Kids' Anxiety Not Caused By Progressive Fake Apocalypse, But By Conservatives' Refusal To Pretend Fake Apocalypse Is Real

facepalm

Vasectomies Are now Praxis Or Something

So...getting a vasectomy after your fourth kid when your wife has a bad time with the pill gets you lefty social credit shit now?

Progressivest quote ev-ar:

“The procedure was a total relief, almost like the covid shot — like I’m safe now,” said Gress, who works in higher education. “I wanted to man up.”

As Fleccas points out...they even manage to get a reference to their current religious obsession, the COVID shot, in there. 

Liel Leibovitz: "The Turn"

I posted on this when it came out, but I'm going through Bari Weiss's year-end top ten, so I re-read it.

I was less impressed with it this time. I mean--the first read was the most important. Back then it was more important to hear other people's redpilling stories. It doesn't really sound like Leibovitz has paid that high a price for leaving the left, actually...and also sounds like he was on its nuttier extreme... But, still: if you're looking for a redpilling story, it's a decent one. 

   I disagree that 'right' and 'left' are empty labels. Redpilling isn't just about recognizing and admitting that the left is a train wreck. It's also about recognizing and admitting that the right has been a lot righter all along than you realized. 

P/MSM Discovers That Conservatives Have Been Right About COVID All Along...

When you make Ben Shapiro say "fuck all y'all," you done screwed up bad...

I don't see any way to defend conservatives on their (by my lights) excessive anti-vax stance. I think old farts and the otherwise immunocompromised--and, of course, the overweight--should get the vax. I mean: that, at least, seems clear so far as I can tell. But the vast majority of the crazy--as per usual now--has been on the progressive left. They tend to be more risk-averse to start with. And more locked into groupthink. And their vanguard uses crises to effect its radical initiatives--so, ceteris paribus, it likes crises. And the hysteria was good for ratings. And bad for Trump. Now that it's bad for Biden and could make the '22 elections even worse for Dems...well...maybe it's not so bad after all...

Alana Newhouse, "Everything Is Broken"

There's a lot of truth in this, obviously--truth about the unhinging/crapification of American institutions resulting from the left's Long March Through them. But when the essay moves beyond that, I'm not sure how right it is. I certainly don't know what to think about her abstract characterization of the problem ("flatness"), nor about her prescriptions. I'm not sure going to church is the solution (note: humorous exaggeration). I also don't know how true the title is--and don't know whether it's fruitful to think that way.

   Newhouse reminds us, inter alia, that an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine argued that we should stop designating sex on birth certificates. Now, that's a monumentally stupid idea that could only have arisen among the barking moonbats. Though, to be clear, I have no problem with discussing stupid ideas. That's basically philosophy. The problem isn't discussing stupid ideas. The problem is doctors discussing stupid ideas and discussing them as if they were serious ideas that should actually be considered for practical implementation. That's the crazy/scary part. 

Got a Cold

Ugh.

Wonder whether it's the deadly batflu, omicron edition?

Bari Weiss: Favorite Articles of 2021

I haven't read most of these. I've just started at the top and plan to go through the whole thing.

Dude Says "Let's Go Brandon" On Xmas Eve Phone Call With Biden; Progressives Lose What's Left Of Their Minds

First: total penis move. Dude is a jackass. Respect the office even if not the man. There's the POTUS, trying to do something nice, and this shithead has to ruin it for some low-grade lulz. Brainless, artless, witless trolling. Of a 79-year-old, no less. So zero respect for his elders on top of everything else.

      Dude who said it claims it was "a joke" and that he has nothing against Biden, but is frustrated with his policies. Bullshit. He knew what he was doing. 

   But, of course, progressivism is a mental disease, and the left couldn't be content with mere rational criticism of the guy's jackassery. What he said was "a right-wing slur"--a phrase that makes almost exactly no sense. Calling it a "vulgar insult" is at least sane and close to the truth--if still not quite right. Wikipedia, believe it or not, says something reasonable, describing it thusly: "a political slogan that has been widely used as a minced oath." 

   Characteristically bereft of anything resembling a sense of humor--not to mention an ability to meme--the left has been pumping out the cringe. Some asshat on Twitter claimed that he'd never heard anyone say 'fuck Trump,' and never saw that written anywhere. Which...is impossible since La Resistance was spewing it basically nonstop for 4+ years. (In fact, you can see instances at the previous link in case your memory is similarly faulty.) In fact, a semi-major U.S. publication (which it will probably surprise you to discover still exists) actually published an article titled 'Fuck Ben Carson'...largely arguing that, well, fuck Ben Carson. Why? Because he's too Trump-like. Jesus these people. Needless to say, the squeals of "RACISM!!!!" would never end were the tables turned, party-wise, on that one...

The ACLU Goes Stupider

Remember when the ACLU was not an embarrassment?

Remember when they weren't working for the Dark Side?

OTOH, this actually has something--something stupid...but...something nevertheless--to do with civil liberties...sorta... So that beats the rest of their new Woketarian bullshit.

Americans

 

No CRT In Schools? The Evidence Says Otherwise

Yeah, there's absolutely CRT in K-12.

But, again, that's not exactly the problem.

The problem is that a giant tangle of irrationalist, relativist, nihilist, skeptical, pseudoscientific hogwash has gripped the American intellectual left for at least the last 40 years. The left has taken over the intellectually weakest parts of the university, and that includes ed. schools. That tangle of philosophical nonsense and antiliberal, anti-American politics has suffused American education--both higher and lower. And it trickles into students' minds in innumerable ways. CRT is merely the most currently-prominent component of that radioactive tangle of bullshit. 

That's the problem.

"What I've Learned Rescuing My Daughter From Her Transgender Fantasy"

I don't know about the solution part, but the problem part is chilling. 

Hard to believe that people who go so far out of their way to seem like unsavory freaks are, in fact...unsavory freaks...

Is Adjunctification And The Disappearance Of Tenure A Myth?

maybe

Yes, Critical Race Theory Is Taught In Schools

link

The Great Shoplifting Freakout?

Are shoplifting, smash-and-grabbing, and large, organized looting big problems on the rise?

maybe.

maybe not.

   I find the question somewhat interesting, but partway through that essay I realized that I wasn't interested enough to read the whole thing. Also, as I often do: I realized that someone like me who doesn't know anything about the problem would have to pay very, very close attention to the arguments to see all the problems with them--and would likely still miss a lot. What I'd need is equal and opposite expert opinion--or at least serious journalism. I'd guess that this essay was downplaying the problem--but there's some reason in there that sounds like prima facie reason to doubt there's been a humongous rise. 

   One possible explanation for closures of e.g. Walgreens...es?...in inner cities may be not that shoplifting has increased all of a sudden, but rather that there's just too much of it--along with other inner city hassles--and the company has been looking for an excuse to close. They might have been hesitant to do so because of the inevitable accusations of racism. Or not. I don't know.

   Anyway: it's at least good to be reminded that the media lies and screws up all the time, and they may be doing that again in this case. Or not. I don't know.

Here Come Those COVID Pills...

link

What's The Holdup On Anti-COVID Pills?

Even more puzzling: what's with this seemingly rational op-ed in the Guardian??

Elizabeth Warren Has The Economic World-View Of A Third-Grader

link

As someone else put it: she's dedicated herself to beating Big Meat.

Conrad Black: The Gathering Cloud Of Political Madness

Black underplays the problems with Trump. 

But he's awfully right about awfully much of this, so far as I can tell.

The Second Amendment = Roe v. Wade

Gosh, I didn't know half this stuff.

Krugman: "What We Lose If We Don't Build Back Better"

I don't know enough to know what's sketchy here and what isn't. I have no doubt that some things in the bill would be good. But that doesn't mean it's a good bill, nor that we should support it, nor that Manchin should vote for it. If the blue team really thinks the bits PK mentions are that important, write a bill without all the other wacky shit in it. Like the "tree equity" and electric vehicle "equity" provisions, the expenditures on PC indoctrination/brainwashing, and on "climate justice" bullshit and other climate-change-hysteria crap. 

   But, as usual, the provisions in question are so clearly and absolutely crucial that conservatives are not permitted to question them or vote against them...but not so crucial as to mean that Dems should drop other crazy shit in order to pass them.

HMD: Inside The Omicron Fear Factory

The mind, it reels.

Leftists Wonder Why Their Policy Of Complete And Utter Destruction Of America Isn't More Popular

That's barely even a joke.

Maoism At UI-C Law School: The Kilborn Case

Utter, abject, jaw-dropping insanity.

"The Fickle 'Science' Of Lockdowns"

Hindsight is etc....but this is roughly in accord with my own half-assed layperson's understanding. First and foremost: even before Summer 2020, it became clear that the public-health messages we were getting via the media were hysterical and (at least as-if) designed to fan the flames of fear. I can't believe it took me so long to figure that out. But it took months, IIRC. I never really understood half-assed lockdowns. A short, hard-assed lockdown would make more sense--or so I thought. Here's a telling--but not surprising--paragraph:

So why did public-health authorities abandon their opposition to lockdowns? Why did they rush to embrace the untested claims of flawed epidemiological modeling? One answer appears in the Johns Hopkins study from 2019: “Some NPIs, such as travel restrictions and quarantine, might be pursued for social or political purposes by political leaders, rather than pursued because of public health evidence.”

It's certainly possible that those were factors. But people who don't understand the technical reasoning in question often revert to something they think they do understand: social/political explanations. Sometimes those explanations are right--or partially right. But if you don't understand the technical arguments you're not in a position to tell whether nonrational social/political explanations are warranted. Magness and Earle do seem to understand those arguments--so they, at least, are in a position to know if nonrational social/political explanations are called for. 

   Obviously everything is politicized now. There's no doubt that the left tends toward certain kinds of hysteria. They love masks--Twitter and Zoom are full of people wearing masks in their profile pics...seemingly take from home... They also became bizarrely, passionately pro-vax...worse...vax-max...as soon as the baton passed to Biden. The right, in this case, went approximately equally and oppositely crazy. Even fat old wingnuts with diabetes and asthma are often devotedly anti-vax. Whereas lefties can hardly wait to get their babies triple-vaxxed...  It's all just crazy as hell.

   Anyway. We didn't know what to do at first. We certainly could have done better. But our mistakes were at least partially justified--or so it seems to me. Perhaps the weirdest thing is how long relevant facts about age and comorbidities were suppressed. Basically the first thing we should have been told was that healthy young people are not at appreciable risk. The suppression of that information--at least by the media, and perhaps by elements of the public-health-industrial-complex, is, to my mind, just about the most amazing part of this whole story--on the social/political side of the thing at least. Second might be the suppression of the lab-leak hypothesis...but there's so much crazy in play that it's kind of hard to rank.

Are Himalayan Glaciers Melting At A Furious Rate?

maybe

The White House Throws A Tantrum

Because Manchin.

Trump Gets Jesus?

I'm not so sure about this combination.

Did Manchin "Kill Transformational Liberalism For A Decade?"

Uncharacteristically cheery for that lot at NRO...

Think about the left, though: it never stops. It will continue trying to do things that will destroy the country. It'll have successes. Eventually, they'll probably succeed. 

Only the vanguard really wants to destroy the country. Closer to the center, they just want a whole lotta xs that will have the actually effect of moving us closer to destruction. 

Get Woke, Go Broke: Salvation Army Edition

link      I'm certainly not giving 'em any money unless/until they dump the leftist bullshit.

The Guardian Has Gotten Into The Cooking Sherry Again--This Time Because Z0MICRON!!!111111

My God, these people are stupid cowards.

Oh and: yet again THE SZIENZE IS CLEAR--IT SAYS LEFTIES ARE RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!!!!11111

So weird that the science is always like that...

Hate Hoax Denialism: BLM / Jussie Smollett Edition

This is delusional even by the standards of the progressive left.

More at Legal Insurrection.

Tom Klingenstein: The Big Lie Is: "America Is Racist"

 

Revisiting: "The Dangerous Rise Of Men Who Won't Date Woke Women"

LOL "dangerous."

You're free to have stupid politics, but the rest of us are free to not date you for it.

Note: if we disagree with them, they think it's permissible to come at us in rabid, spittle-flecked mobs and try to ruin our lives. But it's "dangerous" for us to just quietly prefer not to associate with them.

They're a very stupid lot.

"Park and Tourism Sciences" Prof: SOMETHING SOMETHING SYSTEMIC RACISM!!!!1111

It's a simple formula, and it can easily be used to produce the conclusion 'x is racist' for any value of x. It doesn't even take any brains. All it requires is a small degree of verbal sophistication and an ability to produce bullshit without blushing.

We're Angry About The Crime Wave We Started And Want It To End

Nobody's inherently this stupid.

You basically have to run an ideological stupidity emulator to get that stupid.

Manchin Kills "Build Back Better" Spending Bill

Props to Senator Manchin!

Columbia U.'s Violence Problem: Predictable, Preventable, Progressive

link

OSU's Army of Diversocrats Cost $13.4 Million / Year

Leftists paying leftists to make universities more leftist.

China Interferes With Free Expression Of Chinese Students At American Universities

Who does the CCP think it is? American progressives?

CNN Omicron Panic

I only see CNN at the gym, but often can't look away--morbid curiosity and all.

The dominant theme today was omicron panic. Apparently WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE AGAIN!!!!!!!

Another Christmas Parade Vehicle Attack

link

Pantyfa Goes To Prison

This really is heartwarming.

Shapin: "Is There A Crisis Of Truth?"

Well, it's Shapin doing Shapin...so no surprises. I've probably even complained about this very piece before. Might still be worth a quick read. Shapin seems really sure of only two things: (a) Trump is a paradigm of falsehood and (b) climate change is real. It's pretty funny that he's wrong about both of them--bad as Trump might be on this score. But the "alternate facts" BS--a deliberate misinterpretation--can only be stretched so far...  As usual, I'll point out that the PC left is far, far, far more the enemy of truth than is Trump. And one of the things they're apparently most wrong about is climate catastrophism. It's really kinda perfect that Shapin, who is so skeptical about truth, is so credulous about such obviously shaky, highly-politicized bullshit. He does have a good point--familiar though it is--that people don't so much know about science as they know about society--and on that basis trust science. Obama--revered though he is by "the party of science"--doesn't know any more science than Trump does. According to Shapin, however, he "knows where to look" to find the right deliverances of science. Wrong again, Shapin--I'd be willing to be a little bit that Trump would come out ahead in an actual match-up. The left is currently so delusional--blinded as it is by ideology--that it has become the most important purveyor of pseudoscience--(trans)gender ideology, climate apocalypticism, "social constructionism" of all kinds--especially concerning race--and the pseudosocialscience of BLM &co.  Just for starters...

   It's also pretty hilarious that he contrasts the (bad) Breitbart with the (good, reliable) NYT... The sins of the latter against truth are probably far greater than that of the former, actually...though the Times has had more opportunities, so the comparison isn't quite fair. Find me a Breitbartian Russiagate, or 1619 Project or Ukrainian-famine-denial... Not that Breitbart is so virtuous...but the very fact that the comparison is less clear than Shapin thinks it is says a lot.

   Funny thing about the left: it's made its own skepticism / relativism / nihilism about science into a self-fulfilling prophecy... They've long claimed that science was ideological all the way down... That's never been true...but it's also never been truer than it has become since the left took it all over...

Carolina 69 - Kentucky 98

Ouch.

RIP Ranger

Ahem. 

Post slightly modified.

I do wish painful death upon the killers.

Biden: "Winter Of Death"

It's just a name.

TIL: They Have No Guns Nor German Shepherds In India

Because if they did, this shit would not have lasted more than about an hour, tops.

Mask Mandates Are Less Bad Than Vaccine Mandates, Tho

I'm against mandatory masks--but they're less invasive than mandatory vaccinations.

Does "Double-Masking" Help Stop The Spread?

Don't care.

Mary Anne Franks: "Redo The First Two Amendments"

Basically the stupidest goddamn thing you'll ever read about the Constitution.

"Rewriting" would be bad enough, but this is largely just replacement.

Presumably it's just supposed to be provocative and in no way serious.

Healthy Skeptic: Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Episode 69

link

Panic, panic everywhere...

Sarah Zhang: Some Omicron Fearmongering...But With Some Good Arguments

There are actually some good arguments in here. I was somewhat alarmed when I saw a Bhattacharyya quoted saying scary things...but it's not Jay Bhattacharya. 

It's basically not possible for me to remain on high alert about this stuff after two years of hysteria-mongering. I recognize it could kill my sorry ass, and I do take some precautions. I'm considering a booster. 

Anyway. It's not that I think the arguments in the piece are bad. It's just that, well, I guess I'll believe it if I see it.

The Real Chesa Boudin?

Just one account, but I have no trouble believing that a person who has apparently dedicated his life to putting violent criminals back on the street is kinda insane.

"The CDC's Flawed Case for Wearing Masks In Schools"

I didn't read this carefully, TBH. I've given up on getting objectivity about COVID from the usual suspects.

Gosh, Wherever Did This "Attitude Of Lawlessness" Come From?

link   I mean, this could just be anything! There's simply no telling!  I mean...obviously it's got something to do with Trump something something something but you can't even say that with a straight face so I'll just say "attitude of lawlessness" and rely on our previous character assassination of Trump and some weird suggestion about his magical yet undetectable power to corrupt... I mean, if not that, what? Certainly there's not even any need to mention a certain major political party falling in line with the elementary statistical errors of a certain well-known group of race grifters and working to "depolice" dangerous areas and "decarcerate" dangerous people! I mean, that hypothesis is so preposterous it need not even be mentioned! How does that even make any sense to suggest that demonizing police and heroifying criminals would increase crime? What kind of sense does that even make?

Dems/Psaki Are Lying About The Cost Of Build Back Biden

These are at least more like ordinary DC lies. Everybody does these. Almost quaint by the standards of the contemporary left. We're used to shrieking hordes of spittle-flecked lunatics calling us literally Hitler if we refuse to pretend that men in dresses are women, or that racist to believe that there are races. Lying about the cost of legislation seems so old-school...almost reassuringly familiar. 

I mean, they're not going to stop doing that other thing...so it's really no improvement. 

They're doing both things.

Still...kind of a welcome little dip back into normality.

Global Warming Did Not Cause Last Week's Tornados

I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that winter tornadoes will not be "ninefold" more powerful...

   It's getting to the point that you're probably better off listening to a jackass like me than "climate scientists." What the hell ever happened to 'climatology' anyway? That's a perfectly cromulent word. "Climate science" sounds like its trying too hard. Like '-ology' isn't 'science'y enough or something. 

   We shouldn't actually be talking in terms of single causes in such cases anyway, but in terms of the comparative influence of different causal factors. Climate change may be in the mix in the sense that a slightly cooler planet might have, say, fewer tornadoes, or less-powerful winter tornadoes, or whatever. It's possible. But, at this point, some study or other saying some such thing or other is basically no reason to think any such thing is so.

Anti-Nationalism Watch: Noncitizens Can Now...

...vote

The point is to blur the difference between citizens and noncitizens.

Although, OTOH, I read somewhere that noncitizens could vote in some elections in the early national period.

So, Um...Might Catching COVID-Omicron Be A Good Thing?

I mean...it seems to not kill people...and--speaking as a stupid, but reasonably well-read layperson--it seems like the smart money says that naturally-acquired immunity is better, overall, than the vax...and the vax on top of naturally-acquired immunity might be even better...

   So...if all those things are true...which they probably aren't...I think I might kinda want omicron...

   I got the Jansen jab...long time ago. I kinda-sorta know that I should get a booster--esp. given that I have a weird, persistent upper-respiratory glitch. But I keep holding back...

   Well, I'm not exactly the most rational tool in the shed...don't be like me...

Brendan O'Neill: Little Arthur And The Breakdown Of Sociey

I recommend that you not read this.

I didn't know about this case.

I'm so used to reading horrible things on the internet that I'm rather inured to it.

But this story was hard to take. In that I-want-my-hands-around-these-people's-throats-right-now kind of way.

Among all the rest of the awfulness here: his uncle tried to go to his house and save him and the cops told him that if he did it again he'd be arrested for violating bullshit batflu restrictions. It's enough to make your head explode reading this insanity.

Rest in peace Arthur Labjino-Hughes, poor, sweet little guy.

Does The U.S. Need More Nukes To Counter China's New Missile Silos?

I'd guess not...but what do I know?

Answer: not very much about this.

Watching Wargames like fifty times doth not an expert in nuclear deterrence make.

Juan Williams: "The GOP Is An Anti-American Party"

Unsurprisingly, I don't think this is very good.

   It's not that I like everything going on in the GOP, for I do not.

   However, it seems to me to pale in comparison to the utter madness that has gripped what often seems like the majority of the left end of the American political spectrum--not to mention the obliviousness to that madness exhibited by people like Williams.

   One could go on and on.

   Of less importance is the fact that e.g. Williams is willing to cite the following as evidence of the GOP's alleged anti-Americanness:

In the last year, every congressional Republican voted against a bill to help the country recover from the economic damage caused by COVID-19.
Republicans also overwhelmingly opposed an infrastructure bill favored by most Americans.
Now the GOP is opposed to President Biden’s Build Back Better bill to lower taxes for the middle class and help with child care.

Very ordinary policy disagreements are now, apparently, grounds for claiming that your opponents are out to destroy the nation. Well...if your opponents are Republicans, anyway... There are excellent reasons for opposing those policy proposals--Williams's partisan descriptions of them notwithstanding. One could just as easily--more easily, in fact--claim that it's the Democrats who are out to destroy the country by advocating them. In fact, I incline to think that the Pubs are right to oppose them all--though I could easily be wrong about all of them. Because they're complicated. 

   But the real point is: progressives now tend to see any opposition to even their (rather extreme...) policy proposals as evil. Not to mention their outright lunatic new philosophical views. 

   Trump and the 1/6 riots are real problems for the GOP. As I've said, I don't think Trump is fit for office on account of his very serious problems with demeanor and civility. Yet he is not the devil that the blue team delusionally believes him to be. And, more to the point: he was by far the less-bad option given the radicalization and derangement of the postmodern progressive left. The very fact that he was willing to speak the truth about that radicalization and derangement made him, to my mind, the better option by far. Better a boorish lout who speaks important truths and might just save the country than a delusional, hard-left cult. 

   But I've said this all before.

   I could be wrong.

   But I'm not.

CNN, One-Six Texts

I could--unfortunately--see/read what was going on at CNN this morning in the gym as I did the dreadful treadmill...

Wow those people are crazy.

They were trying to turn Trump Jr.'s text--telling Meadows that Trump Sr. needed to tell the rioters to settle down--into some kind of conspiracy...rather than what it actually is: evidence against a conspiracy. 

And this went on and on and on and on. Stetler and his girlfriends were squealing about it when I started running, and they were still squealing about it when I quit. During the same window, Fox had discussed 3 or 4 different stories--all of them more reasonable and interesting than the nonsense CNN was squawking about.

Also: why does a treadmill even count as exercise? It's so ridiculously much easier than actual running...

Eli Lake: Bitterly Clinging To Russiagate

link

Has Biden Abolished 90% Of Trump's Deportations?

Sure sounds that way.

David Brooks Is The Bill Krystol Of The Right

Wrong about everything.

Actually, I guess he's the Bill Krystol of the slightly-to-the-right-of-the-very-center-of-the-fashionable-very-left...which, if I understand that aright...makes him...Bill Krystol!

Has anybody ever seen the two of them in the same place at the same time?

COVID UV Light Therapy: Was Trump Right?

The answer to questions of the form "Was Trump Right About x?" is probably.

Douthat: What The New Right Sees

This is pretty good.

Though I'd say that the diagnosis pulls way too many punches. 

A more honest accounting would start with the left's abject rejection of the idea of truth. Then it would address the unhinged BLM/anti-white/anti-order/depolicing phenomenon and the left's rejection of equality in favor of an inversion of old racism in favor of neo-racism and the subordination of whites to...well...everybody else...

But don't get excited about that, Asians and Jews...you're "white-adjacent"...

As I may have mentioned, the left has completely lost its collective mind. Consequently, the right--even fairly angry and radical versions of the neo-right--is a far less-bad alternative. Douthat is certainly right that the new right has a more realistic view of recent national and world developments than the new left.

Progressivism In Yet Another Nutshell:: TNR: "Is Criticizing Joe Biden A Danger To Democracy?"

Even though the answer is a somewhat enthusiastic no...the rest of this thing provides a case study in the progressive detachment from reality. 

Did you know that a "detailed" "sentiment analysis" had proven that press coverage of Biden has been worse than coverage of Trump? 

SCIENCE!

Then there's more Packeresque nonsense about the Republicans being a threat to democracy for, y'know, wanting voter ID... Oh and: for thinking that only citizens should vote...

Progressivism has lost its mind.

It's difficult even to hope, at this point, that the Dems might return to sanity and liberalism any time in the foreseeable future. Maybe a right good thrashing in '22 and '24 will do it...but It's far from a sure thing. When a group of people has lost its grip on reality, it's hard to get back.

Real Cost Of Biden's Spending Plan Is $4.6 Trillion...Not $0

This is the future of the nation we're talking about.

What is wrong with these people?

FakeHateCrimes.org

link

Speaking of Fake "Hate Crimes"...: UMass Emails

Might I suggest we employ induction in such cases?

The Jussie Smollett Verdict: Let The Bullshitting And Excuse-Making Commence!

"This Wasn't About Jussie Smollett"

The progressive left is drowning in a sea of its own bullshit.

OD ABC: Is This A Dry Daggum State Now Or What?

Affirmative.

   The shelves down t' th' ABC store have been denuded for a long time. Of course there's been the great Buffalo Trace drought. That's a separate problem. To score a bottle of Blanton's you've gotta go down and queue up at 10 am on Tuesday--the morning the truck comes--like some kind of alcoholic Soviet commie. Also, you have to know that the truck comes on Tuesday morning...and what time in the morning the ABC store opens. Both also signs of alcoholism. And you're still not likely to get the Blanton's. I did manage to score a bottle before Thanksgiving in anticipation of the arrival of the pater familias (i.e. my FiL). And I know I'm probably SoL for Xmas by this point. But I've just been too busy to go queue up etc. Tuesday morning etc. commie etc.

   Anyway: last time I was down there I heard someone asking after something he couldn't get. But it was some kind of Canadian Mist, so my sympathy was somewhat limited. But, yeah: the shelves are thinly-populated, and people are starting to grumble a bit. The Bulleit supply seems pretty solid, so it's not an emergency situation yet. 

   All this reminds me that Rebel Yell has been demoted to just Rebel--which, too, may be deemed politically incorrect soon enough as things are going... And all that makes me want to go have a drink.

   

COVID-19 Reveals Rampant Systemic Ageism

I mean, if we're going to accept the leading principle / basic premise of the pomo-prog left's "systemic racism" arguments, then we have to accept all the relevantly similar arguments. Since differential outcomes across races can only be explained by "systemic racism," differential outcomes across ages can only be explained by systemic ageism. 

   And don't even get me started on systemic comorbidityism...

The Russiagate Hoax Whitewash Era Begins (5)

At Powerline.

Will the PMSM get away with the coverup?

I say: probably.

R. W. Johonson: The End Of The Apartheid Alabi

Honestly facing these facts is not easy.

Progressivism Has Lost Its Grip on Reality: Jussie Smollett Edition

As I noted from the beginning (though I'm too lazy to find the link) Smollett's story was always transparently, hilariously, outlandishly false. The fact that progressives collectively (but not to a person, of course) thought it was not only plausible, but that it was true, is just more evidence that the faction has lost its grip on reality. 

   And, of course, it's just one instance of just one type of progressive delusion. Fake hate crimes are a whole genre now on the left...and that is just one nutty genre among many. 

   Of course here, as so often in the case of progressivism, we find ourselves asking: to what extent was/is this genuine belief--and to what extent "performative" affirmation of politically correct dogma? As usual, I have to answer: I don't know. There may be no fact of the matter.

   But this is yet another case that prompts the realization: if they can believe this, they can believe anything. The really creepy thing isn't their belief in this one outlandishly, obviously ridiculous tale...it's that this is just one of an enormous number of utterly ridiculous falsehoods for which the contemporary left enthusiastically falls.

   Again, finally: political correctness is the cornerstone of the postmodern-progressive left. And the fundamental, defining characteristic of PC has always been: the subordination of truth (evidence, etc.) to leftist political dogma. The most prominent corollary of PC has always been: organized shrieking to shout down unPC thought and speech--what we now call "cancel culture." There's nothing essentially new about Woketarianism; it's just political correctness, 30 years crazier.

Norman Podhoretz Is Right About Trump

I'll take 'Sentences You Never Thought You'd Write' for 2000, Alex...:

   “I was, to begin with, anti-anti-Trump,” he says. “I was not crazy about the guy. I had never met him, and still I’ve never met him. But I thought the animosity against him was way out of proportion and, on the right, a big mistake. I went from anti-anti-Trump to pro-Trump. . . . I still think—and it’s been the same fight going on in my lifetime since, I would say, 1965—I still think there’s only one question: Is America good or bad?”
   He pauses, leans back in his sofa chair, and restates the formulation. “A force for good in the world—or not?”
   Mr. Podhoretz was only 30 when he became editor of Commentary, then a magazine of the left. Over the next several years he began to reject the Marxian attitude of his fellow New York intellectuals. “I broke with the left mainly because of its anti-Americanism. When you’re hanging around with people, you hear things they don’t say in public. I knew what they thought, what they didn’t say except in private. And what they thought was horrendous to me.” Each of his four autobiographical books...is in some way an account of his estrangement from the left as a consequence of its refusal, as he saw it, to embrace the U.S., its history and its culture.
   ...He takes bold positions, expresses them fluently, and hits hard. So his description of conservative voters as “troops” didn’t surprise me. “It’s a war, in my view,” Mr. Podhoretz says. “Many people are reluctant to see it in those terms. I mean, people say it’s a lot like 1858 and so on, but I don’t see it as a prelude to a civil war and 600,000 Americans dead. That’s not my meaning. But spiritually it’s a war.”
   The term “culture war” has been thrown around for 30 years, but Mr. Podhoretz takes the martial metaphor seriously: “We’re in a war, and it’s a war to the death. Now they actually admit it. They used to pretend. Not anymore. ‘Dissent’ was the real patriotism—so being against America meant you were for America, if you remember all that. Now they’re happy to say what they think.”
   The left wants to win, he says, but “I’m not sure anymore what our side wants. The right, as I used to understand it, no longer exists. So you’ve got one very clear side, and one very muddled side.”
   Would it be accurate to say that the right’s muddled state consists in a division between those who understand that we’re in a war and those who don’t? A sizeable contingent of the right, such as it is, still believes that solid reporting, thorough scholarship and careful argumentation will win the respect of their ideological adversaries on the basis of fairness and merit. Is that way of thinking a failure to understand the nature of the conflict?
   “I think so,” Mr. Podhoretz says. “And I think Trump was the only guy who understood the situation in those terms, whether by instinct or whatever.”
   ...
   Here Mr. Podhoretz laughs. “Look,” he says, “Trump is a type of person . . . there’s a wonderful Yiddish slang word: bulvan. A bully, doesn’t care, crashes through. Trump’s bad side is a necessary accompaniment to his good side.”
   ...
   Mr. Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election notwithstanding, Mr. Podhoretz has no apologies. “Maybe Trump’s outlived his usefulness, I don’t know,” Mr. Podhoretz says. “And the way he gave away Georgia”—he means the two Jan. 5 runoff elections that cost the Republicans the Senate majority—“was pretty hard to forgive. But if I thought he could win, I wouldn’t hesitate to vote for him.”
   Mr. Podhoretz keeps returning to the theme of war, a war made necessary, in his view, by the anti-Americanism of the political left. Is the hatred of America worse than it used to be? “Unquestionably,” he says. “The left of the 1930s, which was the first time it had significant power and influence, was anti-American to begin with. But it had an alternative—the Soviet Union.” The U.S.S.R. turned out to be a disappointment when it allied with Hitler in 1939, although some on the left never gave up on Russian communism. “Then, after the war, especially in the 1960s and later, they had a series of alternatives—Cuba one week, Mao’s China the next, or Nicaragua, or North Vietnam, or whatever.” The left liked Sweden for a while, he laughs, but Sweden has a market economy. “And”—he laughs again—“somebody found out about the suicide rate.”
   But now, he notes, there’s no alternative, no pretense that some other place does things better. “This ‘woke’ business—critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, all of it—is just pure anti-American hatred. And I think [its proponents] would admit that. Which is why I keep saying it’s a war. If you don’t understand that, you don’t know what the hell is going on.”
   What about the claim that the war is over, and the right lost? Mr. Podhoretz points out that things were pretty bad for conservatives in the late 1970s, but the reaction was explosive. Magazines like Commentary, he thinks, changed the way intellectuals and academics thought about welfare and foreign policy: “People used to accuse me of being self-important when I said this, but the change in the political culture that the neoconservative movement helped to foster was a necessary precondition for the election of Ronald Reagan.”
   That can happen again? “It could.”

"Transwomen" Are Men

I want to again stress: the left is so weirdly powerful--and crazy--that it been willing and able to bully the entire white-collar half of the country into some combination of believing and saying that men in dresses are women. For their next totalitarian trick: grass is red...

J. Peder Zane: The Russiagate Scandal Outranks The Rest

I've long thought it was rather clearly the biggest/worst political scandal in American history.

Joe Rogan On CNN: "Fucking Propagandists"

There's really just no denying that.

Maybe Antifa Isn't Just An Idea After All....

If I ever saw somebody pepper spray an innocent dog like this I would beat them bloody.

Desperately Seeking White Supremacists

Honestly, these guys do look like Feds. They look far too fit to be white supremacists (in the actual sense of 'white supremacists'--i.e. Klansmen and the like). There's a distinct absence of beer guts and other assorted flab among that group...

   It's hard to even take TEH WITE Z'BREMIZY!!!!!-talk seriously anymore. Everybody to the right of Chomsky's one now, we're told by our lefty friends. 

George Packer: Are We Doomed?

I think this is pretty terrible. Basically just blue-team talking points. Bad enough that I thought Hm...is this Packer's attempt to be readmitted into polite society after his (undoubtedly badly-received) piece on leftist insanity in K-12...?

   How anybody can think the Pubs are the bigger threat to democracy than the Dems right now is beyond me. Yes, yes...Orange Man bad and all...of this I am aware...

Pearl Harbor at 80

Jesus Christ. I've been so busy I didn't even realize that today was the 7th...and the 80th anniversary. 
My God, it doesn't seem possible. I was born a mere eighteen years after the end of the war. Like so many boys then--and still--I was fascinated by it. I never foresaw looking back on it all from such a distance. There were so many veterans of the war back then, too. Gosh, this is all striking me as being so very strange all of a sudden.

Does The U.S. Need Hypersonic Capability Now?

 maybe

Metalooting

At the nation's newspaper of record.

Agent-Provocateur-gate

Folks on the right have known this was all fishy from the get-go. I have no doubt there were shenanigans at Riot One-Six...but I have a hard time believing...wait a second...FBI plants and entrapment are, it seems, pretty common... So...why do I have a hard time believing that there were agents provocateurs at that particular event? Well...I don't know, actually... Maybe I don't have a hard time believing it after all...

Dems Are Losing The Election Integrity Debate

Reason does occasionally triumph.

PC Biden &co. In A Psakian Nutshell

Emphasis on the nut...

Political correctness is the subordination of reason and truth to leftist political dogma.

Kamala Harris: Lazy Bully?

Meh. Accusations are cheap.

Eric Dezenhall: The Media Stonewalls On The Steele Dossier

The media, yes. But progressives more generally. Remember the two-or-so-year feeding frenzy when they thought Trump was a killer Russian robot? Jesus Christ the things my friends said... The things I said! Let's not forget that! I don't think I ever really bought the Steele Dossier--but I certainly took it seriously. I'm sure I swerved in that direction quite a bit. I was wrong. I was dumb. In my defense: I changed my mind! A lot of people I know didn't. Most didn't. The astonishing social/political/cultural developments of the last more-or-less-a-decade have seemingly had virtually no effect on most people's social/political/cultural views. If you were going to compile a list of things I find depressing, that would go pretty close to the top.

The Truth About Woketarianism In A Nutshell: Tom Klingenstein on Winning The Cold Civil War

I fear that this is basically right. 

Edward Shames, Last "Band Of Brothers" Officer, Dies at 99

Respect

RIP Bob Dole

This is a hard one. 

Rest in peace, Senator Dole.

Props To The Heels For Handling Michigan; Good Luck At Tech!

Barely any time to keep even one eye on hoops this semester... But also my ardor is diminished after the departure of Roy, the COVID years...and the Heels' pro-BLM video. I know the latter shouldn't matter. It's not like they're current-events junkies. If all you understand is the BS the MSM feeds you, it makes sense to be pro-BLM. It's not really their fault. But, man, that really bugged me. Much better to just keep politics out of sports. Republicans buy shoes too, y'know... 
Anyway: good luck today, Heels.

DeRoy Murdoch: Media Inverts Reality In The Kenosha, Waukesha Cases

Exactly right.

Every party and every faction has its nuts and its nutty beliefs and its shameful sophistries--e.g. its dishonorable gymnastical dodgings of clear refutations. 

But the straight-up, humiliating contradictions pouring out of progressivism...this is beyond anything I've seen before in my lifetime--in the U.S., anyway. 

The Kenosha/Waukesha inversion is every bit as disgracefully contradictory as the differential treatment of Russiagate and Russiagategate--and that is probably the worst thing I've ever seen, media/politics-wise.

Prager: A Brief Guide To Leftist Destruction

Simplistic, but with a large measure of truth in it. Philosophically, our current left is built on the strange cluster of recent Continental views including postmodernism and critical theory (which really don't go together well). Nihilism is a prominent component of that tangle of weirdness. All political views branch out in several different directions, and shade off into several different views. The current left shades off into nihilism and nihilistic anarchism. It is no accident that it's so closely associated with destructiveness. Destruction of the status quo had become far too much of a priority. And it either gives insufficient thought to what the successor will be and/or the proposed successor is overtly awful.

More On The "Donor Money"/HEQ Hoax

At Ace's place.

This tweet gets right at the heart of pomo-prog climate pseudoscience:

One huge drawback of nuclear power is that it doesn’t dismantle systems of oppression - it only produces clean energy. This makes it unsuitable for solving the climate crisis, which isn’t just about the environment. https://t.co/tkgWSCWbQK pic.twitter.com/Qjw3O9lm8y

— Zack Kanter (@zackkanter) December 1, 2019

Is he serious? I mean, it's a leading view among the vanguard of the pomo-prog left. The Green New Deal was not written as a climate bill, but as an economic one. Needless to say, this is why so many people say: I'll believe in climate apocalypticism when those promulgating the view start believing in it. You can't say both of the following: 

(a) Climate change is such a catastrophe that we must put all other considerations behind it.

(b) It's not enough for a policy to mitigate climate change--it must also address "social justice."

In actual fact, of course, it's "social justice" goals that are primary. Climate change is mere stalking horse. 

"Post-Normal Science:" Lysenkoism By Any Other Name

link

The analogy to Pascal's Wager is right--and the analogy fails. For one thing: PW requires infinite payoffs. The reference to the Precautionary Principle: also right. We could add: Cheney's "zero tolerance" anti-terrorism position. 

This is really my objection to climate pseudoscience: I'm willing to act on real conclusions really supported by real science. But that's not what we're dealing with--to a great extent, anyway--from the pomo-prog left. The irrationalist philosophical ideas at the heart of the thing gets its tendrils into everything.

Trump: "Everything Woke Turns To Shit"

Perhaps the most important (post-)presidential quote of the 21st century.

"Sokal III: The Latest (And Greatest?) Academic Hoax"

I've been crazy busy and way behind the curve on this. 

The FL State Guard

As God is my witness, I am voting for Ron DeSanis in '24, no matter what.

Amanda Marcotte Is Still An Idiot: "Republicans' war on education is the most crucial part of their push for fascism"

She's not getting any smarter, is she?

Will Conservatives Seize Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory?

The Supremes overturning Roe may be the only thing that can save the Dems in '22.