McAuliffe Wins Endorsement Of Wrongest Man In Politics

This is the correct reaction:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA https://t.co/SGVjRKUNbI

— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) September 29, 2021

OD Pubs Take Early Voter Lead?

If the Pubs win big, the takeover of universities by radical crazies may slow a bit. But I've come to doubt that they can be saved. 8 years of DeVos might have done the trick. We might well need a Reagan-level event to save them at this point.

My own institution is circling the drain furiouser and furiouser. 

The ACLU Has Completely Flipped Its Shit

Remember when the ACLU used to be...not completely fucking insane?

With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, we lost a champion for abortion and gender equality. And on the anniversary of her death, the fight to protect abortion access is more urgent than ever. pic.twitter.com/vIKadIHouN

— ACLU (@ACLU) September 18, 2021

Unhinged Anti-DeSantis Ad

At first I thought it was a pro-DeSantis ad making fun of the loony left...but...guess not...

Stop what you are doing and watch this immediately. If you are ready to remove Ron DeathSantis from office retweet this new ad and make sure everyone can see it. pic.twitter.com/AyaHQ77fqs

— Remove Ron (@RemoveRon) September 29, 2021

The Mustang Mach-E: A Sign Of The Apocalypse

This is not a Mustang.

It is:

A butt-ugly

electric

SUV

not a Mustang

QED

Chip Manufacturing Returning To The States?

I don't understand how this could not be imperative.

Are we going to rely on the place China has been salivating to invade for 70 years?

But there must be arguments--it simply can't be as obvious as it seems.

Kavanaugh's Finances: When You've Lost Mother Jones...

link

And I'll take this opportunity to remind everyone: Christine Blasey-Ford is a liar. She blatantly and provably lied in her testimony. There is no doubt whatsoever about this. She lied about fear of flying, she lied about her two front doors, and she lied about Kavanaugh attacking her at a party.

3,500,000,000,000 = 0

link

Surely you don't harbor the racist belief that math is objective...do you, bigot?

I was having second thoughts about buying a truck...but I now see that it'll cost nothing at all if I make some more money and spend less on other stuff... Woohoo! Free truck!

Everything Stupid About The Contemporary Humanities In One Post: Climate Change and "POWER"!!!!!1111

This is so stupid that I'm going to try to get time to come back to it when I'm not busy in order to make fun of it in detail.

But the short story: power is like The Force or something to lefty (pseudo-)intellectuals. Fetishizing/demonizing it has ruined their thinking.

"How Badly Unvaccinated Republicans Are In One Stat"

Agreed. But vaccinated Dems aren't exactly covering themselves in glory when it comes to their belief about the risk of being unvaccinated...

   But anyway, everybody ought to stop being stupid. 

   Which doesn't mean that I think healthy young people should get vaccinated. I kinda sorta think they shouldn't. But my opinion should carry no weight. I got vaccinated. Though I'm not young and not all that healthy.

Monmouth: McAuliffe +5

Disheartening.

Europe Proves Renewables Are Not Ready For Prime Time

Someday, I'd think. Though probably in a major supplemental role. But not yet.

They're being pushed for political reasons, not scientific/engineering ones. 

I'd like to see the true cost per kW-h. 

Look, I, too, think renewables are cool. I grew up reading sci-fi like other red-blooded American nerds. I wish they could do the job. Economically. But they can't. 

This is one of the things that climate panic does--pushes us to bring alt-energy sources online before they're economical.

And, of course: what we do matters little given what China and India and the rest of the world are doing. 

And, of course: if we're serious, we should stop playing with cool toys and build nuclear.

So it seems to me, semi-well-informed layperson, anyway.

Rufo: The White Backlash (Against CRT) That Wasn't

link
The long and the short of it: the progressive left only has one argument: You're a racist for opposing our crazy, extremist bullshit. It's hard to take them seriously, but Rufo does. And it's a bloodbath.

The FJB Chant Is Everywhere (?)

Well, about ten places, anyway. 

As before: we do not approve. But we understand.

The Progressives [i.e.: Radicals] Have Already Won. (Partially Because Biden Is Now One Of Them)

Hey, remember how I yammered ceaselessly before the election about how A Biden victory would be a progressive/radical victory? Because Biden didn't have it in him to oppose them? 

I sure do hate being right all the time:

The president’s gesture of support underscored the political reality that is driving the tense negotiations on Capitol Hill: In the battle for ideological supremacy in the Democratic Party, the progressives have already won. Biden was indeed a proud moderate during his three and a half decades as a senator, but he has fallen in firmly with the progressives as president. He’s embraced the agenda championed by the likes of his former rivals Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—tackling climate change; creating a new child-care tax credit; expanding the government’s role in health care; endorsing universal pre-K, free community college, and paid family leave—and made it his own. The moderates in the House and Senate are balking at the size and scope of Biden’s plan, and, still, the president is siding with the progressives.

   I understand not being able to vote for Trump--even being compelled to vote against him. But it was the wrong decision. Trump was an embarrassing pain-in-the-ass who was, policy-wise, a good president. In fact, a really good one. His policies made the country's future brighter. Biden has harmed the country immeasurably already. And he might just wreck it. As I noted pre-election: it wasn't Trump v. Biden, it was Trump v. the Woketarian cult. And Biden was going to simply be a catspaw of the latter. He's nearly a seamless conduit for their crazy. 

   I would have been extremely happy to have been wrong about this.

Pelosi Goes For (Making Us All) Broke

Remember when I thought she was going to stiff-arm the radicals?

Yeah, I'm an idiot.

The COVID Panic Police

link

   The ivermectin narrative also fit neatly into a broader trend in COVID reporting: alarmism. The terrified tone of so much pandemic reporting, understandable early on when so little was known about the virus and when vaccines were not yet created, has become a permanent feature despite gains in treatment and the protection offered by mass vaccination. It is a form of path dependence whereby the default position for reporting about a new virus variant, for example, or about new treatments for COVID symptoms, begins from a point of panic rather than dispassionate fact-gathering.
   This was evident with much of the reporting on the Delta variant. As COVID cases (overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated) began to rise this summer, albeit with thankfully lower death rates, news outlets shifted away from discussing the raw number of COVID hospitalizations and deaths (which would help readers put the recent wave in context) and instead talked about percentage increases that made the situation sound far more dire than it was—especially given the availability of free vaccines.
   Story after story on cable news and in newspapers emphasized the dangers of the Delta variant and its supposed deadlier nature (which proved not to be true). In late July, the Washington Post ran a fearful story with the headline “The War Has Changed,” citing an internal CDC slide presentation about the Delta variant that emphasized breakthrough infections (which have proven not to be as widespread as stories suggest) and that claimed (falsely) that Delta was as contagious as chickenpox. By early September, the New York Times front page featured stories such as “Covid deaths surge across a weary America as a once-hopeful summer ends.”
   There are a few notable exceptions to this trend. David Leonhardt at the New York Times has used his morning newsletter to debunk several COVID-related panics, most recently analyzing the available data regarding breakthrough cases of COVID in the vaccinated population. (His finding: The vaccinated have a 1-in-5,000 chance, at worst, of being hospitalized due to a breakthrough.)

At least two of these things are clear: 

First: the media and the left generally is dedicated to panic-mongering.

Second: one way they effect this is by stressing whichever measure sounds worst. Oh and, of course: avoiding any mention of the fact that the average COVID death is a person older than the average person lives with four comorbidities. It does kill young, healthy people...but apparently not all that much. But the fact that these things are rarely mentioned--and weren't mentioned at all for nearly a year--itself tells us a lot. Information sources honestly dedicated to getting us the truth would be blaring such information at least once a week.

Is The Spending The Point?

Sorta, I think.

Or at least: maybe.

This is the kind of thing that often looks very different to experts and laypeople. People like me understand very little about what things look like to experts. And yet, given what I know about how universities operate...it wouldn't surprise me at all if the spending is, to at least some extent, the point.

Wesley Yang: Objectivity and Rigor: Politically Incorrect

At some point the agencies that collect the data (statistics, surveys, etc) on which all other journalists and researchers rely will start tweeting out cringe about the harm of objectivity, neutrality, and rigor, pledging to decolonize their practices. It will be lights out .

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) September 26, 2021

Kostoff et al.: "Why Are We Vaccinating For COVID-19 In Children?"

 Most of this is consistent with what seems to me to be fairly well-established. And I've said so several times in various posts. I didn't realize that the second-to-last bullet point was true--but I've said that I didn't think we could have much of an idea about such effects, and I've noted that these were more important in the cases of younger people. I have seen stuff about the final bullet point--but I hadn't drawn any conclusions about it. I certainly didn't know about a lot of the stuff in the abstract. I'm very skeptical of the final paragraph. Can that stuff possibly be true??

Highlights

• Bulk of COVID-19 per capita deaths occur in elderly with high comorbidities.
• Per capita COVID-19 deaths are negligible in children.
• Clinical trials for these inoculations were very short-term.
• Clinical trials did not address long-term effects most relevant to children.
• High post-inoculation deaths reported in VAERS (very short-term).

Abstract

This article examines issues related to COVID-19 inoculations for children. The bulk of the official COVID-19-attributed deaths per capita occur in the elderly with high comorbidities, and the COVID-19 attributed deaths per capita are negligible in children. The bulk of the normalized post-inoculation deaths also occur in the elderly with high comorbidities, while the normalized post-inoculation deaths are small, but not negligible, in children. Clinical trials for these inoculations were very short-term (a few months), had samples not representative of the total population, and for adolescents/children, had poor predictive power because of their small size. Further, the clinical trials did not address changes in biomarkers that could serve as early warning indicators of elevated predisposition to serious diseases. Most importantly, the clinical trials did not address long-term effects that, if serious, would be borne by children/adolescents for potentially decades.
A novel best-case scenario cost-benefit analysis showed very conservatively that there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic. The risk of death from COVID-19 decreases drastically as age decreases, and the longer-term effects of the inoculations on lower age groups will increase their risk-benefit ratio, perhaps substantially.

People Who Give Birth

Shouldn't they be known as "birthers"?

Incidentally: SciAm

Totally racist. Orientalism by homophony, bigots.

SciAm "JEDI" Article: Titania Strikes Again?

Well, ze strikes again whichever way you go on this. Poe's law vindicated. Since the left has, in essence, agreed that we get to believe whatever we want, I choose to believe this is true:

As a proud feminist, I have always dreamed of the day that women will be referred to as “bodies with vaginas”.

Thank you @TheLancet for making that dream come true. 👏 pic.twitter.com/awWJd9l9N9

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) September 24, 2021

Titania McGrath Strikes Again: "Bodies With Vaginas" Edition

As a proud feminist, I have always dreamed of the day that women will be referred to as “bodies with vaginas”.

Thank you @TheLancet for making that dream come true. 👏 pic.twitter.com/awWJd9l9N9

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) September 24, 2021

WSJ: Trump Loses AZ--Again

It seems to not quite be this simple, but I just don't have time to follow this story closely right now. But supposing that none of the other stuff that's been reported is all that serious, this is very good news.

Noah Carl: Decolonize Air Traffic Control!

This general point has been made before, but not generally this pithily/poignantly:

We need to decolonise air traffic control. Who says that only Western science has something to teach us about flight? We should explore indigenous ways of landing.

— Noah Carl (@NoahCarl90) September 25, 2021

Hiring on the basis of anything other than merit means sacrificing, well, merit. And that's just about all there is to it. 

Actual Justice Warrior: KYLE RITTENHOUSE CROSSED STATE LINES!!!!!!111111oneoneone

The prosecutor is an evil moron.

The Good News: Biden's Massive Expansion Of The Welfare State Won't Actually Cost $3.5 Trillion

The bad news...

The left never stops. It never, ever, ever stops. No matter how insane they become, no matter how incoherent their cultural mutilations become, no matter how massive government becomes...it will never be enough. There are no stopping-points; there are only rallying-points. 

   It took me decades to realize this.

   Don't be stupid like me.

   It's right in front of your eyes.

In Scientific American: "Why the Term ‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion"

Strangely, they fail to mention the most important point: It's fucking idiotic.

   Instead, they manage to make a bunch of arguments that--miraculously--manage to be even more fucking idiotic than that fucking puerile acronym. 

   They're marketing this shit. 

   Sophistry.

"Joe Biden's Poll Numbers Are Plummeting At Exactly The Wrong Time"

You spelled 'right' wrong.

ACLU Minitrue Rewrites RBG Quote To Make It Politically Correct

Because, hey, sometimes men have babies, right?

Matthew Schmitz: Angelo Codevilla: The Conservative Thinker Who Took On The Ruling Class

link

GOP Exaggerating Biden's Cognitive Decline?

Yes. But this really isn't reassuring.

   tl;dr: Trump! It's just age, not dementia...probably. There's no single "puppeteer." Ha ha nobody cut off the mic! Casual ageism! Truuump!

   But the Pubs have been exaggerating the problem since the campaign. And they do have the same group-thinky tendencies any other party has. Not as bad as the contemporary Dems, of course--almost nobody's that bad. But anyway. There certainly is cause for concern, but it doesn't yet seem like a red alert situation.

Angelo Codevilla, RIP

Damn.

Codevilla's a guy I only discovered a year or two ago, but I really like his stuff.

This is a real loss.

It's thought that he may have been killed by a drunk driver.

The Biden/Psaki "They Don't Intend To Stay" Lie and Unvaccinated Illegals

Yup.

   In fact, of course, it's a double lie. First, they do intend to stay, else it would make no sense to go through what they've undoubtedly gone through to get here. It's a bald-face lie to say otherwise. 

   But, second: whether or not they intend to stay is barely relevant at all. If unvaccinated, all they need to do is come into the country for a little while to do damage. If this weren't true, there'd be no reason to turn away unvaccinated legal visitors.

   Part of the overarching problem we face when trying to have such debates with contemporary progressivism is that we have to keep deflecting its sophistical character assassination. So we feel inclined to endlessly repeat that we don't hate (progressivism's favorite word...next to 'racism') those who try to come in illegally. It's an angrifying situation, but their actions are understandable. If I were in their position, I'd likely do the same thing. It's a hate the sin, love the sinner situation. But to endlessly repeat such things sounds a lot like begging the forgiveness of a view that we do not and should not respect. Eventually, we get tired of this game. It's fixed anyway. There's no winning it on their terms. 

   But the point at hand is: they're lying yet again. Trump, for all his flaws, is much more honest than Biden and that bunch.

J. Peder Zane: Charles Murray On Facing Reality: Race and IQ

As I've argued many times, this topic tests our commitment to inquiry. Almost no one can look at the facts without flinching. 

   In a way, the PC left made it possible for Murray to do so by doing everything it could to destroy him. The Bell Curve came out back during the paleo-PC era, and the left turned all its guns on him. Because of about half a page of writing. Even some of the most reasonable people I knew said utterly daft things about the data and Murray himself. Since then, his name has come up every now and then on campus--in classes and committee meetings. Invariably, what was said about him was false. But by doing its worst to him, the PCs more-or-less left him nothing to lose.

   So he's just about the only person willing to state the relevant evidence clearly. 

   Zane hits one relevant nails on the head:

Given the current climate, it is not surprising that his new book, “Facing Reality,” has been largely ignored by almost every major newspaper and magazine. But this dismissal is, ironically, a validation of his premise.
If his numbers were easily debunked, legions of journalists and social commentators would be lining up to do so. If the problem he identifies were easy to fix, they would be telling us how. Their unwillingness to engage Murray (pictured) is tantamount to an acceptance of racial determinism.

   In actual fact, there is a giant pile of evidence for racial IQ differences. That conclusion could be wrong, but it probably isn't. And if this fact were openly discussed, it would knock the feet out from under contemporary progressivism, which leans crucially on a barely-warranted and probably false assumption: that all racial differences are due to oppression. Without that assumption, progressivism collapses. The neo-Marxist IdP left already deals viciously with any who honestly discuss politically incorrect facts and evidence. They deal extremely harshly with anyone who honestly discusses this particular evidence. For progressivism, almost everything rests on suppressing this science. This is a real test case for the competing--liberal/conservative vs. progressive/neo-Marxist--worldviews. Thus far the latter has been winning for related reasons: there are truths that the latter group is unwilling to even recognize and the former group is unwilling to speak; and there is no falsehood so absurd and scurrilous that the latter group is unwilling to say it. It this continues, there's no way for the former faction to win the debate.

How's That "Root Cause" Thing Comin' Along, Kamala?

I guess Reingate is more important....

Brought to you by the same people who can't tell a noose from a loop.

Riding Horses Is Not Whipping Hatians

Progressivism is making people dumber.

Actual Justice Warrior: Julius Jones Is Guilty As Sin

AJW is on fire--and he's hot about this one. 

And he's absolutely right: to quasiparaphrase W. K. Clifford: if you don't ****ing have time to examine the evidence, then you don't have ****ing have time to form an opinion. Not to mention write letters to the murder victim's sister.

GodDAMN people are stupid.

Lysenkoism Watch: Pomo-Prog Gobbledygook In Letters To Nature

Holy crap.

Science is in genuine danger.

Note that they declare no competing interests...which, apparently, includes the search for truth...

CORRESPONDENCE

21 September 2021

Changing the wrapping won’t fix genetic-racism package

Latifa Jackson ,

Krystal S. Tsosie &

Keolu Fox

Nature misses a chance to grant agency to marginalized communities in inviting Alice Popejoy to point out that altering racial classifications will not absolve power imbalances in genetics (Nature 596, 463; 2021).

In 1785, philosopher Christoph Meiners reduced continental-scale diversity to an imperial classification system to subjugate colonized peoples. This system is still used by geneticists, and lingers beyond terms such as Caucasian. New ethnonyms replaced older terms (‘mongoloid’ became ‘Asian’, for instance) but failed to redress underlying racism. And socially constructed categories are used in biologically essentialist ‘race correction’ to model disease risks (see, for example, D. E. Roberts Lancet 397, 17–18; 2021).

To demolish genetic racism, geneticists must defer to communities to self-define their ‘belongingness’ (see, for example, K. S. Tsosie Curr. Opin. Genet. Dev. 62, 91–96; 2020). Any unequal system of classification that reifies race, ethnicity and ancestry for biological insight reproduces the obstacles it attempts to dismantle and does not solve the causes of health disparities.

We advocate empowering communities to label themselves; to undertake ethnographies to contextualize research findings; and to self-determine research they deem beneficial.

Nature 597, 475 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02553-z

COMPETING INTERESTS

The authors declare no competing interests.

   Because, you see, the subordination of science to leftist politics is now basically orthodoxy. "Empowering communities" is much more important. And God forbid that we "reify" race...which, y'know, must be made just real enough to allow 50% of academicians to pretend to study it so that they have an excuse for dressing up their personal political opinions as research...but no realer. It's, like, SUPER-REAL...as a social kind! Because the left has a religious belief that everything is social. Except when its convenient to label some sex thing innate. Like, er, sex--maleness and femaleness--is just social and made up! But sexual preference is totally hardwired into your brain, bigot! As is liking to wear dresses!

   But where was I? Oh, yeah--if you even suggest that races are biological, you're an oppressor, Jack.

   And, as always: why are you worried about this, anyway? Bigot. Political correctness doesn't exist and it's totally isolated to campuses anyway and besides it's impossible to do science without it and the real problem is not their total lack of objectivity but, rather, your continue belief in objectivity as an ideal. Bigot.

Greenwald on Megan Kelly: Russiagategate and "Shaming" the Unvaccinated

Greenwald: "What I think this is starting to show is that There was real criminality in connection with Russiagate and during the 2016 campaign--it's just the criminality and corruption was done by those that propagated the conspiracy..."

   Glenn's a step or two behind in this case: this has been clear for, what, over two years now? The actual scandal isn't Russiagate--it's Russiagategate. There was an actual, realio-trulio conspiracy...not Trump + Russians, but Clinton campaign + Dem operatives + FBI + media. 

   But, since progressives control the media, the fake scandal got about two years of nonstop press...whereas the actual scandal has been relentlessly squelched.

Greenwald: The Indictment of Hillary Clinton's Lawyer is an Indictment of the Russiagate Wing of U.S. Media

Subscribers only, unfortunately.

AOC's Dress Seems Like A Weird Place To Draw The Line

Not putting dogma above truth? Not violating election laws? Not sexually mutilating kids? Not throwing open the border? Really? None of those? Huh. Ok.

"Justice For J6": Federman

 

"Justice For J6"-Style Captcha

via Insty:

Easiest captcha ever pic.twitter.com/TDNH91LZ0y

— The Engine (@ngintx) September 18, 2021

The Border Invasion Worsens; Biden's FAA Implements No-Fly Zone For Drones

The Democrats are doing this intentionally. Trump stopped it. Biden started it up again. He could end it. But he just keeps letting it get worse.

   And: can Biden possibly get away with prohibiting drones? It's obviously in order to suppress reporting on his border catastrophe.

   And don't forget: we'll be paying about $82k for each individual in that mass of people over the course of his or her lifetime. 

That Botched (i.e.: Murderous) Drone Strike...

Unless there's something we don't know about this, I don't see how this can be blamed on Biden...

But when you botch everything else you do, you make it more believable that even the stuff you didn't do is your fault. Of course we can imagine ways Biden might have been responsible--e.g. if the WH was pressuring the military to launch strikes--e.g. as a way of shifting attention away from the botched withdrawal... But I haven't seen any reason to think that's what happened.

Turley: HRC's Lawyer's Indictment Reveals Bag Of (Dirty) Tricks

Ok, I'm going to to with: I told you so.

   Russiagate was such a huge, stinking pile of nonsense that...even though I had vowed to ignore it and wait for the Mueller report...and even though I was still devoutly anti-Trump at the time...I stopped ignoring it and made a call. Specifically: that it was bullshit. I'm not claiming any special insight nor superior intelligence. I think it was obvious that it was bullshit. Some day I may go back and see when I started expressing that view.

   Similarly: I called Russiagategate as a genuine conspiracy long ago. I was just going on information widely reported in the conservative press at the time. Again: no special insight, etc. 

   The claim that Trump was a Russian "asset" was ridiculous from the beginning. It was actually kinda dumb for me to take it seriously at all. It always seemed incredible...but I did seriously consider it. 

   And the information that this was a Democrat/media/FBI dirty trick was available well before the election. Since, what? 2018 or so? Can't remember. But that, too, has been obvious for a long time.

WSJ: Durham Cracks The Russia Case

link

Durham Russiagategate Indictment: Perkins Coie Lawyer Michael Sussmann

link

Perkins Coie is, inter alia, a Democrat lawfare--and dirty tricks--outfit:

   In painstaking detail, Durham laid out in the indictment Thursday how Democrat superlawyer Michael Sussmann used Clinton campaign funds to construct a now-debunked memo and other evidence alleging that computer communications between a server at the Alfa Bank in Russia and the Trump Tower in New York might be a secret backdoor communication system for Trump and Vladimir Putin to hijack the 2016 election.
   Sussmann delivered the package in mid-September 2016 — just weeks before Election Day as Trump and Clinton were locked in a tight race — to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker, even after the team of computer experts warned the theory was a "red-herring," according to the indictment.
   And then Sussmann falsely told Baker, the prosecutors alleged, he was providing the information to the FBI solely as a good citizen, and not on behalf of any client.
   In fact, Sussmann was working on behalf of a tech executive and the Clinton campaign and charged nearly all the work on the Alfa Bank narrative to the Democratic presidential campaign, including his meeting with Baker, the indictment stated.
   The alleged lying, Durham argued, deceived the FBI into thinking the allegations were coming from a neutral source — Sussmann had been a cybersecurity expert — and not an election-motivated client.
   "In truth, and in fact, and as Sussmann well knew, Sussmann had acted on behalf of and in coordination with two specific clients of the law firm: tech executive 1 and the Clinton campaign in assembling and conveying these allegations," the grand jury indictment charged.

So part of the reason Sussman was caught is that he charged his dirty-tricks work to the Clinton campaign... I find that hilarious. You'd think that someone who'd interfere with an American presidential election would at least do it out of conviction... 

   I'm old enough to remember when the Democrats were the good--or, at least, less-bad--guys.

   Imagine the press this would be getting if the tables were turned. And it seems that most of my Democratic friends tune out when Russiagategate does manage to break through the MSM force field of silence. That's understandable, but irresponsible. I wonder whether the true horror of the situation will ever dawn on them: Trump and the Pubs were probably the better choice--or at least the less-bad one--even in '16. Though Trump's actions after his loss in '20 change the picture significantly. OTOH, he may well have been right yet again--the election may well have been stolen. Not by the Venezuelan KGB or whatever--but by the almost-certainly-illegal re-writing of election laws by Democrat judges etc. Without those misdeeds, Trump's freakout might never have happened. Of course we might respond that it revealed propensities that make him unfit for the office even if they never manifested themselves. There are obvious responses, but they don't clearly beat that objection. It's not clear to me which side of that debate wins.

Happy Constitution Day!

YAY!

Kid Not Really Endangered By COVID-Delta

Unsurprising.

"Privilege On A Warming Planet"

CLIMATE RACISM IS KILLING US! DECOLONIZE!!!!1111

The stupid...it burns....

The line-up:

Thursday 23 * Local time*
Opening, reading and discussion groups,
15:30- 16:30 *book presentation* Climate Change is Racist - Jeremy Williams
17:00-18:00 *lecture* Leon Sealey Huggins
20:00 – 21:30 *panel discussion* Climate Change is Racist - Williams, Sealey-Huggins and Bergman

Friday:
11:00- 12:00 *Opening of day 2. *
*Panel 1.* Anthropo-who? Jasmijn Leeuwenkamp -Climate justice and the over-representation of Man in Human Right
13:30 – 15:00 *Panel 2.* Privilege and Denial
Vanessa Weihgold - The Fear of Justice in realizing Climate Privilege
Ewoud Vandepitte - Ruled by urgency? Tense temporalities in the Climate Justice Movement
15:30- 17:00 *Panel 3. *Colonialism and Climate Change
Elias Koenig - Climate Justice Beyond the Canon: Undoing Conceptual Imperialism
Archana Ramanjujam - Towards a Du Boisian Approach to the Climate Crisis
20:00-21:30 *lecture* Anneleen Kenis - Don't blame 'men' for climate change? On hegemonic masculinities and the climate crisis.

Don't miss it, bigot!

California Can't Be Saved From Itself

link

MMA: Man Representing Himself As A Woman Beats Actual Woman

Amazing!

Astonishing!

Entirely unpredictable!

  Look at that dude when he--or "she," as the story insists--was in special forces. I do not want to fight that dude. Give that dude any amount of estrogen you want, he's not going to lose a fight to a woman. 

   But the progressive press insist on referring to him as "she," calling him a woman, referring to him as female, the whole nine yards. That's what we're up against. Contemporary progressivism is a massive web of lies and delusions, unhinged from reality. 

   And, yeah, keep this up and an actual woman is going to get crippled or killed. You can pretend all you want, but facts a re stubborn things.

Governor Race Leans McAuliffe

link

Though Trafalgar is the most reliable, and they have TM by only 1 point.

I understand why one might vote against Youngkin. I don't think this choice is so obvious that only the benighted could choose the other guy. 

But damn, the OD is heading for a ditch, and the thought of McAuliffe...again...is depressing as hell. But that's what I expect. The real hope is in the General Assembly.

Honestly, Virginia universities are in trouble. We, in particular, are being ravaged by the progressive left.

Dubya's Dreadful 9/11 Speech

The 1/6 riot was fucking nitwits on parade. A national embarrassment. The sullying of United States Capitol--of a great symbol of the nation. It was nauseating. 

   It was not an insurrection. It was not treason. It was not terrorism.* It was not the most profound attack on the government since the Civil War...or the War of 1812...or whatever the hell it was people said. It was not like Pearl Harbor. It was not like 9/11. It was not even much like the BLM/Pantyfa mostly peaceful social justice riots for peace and justice. It was a god. damned. tragedy of a mess of mass stupidity. Especially by Trump, the stupid sonofabitch. 

   But Dubya--not the brightest of bulbs even at his brightest--was just talking bullshit. I think he wants to be liked by the Obamas--and probably the rest of the D.C. kool kids. And like the rest of the GOPe, he wants to distance himself from Trump. And if he's gotta say that a half-naked, half-baked guy in a Viking hat is like Mohammad Atta...well, then, so be it...

   Which is not to say that Dubya isn't a likeable guy...'cause he seems like he is.

Robby Soave: Lena Wen (CNN): The Unvaccinated Should Not Be Allowed To Travel

The left is about yea far [indicates very small distance between thumb and index finger] from going full totalitarian.

Panpsychism Watch: Mushroom Cognition?

I'm not saying yes...but I'm not saying no...

"Doctors Join The Climate Lobby"

link

See: (a) the medicalization of everything, (b) the left's colonization of institutions.

The CDC's Forever War On Guns

This is right.

This BS is part of the medicalization of everything.

It's also a manifestation of one of the main problems with leftism/progressivism...and, yes, maybe even liberalism: the left tends to be activist and to politicize everything. It tends to take over / colonize institutions and bend them to its (often sinister) purposes. 

Vaccines Effective Against COVID-delta

This isn't really helping advance PROJECT: PANIC!

Seems like another reason in favor of taking the vaccine, though, if you're on the bordeline.

"These Are The People Getting Serious Cases Of COVID-19"

The unvaccinated.

   This is good to know, but a sufficiently complete picture requires that we also know about age, (too-high) BMI, and other comorbidities.

   I'm still not convinced--but, then, I have zero expertise--that healthy young people should be getting vaxxed. It still seems to me--again: zero expertise--that we'd want to be more certain about the long-term effects of the vaccine before recommending it too strongly to the young and healthy. They have the most remaining years of life to screw up. And vaccinating everyone with a fast-tracked vaccine seems like a major case of putting all our eggs in one basket. Counterpoint: we also don't know the long-term effects of COVID. (Again: non-expert.) Of course if more young, healthy people take the vaccine, it would--apparently--help quash the thing faster and minimize the spread. So that matters a lot, too. Probably more, I'd guess. 

Lynn Uzzell: "It's Time To Acknowledge Anti-White Racism"

Way past time, actually.

Sailor: "For Whom The Bell Curve Tolls" or: How The Pseudoscientific/Antiscientific Left Deals With Politically Incorrect Genetics

That such patent sophistry is not only tolerated but "celebrated" / "valorized" pretty much tells you what you need to know about the progressive left.

F*ck Joe Biden

We do not approve.

But we understand.

Is Delta Dying?

 Sounds that way.

Ioannidis: "How The Pandemic Is Changing The Norms Of Science"

Nothing new here, but it needs to keep being said. And it's good to see someone like Ioannidis saying it.

   Well, actually: I didn't know about the fabricated anti-hydroxychloroquine results. Seems to me that if such studies had fabricated pro-HCQ results we'd still be hearing about it. But maybe not.

   Also: while I'm sure there's pressure on scientists from outside the academy if they say/publish things unpopular with the right...nobody really cares. Conservative civilians are viewed as rubes and boobs. Short of death threats, it's kind of hard to imagine anyone paying them much mind. OTOH, the left rules the roost in academia, is ruthless, and has the power to destroy careers. Even their most absurd accusations are commonly taken seriously. Also, their intellectual/scholarly vanguard commonly accepts political control of science as a principle--a feature not a bug. Someone who accepts ideals of rational inquiry, but sometimes violates them can at least be reasoned with and/or shamed back onto the straight and narrow. Someone who gives them up as a matter of principle is beyond reason. The former may be hypocritical, but hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. 

9/11 at 20

I have nothing of any importance to say.

But I'll mention that I remember that day well--even the morning long before the attacks. I was carpooling with two colleagues, and I distinctly remember thinking that it was a notably beautiful day--the sky seemed unusually blue. That's not post-facto editing, either. I also remember a hawk sitting on the power lines in the median of the 4-lane highway we were on. 

Unsurprisingly, I well remember the events that were soon to unfold, too. But that's not uncommon. I've often wondered what their role was in making the earlier-in-the-morning events stick so vividly, too. Probably not that complicated.

Progressive Insistence On Vaccines For Those With Natural Immunity

Is crazy.

It's another instance of the bizarre politicization of everything on the left. 

RCP's 1/6-BLM Riots Dataset

It's weird to contrast the worst attack on America of all time--past and future--with the mostly peaceful social justice riots for peace and justice...but here ya go.

Daniel Idfresne: "I'm 17 And I'm Immunized From Woke Politics"

Good man.

Transforming America In 17 Days

This should terrify you.

Biden's Authoritarian Vaccine Mandate

link

I'm not entirely sure this is the wrong move.

But I'm basically just fed up with this shit.

Dem Strategist: Party Better Brace For A Wipeout In Midterms

We can only hope...

No, wait...we can also donate and volunteer and write letters and make some friendly efforts, as opportunities present themselves, to discuss the issues with undecideds. And, hell, maybe even Dems...

DOE: 40% Of U.S. Power Could Come From Solar By 2035

 LOOOOOOOOLOOOOOOLOOOOOOL

[I typo'd '2015', but I was laughing at '2015']

[LOL did  it again. I WAS LAUGHING AT '2035']

Helen Joyce: The Truth About Autogynephilia

This is consistent with what Dreger writes in Galileo's Middle Finger.

It makes much, much more sense than the gender ideology account.

Which isn't hard, since the latter makes no sense whatsoever.

The Left Colonizes And Destroys Every Institution It Touches: Greenwald On The Transformation Of The ACLU Into A Leftist Propaganda Organ

link

The 'CL' in 'ACLU' has been a sad, sorry joke for going on a decade now. As with every other institution it touches, the left has bent the organization to its purposes. Since the left does not value civil liberties, the result has been that the ACLU no longer values them. As the organization has explicitly stated, it is no longer in favor of freedom of speech unless that speech is in accordance with identity politics and/or the other political positions of the postmodern progressive left.

   One of the most prominent forms of insanity that has afflicted the new new left is its mania for institutionalizing and enforcing even its most fleeting whims--even when those are not essentially connected with its ruling ideology. When Trump was president and news began to break that Operation Warp Speed was likely to succeed, prominent progressives proclaimed that they would refuse "the Trump vaccine." After Biden won the election, their polarity switched--now progressives are religiously dedicated to forcing everyone to take it. Conservatives haven't been any better. Progressives vaxmania has been matched by a strange anti-vax commitment on the right. The proper approach is to let individuals make their own choice about it. But, of course, that is never the right answer according to progressives--everyone must be forced to vaccinate. That includes healthy young people who are at virtually no risk from the virus, people with religious objections, and even children. Children are an especially telling case since they are at almost no risk from COVID, but probably at greatest risk from unknown, long-term effects of the vaccine. An older person who is at great risk from COVID, and only has an average of twenty years of life remaining is in a much different situation than a child, who is at little risk from COVID but my have another sixty years of life during which adverse effects of the vaccine might manifest themselves. Of course the Wuhan virus may also have long-term effects--I don't deny that. The point, however, is that the cost-benefit calculation will look different for a kid than for a 60-year-old. 

   But the real points are, as Greenwald notes: (1) the ACLU--still nominally a civil liberties organization--is arguing in favor of mandates, and (2) its position on such mandates changed when the progressive orthodoxy flipped in favor of them. This is yet more proof that the ACLU's positions are now determined by progressive-left orthodoxy, no matter how arbitrary. 

   The ACLU now joins all the rest of our institutions as a pomo-prog propaganda organ / re-education enterprise. Universities used to primarily pursue knowledge; now they see Job One as indoctrinating students. Big Tech--formerly guided by a free-wheeling libertarianism--is now dedicated to advancing progressive-left dogma and policies and suppressing any dissent from them. Even the military now seems to care more about leftist indoctrination than warfighting.

   The nation is in the grip of a political cult.

PSU Finally Hounds Out Peter Boghossian

The cult of Woketarianism is destroying the university.

   Peter Boghossian is a f***ing hero. I don't use that word lightly, as you may have noted. PSU has been trying to drive him  out for, what, ten years now? 

   Here's what you need to ask yourself: are you going to stand idly by while an extremist, neo-Marxist cult dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization destroys the university--arguably mankind's greatest institutional achievement?

Thomas D. Klingenstein: Winning The Cold Civil War

I hate to say it, but I think this is basically right.

Philosophy has gone stupid:

“Blood Bans: A Case Study of Defenses of Stereotyping in Medical Contexts”

Professor Rima Basu (Claremont McKenna College)

Time: 9th of September, 2021, 17.00-18.30 GMT+1

Abstract: Stereotyping in medical contexts is often considered to be less problematic than stereotyping in other domains. In medical contexts, doctors can use well-evidenced stereotypes as a tool to shrink the space of theoretical possibilities to arrive at more accurate diagnoses. Such stereotypes can also serve as useful epistemic shortcuts. However, these stereotypes may nevertheless be morally impermissible. This creates the need to be able to identify the difference between rightful and wrongful stereotyping. This paper explores the explanations that have been offered for the differential treatment of gay and bisexual men with respect to blood donations in order to develop an account of the difference. Statistically, gay and bisexual men remain a high risk group for HIV transmission and such evidence has been used to ban or defer gay and bisexual men from blood donations. I argue that such policies, despite their evidential basis, wrongfully stereotype gay and bisexual men. To arrive at that conclusion we will need to look closely at the history of these policies and the moral and epistemic defenses that have been offered in support of this kind of stereotyping. I argue that each such defense fails.

About the Speaker:
Professor Basu is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. ​Her areas of research expertise include epistemology, ethics and moral issues, and race and social problems. The central theme of her work is that when it comes to what we should believe, morality is not voiceless. What we owe each other is not just a matter of what we do or what we say, but also what we believe. ​You can read more about her work in this short Aeon article, "To avoid moral failure, don’t see people as Sherlock does".

*Please note that this colloquium will not be recorded. So we very much hope you’ll turn up at this smashingly exciting, final colloquium in our series! However, you can view recordings of previous colloquia by the Philosophy & Medicine Project in this and other series on the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s website and YouTube channel. And to be notified about events by the Philosophy & Medicine Project, you can sign up to our newsletter here, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

So here's the deal with bans on "MSM" ("men who have sex with men")--it's very simple: MSM have more HIV. We don't really need the extra blood. The risk of HIV transmission outweighs the benefit of the extra blood. And that's all there is to it. Nothing about stereotypes can overturn the risk-benefit reasoning that was used to make the decision. What stereotypes are even relevant? That "MSM" have more HIV than other groups? Because that stereotype--like so many stereotypes--of it even is a "stereotype"--is true. Even if it turned out to be "wrongful"--whatever that means. 

   Philosophy has gone very, very stupid.

   Here's the website--tag line: "Thinking At The Intersection"

Youngkin's Day One Game Plan

Sounds pretty good for campaign hoo-ha.

Wow this election is huge. 

The OD is probably lost, but maybe we can squeak one more by the blue plague that has wrecked NoVa.

TX Abortion Gambit Is Politically Insane

100% agree.

Of course people who are convinced that abortion is morally wrong don't think so tactically about this. Since I have no position, I basically see it as Scher describes it: as a great way to seize defeat from the jaws of victory. 

I'm not sure there are any actual must-win elections...but if there are, this is one. This isn't really Pubs vs. Dems; it's more like: Pubs vs. the antirational, antiliberal, evil spirits who have possessed the Dems and turned them into the Army of the Woke...

The Catastrophic Leftist Takeover Of Universities

Things are bad.

Very, very, very bad.

My institution is, basically, losing its goddamned mind.

VCDL Files $450k Lawsuit Against Lying Liars At The Coalition To Stop Gun Violence

Git 'em.

I wish the VCDL had their logo on t-shirts. I don't like polos and I'm not wild about the bright orange "Guns Save Lives" shirts.

Daniel B. Klein On Groupthink In Academia

Absolutely fantastic and right on target:

Bad Jobs Report

ugh.

Maybe we should contemplate an end to paying people not to work...and/or making them pay rent again.

Just an idea.

(Also: when you've lost MSN...)

Conservatives Pounce! CRT / Leftist Indoctrination In Schools Edition

This is actually a decent piece, but there is a bit of Conservatives Pounce! in it. 

The hard left's long march through our institutions is a real problem. And parents who are pissed about the leftification of K-12 are absolutely right to be pissed. As the other guys would say, they're "on the right side of history." 

   Of course the left wants to pretend that this is all astroturf run by Big Right. But it isn't. What they're complaining about is politics--and politics of a kind that the left engages in all the time. (In fact, it won't come as a surprise that I think the left is worse.) Many Americans are pissed about something they ought to be pissed about. Something we should all be pissed about. They're getting help from some conservative groups who have some expertise and money. This is how it works. If you're mad about that aspect of things, your hair should be on fire about George Soros...

   At least that's the way it seems to me.

"How Biden Can Help Dems Become The Party Of The Working Class Again"

Well, at least one party ought to be...

A wee observation I've maintained from back before the Dems lost their collective mind:  only the quasi-Marxist intelligentsia tends to talk about "workers" and "the working class." Real actual working people I was around back when I was a kid--when I was around such people...--tended to say "the working man." 

Not a big deal. I just felt like saying it.

   I don't think the Dems really want to be the party of the working man--or person. What they want is to trick working people into thinking that's what they are. That is: they want to implement their favored policies, and they want working people to vote for those policies. But they don't really want to change. Witness Greenhouse's paean to the "infrastructure" bill...

   I don't think the GOP is exactly excellent on this score... But I do think that genuine working folk are probably more fond of Pub policies. At least the Pubs aren't hostile to capitalism and in love with an ever-expanding welfare state. The mere fact that the Pubs don't want to import massive numbers of illegals to compete with blue-collar American citizens puts them lightyears ahead of the Dems. Overall, right now, at least, Republican policies--though suboptimal--are at least sane. The Dems aren't in that conversation anymore. They've gone Woke and soft-Marxist. They're the most extreme extremist I've ever seen in the USA in my life--among major parties/factions, anyway. They are, currently, simply not an option. They've abandoned the field of conflict. They've exited stage left. Only the Pubs remain as a viable option.