Lin Wood Is Nuts

 And I'm seeing a lot of conservatives taking him seriously:

I am fully aware of the onslaught of attacks being made against me based on my revelations about Chief Justice John Roberts. Before attacking me, maybe fair-minded people would first ask Roberts to tell the truth.

Or ask Jeffrey Epstein. He is alive.

— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) December 31, 2020

Joseph Epstein: The Tyranny Of Diversity

link

I'll note that holy "diversity" was never officially supposed to remedy past wrongs. Rather, "diversity" is supposed to be entirely forward-looking: it's supposed to be justified entirely on the grounds that "diversity" makes organizations more effective at what they are supposed to be doing. In fact, as is clear from Powell's decision in Bakke, it's always been a cheat--a way to accomplish the backward-looking ends of affirmative action without admitting it.

WSJ: Trump's Embarrassing Electoral College Hustle

Probably right, but I'm far from convinced.

   I don't trust the outcome of this election. The Dems engineered it to be untrustworthy, and did a good job of it. I don't buy the story about a vast global conspiracy to steal the election. But after Russiagate we can't put anything past the Dems. I have a reasonably strong expectation that all the questions will be answered in due time...but they certainly haven't been answered yet. Since progressives shut down debates instead of debating, there's been no real, systematic effort to address and answer the questions. Shut up, bigot, while we confirm PRESIDENT-ELECT AND DR. MRS. BIDEN.

   Given magical, dictatorial powers, I suppose I'd advise delaying any irrevocable action until at least the very most worrisome anomalies can all be explained away. In the real world, we have to stick to the system--and investigate later.

Your Blue Future: Gangs Of New York Edition

 What you get when criminals and crazies know they're protected by Democrat officials.

MiniTrue Issues New Newspeak Dictionary

LOL: "Stop Using These Phrases In 2020"

I mean...needless to say I'm hesitant to question the moral authority of the august Dictionary.com...

But to them I say:

Me and the Ninja Sherpas made some extra $$ by scalping fake tickets to some Woketarian Nazis. They got hysterical when they realized they'd been gypped. Also I guess somebody had a spirit animal or whatever. 

tl;dr: GFY, you Nazis.

Maybe Letting Cormac McCarthy Head FDA Wasn't The Best Idea

 

SMITH GO TO GYM TODAY

For like the first time in months.

This is me now:

The campus UREC is too hysterically hysterical to go there. You have to make an appointment on the web before going--you can only be slightly early or slightly late. They have arrows on the floor, and you can only walk in certain paths/directions, they have draconian and arbitrary rules about masks (you can take them off if you're on a weight machine, but you have to wear it if you're working on the heavy bag), and they have legions of observers to make sure you're following all the nutty rules properly. So I joined a cheap townie gym, and it's SO FREAKIN' MUCH BETTER. People are generally wearing masks when they walk around--so I do, too. But they rarely wear them on the machines. There's more mask-wearing than not, and it's pretty sparsely-populated, so people keep their distance. But it's just generally saner and more conducive to actually, y'know, working out. Downside: no heavy bag. It's a slightly glam-ish gym. But it's friendly and ridiculously cheap. And any port in a storm.

Tulsi Gets Bipartisan Support To Protect Women's Sports

 It's amazing that this is necessary.

Jonathan Kay: COVID-19 Superspreader Events: Patterns and Lessons

 This is kinda like Fantasy Football or something. Not professional, but something maybe of interest to kibitzers like me (and probably you).

Washington Beacon Man Of The Year...Matt Yglesias???

 Good on him. He really has seemed to be escaping the clutches of the cult.

THE SKY IS FALLING

 Boeing 737 Max resumes commercial flights RUN FOR YOUR LIVES

Trump's Lies Are Not Official Lies

 I've been reading some of the traditional, year-end Trump Has Destroyed Truth Forever pieces, and holding forth about them to a friend of mine who's smarter about this stuff. His response was the title of this post. That's a damn good point. Nobody pays any attention to Trump's "lies"...which are radically exaggerated and mostly bullshit (as opposed to lies) anyway. Honestly, who takes what that guy says seriously? That's not to excuse him. It's deplorable that we have a President who speaks as he does. But this post isn't about Trump's unfitness for the office. As I've been saying, the other side's lies are big, sweeping lies that are supported by the massive apparatus of the left, which controls all our institutions. People believe these lies--climate hysteria, transgender ideology, BLM fabrications about rampant police murder, "systemic racism," and the like... My friend, however, hit the nail more squarely on the head: these lies are official lies. It's not just that they're widespread and believed. It's worse than that. It's not just that they're the orthodoxy. It's worse than that. It's something more like: they have been designated official truth by our cultural overlords. That's insanity--in case you need me to tell you that.

Ryan Cooper: $2,000 Checks Are Good

This may well be a parody / stealth argument against the checks. It left me more inclined against them.

Pence Refuses To Sign-On To Plan To Overturn Election

 Well...um...good?  We shouldn't even be talking about such a thing...but since I guess we have to, this is the best news we can hope for.

Mickey Kaus: Wokeism Should Terrify Liberals / Biden Might Surprise On This Score

Wow, another thing I really agree with.  I gave up on Biden pushing back against PC months ago. He sure acted like somebody who was giving in to the Woketarian left... But maybe there's enough Biden left in there to put the brakes on this insanity to at least some extent. He won't be Trump in this respect, obviously. And we're basically screwed because of the wave of new high-level Democratic administrative bureaucrats he'll sweep into office. But still...he might surprise us. 

   (Don't think about $2 trillion for climate hysteria...don't think about $2 trillion for climate hysteria...)

   As for whether neo-PC should terrify liberals: well, of course it should. That should go without saying by now.

An Excuse For Trump

 Incidentally: though Trump's putting all the reasons he'd unfit for the Presidency on parade, he does have something of an excuse (as I've already said; just highlighting it here): he knows that he and his family and inner circle will be hunted to the end of their days. Everything's on the line for them. Losing means more than just losing. It means, in a sense, going on the run from the cult for at least years, and maybe forever.

WSJ: McConnell At The Bridge

Cocaine Mitch, our best current hope.

I'm not sure Trump is putting his personal interest first--though he may be. I think he's pathological about conflict and defeat. When challenged, he immediately cranks his assholery to 11. And defeat! Has he ever even experienced that before? Oh and: he can't control his mouth. Worse, he can't seem to control what he allows himself to believe. There are genuine reasons to be concerned about this election--but there's all the difference in the world between that and "I WON IN A LANDSLIDE!!!!111"

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.: "The Slow Birth Of Covid Realism"

I agree pretty much completely:

   The U.S. remains in a similar phase of denial, with every failure related to testing, mask promotion, etc., spun as a missed chance to extinguish Covid altogether. When the reality principle intrudes, here’s suspecting the greatest failure will be the one we are least willing to acknowledge or even understand: It began with our strange reticence to acknowledge the reality of mild (and, as it turned out, asymptomatic) Covid.

   Any alert person knew from the get-go that, amid the exigencies of Wuhan, Chinese doctors were failing to detect mild cases, and that thousands of these cases were likely being exported to the world. Whatever the horrors in Wuhan’s hospitals, they happened not because Covid-19 is an extravagantly deadly respiratory infection. They happened because a flu-like disease had been allowed to spread unrecognized for months in an urban population unprotected by any prior immunity or vaccine.
   Yet it instantly became a U.S. journalistic trope to accuse anyone mentioning the flu of “downplaying” the new disease—downplaying anything being the worst sin in journalism.
   Inexplicably, authorities, including the World Health Organization, insisted on promoting a fatality rate they knew was exaggerated because of the failure to account for mild infections. To this day, U.S. officialdom and the media dwell on a nearly meaningless “confirmed” case count, knowing full well that doing so is innumerate and unstatistical. It’s a mystery and my only explanation is that they are afraid to stop because it portrays the disease as more deadly than it is (supporting the case for urgency) and also less prevalent than it is (supporting the case that it can somehow be contained).
   A parade of conclusive contrary indicators is not so much unreported as simply unintegrated into the picture sold to the American public. To give the latest example, a Johns Hopkins study finds that in late spring in Maryland, when “confirmed” cases were less than 1% of the state’s population, 10% of autopsies showed evidence of Covid infection—a rate that applied equally to auto-accident victims and people who died of natural causes.
   As the pandemic has unfolded, only deeper has become media revilement of anyone who pointed out that the death risk was being exaggerated, that the lockdowns were not sustainable due to the costs they imposed on people who were at low risk, that our efforts would be better invested in shielding those at high risk of a bad medical outcome.
   The hostility is even greater now that these views have been adopted implicitly and unavowedly almost everywhere in obedience to the reality principle. The lockdowns were unsustainable. Low-risk people were unwilling to maintain energetic social distancing through the summer and fall. Vaccines are being rolled out now expressly to protect the most vulnerable first.

Read the whole thing, as Insty says. 

COVID Relief Bill: $2.3 Trillion

WTF???

All the time I spent fretting about the cost of the Iraq war...and we just apparently blow that amount now without a second thought.

It's very difficult to believe that shutting down the economy + printing money is the best response to a disease that doesn't seem to be much of a threat to people under about 50... But, then, the people making the decisions presumably understand all this a lot better than I do.

Greenwald: The Threat Of Authoritarianism In The U.S. Is Very Real, And Has Nothing To Do With Trump

It's not that I agree with absolutely all of this--e.g. Greenwald repeats the untruth about tear gas in Lafayette Square--but even where I don't necessarily agree, he's interesting and worth reading. I agree that Trump isn't the authoritarian threat in the U.S....though I'm never entirely sure what that guy is capable of. He's certainly making noises he shouldn't be making. I think all the shrieking about Trump the fascist is absurd...especially given that it comes from the now-totalitarian blue team. Still, I wouldn't bet a ton of money against him doing something crazy/stupid.

About Those "20,000 Lies"...REEEEEE PEPPER BALLS ARE TEAR GAS!!!!1111

So Trump honestly reports, relying on the Park Police, the Secret Service, and four other agencies--that no tear gas was used in the famous Lafayette Park incident. Progressive media and its enablers KICK INTO ACTION! to prove that....pepper balls are tear gas...because...they make people cry...

   This is the level of stupidity and dishonesty we're dealing with.

   A spokesman for the Park Police said they didn't use tear gas--which is apparently true--then later said, basically: Oh...we hadn't thought about the fact that you people have no idea what you're talking about...so it's probably all 'tear gas' to you...in which case: yes, if you speak that imprecisely, then you would say that we used "tear gas".

   They got some medical types to go along with their misuse of the terminology...and...voila! ANOTHER TRUMP LIE!!!!

   Of course: not a lie at all. Supposing pepper balls and smoke grenades were, in fact, the only things used, then, no, they didn't use tear gas. Some people may call pepper balls tear gas, but they're two different things. The Park Police, Trump, and the rest spoke truly when they said they didn't use tear gas. Nothing is to be gained other than a tricky, dishonest, rhetorical score by saying "AHA SOME PEOPLE CALL PEPPER BALLS TEAR GAS!!!1111" 

   Besides, I'm actually in favor of them using tear gas against that crowd. They were supposed to have been cleared out earlier, they'd already vandalized St. John's and made some effort to set it on fire, they were aggressive, and it was perfectly legitimate to clear them out. It's not as if we're not giving violent Antifa shitheads enough free reign to riot these days... The decision was reasonable, we're generally erring in the other direction, even if it was a mistake, such mistakes will happen. This is hardly a coordinated assault on the First Amendment.

   Now...if, contrary to what Barr reported, this really was a last-minute decision and the operation was conducted purely in order for Trump to go pose with the Bible...no. Screw that, of course. I don't think it happened that way because we never heard about it again--and you can bet we would have if that were the case.

   If this is where you set the bar for lies, anybody's going to rack 'em up pretty fast.

[Further thought: imagine the media'd asked whether the USSS, USPP, etc. had used rubber bullets, and they'd truthfully said no. But when the media found out they'd used pepper balls, they said: But pepper balls are surrounded by flexible plastic which is tantamount to rubber! So you did use rubber bullets! TEH TRUMPZ LIEZ!!! 

No. Pepper balls are not rubber bullets. They're completely different things. Nobody who knows anything says otherwise. Rubber bullets are hard, solid projectiles, not little spheres filled with pepper dust. This is nothing but an equivocation. What they said was not only not intended to deceive, it was true. This is nothing but gotcha pseudo-journalism.]

PA Lawmakers: Numbers Don't Add Up; Certification Of Presidential Results Premature And In Error

Every time I think I've convinced myself to stop puzzling over this, I get sucked back in again.

The Climate Hoax: "Biden's Climate Plan Will Not Address Gender And Racial Inequality"

 Yet more evidence that the left doesn't believe its own story about a climate emergency. If someone actually believed that we had only a decade to reach carbon neutrality (or cut emissions in half, or whatever it is they're saying), he would not be complaining that most construction workers are men; nor would he advocate wasting crucial, possibly planet-saving resources on jobs that aren't directly relevant to reducing emissions. The authors of the op-ed above actually advocate increasing funding to certain professions like health care because they have a lot of women and minorities and don't produce much carbon. That's like saying: our ship is on fire, but most firefighters are men...sad!--so lets fund women poets because that's a low-combustion profession... 

To repeat myself yet again: one reason I don't take climate hysteria seriously anymore is that the progressive left doesn't take it seriously. And the bigger point is: this is the left's M.O.: create or spin or exaggerate a crisis, then use it to ram through policies and social/cultural changes they want for independent reasons. 

Fauci Spins Estimates To Manipulate Public

 I understand what he's saying here. And I'm not saying it's terrible. I'm saying that there seems to have been entirely too much of this sort of thing. The public is entirely warranted in being skeptical about such expert opinion--for one thing, it's at least as much opinion as expertise. Pile on top of it the unreliability, irrationality and political bias of the media, and the relentless commands to "follow the 'science' "--which "science" is largely more like opinion, guesstimation, or pseudoscience...and, well, I'm actually heartened to see Americans telling the powers that be to get bent. All of this ends up being much more complicated than it might seem. Of course contrarianism can get you in trouble at least as easily as groupthinkery... But it's more morally virtuous, at least. We're way past the point at which rational, autonomous people are warranted in being done being jerked around. None of that is to say that the public health folks don't have a difficult job, and that they aren't doing yeoman's work for the most part. But that goes without saying. What does need saying is that rational people can conclude that there's no need to hang on the experts' every whim.

Mark Judge: How I Learned To Respect Our Communist Media

link

Every person who comes into the media’s crosshairs should understand this. Nothing you say or do is going to change the story they are going to write. Indeed, the story was written before they even contacted you. They will falsify quotes and leave out facts. They often have reams of opposition research (ugly tales about you) at the ready. If so, they will slowly dole it out to set up and trick a naïve subject.

Fish Numbers From PA

 Is this right? Was this debunked? Admittedly, I'm not focusing on this stuff like I sometimes would have...just exhausted by it all...but I can't keep up:

Not good pic.twitter.com/P1ItQQHlJJ

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) December 29, 2020

Podhoretz: "The Pardons. Dear God, The Pardons"

Basically right, and basically what I've said most of the time--but IMO a bit too hard on Trump. The "25,000 lies" thing is bullshit; the "fact"-checkers are just more blue-team propagandists. Let's see whether Lyin' Biden gets anything like similar scrutiny. He'd already be off to a helluva start even if we only consider how many times he repeated the "very fine people" lie... David Hirsanyi or somebody claims that about 10% of the alleged Trump "lies" are actually true and warranted denials of false Russiagate accusations. And they were all over his claims about the vaccine being available before the end of the year...and yet...

   Still, Trump said a lot of false things, and I have no interest in excusing his actual transgressions against the truth. That stuff matters--a lot.

   But what of the pardons? 

   I do not know. I don't understand anything about pardon power and conventions. I remember being appalled at Clinton's pardons...but, again, I don't really understand the issues and norms.

   Trump's sound pretty bad alright. But, given the abuse of power by the government and courts against Carter Page and General Flynn...was the Stone prosecution more of the same? I've read stuff about it, but I never got a clear view of what happened.

   Also, of course, the blue team is now run by a cult, and the cultists have made it clear that Trump and his family and inner circle will be on the run from their lawfare and other harassment for the rest of their days. Leftist politics expands to infect every aspect of life--even science and even the personal are political, you know. Trump has to take that into account just as he had to take similar considerations into account in releasing his taxes--he knows the cult is out to get him, and he has to act and plan accordingly.

   Anyway, I absolutely agree that Trump's the kind of mixed bag Podhoretz says he is--excellent policies, shitty, anti-presidential public persona (and maybe: actual personality). But whether the pardons show the latter to be as bad as Podhoretz says, I cannot say.

Anti-Americanism And Its Opposite

Well, you know me and counterproductivity arguments... 

Yessir, ahm agin' 'em.

But I do not like what I'm seeing on the right in any way, shape, or form. 

I prefer flag-waving in moderation. I've been very much in favor of the friendly, cheerful pro-Trump demonstrations--especially as compared to the mostly peaceful social justice riots for peace and justice. But I seem to be seeing more anger over there. And Twitter--what a f*cking cesspool--is filled with tweets from righties saying that Trump won. Trump is, of course egging it on. Saner folk like Brandon Straka claim to be doing it to lure Twitter into banning them...but I dunno...

I do think that you have to deal with the threat you face at the moment. So my concerns about the future of the right certainly don't eclipse my concerns about the current left. But my concerns about Trump's anti-presidential bullshit about the Senate throwing him the election are starting to seem like the most immediate problem.

Anyway--worry-wart that I am--I've been worrying.

Aaron Sibarium: How The CDC Went Woke

 Just another brick in the wall of crazy...if that makes any sense....

IMO this is (in part) one consequence of letting the PC left sneak that "non-racism"/"anti-racism" bullshit by. What we want in cases like this is precisely non- (rather than anti-)racism. That's approximately equivalent to saying: we want our policies to be color-blind. (They also have bad arguments against color-blindness.) "Anti-racism" should not be a goal at all times, and with respect to all things. Race should simply be ignored in some (many, actually) cases. If, as the left now seems to say, we make "anti-racism" a pervasive goal, then we have to take race into account even in cases where it shouldn't be. I have no doubt that there are better counterexamples out there, but: if we're providing aid to battered women, we shouldn't also be thinking about irrelevant goals like reducing world hunger--even though we are, in some sense, "anti-hunger." Needless to say, if we're studying quasars, race shouldn't enter into our thinking in any way. If we're providing care to Mr. Smith, we should be not-racist about it...we should be not-racist about everything. We shouldn't care about Mr. Smith's race at all. But we should not, for example, force Mr. Smith to endure lectures about racism during his chemotherapy sessions... If you've got a broken water pipe, and water is spraying all across the second floor of your house, running down into the walls and across the floor...you're a damn fool if you ask "How can I use this incident to fight racism?" Race simply isn't relevant to most issues. And even in cases in which it is relevant, it isn't true that each of those cases should be used as an opportunity to strike a blow against racism. If I come across a white dude and a black dude beating each other up, and I have no other grounds for choice, I shouldn't think: I'll help the black dude because it will advance the cause of anti-racism! A judge adjudicating a boundary dispute between white Smith and black Jones shouldn't think: Ok...Smith's case is a tiny bit stronger...but I'll tilt it to Jones because...antiracism! And to jump back to the quasar case: don't think: yeah, but race isn't relevant to quasars. It's more important not to let race illicitly interfere with race is relevant. If, say, you're researching race and IQ, it's extremely important not to let irrelevant issues about race interfere. You're studying race--so race will be at issue in some ways. But it's crucially important not to distort the data or skew the analysis in order to strike a blow against racism. 

Look: there are interesting questions about race. But race is not the end-all and be-all of human issues. It's probably not in the top 50. And the obsessive idea that it everything must be seen through its lens...is just flat-out nuts. On the bright side, I have no doubt that there are a lot of people like me out there who are just fed up with it. And the dementia of the PC left about such issues becomes more and more impossible to deny by the day.

Dunning-Kruger A Myth?

 maybe

Congrats To State

Neglected to post on this: Carolina 76 - State 79. 

Nice work, Pack!

Needless to say, we'll getcha next time.

China Jails Journalist For Telling The Truth About COVID

This sort of thing may well be in your blue future...

Asymptomatic Spread

 Incidentally, I don't buy the line that there's no asymptomatic spread. Mainly because basically nobody's going around in public with symptoms. But it's spreading around somehow. Also there's the Marine study.

COVID Psychosis?

 link   I'm extremely skeptical, but maybe. Certainly scary if true. There's no clear indication in the article, however, that we're seeing more than the normal number of cases. I suppose it wouldn't surprise me a lot if psychosis was more likely after an illness--though I don't have any evidence that it is. Also I've just been assuming that there's been more than an average amount of mental illness this year. 

Trump: Proof Of Fraud "Irrefutable"

 Yeesh:

Time for Republican Senators to step up and fight for the Presidency, like the Democrats would do if they had actually won. The proof is irrefutable! Massive late night mail-in ballot drops in swing states, stuffing the ballot boxes (on video), double voters, dead voters,

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2020

NY Post: "Give It Up, Mr. President--For Your Sake And The Nation's"

Exactly

Though it's appalling that we'd have to appeal to a President's self-interest at all. The interest of the nation should be enough.

We knew he'd go out ugly...but this is uglier than I'd feared.

Your Blue Future: The PC Crazies Censor Homer

In case you've forgotten, these people are insane.

In response to the claim that The Scarlet Letter promotes "misogyny and slut-shaming":

   Jessica Cluess, an author of young-adult fiction, shot back: “If you think Hawthorne was on the side of the judgmental Puritans . . . then you are an absolute idiot and should not have the title of educator in your twitter bio.

She is, of course, exactly right. But--sadly and predictably: 

   An online horde descended, accused Ms. Cluess of racism and “violence,” and demanded that Penguin Random House cancel her contract. The publisher hasn’t complied, perhaps because Ms. Cluess tweeted a ritual self-denunciation: “I take full responsibility for my unprovoked anger toward Lorena Germán. I am committed to learning more about Ms. Germán’s important work... I will strive to do better.” That didn’t stop Ms. Cluess’s literary agent, Brooks Sherman, from denouncing her “racist and unacceptable” opinions and terminating their professional relationship.

New COVID Treatments Sit Unused In Hospitals

When people are turning them down for these reasons...kinda makes the overall situation sound a bit less desperate than we've been led to believe, doesn't it?:

Some patients who meet the high-risk criteria have mild or moderate symptoms that are improving, so they aren’t interested in coming in for an infusion, Dr. Rubin noted. Others aren’t able to spare the two hours required for administration and monitoring.

COVID Straw Men, "Denialism," What The Hell Is Up?, Etc.

I keep running into lefty types who think that the main objection to the orthodoxy involves not believing the batflu is real. I'm sure there are some of those people about, but there can't be many of them. Seems like the most important objections involve opposition to the waves of hysteria, the bumbling diktats from overextended experts, and so on. I take this thing seriously--but not hysterically. And that's what people on my side of the fence want the country to do. When you're pumping out hysterical,exaggerated, underinformed nonsense 24/7, you're going to scare the sheep...and you're also going to generate excess skepticism and cynicism in people like me. Now people like me have to try to correct for your bullshit, and correct for our own overreaction to your bullshit, and more-or-less blindly guess where the target is.

   I've had a long-standing--or, rather, on-again, off-again--hypothesis that there's something we're not being told...maybe that the "long" effects of COVID are much more serious than we think. I'm not a conspiracy type...but I keep flailing around for an explanation as for why the risks seem to be so badly misrepresented. It seems clear that there are significant threats to certain groups--most notably the old--and that we should be doing what we can to keep them safe. But the relatively minor risk to the rest of us just keeps being exaggerated. I just cannot figure out why this could be. It simply doesn't make sense. Of course it also doesn't make sense that anyone would conceal concerns about "long COVID." They're certainly not worried about scaring us... They rather clearly want to scare us. So even this long-shot of a hypothesis won't do the explanatory trick.

   Something's gone wrong here. Perhaps it's the media's fault. Perhaps people like me are just confused. But the message we're getting just doesn't seem to make sense. Instead of significant, warranted, focused concern, it's generalized, seemingly unwarranted hysteria that's being pushed on us. It's just weird and confusing as all hell.

It's OFFENSIVE To Talk About The Survival Rate For COVID-19...DO BETTER

STFU

My God these people are mental.

Every time somebody says "do better" they ought to get slapped upside the head.

I like how “survival rate” is in quotes, like it’s not the most important (and easily calculated) fact in the entire epidemic https://t.co/w5zPrxynSJ

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) December 27, 2020

Long-Term and Cognitive Effects of Batflu?

 I'm skeptical, but maybe.

Jordan Schachtel: "The 'New Strain' Of COVID Propaganda"

ZZZZZOMG WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE AGAIN PUT ON MORE MASKS AND GET BACK IN YOUR BASEMENT NO TIME FOR A TOILET PAPER RAID ON TH' COSTCO!!!!!!!!!!!!

   Look, I know that we're bathing in uncertainty here, and that there are people out there genuinely doing their best to deal with it...but at some point we've got to say that enough is enough.

   Maybe there really is a killer new strain of the batflu out there... But we can't just keep buying these maybes one after another. We're in week 40 of "two weeks to flatten the curve." We seem to have done just about everything wrong. Instead of isolating the relatively small slice of the population that's genuinely vulnerable, we isolated everybody...except, y'know, for all the blue-collar workers for whom it's all just business as usual...but with masks... We shut down schools when kids aren't vulnerable and the virus doesn't seem to spread well in classrooms. We shut down colleges when--at last check--only two college students in the entire country had died from this. The powers that be fanned the flames of hysteria at every point. So we're just long past the point at which we can pay much attention to MAYBE THERE'S A KILLER NEW BATFLU 2 OUT THERE!!!111

Trump Needs To STFU

He's permitted--perhaps even obligated--to express doubt and call for audits and investigations. He's not permitted to assert that he won--in a landslide, no less.

   I'm grateful to the dude for what he's done. In terms of his accomplishments, he's been,,,well...one might even say a great president in many respects. His loss to the newly-loony Dems is a terrible blow to the country. We're going to be moving from a notably good administration to a notably bad one. But it's past time to face the facts: barring something akin to a miracle, Joe Biden will become the POTUS in less than a month. 

   Trump's mouth has always been his downfall. He seems to think of himself as a good talker. In fact, it's his worst thing. He only has two dialectical/rhetorical settings: 200% FOR and 200% AGAINST. He just doesn't have it in him to say I'm skeptical, but the evidence seems to be against me. That was his batflu downfall--well, along with his inability to resist the spotlight. Once he saw the ratings, he couldn't resist being there every day. And he couldn't just say We're not sure, but here's what we currently think, and here's what we're going to try... He could maintain that sort of stance for a couple of minutes...then he'd revert to form. 

   One of the Dems' advantages is that they manage to act a little bit like ordinary people might act most of the time. Or, rather: they do a pretty good impression of aliens who do pretty good impression of a certain type of human. They have, basically, the manners of the elite. Most people know little about politics and policy, and so they go with the side that exhibits the manners they prefer. Trump, of course, repulses them--and not for particularly bad reasons. 

   Bellowing that HE'S STILL THE POTUS as he's dragged out the White House...[shakes head]...that is not going to MAGA, my friends... In fact, it's going to help La Resistance. A lot. It's going to energize the cult and its enablers, delight the Resistors of the MSM, and turn off reluctant Trump-supporters such as yours truly. It looks like it'll be Trump who defeats Trump--humiliates him, in fact, if things keep going in this direction. 

   As I've said before, Trump's always been a gamble--and this election was the most unstable and dangerous part of the gamble. It was always going to be a humiliating spectacle if he lost. Win and we got another four years of surprisingly good policies and Presidential opposition to the cult. Lose and we not only get the blues in power--perhaps across the board--but we have to endure the spectacle of Trumpian self-humiliation...not to mention cult triumphalism. We'll also have a rampaging Trump running around the country for the next 4+ years saying God-knows-what... 

   One of Trump's main flaws, IMO, is that he cannot deal with opposition like an adult--and the most obvious corollary of that is: he can't stand to lose. Losing in the biggest and most obvious and public way one can lose in America....it's just not in him. He really might just self-destruct...

IFRs Given As One Number; Weird

 When the fatality rates differ so dramatically by age (and sex), does it really make much sense to just publicize one number? Is that really informative? If a disease killed 100% of men and no women, it seems a little crazy to say that it has a 50% fatality rate...doesn't it?

More Than 50% Of "COVID Deaths" Mislabeled Normal Deaths?

It appears that more than 50% of currently reported Covid deaths are simply mislabeled "normal" deaths.

— PLC (@Humble_Analysis) December 16, 2020

Dunno. I've got no expertise. But, if true, it won't surprise me. But that's pretty weasely... The question is: would I bet on it? Answer: hm. I think I'd take an even-money bet that COVID deaths have been exaggerated. But of course it can't be just like one or two deaths--we can be sure that any estimate we ever come up with will be high or low... So...I think I'd taken an even-money bet of $100 that COVID deaths are being overestimated by at least 5%. 

The CCP And The UN Both Suck

 You really can't make this shit up.

One week from tomorrow, a man who herded 1 million Uighurs into camps, jails human rights activists, crushed Tibet, disappeared courageous men and women who sounded the alarm on the coronavirus, and suffocated freedom in Hong Kong will join the U.N.'s highest human rights body. pic.twitter.com/j4iSBOOnlk

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 24, 2020

WSJ: "Ted Cruz And Hong Kong's Democrats"

I don't know what's going on here.

But, given what little can be gleaned from what I've read, I have some agreement with both sides.

First, it seems clear that we should do something to help get HK's democrats get out of there and into here.

(I'll resist the urge to suggest that our own Democrats might be more at home there...or will I?)

Second, the Dems will use any trick they can think of to illicitly cram more immigrants into the country...so I'd expect Cruz to be right about that part. So I'd understand his blocking the bill. The editorial doesn't tell us whether there's any movement to pass a similar bill that's more narrowly-focused / less subject to abuse. But there ought to be.

Turley On The Martial Law Nonsense

I basically automatically discount such hysterical TDSy bullshit from the MSM. Unfortunately, I'm a slow learner, and stuff like this martial law thing still does tug some wispy strings of concern in me. 

Turley seems right, as usual:

There is every possibility that martial law and the special counsel were raised. The meeting was described as an informal gathering with Powell and Flynn. It would be no surprise that Flynn repeated his view. I criticized Flynn recently for suggesting that martial law would be appropriate given the election controversy. It was an outrageous and reckless statement that was tantamount to a call for tyranny. For those of us who defended Flynn over his abusive prosecution, it was also a disappointment that someone who has long defended this country would embrace such an anti-democratic call. Frankly, Trump should have reminded Flynn that he is speaking to the President of the United States in the Oval Office and such a suggestion is wildly offensive and unhinged.

It's pretty creepy how rampant TDS is on the left. They decided Trump was a fascist early on--of course it's now a commonplace on the left that all non-leftists are fascists--and no matter how much evidence they have to the contrary, and no matter how many times they're wrong, and no matter how clear it becomes that it's the left that's teetering on the bring of totalitarianism, not the right...they just cannot get that idea out of their collective head.

It's inexcusable the Trump's claiming to have won the election. It's also inexcusable that the MSM and the rest of the left are refusing to acknowledge legitimate doubts about an election they engineered to be unreliable and untrustworthy. But Trump's the president, not some professional bullshitter at the NYT. There's all the difference in the world between "we're not sure the election was legit" and "I won by a landslide." This is exactly the kind of reason Trump's unfit for office--he can't control himself. He's right to raise questions, explore legal options, begin an investigation and get it set in stone so that Biden can't end it prematurely. But he crossed the line--yet another line--with his unequivocal proclamation to have won.

It'll be a relief not to have to deal with Trump's looniness after next month. Of course I think it's fairly clear that we're going out of the frying pan and into the fire...but in this case, the frying pan has been such a pain in the ass in so many ways that there'll still be a certain sense of relief at just being elsewhere...

"Hate-Crimes Bills Gain Support In South Carolina, Arkansas"

I tend to not be in favor of these things. But: (a) I don't have the kind of ground-level knowledge that one probably ought to have to properly assess them, and (b) there are precedents for some kinds of crimes receiving extended penalties--e.g. racketeering (via RICO). They'd have to be applied fairly--that is, without regard to which races are involved in which capacity--and I'm among those who tend to doubt that they're applied that way. I'm especially skeptical now that we're in the midst of the Woketarian crusades/jihad/inquisition... But I'm persuadable on the issue.

What Ever Happened To "#MeToo"? Whatever Happened To "Rape Culture"?

 As usual, the exaggerated politico-cultural grievances of women take a back seat to the exaggerated politico-cultural grievances of...everybody else other than the reviled straightwhitedudes...

"Christmas Should Not Be Fun This Year"

 It's dumb to rag on a single bad thought or poorly-chosen sentence... But this really does seem to express the blue-team attitude...   Admittedly, there are some people who probably should take precautions. But there simply can be no doubt that this is yet another thing the blues are crazy about. There's a shit-ton of difference between People who are at-risk should consider taking precautions and EVERYBODY LOCK DOWN WEEZ ALL GUNNA DIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE...

Snopes: No Longer An Actual Fact-Checking Organization: Michael Shellenberger / Climate Hysteria Edition

tl;dr:

Some scientists disagree!

He may not get everything right!

He's selling a book!

Snopes is now, to facts, what the ACLU is to free speech. 

   

Biden's Climate Pseudoscience: Climate Change The "Existential Threat Of Our Time"

This is bullshit, incidentally. Climate change is a significant concern. It is not an "existential threat." Even the IPCC--the epicenter of world climate hysteria--does not claim that it's an "existential threat."

Biden Cranks Up The Fear Porn

 Here we go again.

ICC Rejects Uighur Genocide Complaint Against China

 link

Trump On Batflu Relief Bill: Right Again?

My clueless inclinations: I was for the first relief bill and against this one. My inclination is to say: let's stop printing money and get the economy going again. That inclination is based on two things: (i) near-total ignorance of economics and (ii) COVID hysteria skepticism. So God knows what I should really think about this.

   But I'm inclined to think that Trump is closer to being right about this than Congress--for roughly the reason he's so often righter than his interlocutors: he's offering a common-sense solution uncorrupted by crackpot theories and commitments. First, he's clearly right about the pork. (Of course I could be wrong because I have no idea why anyone would include such nonsense in such a bill...so there's likely something I don't understand going on here). Second, he's been right all along about the money. If there was going to be money, it should have been more and sooner. Or, again, so it seems.

   Of course if he vetoes this it could throw the Senate to the blue team...which would be a catastrophe.

Shenanigans In The Batflu Bill: Climate Shenanigans

link    Further reducing HFCs sounds good to me. R&D money for renewables seems fine to me (if we are, indeed, talking about R&D money here)--but tax credits for renewables strikes me as a boondoggle. But I don't really know. What I really oppose is all this shit getting shoveled in and passed with no discussion. 

And back to renewables R&D: that's exactly the sort of thing you would not waste money on if you actually believed that we're heading for a tipping-point in a decade. You don't gamble the future of humanity on shaky, low-energy-density, unscalable tech...when you've got something proven and much, much better with none of those drawbacks. To wit: nuclear. Not to mention fracking.  To be clear, I'm ok with R&D for "renewables." But, then, I don't believe the lies about tipping-points and existential threats. So I think we've got a lot of time to mess around and see what we can do with e.g. solar. Could pay off some day. Though not, of course, soon enough to make an appreciable difference within a decade.

The COVID Bill: Mostly Pork

 I don't understand this very well...but I'm inclined to hope Trump refuses to sign. This sounds like typical swamptastic bullshit.

Detroit Suing BLM For Civil Conspiracy

 Sounds good to me.

Biden's $2 Trillion Green New Deal Is A Camouflaged Democratic Jobs Program

 That can be said of all versions of the GND. People need to understand that "Green New Deal" doesn't mean: a new deal for the environment. It means: a(nother) new deal--and this time it's pretty green. It's a plan to shift the economy in a socialist direction masquerading as an environmental program. The idea is characteristically leftist: create (or exaggerate) a crisis then pretend that something you wanted to do anyway will fix it. It's like fanning the flames of COVID-19 hysteria, then acting like weakening voting requirements is a solution--or pretending that giving money to teacher's unions will do so. If they actually believed that we were all going to die if we didn't fix the environment in a decade, they'd damn sure be building nuclear instead of funding "community gardens." Nobody who's even vaguely objective can look at the GND and think it's a serious emergency climate plan.

Oops. Forgot the video (via Insty):

Jim Geraghty: "The Beginning Of The End Of Trump's Presidency"

It wouldn't surprise me a lot if this stuff were to turn out to be true. As Geraghty says, it kinda fits Trump's profile. OTOH, it also fits the kind of stuff the press makes up about Trump. So who knows? I'd guess: some truth in it, but radically blown out of proportion. 

   Still...we don't want a President such that there's even some truth in such reports.

   OTOH, we don't want a president who's a doddering front-man for a politico-religious cult...  But those were our options...

   This is the kind of thing I'd normally flip out about. But, things being as they are, I merely conclude that this is more MSM lies and move on. People who would stand up and openly lie about a president being a racist--when they can be seen to be openly and obviously lying by anyone paying attention--would certainly lie about something like this that they can easily get away with.

   It's too bad we won't be able to actually enjoy a Trump-free White House...

Nathanael Blake: "Health Experts Need To Get Out Of The Society Manipulation Business"

I couldn't agree more, FWIW...which may not be much.

   We (generic 'we') are good at some things and bad at others. For the good, see: Operation Warp Speed. For the bad, see: well, the attempts to manipulate society and micromanage our actions. That nonsense is largely responsible for the current backlash. There were the manipulative lies about masks. There was the Lysenkoist bullshit about Black Lives Matter rallies--which may have constituted the high-water mark of politicized science in my lifetime. And, of course: the pandemic is just one episode in general efforts to medicalize everything, misrepresent progressive politics as science, and micromanage our lives.

   Anyway: "we" seem pretty good at producing technological solutions Maybe it's because it's easier to be objective about success there. But as soon as politics starts influencing people, it quickly seems to swamp the power of scientific evidence. Science often requires stepping back and exercising fine discrimination. Politics is passionate. And people are just shit at stepping back from that. Progressive are currently (and perhaps inherently) worse at separating politics from non-politics...likely because their intelligentsia has duped them into believing that there's no separation to be had. Once you give up on the possibility, you have to give up on the ideal (by ought implies can). And if you've given up on even the ideal, you're lost.

   Actually, it's kinda fortunate that they get things ostentatiously wrong so much. Otherwise it might be easy to fall for. I mean...progressives do seem to fall for it...but that's a whole other thing. Trying to get progressives to be objective about this stuff is like trying to get religious conservatives to be objective about Jesus--it's basically wasted effort.

Flynn Was Framed, But The Martial Law Stuff Is Cracked

 obvs

Trump's Bad Exit

 Yup.

Bat Flu: NO Asymptomatic Spread?

 That's what a gigantic Chinese study seems to show.

Bat Flu: Minimal Asymptomatic Spread?

New JAMA meta-analysis of 54 studies with 77,758 participants finds household secondary attack rate (chance an infected person will infect one or more people at home) is 18% if the index case is symptomatic and 0.7% if asymptomatic.https://t.co/K09cAeCaEr pic.twitter.com/YX4tYI2dcL

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) December 14, 2020

Disgrace After Defeat

That's about the size of it--and what I expected. Not: losing. But: freaking out if he did. 

This was just about all-or-nothing for the red team:

Trump wins: four more years of surprisingly good policies + no Trumpian freak-out.

Trump loses: Blue-team policies + Trumpian freak-out...which also serves to further convince the smugly delusional blues that they were, somehow, right all along.

   Of course the blues have exacerbated this by refusing to acknowledge the many genuine and serious questions about the vote. A reasonable person can have significant doubts. And a reasonable person after four years of rabid, lunatic accusations and abuses? Shit, man...I'd have lost it by now in Trump's position. And Trump...well...not the most reasonable person in these ways. 

   Anyway, Trump was always a gamble. I voted against him in '16, but saw the light by '20...and knew that he'd be good in victory, bad in defeat. 

   What we have to do is deal seriously with questions about the election and make it clear that it was fair--if, indeed, it was.

The Great Barrington Declaration, Again

Just posting it again.

   Of course I'm not qualified to judge, but it aligns with my half-ass conclusions/inclinations about all this. Nothing in my experience, certainly, supports hysteria or lockdowns/self-inflicted-economic-disaster. 

Being at a university, you always basically see the left side of the problem. Shutting it all down and doing classes half-assed online simply doesn't seem rational given what we know about the Kung Flu's effect on college-age kids. Professors are a different problem, but most are under the quasi-threshold at which the real danger kicks in. I'm 100% down with protecting the vulnerable; but that can be done by not acting like idiots with respect to the not-actually-vulnerable. I've got a genuinely vulnerable family-member, who I keep offering to help out. Last time I saw him, he just yelled at me for not wearing a mask while I was driving in my car and standing outside his apartment. 

   You don't have to believe this thing isn't dangerous at all...it is dangerous...to members of some groups. Taking no action would have been suboptimal. But hysterically overreacting and locking it all down seemed, from fairly early on, like a damn stupid idea. It still seems that way--to me, anyway.

How To End Lockdowns Next Month

 Bhattacharya and Gupta.

Now that it won't harm Trump, I'd expect the Dems to relent a bit on the bat flu hysteria. There's still "Great Reset" madness--but I don't think that would motivate too many people beyond the blue fringe. Though, of course, the blue fringe sets the agenda for the blues in a way the red fringe doesn't for the reds. Also, all these blue obsessions take on a religious character--so I'm not sure what to predict.

The reds have their dander up, of course, and this has become, to them, a matter of freedom vs. tyranny... I actually think they're pretty right about that.

GOP "Should" Win Both GA Senate Seats

The good news: The GOP is the currently-less-insane party.

The bad news: It's not because the GOP really got a lot saner...

But anyway...if the reds don't win at least one of these, we're screwed.

More On The Crapification Of Academia: CFP Cringe

This is real. Via PHILOS-L:

Call for Papers: Disability and African Indigenous Thought

Organized by the Disability and Inclusion Africa Network

African indigenous thought – with specific reference to sub-Saharan Africa – informs understandings and conceptions of disability. Such conceptions of disability include explanations for, and representations of, different forms of disabilities, attitudes towards disabilities and persons with disabilities, and ways of coping with, and managing health-related and other challenges related to disability. These explanations are not only long standing in local cultures, passed from generation to generation, but they are also deeply rooted and entrenched in the fabric of community life. They permeate daily existence and have real consequences for persons with disabilities. Even in modern-day Africa, with the influx of scientific explanation for disabilities into African places and growing awareness of medical and social models of disability indigenous explanations and understandings remain intensely felt and continue to shape the lived experiences of persons with disabilities in these societies.

The Disability and African Indigenous Thought workshop is organised by the Disability and Inclusion Africa Network, as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Global Challenge Research Fund funded research project, ‘Alternative Explanations: Disability and Inclusion in Africa’, to explore African explanations for, understandings and representations of disability. The primary objective is to expose how these conceptions and representations of disability and disabilities in African indigenous thought impact positively and negatively the lives of persons with disabilities, particularly in terms of how they inhibit or promote wellbeing, dignity and inclusion. Proposals are hereby invited that explore the following and related themes and areas:

• • Conceptualising African indigenous/traditional thought

• • Conceptions and representations of disability in African thought

• • Traditional understanding of specific disabilities e.g. albinism, epilepsy, autism, blindness, etc.

• • Epistemological, ontological and moral foundations and concerns

• • African traditional religion and disability

• • African arts or literatures and their engagement with traditional understandings of disability

• • The negative impact of indigenous thought on wellbeing and inclusion for persons with disabilities

• • Aspects of indigenous thoughts to explore for the promotion of wellbeing and inclusion for persons with disabilities

• • African indigenous healthcare and disability

•                 • Historical perspectives on the origin and basis of African thought on disability

Progressivism In Yet Another Nutshell: Left-Wing Freak-Out Re: "Dr." Jill Biden Continues

Not taking the bait.

But after four years of utter contempt for Melania Trump--who apparently speaks like four languages--which is much more impressive than an Ed.D.--the progressive left is spewing spittle everywhere over one largely-jokey, largely correct, op-ed. An op-ed that correctly points out that insisting on being called "Dr."--especially if you have an Ed.D.--is cringy. 

   Seriously, man. The right's got its problems for sure...but the left has just lost its shit.

More Puling And Whining About Epstein's Piece On "Dr." Jill Biden

 SSSSSEEEEXXXXXIIIIIIISSSSSTTTTT!!!!!!!11111111  The progressive left is a one-trick pony...and a very screechy one.

There Both Will And Will Not Be An L4D3

 Boo/Yay

Propaganda Operates Largely Just By Repetition

 Any criticism of any progressive woman is SEXIST SEXIST SEXIST

One sub-technique is to simply presuppose the propagandistic proposition rather than arguing for it--because if you argue for it, you'll probably lose.

Any Criticism Of Teh Wimminz Is Teh MIZOGYNYZ BIGOT!!!!1111

 When you've gotta cram it into parentheses in the title....

(No teh clicky, plz: iz teh fake newzzzz)

Blue Double-Standards And Accusations Of Sexual Assault Against Cuomo

With Kavanaugh, various leaders publicly insisted that “women must be believed.” Sen. Hirono publicly stated that Kavanaugh was not even entitled to any presumption of innocence. That view changed with the allegations against Joe Biden and now Cuomo. https://t.co/wSrNrdR1Md

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) December 16, 2020

Trump's Losing His Shit, Threatening Georgia Pubs With Jail For Not Doing His Bidding

 Well, not too surprising, unfortunately.

As I've said from fairly early on in the Trump years: I fear Trump because I don't know what he'll do; I fear the Dems because I do know what they'll do.

Changing My Mind About Snowden

Eh, I didn't really know what I was talking about when I used to shoot my mouth off about Snowden. I just had fragmentary knowledge. And I trusted Obama on the issue. Seeming to me now that I was talking out my ass. I've found my view of him becoming more positive. 

Just sayin'.

The "Dr." Jill Biden Dust Up: Her...Thesis? "Position Paper"? Dunno

Alright, this is all stupid and I'm not going to waste any compute cycles on it. I can't even get myself to focus on the electoral snarl.

   But, yeah, somebody posted her...thesis or whatever they call them over in ed. Yes, it's very badly-written. It's painful almost from the first paragraph. Even the first sentence is oddly (slightly) awkward. 

   But it's dumb and mean to harp on this. Go look at my dissertation. It was regarded by my committee as an unusually good piece of work--and I pretty much agree with that assessment, despite my prodigious honesty. But try counting all the its/it's errors... My God. It was my job to clean those up before the final copy was turned in, but I was just too exhausted. I was teaching at my first full-time (non-tenure-track) job, at a place I f'in hated, getting divorced (which often goes along with finishing one's dissertation), applying for real jobs, and living in my office. It turned out that I was exceptionally terrible at the job market, and underperformed even the most pessimistic expectations. So, yeah...I never put the final polish on my dissertation...yet somehow it made it past the gatekeepers affectionately (really--affectionately) known as "the bitches of Bynum hall)... 

   Anyway. It's actually a pretty good dissertation. But I'd die of shame if it were posted to the web. To be clear, though, it wasn't badly-written. So there's that, anyway.

   So, yeah. Biden's dissertation is badly-written, and it looks like a pretty low-grade piece of work. But that's not Biden's fault. That's basically the Ed.D. Education probably shouldn't be a field. It's widely-regarded inside academia as a kind of embarrassment. And it ought to be said more. The country, I'd guess, would be a lot better off without it. But there's no need to be mean to individual people.

   Finally--and I can't believe I've wasted so much time on this--is it that she really insists on being called "Dr."? I.e.: she wants people to refer to her as "Dr. Biden" or "Dr. Jill Biden"? Or is it that she likes being referred to as "Dr. Jill"? Because the latter may just be an affectionate thing her students call her, and she likes it. Anyway. Allegedly lefties made fun of Sebastian Gorka for something similar...also apparently what he really does is have "Dr.G." as a Twitter handle or somesuch.

   Anyway. This is all stupid.

   The reaction against Epstein is, naturally, much more insane...because the progressive left, as you may have noticed, has lost its goddamned mind. He's been removed from the Northwestern web-page (though he hasn't taught there for awhile) and (falsely, of course) accused of sexism and "misogyny" (a special, extra-bad kind of sexism!...because women!) So, yeah, Epstein seems to have been a bit of an ass...but generally maybe right. The left responds with its now-S.O.P. rabid totalitarian lunacy. They deserve merciless ridicule...and Biden is going to do their bidding and visit disaster on the country...so I say: let's not waste time being mean to his wife. That's the kind of thing the crazy PC left would do. That may be reason enough for sane people not to do it.

Once You Abandon The StraightWhiteWesternMale Obsession With Consistency, Whole New Vistas Of Bullshit Open Up

Not the Bee:

Criticizing AOC's haircut: doubleplus ungood.

Criticizing Ivanka's haircut: TOTALLY F*CKING WOKE, MOTHERF*CKER.

McConnell: Electoral College Has Spoken; Biden Is President-Elect

LOL n.b. Fox: "Trump's baseless claims of  'voter fraud' "....note: 

That should be:

"Baseless claims of voter fraud"

or

"Claims of 'voter fraud' "....

But probably not "baseless claims of  'voter fraud' "...  Unless 'voter fraud' is in quotes only because it's a direct quote...

But, more to the point: the MSM is either delusional or lying (or, I suppose, both...) if it thinks the claims are baseless. Even if the bases turn out to be false or insufficient, it's batshit to say that they don't exist. But now that they are barely even pretending to be even a little bit objective, they pour this shit on like nobody's business. 

Again, I hope this all turns out to be much ado about nothing. McConnell seems to think it will, no? And that matters. 

But the doubts have a basis. 

Jacobson: Where Things Stand At This Hour

link

We have substantial reason to think the election was stolen, but the legal remedies seen to have been exhausted.

He also writes (of an old acquaintance):

Back to Wisconsin. Karofsky was known to be on the extreme end of the spectrum, and she demonstrated it during the oral argument, with obviously planned pronouncements from the bench that the challenges were racist, and that Trump was acting like a king. It was the most abysmal display I’ve ever seen in an appellate court oral argument. Karofsky has just started her 10-year term in office.

It's hard to act surprised...that's the blue team's Master Argument now.

   What to do? Jacobson says to organize. I suppose that's good advice. I say: investigate. Journalists swarmed Florida after 2000 and conducted their own recounts--driven, of course, by the hope of proving that Gore had won. There's no such motive in this case--they want to pretend there are no questions in order to shut this down asap. In 2000 they repeated the mantra "count every vote"...though at that time they were at least concerned to pretend to be objective... Those days are obviously gone. Now they just angrily and repeatedly pronounce that it's over and there are no legitimate questions. To pretend otherwise is...you guessed it...a conspiracy theory!!!!1111  Even were they to conduct a recount, it obviously couldn't be trusted. 

    But obviously we have to know what happened. An election in which half of the people have no faith is basically worthless. Since Democrats and journalists (but I repeat myself) won't investigate (and couldn't be trusted if they did)...I guess that leaves...us? Whatever that means. 

   Internet Pubs do have a history of uncovering some pretty sophisticated blue-team shenanigans (e.g. the fake Bush TXANG memo.) So who knows?

   Ah, I don't have anything to say about this. I just don't know. I hope that's not just the relentless drumbeat of blue-team propaganda getting to me. 

   OTOH, the red team has gone from zero to crazy in like six weeks. Whew. Lots of comments over there about how it's obvious that there was electoral fraud and....[ominous suggestions follow...]. Well, as they say, the party out of power is crazy... Maybe that means that the blues will sober up a bit to compensate...though I wouldn't bet any money on it...

Biden Wins In Electoral College; Or: America Really Screws The Pooch This Time

Nice work, America. Now if you really want to make it quick, go ahead and hand the Senate to the blue team, too. 

Shadow In The Cloud

 This, with Chloe Grace Moretz, looks like it could be pretty cool.

George Floyd Repeat?

 If you believe basically any of this, there's not much I can do to help you. Mere falsehood won't stop it from triggering riots, though.

ASOG Report: Dominion Voting Systems Designed For Fraud

 link

Crazier and Crazier: PC Lefties Want Gina Cerano Fired From The Mandalorian Because She's Against Masks And Skeptical Of The Vaccines

 I've come to expect them to shriek and rend their garments over crackpot shit like "misgendering" and "deadnaming"....that's all so cracked that they're off in their own separate little cult world where the laws of reason don't obtain.  But there's something differently weird about thinking that someone shouldn't even be able to disagree about relatively pragmatic, empirically unclear matters like wearing masks. Their position on this is objectively less weird than their crazy gender stuff...so this is a strange reaction on my part. Maybe it's that it's actually a real, largely-non-religious issue, unlike gender dogma. Surely they should be able to be rational enough to realize that we don't have any proof that masks work...and that that matters...no? I guess part of the continued crazification of the left is that smaller and smaller deviations from doctrine are permitted. 

[Here's an indicator of how deranged this stuff has become:

Considering Disney likes to see themselves as a company for all, and the outrage against Gina Carano remaining on The Mandalorian has been quite loud, it wouldn’t be a surprise if The Mandalorian did get rid of Carano.

So...lemme see if I've got this straight: because Disney likes to represent itself as "a company for all"...it's likely to fire the one actor that steps out of political line by expressing a view believed by at least half the country...but extremely unpopular with deranged political cultists...  

Compare the tone of that piece to that of this one about rumors about firing the very PC Brie Larson from the Captain Marvel role. Actually, even I had heard that colleagues don't much like Larson...and I barely read anything about this stuff. I haven't even seen Captain Marvel yet.]

"Biden Calls For Unity..."

Hahahahaha fuck you, asshole.

I say: give them as much unity as they gave. Aim to wreck Biden/Harris, and stop everything the blue team tries to do to move the country leftward. 

I couldn't be more in favor of national unity. But that doesn't mean: compromise with a faction that's dropped off the edge of the rational world. Compromising with crazy people gets you crazy policies. 

Our task is to hobble the Dems until they shake off the progressives and return to relatively centrist liberalism. We have to hold out hope that this will happen--because if it doesn't, the country is toast.

Bill Barr Resigns

link.    I don't know enough about law, nor about attorneys general, to know what I think about Barr. I was, of course, disappointed that we didn't hear from Durham before the election...and didn't hear anything about Hunter Biden before the election... But Barr strikes me as a smart and honorable man. Dunno what to think about this.

Progressives preparing To Give Biden The Old Heave-Ho?

 Yes, there are, indeed, at least two different explanations. First: having effectively suppressed the Biden corruption stories until the election, the MSM is free now to let them come out--and, of course, there's incentive to do so. It's costly--in terms of political / media capital--to manipulate the news. The more overtly they do so, the more people will notice. So that explanation is about resisting the inherent desire of the information to be free...and then letting it go after the crucial date has passed. Alternatively, there are positive incentive for progressives to want to ditch Biden, obviously--then they get the candidate they really want (for various reasons...). OTOH, they'd probably rather not have to admit (if it would be an admission) that Biden is a crook. That'd carry a psychological cost, as the Trumpistas will crow mercilessly about it.

Can Our Liberal Constitutional Republic Survive The Assault From The Contemporary Far Left?

I don't know. You don't know. Nobody knows, so far as I can tell. They are pushing many crazy/radical ideas, any one of which could destroy the country. Open borders (or quasi-open-borders) alone could destroy it. The gutting of the First Amendment could destroy it. Similarly of the Second. Radical, rapid, coerced cultural transformation could destroy it. The loss of cultural and social cohesion could destroy it. The subordination of truth to leftist dogma could absolutely destroy it. Fanning the flames of (anti-white) racism (or, for that matter, any racism) could destroy it. The destruction of  every vestige of traditional sex roles--and/or the destruction/re-engineering of the nuclear family could destroy it. As could the leftist brand of environmentalism that basically sees humans as a blight. Some sane versions of those ideas I think are worth discussing--e.g. the weakening of traditional sex roles, and rethinking the nation as the primary political unit. But that's not what we're being asked--or commanded--to do.

   We're basically dealing with a set of radical, insane, untested ideas, about ten of which could destroy the country...and take Western Civilization with it. And, of course, in typical leftist/progressive fashion, we're told that they can't be discussed, they must simply be implemented immediately. 

   As I keep saying: I'm a philosopher. I'm willing to discuss almost anything. But we're facing a powerful political cult that is pushing crazy ideas and insisting that they must be implemented immediately and without discussion. 

   This is, honestly, the craziest goddamned thing I've ever seen in American politics in my entire life. And I've seen some pretty crazy shit--from both sides of the aisle.

Woketarianism Destroys Everything

Some silly thing about a food show...yet the frivolity of the whole thing is another measure of the evil heart of the cult.

Joseph Epstein On "Dr." Jill Biden: Pretty Much Right; Clearly Not Sexist

This is mainly right.

It is, of course, being accused of racism* by the Woketarian left--in this case: sexism variant...and misogyny. Why they often level both charges is beyond me. Though I think they're actually phasing out 'sexism' because it's unspecific with respect to sex. Thus, like 'racism,' it suggests that the non-left-favored class could be the object of such a thing. With 'racism,' they just started proclaiming that whites can't be victims of it, and blacks can't be perpetrators. The left, of course, love redefining terms--or trying to. But they could, in this case, also just phase out 'sexism'...or claim there's nothing wrong with it. Only misogyny matters...

   Anyway: nothing Epstein writes in any way suggests sexism at all. It's just the knee-jerk reaction of the cult to deploy some -ism or -phobia accusation whenever someone they favor--and who belongs to the appropriate group--is criticized. After four years of exhibiting vile contempt for Melania Trump--and that after eight years of adulation for Michelle Obama--the MSM is out of the gates fast with their pro-"Dr."-Jill-Biden project.

   As Epstein notes, almost no one with a Ph.D. goes around calling himself "Dr." in ordinary contexts. Anyone who does is ridiculed, at least silently. It's not some big deal. But it'd be kind of like always referring to yourself as John Jones, B.A. Speaking of which: nobody really calls himself "John Jones, Ph.D." in ordinary contexts, either. A friend of mine refers to it as "titling up" when he has to do it--as in "I had to title up." Which you do have to do sometimes in professional contexts. Or if it's on a dropdown menu or whatever. Then I choose "Dr."...but probably wouldn't bother to change it if it were wrong. 

   Look, I don't even think medical doctors identify themselves as "Dr. So-and-So" on Twitter--which is how Jill Biden does it. So this isn't really about medical degrees vs. Ph.D.s.  (Though it reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon that has a maitre d' saying into a phone something like "And, Dr. Jones, is this an actual medical degree or (merely?) a Ph.D.?" (probably not getting that exactly right...but NewYorker it up a bit.) 

   Also look: not to be a snob...but Biden's degree is actually an Ed.D... Which is a step down from an actual Ph.D., even. Though probably no less an accomplishment than a Ph.D. in one of the grievance studies, or one of the weaker humanities...

   Weirdly, I thought that making fun of her for using "Dr." all the time was fine...but suggesting to her that she stop doing it was...kinda weird. For some reason that part irked me a bit. Can't figure out this reaction...

   Epstein also notes that the value of Ph.D.s has diminished, and I agree. There's now so much lightweight, political bullshit in academia--including in the sciences--that there's not much reason to be impressed by a doctorate. Such a person could be a genius...but is probably not...and there's a decent chance he or she's an idiot...And the push for "diversity"...now "DEI" at my school...though I say "DIE" or "IED"...is just making it worse.  (Oh...we've just been told that they now want us to say "IDEA"--the 'A' is for a snazzier acronym...and for 'access.' Dipshits...) Needless to say, the push for "diversity" lowers standards. Everyone but the most thoroughly PC realizes that. But it also tends to bring in more Wokes. And that hastens the downward spiral...

   So this is all stupid, but that's the mud the Woketarians have dragged us down into. Our public discourse is stupider than ever, largely because a cult has taken the reigns. There's no sign it's power is diminishing, and no sign it'll ever stop being flat-out stupid and irrational.

[More bullshit accusations of sexism. Also: straw man. No one has claimed that she doesn't have a right to refer to herself as "Dr. Jill Biden." All they've noted is that it's bush league and a bit comical. And it is. 

OTOH, maybe we could response: that's kind of entitled bullshit. Maybe in your family Ph.D.s are a dime a dozen...but in many families their considered real accomplishments... I dunno. I don't think that's crazy. My grandma used to think that I should basically always use my title...she was so proud of it... Damn. I really miss my grandparents... Ok. That's enough of that...]j

[Y'know...now I'm thinking it's kinda mean to give her the business about this. I mean....it's not even at the 50-yard line by the vicious standards of contemporary public rhetoric...but still kinda mean. I mean...it really is a kind of bush-league thing to do. Which makes it kind of mean to make fun of. Not sexist, of course. That's still Woketarian bullshit. Those people are so goddamn stupid they don't even merit attention...or wouldn't if they weren't so crazy/dangerous/destructive... They always reach straight for the race* card--in this case: sex variant. In actual fact, it's just kinda nit-picking and mean. Though not wrong...]

WSJ: Trump's Challenge Is Over

 Seems reasonable to me.

Trump, "Treason," etc.

People on both sides need to stop throwing around the 'T' word. For one thing, they don't seem to know what it means. 

Gotta say, not sure right now which is more destructive: the blue team pretending there's no reason to doubt the legitimacy of the election, or Trump spewing nutty claims. He ought to be saying that we have grounds for doubt that must be addressed; but, of course, that's not the sort of thing Trump says. Instead what we get is "TREASON!" and similar stuff.

None of this is good.

The ACLU Is Now A Full-Blown Anti-Free-Speech Organization

The progressive left in yet another nutshell. An organization that had the defense of free speech at the very center of its mission now aims to restrict speech--in particular, that speech that conflicts with the superstitions of the cult of Woketarianism. An insane, radically relativistic, obviously false bit of nuttery thought up in the women's studies department last Tuesday trumps freedom of speech. "Strangio" herself is a woman misrepresenting herself as a man. Ergo the obvious hypothesis is that she's trying to overwrite the First Amendment with her own personal psychosexual struggles. I don't like to drag such personal matters into these discussions, but by this point there just doesn't seem to be any denying that this is much of what's going on across the board.

FALSE AND VIOLENT PRO-TRUMP PROUD FALSE BOYS LISTEN TO FALSE CONSPIRACY FALSEHOOD THEORIES AND STAB STAB STAB WHILE GOOD PRESIDENT-ELECT BIDEN IS GOOD

 My God. This is so embarrassing I ain't even hardly mad. (Warning! MS news--not an actual news source.) Six months of covering up the vicious violence at the mostly peaceful social justice riots for peace and justice...suddenly the MSM doesn't like political protests...nor violence. (In this case, well, they just can't tell which side it came from...though I, personally, have a guess...) Oh and: there's no reason to be skeptical of the election results...it's a fait accompli, bigot. Follow the democracy! We have innumerable reasons to doubt their account, of course. In fact, you have to be kinda stupid to believe them about this sort of thing. Lucy, football, blah blah blah.

I'm burned out on politics and trying to manage my finals. I have no doubt that Trump is being a buffoon about it...but I'm basically averting my eyes. I just can't stand to see it. (So: I'm being irresponsible about this.)  As I've claimed before: this is the worst possible outcome: we're going to get "progressive" policies and the worst of Trump's petulant, loony rhetoric. In the end, I expect it'll all come to this: the Dems pulled a fast one with their batflu / mass-mail-in-voting scheme--plus some more overt cheating here and there. Plus, of course, the torrent of MSM lies, the Hunter Biden cover-up, etc.) But the time to stop the mail-in voting caper was before the election, not after it. And the other stuff likely isn't serious nor widespread enough to matter enough. (Except for the MSM stuff...which won the election for them...but isn't illegal.) It's probably going to fall into the category: Banana-republicy...but not quite illegal enough to invalidate. Unfortunately, Trump's likely to be right that this is fishy as hell...but not right enough to win it. And he's capable of pig-headedness even when wrong. God knows what he might be capable of when mostly right... Thing about Trump is: a lot of the time he's right, and sees through the leftist bullshit; and a lot of the time he also seems to be wrong. We can't tell which it is...he probably can't even. And he's not exactly a man of humility and epistemic caution...

The blue team runs everything now, including especially the media. So they're basically pretending that there's nothing to see here. The (small-'d') democratic thing to do, of course, would be to investigate the hell out of this. But the (big-'d') Democrats are pretending that you've got to be crazy to even question. Which, again, is the leftist strategy: don't try to win the debate--try to stop the debate. Pretend there's no real question...pretend the debate is over and you won...pretend that there's no time to debate...just don't admit there's a genuine question and you have to produce evidence and arguments.

They might be right--their apparent win might be actual. I expect it is. But it isn't, really, unless its proven to be. IMO the GOP rammed through their FL "win" in 2000. Though they ended up actually winning, we didn't know that at the time because they refused to actually recount the votes. Though, admittedly, it was complicated. The Dems are doing basically the same thing now--refusing to admit that we can't, given what we currently know and don't know--say with sufficient confidence that Biden won. Maybe the information is out there and I'm just not seeing it. Again, I'm not digging hard into this stuff as I often do. I do know that the MSM can't be trusted even a little bit with respect to such issues, though. So their insistence that--mirabile dictu!--there's nothing to see here only makes me more skeptical.

This is all likely to bring out the worst of the right--which can be very bad indeed. Then the MSM will exaggerate it, of course. God knows where all this will end up. Not a good place, I reckon.

Biden Planning Radical Anti-Firearm Action?

 Probably.

Did The Trump Threaten the Head of FDA To Speed Approval of Vaccine???

Breaking —> White House orders FDA chief to authorize Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Friday or submit his resignation, ⁦@jdawsey1⁩ and ⁦@lauriemcginley2⁩ report https://t.co/6dKqAFMp2f

— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) December 11, 2020

WTH??? 

Fleischer: MSM "Fear and Favor" Dems

 link.  In other news: grass green, snow white.

The Secondary Headline Than Which No More Hacktastic One Can Be Conceived

 Via Insty:

This @NBCNews drop head is absolutely stunning: pic.twitter.com/y77mDgWtxV

— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) December 11, 2020

You really, honestly, actually cannot make this shit up. 

NYT Still Flogging Masks And Lockdowns

The more the crackpots on the progressive left shriek at us to do this stuff, the less I do it

   Not content to merely lie and pontificate about their favored new pseudomedical fads merely in the first sentence, their political preferences are shoved into the title, too, also masquerading as knowledge:

"We Know How to Curb the Pandemic. How Do We Make People Listen?"

"We" actually meaning: progressives and their highly-politicized quasi-medical propaganda wing... "People" meaning: the deplorables.

At this point, we have all the scientific information we need in order to prevent the surgings of the coronavirus: Avoid gathering indoors with people from outside your household, keep physically apart from others, wear a mask, wash your hands often.

LOL such bullshit. "We" don't have "all" the scientific information we need in order to prevent "surgings" of the bat flu. Nobody who pays even the most casual attention to this stuff could believe this is true. Her recommendations are beloved by progressives, but they're basically the ones we started out with, and basically based on guesses and a certain amount of common sense. Avoid close contact with non-family in small spaces? Really?? This new learning amazes me! Keep your distance? Who denies that? Wear a mask: entirely unproven. Seems to me that, intuitively, it might help some...but, again, anyone paying any attention knows that this isn't knowledge. Wash your hands often? Roger that, blue fruitcake...but I thought the newest "science" fad was: that's not how you get respiratory viruses? 

   She left out: don't go to church, don't go to school, airdrop ballots across entire states instead of voting in person...and never, ever say "MAGA!".... Then there's my favorite: BLM rallies/mostly-peaceful-protests/riots actually decrease your odds of getting the 'ro!

   The NYT is an embarrassment at this point.

[Of course this is par for the course on the contemporary left: trot out whatever fads happen to be popular at the moment and call them "the science."]

Progressive Pravda Buries Another Blue-Team Scandal

 Swalwell and the Chinese spy.

SpaceX Starship SN8 Go Boom: "Suicide Burn Was A Little Late"

 

Atomwaffen Division

The Atomwaffen Division is one of my favorite (" ") hard-right uber-wacko outfits. Aside from the, y'know, actual violence. Check out the pic here. Missing caption: Hans...are we the baddies? Then. when you're done, you better clear your browser history, my dude...

   The crazy left is obviously our biggest problem right now...and their ongoing red-herring propaganda effort about TEH WHITE SUPREMAZIZTS!!!!111 is so transparent that it can't possibly fool anybody but the truest of believers. But--not that you need me to remind you--the crazy right is still out there...lurking. And, though I generally eschew counterproductivity arguments, there's no doubt in my mind that the cultural hegemony of the crazy left will, eventually, swell the ranks of its opposite number.

   They seem to me to pose different kinds of threats. The crazy left is well-organized, with a kind of structure such that crazy ideas get manufactured in academia and then trickle down to the rest. It long ago embarked on it's "long march through the institutions." The left is playing the long game...and it's winning. It's winning almost exclusively by calling anyone who opposes it racist. It's winning with a word, basically. The crazy right is far less numerous and well-organized. It's as marginalized as it could be. The crazy left is in control of the left; the crazy right is hated and shunned by everyone, including everyone on the right...but then every now and then, somebody over there just blows a gasket...and then the shooting starts. Then, of course, that's used as evidence that we need to crank the leftism up to eleven...and the cycle threatens to repeat itself. Or thus it seems to me.

   In general, I find esoteric Hitlerism a hoot. I mean...as if all the other Nazi shit weren't cracked enough...you gotta add some woo to it. Not to suggest that supernaturalism isn't already in actual Nazism, of course. Those guys, man...it's like it was their project to cram in all the bad ideas...