Shellenberger: "Homeless Encampments" Promoted By San Francisco / Other Blue Cities Are Actually/Primarily "Open Drug Scenes"

This is consistent with what I now think I know about progressives/progressivism.

I don't necessarily believe the following comment below the piece...but, honestly, it kinda rings true:

   2 more factors.
   The Bay Area is home to the largest Burning Man community in the world, in many ways, the culture of Burning Man is blowing back into the city and corporations of SF. Basically, its cool to be in a cyberpunk dystopia on the streets, and then climb into your self-driving car or use an app to summon an uber to take you to your private sex club or woke high-tech workplace.
   Secondly, I suspect the homeless shelters are vote harvesting factories and that many of the politicians in SF owe their insurmountable and surprising wins to massive election fraud using homeless shelters as addresses where thousands of voters can be housed.
   What better way to take over an elite neighborhood politically, than bring in thousands (or actually an unknown) number of homeless, shelter them or register them in some shelter to vote, and then harvest all those votes. A certain revolutionary DA is reputedly a beneficiary of such a scheme. After they win, they support even more "homeless" nonprofit industrial complex.
   So, these post modern non profit industrial complex elites are using the homeless as foots soldiers in a war against capitalism.
   I would also add, that homelessness has been used to justify radical California wide rezoning laws, which are very quickly changing the city scape all over the state. High rise is everywhere now, where the used to be urban villages and suburban garden cities, now you see high rise to deal with the "housing crisis" and this cannot be justified if there is no visible homelessness on the street.
   Also, big tech win if the physical spaces are disgusting and dysfunctional. Stressed and isolated people by more online, and if physical shopping districts are over run with legalized crime, than the only place you can go is online, to the Meta Verse.
   So, yes, there are institutional reasons why "homelessness" is a thing. Its a business model and many of the usual suspects win.
   The Burning Man tech elite have spilled over from a weekend in the desert, and now are starting to bring down the entire state of California, and all the blue cities of America.
   Keep digging. Its a business model.

AP Refers To Waukesha Christmas Parade Terrorist Attack As "Last Week's Christmas Parade Crash"

"Crash"?

Seriously?

Oh and:

"Darnell Brooks Jr., 39, is accused of speeding away from police and entering the parade, refusing to stop even as an officer banged on the hood of his SUV."

Kyle Rittenhouse is a murderous white supremacist...

Darnell Brooks "entered a parade and refused to stop."

34% Of White College Applicants Lie About Their Race

This is as close to conclusive proof as we get in this vale of tears. Despite progressives' characteristic refusal to believe the obvious, being nonwhite/nonAsian is an advantage in college admissions and everybody knows it.

It helps even more if you're trying to snag a teaching gig. Members of the relevant demographic groups go to the front of the line.

Of course progressives deny all this. Despite the fact that everyone is tripping all over themselves to get "diversity hires," they still pretend to believe that e.g. blacks are at a disadvantage.

But that's the central vice of the PC left, as I may have mentioned: the subordination of truth to dogma.

I mean, look, hiring preferences may be the right thing to do. I don't know. But at least be honest about it, fer chrissake.

Brad Patty: Marxists Against CRT

 Worth a read.

That weird, confused fact/truth distinction is all over the place. I mean, there is a difference between fact and truth--the latter being a characteristic only of representations (or so goes the standard line, anyway). But I've heard science types say that they are interested in "facts not truths"--roughly as Patty's imagined historians do. Whatever they're trying to say, that's not the right way to say it. E.g. some of the relevant science types seem to think that truth is some religious thing. 

Anyway. Patty gives the distinction a gloss that makes sense--it's fine. It's just not what the fact/truth distinction is really about. He's talking about a distinction, roughly, between bare facts and high-level explanatory accounts or efforts to unify the facts. Something like that. 

Fred L. Pincus: "Critical Race Theory Controversy Has Decades-Old Roots"

facepalm

   I mean...there are some truths here and there in that thing. Certainly the right can be nutty in its own ways--e.g., notoriously, about sex. Though...well...who could have thought that the left would turn out to be even crazier about it? Not me, surely. I absolutely did not see that coming. Wingnut puritanism looks downright quaint compared to the systematic brainwashing, sexual grooming, and sexual mutilation of children.

Yep.

I sure got all that stuff wrong. I used to think that left-liberal sexual liberationism was pure good.

Boy, am I dumb.

But anyway.

The piece on the other end of that link is like a case-study in progressive self-delusion. If you really want it to be true, and you're just clueless enough, and your information sources are just biased enough and you engage in a bit of selective nipping and tucking of the evidence...you can end up with an essay like that.

So there it is, for your reading...pleasure...or whatever.

COVID: Vaccines vs. Immunity Acquired Via Infection

This seems obvious to me--though, of course, I lack all relevant expertise...so...

First, you don't mandate vaccines for something with such a low mortality rate--so I don't understand how this is on the table. It's not even clear to me that it's a medical question, but a moral/political one.

Second, speaking with the vulgar and not with the learned, this is an experimental vaccine. The more it is insisted that it's THE MOST PERFECTLY SAFE VACCINE OF ALL TIME AND EVERYBODY MUST TAKE IT EVEN PEOPLE WHO HAVE ALREAD ACQUIRED IMMUNITY FROM INFECTION...the clearer it becomes that something loony is going on here. The only rational position is: Ok, you've had the batflu, no need for the vax. But: there should be no talk of mandates, anyway. If somebody had it and still wants to be vaxxed--well, sounds like that's up to them. But unless/until it's proven that naturally-acquired immunity is basically useless--no. No pushing vaccines on them.

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Greenwald: "The Cynical And Dangerous Weaponization Of The 'White Supremacist' Label"

Nothing much new here except some stuff about the Washington Post continuing to accuse Rittenhouse of so-called "white supremacy" even after it itself had published an op-ed acknowledging that the charge was unfounded. 

Also: that the WaPo itself often gets the basics of the case wrong, demonstrating that at least some people writing for it don't seem to know anything beyond what they read on left side of Twitter...

Anyway:

I'm always heartened by the fact that even the very-much-left-leaning Greenwald is onto them. 

One last thing: I wonder how much of the lunacy in the MSM is explained by massive ignorance rather than malice and political correctness? I mean--clearly some of it is. That's always been clear. But e.g. ignorance about global warming models is one thing...but how does a writer for the Washington Post--one writing about the Rittenhouse case--continue to believe...even after the trial...that Rittenhouse transported the rifle across state lines? That's a level of reportorial ignorance that's almost beyond belief. 

I tend to think that most of the insanity on the left is generated by political correctness--and it's beyond any doubt that much of it is. 

But maybe I'm underestimating the role of mere ignorance.

Or maybe not

I mean...come to think of it...writing it doesn't mean they believe it...

And extremists generally--and PC leftists in particular--don't maintain a clear difference between what's true and what's in accordance with their dogma. 

One last thing: of course GG is also right--and I've said it innumerable times--that accusations of racism and "white supremacy" are now basically like accusations of witchcraft--they don't require any evidence. They've basically become verbal tics. The left just flings them around indiscriminately. It's particularly weird for "white supremacy," which escalates things beyond "mere" racism. In actual fact a white supremacist is someone who belongs to or would at least feel at home in organizations like the Klan. Your kindly but old-fashioned great aunt might be a tiny bit racist...nobody's a tiny bit white supremacist... And yet that nonsense is now flung about with the same mindless abandon as 'racist.'

Friedersdorf: "Universities Try To Force A Consensus About Kyle Rittenhouse"

No surprise here.

I predict a similar resolution from our faculty senate.

"The Lab-Leak Theory Meets Its Perfect Match"

A really interesting puzzle that I don't have the time nor the expertise required to even be a well-informed layperson about. All I really know is that the lab-leak theory was rejected for obviously weak reasons, at least in part because, as is so often the case now, it took on a political valence and progressives didn't like it--probably because they now tend to be oddly pro-China. And the lab-leak theory seemed more anti-China than did the wet-market (ugh...what a term) theory. (The former is more on the China is evil and incompetent end of things, the latter more on the China is gross end of things.)

   Anyway...no sleep again, so I just skimmed this Atlantic piece even.

   We could get the worst of both explanatory worlds if we combined the two into something like: Wet markets are hotspots for interspecies transmission...the virus leaked from the lab and then naturally gravitated to such a hotspot and then went crazy.  

   I don't care about the political quibble over this, except to the extent that it interferes with figuring out what happened. Anyway, the kinda-stupid suggestion above isn't quite the worst of both hypotheses. I mean, it doesn't require two origin stories. And it would explain why such the virus would originate near both the lab and the "wet market" (again...ugh). The idea is something like: you could have leaky labs without the leaked viruses necessarily causing trouble...unless one leaked into a wet market. But those things are hotspots for trading viruses among species, and so they exacerbate the problem...something something something. 

   Obviously I'm basically just bullshitting here. And if this were anything more than bullshitting, somebody else would have suggested it already.

David Frum, Russiagate Dead-Ender

The last, best defense of the dying hoax: the SSIC report--which has the advantage of sticking to innuendo and hypothesis. None of the investigation worked out the way progressives, Dems and anti-Trumpers hoped it would...so the SSIC report lets them fall back to the reasons that prompted the investigation and pretend it constitutes proof. 

Sad!

The Salvation Army Joins The Cult

The insanity spreads.

Nu, Xi, Omicron, Stupid

Oh

So, Wait, Are We Supposed To Be Getting Hysterical About The Nu Variant Or The Omicron Variant?

I have no idea what's going on.

But WSJ says this.

Hey, remember when Trump was a racist for imposing a COVID travel ban? Good times.

Basically I can't distinguish fearmongering from legitimate causes for concern when it comes to COVID.

I mean...it's fucking awful...but also very much exaggerated...right? I mean...just about the first thing that became clear to be out of the fog of hysteria, early on, was that the danger was being more-or-less systematically exaggerated. Why was it suppressed for so long that age and comorbidities were so crucial? I mean...how is that to be explained? Why has no one ever said, in all this time: "Lose five pounds"? 

And I say:  Gell-Mann amnesia.

I know that progressive institutions are radically distorting race issues. and, so far as I can tell, they're doing the same to climate issues. And somehow COVID, too, has taken on a political valence--with the left being committed to COVID hysteria and the right being committed to a much more sanguine and let's-get-back-to-normal view of the thing. So one has to suspect that there's a certain degree of progressive influence on the reporting...

Are leftists generally just more panicky? I mean, they're less panicky about China... Which is consistent with them being generally just more panicky...

The Wokefication Of Philosophy: "The Spatial Phenomenology of White Embodiment"

Some things you don't even have to read/listen to in order to know they're crap...

Atlas: "I Watched The Nation's 'Top Scientists' Lie About COVID And Get Away With It"

No surprise, really. 

Though I remember thinking at the time that Redfield sounded reasonable.

Waukesha Christmas Parade Attack Disappearing Down The Memory Hole

link    I didn't realize that a sixth person had died. You probably didn't either. As goes without saying, were the racial tables turned, the story would hardly be disappearing off of front pages.

The CDC Lied About Naturally-Acquired Immunity and Reinfection

Par for the course.

Healthy Skeptic: Answers To Questions

I have a high opinion of this guy thus far.

Do Masks Work Against COVID-19?

Maybe.

   According to Nature's account of recent research, they do. I don't accord that much weight--basically because I don't trust Nature anymore when it comes to questions that impinge on culture-war stuff. My general view is what it's been for...well...a long time now: forced to guess, I'd guess that masks have some effect. Forced to guess about how much...I wouldn't know what to say. Maybe: not a whole lot? I have exactly no expertise. I don't even know enough to intelligently evaluate primary research.

   But I do know that, once the progressive left takes a position on something, every progressive institution falls in line and supports the shiny new orthodoxy. And that includes Nature (and Science, for that matter). Science and its publications have turned out to be just about as stupid, irrational and cowardly in the face of the Woketarian onslaught as everything and everyone else.  (e.g.). Since we know that Nature is woke/progressive/converged, and we know that the official progressive position is that masks are a sacrament--or a shibboleth--we know that it would be foolish to believe the story at the link. We have to treat such reports as something like suggestions for further inquiry--and I mean: to a greater extent than we normally would.

Ahmaud Arbery's Extensive Criminal History; Jogging Was His M.O. / Cover Story

Incidentally, none of this appears in the Wikipedia article on his killing.

   Wikipedia, as I've argued, can't be trusted with respect to any issue that impinges on any interest of the political/intellectual/cultural left. Wikipedia is controlled by editors who are absolutely committed to the leftist worldview. Wikipedia is just another institution, like academia and the media, that has been taken over by the postmodern progressive quasi-cult. Note that the evidence of Arbery's crimes is rejected for two reasons: (a) a ban on original research and (b) the evidence of his previous crimes (and mental illness) were ruled inadmissible in the trial. (b) is mere excuse--the entry isn't on the trial, it's on the incident. Information on (a) is available many places--if the editor had any real interest in the truth, it would be easy to find a published version of the claims in the original document. 

1 in 5 U.S. Prison Inmates Is A Criminal Alien

Needless to say, this is a very politically incorrect hatefact.

WaPo: Waukesha Christmas Parade Terrorism "Caused By An SUV"

Wait, I thought it was caused by a knife fight...or TEH WITE Z'PRIMIZY...

Daniel Buck, James Furey: A Language Arts curriculum widely used in U.S. schools ignores academic fundamentals in favor of radical pedagogy

There is absolutely nothing surprising about this.

Basically all the intellectually weakest parts of universities have accepted this mishmash of postmodernism and critical theory--and it would be redundant to add: radical leftist politics. 

It's everywhere. People who are not very smart, not very well educated, and not very good at philosophy have accepted this tangle of utter nonsense as if it were some sort of unquestionable foundation of all knowledge. When people say, for example, "critical race theory is not being taught in Virginia schools!", that's about as plausible as saying "there is no slant leftward anywhere in Virginia schools." Saying--as the left has basically been doing--that you can't find any part of an official curriculum titled TOP SECRET CRITICAL RACE THEORY INDOCTRINATION PROTOCOLS...well, you see where I'm going with this. You also can't find any part of the school day called "Radical Leftist Political Brainwashing Hour," either. But if schools don't slant hard left, I'd be astonished. Which isn't to say it's impossible. But I'd bet lots of money that they do. It's also possible that the pomo-critical-theory mishmash that now pervades and rules academia and all our other institutions, and that shows up in innumerable reports on K-12 curricula...just doesn't actually affect K-12 in any way. But that's not what's actually happening.

Old GA Citizen's Arrest Statute

Here are the two sentences that the jury instructions depended on:

A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.

This is the sort of thing I'm fairly good at, and can generally figure out at a glance. But this one made my head spin. Jacobson Andrew Branca writes:

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Ahmaud Arbery Verdict: Basically All Defendants Guilty On All Charges

Seems wrong to me, but I wasn't paying close attention.

   The legal question largely seemed to turn on the question of the dependence or independence of the second crucial paragraph on the first, hence the instructions the judge gave the jury. I didn't know what to make of that, but I didn't think about it long enough. When I heard the judge talking through his interpretation, I wondered why there isn't some interpretive analog of the presumption of innocence--given what seems like a genuine indeterminacy in the law, it seemed to me that the more permissive (i.e.: favorable to the defense) interpretation should have been used. But, of course, I am NAL.

   Morally...well...Arbery was a dangerous criminal and he was clearly looking for stuff to burgle. He wasn't an innocent dude out for a run--pretending to be on a run was his known M.O. He tried to take McMichael's gun away, and either basically shot himself or gave McMichael little choice but to shoot him. You can't let a violent criminal take your gun away. There are undoubtedly aspects of the case I don't know about, but, morally speaking, I didn't think the McMichaels acted unreasonably--given my understanding.

   It's pretty damn hard to believe that Bryan was convicted. 

   But, as I said: I haven't followed the case very closely. 

   One might say that it's no surprise given the madness gripping the country. If Rittenhouse went to trial at all, I rather figured that the the defendants in this case were screwed.

Ilana Redstone: America By Gaslight

link

A main point: combining "the settled-question fallacy" with social punishment for wrongthink generates resentment. 

I don't care so much about the resentment part--but it seems right.

What I guess I'd say is: it'd be bad enough if we took an open question and prohibited people from accepting or endorsing one of the possible answers.

That's certainly what's going on in some cases--and in the case of the question How much racism is there in America? The most likely answer--but at least a reasonable one--is: not a massive amount. But that answer has been decreed not only impermissible, but racist. 

But Redstone's example of transgenderism isn't a good one to illustrate that problem.

What's happened in the case to transgenderism is that an actually settled question was deemed, by diktat, to be an open one...and then the actual, true, not-actually-in-question "answer" was deemed impermissible. 

A woman, to take the central case, is an adult, female human. One can--as is often done in philosophy--undertake to cook up doubts about it by focusing on distant logical possibilities. But such "doubts" aren't real doubts, and the issue isn't really in question. The "doubts" are pseudo-doubts. The gender-ideological position on the "question"/"dispute" is wildly implausible. It's more on the order of a skeptical "doubt": maybe woman has--somehow...unbeknownst to anyone for thousands of years--been a non-biological kind or concept all along... That idea is interesting only because it's so wildly implausible.

If the idea remained confined to seminar rooms, it would be a mere waste of time.

But that's one of the main characteristics of the postmodern progressive left: abstruse philosophical ideas are introduced into practical affairs. It's as if we had suddenly begun worrying about whether we were brains in vats when we were trying to make budget decisions or allocate resources to the military.

Sure, China seems like a threat...but maybe it doesn't exist at all...

To make matters worse--which, prima facie, one might have thought impossible--the crazy, philosophical, pseudo-doubt is declared true...and, worse: unquestionable.

So, in actual fact, the situation is often much worse than Redstone describes.

And this is political correctness: the declaration that obvious facts are fictions, and obvious fictions are facts--and the mass, rabid punishment of those who do the equivalent of refusing to "admit" that 2+2=5...

Actual Justice Warrior On Flash Robberies

Stop noticing things, bigot. These robberies are a completely new and never-before-seen phenomenon, and the perpetrators have nothing whatsoever in common and if you suggest that they do, you are even more of a bigot than you already are.

Hey, Don't Forget, Bigot!: "There's Nothing More Frightening In America Today Than An Angry White Man"!

link
So...y'know...I certainly don't want to be like the lefties and whine about every slight against my demographic group... I mean...you should say what's on your mind...and this was apparently what was on the author's mind. So ok. Instead of whining about it, we ought--as always--ask: is it reasonable? / is it true?  

I mean: it's CNN anyway...so it's not really to be taken all that seriously.

So "frightening" is about subjective mental states...not sure how to evaluate a claim about frighteningness... But if it means dangerous...well...just as an objective matter of fact, go look at crime data...then get back to me.

Amber Athey: Get Ready To Forget The Waukesha Attack

link

   My favorite thing about it thus far has been the MSM immediately--before the suspect was even captured--arguing that this had nothing to do with BLM or the Rittenhouse verdict. Oh, hai, no, this is fine because he was merely fleeing from a knife fight... The mind, it reels.

   The only question now is: How quickly will this be memory-holed?

Ahmaud Arbery: Very Tough Question

I haven't been keeping up--I don't even know what the judge ruled about jury instructions. But as Actual Justice Warrior argued, basically everything comes down to how to interpret two clauses in GA law concerning citizen's arrest. Anyway...I only spent about five minutes trying to figure it out, but damn, it looked like a really puzzling interpretive problem.

Fauxcahontas Blames High Gas Prices On Corporate Greed

[facepalm]

It depresses me that anybody is more ignorant of economics than I am...

It...I dunno...what's worse than depressing? Anyway, whatever it is, it does that to me that a U.S. Senator is more ignorant than I am. And a U.S. Senator who's views about economics are unusually influential, to boot. sheesh

BLM Activist On Waukesha: "It Sounds Like The Revolution Has Started"

One wacko does not a mass hysteria make.

My real concern is that fervor for violent revolution is always close to the heart of the radical left. It's the fact that insanity is the root and branch, the heart and soul of the contemporary left that concerns me. 

But this one wacko, in and of himself, doesn't.

Nixon Innocent? Prosecutorial Misconduct??

link

   I don't know what to believe anymore about any newsish stories about which I don't have fairly extensive personal knowledge. 

   Obviously we can't believe these claims about Nixon--the burden of proof there is extremely high. And I was way too young to understand Watergate when it was happening--though I do remember my family sitting around the black-and-white tv after dark at the farm watching what I suppose must have been re-runs of the days proceedings. I remember my dad and others saying "everybody does it--he just got caught." Of course I didn't know what to think--I still had a heroic, Washingtonian idea of the Presidency...

   But anyway. After Russiagate and Russigategate--and we aren't even after that latter one yet--I don't know what I can rule out as too crazy to be possible anymore. 

   Not to mention the Venona decrypts and the revelation that Joe McCarthy was basically right--accidentally, it seems. But right. His main beliefs about communist infiltration of the government were true--though they seem to have been largely unjustified. 

   While we're here: no one I know has known about the Venona decrypts until I mentioned them. And my pool of friends is unusually interested and well-educated. That fact has rocked me almost more than the information about communist infiltration itself. How can these astonishing revelations be so widely unknown?? What the hell is going on? In an information ecosphere in which trivialities play such a large role, how can something like this have so very much failed to register? (Bad sentence.) 

   tl;dr: WTH, I don't know what to think anymore.

Markel Hutchins: I've Been A Social Justice Activist For Decades. The CRT Debate Is Divisive.

Authors don't generally write their own titles, and what Hutchins actually argues is that CRT is divisive. Which it is.

CRT and the rest of the popomo mishmash is destructive at its core. It's inherently divisive and racist. Now, a normal theory might respond: yes, but the theory is true. Truth is the goal of inquiry. Too bad it's divisive--but you'll just have to deal with that. 

However the popomo mishmash doesn't care about truth. Truth enters into most bits of that tangle of nonsense in complicated, tangential, and subordinate ways. So, to cut the Gordian tangle: this theory can't plausibly respond that way. 

So it neither gets at the truth (nor really even tries to) nor promotes social good. (Nor, to use its proprietary jargon, "social justice.") It's epistemically, morally, and politically bankrupt.

Michael Harriot: "Kyle Rittenhouse Wasn't Convicted Because, In America, White Reasoning Rules"

Wow this is bad.

So...I don't know whether the author is white or otherwise...so I don't know whether the godawful excuse for reasoning he deploys is supposed to be of the white or nonwhite variety... But look: writing stupid shit like this is bad. Supporting the stupid side in a dispute by using stupid reasoning to argue that there's something crazy and racist about the obviously correct side in the dispute is wrong. You're trying to convince people that a reasonable verdict was unreasonable, wrong, and racist. This is the progressive left in a nutshell: since you've got no arguments, just screech RACISM!!!

"White reasoning." LOL. Sounds an awful lot like Jewish physics...

The Progressive Left Takeover Of K-12: "Critical Ethnic Studies" In MA

Well, the author's complaint is that it's antisemitic because it lumps Jews in with whites...so...that tells you a lot about the whole situation.

   Look, the tangle of nonsense that is recent Continental philosophy (and literary criticism...and feminism...and that whole radioactively ridiculous morass) took over the humanities and all adjacent fields ca. 1990. Everyone in philosophy grad school used to make fun of it. Well, nobody's laughing now. It's still incoherent...but the low intellectual standards and high degree of politicization in most of the humanities, social sciences, grievance studies, education, SComm...all of that...provided a fertile medium in which the infection of insanity flourished. Now it's more-or-less openly being implemented as K-12 educational doctrine. 

   Look, I haven't read the legislation. There's some chance that the MA policies are benign. But almost certainly not. I hope I'm wrong. But if I were, there'd be no reason for implementing such a curriculum. If you're teaching about race and racism in the ordinary way--as two prominent features of American history and human life among many other prominent features--you don't need a "critical" theory curriculum to do so. 

   The cult has taken over to such a degree that it can implement whole statewide curricula to indoctrinate children with pseudoscientific, racist, anti-American propaganda. And one of our political parties is supporting that.

Waukesha: MSM "We May Never Know The Motive" Protocol Initiates in 3...2...

Calling it now

Alex Tabarrok: The Scientific Cost Of Immigration Quotas

Duly noted.

But the cost can be mitigated without fully open borders.

Not even sure what lessons we should draw from it now when communication among scientists, even intercontinentally, is so easy.

I Never Make Arguments Like This, But...

...they're accurate:

Don't forget that the progressive left--which includes the mainstream media and academia--has woven a web of lies and myths which, inter alia, deceives black Americans into believing that they are hated and despised by their countrymen. 

The NYT Buried The Waukesha Story So Deep...

...that it looks like it's gonna be easier to find Hoffa...
link

Currently reading The Gray Lady Winked... According to it, this is pretty much par for that course.

JMU Makes Fox News Again: Student Posts Highly Politicized Falsehoods About Rittenhouse Verdict On University Instagram Account

JMU has become a comedy of errors. This is (a) par for the course and (b) a drop in the bucket. My immediate reaction is something like: the student has no idea what he's talking about...but that's no surprise. The media has fed him lies, as has "social media"...as, almost certainly, has his university. He made a mistake. This tells the university that it might be good to make information about institutional neutrality available to students...but...it's a lot more important for the university itself to regain its institutional neutrality. IMO that was abandoned years ago. The main error lies with the institution. Again, the side in this dispute with which I sympathize is the liberal, reasonable, and forgiving side. Mistakes were made. Unlike the other side, we don't wield people's mistakes against them with a mind to destroying them. But there's a big, ongoing problem here--an institutional problem that becomes less and less forgivable by the day. There's been plenty of warning and this is another one. If the university doesn't address and correct its politicization, I think that the Commonwealth would be warranted in considering options like reducing or cutting state funding. Which would, of course, be the end of the university.

Waukesha: Will This Be A Turning Point?

I'm not sure there will be a turning point. 

But it's likely there will be.

Many of my redpilled friends keep saying there will be.

My main view of the matter: it won't be a complete reversal.

That's not how the left works. 

It never, ever, ever stops pushing leftward. It never will. The only thing that stops it is (a) opposition and (b) disaster. (b), incidentally = achievement of its goals...or roughly that.

The Woketarian cult is stronger than ever at my university. Of course we're way behind the curve as compared to more prestigious schools. So I suppose things might be improving elsewhere...but not, so far as I can tell, at e.g. UVa...

Not that I'm just going with the obvious hypothesis...on which I'd gladly lay several thousand bucks: this was a BLM/Antifa/etc. act of retaliation for the Rittenhouse verdict... 

Waukesha Christmas Parade Attack

Needless to say, the lead hypothesis has to be that this is retaliation for the Rittenhouse verdict. Anyone paying attention will have to be surprised if it isn't. Thus we can predict that the perpetrator is a leftist--and likely Antifa, BLM, etc. If the obvious hypothesis turns out to be true, then the MSM will bear a substantial share of the responsibility. Biden and Harris will share some, too.

   It's easy enough to predict that, pretty much regardless of the death toll, this event won't hand the same sort of sword to anti-progressives that James Alex Fields's attack handed to progressives. Or, rather: even if it did, they wouldn't use it as brutally and relentlessly. And Biden--though plausibly partially responsible--won't suffer anything like the political consequences Trump suffered as a result of his (true, post-facto) comments about Charlottesville.

   Such speculation is unseemly at a time like this, and I may well regret engaging in it.

   Needless to say, we all hope for the best for the survivors.

Watched Some CNN At The Gym

Big mistake.

But I was on the treadmill...for which I have virtually no patience. I can gleefully run trails for hours, but two minutes on the treadmill and I'm ready to jump off a cliff.

But I digress.

There was CNN on one of the five zillion tvs, and closed captioning was on.

It was...get this...Brian Stelter interviewing Nicole Hannah Jones. My God. It was like supervillain team-up. Or stupervillain team up... Get it?

It was so revolting that I didn't even finish my traditional one fast mile. I was done lifting anyway and just grabbed my jacket and left. 

I know that there have always been stupid people in journalism...but did academia always try to hire the very stupidest ones into endowed chairs? And Stelter...  A living, breathing experiment in self-humiliation.

Ok. I've gotta quit thinking about it. It was just too repulsive.

Leftist Anti-Justice Riots After Rittenhouse Verdict

The 'social' in 'social justice' means what the 'trans' in 'transwoman' means: i.e.:  not.

And, yes, the lies of the PMSM contribute greatly to the insanity on the left. As do leftist politicians...like Biden. And, yes: they refuse to recognize the possibility that they could ever be wrong.

Take an unhinged, violent, infallibilist political faction and feed them lies guaranteed to fan the flames of their lunatic prejudices...this is what you get:

The Same View That Tells You That Black Is White Also Tells You That You Can Trust Its Inscrutable Theories And Take Its Word About What They Prove

Or: And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped...

   Sooo....lemme get this straight... The same worldview that tells you patent, provable falsehoods...that tells you that the big, hairy dude standing right in front of you is a woman...that tells you that a black woman elected Lt. Governor of Virginia is "the black face of white supremacy"...that tells you that an obvious case of self-defense against three criminal white dudes is really the murder of peaceful black protesters... So...this view that straight-up tells you that black is white and night is day... You're supposed to let this same view dump a huge load of bullshit verbiage into the dark corners of academia...and then you're supposed to trust its exponents when they tell you that it conclusively proves that everything you know is false... Science is wrong, common sense is wrong, other, more respectable theories in more respectable disciplines are wrong... You must accept that the most implausible conclusions "proven" by the most implausible theories are undeniably, unquestionably true...

   Oh, yeah: and also the "proofs" don't make any sense at all.

   But the same people who call everything they don't like racist will call you racist if you don't just shut up and accept the most patent pile of bullshit anyone has ever tried to foist off on anyone else

   So the question for you is: are you really dumb enough to do it?

   Because if you are, you probably deserve what you get.

Healthy Skeptic: Epidemic Summary

This is consistent with my dumbass, skeptical, contrarian layperson's basic view of the matter. 

Trans Politics Has Driven The Left Insane

Lots of things have. Their whole worldview is deranged. But transgender ideology/mythology is surely one central delusional feature of the whole delusional mess. The clip referenced in the link above isn't really funny...it's nauseating. These people have allowed their crazy ideology to make them personally crazy. O'Hagan is basically like a wild-eyed denizen of Bedlam trained up to have good manners and maintain a superficially sane demeanor.

Are "Important Elements of MMT" Accepted By "Much Of The Financial Establishment"?

Jeez.

Of course MMT sounds loony to the non-economist. But I don't deserve an opinion on it. So, for theoretical purposes, I resolutely suspend judgment. Ask me to vote on a policy presupposing it or not, then, other things being equal, I'd vote against it. Sounds like actual voodoo economics to me. But God knows. Economics!: a whole, like, science that requires, like, actual knowledge to understand.

WSJ: Kyle Rittenhouse Is Not Guilty, But Politicians Continue To Distort The Truth

Progressives live in a parallel reality. Or, rather: progressivism is a parallel reality. Except, y'know...not a real one... 

   Even when facts are right out there in the open, they very often just have no effect on the collective progressive view of the world. Despite their certainty that America is evil and the world must be unmade/remade in accordance with progressive principles: the great mass of progressives have no idea what's going on. Their knowledge of current events (not to mention history) is basically of degree zero. Maybe conservatives are the same--I'd kinda guess they are. But their view of the world is so much more ordinary and sane that--currently, at least--it simply matches the facts much more often. 

   And, of course, a cornerstone of the postmodern progressive left is political correctness. So, when the progressive worldview fails to match the truth--which is often--progressives begin spinning out a tale that--were it true--would justify their political/politicized view of the matter. Then they begin doublethinking it to be true.

   How could you be alive in America in 2021 and think that the dead assailants in the Rittenhouse case were black? How?? It's mind-boggling. And now, after the trial, after the verdict, after the rest of us finally discovered how distorted the progressive view of the events was and began explaining the facts over and over again...how do they still believe the fake version???? 

   And...WTF???...despite their abject ignorance/misunderstanding/cluelessness about the facts...they are, nevertheless, so passionate about it that they're protesting and rioting about it again. 

   How can you care so little that you don't know even the most basic facts...but care so much that you riot in favor of sending an 18-year-old kid to prison for life????

   Granted, the PMSM is a gigantic cornerstone of progressive derangement. Even those who manage to read stories about the events in the PMSM will likely come away more ignorant than they went in. So that's a major partial explanation. It may even explain a significant majority of the phenomenon. But it doesn't explain all of it. Part of the explanation is also that youth is stupid, and easily manipulated with emotional appeals and oppression rhetoric...

   Meh. I don't know, man. I've got no big conclusion. It's just mind-blowing and horrifying to watch this go on and on and get worse and worse. I note that Biden picked up where Obama left off, senselessly, falsely fanning the flames of racial strife. (I was very pro-Obama...but, in retrospect, he did often (but not always) fail in that direction.) I hope Rittenhouse sues the shit out of Biden, CNN and the rest for falsely calling him a White Supremacisttm. Ah, I'm shutting up now.

The Malign Prosecution Of Kyle Rittenhouse

John Kass, right on target.

Ten Lies About Kyle Rittenhouse

It isn't quite true to say that the progressive media never tells the truth...but it's not too far off the mark.

Jonathan Tobin: "Segregating kids by race — even as a class exercise — will only fuel endless racial conflict"

Reject neo-racism.

The University Of Austin--It's Like Other Universities...But With Free Inquiry

Godspeed, UATX.

It's ridiculous that faculty are so (on the left) idiotic, ignorant and dogmatic and (not on the left) cowardly that it seems that we have to specially establish an entirely new university to do what the thousands of existing ones in the USA are supposed to be doing, but aren't.

Perdue 93 - Carolina 84

Congrats to the Boilermakers.

Turley: From Kenosha Riots To Rittenhouse Trial, Biased Media Coverage [Is Part Of The Left's Descent Into Madness]

link

   That bracketed part is mine, as you might guess.

   A university with which I am extremely familiar just had some former students post a complaint about the Rittenhouse verdict to its Instagram account. And they--like half or so of progressives--got even the uncontroversial details wrong, claiming the decedents were black. If someone posted such a thing expressing a conservative view, the faculty would explode into flames. It's starting to look like leftists can basically get away with anything, however. 

   Sadly, it's clearly time that the Commonwealth started looking at cutting the funding of the university in question.

Postmodern Progressive Pravda: Nightline/Rittenhouse Edition

If you scripted a parody of the MSM, it might look a whole lot like this:

The Postmodern Progressive Left Inhabits A Web Of Lies And Delusions Of Its Own Spinning: Kyle Rittenhouse Edition

The only person who seems to have any idea what actually happened--including the talking heads--is the judge. And her comments are so truncated it's hard to tell what her overall point was. She may well have been trying to explain why it was the right verdict:

My University Now Barely Even Bothers To Half-Heartedly Conceal The Fact That It Hires On The Basis Of Race

It's insulting that they barely even try anymore.

Justice For Kyle

Rittenhouse not guilty--on all counts.

The Real Cost Of The Biden Entitlement Blowout: $5 Trillion

Whelp, I'm no economist, but this sure seems nuts.

Let's Go, President 36%!

Almost not even funny anymore...

Colin Dickey: The Upside Of COVID Hygiene Theater

Eh...this author has a good attitude, IMO. And it's an idea worth saying, I guess. And it has the virtue of trying to put an optimistic spin on something bad: empty and often politicized COVID hygiene theatrics, as you can discern from the title. This is a general form of argument sometimes used to make excuses for some religious rituals. Anyway, I don't buy it. I'm less reflexively hostile to such arguments than I used to be...but I'm just not sympathetic to them. Needless to say, I could be wrong.

Biden Admin Wants To Force The School* Of The Ozarks To Put Men In Women's Dorms

Forced integration of public (and in this case private) facilities is one of the main aims of "transgender" ideology. It works via the PC terminological two-step:

[1] We decree the normal way of speaking, W1 to be bigoted; you must replace it with the approved, politically correct, new way of speaking, W2, that we just made up. They're just words, bigot. It's just about politeness and people's feelings. Why are you so resistant to way of speaking W2?

[2] We all agree that W2 is accurate and W1 is antiquated and bigoted--you agree as is shown by your acquiescence to W2. Now we must implement new policies and reengineer society in accordance with W2. Too late to object, bigot. Language creates reality.

Why won't you say that men in dresses are women? It's about their feelings. It's just words. Call them "transwomen," bigot! 

   Oh...you admit they're women...well then, if you're a straight man or a lesbian, you must treat them as potential sexual partners. Also, you must let them into restrooms and locker rooms with your wives and daughters. I mean, they're women! You already admitted it!

   Sometimes linguistic changes are mere linguistic changes. But that's never the way it is with the PC left. They always have social re-creation in mind.

*It's College of the Ozarks now. It'll take me a little while to get used to that.

The New York Times Makes Excuses For Its Steele Dossier Lies

Almost an apology...that barely gets going before the excuse-making and indictment of "the endemic and willful deceptions of the right-wing press" take center stage. After all, it is impermissible to criticize the left in any way without loudly proclaiming that the right is worse. In fact, those right-wing sins are so multitudinous that Grueskin has to dig all the way down to OAN to find an actual example.

   The MSM's torrent of lies were apparently excusable--or, anyway, Grueskin spends a lot of words excusing them. But Fox News...[checks notes] "downplayed" the COVID-19 threat...

   Downplayed!!

   The monsters!

   Does it matter, one wonders, that the MSM has spent two years up-playing COVID? 

   Anyway: dude goes from "endemic and willful lies" to "downplayed" in about a line and a half. "Downplaying" something doesn't sound all that much like "endemic and willful lies" to me. But, then, I'm not a trained journalist... 

   And to even mention the "echo chamber" "built" by the "right-wing press" in such a piece shows how far gone the progressive press is. They've built a massive, multifaceted, astonishingly effective echo chamber...and they've just been caught actually engaging in actually endemic and willful deception... And all they can muster is FOX NEWS DOWNPLAYED A THING!!!!!...

   The right-wing echo chamber is a puny and scrofulous effort compared to the progressive version. It's absurd to even mention them side by side. Especially when the subject is supposed to be the bigger, crazier, much, more worser left-wing version.

   But this is the closest thing we've gotten to an acknowledgement of wrongdoing from them...seems to me like there's some downplaying going on...but, again, I'm not journalist...

Massive Pub Advantage In The Polls

The Dems have absolutely, positively earned an absolutely vicious beating in the midterms. And it looks like they're going to get one.

Happy 220th Birthday To The New York Post

Certainly the best paper in town.

"Jump-Kick Man" Who Kicked Rittenhouse In The Head: Yet Another Violent Felon

So all of the psychotic rioters that attacked Rittenhouse have turned out to have violent criminal records predating the totally peaceful social justice riot for peace and justice in Kenosha...

   Too bad Rittenhouse missed in this case.

Lying Anarcho-Commie Chad Loder Is Also A Sexual Harasser...And Has The Most Punchable Face In The Known Universe

At The Post Millennial

There's No Even Vaguely Reasonable Way To Find Rittenhouse Guilty...And You Know What That Means...

More "racial justice" protests, comin' up!

As I've noted previously: you understand a lot more about the left when realize that "no justice, no peace" is a conjunction, not a conditional...

Hey, Remember All Those People Who Were Saying, ca. 2018-19, That There Was "No Other Possible Explanation" Of The Russiagate "Facts"?

...other, that is, than that Trump was a "Russian asset"?

LOL good times.

Everybody Panic Because TEH COVID! More Vaxxes! More Masks! EVERYBODY RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!11111

I'm not saying he's not right.

I'm really just saying that I'm tired of their bullshit.

Dems Deploy The "Messaging" Excuse

Oh, yeah, Pubs do it too--every time they lose. It's always the messaging...never the message. Here's a paradigm example from Bill Press:

Democrats are good at a lot of things.They have a lot of good ideas, like child care, universal pre-K, cheaper prescription drugs, and family and medical leave. But here’s one thing they’re not good at: selling their own story.

So, so many good ideas!  They have the best ideas, folks! But they're just not good at salesmanship, you see! The substance is basically perfect! But, y'know, people who are, like, so deep into, like, y'know, policy? Like, sort of eggheads? I mean, messaging is just beyond them, right? Beneath them, really...

   Just keep telling yourselves that, blues.

   I mean really: keep it up.

   I really, really want you to.

   I'm fine with the Pubs beating you like rented donkeys well into the future. 

   Besides, I thought the Dems had given up the old tried-and-true we-just-didn't-get-our-message-across bullshit for their new all-purpose excuse: RACISM!!!!111? 

   Maybe they could combine the two:  We lost because we didn't get our message across...which is: YOU'RE ALL A BUNCH OF RACISTS.

   Surely if the American public just understood that they're all a bunch of racists, more of them would have voted for the blue team...

   

Must-Read: Christopher DeMuth: "Why American Needs National Conservatism"

link

   I'm dragging this morning, but I'd say that about the first half of this piece, which is basically a diagnosis of our current "progressive" crisis, is great. Which is not so say it's entirely right--but I think it's really, really good. Then comes something like an articulation of "national conservatism," which is also interesting. The final few paragraphs are more speculative--more like home-run-ish suggestions about possible ways forward. I don't know what to think about those.

   One point that's in DeMuth's analysis of the contemporary progressive left is one that others have made, too--and it's a point I should (given my long history of thinking about and opposing the postpostmodern left) have seen more clearly than I have...ergh...very foggy...too lazy to try to finish that sentence in a coherent way...  Anyway, here's the point: there's a strong strain of pure destructiveness in the contemporary progressive left. It's there at the philosophical level, in the skepticism and nihilism of the movement. It's also there at the activist level e.g. in the anti-nationalism, e.g. the open-borders-ism. It's also there in the anti-Westernism and anti-Americanism of the movement.

   Anyway. Really all I have to say is: this is an extremely interesting piece. I'm not familiar with "national conservatism," though I've heard the term. So...what? So I don't know.

   Just read the thing, I say.

It's Time For The *Don't Forget To Badger Your Non-Radical Relatives At Thanksgiving* Posts 2021

Uncle Stew and Aunt Vy ain't gonna berate themselves about their white privilege and carbon footprint...

Oh and: masks. I'm sure there's gonna be some mask harassment how-tos...-to's? I don't like using apostrophes like that. Makes you look like you don't understand the difference between plural and possessive. But waddaya gonna do? Anyway: a mask-harassment* how-to...in fact, several of them. But I'm trying to ignore that stuff. So you'll have to go make fun of it on your own this year.

* Harmaskment? Eh. Doesn't quite work.

Michelle Goldberg: A Frenzy Of Book-Banning

[eyeroll]

1. Alright, so:  banning books: bad. Right out. No. 

2. It's a little ridiculous to focus on a few nutty, rightward parental misfires in the face of the insane leftist tsunami that's engulfing the nation...but I guess we've gotta play the hand we're dealt. Looniness is looniness, and has to be addressed wherever it crops up.

3. I'm sure Goldberg is bullshitting/spinning/misrepresenting some of this. But that sort of goes without saying anymore. I'll basically just take her word for it all, for the sake of the argument.

4. To some extent this sounds like a freedom of speech question. On that front, I'm for maximal protections. 

5. I argue, ad hominem, that the left has pretty consistently argued for narrowing speech protections, based, basically, on hurt feelings. See, bruised snowflake fee-fees are ABSOLUTELY GROUNDS FOR CRUSHING FREEDOM OF SPEECH, BIGOT... But parents trying to protect their kids from twisted violence and sex...NOT A REASON!!! Not even a reason for keeping the blowjob books behind the counter, apparently.

6. If the tables were turned, we'd get standard lefty arguments like: we're not saying you can't write it--we're saying we don't have to "platform" you by putting your book in our library...bigot.

Read more »

Krugman: History Says Don't Panic About Inflation

Yes, yes, it's Krugman. Yes, he's the Bill Kristol of the left--always wrong about everything.

Er, wait--now Bill Kristol is the Bill Kristol of the left...

Well, never mind.

This is in Krugman's wheelhouse, and I don't know enough about econ to have an opinion, and so I post.

I have no idea what's going on, but expect Krugman's worth at least listening to on this one.

PMSM Lies To Liberals and Progressives; Rittenhouse Trial Is Redpilling Some Of Them

Apparently many liberals and progressives have been told / given the impression by the PMSM that Rittenhouse "crossed state lines" in order to go to a peaceful Kenosha BLM protest and murder innocent black people. Needless to say, as with any extremists, many will stick to their preconceived beliefs no matter what. But others are being redpilled by the trial--recognizing that the so-called "narrative" (i.e. lies) progressive media has spun are wildly at odds with what we, outside the left, know as the facts--a racist concept that was first invented by the West in order to justify racism and other racist things like not believing everything the left tells us to believe.

ITT: whole lotta redpill goin' on:

Again: look how many people are saying that they feel completely betrayed and misled by a year's worth of media coverage about the Rittenhouse case, now that they're watching the trial.

Maybe this should cause a bit of media self-critique? Yeah, I know.https://t.co/SWTfVcBryN

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 11, 2021

BLM Threatens More Crime If Adams Acts To Reduce Crime In NYC

It's a criminal organization, as you may have noticed.

Court Delays Release Of Trump 1/6 Docs

Just delaying release to allow legal arguments. Seems reasonable.

Rittenhouse Acted Heroically

True. 

Rittenhouse is not only innocent but he acted in many ways heroically that night. He even tried his hardest to preserve the lives of his assailants, shooting only at the last moment when he had no other choice. If he is convicted, it is the death of legal justice in this country.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) November 9, 2021

When You've Lost Anna Kasparian...

Holy shit...though this is a sign of the apocalypse...good for her:

‘I Was Wrong’: Young Turks’ Kasparian Admits She Bought Into False Rittenhouse Narrative https://t.co/6RmUhWg8wz pic.twitter.com/uE7lyscVkh

— The Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) November 10, 2021

White House Looking To Hire McAuliffe

Better them than us.

Andrew McCarthy: Durham indictments – don't be fooled, here's where this case is likely headed

Well, as much as I'd like to see him lower the boom on everyone involved, I guess it's good that he seems to have concluded that the FBI was duped, rather than that it colluded with the Clinton campaign. McCarthy knows whereof he speaks--and I'm sure Durham knows a lot, lot more. 

"'Presidents Are Not Kings': Judge Rejects Trump's Bid For January 6th Secrecy"

This seems like an open-and-shut case to me. I'm NAL, of course. And I don't expect Dems to use the information fairly or responsibly. But, still, from the perspective of a layperson, it's hard to see how to justify secrecy about something like the 1/6 riot.

Must-Read: John Murawski "Medical Research Rapidly Adopts 'Systemic Racism' as Undisputed Truth, Risking Scientific Credibility"

Absolutely, positively read the whole thing.

Medical research in the U.S. will now be guided by politicized, prope-Lysenkoist pseudoscience that cannot even be questioned without risking one's career.

This is not an ordinary cultural/political dispute.

This is an irrationalist, totalitarian takeover of all of our institutions.

20-Year Trucker On Why The Supply-Chain Crisis Won't End

I know nothing about it--but here's a view.

Dan Gainor: Dishonest Press Goes Dark on Discredited Dossier Designed to Divide and Destroy

I've said this, too--the MSM breathlessly reported every scrap of a lunatic rumor they could scrape up or make up when Russiagate was an anti-Trump story. Now that it's an anti-Dem (and, to some extent, pro-Trump) story...they say the absolute minimum they think they can get away with. And much of that is--yet again--lies. Gainor:

 A year after the presidential election, it’s easy to forget just how much the legacy press freaked out about Trump and Russia—every report designed to undermine his presidency and prevent a second term.
The airwaves were filled with stories. ABC, CBS and NBC evening news programs devoted 2,634 minutes in two years. That’s more than 100 minutes a month.
Print was just as bad. The Washington Post lists more than 900 Trump and Russia stories from the date of his election. The paper ran just three pieces since the story fell apart—and only one admitting the media’s responsibility. 

Aaron Mate: Russiagate Has No Rock Bottom

link

Paul Brandus: Biden's Doing A Great Job, But Can't Control "The Narrative"

This isn't stupid. Except for the "narrative" part. Dems are more-or-less in complete control of the storyline the media emits. I'm not convinced, but Brandus's arguments at least would have to be addressed. I don't buy the job-creation argument: a huge employment surge seems like exactly what we'd expect right now at the more-or-less end of the pandemic. As for the infrastructure bill: I've long been under the impression that more infrastructure spending was needed. The objections to the bill, as I understand them, are basically: (a) it contains too much ridiculous Democrat pork that no reasonable person can construe as infrastructure ("human infrastructure" is the weasel phrase they use for unrelated stuff like Head Start), (b) it contains basically wasted climate-change spending, and (c) it's bad time for huge amounts of government spending. All of these criticisms could be wrong for all I know.

   At any rate, I'm certainly willing to give Biden whatever's his due. My objections are based on the stuff I understand; I object to his role in advancing the genuinely and obviously insane parts of the Democrats' agenda. As for stuff that's genuinely unclear--that's just what happens in every administration. I don't object to that stuff. 

Everything Is Racist: Admitting There's A "Biden Border Crisis" Is Racist

It's a hatefact, bigot.

Does The Russiagategate Trail Lead Back To Brookings, Too???

Of course arguably the biggest political scandal in American history is not actually happening according to the PMSM... But imagine that the tables were turned: imagine Fox News had conspired with the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Trump Campaign and other front-line conservative people and organizations to falsely accuse Barack Obama of treason in order to deceive the American people into electing a Republican instead... Imagine also that they'd made up a disgusting salacious sex act as part of the thing. The accusations of racism would never end. Even aside from that, it would be front-page news every day for as long as it lasted and then another decade or so. The CNN chyron would burn itself out and burn out the pixels on your tv. The NYT would add "The 2020 Project" to it's "1619 Project" ideological product line for schools. Whole new areas of grievance studies would spring up in universities. There would be tearful commercials by brainless pop culture stars. There'd by lefties shrieking at the sky...

   But the tables are not turned...and what we get is a massive, media-wide effort to pretend that nothing at all is happening.

British Universities Offer Students Pr0n, Prostitution Training

You've gotta be pretty debauched to fall below my rather lax standards:

Durham, Leicester, Manchester and Newcastle are inviting undergraduates to access tools to help them navigate challenges they might face when escorting, performing on web cams and stripping.

via Moonbattery. 

Everything Is Racist: Bridges Are Racist

But wait...I thought we were supposed to build bridges not walls...et tu, bridges?

Pete’s biggest concern with the crumbling infrastructure is racist bridges. pic.twitter.com/yKNHgmc8Bu

— Ian Miles Cheong @ stillgray.substack.com (@stillgray) November 8, 2021

Everything Is Racist: Trains Are Racist

well obvs

NewNewSpeak Update!!!: 'Woke' Now A Racial Slur!!!!!

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

These people seem to have no idea how ridiculous they are.

   But, then, you almost can't blame them. Progressives basically control the national vocabulary. They declared 'Wuhan virus' politically incorrect...then scientifically incorrect...then "stigma"-producing, then, finally--of course--RACIST!!!!

   Also, of course: 'colored people': RACIAL SLUR!!! 'People of color': OBLIGATORY!!!

   They have plenty of evidence that they really do control the national lexicon... They kinda do after all.

   Anyway.

   The Woketarians have gone way, way past the point of self-parody.

   I like the bit where he issues a vague threat about how he might "do something" about non-progressives...or maybe non-blacks?...using the word 'woke.' Scary!

   How braindead do you have to be to still be a progressive in 2021? I mean...it was already ridiculous in 2014. To still be hanging on to it in 2021...you've got to have major problems.

Oh and: woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke....  Pretend I repeated that like 100 times--I don't care enough to really do so.

Lysenkoism Watch: Another Politically Incorrect Scientific Paper (And Book) "Cancelled" / Crammed Down The Memory Hole; Tearful Apology For Badthink Issued

Behold, the party of science strikes again. It's weird that progressivism can be both pro-science and anti-science... I guess my powers of doublethink need work.

Rittenhouse Prosecution After Witness Grosskreutz Admits He Only Got Shot After He Drew His Gun On Kyle And Advanced On Him

Rittenhouse prosecution after witness Grosskreutz admits he only got shot after he drew his gun on Kyle and advanced on him pic.twitter.com/yvzeowUzF3

— Tim Pool (@Timcast) November 8, 2021

via Insty.

So the lesson is: if three progressives try to kill you, it's at least possible to avoid jail if you shoot them in self defense.

Is this a great country or what?

Your Blue Future: More On Our Two-Track (Social) "Justice" System: Doxing/Stalking Jurors And Judges

It's social justice, bigot.

Not to be confused with, y'know justice justice.

There but for the grace of God go you.

The only thing keeping the lunatic mobs away from your home is that they haven't noticed you doing anything to piss them off.

Your Blue Future: Intimidating Juries and The Populace No Longer Enough / Intimidating Judges Is The Progressivest Thing

link.

Does anybody really think the officer involved is going to get a fair trial?

Turley: Durham's Latest Indictment: More Lines Drawn To Clinton Campaign

link

The most astonishing possible outcome--something many on the right have long predicted--would be that it was actually the blue team that colluded with the Rooskies... Turley certainly doesn't say that's what he expects. But that possibility seems to me to be a real possibility now. It's long been clear that there was collusion among the Dems, the MSM, and the FBI--but so far as I can recall, I've always thought that collusion with the Russians was a bridge too far. Russiagate has already been turned on its head--but to be completely, 100% turned on its head...that just seems too much like a Christopher Buckley novel. 

Biden Accused Of Mocking Americans' Intellect b/c They Don't Understand Supply Chain

Well...is he wrong, though? I mean, I'd never given "the" supply chain a moment's thought.

It's pretty easy to understand the very general details, though. Biden himself describes the basics in a few sentences. Anyway, he's really denigrating their/our knowledge, not their/our intelligence. 

C'mon, man!

The Biden administration is, IMO, a rolling, flaming disaster. It's a target-rich environment for criticism. Why stretch things to fabricate more targets?

I mean, I'm not exactly sure why it's relevant--not sure why Americans need to understand it. The point is that it's a problem and there's no clear indication that the administration has a way to fix it. More impeachment would already be in the works if Trump were still president. 

Anyway. This criticism just seems dumb.

Astronomer Recants Counterrevolutionary Use Of Data; Retracts Paper

Appeals to evidence in hiring decisions can harm women (of all sexes, genders, species, and metaphysical status) and minorities. Dr. smarty-pants regrets his counterrevolutionary thought, withdrew his paper and put his book on pause. 

But we are not living in a time of progressive Lysenkoism, and any suggestion to the contrary is, itself, counterrevolutionary thought.

Analysis From The Guardian Dimension: Election Not A Loss For Dems!!!!111

Crazy as everybody is over there, I actually think the core of this largely nutty screed should be taken seriously. Y'know, not the parts about TEH REPUBLIKKKAN NAZI TAKEOVER!!!111... But a weakened form of the central argument to the effect that the election results were to some extent predictable. She relies on the argument that the OD tends to elect Governors of a different party than the President. I don't remember this pattern, and haven't checked it out, so I don't know whether it exists, nor how strong it is. Nor whether it should even matter. But this argument didn't show up until it was time for damage control after the Dems loss. Also it doesn't explain why McAuliffe led for so much of the race, and why the polls switched so rapidly after the CRT issue and McAuliffe's commentary thereon. To the naive observer, it rather seems that issues might matter a bit to OD voters...

   Also: do gubernatorial candidates tend to sweep in lieutenant governors and AG candidates on their coattails? 

   Anyway, what's-her-name, the author, cites several victories by (and I'm not making this up) "mayors of color." And some other stuff. I was honestly skimming by that point.

   But anyway, independent of what's-her-name's argument: the progressive left has gone utterly insane, and the Dems have largely ceded control to their insane ideas. Pubs should be out there winning by landslides everywhere. But they aren't. As Insty often reminds us: don't get cocky.

Jenkins: On Russiagate, Durham Indicts The Press, Too

Funny how the biggest political scandal of my lifetime has been suppressed and distorted by the mainstream media...and nobody on the left cares one bit. They still revere their prestige media, read it exclusively, take its word as gospel--so long as it toes the party line. Which it almost always does. Their media itself participated in creating and sustaining the Russiagate hoax, and this undermined their faith in that media exactly not at all--so far as I can tell. If you're still taking the word of the NYT, WaPo, et al. on politically and culturally controversial stories...uh...well, look: what sort of evidence of their unreliability are you waiting for? How much more could you possibly want? The entire progressive institutional superstructure is living in a web of lies and delusions of its own spinning. The madness has infected the truth-discovering-and-transmitting institutions, and progressivism is going along with the madness those institutions pump out--sometimes happily, sometimes angrily, sometimes terrified of the apparatus of "cancel culture" being turned on them themselves...but it's certainly going along...

Preston Cooper: Is College Worth The Cost?

Depends, in part, on the major:

   The results show that 28% of bachelor’s degrees, weighted by enrollment, do not have a net positive return. More than a quarter of students are in programs that aren’t worth the cost.Though students often obsess over where they get in, their majors have the most sway over their future earnings.
   Programs in engineering, computer science, economics and nursing all yield a high return, often increasing their students’ net lifetime earnings by $500,000 or more. But a majority of programs in art, music, philosophy and psychology leave their average students financially worse off....

   One of the nation’s highest-return programs is the computer-science major at Harvard University. This degree has an expected value of more than $3 million. But attending the nation’s most elite school is no guarantee of financial security. Harvard’s ethnic and gender studies program leaves its students worse off by around $47,000 on average, according to my estimates.

Too bad about philosophy. It could be that it's just a bad major on this measure, but it could be that philosophy tends to derail smart people from more lucrative careers (philosophy majors rank in the top three majors, on average, after math, physics and astronomy ("top three" because those three seem always to be consolidated in one way or other into two) in GRE scores; so smart isn't just wishful thinking.) 

   OTOH, how would such derailing work? Not that many people are derailed from laws school into philosophy grad school. I was. But there aren't enough people in phil grad school to make that the crucial factor...are there?

   I don't try to talk student into a PHIL major (though some people do). I do tell students that I think it's a great minor or second major...but they should probably do math instead. 

   At least philosophy is largely interesting, and it does seem to hone your mind to some extent. Though analytic philosophy probably gives you a lot of bad intellectual habits. And Continental wrecks you--and is wrecking the country. 

   Grievance studies, OTOH--gender studies, women's studies, AfAm studies, "Latinx" (lol) studies, queer studies blah, blah may not make you rich...or, who knows, they may as the diversity-industrial complex becomes further entrenched, and the demand for bullshit consultants strengthens. 

   The real reason not to go into grievance studies is that it's basically recent Continental philosophy + even bullshittier bullshit that will ruin your mind. It'll leave your head filled with falsehoods and nonsense, and, worse, instill in you terrible habits of reasoning.

   That's all I got.

More People Work When The Gubmint Stops Paying Them Not To

Incentives, how do they work?

First-Ever "Female" Four-Star Admiral: Twitter Locks PJ Media's Account For Telling The Truth About Rachel Levine (Hint: He's a Dude)

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

                                                                                -- not George Orwell

Dream House

Samuel Freel: Academia's Identity Crisis

I'd add/correct: "scholar-"activists are mostly not very good scholars.

And: my own institution, like others, has basically outlawed pure scholarship. All applicants for faculty positions (and, I guess, administrative ones) are forced to include a description of their pro-"diversity" activist views and activities. 

Academia isn't dead--but it's on its way to the ER.

If You Oppose CRT In Schools, Then You Oppose Teaching Kids About The History Of Race In America

Analogously:

If you oppose Scientology in schools, then you oppose teaching kids about the history of religion in America.

Is Christopher Rufo A Right-Wing Leninist?

It's not a stupid question.

I have read things from him that made me worry about stooping to the level of the pomo-prog left. It's the sort of thing one ought always to worry about and keep an eye on. When you go hunting monsters...

The only way I know to do all this is to stick to reason as closely as we can, which means, among other things, being resolutely fallibilistic. It's tougher when your opponents are such a train wreck...but it's the only way I know to lower the odds of becoming a train wreck yourself.

WSJ Editors: Durham Unravels The Russia Case

But this still might as well not even be happening according to progressives/MSM.

Sugar Consumption and Obesity

Against the monocausal theory.

Primary Steele Dossier Researcher Danchenko Arrested In Durham Probe

Russiagategate is huge--and it's going to get huger.

The MSM has already muffled it beyond what even I thought even they were capable of. And they're obviously not going to change their stripes any time soon. 

So, though I'm sure they'll minimize it to the maximum degree they can manage...it's still going to be huge.

If You Think Classic Rock--Or Anything Else--Is Safe From Censorship/Book-Burning/The Progressive Index...You Haven't Been Paying Attention

There's not really all that much reason to keep making this point: nothing is safe from the depredations of Political Correctness. The PC/pomo-prog left will destroy everything if left unchecked. Destruction is its raison d'etre. That's the internal "logic" of the left. Its judgments are whimsical and literary-interpretive. Thus its decrees are subject to no rational standards. It's like bad poetry about the destruction of civilization. Everything good and rational is bad and wrong and must be crushed. And these "conclusions" are always protected by a meta-"argument": if you disagree, you're a racist*.

They will never stop making this same "argument," over and over and over, about everything worthwhile, everything human. Their ultimate, unacknowledged and unacknowlegeable goal, is their own Ouroboros-like destruction, in which they themselves vanish in a puff of deconstruction.

And, for the record, I don't even like classic rock that much anymore, in case that's what you're thinking.

*i.e.: a racist or the moral equivalent thereof: misogynist, homophobe, "transphobe," whatever.

Swimming In A Sea Of Lies

We all now swim in a sea of utterly insane progressive lies and delusions. Men are women--and always have been, bigot. Racism pervades absolutely everything about the entire nation--largely invisible, undetectable, "systemic" racism. The Earth teeters on the very bring of Carbongeddon! If we don't reduce carbon emissions down to [2000 / 1950 / 1900 / 1825 / 1066] levels in [10...9...8...7...] years, it's CURTAINS for humanity!!! Also, curtains are racist. I mean--obviously. And these are just the Big Three lies. That's barely to scratch the surface. Oh--but don't forget the Master Lie: facts are racist...racist. To be more specific: facts always must magically conform themselves to progressive political fashion. And the most important corollary: science must also so conform...

   Universities--and this is a red alert situation--are at the forefront of this madness. What are allegedly our flagship truth-seeking institutions are the primary spreaders of this madness. To teach at a university is to be saturated in patent, lunatic falsehoods. My own august institution has just hired a consulting firm--that obviously specializes in telling far-left organizations that they are not far enough left--to tell us that we are not far enough left. This, of course, is a means to the end of moving the institution farther left. We have adopted--as our number 1 and guiding goal--the goal of "antiracism." This, let me remind you, is a university. To repeat: our number 1 goal is: antiracism. This is predicated on the obviously false assertion that we're saturated in racism. Which we aren't. At all. In about a quarter-century at this institution, the only overt racism I can ever remember encountering was someone on the left asserting, a couple of months ago, that all whites are oppressors. Other than that, what I've witnessed here is mostly: white people bending so far over backwards to avoid even any suggestion of a suggestions of (non-anti-white) racism that it's embarrassing. But we live in the lie that racism is everywhere here--and I'm the only faculty-member I've ever heard challenge that idea. Only because It's only a matter of time before I do that in front of some of the local leftist hysteriacs...and then there's gonna be a very large blowup...

   But the whole country lives in lies now. Not distant, esoteric ones, either. Obvious, outrageous falsehoods that anyone with so much as half a brain knows are stupid lies. 

Whaddaya think that does to a people, I wonder?

RACIST REPUBLICANS: ELECTION ASS-WHOOPIN' EDITION

Razizt, razizt Republicans... Go to the 2:30 mark if it fails to start there. After the razizt, razizt Republican parents you can stay around if you want for Van Jones and further accusations of razizt razizm...plus his cringy "delta variant" analogy/thingy...which should be called the Old Dominion virus, in keeping with proper conventions of nomenclature...:

Progressive Lies About Progressive Race-Indoctrination: The Title and Subtitle Tell You Everything You Need To Know

Here's the title and subtitle of an op-ed in the Times:

The kids can handle America’s real history. Why can’t adults?

Not to idealize young people, but I suspect they have no need or desire of being treated like hothouse flowers.

This is just a blatant lie--and a kind of blatant lie that's common on the left--a left, I'll add, that has spent more than five years telling us that leftist children--and adults--are typically so fragile that they can't even hear opposing views without be terrified and psychologically scarred to such an extent that they have to flee to rooms full of coloring books and puppies. In fact, that hearing non-leftist views is violence.

   But, consistency to the side: no one, anywhere, is saying that you can't teach kids honest history. No one, anywhere, is saying that they are psychologically incapable of handling it. To say that that's what non-progressives are saying is just a lie. 

   What they're saying is: stop indoctrinating their goddamned kids with leftist pseudoscience like f****** Critical Race Theory. In fact, it's only partially pseudoscience. The rest of it doesn't even rise to the level of pseudoscience--it's just shitty philosophy. 

   The left can't take it. It can't take criticism, it can't take being wrong, it can't take losing. Progressives are all over media today shrieking about how RRRRAAAAAZZZZIIIIZZZTTT VA Pubs are. You know--the party that just elected one white dude, one black female veteran, and one Hispanic guy to the three statewide offices at issue. 

   Anyone with more than half a brain is sick of this nonstop shrieking about racism--mainly by antiwhite racists. Some people are willing to smile and grit their teeth like good little "allies" and take it with a hearty Thank you, sir, may I have another?

   The rest of us say: Fuck off, we're voting Republican.

   

Pubs Sweep OD Elections ?

The Times-Dispatch has called it for the Pubs in all the statewide races: Younkin, Sears, Miyares. Miyares is particularly great news. It also claims that a 6th HoD seat has been flipped, giving the Pubs a one-seat majority there. But that latter judgment does not seem to be shared by every source.

The Pubs come with their own set of problems, obviously. But, given the current state of play, this is all great news--if there's a majority in the HoD. Even if not, it is, of course, a lot better situation than we were in yesterday.

/r/Politics On Suicide Watch

that is all

Election Night Looking Pretty Good So Far

Apparently many good signs for Youngkin. Early returns in his favor. Doesn't mean much. Probably not many absentee ballots tabulated yet. But Youngkin is only losing the in-person vote in Loudon County by like 10%--which would be a huge win/improvement over 2020, apparently, when Biden won it by like 25%. 

 HoD looking good. 

If you'd have told me in 2016--especially right after Trump's win--that I'd be sitting here five years later rooting for the Red Team, I'd have told you you were nuts.

[Sears looking good, too! I somehow got the idea Ayala had pulled ahead in that race. Hope these trends hold.]

[Holy crap, AG too? I will not be sorry to see Herring go, not one bit.]