Science vs. Humanities: Fighting Pandemics vs. Repeating The "Diversity" Mantra Ad Nauseam

The sciences do things--like fight pandemics.
The contemporary humanities simply repeat the same ridiculous political idea over and over and over. No thought is ever required, no actual analysis is ever conducted...they just repeat some version of the mantra...diversity diversity diversity...racist racist racist...
It's too bad we can't all be given the choice of either (a) choosing to deploying the very best people regardless of race, sex, etc. or (b) using race, sex and the rest of the progressive obsessions as criteria of choice. I have no doubt that some lefties would choose (b) even if their family's lives depended on it, because that's how deep their racist/sexist delusions go. But most would snap to their senses and choose (a) pretty damn fast.

"Blowing The Whistle On The Administration's Coronavirus Incompetence"?

Larison, like so many others, has apparently lost his mind about Trump, and seems incapable of discussing anything about the guy objectively. Which doesn't mean that this isn't right, of course. Honestly, so much of what I hear about the handling of such things seems jaw-droppingly half-assed--e.g. the account of events in The Hot Zone. When I read that thing I almost could not believe the account of events in Reston. How is it that trained professionals could be so incompetent and stupid? A group of untrained, intelligent, reasonable people could have done better if you just handed them some hazmat suits. The woman thinks she may have exposed herself to Ebola...but talks her superiors into letter her skip quarantine and go home because she doesn't want to be away from her family. She risks killing them and everybody else because two weeks in quarantine would be unpleasant.
   Progressives shrieked about racism and xenophobia when Trump shut down travel from China because of course they did. Though it seemed to me that it should have been done sooner. The account on the other end of the link, if true, seems consistent with other idiotic stuff I've read about. You could make up better protocols on the spot. It just makes no sense. Though: I don't see how it's supposed to be Trump's fault.
   Anyway, after reading that, my attitude has switched to: incompetent as we apparently are, there's no way we'll contain it. So get ready to deal with the pandemic, I guess.

The PC Cult In An NYC Private School

What happens when the cult takes over a whole school.

Don't miss the video about the teacher who likes to dress up as a doll...

COVID-19 Could Cost Trump The Election

Gosh, I guess that's why you guys make the big bucks.
Is there anyone who has not thought of that?

Sorry, NYT, But America Began In 1776

This kicks ass.

Warren Wants To Take All The Money For Trump's "Racist Wall" To Fight Coronavirus

My God she's a ****ing idiot.
   So long as it's an effective weapon, and no one ever pays a price for such false accusations, progressives will just keep spewing this shit at every opportunity.
   And, as RedState points out, we're listed among the countries most well-prepared to deal with this stuff. And having improved border security and fewer illegal crossings is undoubtedly part of that.
   How did the Dems go this crazy this fast? I swear to God they weren't always like this...

Dems Rooting For The Virus?

Eh...not exactly...but not exactly not...

Two Years Of Non-Stop Mueller...Nary A Peep About Durham

But I reckon we'll see.

How Much Would The GND Cost The Average Family

About a quarter-million bucks in the first five years?
I doubt there's any fact of the matter, it's such a crackpot scheme. How much would it cost to beat the Klingons? No fact of the matter.
Reminder: it's not a climate plan, and it's certainly not aimed at stopping the fictional climatopacalypse. It's a massive plan to implement a wish list of crackpot leftist social and economic preferences, disguised as a response to climate hysteria. No one would actually believed the climate stuff would adopt such a plan.
If you really believed the hype, you'd close the borders to prevent any migration from the third world to the first (which inflates people's carbon footprint by, like, an order of magnitude or something, build nuclear plants like they were going out of style, and just start shutting down roads and fossil-fuel-based electricity generation. You'd go to the Pubs and say: we will give you anything else you want if you'll just give us carbon reductions. You sure as hell wouldn't be wasting political capital on transgender bathrooms and whatnot.
And you certainly wouldn't be wasting resources on community gardens, "free" housing, "free" college, "free" food, "indigenous rights," and all the other nonsense in there.

Dems' Best Hope Is Kids, Because They're Dumb About Politics

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I was dumb about politics as a kid myself.
You can sell socialism and identity politics to kids because they just don't have enough experience to understand what's going on.
Which makes them the Dems' best hope.

Angelo Codevilla, The Rise Of Political Correctness

Very interesting.
I don't agree with it in every detail, but there's a lot in it that's insightful.

A Racial Slur Becomes Magical

First, of course neither of these people used the racial slur in question. Both mentioned it. Second, this is another insane development in the march of political correctness. The word isn't magical, it's not orders of magnitude worse than other slurs and vulgar terms. It doesn't invoke Satan.
   You can learn a lot about PC from thinking about this. When I was a kid, it was a crude, racist slur that nobody used in public. There were older rural people who used it purely descriptively, and without malice in certain situations. But, in the main, you marked yourself as a stupid asshole for using it. Nobody would use it, say, on television.
   Now it's used indiscriminately by blacks in mass media...which was weird enough...but, furthermore, any white person who might speak it even oratio obliqua is treated like a child-murderer or something. Obviously some doubleness of standard is understandable. And not even peculiar nor difficult to understand, to my mind. It's similar to, say, the fact that you can call your friends all sorts of things that would get you punched were you to call a stranger the same thing. But this degree of asymmetry isn't rational. It seems to have become not about the word anymore. It's become some bizarre political power thing. Maybe it's progressivism working to see how absurdly radical they can make the double standard.
   It's rude, but it's not magical. And it's protected speech. People are going to have to get their minds right about this at some point.

Bernie On The Coronavirus

Say what you want about the COVID-19...but where it sweeps through...you know what it does? It leaves fewer illiterates in its wake...

Carolina 85 - State 79

Wow Roy sure does like beating State...
Even when he can't seem to buy a win to save his life, the Pack can't seem to beat him.
Props to Brooks and Keeling especially.

Bernie: Netanyahu's A Rectionary Racist

I know f*ck-all about Israel. Except that they're basically the worst ally we could have. I mean...I tend to like 'em fine in and of themselves. But they're a shit ally.
So I don't know whether Bernie's right or not. He could be for all I know.
Except progressives' accusations of racism are utterly worthless. They're as indiscriminate--and as rational--as monkeys flinging shit. The safest bet is that the accuser is full of shit in any given situation.
Though Bernie's a socialist and no so much of an identity-politics type.
But he's been sucked into all sorts of crazy pathologies of progressivism that he didn't seem naturally inclined toward--like climate hysteria.
And, of course: you're an asshole if you falsely or irresponsibly accuse someone of racism or any other such thing.

Allegedly Gay 9-Year-Old Comes Out At Pete Buttigieg Rally

Jeez this is cringey.
   I had no idea what sex or sexual orientation was at the age of 9. I doubt this kid does either... But now we know what sexual orientation is parents....or, more likely, his mother...wants him to be...
   I used to be one of those liberals that was incredulous when conservatives said that that the gay rights movement was aiming at / would result in the sexualization of kids. But here we are.

Bloomy: Progressive Left At Least As Scary As European Far Right

True dat.

CDC COVID-19 Siuation Summary

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I'm at about FretCon 3.

Coronavirus Crisis In U.S.: Not *Whether* But *When*

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Heather Mac Donald + Facts + Reason vs. The Cult Of Campus Crazy

Everything you need to know about progressive leftists in one video.

Well...not true, actually. This is a nice little snapshot of what might be the most important struggle of our time...but it's only one slice of the deep, wide river of crazy running through progressivism. There's way more than is revealed here...loony though they are shown to be.

Funny how many relatively short videos there are that would be enough for any rational person to make up his or her mind about the totalitarian left...

[Jeez. Listen to how thoroughly brainwashed those students are... Universities tell themselves that they're making their students less-susceptible to brainwashing and indoctrination. In fact, universities have become massive brainwashing operations. They're the main perpetrators. They're not the cure, they're the main carriers of the disease.]

Salonlol: Journalists Are Too Objective / Insufficiently Anti-Trump

You'd think I was making this up:

We know what needs to change. It involves "less false equivalence, more high-impact language and more willingness to take a stand for democracy," writes Sullivan. It involves corporate media figures recognizing that "[t]his is a moment for curiosity in America," says Giridharadas. It involves actively fighting misinformation, rather than reporting on how effective it will be, as Klein argues.

False equivalence? Exactly where does the MSM represent Trump and the Cult of Progressivism as equivalent in any way? My favorite bit there is probably "more high-impact language." Jeez. A complete absence of self awareness. The manipulation of language is (a) scurrilous and (b) one of the things at which the left most excells. It's a classic anti-democratic method of manipulation.
   Also: again we see the inane idea that Trump is somehow anti-democratic. Democracy's hardly an unalloyed good. Neither is Trump, of course. But he's the output of democracy. The anti-democratic faction is on the left. Russiagate, you see...that never happened...
   As for misinformation/disinformation: the familiar pattern repeats itself: Trump is bad; the progressive left is off the scale. Trump's a pretty much ordinary political liar/bullshitter who's just turned it up to 11. The progressive left has a culture-wide network of propagandists dedicated to advancing their loony worldview--in fact, some of the very institutions that are supposed to be dedicated to fighting propaganda and tribe-think are religiously devoted to conducting leftist indoctrination: universities and journalism. Trump's a lone bullshitter. He's completely outgunned in this respect. He also slips in important truths now and then that no one else will say. And that counts for a lot.

Angelo Codevilla: After The Republic

It is with great sadness that I report that this general kind of view has come to seem horribly plausible to me. But there are plenty of gaps in my knowledge of the relevant facts. So there's plenty of room for me to be wrong. Which, of course, I hope I am.

Legal Immigration Decreases Because Of Trump's New Rules

We should have an open, objective, rational discussion about what level of immigration we should have. Of course the NYT is disapproving of any decrease in immigration, legal or illegal. Given the excesses of the past few decades, it seems like some decrease would be the natural thing. I tend to favor more slots for refugees, but there seems to be a certain amount of system-gaming--I've got to read more about that. Maybe it's fictional or minimal. If real, it should be stopped. Which seems to ve what's happening now.
   Of course what we're asking is: will we have lots of immigration or ginormous amounts of immigration? Trump seems to favor the former, which seems reasonable.
   The public charge rule seems good. The progressive tendency to allow unrestricted illegal entry, to give illegals public money, etc. is largely what has made many of us go in the other direction. Contra Bernie, non-Americans and non-citizens don't have the same rights nor deserve the same benefits as Americans/citizens. "Restrictionism" in the new lingo...which seems to mean: having some immigration laws and at least kinda enforcing them. It's a way of making opposition to open borders seem sinister...
   Anyway, few of us really understand any of this. We've got to be able to have a public discussion in which the other side does more than merely scream "racism!" As far as I can tell, all options should be considered--maybe legal immigration should go down, maybe it should stay the same, maybe it should go up. Without an open and rational public discussion, how are we to form reasoned opinions? There actually seem to be some reasons to keep immigration up currently.
   I tend to think that the more the left aims to fragment and multiculturalize the country, the less immigration we should have. The more cohesive we are, and the better people assimilate, the more we can accommodate. But massive amounts of immigration + the ruling faction ceaselessly promoting anti-assimilationism seems like a blueprint for disaster.
   But, again: we need rational public discussion.

Ambiguity Watch: "Powerful Antibiotic Discovered Using Machine Learning For The First Time"

Kind of a good-news / bad-news situation...

Calls For Chris Matthews To Resign Are Ridiculous

I mean, so is Matthews...but never mind that.
There wasn't anything wrong with Matthews's analogy. But this is how the game is played on the left: no matter how far you have to stretch, if you can find some half-assed way in which something is "offensive" (the paleo-PCs' favorite word...), you can hurt your opponent. Trying to work the angle that Bernie is Jewish is particularly gross.

Corona-Virus-Infected Americans Flown Back To U.S. Against CDC's Advice

WTH?

Google AI Will No Longer Identify Images With "Gendered" Labels Like 'Man' And 'Woman'

Because we live in Clown World now.
Though: 'man' and 'woman' aren't genders, they're species/sex/age terms like 'buck' and 'doe.'
People who spend all their time screeching about race and sex actually end up knowing less about it than ordinary people. Weird.

COVID-19 Update Dr. John Campbell

Sounds like things may be bad in Iran, contra the "only East Asians" hypothesis.

Thought-Control On The Left/MSM: Does Wuhan Coronavirus Preferentially Kill East Asians?

There is some talk on the right about the hypothesis that COVID-19 preferentially kills East Asians. Some reports claim there have been no non-East-Asian deaths from the virus. However, this hypothesis/information seems to have been suppressed. Or, again: so some chatter on the right has it. But if so, why? Even given the ruling elites' pathological inclination to spin non-racism into racism...why on Earth would anyone try to suppress information like this??
   The only think I can think of is this: the dedication of the left / cultural-superstructure to denying that races are natural kinds. But damn, that seems like a stretch... [Note: the Freeper who posted the post floats the same hypothesis--I hadn't read that far.]
   Since I've started taking conservatism more seriously, I've noticed that the conservative press scoops the hell out of the MSM and the lefty press (but I repeat myself) a lot. IMO: if they're right about this, it's pretty big.
   [Note: it may be that only East Asians are even catching the virus...]
   [Sanjay Gupta apparently explicitly suggested (on CNN) that this was not true.]
   [Note that the Freeper link is from 2/8... Even I didn't read about this until 2/23...]
   [Another hypothesis: panic makes people malleable, and that's what the left/ruling-elites currently want. Yet another hypothesis: the left would politically benefit from an economic slowdown in the U.S...]
   [Apparently a 77-y-o Italian with no known East Asian ancestry seems to have died from COVID-19. One such case doesn't do much to undermine the hypothesis, but it does a bit.]
   [Sounds like some cases and a high percentage of deaths in Iran.]

British Gov't Conceals Information On Grooming Gangs

This is almost enough to make you wonder whether certain elements want to suppress politically incorrect truths...

Nah...surely not...

Everything Is Racist: 'Africanized Bees' Is Racist

What does one even say at this point?

These "Russians"...

Transgender Ideology And The Left's War On The Family

There can't be any real doubt that the left is opposed to the family and aims to weaken it. That's a long-standing Marxist goal. Transgender ideology is a collection of theories, myths and quasi-religious commitments that constitutes a more-or-less principled expansion of the left's sexual worldview. (Largely bad principles...but principles nonetheless...) The education establishment is firmly on the left. So this should, really, come as no particular surprise.
   There's virtually no opposition to such leftist projects from inside the educational establishment or the bureaucracy--especially since you can, increasingly, be fired for expressing such "bigotry." Just about the last remaining source of opposition is the family. Parents care so much for their kids that they have an incentive to object to PC diktats despite the high social cost of doing so. And that's a big problem for the left. A predictable leftist strategy is, then, to cut them out of the loop. This eliminates a source of opposition and simultaneously advances the project of replacing parental authority with that of the state. The left has basically created a religion, implemented brainwashing of kids with it in schools, and then cut parents out of the loop when there's any chance they might object to this. Oh and: part of the religion involves sexually indoctrinating and mutilating these kids in ways that are likely to scar them for life and undermine their ability to reproduce. That's another thing that motivates parents to object, given their interest in the survival of their family into the future (that's to say: grandkids). I continue to be amazed at how powerful the mind-control techniques of the left are. I really underestimated those guys. They are scary dangerous.

The Intolerant Left And The End Of Liberal Democracy

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Don't Forget That A Bernie Bro Tried To Kill The Entire Republican Congressional Leadership

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If the roles had been reversed, does anybody think it would have been memory-holed like it has been?

Bernie?

The country is losing its collective mind.

So It's Red Team v Red Team, Then, Is It

Eh, all I got is that snarky, obvious headline.

NYT Goes All-In On BS "1619 Project"

Progressivism has lost its minds, and this shows up in a lot of small, medium-sized, and big ways. The NYT's bullshit "1619 Project" is a medium-sized way. That's somewhere between the small, self-contained madness of, say, the Covington Kids incident and the big, sweeping problem of prope-Lysenkoism. But it is a pretty good illustration of one of the left's big, sweeping problems--the deep, misologistic rejection of truth and reason that lies at the core of leftist thought.

Trump Is The Moderate Candidate

And that's without even mentioning social policies, on which the Dems are far, far more radical even than they are on economic policies.
The thing standing between Trump and a landslide is Trump.
He governs from the moderate right. His SCOTUS nominations have been great, and constitute the beginnings of a firewall against the looming leftist destruction of the Constitution...but he can't seem to control himself on Twitter. He's not even that bad in person. But on Twitter, he's alarming to say the least.

Asymptomatic Wuhan Woman Infects 5 Relatives

Very bad news.

More Politically-Motivated Violence Against Trump-Supporters

Notice how much of this stuff is perpetrated against kids?

"Gay Marriage Was Always Leading To Polygamy"

I was so deeply bluepilled in certain ways that I denied this for years...but it's likely true.
    As I've noted several times, the central argument for same-sex marriage--the love argument--does entail that polygamy is permissible as well. If any people who love each other should be able to marry, then clearly polygamy should be permitted. Even if you state it as The Human Rights Campaign et al. prefer to state it ("Any two people who love each other should be able to marry"), polygamy is still entailed. That's because it entails that any two people should be able to marry even if they're already married. That is, if A and B love each other, then they should be able to marry even if one or both of them is already married.
   So the logic of one of the main arguments for same-sex marriage does lead to the conclusion that polygamy should be permissible. But what I've called "the logic of the left" does as well. Regardless of the logic of the arguments, the left will always push leftward. Thus no matter what it advocates, it will advocate positions to the left of that more-or-less as soon as possible. The ink wasn't even dry on Obergefell before the left began insisting that we all accept trans ideology. That has now led to the sexual mutilation and sexualization of children. Polygamy is now decriminalized in at least one state, and it's unlikely to stop there.
   As I've often said, I started this blog with a couple of general ideas, and one was: you can be a liberal without being an idiot (i.e. an extremist). I now doubt that's true. I'm not sure it isn't--but I doubt it. Liberalism has turned into something that refuses to oppose leftism (e.g. progressivism), no matter how insane and illiberal. And I didn't see that coming...even though I'd seen it in action in the paleo-PC era. Of course liberalism did eventually say no to the crazy PC left...but only after severe damage had been done...and only for a decade or so before the crazies arose again, even crazier than before. And, again, liberals--such that remain--stand by and watch it happen, complicit in their silence.

"Chase Strangio": There's No Such Thing As A Male Or Female Body

facepalm
The same bunch of sophomoric fallacies we always get in these pieces from the partisans of the Super-Sciencey Pro-Science Party Of Science(tm). It really is bizarre that they can get away with openly proclaiming the patent sophistries their position rests on over and over and over again. These are the same people who think they understand climatology well enough to deserve certainty about extremely complicated questions involving projections of past trends into the distant future...but they seem to have failed--or never taken--freshman critical thinking.
   Basically such arguments always deploy the continuum fallacy to argue for barely-understood, extreme version of nominalism that would undermine all science. But, since consistency is the hobgoblin of racist minds, they never consider the consequences of their view. This is all really a kind of macrocosm of the left's ability to argue that Bruce Jenner is a woman but Rachel Dolezal isn't black...and you're a racist* if you even think for a second that the two cases have anything to do with each other.
   There is one paragraph in there that's semi-worth gesturing at, though:

At birth, we classify infants as male or female based solely on the appearance of their external genitalia. Notably, this classification serves population control and surveillance and not medical purposes. The medical experts I have spoken with could not identify a single medical purpose for assigning sex at birth and explain that the components of sex are far more complex than just external genitalia and include, at least, chromosomes, genes, hormones, internal genitalia, gender identity, and secondary sex characteristics. By embracing a narrative that one is born with a “male body,” we reinforce the idea that only the bodies we assign male at birth— bodies that have medically normative penises— are male.

Doctors do observe the baby's anatomy to discern whether it's male or female. This is easy, and a quick visual inspection apparently suffices in the vast, vast majority of cases. Because sex is strongly bimodal. Like all natural classes, there are borderline cases. But, in this case, very, very few. Cases that can't be determined by quick visual inspection can usually be determined in some way. Though there are a very few genuine people who fall right between male and female. That's a real phenomenon--but nothing new. And it in no way indicates that no one is male or female. In fact, Peirce argues that borderline cases are a sign of real classes.
Read more »

Ilhan Omar: Marriage Fraud And Threats Of Violencs

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It's been widely reported on the right for two years or so that Ilhan Omar married her brother as part of some kind of immigration scheme, and that her henchmen use threats of violence against people who might blow the whistle on her.
This is one of those test cases. If it turns out to be true, then, yet again, the conservative press / blogosphere / interweb has been reporting on something right under our noses that the progressive press basically ignored until it was no longer possible to suppress it.
This is turning into a pattern.

ROOSKIES HEART TRUMP / Rooskiegate 10.0 / Trump Craps The Bed Take MCXVIII

facepalm
Where to even begin?

14-Year Old Girl Brainwashed By Transgender Mythology; Court Prevents Father From Intervening In Her Medical Mutilation, Threatens Him With Jail If He Refers To Her As 'Her', Prevents HIm From Even Speaking About It

Um, look. This is where the American left wants us to go. It's where we're currently headed. The more power the Surrealocrats have, the faster we'll get there. Trump--God help us--is what mostly stands between us and this kind of insane cultocracy. It's not enough that they want the power of the state to reach down even into the family--and that they're willing to force parents to comply with this abject bullshit cooked up in the women's studies department last Tuesday... Their ultimate goal is to prevent people from even voicing disagreement with their madness.
Well...their ultimate goal is, of course, to prevent people from engaging even in thoughtcrime... But controlling speech is both a means to that and the best they can do for now.

Warren Promises To Fill Half Her Cabinet With Women And "Nonbinary" People

Well, since people can't be "binary"...nor non- it...I'm sure I have no idea what she's talking about.
Progressivism is a clown show. And we're all so cowed that we're sitting around watching it and pretending it makes sense. The Surrealocrats have already basically won. They've moved the Overton window so far to the left that often their proposals aren't even awful anymore...rather they don't even make any sense.
And, as I may have mentioned: these people are not liberals. They're the most illiberal significant political faction of my lifetime. Even if we manage to beat them back and the American left should return to some version of liberalism, always remember what we've learned. A huge percentage of the people who pass for liberal when the totalitarian left isn't surging are really just opting for the leftiest available faction. When the totalitarian left surges again--as it inevitably will--they'll hop on that bandwagon with great relish.
I learned that during the paleo-PC era, and let myself semi-forget it. Because I'm an idiot.

"Identity Politics Isn't Hurting Liberalism. It's Saving It"

My God, Zach Beauchamp is an idiot.
I mean...he's nearly an Amanda-Marcotte-level idiot.
And that piece just goes on and on and on. I gave up after a few screens' worth. Life's too short.
Vox is a tragic waste of the human spirit.

Bernie's Wrong: We're Better Off Than Ever Before

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There are, of course, some important but less-easily-quantifiable ways in which we're much worse off. But that's a more difficult topic. And neither Bernie nor the Dems will help. In fact, they're more likely to make things worse.
But, overall, there's no doubt that our lives have gotten safer, more comfortable, and (in ways) more enjoyable.

Idiotic Pronoun Bullshit Is Just One More Step Down The Road To Soft Totalitarian Irrationalism

It's all so f*cking idiotic that one hardly even knows where to start. The smug idiocy, the virtue signaling, the pathological need to micromanage the way other people talk, the linguistic ignorance, the incoherence of the view it's all based on... Then, of course, there are all the non-crazy, relatively-more-centrist progressive/liberal types who are dutifully bending the knee to all this...because what could be worse than the disapproval of crazy totalitarians?
   And apparently there's at least one court ruling that says that the First Amendment--magically--doesn't apply to such things. So you can be compelled by your university to misuse words or use non-words upon demand by students... And note: not just: not use ordinary terms correctly... You can be forced to misuse words and use bullshit words.
   This is insightful:

“Youth exists to torment age,” Mr. Bukiet said. “That’s fine. I can dig. Wouldn’t trust anyone under 30 who didn’t poke at his or her or their elders. But it doesn’t mean that I or we have got to oblige.”

Note that youth used to torment age by doing crazy shit and provoking age to rage. It was, at least to some extent, about exercising freedom. Now youth torments age more like it did in the Soviet Union--by forcing it to comply with batshit dogma. Which is, needless to say, about freedom, too, in a way....but about destroying it in the name of quasi-religious lunacy.

Trump Just Can't Keep His Mouth Shut

That guy's a pathological loudmouth. He can't keep his big mouth shut even when it's desperately in his interest to do so.
The anti-Barr letter doesn't bother me much. Obama and Holder packed the DoJ with Democrats, didn't they? Which is, as I understand it, against the law...

"Canada: A Totalitarian State In Progress"

This is what the new, woke Democrats want for us, too.

"Why The Left Is Losing"

As Reynolds says: don't get cocky.
The insane left has been chillingly successful of late in the U.S.

[This deserves some comment. The most important idea in there, I think, is that the really crazy, activist left pressures leftier parties not to move rightward/centerward on cultural issues--e.g. by shrieking 'racist!' at anyone who does. I'll add that this psychotic tendency also prevents the country as a whole from honestly discussing important issues--like dudes in women's public restrooms and locker rooms. It's basically a method the left uses to prevent the Dems and the majority from having rational discussions and making rational decisions.
But this is more our fault than theirs. They're crazy cultists. They're only marginally responsible for their actions--or, rather, behaviors. But rational people giving in to such tactics...that's irrational and irresponsible and cowardly. We can't keep giving in to this kind of insanity. People have to realize that "you're racist!" just means I have no response to your argument in leftyspeak. ]

Bernie Can't Win?

If we're lucky.

WHO Situation Reports On Covid-19

This seems good.

The Snows Of Kilimanjaro Defy Gloomy Predictions

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Jeb! Speaks! Truth!

Right on the money:

  Bush spoke Monday to an audience of several hundred investors in Hollywood at a conference sponsored by the financial firm Noble Capital Markets of Boca Raton. During a speech and onstage interview with author Brant Pinvidic, Bush likened the role of the president to part prime minister, part king.
   He gave Trump good grades on the ministerial side, applauding the appointments of conservative jurists Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh as justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as the strong economy, low unemployment and a reduction in government regulation. “There are a lot of good things going on,” he said.
   The nation, though, still faces serious financial problems, said the two-term former Republican governor.
   “We have trillion-dollar deficits in a growing economy,” he said. “We never envisioned that,” along with unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities that will have to be resolved by others.
   “These things are left to be tended to by somebody else and I think that’s malpractice.”As for such "kingly’ duties as setting an example to which younger people can aspire, Bush found the president deficient.
   “The duties say if you can work hard and play by the rules you can be just like him … that’s an ‘F,’” Bush said. “That’s an important part of this, to be admired by someone that you look up to. This president doesn’t achieve that.”

WE ALSO NEED A "BLUE NEW DEAL"!!!!111

Jeez Warren is a loon.
One massive hysterical leftist modernity-ending bad-science-fiction plan for reengineering society pretending to be a climate proposal isn't enough...we need at least one more!!!!

Cato: No National Security Justification For Adding The Six New Countries To The Travel Ban

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   There is no national security justification for banning immigrants from those countries. From 1975 through 2017, 11 foreign‐​born terrorists from those countries attempted or committed attacks on U.S. soil. They murdered 6 people in their attacks. The annual chance of being murdered by a foreign‐​born terrorist from those six countries on U.S. soil is about 1 in 1.9 billion per year. Those 6 murders by terrorists account for 0.2 percent of all people murdered by foreign‐​born terrorists on U.S. soil from 1975 to 2017.
   By comparison, the annual chance of being murdered in a normal non‐​terrorist homicide during that time was about 1 in 14,383, or 134,000 times greater than being murdered in a terrorist attack committed by a person from one of those six banned countries.

Trump Claims Legal Right To Interfere In Criminal Cases

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More and more I think of our choice in November in these terms: it's a near-certainty that a Democratic president would do severe damage to the country. Trump is out there opposing them, and doing some good things...but it's also, IMO, a near-certainty that he will eventually go off the rails. So it unsurprisingly comes down to a question about the odds: how likely is it that Trump can make it through a second term without flipping his shit and doing more harm than the Dems are destined to do?
What a freakin' mess.

Tom Cotton Notes That Coronavirus Might Have Originated In Nearby Bioweapons Lab; WaPo Pretends It's A Debunked "Conspiracy Theory"

This seems to fit a pattern on the left to me.
Conservatives ask a perfectly reasonable question. It's vaguely inconsistent with some progressive preference or other. Progressives condescendingly claim it's obviously false or racist (etc.) or has been debunked already or is a conspiracy theory or conflicts with "settled science" or...one of their other go-to moves.
   "Conspiracy theory" is one of their favorite epithets. The most prominent and jaw-dropping conspiracy theory in recent memory, however--Russiagate--is never described that way (on the left, that is).
   In case you haven't noticed: the left is Orwellian as hell.

Larison: The Disgusting Cruelty Of The Travel Ban

I'm inclined to agree, though I'm not really clear on the purpose of the thing, tbh.

Everyone Who Contributed To Trump's Senate Acquittal Is Not Responsible For Everything He Does For The Rest Of His Life

I'm not even exaggerating this guy's point.
But why not: everybody who votes for him? Or defends him in print?
Do we also get credit forever for keeping the now-crazy Democrats out of office?

Four Virginia Dems Hand Northam A Bitter Disappointment

Hallelujah.
It's just tabled til next year...but that's one year closer to the election (here in the OD). If they couldn't pass it this year, I doubt they'll pass it next.

Donald Ayer: "Bill Barr Must Resign"

This seems wrong to me--but what do I know?
   More precisely: we seem to have entered a period of insanity in which both sides are bending the law and acting nuts. I'd prefer everyone adhere to it scrupulously. But if the Dems are going to cheat, then, given how insane they've gone and how destructive their policies currently are, I suppose I want the other side to bend the rules/laws to an equal and opposite degree. Which all just sounds like madness to me. But Ayer is still trying to ride the Mueller train to name just one thing. Which seems a little nutty.
   I'd like to get Trump out of there, because he does worry me a lot. But currently he's the only bulwark against the horrors of the other guys.
   I expect we might see it all in a different light when we hear from Durham. Trump may also turn out to be the least-crooked of the bunch. Which would, of course, be bad.

Embarrassing Montage Of Media Fawning Over Michael Avenatti

These people are idiots and should never be allowed to forget this shit.

Transgender Child Abuse

Probability that this was the kid's idea rather than the parents': 0.00.

MO House Bill Would Require Every State Resident To Own "At Least One" AR-15

Let us now all praise the great state of Missouri!

British Cops Now Come To Your House To Indoctrinate You With Pseudoscience If You Post UnPC Tweets

But of course there's nothing to be alarmed about, bigot.

Keeping Track Of Left-Wing Violence In The Trump Era

Conservapedia.
AttacksOnTrumpSupporters.com.
Breitbart.

Trump Rallies Are Welcoming And Full Of Nice People

So sayeth the woman who was at the center of the crazy wokification of....not making this up...online knitting...
   Like me, she left the Dems when they lost their minds. Unlike me, she actually went to a Trump rally to see what it was like. In addition to her conclusion that the people were a lot nicer than the Democrats she'd been around, she also had this to say:

I think the Democrats have an ass-kicking coming to them in November, and I think most of them will be utterly shocked when it happens because they’re existing in an echo chamber that is not reflective of the broader reality. I hope it’s a wake-up call and causes them to take a long look in the mirror and really ask themselves how they got here. Maybe then they’ll start listening. I tend to doubt it, but I can hope.

Do 97% Of Climate Scientists Think We're Headed For Climate Apocalypse?

Nnnnope:

Biologists Colin M. Wright And Emma N. Hilton: "The Dangerous Denial Of Sex.: Sex Is Dichotomous; Trans Ideology Is False And Harmful

Here's how crazy our public discussion is now: the following things need to be said, and are controversial:

   “The concept of changing one’s biological sex is, of course, nonsense, as sex is determined by unalterable chromosomes,” wrote researcher Jane Robbins for Public Discourse last October. “An individual can change his hormone levels and undergo surgery to better imitate the opposite sex, but a male on the day of his conception will remain a male on the day of his death.”
   The problem with this ideologically driven approach to human sexuality is more than academic, because it often results in real-life damage to the most vulnerable members of society, Thursday’s op-ed argues.
   This includes opening female-only spaces and women’s sports to biological males and trampling laws that safeguard women from discrimination in the workplace.
   “The falsehood that sex is rooted in subjective identity instead of objective biology renders all these sex-based rights impossible to enforce,” the writers note.
   Those most likely to be seriously hurt by such “sex denialism” are children, the op-ed contends, since secondary sexual characteristics such as voice, mannerisms, and personality type can be seen as more gender-defining than the person’s biological phenotype.
   The American College of Pediatricians has pulled no punches in condemning this behavior, calling hormone treatment and surgical operations on children with gender dysphoria “child abuse.”
   “The time for politeness on this issue has passed,” the authors conclude. “Biologists and medical professionals need to stand up for the empirical reality of biological sex.”

I'm off-campus and don't feel like dealing with the proxy server, but here's the direct WSJ link.

Roger Waters: Trump Is "The Biggest" Tyrant...A "Mass Murderer"...His Supporters Have Turned America Into "Hell"...

None of what he says is even vaguely true.
How is it that people can say things like Trump is literally Hitler...or that he's actually worse...and others continue to treat them as if they're sane?
Such people are entertainers. They know basically nothing. Yet they wield outsized influence. And they live in a fantasy world created by the groupthink of their coreligionists.

Postpostmodern New New Age

Once again with my pet quasi-hypothesis about the link between the left and woo.
What's the link? Well...this appeals almost exclusively to women. The same goes for astrology and the rest of the woo. It also goes, to a lesser extent, for "social justice" / progressive leftism. Leftism has a strong magical / anti-scientific / antirational streak--witness the left's theoretical commitment to relativism / subjectivism / social constructionism, and its dedication to subordinating science to dogma.
One could go on.

Trump Landslide By The Numbers

I currently think that this is the least-likely-to-be disastrous of our genuinely possible futures.

Klobuchar Allegedly Extremely Mean To Her Staff

Dunno what to think.

The Left Wants Whites To Be A Minority; And They Are Dedicated To Squelching Discussion Of This Goal

Here's Biden--allegedly a moderate. Certainly too conservative for a large percentage of progressives.
   This should send you to red alert. I view this the same way I'd view someone saying that he wanted to make blacks a smaller minority. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to think that reducing whites to a minority is good. The only two reasonable positions I can see are (1) wanting to maintain something like our current (and largely successful) demographic mix, and (2) indifference to our demographic mix.
   The left likes to speak of "the browning of America." It's important to realize--as I've said before--that this isn't merely a prediction--it's a goal. They aim to turn whites into a minority, and they think it will be good when this happens.
   Now...this would be an extremely weird goal even if it weren't combined with anti-white racism, overt hostility to American and Western culture, and political self-interest. But, of course, it is largely conjoined with those things. The farther one goes toward the left, the more common they become and the more openly they're expressed. Even Rorty acknowledged this sort of thing (in Achieving Our Country).
   I don't have a fixed view of these matters, except for this one: the issues must be discussed openly. But the left--per its M.O.--seeks to stifle any open discussion of them by using its Master Argument: That's Racist!
   And here's one of the most important principles to keep in mind when reflecting on the contemporary left: when someone wants to stifle open, rational discussion, it's because they're up to no good--and know they can't win in open debate.
   And as for "diversity is our strength"--it's false and sheer propaganda. Of course it means "diversity" is our sole strength. Which isn't true, and isn't anywhere near the truth. Nothing is our sole strength. Having a good demographic mix is probably one of America's advantages. Probably not in the top five, but probably a pretty big one. Certainly not as important as freedom, rationalist Western culture, science, democratic republicanism, good government, social cohesion...
   Anyway, none of the specifics matter that much.
   What really matters is this: the left seeks to fundamentally re-engineer the nation (and the world), and in order to achieve their goals, they must stifle speech and discussion. We must not allow them to do so. If, after long, dedicated, free and open public debate, we conclude that one or more of their plans is worth trying, then so be it. But no such goals can be adopted in the absence of such debate.

Conservative College Students Do Self-Censor

No surprise whatsoever.

Good Post On Wuhan Coronavirus at Watt's Up With That

via Instapundit.
Apparently, "wet markets" are going to kill us all.

Google Is Censoring Senators Now

link

Ready.Gov On Pandemics and Coronavirus

Ready.gov

Sowell: Discrimination And Disparities

I am so sad that I didn't realize, earlier in life, how ridiculously interesting econ is. Sowell's conceptual toolbox puts that of most philosophers to shame. He makes me sad to be a philosopher:

Klobuchar

I keep trying to make Klobuchar look moderate.
But her actual positions aren't helping.

"A President So Unhinged That Even Bill Barr Says He's Out Of Control"

I'm pretty concerned...but these pieces by the MSM are completely f*cking useless. They've been shrieking hysterically about Trump from the beginning. Remember how he was a fascist who was going to have roving bands of Brown Shirts and concentration camps for homosexuals? Two years of lunatic screeching about the patently preposterous Russiagate. Then the botched Ukrainegate impeachment. But now...NOW...THEY REALLY MEAN IT!!! Now he's really gonna cut loose! Now we're in for it!
   This is just one factor in the overall mess. But the MSM's non-stop irrationality since the election makes it (a) difficult to keep things in perspective and (b) impossible to take them too seriously about anything. Also, their role in promoting the abject crazification of the left means that they've helped to (c) make Trump the apparent least-bad option...even if he were as bad as they make him out to be. Which, as goes without saying, he isn't. Which doesn't, as goes without saying, mean that he isn't pretty damn bad.
   In actual fact, Barr has seemed pretty good--so far as I, an ignorant layperson, can tell. And the fact that he just threw a brushback pitch is yet another indication of his basic reliability and reasonability. It's hard for me to believe that Trump will react rationally to it--I expect him to charge the mound. But we'll see, I reckon.

Aaaand More Violence Against Trump Supporters

link

Still More Violence Against Trump Supporters

Imagine the non-stop coverage if a grown-ass Trump supporter hit a teenage kid for wearing a Bernie hat.

Hemingway: Roger Stone And Political Accountability Of The Administrative State

link

   The decision to prosecute the case was a curious one, since it’s not common to prosecute someone for lying to Congress, particularly with no underlying crime. The FBI and Justice Department have come under fire for allowing political friends to skate without charges for false statements while nailing political foes for lesser and less consequential problems.
   Prosecuting was one thing. Getting a guilty verdict thanks to a highly partisan jury was another. But recommending that the 67-year-old man with no prior convictions and not considered a risk for violence be sentenced to nine years in prison was another thing entirely.
   The disgruntled Mueller attorneys misled Department of Justice officials about their sentencing plans. When the political leadership learned of the egregious recommendation, they filed a new memo saying, sanely, vaguely, and mildly, that they now recommended fewer than the seven to nine years.
   The media and other Resistance members flipped out and immediately sprung to action. Sidestepping the issue of the recommendation of nine years in prison, they began shaping a narrative that Barr had no right to exercise such oversight of the agency he, well, oversees. Media ran story after story suggesting that political leadership of the agency — not rogue agents behaving irresponsibly — was in crisis.
   The story came mere weeks after a series of revelations confirming egregious abuse of the spy powers the agency used against the Trump campaign. A several-hundred-page report from the inspector general catalogued 17 major errors — all going against Trump campaign affiliates — in the securing of spy warrants. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has already thrown out two of those warrants, with another two possibly facing the same fate.
   The media and other Democrats did not care about that story, except to spin it as an exoneration, somehow, of the Department of Justice and FBI. They never suggested that the agencies’ adoption of an unhinged conspiracy theory of treasonous collusion with Russia was a problem. They didn’t see a crisis with the use against political opponents of human informants, overseas intelligence assets, wiretaps, and national security letters. They didn’t care that the surveillance was inappropriately acquired. They didn’t care about the dozens upon dozens of criminal leaks that were deployed through a compliant media to set a false narrative of collusion.
   But they care if someone attempts to stop any of these shenanigans.
   The U.S. Constitution establishes the right of the president to appoint individuals to head agencies. The Founders never imagined the bloated and largely unaccountable bureaucracy that controls the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans through regulations and other administrative actions, but they never would have adopted Chuck Todd’s dangerous proposition that bureaucrats be allowed to lock Americans up, deny them their liberty, and otherwise operate a police force without political accountability.

Bloomberg Surging In Polls

Noted hoplophobe and sodaphobe Michael Bloomberg seems to have gained some support.
I think this guy is real trouble.
[Though a third-party run would be just about a best-case scenario with respect to keeping the cult of Woketarianism out of the White House...]

Black Guns Matter

Yeah they do.

Barr: Trump's Tweets Make It Impossible To Do My Job

That guy is pathological. How loony do you have to be to have so little control of your mouth (or thumbs)? Dude managed to win a presidential election against all odds...and he's basically sinking himself because he can't keep his goddamned mouth shut. It's completely nuts. Any even vaguely rational person would give up the idiotic Twitter account, or hand the keys over to someone reliable. The guy just shoots himself in the ass over and over and over again. I almost wish he'd been impeached so that I don't have to see his moronic tweets posted all over the place.

Everything Is Racist: 'The Heartland' Is Racist

Pete Buttigieg is racist because 'the Heartland' is racist...probably because the Heartland is racist...probably because everything is racist.

Teets From R'lyeh

Never look at Trump's Twitter page if you want to retain your sanity.

Truth Is The Most Politically Incorrect Thing: Buttigieg Spoke The Same Hatetruths Bloomberg Spoke About Stop And Frisk

Hateful, hateful hatefacts.

Alexa-Like Listening-Devices To Monitor All Office Conversations For Implicit Bias And "Microagressions"?

Big Sibling is--or will be--listening to you.
When you think about the progressive left, you should always think not only about what they're advocating now, but about what they'll be advocating five years from now.

VA Dems Are Still Pushing for Firearm Confiscation

I'm disgusted by the fact that I used to vote for, volunteer for, and contribute to these people.

Well...not for/to that jackass from NoVa, obvs. He's not my fault...

Register to vote. Join the VCDL and the VSSA. Join the NRA. Give to the Pubs. Vote for the Pubs. Sign the petition to recall Northam. Give to the Northam recall. The blue team has completely lost its goddamned mind.

The Great Lionel Shriver on Political Correctness

Ok, now I'm crushing on her:

If she said these things on an American university campus she'd probably be burned at the stake or something.

The NYT Is Now Selling Its "1619 Project" On The TeeVee

Their little slogan is: "The truth can change how we see the world."
Really? Gosh, that's so profound. It can? How would the NYT know, one wonders? And how about getting some of that thar truth into your lying, fantastical, ridiculous "project"?
Jeez that's so bad. It's bad enough to sell such a thing. It's bad enough to have a little slogan. But that slogan...it's as if they're so unused to dealing with truth... As if truth were this rarity that barely figures into our view of the world. Thank God for the New York Times!
What crap.

Innocent Men's Lives Being Destroyed By False Accusations Is Just Another Benefit Of The "Me Too" Witch Hunt

This shouldn't surprise anyone.
Contemporary progressivism still officially pretends that its anti-white, anti-male, anti-straight, anti-wealth, anti-American, anti-Western implications are basically side-effects of working to promote the interests of women, minorities, the third world, and so on. But it's been as clear as it can be for years now that that isn't entirely true. Progressivism now largely aims to do harm to e.g. men. It's a feature not a bug. It's a goal, not a side-effect. Liberalism/progressivism doesn't have to be like that...and, in fact, didn't used to be. But that's the way it is now. To some extent it's because it's influenced by Marxism, and sees everything as a zero-sum fight for power among groups. But to some extent it's worse than that--it's a matter of hating men etc. I think it's obvious that those attitudes aren't common among a majority of progressives. But they're absolutely there--and very prominent--among the vocal vanguard.

Behold, The Intellectual Left: Gay White Men Are Symbols Of Heterosexuality

Much of the responsibility for sinking the American political left goes to the intellectual left, which completely lost its shit about 40 years ago. 

Here's yet another example.

The intellectual / literary left has turned the humanities into a joke, and its incoherent fads and pronouncements get moved pretty much automatically on to the political / cultural / activist left. So what you get are crackpot political pronouncements based on a free-form method that is engineered to produce aggressively stupid ideas. The rather minimal method of vaguely rational criticism that is the thin tweed line working to keep the very dumbest ideas from taking over the less-crapified sectors of the humanities has been breached in the crappier sectors. There, stupid is chic. The whole point is to produce the most outrageous, overtly political bullshit you can think up. And there's no firewall keeping that bullshit from infecting the real world. In fact, there's something more like a conveyor belt move these ideas into mainstream progressive culture.

Trump and DeVos Want To Shrink The Dept. Of Education

A few years I realized that I understand basically nothing about public policy. Sowell is great on this, arguing that "intellectuals" basically adopt the liberal/progressive world view, and then apply its generalities ignorantly. I'm rather inclined to think that he's onto something there. So I realize that I don't understand much about education policy...but...from my acknowledged state of ignorance...this sounds like a good suggestion to me. I've come to think of Ed as, basically, a department of progressive propaganda. Since Catherine Lehman's Dear Colleague letter fiasco, I've noticed that I hardly ever hear of Ed doing anything that sounds prima facie good. Ed schools are notorious at universities for basically two things: (a) political correctness and (b) low standards. DeVos seems to me to be a good secretary of education largely because she's an outsider. Seems like Ed, like ed schools, is so eaten up with quasi-religious ideology that a smart, competent outsider is about an order of magnitude better than someone from inside the church. Shrinking the whole operation sounds like a good idea...it might be better yet to get rid of the whole thing...

   But I don't really know because I really have no idea what the nuts-and-bolts, day-to-day work of the department of education is like. As Sowell notes, it's easy to make sweeping pronouncements favoring radical change when you don't actually know the details of how something works.

Making Hate Pay: The Corruption Of The SPLC

Not sure I'll read this book, but I do think that the trajectory of the SPLC is a lot like microcosm of the trajectory of the American left in general. Start out as genuinely liberal--in the not-crazy sense--win the important battles...  But, of course, instead of declaring victory and standing down or at least throttling back...you pour on the coal, turn it up to eleven, define oppression downward, lose your shit and become the oppressor. They went hunting monsters and...well...you see where I'm goin' with this.

"The Non-Fascist Case For Classical Architecture"

Because the Fascist case for such architecture--if such a thing really exists, which I rather doubt--is a tiny sliver of the overall case. But Trump is a Fascist, of course--the immense body of available evidence to the contrary merely strengthens the case that he is, of course. He is wrong and Fascistic virtually by definition. So blah, blah, blah.
Jeez TNR has gone to shit. As I may have mentioned.

TNR: "The Obsolete Politics Of James Carville"

I couldn't bring myself to actually read this.
I read the first bit, then skimmed, then "skimmed," meaning I basically skipped to the end. Then skimmed that. Sort of.
Jesus. Remember TNR of old? Sullivan. Sunstein. Rauch. Chait before he went over to the dark side. TNR was flamboyantly itself. Often wrong. But often right. And always interesting. And iconoclastic.
Now it's just another lefty rag.
But I digress from my digression from doing something important.
Back to the Carville piece.
tl;dr: okay, boomer.
Like Obama and anybody else who dares to even question the Democrats' wholehearted embrace of progressive madness, Carville has been deemed old and out of touch. He just doesn't get it. He should do better. You know the drill.
As I've said, my not-very-neutral guess is that, when people like Obama and Carville start saying this stuff out loud, they've been saying it in private for awhile. And they're very alarmed.
As they should be.
Because if they've lost me...and lost me to Donald F***ing Trump...they're in very damn big trouble.
But, of course, no party ever admits it's substantively wrong. They always blame it on "messaging" or some bullshit. The only hope for the Dems, IMO is a loss in November. Preferably a crushing, humiliating, Mondalesque loss.
I doubt that the Dems will ever return to being the less-crazy of the two parties. But we need them to be less crazy than they are now, because they will win again some day. And when that day comes, if they're still like they are now, we're totally screwed.

"Bring Back The Tomboys"

facepalm
The worst thing about political correctness is the dishonesty. Driven by groupthink and a paralyzing fear of saying something un-PC that will lead to mass mobbing, progressives construct a web of fantasies and falsehoods and talk about it as if it were the real world.
   Here's a whole article on why there aren't many prominent fictional tomboys in mass culture ("underrepresentation" is, of course, another ubiquitous PC-ism). It mentions the re-forging of the link between femaleness and femininity. But it fails to mention one of the main obvious drivers of this: transgender mythology. Girls who are less overtly feminine are now likely to be brainwashed (by culture, their peers, and even their teachers) into thinking that they're "boys." The author blames "hostility to feminism"...but it's feminism itself that's to blame, having been an early-adopter of TM. But, of course, feminism is immune to criticism--unless it's "TERFs" taking fire from their left.
   Critics of TM have noted from the beginning that one of its many crazy consequences is that it reinforces "the sex-gender system." That's to say, it re-solidifies the links between maleness and masculinity and femaleness and femininity that old-school feminism sought to loosen up a bit. In fact, it comes damn close to making boy=masculine and girl=feminine (re-)definitional truths.
   This is an obvious--and sound--criticism, though I tend not to mention it much as a matter of principle. One of the main drivers of progressive insanity is that the left refuses to accept any criticisms coming from the right. It also refuses to accept criticisms to the effect that its dogmas are simply false. So leftists don't seem to care that transgender mythology is false, nor that it's harmful to men and boys--it's much more likely to listen to, say, feminists arguing that men in women's restrooms is dangerous to women. This is an extremely important driver of crazy on the left, and so I tend to refuse to work around it by emphasizing lefty criticisms that lefties are more likely to listen to.
   Anyway. Same old stuff.

Some MSDNC Talking Head: Should Gerrymandering Be Used To Deny Pubs Control Of The Senate?

W....haaaa...t?
Wow. This is so head-hurty I literally can't even. My jaw actually fell open. I mean, the misunderstanding of how Senators are elected is bad enough...but the suggestion that Gerrymandering is a perfectly legit method for denying the other party control of Congress... Just wow.

The Primary Objective Of The Left Is To Suppress Criticism Of The Left

Everything else has become secondary.

Trump Is Bad But Dems Are Crazy: Part The Zillionth

Basically this:

   According to Oval Office visitors, Trump privately chortles at the extent to which he lives rent-free in the heads of his opponents, thus discombobulating them. A new book entitled “A Very Stable Genius” recounts that former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, now a fierce Trump critic, once witnessed a classic over-the-top Trump riff in the Oval Office. Scaramucci then reportedly asked the president, “Are you an act?” Scaramucci says that Trump replied, “I’m a total act, and I don’t understand why people don’t get it.”
   Those Democrats who can’t resist falling for Trump’s trolling are reacting to him exactly as he would wish. “Trump sends liberals over the edge in rage, and while they’re not looking, the socialists like Bernie Sanders are stealing their party out from under them,” former GOP congressman Dana Rohrabacher told me.
   Liberal satirist Bill Maher, who hosts a comedy show on HBO, says that Trump’s behavior is increasingly viewed as acceptable. “Every time he’s just this horrible jerk people say, ‘Yeah, but that’s part and parcel of being a strong leader and getting things done.’”
   Maher, a donor to Democratic causes, says his party is in danger of ceding the election to Trump if it drifts too far to the left on economics and politically correct social policies.
   Trump Derangement Syndrome may be so deeply imbedded in the Democratic Party that it can’t be successfully treated. But the first step would be for Democrats to take Trump at his word. He is not evil — he is more of “a total act” who tramples social norms and sacred cows with equal abandon. Opposing him is fine, but acting as if he’s a dictator tilts the rhetorical playing field toward him.
   Instead, Democrats might compete with Trump by recognizing that he’s the P. T. Barnum of American politics. In short, Trump is a brilliant self-promoter who often knows exactly what he’s doing and changes course constantly to match what he thinks audiences want to hear — much as Barnum used to switch out circus acts between towns on his tour.

The crazification of the Dems and their spittle-flecked hatred of Trump has (a) brought out the worst in him, and (b) made them reveal that they are--or have become or at the very least seem--even meaner and nuttier than he is, and (c) helped make him the least-bad option, and so (d) made him likely to win in November. Unfortunately, it's only (d) that seems to be bothering vocal Dems publicly.
   It's heartening that some Dems are starting to say this stuff, though I doubt they'll listen. When Obama can't even make the moderate and obvious point that it's bad to become a bunch of crazy radicals without being derided as out of touch...things have gotten very bad indeed.

Everything is Racist: More Coronavirus Is Racist Bullshit

My God what idiocy.
My favorite parts: somebody-or-other claims to have seen people moving away from Asian people coughing and wearing masks. First: that's probably bullshit. He probably made it up. Second: I'll tell you right now that I'm likely to move away from anybody who's wearing a mask and coughing.
But even better: 'ChiComm' is a "slur" "against the Chinese Communist government." I want you to just sit there and reflect on that for about ten seconds. A slur...Against the Chinese Communist government.
Progressivism is an insanity emulator.

Why The Flu Comes From China

I can't believe I didn't know this.
Instead of trying to get them to cut carbon emissions, we should get them to spend the money on building separate bedrooms for their damn pigs and chickens...*



*Sounds like I'm making fun of them...and I kinda am...but actually I respect anybody who lives like that and works that hard. Damn. I grew up on a farm...but not the kind where you've gotta sleep with the damn livestock downstairs... I'd never stop bitching if I had to live like that. You wouldn't even be able to stand to be around me.

Be Like Timmy

Worst. Racist. Ev-ar: Trump Has A 60% Approval Rating In...Nigeria???

The Nigerians actually sound unusually cool and reasonable.

Guns And Freedom: A Short Film

link

Jobbed In OT

Wow, looking at the replay again, we really did get jobbed. I tried not to dwell on it...almost sorry I watched this. Platek gets absolutely hammered by Moore...no foul call...ball goes out of bounds off Moore...refs give the ball to d00k.
   I don't know how they manage to get calls like this so often, but there it is. That's why people say not to let it be close against d00k late in the game. If it is, there's a good chance you're going to get hosed.
   This was bad, especially after Carolina played, by far, their best game of the year. Despite that little free throw problem. It wasn't as bad as '12, IMO, when three absolutely terrible calls (2/3 of them no-calls) in the final 3 minutes just handed them a game they in no way deserved. But this one's bad enough. It'll do.

VA Dems Advance "Assault Weapon" / High-Capacity Mag Ban

In case there was any doubt in your mind that the Democrats have lost theirs.
Virginians will not comply.
My money and my votes will go to the red team in '20 and '21, as should yours.
Join and contribute to the VCDL.

Comrade Bernie: "Assault Weapons" Ban Is Just The Beginning

link

TRUMP IS FASCIST + Everything Is Racist: Classical Architecture Is Racist Edition DID I MENTION TRUMP IS FASCIST?!!??!?!?!?

God this is stupid.
   I'm not particularly in favor of the executive order. Though I think classical architecture is better than lots of the alternative shit--e.g. brutalist shit in particular--that people are singing the praises of on the grounds that if Trump likes something they like the opposite.
   But (a) this is totalitarian? The Commonwealth of Virginia is talking about mustering the National Guard to confiscate private firearms in apparent violation of the Second Amendment...and this is what strikes you as totalitarian? Not the left's efforts to weaken the First Amendment? Not their now-routine use of violence and intimidation against their political enemies? This?? Also (b) of course you think it's racist, you nitwit. You people think everything is racist. Everything done by anyone anywhere to your right, at least. Give it a fucking rest. Nobody cares what you think, and nobody listens to your accusations of racism anymore.
   I don't know anything about architecture. So I don't deserve much of an opinion about this...though, again, I report ignorantly: I like classical architecture. I get to say that even though it's not worth much.
   I try--I really try--to keep up with what the left is saying. But, as I've noted before: I'm really better off not doing so. Every time I try to hear out folks at the Atlantic, or The Nation (other than Aaron Mate) or the Times or the Post, or The New Republic (which now, of course, sucks--it's a crime what they did to that publication), I just become more disgusted with how outright stupid the left has become. It's the same stupid arguments over and over and over. It's Trump is a fascist!, when he's a piker compared to you aspiring Stalinists. I don't care for the guy...except now I kind of do because he's the only thing standing between you people and your efforts to wreck the country....oh and also because: he makes you so hilariously angry.

Maher's The Latest Dem To Realize: Trump Is Bad, But The Dems Are Nuts

It's amazing to me that so many prominent progressives seem to be saying this stuff out loud now:

   ...Maher explained why he believes one of Trump’s favorite campaign lines, “You have no choice,” is likely to work. “He’s saying, ‘Yeah, you may not like me, I may be crude and vulgar and horrible, but they’re crazy,’” Maher said as Trump. As himself, he then added that he agrees there is a lot of “crazy” in the Democratic Party.
   “People read it every week, just these too far out left, woke-y stuff,” Maher continued, warning that if Democrats continue down that path voters will say to themselves, “Yeah, I don’t like Trump, but he’s right, I’ve got to vote for him, they’re nuts.”

   This is not something people on either side normally say about their own faction. Listen to the desperation in Carville's voice, and in Maher's. Seems to me like genuine realization that their side has lost its shit. And Zakaria admitting that Trump is genuine...wow! Which, of course, he is. If I were still a Democrat, this sort of stuff might well panic me.

   And I'm strongly inclined to believe that Trump is right: we don't have a choice. We can either give the presidency to the Woketarian cultists--which is guaranteed inflict grave harm on the nation and send it barreling even further down the road to Crazytown--or we can roll the dice on another four years of Trump. He could start a war with Russia over Twitter...but maybe he won't! He's actually been pretty damn good thus far, policy-wise, hard as that is to believe. He may be a loud-mouthed, narcissistic vulgarian who demeans the office of the presidency...but at least he's not a crazy cultist hellbent on inflicting his quasi-religious delusions on the rest of us. He may not do anything much worse than enforcing immigration laws and letting us keep more of our own money. Or, y'know, it could be the war thing... If he merely avoids gigantic errors and keeps the stock market humming, he'll do far, far more good than harm for the country and the world. And if he does nothing more than keep the Dems out of power and then play golf for the next four years, the benefits of his presidency will far outweigh its costs.

Still More Antifa Violence

My God these little *****s are loathsome. What a disgusting collection of pathetic, dishonorable *****s. What kind of little ***** uses spray paint as a weapon? And to fight, in effect, against the First Amendment. And they know that they basically control the situation--not merely on account of having numbers, but because they know their targets won't attack first. And once you've been spray-pained in the eyes, it's basically all over. Then there was the little ****-head using a license plate--which he undoubtedly was going to try to cut people with. The umbrellas, however, were probably the ultimate sign of ******ry. At least there was no sign of their signature poop-pee-and-paint bombs...
   These little shits need a bunch of right good ass-kickings.
   Behold, the contemporary left. This is merely one aspect of the totalitarian insanity that's gripped it. And the less-overly-violent sectors of progressivism either support these little ****ers or refrain from criticizing them or criticize them only mildly and obliquely.
   The progressive left is had-core anti-liberal. They've got more in common with Stalin than they do with Madison. And they are only anti-fascist in the sense that Stalin was anti-fascist. They're at least as bad as Fascists. Or, rather: they tend to crumble when they don't have overwhelming numbers and their force is met with force...so at least they're, in that sense, less dangerous. Their vision of government is no less murderous and evil...but at least they're pathetic little cowards.

62% Of New Hampshire Dems Prefer SMOD to Trump In November

Obviously they were joking...but still pretty funny.
Dunno why, but the thing that cracked me up most about this story was the information about the margin of error at the end.

Yet More Anti-Trump Political Violence

Imagine the outrage in the media if this had been a Trump-supporter attacking Dems.

Everything Is Racist: That Coronavirus Came From China Is Racist

Because it's way more important not to "enact racism" by noticing hatefacts than it is to honestly discuss the causes of pandemics
   Bonus tu quoque: some "Western food practices" have also had bad consequences!! Like antibiotic resistance...which...we all bitch about all the time...but that's ok...because the West is horrible and racist and you should criticize it.
   These people never get tired of witnessing for Woketarianism.

Buttigieg Is Not A Moderate

link

WaPo: "No, Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden Are Not 'Centrists'"

Weird...
I'm so used to the Post working some pro-progressive/Democrat angle that, at first, I thought they were arguing something like Hey, progressivism is good and these guys are progressive so stop saying they aren't! I was so puzzled I had to read it twice. In the end, I think they're just making an honest observation: for better or worse, PB and JB aren't centrists--they're both left of Obama. And the others are left of them. It's possible that they're laying the groundwork for a Biden-or-Buttigieg endorsement that will, rhetorically speaking, require them to argue that PB and JB are progressive. But, hard as it is to believe, they also may simply be making an honest and reasonable observation.

Carolina 96 - d00k 98

Carolina played one of their best games of the season, then, frankly, choked away an 11-point lead at the end of regulation, largely because they simply cannot make free throws. Some dumb mistakes and more than one shitty call at the end of OT, and that was all she wrote.
You've really gotta hand it to these kids, though. I wouldn't have been terribly surprised at a 40-point loss. If just about anything at all had broken our way, it would have been a different result. Really too bad about that Brooks turnover.
Sucks to drop a game like that, but it really did require a whole lotta bad luck at the end. And when you don't hit your FTs, you basically can't complain.

"Is Anti-Woke Becoming The New Woke?"

Uh, no.

Confessions Of An Equity-Industry Propagandist

link
What's creepy to me is that, even (?) in academia, a huge percentage of people either (a) simply agree with this woketarian bullshit, or (b) have talked themselves into agreeing with it, or (c) go along with it out of fear. Academia is now selecting for bullshitters, morons and cowards.

Democrats' New Hampshire Debate

Jesus Christ those people.

Carolina - Duke

This is gonna be ugly.

Even James Carville Realizes The Dems Have Lost Their Minds; Even He Can't Say That PC, Identity Politics, Transgender Mythology, Etc. Are Losing Issues

link
Even Carville recognizes that the Dems are now for open borders--just to mention one thing. And felons voting from prison. And, of course, he can't even mention transgender mythology and the rest.
And what the hell is Brian Williams talking about with the soup?
Though, James...you all aren't winning any arguments anymore. Don't flatter yourselves.

CNN Trying To Suppress Any Discussion Of "Whistleblower" Ciaramella; Progressives Victims Of Their Own Propaganda Wing

The other McCain on why CNN is trying to suppress any discussion of "whistleblower" Eric Ciaramella:

   Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts refused to admit Paul’s question in the trial, but why was Tapper playing Twitter tattletale against a Trump campaign staffer in an apparent effort to suppress the name Eric Ciaramella? As Professor Glenn Reynolds has often said, the media in general have become “Democratic Party operatives with bylines.” Their coverage is organized on the basis of what will help Democrats win elections and advance the party’s agenda, and anything contrary to that organizing principle, they consider not newsworthy. Tapper and his network — now consistently third place in the cable-news ratings — are a perfect example of how this principle operates. The decline of CNN illustrates why this one-sided political bias is bad for the news business and ultimately also bad for Democrats.
   How did Donald Trump get elected, after all? During the 2016 presidential campaign, CNN went so all in on its support of Hillary Clinton that its coverage amounted to a massive contribution-in-kind to her campaign. The bias was so obvious during the Democratic primaries that supporters of Hillary’s rival Bernie Sanders dubbed CNN the “Clinton News Network.” Why did CNN treat Sanders so unfairly? Wasn’t it because they viewed Clinton as the more “electable” candidate in the general election? That confidence in Clinton’s electability, widely shared in the so-called “mainstream” media, arguably fed into the over-confidence within the Clinton campaign, which clearly underestimated Trump’s appeal to blue-collar voters in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The media in 2016 conveyed the idea that Trump couldn’t possibly be elected, but apparently 62.9 million voters didn’t get the memo.
   The benefit of having a majority of the new media acting as Democratic propaganda operatives is diminished if (a) Democrats make the mistake of believing their own publicity, or (b) the public becomes aware of the unbalanced nature of what is being presented as “news.” In 2016, biased coverage led Democrats to underestimate the appeal of Trump’s populist message, and Trump made it a habit to call attention to how biased the media really is.

And both (a) and (b) are happening. Nobody but progressives thinks that the MSM is even vaguely objective. And progressives seem trapped in their own echo-chamber, the loudest echoes being produced by the MSM.

More Bad News About Democrat Centrism?

maybe

B-Rob Out

That BC Jackass not only jumped into B-Rob on the 3, got the bullshit call, and won the game for them, he injured B-Rob pretty seriously.
Stupid asshole.

Bloomberg: Unlike We Elite Sophisticates, The Rubes In The Midwest Don't Believe That Men Become Women By Putting On Dresses

These people are unfuckingbelievable.
   No matter how patently false, no matter how unscientific, no matter how outright absurd, no matter how obviously fad-driven their beliefs, their confidence in their intellectual and moral superiority is never shaken.
   I'll bet the rubes in the Midwest also refuse to believe that war is peace, that freedom is slavery, and that ignorance is strength.
   And: this isn't really a disagreement about individual versus collective rights. Unless you mean: it's a disagreement, in part, about whether those who refuse to believe contradictions can be compelled to say that they believe them anyway...
   And: you've got to be pretty thick to think that the left is more committed to individual rights than the non-left. The vanguard of the progressive left mocks the very idea of rights, you halfwit halfling. Jesus Christ, read a book or something.
   The fact that the rubes in the Midwest refuse to immediately believe outright contradictions merely because their progressive better tell them to speaks well of said rubes. There's not a shred of intellectual autonomy left on the left. Hence the memes:

   Perhaps the most telling part is when Bloomberg says that you have to separate people by sex in prison. This is, basically, doublethink. When it really matters, you have to bow to the facts. But when it doesn't matter in such a stark and consequential way...then you can pretend that your bullshit progressive mythology is true...and ridicule the rubes for not being sophisticated and well-educated enough to believe such utter nonsense.
   I continue to think that transgender mythology is the clearest and most telling instance / representation of the madness of the contemporary left. There are plenty of other instances / representations of it...but that one is just so damn clear and simple. Any political faction that can adopt such a patently insane orthodoxy, immediately implementing a material contradiction as unquestionable dogma, and then exercising such effective mind-control over its sheeple that they screech in horror at the mere suggestion that the outright contradiction might possibly not be true...Jesus Christ. That faction absolutely, positively cannot every be allowed to get anywhere near the levers of power ever again.

No Organized Political Party

Still don't know who won in Iowa.

Sherrod Brown: In Private, Republican Senators Admit They Voted To Acquit Trump Out Of Fear

This sounds like bullshit from beginning to end.
First, he doesn't give any proof at all for this thesis.
Second, the evidence he does manage to gesture at runs counter to his thesis.
Third, if Republican senators were afraid of the guy, they'd have voted to convict. That'd strip him of all power and eliminate the problem.
This seems like just another edition of Straw Trump Theater.
The guy doesn't seem qualified for the office. But anti-Trumpers somehow can't be satisfied with that assessment. They've got to push further and further, shriek louder and louder, say less and less plausible things. He's got to be a demon. He can't just be an unqualified shithead.
I've heard people say really implausible stuff about him. At least three people I know have insisted that Trump cares for nothing but himself--something obviously false to anyone who observes the guy. He obviously cares about his family, for one thing. He also obviously cares about the country. One of my friends thinks he's, like, a clinical narcissist. Another one bet me $50 that he would "throw his son under the bus" before his first term is over. He wanted to bet more but I wouldn't let him. Obviously it's not going to happen. And of course basically everyone on the left thinks he's a racist...but, then, they think everybody's a racist... so that barely counts.
He doesn't seem like a guy I'd be friends with. He isn't deserving of nor qualified for the office, IMO. But he's not a monster.
And, in fact, he's the guy who's doing the most to save us from the realio-trulio off-the-goddamned-rails-and-not-getting-back-on-'em-any-time-soon progressive left. And that's the most important political project in America right now. So, whatever his vices--and they are seemingly legion--the guy isn't all bad, and is, in fact, doing significant good. And he is, IMO, by far the lesser of the two evils we're going to have the honor of choosing between ten months from now.

Shold Pelosi Resign On Account Of Her SoTU Antics?

That seems extreme to me, but I'm not exactly immersed in the traditions, and I haven't thought about it much.
Tearing the speech seemed less bad to me than all the weird facial expressions and overt signs of disagreement throughout. It also seemed less bad than the fact that she clearly did it ostentatiously, for the cameras.
In a slightly less stupid world, we might try to use this as an opportunity for everybody to calm down and act like adults. But there's too much juvenile narcissism on both sides, I reckon.

TRUMP ACQUITTED

So sayeth the Washington Post.
The least-stupid available option, I guess.

Having Impossible Conversations

looks interesting.

Guy Says Some Stupid Shit At A School-Board Meeting

Look, this guy's an asshole--or, at least, he said an assholish thing. Who knows? People have bad days. People say stupid shit. Dude needs a good talking-to, and he ought to apologize. Odds are, it's some dumbass thing that slipped out. Dude's probably had to sit through fifty sanctimonious sermons about "diversity and inclusion." There's at last a 50-50 chance he feels like crawling under a rock this morning.
But look...
When we get down to the point where the Washington Post is reporting on one stupid sentence one stupid guy uttered at one school-board meeting somewhere in Michigan...then we've largely licked such problems. I was more concerned to hear about the stuff being said to his kid. Thing is, kids say all kinds of mean and stupid things to other kids. The fact that they also say mean and stupid things about where other kids came from doesn't actually mean much. There's really no sense picking that stuff out and pretending that it shows there's some kind of specific problem. The general problem is that a lot of kids are stupid and vicious and will say any stupid, vicious thing they think will upset other kids. Seems like they mostly grow out of it as the other kids get big enough to punch them in the mouth...
So you've got kids saying mean and stupid things...probably some frustration with repeated sermons about Diversity Jesus...guy says a stupid thing--perhaps because he's stupid, perhaps because he's a fairly normal guy who had a stupid moment--and it all makes the Washington Post as if it's representative of the attitude of the country. Which, of course, it isn't. Because see how everybody else got mad at the guy? And how this rocketed to social media? And how it's in the Washington Post? And how everybody agrees it was stupid?

[Though, having now watched the video, it kinda does sound like that school might have a problem... Also sounds like it might be teenagers instead of little kids, which does make things different, IMO. Still: that this is national news says a lot.]

WaPo "Fact"-Checks The SoTU

Thing is, we can't trust the Washington Post, either. We'd--obviously--really need an objective third-party to check the "fact"-checks. Or at least a rebuttal by an organization less-hostile to Trump. To just take the first item, the WaPo doesn't even consider the obvious possibility that the administration means that the economy is the best overall that it's ever been. It doesn't need to be the best it's ever been in every respect. I suppose I'd still bet that the Post is a little bit more trustworthy than Trump...but I worry that I'm just being naïve about that.