaggerating the Post's awfulness now. But there's no doubt in my mind that the Post is very, very far off the beam of rough objectivity.

Chronicles Of The Orwellian Left: Project Projection Proceeds Apace

I suppose it's to be expected that an Orwellian faction will accuse its opponents of being the Orwellian ones. 

   My take (FWIW), as I've made clear, is that Trump isn't Orwellian. Not even close, I'd say. He's an ordinary lying, bullshitting politician who has, in many cases turned it up to 11. (At other times, however, what angers his opponent is not that he's lying, but that he's telling the truth...)

   This piece is cringe-inducing, honestly. From dragging Star Wars into it to dragging Boris Johnson into it...it's just...not good. 

   The real error, though, is the complete and total failure to in any way acknowledge the outright, paradigmatic Orwellianism on the left. They just rail about the relative mote in the eye of the right, while...well, you know...

   And as somebody somewhere points out, the emphasis on surveillance isn't that relevant. The surveillance powers of the Orwellian state aren't even that great. Is the political correctness that is most notable--the attempt to control thought by controlling language via Newspeak. Jesus.

   What's amazing is the kind of meta-PC in play. The left has convinced itself that it's not doing what it's doing. And that it's the right that's actually doing it. Are they still running that "there's no such thing as political correctness" line? That was so delusional it was kinda breathtaking, IMO.

   Well, there's no reason to rail against this. Anyone who hasn't recognized what's going on by now probably can't be convinced.

Serwer: "The Fight Over The 1619 Project Is Not About The Facts"

link
More to the point: the "1619 Project" itself is not about the facts...
[1] Honestly, that should have been clear to everyone from the beginning.
[2] This is one of the main problems with the Orwellian left--it is, perhaps the main thing Orwell was warning us about.
[3] True to form, when their bias is exposed, advocates of the "1619 Project" retreat to subjectivism, the last refuge of leftist scoundrels.
   C'mon. Does anybody trust the Times to be objective about something like this? Anyone who does is either extremely naïve or simply not paying attention.

VA Dems Aim To Outlaw Suburban, Single-Family House Zoning

link
   First, this is a real idea that is popular on the cutting edge of the left--and, apparently, back somewhat behind the cutting edge. It's not some isolated quirk--it's part of a real, living, moving set of ideas that aim to force people to adopt the urban mode of life that progressivism prefers. (And prefers for partially aesthetic reasons.) (The inescapable locution in academia is "the city;" if I have to see one more call for papers about "the city" I'm going to...well...complain about it, I guess.)
   Second, this is the kind of totalitarian nonsense that, in a sane world, would, by itself, sink the left. But here in clown world, they have so many absurd balls in the air that this one probably merits little attention.
   The point of this is to destroy, by legislation, a mode of life elements of the left detest. Presumably there will be some analog somewhere down the line that outlaws rural life as well. The justification presumably will be: global warming or suchlike. (But remember...Agenda 21 is just a conservative conspiracy theory...) This, IMO, says a lot about the contemporary progressive left. It detests the modes of life that have evolved by embodying and fulfilling the actual choices and compromises had and made by actual, ordinary people. These real, evolved choices and compromises don't comport with theoretical, speculative, totalitarian leftist preferences--nor with fevered fantasies about the apocalypse du jour, global warming-which-of-course-includes-cooling. These politically incorrect modes of life must be destroyed. You will live next door to a public housing unit, bigot. That is: until we can make everybody live in such units. It's not "equitable" that some people can find ways to live in less-crowded, more pleasant places. Everyone must be equally miserable.
   They've already pushed this sort of thing through elsewhere. Don't think it can't happen, and don't think it can't happen here. NoVa controls us all now. The leftist ideal is a future in which it micromanages everything about our lives, and everything about us is made politically correct. One of my friends has a tendency to dismiss criticisms of crazy leftist policies by saying they're "merely aspirational." My response tends to be: they're bad aspirations.

More Progressive Not-Quite-Open-Borders BS

link:

   “It’s heartbreaking. It’s really heartbreaking,” Biden said of the camp, according to Border Report. “Across the river is the flag of the United States. The flag of the United States offers people hope. They’re bringing their families and their loved ones here for hope of a better future and a better life for themselves.”
   “We are all immigrants and our nation was built on immigration and immigrants and we are welcoming nation, but that’s not the message we are sending here at the border. We’re saying ‘Stop, don’t come in!’ And that’s not who we are,” she added.

It is heartbreaking that so many people live in such terrible conditions. It's too bad we can't help them all--e.g. can't let them all in. But we can't. And what Biden means is: it's heartbreaking that we aren't letting them all in. And that's a very different thing. There can be no real doubt anymore that progressivism is in favor of unrestricted immigration. Which would be the end of America. What Biden is really saying is: That evil Trump refuses to let everyone in! Which is roughly equivalent to: That evil Trump wants America to continue to exist.
   Our options are clear, really. (1) We can continue to be a nation--which means keeping at least some people out. Which will mean things like: border camps where some of the people we didn't let in live. Or: (2) we can decide that it's better to just give in to incoherent, bleeding-heart bullshit and give up on that whole nation thing.

Buttigieg: "Reparations" For Illegal Aliens

Progressivism has lost its mind.

Historians Call Bullshit On The NYT's "1619 Project"; Times's Response: Hey, We're Journalists Not Historians

link
   The Times goes on to offer an extremely long-winded and unpersuasive response. The historians note that the "project" is based on provably false claims. The Times responds, basically, that, hey, there's a little bit of evidence for something in the vicinity of their false claims, so...
   Which is how propaganda works. It's usually not just fabricated out of whole cloth. You find a little truth here or there, you spin it up, you dye it the color you want it to be...it doesn't take much such stuff to produce this sort of thing.
   Look, the "1619 project" is leftist propaganda. Maybe--maybe--slavery is more central to American history than is commonly acknowledged. But there's simply no way to make it the central fact of that history. Citing Jill Lepore's recent popular history of the U.S. doesn't impress me much. After listening to most of it, I drifted away from it largely because of the non-stop drumbeat of slavery racism SLAVERY RACISM...
   Needless to say, it's hard to be objective about American slavery. In some moods, its awfulness seems beyond comprehension. But it was far from unique. Which doesn't make it less than awful...but you simply can't understand it without understanding it as one component of a world that was, in most ways, more brutal than our own. Slavery wasn't unique to America. We didn't invent it. We planted seeds that helped destroy it. Except, of course, it isn't destroyed. But, according to the Times, slavery still conducted by non-Americans is less worthy of attention than slavery eliminated by us nearly 150 years ago... Wonder why that is?
   Furthermore, the Times's response makes clear that its "project" was largely based on work by "scholars of African-American history and related fields." Those sectors of academia are well-known for leftists political bias. If you want to write an objective history of the U.S., you might want to include such perspectives--but if you make them central, you're not going to end up with an objective account.
   But, of course: an objective account is not what the NYT wants.
   They conclude:

That, above all, is what we hoped our project would do: expand the reader’s sense of the American past. (This is how some educators are using it to supplement their teaching of United States history.) That is what the letter writers have done, in different ways, over the course of their distinguished careers and in their many books. Though we may disagree on some important matters, we are grateful for their input and their interest in discussing these fundamental questions about the country’s history.

No...that's not what you have said the "project" is supposed to do. That's not the explicitly-stated point of the thing. Their point is that slavery is the central fact about American history. They seek to convince people of that claim--that false claim--not merely to "expand the reader's sense of the American past." That latter, very general goal is easy--even the most incompetent history can sometimes do that. The former, much more specific, goal amounts to this: they aim to convince people that a politically correct falsehood is true.

Turley: Impulse Buy Impeachment

link

Trump's "They're Not After Me..." Tweet

Jesus. There's way, way too much truth in this for comfort:

Two years ago I would have laughed my ass off about that. But the hysterification of American progressivism has left Trump as--apparently and unbelievably--the least-crazy, least-dangerous player on the field.
   Remember when I though the election of Trump was just about the worst thing that could actually happen? That'll teach me to violate my family's ban on saying "Well, at least it can't get any worse..."
   Jeez. I'm not kidding. It's depressing as hell how much truth there is in that damn meme.

MSNBC Guest: Interviewing White, Midwestern Trump Voters Is Racist

It's not exactly what he said--but it is what it basically boils down to. The curlicues are irrelevant.
Furthermore, when progressives and the media just repeat the same basic shit over and over and over, the central pattern, which is independent of any idiosyncratic efforts to blur its edges, becomes perfectly clear. To a large extent they're just riffing on a theme. That's the way pomo progressivism works. The basic theme is: everything you do is racist, whitey. The free-associative curlicues, the improvisational jazz, the riffing...all that stuff is really irrelevant. Except insofar, I suppose, as a pattern emerges there, too: harping, hectoring accusations of prejudice can and should be wedged in everywhere.
   We don't live in a racist country full of racists. We do live in a country in which a monomaniacal cult has taken over the culture and much of society. And the obsession of that cult is racism, racism, racism. It's really, of course, an ever-expanding cluster of related obsessions about prejudice--racism, misogyny, and all the rest--new ones being added as they, too, become trendy. But racism takes pride of place. It's the prime and paradigm obsession.
   Look, this is psycho. A lunatic obsession with racism may be less-bad than actual racism. But that's setting the bar way, way too low--and we don't have to have either. A crazed cult has taken over, and it can't STFU about its own idiosyncratic conception of sin. Most people I know would hit the roof if the righties took control of education and universities and the media and publishing and everything else and turned sin into a national obsession, reengineering whole institutions to root it out. But the almost-equally-fantastical lefty obsession with racism...they either just go along with it or they actually believe in it all.
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Climate Politics Prediction

Prediction: as we get closer to the imaginary ten-year tipping-point deadline, here's what will not happen:
Progressives will say Whelp, no sense fretting bout this shit anymore; deadline past, tipping underway; might as well lassaiz les bon temps rouler, as the end is nigh...
Instead...well, you know what'll happen as well as I do: It'll turn out that--mirabile dictu!--we were wrong! (Or maybe: the policies we did adopt bought us some time.) We've actually got another ten years (or whatever)! There needs to be a name for that imaginary length of time that seems to play such an important role in such progressive arguments--not long enough to investigate and discuss any further...just long enough to avert impending doom if we implement all progressive policies immediately!!!!1111

Did Biden Just Lose The Election By Saying He'd Sacrifice Blue-Collar Jobs For A Green Economy?

Probably didn't help.
   Politics aside, it's the kind of thing I now think the left is wrong about, and the kind of thing climate hysteria generates. I'm very much in favor of moving toward cleaner energy. But as I understand the question, it's largely about losing jobs by stopping fracking. And I'm led to believe that fracking is what's made it possible for us to rely more on natural gas and less on coal and oil. So for one thing we're talking about taking a step backward--or so it seems--in order to be...what? Energetically correct? But, second, a premature and/or politically skewed/driven movement toward different energy sources that costs jobs is purchasing an uncertain, possibly-not-worth-it potential benefit at a real and significant cost. Giving up jobs is, I now tend to think, the kind of thing you only do if the benefits are clear and more-or-less certain. And then, of course, there's the geopolitical cost.
   My current view--not an uncommon one--is that progressives have been misled (we could say: brainwashed) about the likelihood and harms of climate change, and that has a couple of extremely harmful effects. First, it makes them botch calculations of this kind--they're willing to made bad tradeoffs. Second, of course, they are adding a bogus dollop of doom and gloom to the psychology of everyone who buys their tall tale--mostly young people, it seems. I actually have a little bit of sympathy with the overwrought melodrama of the mean green tween. Nobody's quite stolen anyone's childhood in this respect...but they've added a completely unnecessary source of stress. The odds that we're a decade from an "existential" tipping-point are...well...low.
   There's not really any sense in bombarding kids with this stuff, anyway. Nobody thinks kids need to be obsessing about the deficit, for example. Funny. Funny that progressives control education, and it also turns out that kids need to be brainwashed with the bullshit that older, wiser folks aren't so much buying--e.g. climate hysteria and gender mythology.

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted...

Well this post sure went to crazytown fast....

Dems' Hard Lurch To The Hard Left In One Chart

From the NYT, to their credit:

Dreher: J. K. Rowling And Havel's Greengrocer

Very interesting.
(Inter alia, it's telling that even those with the highest status among the wokest have to basically beg for the freedom to even merely express their belief in even the very most seemingly obvious truths. When even feminists--who, normally, cannot be questioned--aren't permitted to express disagreement with the woke orthodoxy, shit has definitely gotten real.)
(Also, incidentally, a sidebar: As people on the dissident right often say: read another book.)

Ukraine Call Transcript: A Semi-Careful Reading

Well, turns out I already knew more about it than I thought. My view didn't really change after a somewhat carefuller (it's a perfectly cromulent word) reading.
I dunno, man. Everything seems right on the surface to me. He's straight-up asking them to investigate Biden. I don't see why QPQ should matter. It sounds shady as shit to me. Except for two things:
[1] It's plausible that there were sufficient reasons for any president to ask about such a situation.
and
[2]  It actually sounds a lot less-bad than the Russiagate shenanigans. (So...what? I'm not sure how that argument goes, but I think there's something there. Like: given the loco way the FBI was acting...something something something...)
So anyway, a semi-careful reading didn't change my mind about anything: I'm weakly inclined to think there were shenanigans, but there's nothing in there that suggests QPQ.

Finally Gonna Read The Ukraine Call Transcript Carefully

link
Obviously trying to be objective. I have a slight predisposition to suspect Trumpian shenanigans--though also a slight predisposition to think no quid pro quo. But, as I've said, I don't see why quid pro quo is necessary for shenanigans. Just asking for an investigation of a potential political opponent seems pretty bad. But that would seem to make it an open-and-shut case. Also, if it were true, the Dems would have said that. And everybody would be saying it. And OTOH, if there are sufficient reasons to ask for an investigation of x--and you know that--then it shouldn't matter that x is likely to be your future electoral opponent, should it?
   Incidentally, it says something that I didn't trust the WaPo enough to use their link... Says something about the WaPo, and something about me...

Carolina 74 - UCLA 64

Yay!
Nice work, boys. Jeremiah Francis lookin' pretty good.
What 4-game losing streak?

Romesh Ponnuru: Four Tests For Impeachment

Haven't read this carefully enough, but it looks pretty interesting. He seems to be arguing that there are four individually necessary and jointly sufficient criteria for impeachment (impeachability?), and all are satisfied.

Fox News Bullshit Now A Welcome Respite From The Pervasive Bullshit Of The Progressive-Media Complex: Melania Trump Edition

Well, actually this isn't bullshit at all.
   Conservatives have been commenting on this for quite awhile now. The progressive-media complex poured fourth a torrent of adulation for Michelle Obama for...well..from before Obama was elected until he left office--and ever since as well. So let's round down and say: a decade. And now there's at least some loose talk of nominating her for president. Basically, its the love fest lovier than which none can be conceived. Apparently she was on the covers of major magazines like 50 times. Everything she did and everything about her was the greatest thing ever.
   Melania Trump, however, is noticed by the PMC only to be viciously ridiculed. She was a model--but, I'm led to believe, has been featured on zero relevant magazine covers since Trump was elected. I've seen several things about the White House Xmas decorations--which, honestly, look cool as hell to me--and all the ones in the PMC/MSM are derisively critical. ('Catty' is the term that comes to mind for many of them. Interesting...)
   Look, this isn't some huge deal on its own. But its not on its own, is it? Its a kind of small, telling sample of a pervasive phenomenon. The progressive bias of the media is so decided and ubiquitous that, even in what ought to be a fairly nonpolitical slice of things, it's viciously partisan through and through.
   The bias of the conservative media is almost welcome now, to my mind. It's a respite from the nonstop leftward bias of...absolutely every other damn thing everywhere in our very, very stupid popular and middlebrow culture. Even sneery Laura Ingraham is like a breath of fresh air:

Come Go With Me -- The Del Vikings

I barely remember this, but it's awesome.

Runaround Sue

Feckin' classic

Progressivism Has Lost Its Mind: More OK Sign Follies

Progressivism is now a self-parody. It's 4channing itself, trying to determine how stupid it can go before it starts losing support.

TOP GUN 2 EXTENDED TRAILER!!!

It's Top Gun...but with better planes!!!!
I've never had any interest in the F-14, which was, IMO, just a missile platform built around the Phoenix.
The F-18, OTOH...now that's a sweet-ass plane.
And I don't say that merely because my grandpa worked on its production. (He worked on the F-101, F-4, F-111, F-15, and F-18).
The F-18 scenes in this trailer are bad. ass.
Also, you gotta love that first scene ("they're called orders...")

Gad Saad: The Open And Accepted Hatred Of White Men On American Campuses

I don't care that much about it--it's amusing and contemptable. Though it's open and accepted, we don't whine about it--unlike the groups at the top of the progressive stack who whine ceaselessly about hypothesized and imagined slights and disses. But it's good to acknowledge the racism and sexism of the progressive left.

Vox: Only Nazis Think Women Are Female

Progressivism has lost its mind.
That's not mere opinion.
It's verifiable--in fact, it's verified.
Over and over and over.

Matt Karp: "Is This The Future Liberals Want?"

sigh
   I force myself to occasionally read Jacobin, despite the fact that it not only doesn't help to even me out, it strengthens my conviction that the left is dangerous as hell. All the sneering at Obamian technocratic centrists makes me fervently hope that the Jacobin crowd never gets the future it wants. Not that they're liberals, of course. Which is kinda the point of the article.
   And how is it that anybody could/would endorse the characterization Jacobin of himself? It's kinda like having a magazine called Nazi! Or Better Homes and Gulags. Nobody could get away with characterizing himself as a fascist...but nobody bats an eye when someone says he's a Jacobin or a communist. I've even known people who call themselves Maoists. Crazy man. Why this left-right asymmetry?

Trump Rallies

These rallies concern me.

A little tin-pot dictator-y for my taste.

Also, I get a little worried when I remember that there are people out there who really like him. I guess I want everybody to think what I think: he's unqualified and antipresidential….but probably the least of the available evils. 

Why can't everybody just agree with me?

RIP Junior Johnson

moonshiner, race car driver.

Jeet Heer: Why You Should Fear The Radical Left

Actual title: "Impeachment Needs To Move To The Streets."  You don't even have to read between the lines to understand why the newly-radical progressive left is dangerous. Reading the lines themselves is enough.
   I don't like where any of this is going, needless to say.

Michelle Goldberg Has Lost It: "The Tyranny Of The 63 Million"

facepalm
   Old white men bad! Old white men bad! OLD WHITE MEN BAAAAD!!! Women good! People "of color" good! Trump bad! Electoral college bad!
   One hardly knows what to say about these people anymore. When you keep making Trump look reasonable by comparison, you've worked yourself into a bad place.

Woke Kids: Impeachment Edition

facepalm

J. K. Rowling Notes That Women Are Female; Leftists Flip Shit

Don't even try to tell em that freedom isn't slavery.

British Tax Expert At International Think Tank Loses Her Position For Tweets Opposing Transgender Ideology

Utter madness.
Coming to the U.S. soon.
Not that it really matters, but it sounds as if this had something to do specifically with her using politically incorrect terminology.

"Lawfare" Blog Founder Admits Nunes Was Right All Along

This is huge for many reasons.
   First, background: I've been saying that, if conservatives turn out to be right about Russiagate: Origins, that's game, set, match, tournament, and whatever comes after tournament. Progressives and the blue team (but I repeat myself) should close up shop and live out their days in a Tibetan monastery or something. Well...the Horowitz report seems to have come pretty damn close to vindicating the conservative view of things.
   Second: That the Nunes memo--widely and viciously derided by progressives and the media (but, again, I repeat myself)--turns out to have been right on the goddamn money is basically just another way of saying: conservatives were right.
   Third: that the founder of Lawfare, for chrissake, admits this is just about an end on it all.
   Fourth: That the Lawfare Executive Director, Susan Hennessey, is still asserting that "There was no Russiagate collusion hoax" is...well...just a kind of depressing icing on the cake. This is the greatest bit of progressive reality-denial since Amanda Marcotte's (on-going) refusal to admit that there was no rape in the Duke lacrosse rape hoax. (And has she ever admitted that there was no rape in the UVA/Rolling-Stone rape hoax? I don't think so...) Note that Hennessey doesn't even say that there was no Russiagate hoax...she says specifically that there was not Russiagate collusion hoax...a much more ambitious claim...which cannot in anyway be defended.

Michael Anton On TDS and Impeachment: "The Empire Strikes Back"

Not fantastic. Could be shorter. But maybe worthwhile.

Madison On Starting Off A GD Boog

ACLU Calls For Tampons In Men's Restrooms To Achieve "Menstrual Equity"

Imagine someone saying, ten years ago, that this would be the progressive position in 2019. No one would have believed it. It'd not even be considered a plausible parody of the left. Basically, over the past six years or so, progressives have adopted the very craziest positions they could have adopted at every point along the trajectory of their rapid descent into madness. I really don't think they could have pushed it any further and faster without losing too much support.

   Though...I'm starting to think that there's really nothing they can do to drive their supporters away. You could stand in the middle of fifth avenue and say that night was day and progressives would just nod along. Once you can look straight at Bruce Jenner and solemnly declare him a woman, you can accept basically anything. "Menstrual equity" is just one of the many insane consequences you've tacitly accepted when you accepted that initial insane bit of political dogma.

"The Final Nail In The ACLU's Coffin"

It's now a hard-left organization, without much interest in civil liberties.
As the law attributed to Robert Conquest says: any organization not created specifically to be right-wing eventually becomes left-wing.

Violence Against Trump Supporters Has Been Normalized

Whelp, it's come to this: I may very well buy a MAGA hat.
Even if I hadn't concluded that he's almost certainly going to end up being our least-disastrous option, I don't think I'd be able to sit idly by while assaults against people for expressing their political views became routine.
We heard 100 times more about the obviously fictional assault against Jussie Smollett by people allegedly wearing MAGA hats than we've heard about any of the numerous actual assaults against people wearing them. One actual assault by someone wearing a MAGA hat--or against someone wearing, say, some Bernie attire--might very well dominate the news cycle for days.

Here's some more. Wow these people are crazy.

Settle Homelessness Agency Hires Transgender Stripper To Perform At Conference

Grotesque...but imagine how much bigger the blow-up would have been if they'd hired an actual, ordinary stripper stripper...

Progressivism, as I may have mentioned, has lost its mind.

Fake News About Elise Stefanik

A couple of days ago this was just one of the many idiotic and not-even-vaguely objective stories besmirching the front page of the formerly great newspaper. It was nauseating. You see, progressives amass support by being right. Support for Republicans has to be explained otherwise, e.g. by nonrational demographic facts about their constituents--or their pandering thereto.

CNN Spends Five Days On Thanos Meme, Ignores Afghanistan Papers

link
The Washington Post almost looks like a serious news source compared to CNN.

Appeals Court Rules Obamacare Unconstitutional

link
What the hell.
I seem to be coming down hard with a cold, so I'm thinking even less clearly than usual. And the wind is howling and it's got butt-ass cold.
But it's not all in my head, obviously.
Everything seems to be going crazy.

Black Army Football Coach Calls Bullshit On Accusations About Throwing White Power Signs At Game

link
It's obvious bullshit, but there's nothing unusual about it. It's par for the course for progressivism.

Trump Impeached

Whelp, the Dems have accomplished the goal they've cherished since about five minutes after Trump was elected.
It's even possible that Trump deserves it.
But I'll be damned if I can tell.

The Ukraine Call: Absolutely No QPQ

There's absolutely no quid pro quo suggested in the Ukraine call.
But I'm not sure why that's really the issue. Seems to me that merely asking for an investigation of the Biden family is not good.

90% Of OD Counties Join Sanctuary Movement; Expands to 9 States

Sic semper tyrannis, bitches.

Michelle Malkin: "Three Cheers For Refugee Reduction, New Annual Cap"

Though the main reason I've wanted to check illegal economic immigration is in order to give us more flexibility with respect to political refugees, I am inclined to agree with all of this:

   It is most certainly true that America has a legacy of embracing people from around the world fleeing persecution and war. After World War II, the U.S. helped lead efforts to assist 650,000 displaced Europeans who had fled in fear, were expelled and were victims of Nazi crimes and terror. Congress passed the 1948 Displaced Persons Act to accommodate them. Five years later, the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 aided refugees from Italy and East Germany escaping Communist regimes, adding another 250,000 refugees over four years. In the 1950s and 1960s, we welcomed Hungarians, Cubans and Czechoslovakians also escaping Communist oppression. In the 1970s, we opened our doors to an estimated 300,000 political refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The Refugee Act of 1980 created the Office of Refugee Resettlement and Office of U.S. Coordinator for Refugee Affairs and raised the annual ceiling of admissions to 50,000.
   Under Obama, that number soared to nearly 100,000 annually. The idea that we’ve abandoned our humanitarian leadership role because of this refugee resettlement reduction is ludicrous. Overall, since 1975, the U.S. has resettled more than 3 million refugees. Under Trump, the U.S. still accepted more refugees than any other country in both 2017 and 2018. On top of that, America forked over nearly $1.6 billion to support the U.N.’s refugee resettlement campaign. Moreover, America remains the largest single country provider of humanitarian assistance worldwide. Total U.S. humanitarian assistance was more than $8 billion in fiscal year 2017, covering food, shelter, health care, and access to clean water for millions.
   That’s enough.
   Past refugee admissions don’t lock America into those same levels now or in the future. America’s constitutional duty is to Americans first (“ourselves and our posterity”). The truth is that we’ve been generous to a ruinous, open borders fault. Last year, the Federation for American Immigration Reform tallied refugee resettlement costs to taxpayers at nearly $9 billion over five years.
   In my adopted home state of Colorado, a new University of Colorado Boulder study acknowledged that refugees are often “trapped in chronic poverty” after resettlement subsidies dry up and are unable to lift themselves out of dependency on government aid such as public housing, Medicaid and food stamps. Federal statistics show that nearly half of all refugee households receive cash welfare. Chain migration perpetuates the cycle of poverty.
   A tiny cabal of government contractors, mostly religious groups cloaking their profit-seeking in compassion and Scripture, perpetuates the refugee resettlement racket. Openly hostile to American sovereignty, these people spread their tax-subsidized syndicate’s wealth to a vast network of subcontractors, often tied to billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, which promote global governance and unfettered migration espoused by the United Nations, European Union and Vatican. These special interests have systematically blurred the lines between legitimate refugees seeking asylum from oppression and economic migrants from Central America clamoring for higher wages or better welfare benefits. They’re indifferent to the national security risks of absorbing large numbers of Muslims whose adherence to repressive sharia and religious jihad is utterly incompatible with our constitutional principles.
   Mass migration champions have stretched the definition of refugee so thin that “climate change refugees” seeking relief from uninhabitable environments are now a phenomenon.

Conservatives--right now, anyway--are just, on average, more intellectually honest and willing to speak honestly than progressives. We can maintain our principles without being stupid about it.

The Progressive Media/Academic Complex: This Isn't An Isolated Case

Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to get progressives to recognize that this sort of progressive-friendly fake news isn't that uncommon.

Public Schools And Leftist Indoctrination: Gender Ideology Indoctrination In CA Elementary Schools

link

I've long thought that it would be good if kids weren't pushed into sex roles / gender. 

But this sort of indoctrination by schools is madness.

Your kids are being brainwashed to believe something basically cooked up last week in the gender studies department. 

The progressive left is dangerous as hell. And the very fact that they get virtually no pushback on this lunacy ought to concern everyone.

Dems Still Leaning On The "Russia, If You're Listening..." Bullshit

If you're still trying to spin that jokey comment into Russian collusion, then you've got nothing.

Leroy Justice Purple Rain Cover

Too Much Not-Entirely-Jokey Chatter About Shooting Guardsmen If They Try To Confiscate Guns

   I think we're living in dangerous times, as I guess I've made clear. The left rules the culture, and has gone mad
   I take questions about high-fire-rate, high-capacity firearms very seriously. I don't think I have any special insight into or expertise relevant to the issue. I think additional controls, including registration, might be reasonable--so long as they're in accordance with Heller etc., of course. Though, as I've said, I don't think we should consider them right now.
   I like to joke around about the boog and claymore rumbas and whatnot as much as the next dumbass, dipshit, tendy-eatin' honorary autist. And yeah, I realize that we're not completely kidding. We're kidding on the square. Which is what's worrisome.
   I'm very concerned about what's happening in the OD. After years of working to flip it blue, the goal for which I worked has only been accomplished as the blue team loses its mind. Shows what I know. That'll teach me to try to do things. You'd think philosophers would know enough to know that they don't know about practical matters. But nooo….
   I'm very concerned about the totalitarian left, obviously, and about how far its madness has permeated into the relative center of the blue team. Northam never struck me as an extremist. Hell, I voted for the guy. Dumbass that I am.
   At any rate. I'm down with joking about basically anything. But let's not accidentally get serious about shooting our countrymen, even if they're doing the wrong thing. Before we even think about that kind of craziness, it should be civil disobedience for us. Haul your gats down to Court Square and make the cops take 'em away and throw you in jail. They can't jail all of us. They can't even come close to that. And they won't do it. Too many cops, and too many guys in the Guard are on our side. Don't give in, but don't turn it up to 11 just yet.
   And having so said, I also say:

Kesa Gatame Kicks Ass

Kesa gatame is a fantastic pin. I've used it to great effect in practice, tournaments and actual fights. A lot of BJJ and MMA guys deride it, but that's mostly because they don't really know how to do it, or they've been taught some simple escapes that work against people who don't know how to do it. This video shows you how to do it right.

The Afghanistan Papers And The Failure Theory

link
I was in favor of going after OBL in Afghanistan, and livid when Bush held back resources from the assault on Tora Bora in order to stockpile them for Iraq (allegedly). I was in favor of smashing the Taliban, and continued to think of Afghanistan as a good war for quite some time. I was furious about the lies that got us into Iraq, but probably not as against the war as I should have been, in part because I considered eliminating Saddam a very good thing--which it basically was.
   I rejected--and still reject--the Fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here argument. It's roughly equivalent to: Fight 'em where they're strongest so we don't have to fight 'em where they're weakest. Which is foolish. I hate to sound like a reverse feminist, but one quasi-presupposition of that is that the lives of young men are worth less than the lives of the rest of us. Which obviously isn't true. My life isn't more valuable than the life of a young man.
   I've mostly been in favor of getting the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan for some time. Every time one side tries to get us out, the other side politicizes it, shrieking about the possible disadvantages. Without regard for the advantages. I'm no expert. Obviously. I doubt that even the experts have very good judgment about this stuff. My view for several years now has been: unless someone can make a pretty powerful argument for, all things considered, saying, then we should get out. There will be bad consequences, probably. Terrible ones, I'll bet. But that's not an argument. Or, rather, it's only half an argument. Focusing only on half arguments is maybe worse than using no arguments at all. If we get out, bad things--terrible things, even--will probably happen. But good things will definitely happen--specifically: we'll expend less blood and treasure.
   Anyway, as the author notes, the conventional wisdom (or "narrative"...bleh) is now shifting.

David A. Graham: Impeachment Is As Popular As Ever

This is interesting, but typically one point of such a piece is to suggest that the position in question is justified. That's unlikely to be true in this case, since few people understand what's going on. Hell, I don't understand it, and I read way too much about it. When someone says "I'm against impeachment," that person is basically expressing support for Trump; when someone expresses support for impeachment, that person is basically saying "I disapprove of Trump." This fairly obvious point explains why attitudes about impeachment track attitudes about Trump, and don't change a lot.

"White Supremacy In The Classroom"

link
I only watched the presentation once, but didn't see a bit of "white supremacy" in it. Much of it is straightforwardly factual (e.g. white birthrates are declining, progressives promote high levels of immigration, and the latter is often represented as a solution to the former). Later the presentation wanders into speculative and dicey territory. He seems to endorse some proposals guaranteed to piss many people off and to be unwelcome at universities--e.g. it'd be cheaper if we subsidized self-deportations for immigrants living on the dole. But that has nothing to do with race. Certainly there's no indication that the presenter holds any view about racial superiority.
   Many of these are ideas promoted by racists and white supremacists (actual ones). But, again: the fact that bad people believe something doesn't make it false. If the kid is wrong, deploy some facts or find a hole in his argument and refute him. Don't just shriek racist! The university seemed to deal with it pretty well--except for using it as an opportunity to deploy more "diversity and inclusion" propaganda. The two worst things in play here are: the irrational screeching at the kid for wrongthink instead of addressing the content of his presentation, and the mindless "diversity and inclusion" brainwashing. Which should also be addressed critically, but never is. Instead of rational discussion of either thing, the kid's ideas are mindlessly rejected and vilified, and the diversity propaganda is mindlessly accepted. If both were addressed rationally, everybody would learn some interesting things.

Soave: No, Cadets Weren't Flashing White Power Signs At The Army-Navy Game

LOL this whole thing was apparently started by a "model and activist" on the Twitter.
This is public discourse in the age of progressive Twitter.

Progressivism Has Lost Its Mind: More On The *OK* Hand Sign / Army-Navy Game

Lord, save us from the sanctimonious, progressive bullshit of the NYT.
   The hand sign meaning ok looks, of course, like this:

4Chan made up a story about it meaning 'white power'. Get it?:

Why? Because progressivism has lost its mind and thinks everything is racist. To be a progressive today, you have to have a broken bullshit detector. No thinking person needs this proven to him anymore. It is manifest. But the autists at 4chan like to plumb the depths of progressive gullibility, making their crack-brainedness even more painfully obvious. Anyone who'd believe such a thing is a complete idiot.
   Incidentally, I'm making the OK hand sign right....now! I'm doing it! I'm making the forbidden sign!!! Call the thought police...or hand-sign police...or whoever's in charge of handcrime! And I do it all the time, ironically, with one of my friends. And I'll fuckin do it again! Bwahahahahaha! NOW I'M DOING IT WITH BOTH HANDS!!!! Well...not while typing...but BOTH BEFORE AND AFTER TYPING THIS!!!!!1
   Though said autists also like to force progressives' thinly-concealed anti-white racism out into the open by, e.g., getting people to put up signs like this:

The left does, indeed, lose its mind whenever these signs appear. That's in part because they do not, in fact, believe that it's ok to be white--which is 4chan's point. Anti-white racism pervades the lefty-left. It's not like they hide it. But the other idea motivating the leading edge of the progressive left is almost as crazy; it's roughly:

               Anything racists think (or say) (or might think (or say)) is racist.

   This is an old sophistry, refuted innumerable times. Hitler loved his dog. The Nazis were environmentalists. Stalin hated Hitler. Mao...well...presumably he believed something good... Bad people believe good things. Good people believe bad things. It's a mixed-up, muddled-up shook-up world. The nuttiness in question is the kind of nuttiness that has motivated the progressive left to proclaim that believing that races are natural kinds--biologically real clusters of characteristics--is racist. My God racists think that! So...so....etc. You know what else racists believe? That there are racists everywhere. They think that most everybody agrees with them, but only they are honest enough to say it. So you guys have that in common, too.
   Even if racists adopt something in a widespread way,  it doesn't mean the symbol is ruined for the rest of us. I have had one of these in my office for about fifteen years:

During that time, the Gadsden flag seems to have been adopted by the crazy right. So now one of the things it symbolizes is that slice of the crazy right. Oh well. Wanna try to take it? If falling afoul of the crazy right and the crazy left makes you give up your Gadsden flag, you didn't deserve one in the first place.

  Of these two kinds of crazy, the crazy left is craziest, as usual. The crazy right just does ordinary crazy fringe political shit--e.g. waving flags and whatnot. The crazy left runs around with its hair on fire making shit up right and left to accord with the general orientation of the cult. In conjunction with its postpostmodern pseudophilosophy of meaning, this makes the world their Rorschach test. And, as the man with sex on the brain is alleged to see every blot as pr0n, the leftist sees a world composed entirely of racism and similar things.
   This Swales person is such a kook that she can't even bring herself to admit that the OK dust-up at the Kavanaugh hearings was bullshit:

Critics expressed outrage when a former White House aide, Zina Bash, appeared to be flashing the sign as she sat behind Brett M. Kavanaugh during his televised Senate confirmation hearings for his appointment to the Supreme Court. Defenders of Ms. Bash insisted that she had not intended any racist connotation and was merely signaling O.K. to someone.

"Defenders" of Bash "insisted" that she hadn't "intended" "any racist connotation" [sic]… Jesus. English much? But the important points: actually, no one with half a brain thought Bash was throwing white power signs. It wasn't just her defenders, and the only people insisting about anything were on the crazy left. The rest of us were laughing at you. This lunacy was just one small bit of the lunacy emanating from the left throughout those hearings. It was swamped by the screeching crowds clawing at the doors, the Handmaid's Tale cosplayers, and, of course, the Blasey Ford foolishness at center stage.

   There are just so many levels of stupid here it's not worth disentangling them all. As others have noted (and as has happened previously), this non-incident didn't even involve an OK sign--rather, it was a reference to the "circle game." Which is a completely different thing. So there was no reason to even start with this bullshit. As with the Bash incident, the left not only reads its preferences into the actual OK hand sign, they then interpret it broadly so that even non-instances of the thing get counted as instances.
   Apparently the service academies are investigating, but that doesn't mean that this bullshit isn't bullshit. The military has been converged, unfortunately, and it dances to the PC tune. In their defense, though, they can't let even a whiff of that sort of thing pass uninvestigated. So they've got to make a show of looking into it, no matter how idiotic the dust-up is and how obviously a non-event.
   In conclusion: the left-wing analog of the religious right now controls our public dialog, and they are excited to have something new to forbid. Needless to say: don't let them get away with it.

TRUMP IS JUST 67 VOTES AWAY FROM BEING AN EX-PRESIDENT!!!!!!!!!!11111111

facepalm

I mean...CNN is basically cheating...but still.

Don't...Hire The Best People--Focus on Diversity

An unusually honest title, that can be made even more so by a simple and obvious omission:
"Don't Just Hire The Best People--Focus On Diversity"
Thing is, I actually think there's a very weak (though not weightless) argument to be made for discrimination in some cases in which demographics are ludicrously out of whack. But that's not what the diversity cult thinks. Instead of a reluctant finger on the scales in extreme cases, it wants its ham fist slamming down on them in every case.
Again, though: it's uncharacteristically honest to admit that "diversity" means not getting the best people.

Rand Paul To Liberals: "Stop Yelling At Us"

Us = everyone who disagrees with you.

I say: Don't listen to him! Yell and screech even more! Your frothy, irrational anger amuses me and drives more people away from the dark side.

VA Dems Introduce Bill Allowing The Commonwealth To Fire Any LEO That Fails To Enforce New Firearm Restrictions

So...it's the boog, then?
Because it kinda starting to seem like that's where the Dems are pushing us.
They just keep escalating this.
Unless you count the part where Northam asserted that they'd settle for mass registration rather than mass confiscation...y'know...for now...
By this point the question has become: how far toward crazy town can the Dems go before they start losing support en masse? Because I'll bet you a whole lotta money that a whole lotta people I know are still going to support them. Because orange man bad, of course. But, worse, because they basically agree with where the Dems are going.

Heels 6-4 After 68-64 Loss To Wofford in Carmichael

Daggum.
But big props to the Terriers.
Cole and Leaky out.
Tough season thus far.

The Rock Strikes Back

Can't resist posting this again.

*People* Don't Have Pronouns, Dumbass; *Languages* Have Pronouns

And in English, 'he' refers to males, and 'she' refers to females.
If we got to pick our own pronouns--which we don't--we should get to pick our own adjectives too.
Mine would be 'awesome,' 'awesomer,' 'awesomest' and 'attack helicopter.'

The Cleverlys: Loser

Russians! UNDER MY BED!!!: Ronald Brownstein Pubs-Are-Rooskies Edition

Actually, I kinda agree with Trump on this.
It would be better if we have better relations with Russia.
Putin sucks. But I've generally hoped for better relations with Russia in the post-Soviet era.
For one thing, we could use the help in our coming tussles with China.

Noble Cause Corruption

Good concept to have in your toolkit.

1/4 Of Kids Treated For Transgenderism May Just Be Autistic

link

The Left Has Lost Its Mind: OK Army-Navy Game Edition

Look, I'm not just saying this. It's true. Influential elements of the progressive left are basically running an ideological program that emulates insanity. They are so daft that 4Chan can play them like violins. They fall for even the most transparent bullshit--because their loony ideology requires that they disable their bullshit detectors. They have come to genuinely believe that the OK hand gesture is TEH WITE SAPREMASY!!!!!!!11111
   They didn't just fall for this. If they'd have fallen for it initially but then laughed it off (and maybe learned a little something) when they found out they were played, that'd be one thing. But they are so unhinged and dogmatic that they have raised their punking to a principle.
   And, crucially: this is not some single, isolated thing. This is par for the course. This is who they are. This is symptomatic of the madness that has gripped them--it's just focused in a particularly informative way on a particularly stupid and transparent thing. They see racism in everything and, basically, in nothing at all. They're secular religious fanatics seeing Jesus in a tortilla.

Some Buttigeig Doners Demand Refunds After Deciding He's Not Progressive Enough

Hmm...this raises him in my estimation.

Douglas Murray: "Britain's Divide...Is Between The Ugly, Intolerant Left And The Rest Of Us"

That goes for the U.S. as well, IMO.

NYT: Impeach

This is, of course, entirely predictable. It's also one-sided and at least somewhat dishonest. In short: it's the Times. But none of those things mean its conclusion is wrong. 

   I don't have a settled opinion on this. I somewhat lean toward impeachment, even though the case seems insufficiently strong--let the Senate sort it out. It's going to be nearly impossible for them to be objective given the clown show the Dems put on in the House Judiciary Committee. In fact, I don't expect that they will be. In fact, some of them has said as much. But we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

   If this does go to the Senate, I guess we'll all have to get more serious about articulating and evaluating the arguments. It's hard for me to be objective since I worry that, the more this goes against Trump, the more emboldened Democratic activists and the Democratic base will feel to nominate somebody further to the left. Though I actually don't care all that much who they nominate: the current problem, IMO, pervades the party and the left. A Democratic victory would have a lot of bad consequences pretty much regardless of the frontman. I'm not even sure those concerns are irrelevant, especially if Trump's actions are short of an actual crime. But I dunno.

It's Only Democracy If The Left Wins

Jeez kids are stupid about politics.

COP25 Talks "Collasping"?

Uh...:

Faced with five-alarm warnings from science, deadly extreme weather made worse by climate change, and weekly strikes by millions of young people, negotiations in Madrid were under pressure to send a clear signal that governments were willing to double down in tackling the crisis.

   "Five-alarm warnings from science": Ok, I'll give you that.
   "Deadly extreme weather made worse by climate change": No. There's no general trend toward more extreme weather, and no proof that any particular instance of extreme weather is caused or made worse by climate change.
   Kids skipping school. Um. Really? That's a reason?

Turley: An Apology To Carter Page

link

Does Neutering Cause Behavioral Problems In Dogs?

Sounds like.
It's also, obviously, a terrible thing to do to a dog.
I've had a tendency just to basically accept the pro-neutering propaganda...and am not sure I won't have it done. Obviously one doesn't want to contribute to pet overpopulation. But the propaganda just flat-out ignores the fact that it's not at all obvious that this is something you should have done to a pet you love.
Ideally, this would have been something I read and thought more about before I had to make a decision about adopting. But that's not how it worked out.

Curry: "The Toxic Rhetoric Of Climate Change"

This use of "toxic" is on the index as far as I'm concerned, along with such ruined words at "problematic"...

But, as usual, I think this, by JC, is pretty good.

I don't really deserve much of an opinion about this stuff. But I do know a think or two about the politicization of science. And my guess is that's what's going on in climatology. Progressivism has itself become hysterical, and at every point where it has an interest in manipulating science, it's been able to do so. For purely "external" reasons, my guess is that the alleged consensus is right where progressives want it largely because that's where they want it. Surely no one thinks that, were the political pressure removed, there would be no effect on reports of the alleged consensus from climate science...do they?
   Oh and: I agree with Curry that this madness is likely causing significant emotional harm. I mean, I doubt that most adults outside of the lowest circles of progressivism really believe it. But I'll bet a fair number of kids do.

Greta Thunberg Just Doesn't Know What 'Put Up Against The Wall' Means

It's silly to pretend that she was advocating killing non-climate-zealots.
My guess is that she just hangs around a lot of loony lefties, and has heard the phrase, but didn't realize it means to execute. Sounds like she means something more like to hold them to account or to make them do their jobs or something.
There's plenty of crazy on the left without making stuff up.

Leftist Violence On Campus Compilation

link

Leftists Control Everything: Leftists Control Merriam-Webster: Pronoun Follies Edition

Well, of course, this is ridiculous.
   I actually don't have a problem with the singular use of 'they,' and have used it that way many times. I'm no linguist, so I can't make this point very precisely, but: it can be used to refer to an unspecific person, but--until it became a leftist cause--I'd never heard it used to refer to a single, specific, determinate, known person. You can use it in a context like this, basically as a kind of quantifier: If someone happens to come in late, you can still feel free to admit them. You can't use it like this: I'd like you to meet John; they are my neighbor. That's ridiculous.
   Also: 'they', used in this way, is unspecific. It has never had anything to do with being "nonbinary," which isn't even an actual thing. Not with respect to sex (or "gender") anyway. Intersex-ness is a thing. As is androgyny. But M-W is illicitly lending its authority (such as remains) to a political invention that it favors, while pretending that its doing its lexicographical job.
   This is one of the reasons the illiberal left is so dangerous: it so effortlessly coopts/controls so many cultural pressure-points.

Russians! Under My Bed!: Some Progressives Still Can't Give Up On The Russiagate Hoax

facepalm

(h/t Reynolds, of course, for the title template.)

Heather Mac Donald: The Cost Of America's Cultural Revolution

Social-justice crusaders are stripping the future of everything that gives human life meaning: beauty, sublimity, and wit.

Gore: Dems Should Run On The GND

facepalm
At least that would make the choice easy.

Is There A Future For (Actual) Liberalism?

I don't know.

I'm not terribly optimistic.

The Pubs' Four-Point Defense Of Trump Looks Pretty Damn Strong

link:

First, both Trump and Zelensky say there was no pressure applied. Second, the transcript does not indicate Trump making any demands or setting any conditions. Third, Ukraine was not aware that the aid was delayed. And fourth, aid flowed without any announcement of investigations.

Alan Morrison: Turley Is Right, But Ultimately Wrong

Interesting.
But I'm not convinced. Specifically by this:

It is not, as Turley implies, that the House argues that the President does not have a right to litigate his claims of immunity and executive privilege. Rather, the argument is that he cannot also claim that the House is not basing its conclusions on the witnesses who are closest to the President and the documents that will prove or disprove his defenses, while stonewalling the efforts of the House to do just that.

Why not? I mean...I'm not sure how logic-gamey the law is. Sometimes it seems, like, a lot. But there's no contradiction in those claims. To simplify: suppose you can't convict me without the evidence of a certain videotape, but I have a legal right to control the tape. I don't see why those two things don't, together, mean that your case is screwed. The important difference here seems to be that there is weaker evidence that could be used. But, if that evidence is too weak, then it doesn't matter.
   I'm not defending Trump here--heaven forfend! I'm just wondering about the technicalities.
   Actually, if I were Trump (yeesh...there's a nightmare scenario...you wake up as Donald Trump...), I wouldn't give the Dems anything whatsoever that I didn't absolutely have to. They've proven that they can't be trusted, and that they're dead set on torpedoing him by hook or by crook. They're more nuts about torpedoing Trump than the Pubs were about torpedoing Obama. I absolutely don't blame him for saying, basically: every memo and every email and every grocery list you want you're going to have to ask SCOTUS to get for you. I will fight you on every fightable point.

"DACA: An Actual Abuse Of Power"

I did not understand this stuff.

Greenwald: "The Inspector General’s Report on 2016 FBI Spying Reveals a Scandal of Historic Magnitude: Not Only for the FBI but Also the U.S. Media"

I don't like Greenwald, but he often does good work--this, for example.

There's not really a lot new in there, but it's good, clear, and reasonably compact. 

The upshot by itself doesn't do it justice, but I can't quote the whole thing:

As Taibbi put it: “No matter what people think the political meaning of the Horowitz report might be, reporters who read it will know: Anybody who touched this nonsense in print should be embarrassed.” No matter how dangerous you believe the Trump presidency to be, this is a grave threat to the pillars of U.S. democracy, a free press, an informed citizenry and the rule of law.

The thing is, progressives and the MSM--after their nonstop cavalcade of errors over the past 2.5 years--are now pretending/insisting that this report counts as some kind of vindication. They can't even tell--or admit--when their fantastical parade of bullshit has been humiliatingly exposed and repudiated. They're so dogmatically convinced of their moral and epistemic superiority that one wonders whether there is anything that could get them to even question it.

Matt Taibbi: The Media's Epic Failure On The IG Report

Sullivan: The Evidence Against Trump Is Overwhelming

I love Sully, but he makes me look dispassionate and level-headed.
His aversion to Trump tends to swamp his rational faculties.
Of course he could be right, but it doesn't seem that way to me.

More On Rockingham County's New Second-Amendment Sanctuary Status

The DNR's story on the meeting.

Progressivism Is Immune To Evidence: Britain Needs Its Own Mueller Report!

In an even vaguely rational world, the GPS guys would have moved to Uzbekistan by now.

Here in clown world, however...

MSM: Steel Dossier Corroboration Supercut!

Progressives live in a web of delusions.
Their credulity and dogmatism re: the Steele dossier is just one small part of it all.
A fair number of them actually still seem to be out there insisting that it was right.
I basically have no hope that significant numbers of progressives will ever recognize how unhinged progressivism has become. Most people can't seem to shake their religion once it's got hold of them. Fortunately, it isn't necessary. All that's required is for enough of the center to realize what's what. Most people I know will stampede to the polls to vote against Trump basically no matter what madness the left is peddling. Our hope lies with the center.

VA Dem Suggests Deploying National Guard Against 2nd-Amendment Sanctuaries; Mark Herring Says Something Dumb

Whelp, this may be one VA Dem shooting his mouth off. Or it may be still more evidence of the totalitarianism of progressive Dems. We went from Hey, nobody wants your guns, we just want some common-sense gun control legislation to WE'RE SENDING IN THE TROOPS TO TAKE YOUR GUNS in, politically speaking, the blink of an eye.
   Mark Herring. I can't believe I voted for the guy. But that was back before I lost my mind got red-pilled. Actually, I'd say: before the Dems lost their collective mind and went full lefty. In actual fact, it's probably a combination of all those things: illiberal progressive lefties took over the Dems = the Dems lost their collective mind / I got red-pilled / this combination has caused me to flip my shit a bit. Or a lot. Who am I to judge?
   Anyway: you really kinda have to be an idiot to put responsibility for this on "the gun lobby." "The gun lobby" has little to do with this. If anything is ever a "grass roots" phenomenon, this is. There's no role for the goddamned "gun lobby" to play here! Dems proposed a radical, nutty bit of legislation that anyone could have predicted would cause an uproar. We seem to be talking about confiscation here. Who, where, is dim enough not to realize that this is utterly cracked?
   And now: talk of using the Guard to enforce the thing.
   My prediction: the next bill from the VA Dems will mandate quartering of the National Guard in private homes while they're here trying to take our guns.

Congrats To The Brits On Conservative Landslide, "Irrefutable Brexit Mandate"

There's hope for Airstrip One yet.
But I'm sure progressive Brits are still yammering about what an embarrassing dummy Johnson is.

VA Dems Threaten To Use Nati'l Guard Against Sanctuary Counties

link

F-15: Eagle: The American Hunter

Long live the king

Rockingham County Board Of Supervisors Votes To Become A Second-Amendment Sanctuary

link
More than 60 local governments in the OD are now on board.

Trump Can't Even Just Ignore The Mean Green Tween...But The Left's Saint Greta Shtick Is Dumb As Hell

I agree with this.
   It's yet one more aspect of Trump's pathology that he can't even ignore provocation from a kid.
In related news, it's part of the left's pathology that they think that it matters what this kid--or any kid--thinks about this--or basically any--topic. Aside from her cringetastic "how dare you?" spiel, she hasn't said anything new. She just repeats the well-known talking-points. Angrily. But y'know, she's not, like, the Doogie Howser of climatology or whatever. She's just a spokesmoppet.

"Trump's Wednesday Twitter Rage Set [sic] New Record..."

Jeez that guy's pathological.
   Though, to be honest...he's right about a lot of it. The Dems are nuttier than he is, and the impeachment's a joke. But Jesus...if you can't exhibit at least a tiny bit of self-control about such insanity, you really can't be president.
   I reckon this is the Dems' strategy. Their case is pathetic. Public opinion is turning against them. They may be responding to the loony demands of their left wing--or this may be a tactic to drive Trump over the edge. The more pressure they put on him, and the more unjustly they treat him, the less self-control he's able to muster. And the more obvious it becomes that he has no business in the Oval Office.
   Mostly what's happening is that both sides are demonstrating, with unusual clarity, that they have no business being in power.

OD Dems Appear to Cave On Gun Confiscation...Suggest Sweeping Registration Requirement Instead

Right.
   So...here's our completely insane plan...oh, people revolt against it? Ok...we're willing to compromise...here's our merely loony plan instead... What?! You don't want to compromise?! Extremist!
   There are difficult issues here. I've certainly never been able to figure them out. Modern high-capacity semi-automatic weapons wreak havoc in the wrong hands. Though the vast majority of them are never put to any such use. Most criminals get their weapons illegally. It's not clear that restricting the rights of responsible gun-owners will accomplish much. But we all have an interest in keeping them away from people who are bad and crazy. Though the vast majority of gun violence is not of a kind progressives care to talk about. It's certainly not done by the law-abiding rural gun-owners progressives despise and seek to control.
   I was willing to try out the Clinton-era "assault weapons" ban. I was also glad to see it go. I'm open--in principle, and in the longer run--to reasoning collectively about firearms, and, perhaps, to further restrictions.
   But not now.
   The newly-radical Dems have shown that they absolutely cannot be trusted--on these and many other issues. There's no way I'd even consider further restrictions right now.
   As the grim joke goes among internet firearm folk: the Dems deride our resistance to more controls by derisively repeating their "Nobody wants your guns" mantra as if we were stupid and paranoid. Then, as in the OD, when they get control of the government, they turn on a dime to GIVE US YOUR FUCKING GUNS, REDNECK.
   VA's Dems, at least, have demonstrated that they can't be trusted. Not now, at the very least. They tipped their hand--again. We know what they really want, ergo we know what registration is a way-station to. Why would a government want to know who has the firearms, one wonders? Hmm...a real puzzle, that...
   And don't forget the overall logic of the left: leftward, ever leftward. Pause only when you don't have the power to push further. Start again as soon as you can. Slowly if necessary, by leaps and bounds if possible.
   And, again: it's not as if this is the only crazy thing they're doing. We're talking about a left that wants to undermine the First Amendment--not to mention the Fifth. So long as that's happening, it's just nuts to acquiesce to weakening Second Amendment protections.

Hemingway: Nunes Was Completely Right; Schiff + MSM Were Completely Wrong. There Should Be Consequences

Whelp, I certainly remember everybody making fun of Nunes. I basically went along with it, but, of course, was talking out my ass.

You Can Rely On The Newtron Bomb For Banal And Not-Quite-Apt Historical References

I really don't care for that guy.

Progressives On Twitter Defending The Steele Dossier

What I've seen so far:
It was preliminary research! Stop pretending it was supposed to be supported by evidence!
and:
It was right--look at all Trump's Russian connections!
and:
It hasn't been conclusively disproven!
e.g.:

Right, the details were wrong, but Steele's conclusions weren't off-base...look at Trump's connections to Russians. It was early research, it wasn't meant to be iron-clad.

— Rachel Joy Larris (@RachelLarris) December 11, 2019

Mate: The Steele Dossier Was Crap...So What Does That Mean For The Journalists (Esp: MSNBC) That Spent 2+ Years Flogging Its Patently Absurd "Findings"?

If "the Steele dossier does not emerge well from this IG report," how about the journalists, especially on MSNBC, who spent 2+ years credulously parroting Steele's transparently ridiculous, and now definitively repudiated, reporting in their "reporting"? https://t.co/W33lMhpRLW pic.twitter.com/DXtfHwA4Po

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) December 11, 2019

Possible Tipping-Points Everywhere!: The Arctic

Possibly, if certain things are happing...or if they happen...then we may hit a tipping-point--and then other conditional things will possibly happen. And possibly if they all happen, we may be screwed. So, you see, it's possible that we're on the very brink of a disaster that doesn't really seem like a threat because we don't see how quickly a bunch of implausible-seeming but totally linked leaps forward can happen. But the real point is: the possible end-point is so terrible that we can't wait around to figure out whether any of the relevant conditionals are true, nor how likely the relevant possibilities are.
   This is a slippery-slope argument, of course.
   Some such arguments are sound, some aren't.

"Making Black Women Scientists Under White Empiricism: The Racialization Of Epistemology In Physics"

One thing about this kind of popomo BS: you don't have to actually read it to see that it's stupid. I was already skimming by halfway through the abstract. Actually, the title contains more than enough information to support a pretty reliable judgment about the thing.

The Virginia Citizens Defense League

The VCDL seems to be leading the Second-Amendment Sanctuary movement.
Here's a pretty encouraging map.

HRC 2020?

Well, I've got to say, against my better judgment, I'm interested.
   In '16, SJW/NPC madness had not yet thoroughly possessed the blue team. I think it's pretty damn clear that neither Hillary nor Bernie were much on board with "social justice" madness back then. Hillary dragged her feet and dissembled pretty much whenever she was forced to speak on that nonsense. Well, much of the time, anyway. Bernie seems to have knuckled under in the interim. HRC? If not, she could be the centrist savior the blue team needs... But I don't know since I haven't been keeping up with her. I wonder whether the loony left wing of the party would revolt?
   Obviously I don't think the Dems are an option in their current form.
   But if HRC gets in, at least I'm listening again.
   She's not my fave rave--but I've always thought she was just fine. Just fine and not stark, raving mad puts her way, way out front of the rest of the blue-team pack in my book.

Has Feminism Been Bad For Us?

Probably.
Well, possibly, anyway.
   This is pretty short and superficial, but they're some pretty well-known and plausible ideas.
Of course there's virtually no way to get most progressives to think objectively about feminism. They basically think that feminism is about the equal moral worth of the sexes. And if that were true, then it would be good. Or, more precisely: when that was true, it was good. But that's not what feminism has been about for a long time. Or, more precisely: feminist are so obsessed with feminism that they've basically expanded it until the equal moral worth thesis is, at best, a tiny fragment of the thing. 'At best' because misandry has been rampant in feminism for, well, most of my life, anyway. There's feminist epistemology, for chrissake. It's not good--but it exists. There's quite a lot of it, in fact. This radically expanded feminism has something to say about almost everything--and the vast majority of what it has to say is wrong. I have learned a thing or two from feminism. But the vast majority of the things it convinced me of turned out to be laughably, harmfully false. Like the rest of strident leftism, its a train wreck. Again: aside from the occasional worthwhile insight.
   Also like the rest of leftism (one needn't actually add 'strident'...its redundant), its main problem is its dogmatism--criticism of feminism from outside feminism is...well, it's not even quite right to say that its assumed to be evil. That it might not be evil isn't something it's possible to consider. Anti-feminist = evil. Even non-feminist = evil. Criticism from within feminism is permissible--but only if its from a leftier version of feminism. That's part of the logic of the left--and why that train always goes off the cliff.
   I don't think anyone thinks that women oughtn't have the same kinds of career and life choices men have--ignoring the ones that aren't biologically realistic. Feminism's error in this regard seems to have been insisting that women must not want the things many women do want--roughly, a traditional home life. Not all women want that. But there's fair evidence that many do. Instead of just working to make other options available, feminism basically tried to rule out the option that women have, very likely, evolved to want. Like the rest of progressivism, feminism went bad when it abandoned centrist, reformist liberalism and became a kind of radical, anti-human repudiation of everything traditional. Instead of: hey, you don't have to be traditional, it turned into: tradition is evil and you are a fool if you're duped into preferring it.
   Undoubtedly there are insights even in the defective, radical, contemporary version of feminism. But there's at least as much bad in there as good.

Relatedly: here's something really, really, really stupid: "masculopathy". Man, the left looooves making up stupid words. They're like a bunch of teenagers hooked on inventing bad slang. Apparently "toxic masculinity" is tres passe.