The Black Lives Matter Scam

Such causes don't generally move so rapidly to Hoffer Stage 3--i.e.: racket.

Conservatives have been calling bullshit on BLM for a couple of years now. For progressives, the emotional payoff from kneeling and repeating the mantra--black lives matter!--outweighs mere thousands of deaths. Even black ones. To criticize a black leftist organization or person makes you a racist, according to Woketarian dogma--and racist is the worst thing you can be. So progressives will just keep on kneeling and professing, no matter what level of thermonuclear train wreck BLM becomes. Oh, sure, eventually they'll have to find some excuse for cutting loose...but it'll take some other left-acceptable pretext. Merely increasing murder rates and stealing money won't do the trick, I'd guess.

USS Johnston Wreck Found

 link

Battle 360: Leyte Gulf

 

Carolina 100 - State 80

I almost feel bad for State...almost...

Ilya Shapiro About To Be "Cancelled" Over A Politically Incorrect Tweet

What, exactly, is supposed to be wrong with this tweet? 

It doesn't say any of the things lefties are pretending it says, that's clear.

It's not a model of clarity and felicity--but that doesn't mean it warrants a freakout. 

What he seems to mean is that, if you specify ahead of time which demographic group you're going to choose your Supreme from, you're going to end up with a less-good one than you would have if you didn't do that.

But, of course: truth is no defense, bigot.

Why Can't The CDC Admit The Evidence Doesn't Support Masks In Schools?

Short answer: because that would be politically incorrect.

PA's Mail-In Voting Law Unconstitutional

Pay all this 2020 illegal voting no nevermind, bigot.

Why Russia Fears NATO?

maybe

Wisconsin Election 2020: Not Stolen, But "Not Adequately Secure"

There were shenanigans, but they don't seem to have risen to the level of illegality. The do seem to have come awfully close to making a difference.

Librarians, Hence Libraries, Have Gone Woke

In fact, some have gone Tumblr...

If You Oppose CRT, Yera Nazi, Nazi

Though CRT is basically commies, yera Nazi if you oppose it.

Academia is now a cesspool filled with bullshit.

It is an embarrassment.

Techno Fog: Has Peter Strzok Testified Before A Durham Grand Jury?

This is much bigger than the Mueller/Russiagate. And Russiagate was an obvious hoax from very early on. And Russiagategate is clearly not a hoax. (Though it's about a hoax, obviously.) But whereas the PMSM was filled with every breathless detail about Russiagate--and then some--they're keeping a tight lid on this one. 

   Once you realize how much control the PMSM has over this country, you cannot but be horrified.

Did You Realize That "Identity" Is A Weapon "Against" The Left?

I couldn't finish this report from Counter-Earth. 

Ben Rhodes-Friday: ORANGE MAN ANTICHRIST

These people really have lost their minds.

   I wanted to read this specifically because I do think that Trump has some bad tendencies--tendencies I should worry about more than I actually do. He's not an authoritarian--as, e.g., his extreme federalism demonstrated. But he did kinda flip his shit after the election--and showed his ass during the Capitol Riot. Oh, sorry: I mean Pearl-Harbor-x-9/11-x-1000000...

   But a few paragraphs in, the stupid, it burned.

   Honestly, the stupider and crazier the left becomes, the more Trump seems like a live option, even now.

The Year Left-Wing Ideas Came Home To Roost

They have been almost uniformly catastrophic. 

But they're quasi-religious. 

So it'll take more than merely being laughably false and ostentatiously harmful for their exponents to drop them.

Choosing Supremes On The Basis Of Race And Sex

There are conditions under which it may be permissible to take such biological characteristics into account. This is not one of them. We have a black Justice, and we have female justices. The case for a specifically black-and-female Justice is weak. Furthermore and of course: choosing a pool based on talent, then applying a small multiplier to members of underrepresented groups that make the cut is one thing. Deciding ahead of time to limit the field to the small intersection of two such groups is something else entirely. This is more-or-less outright appointment on the basis of race and sex.

   This is also, of course, predicated on the acceptance of a progressive-left / identity-politics idea that almost nobody else accepts: a strong version of "intersectionality." In its weak form, it's not a bad idea: sometimes different disadvantages can interact in ways that aren't just additive: e.g. black women may face special disadvantages that aren't reducible to disadvantages attendant on being black, nor to those attendant on being female. But, as usual, even when progressivism manages to have an insight, it blows it by blowing it out of proportion. The version of the idea one actually tends to encounter is: it is impossible to understand or mitigate any one of the left's tangle of favored '-isms' without addressing them all--because intersectionality! And that's just a flat-out ridiculous idea. Also: a blueprint for failure.

   At any rate: this seems like yet another terrible decision from the Biden team.

   But, hey, this is your blue future, bigot. Get used to it. 

Bullshit Or No?: "Local Hospitals, Overwhelmed, Plead With Virginians To Get Vaccinated"

Ok, first: what is the most natural interpretation of that title?

I thought it meant: all the local hospitals have run out of beds--and the pleading part. 

In fact, here's almost the entire story:

Two local hospitals pleaded with the public today / Tuesday to get vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
Wendy Horton and Mary Mannix, the CEOs of UVA Medical Center and Augusta Health, respectively, said their employees are exhausted after battling a pandemic for two years, and many have decided to leave.

That is: at two of the local hospitals, "many" employees (I'll bet that means: nurses, who seem to take the brunt of this sort of thing) have "decided" to leave. Not: they're out of beds. Not: 10% of staff has quit. Not anything so clear-cut as any of that. Rather: an alleged lot of employees allegedly allege that they're going to leave.

   I'm not saying this is great--some of my best friends are nurses. One is right in the very thick of it, in a hospital that's had to bring in National Guard units to help. But this headline does not seem to me to be an accurate representation of the story. 

   NPR. Your tax dollars at work.

Oopsie

F-35C crashes on USS Carl Vinson, falls off deck into South China Sea.

Carolina 58 - BC 47

Hey, it's a 'W'.

We're Going To End Up With Another Sotomayor

 ...aren't we?

Jim Acosta and Some Other Lefty Lose Their Shit Over Youngkin

Because it's opposing CRT that is divisive, you see...

Wow these people are cracked.

Breyer Retiring

shit.

Suddenly It's No Longer "Deeply Dangerous" To Talk About Rigged Elections

It's different when the Dems do it.

Biden Calls Peter Doocy A "Stupid Sonofabitch"

But the important thing is: no more mean tweets.

Biden Regime Struggles to Reprogram Pandemic-Crazed Base

These people are nuts.

"The Rule Of Midwits"

link

"All Science Is Political" Is A Leftist Excuse for Politicizing Science

It's fine for Unscientific AntiAmerican to endorse Joe Biden because science is political.

Well, it is now, anyway.

My God these people are fucking imbeciles.

Soft Coercion At The Woke University

 link

21 Days To Brainwash Your Child

link

E. O. Wilson and the Climate Cult

link:

   In spring 2008, a faculty member at the University of Delaware alerted me that the university office of residence life has imposed a peculiar dorm-based form of ideological indoctrination on students. It involved all sorts of arm-twisting to get students to vocally support various racial claims, gay marriage and socialist goals. At first the university denied it was doing any such thing, but we had documents as well as witnesses, and the administration eventually climbed down. Those documents, however, looked even more peculiar when we started reading them more carefully. What jumped out was that the whole indoctrination program was presented as a “sustainability” initiative.

   Thus began what became a seven-year project by NAS to track down exactly what this meant, culminating in 2015 study we titled Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism. What did and what does “sustainability” mean? The answers aren’t so simple, though one place to begin is with a 1987 United Nations report Our Common Future, better known as the Brundtland Commission report. It defined sustainability as “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability if future generations to meet their own needs.” That sounds nice, but if you stop to think about it, how are we supposed to know what future generations will need? Could generations past have predicted the need for coal, oil, uranium or rare earths? Plainly we can predict some future needs. People will need breathable air and drinkable water, and we best not use these all up. But the concept of sustainability, launched in that UN report, still has something fishy about it.

   Part of what is fishy is that its proponents were in a hurry to take a concept about “development” and the “environment” and move it quickly into seemingly unrelated areas. “Sustainability,” according to the mandarins at the University of Delaware in 2008, was only one-third about the environment. Another third was about “economic fairness” and the last third was about “social justice.” In short, sustainability was a master concept that wrapped together a whole new Marxist utopian view of society.
   By 2008, that included the idea that planet Earth was in the midst of manmade catastrophic global warming. But don’t lose track of the chronology. The sustainability movement was launched in 1987, a year before NASA scientist James Hansen lit the fire that became global warming hysteria. The two movements, however, quickly found one another and became the great quasi-religious pantheist dogma of our age.

Leftists Still Don't Understand Why Moderates Voted For Trump

Had to fix the title.

Jordan Peterson: "Why I Am No Longer A Tenured Professor At The University Of Toronto"

Absolutely 100% right on target.

N. S. Lyons: No, The Revolution Isn't Over

correct.

There's no guarantee the revolution will ever be over. 

Maybe if you want a picture of the future you should imagine a transnonbinary gender-indeterminate high heel stamping on a human face forever...

But if you just think you can sit on your ass and keep your head down and stay quiet and not piss anybody off and everything will still somehow magically be ok...well...you're an idiot.

Negotiate or Expect Drastic Escalation By Russia?

maybe

The Idling Of America?

This does not seem good.

It also seems like a fertile field in which to sow the probably-disastrous idea of a guaranteed basic income.

"The Left Dreamed Of Remaking America; Now It Stares Into The Abyss As Biden's Plans Wither

Is this for real?

It...seems to be...but...?

I'll just note: to behold an America they barely missed wrecking is "staring into the abyss"...

That's just a title--but it does kinda capture the sense of the story, I suppose.

Better title: American dodges a bullet.

Lawrence Krauss: Google's "Inclusive Language" Police

These people are idiots and totalitarians. 

They're also influenced by some of the worst ideas of the last 50 years, including postmodernism--which is, I suppose, part of what encourages them to grasp at impressionistic quasi-interpretations and vague feelings of disapproval...and then turn them into prohibitions and diktats everyone is supposed to follow. 'Black box'? Fuck you. 

Black box black box black box black box.

Now I'm going to look for more opportunities to use that phrase--and all the other prohibited ones.

'Senior citizen'/'older adult'? 

This is what Pinker calls 'the euphemism treadmill'...though the idea predated the term of course.

Idiots and totalitarians.

They seek to control language in part because it's a way to influence thought...but also simply because they like control. Their fruitcake...oh, wait...surely that term is prohibited???...ideology and their desire to control other people fit together naturally, as it turns out.

First they start falsely spewing accusations of so-called "white supremacy" everywhere...because 'racism' just wasn't bad--nor specific--enough...then they, apparently, declare all other uses of 'supremacy' politically incorrect...

Idiots and totalitarians.

RIP Mr. Loaf

God. Damn.

The Filibuster, Elections, and the Republic Dodge a Bullet

whew

"Metaverse"

Erm...you realize that, relative to Facebook or anything even vaguely like Facebook, or anything even vaguely like anything Facebook could become...we are the metaverse...right?

Just checking.

Longs Peak (Keyhole Route)

I climbed this:

More Pomo-Prog/CRT Pseudoscience: Privileged Squirrels

link

Is behavioral ecology actual science? Honest question. I don't know anything about it. But it sounds like it's on the soft/social end of the sciences, anyway. Even before it started--apparently--going woke...

Biden Called Kyle Rittenhouse A "White Supremacist" But Refuses to Speculate On The Motives of Malik Faisal Akram

He's probably a "white supremacist" too

FBI Finally Admits Texas Synagogue Attack WAS An Antisemitic Terror Attack

That's a real plot twist right there.

Dems Target "Anti-Authority Ideologies"

The old/liberal left: question authority.

The new/progressive left: creates "anti-terrorism" unit to fight "anti-authority ideologies"...

Because standing up against authority is terrorism or something.

Arif Ahmed: How Universities Became Sheep Factories

Exactly right.

Except I think it's irrelevant that "diversity" indoctrination doesn't work. In fact, I think that's basically the strongest defense of that nonsense. Brainwashing that works is worse than brainwashing that doesn't work.

An Education Agenda For Governor Younkin

link

I say get rid of the education major entirely. It's useless, it attracts weak students and makes them weaker, and its become a cesspool of leftist indoctrination:

Second, high school teachers should no longer be required to complete education-methods courses, which usually last a year, and teachers in the elementary grades should have their requirements drastically reduced. These requirements make it impossible for 90 percent of college graduates to work as teachers, including almost all qualified scientists, career-changers, retiring military and public service personnel, and educated housewives with grown children. Instead, we have a closed shop of ill-educated products of education schools—the weakest graduates from the weakest colleges. To make things worse, seniority provisions in union contracts allocate the most experienced and best-salaried teachers to the least troublesome schools.

Biden's Plan To "Ensure Scientific Integrity": Yet Another Mote/Beam Problem

The party of science!

Colleyville Synagogue Attack

What could have been the motive? 

Guess we'll never know!

No sense thinking too much about this, citizen.

Time to move on.

We said move. on...

The Moment Biden Lost His Credibility

It was already basically gone, but this may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

Worst President ever?

Definitely in the running.

Joe Biden, Liar

This barely scratches the surface.

By almost any reasonable measure, the blustery, bullshitting Trump was better on this score. At least he mixed a healthy dose of important truths in with his bullshit--something Biden does not do.

But, hey: no mean tweets.

Matt Beard: The Importance Of Academic Impartiality

yes

Progressives And the Colleyville Synagogue Hostage Incident

link    If the perp had been a white guy, and the victims non-white, the left would already have pumped out hundreds of pages of exposition on "white supremacy"...  They pretended that Omar Mateen was gay in order to avoid admitting that the Pulse nightclub shooting was another act of Islamic terrorism... Maybe they'll come up with some cover story for this case, too.

The Dems Have Lost Their Minds: Turley On Kyrsten Sinema And The Politics Of Rage

The ACLU is now a grotesque mirror image of its former self. But the lunacy seems to have afflicted just about all the prominent members of blue team.

Carolina 88 - Tech 65

Nice work Heels.

The Washington Examiner: The Left Is Trying To Erase The Meaning Of Citizenship

Better title: The left is trying to eliminate the difference between citizenship and non-citizenship, which is equivalent to eliminating citizenship, which is roughly equivalent to eliminating the USA.

   The following isn't exactly the whole truth--one rarely gets the whole truth in any short passage--but it's a significant chunk of the truth:

   As with every terrible idea the Left devises, that is always the goal: to force those same wretched policies on the rest of the nation. Five other deep-blue states already give free healthcare to illegal immigrant children, including Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, and Washington. If Democrats manage to get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, no doubt they will force all 46 other states to do the same.
   Not all bad ideas originate in California, however. The small Washington, D.C., suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland, has allowed noncitizens to vote in its city elections since 1992. The policy hasn’t exactly spread like wildfire, but 15 cities now allow noncitizens to vote in municipal elections, including another 10 in Maryland, two in Vermont, and, of course, San Francisco. New York City is also likely to join the noncitizen voting bandwagon after newly sworn-in Mayor Eric Adams endorsed legislation giving the city’s estimated 800,000 noncitizens the ability to vote in city elections.
   The 1993 Motor Voter Act made it illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, but it did provide room for states and localities to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Despite the possibility of a year in jail and certain deportation, significant numbers of noncitizens already vote illegally in federal elections every cycle. A 2014 study found that 6.4% of noncitizens voted in the 2008 election and 2.2% voted in the 2010 midterm elections. The authors concluded that because of the close margins in some Senate races, illegal noncitizen voting likely gave Democrats the 60th vote they needed to pass the Affordable Care Act.
   No wonder Democrats are so eager to get more noncitizens in the habit of voting.
   It is not a coincidence that the same party in which only 30% of its members are “extremely proud” to be an American wants to dismantle the borders and devalue citizenship in this manner. The Democratic Party is ruled by a wealthy, cosmopolitan elite who think of themselves as global citizens. They are embarrassed even to admit that they are American as they jet around the world from one international vacation spot to another. [My emphasis.]
   As long as Democratic strongholds are allowed to declare themselves “sanctuary cities” and refuse to cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement, there is no such thing as a “local” election on immigration issues. Congress should move to ban noncitizen voting — at least until localities have agreed to cooperate in enforcing America's immigration laws.

Bhattacharya and Nicholson: A Deceptive Mask Study Unmasked

Guess which side the study cheated for?

To End Fatphobia, We Must Dismantle Western Civilization Says Fat Therapist

The destruction of Western civilization is, indeed, the main goal of the vanguard of the intelligentsia... It's a mere shadow of itself by the time it trickles down to the average progressive activist. And it's even harder to discern in the thinking of less-activist progressives. But it's always there, affecting the course of the movement. It shows up in low-grade progressive ideas like Oh, letting people come across the border illegally is just nice...don't be mean! People at that level would be less moved by Permitting unchecked immigration will destroy the USA, and that will destroy the West... They don't quite share that goal. So the trick is to get them to accept the first-order goals despite them not sharing the ultimate goal. Taking away people's say in the education of their children is a step toward destroying the nuclear family--but that's not going to sell too well to suburban housewives. So instead it's marketed as anti-racism. Because who could be against that???

The left is evil and crazy...but it's damn good at being those things...

David Cole On Soros-Funded DAs and Anarchy

Pretty good, but he's wrong at the end, though. Soros is Hungarian, and, apparently for that reason, a fan of Karl Popper. And what he's expressing in the paragraph quoted by Cole at the end is just Popperian falsificationism.

"The Trusted News Initiative" Is A Pro-Censorship Organization Run By The BBC and MSM

link.   The name of the thing adds insult to injury.

Must-Read: Dreher: The Trans' Plans

Insidious, evil, crazy.

But, sadly, if you can get half the country to believe that men can become women by putting on dresses, there's probably no end to what you can get them to believe...

Younkin Taps CRT Opponents To Lead Public Education In The OD

Excellent.

John Ellis: Can Politics Get Better When Education Keeps Getting Worse?

 Not likely. Not only are students being brainwashed, they're being brainwashed with moralistic, irrationalist bullshit that doesn't even rise to the level of pseudoscience. Students are being made into vicious conformists--not even sheep. More like piranhas. 

A Conspiracy To Delay The Vaccine Likely Cost Trump The Election; It Certainly Killed Many People

It's possible that this isn't as bad as it looks... Possible. 

But the left seems to get away with such outlandish things fairly routinely.

7 Things We've Learned (?) About the 2020 Elections

There certainly were irregularities and some rigging. I don't know about some of these tho.

Goodbye McAuliffe, Hello Younkin

Thank God.

Dahlia Lithwick Is An Idiot: GORSUCH DIDN'T WEAR A MASK Edition

Not exactly breaking news, I'll grant...

Anyway: calm down, Dahlia...in case it helps: they don't work.

I like the bit where not wearing a damp, useless face burka means that THE JUSTICES CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT AND ALSO THIS IS THE SAME AS JUDICIAL ETHICS AND IT MEANS THAT THEY CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT AND WHY SHOULD THEY GET TO DO WHATEVER THEY WANT WHEN THERE IS A MASK MANDATE????? 

In case you haven't noticed: these people have lost their goddamned minds.

Biden Divides The Country He Promised To Unite

Worst president of my lifetime*

*Generalization does not apply to Bush '43 with respect to his catastrophic distortions and occasional actual lies that took us into Iraq, the dumbass. There's no justification for ignoring this, really. But, my God, at least there was 9/11...which...didn't justify it in any way, shape, or form... But we knew Biden was going to be a puppet of the insane left. At least Bush's world-historic dumbassery was triggered by something we couldn't have foreseen before the election. Still no excuse. Hm. But what this comes down to is: I TOLD YOU SO. We knew Biden was going to be terrible. It was not only predictable, it was damn near unavoidable. Though even the most clear-eyed of us didn't foresee the Afghanistan debacle... And I didn't predict that the administration would basically unleash disastrous inflation on the country. 

But, hey: no mean tweets so...

.30 Super Carry

 Very interesting:

Flashback: May 2020 Assault On The White House: 60 Secret Service Agents Wounded, President Trump Taken To A Secure Bunker

Strange that there was no multimedia extravaganza marking the 1-year anniversary of this... 

In fact, of course, there was outrage that these rioters were pushed out of Lafayette Square the next day--and that pepper balls were used. You may recall that there was several weeks of media hysteria because USCP used correct terminology and did not initially refer to pepper balls as 'tear gas.' Because the media is ignorant and biased, that became a scandal--despite the fact that USCP immediately said: Oh, yeah, we should have realized that you would think that pepper balls were tear gas; if we'd have thought of that, we'd have used the incorrect terminology so that you wouldn't get confused...

Imagine what would have happened if the Secret Service or USCP had shot an unarmed protestor in St. John's...or if three of the rioters had died of natural causes...

Again, it's not that the Capitol riot wasn't a godawful national embarrassment. The point is, rather, the radically inconsistent treatment of the left and the right.

SUNY-Geneseo Suspends Student For Politically Incorrect Instagram Posts

Suspended from the ed school for pointing out that "a man is a man and a woman is a woman." So: suspended for stating tautologies...

He seems to have been reinstated--but that almost doesn't matter. SUNY-Geneseo should lose state funding for this.

Survey of 200+ Sociology Syllabi Reveal Leftist Bias

The state, students and parents are paying for and otherwise supporting leftist indoctrination.

Zaid Jilani: "It's Coups All The Way Down"

link

Medieval German Marital Duels

Ok, that's one of the craziest practices I've ever heard of:

   In marital duels, as a rule, all sorts of everyday disagreements between husband and wife were resolved. They probably did not talk about unwashed dishes, but the question of adultery, the fact of which was problematic to prove, could easily become an occasion to measure strength between spouses.
   As a rule, one or two months were given to prepare for a duel. During this time, the spouses had the right to make peace. If not, a special site was being prepared, in the center of which a hole was dug about half a meter deep.
   The husband was supposed to be in it, and during the marital duel, he did not have the right to leave this pit – this condition was made to equalize opportunities. Another similar condition, a kind of handicap for the fair sex, was the rule of the left hand, which was tied for a man either in front, or – more often – behind his back.
   That is, the husband could fight only while standing in the pit and with only one hand. At the same time, he could not even touch the edge of the pit – for this, his weapon was taken away from him. The lady had both hands untied and each could have a weapon.
   probably, in some fights, knives were used, and maybe even swords, but in the manuals that have come down to us, marital duel weapons were much more primitive: more often than not, a man and a woman fought with stones and clubs.
   The wife wore a long shirt tied between her legs. A large cobblestone was placed in the long right sleeve and tied in the manner of a bag. The left sleeve could also turn into a tool, or it could remain free.

And just in case you might think that this arrangement is surprisingly egalitarian for the Medieval Germans, the chicks still get worse treatment in the end:

A marital duel did not necessarily have to end with the death of one of the participants, but the fate of the loser was unenviable in any case. The husband, if he was defeated, was declared guilty and his head was cut off. If a woman lost, she was buried alive.

"Oath Keepers" Leader and 10 Others Charged With Seditious Conspiracy

You've got to at least wonder whether this has anything to do with rebutting the argument that no Capitol riot participants were charged with anything like sedition or insurrection... And, of course, being charged and being convicted are quite different things.

View From The Left: Brad Bannon: "Democracy Is On Life Support--The GOP Wants To Pull The Plug"

Seems wildly, fantastically wrong to me--on basically every point. But here it is anyway.

SCOTUS Puts An End To The Pandemic Of The Autocrat

Another reason to shrink government: whatever agencies exist can be abused by the left in its ceaseless pursuit of control over our lives. OSHA does a lot of good, so far as I can tell. But that has to be balanced against the fact that OSHA can be weaponized--as this administration has tried to do.

Trump failed us in a bunch of ways...but his SCOTUS appointments were money.

Wholesale Inflation Spikes to 9.7%

But, hey, no mean tweets, so...

Don't Forget: Progressive "Equity" Means: Identity of Outcomes

This, IMO, interacts with "privilege" in this way: "privileges" are not rights. Ergo a difference in "privileges" can be "rectified" by taking away the "privilege." If A succeeds and B fails, the progressive left thinks that this can only be a result of A's "privilege." And, ergo, that it is permissible--in fact, obligatory--to take away from B until A and B are equal. That is, in this case: until both fail. 

   Progressive leftism is the most unhinged and destructive set of political ideas to grip the USA in my lifetime.

Your Vice President:

There’s a big difference between equality and equity. pic.twitter.com/n3XfQyjLNe

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 1, 2020

MS Word To Suggest Politically Correct Edits As You Type

Your blue future, bigots.

More: everything woke turns to shit.

Cocaine Mitch, Right on Target Against Biden's Unhinged Voting-Bill Demagoguery

Right.

On.

Target:

Sinema Saves The Nation?

She's confused about a lot of particular things--but she got this crucial procedural matter right. Her comments on the filibuster were, I thought, excellent. It might be melodramatic to say that she saved the Republic...but maybe not.

Karl Rove: Biden's Georgia Election-Law Distortions

So it's come to this: Karl Rove is the voice of reason...

   I want to say, yet again, that the blue team has lost its mind...but this is really more a matter of lies and dirty tactics. Though, as is common, it's really a mixture of the two. Dems to some extent believe these things, and to some extent they're pretending to believe them in order to gain electoral advantage. That superposition of dishonesty and ignorance is common. It's hard to work up the right veneer of indignation if you can't get yourself to believe at least a bit. And once you speak indignantly about something, belief--to at least some degree--tends to follow.

Elle Reynolds: "Biden Education Secretary Planting NSBA Letter Takes A Page From Russia Collusion Hoax Playbook"

One reason the progressive left is currently the biggest threat to the nation: it controls all our institutions, and those institutions collaborate to criminalize dissent. As in the Russiagate hoax, the FBI and DoJ seem to have colluded with other progressive groups to promote a false storyline about conservative dissenters being criminals--terrorists, in this case:

   Biden’s Education Secretary Miguel Cardona requested the infamous letter from the National School Boards Association comparing protesting parents to domestic terrorists, emails published Tuesday revealed, demonstrating even further the Biden administration’s entrenched efforts to smear its political opponents as threats to national security.
   In an Oct. 5 email obtained by Parents Defending Education, NSBA Secretary-Treasurer Kristi Swett wrote that NSBA interim Executive Director Chip Slaven “told the officers he was writing a letter to provide information to the White House, from a request by Secretary Cardona.”
   That letter, which smeared concerned parents who showed up at school board meetings as domestic terrorists and urged the Department of Justice to use terrorism laws against them, was cited by Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland as the reason he directed the FBI and state attorneys to take action against “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” The NSBA later apologized for the letter, but that wasn’t enough to keep dozens of state school board associations from distancing themselves from the national organization over the debacle.

Even if Cardonia did not solicit the letter, this is grave matter indeed. If he did, it's off the scale. 

Trump University! The Greatest...The Most Beautiful...We Have The Best University, Don't We Folks? The Biggest...The Greatest...University-Wise, There's Really No Beating It, Okay? Just The Best.

 Trump U!

The COVID

Well, Jonny Quest and I either do or don't have the batflu, depending on which test results you trust. We guess we probably do. It doesn't fit the profile of the flu nor a cold nor any other thing we know of. It's never been that bad, but it's been somewhat bad at times. I've never been bedridden nor near to it, but JQ seems to have it a bit worse and has opted to stay in bed some. Thing is, the f*cker just won't go away. I'm at two weeks now, and I'm still dragging ass. And I still have crap in my lungs--though that's a somewhat chronic condition of mine. Never a fever for either of us, either. Anyway, whatever this is it's a pain in the ass and no mistake. It's definitely cramping my gainz, as I haven't been to the gym in over two weeks now. And the Western Slope is closed for hunting season--so no trail running. But, actually, the tiny bit of running I've been doing when I take The Bear for walks has been freakin' exhausting--in fact nigh on impossible. So Running really isn't the ticket right now anyway. That's the main symptom of whatever we have--fatigue. Or: fatigue + weakness. 

Alright, enough bitchin'.

The Left's Campaign To Normalize The Sexualization Of Kids Goes Mainstream

The left never rests. It's always planning new moves toward the destruction of Western civilization.

   When I was a kid, only crazy people talked that way--or so I thought, anyway..

   At any rate, the only surprise to me here is that I had predicted that legalization of 3+-person marriage would be the next major initiative. Actually, the transgenderization of everything is an ongoing revolution--so that should count. I never thought it would go so far. The sexualization of kids is really a part of that whole mess--it's been one of the goals and one the methods all along. But it's remained somewhat concealed. Coming right out and floating a trial balloon in USA Today is notable. 

   The story has some of the hallmarks of a leftist normalization campaign--they've dropped the "social construction" talk and shifted to biological determinism: it's inborn! Can't help it!:

   One of the most significant findings is that scientists who study the disorder say pedophilia is determined in the womb, though environmental factors may influence whether someone acts on an urge to abuse.
   "The evidence suggests it is inborn. It's neurological," said James Cantor, a clinical psychologist, sex researcher and former editor-in-chief of, "Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment." "Pedophilia is the attraction to children, regardless of whether the (person) ever ... harms."

Your sex and race are choices...you can just say whatever you want and make it so! but ped0philia...that's innate! 

   As with many lefty ideas, it's not that there's no kernel of truth in this one. For example, people feel all sorts of sexual urges they never act on. So I'm not quibbling with that. I'm just pointing out that the left has undertaken a campaign to sexualize kids, and this is an initiative in that campaign. Not every single component of such a campaign has to be false. The strategic use of kernels of truth is common. 

   Hey, remember how Milo got vaporized a couple of years back for saying that he wished someone hot and older had taken sexual interest in him when he was slightly underage? That is to say: he voiced a thought that every single male human being has had? Is there any 17-year-old guy anywhere in the world who hasn't pined away for hot 20-30-year-old girls? No there is not. Milo's gay, but that doesn't matter much--the principle's basically the same. (Wait...didn't he announce that he's straight now or something?) Anyway: he was absolutely assassinated for admitting something perfectly normal and known by everyone...and now, five years on, the left is laying the groundwork for normalizing sex between kid kids and adults. Not 17-year-olds and 18-year-olds...nope, not that. Something far, far worse.

Omicron Peaks in UK?

That doesn't mean you're permitted to stop panicking, bigot.

Trumpigation

 

CNN Discovers The *From COVID* / *With COVID* Distinction

Conservatives have been harping on this for at least a year. It is astonishing and inexcusable that the PMSM should only be discussing this now:

CNN's Jake Tapper rips into "misleading" COVID hospitalization numbers.
"We're 2 years into this ... if somebody's in the hospital with a broken leg and they also have asymptomatic COVID, that should not be counted as hospitalized with covid, clearly." pic.twitter.com/rZhcANyYaW

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 10, 2022

CNN Expert: Cloth Masks "Little More Than Facial Decoration"

And that's CNN--The Most Leftest Name In News...

I quit wearing those things like a year ago. At least surgical masks might work. Though they don't. I only wear them on campus, and only then because there's no way around it.

Citing the ‘harm’ of open discussion, Emory Law’s student government denies recognition to student free speech group

But there's no such thing as political correctness nor cancel culture...the right just made that shit up, you see...

The Pomo-Prog Left In Yet Another Nutshell: Vox Man Misrepresenting Himself As A Woman Claims That Yglesias Signing Pro-Free-Speech Letter Makes Him "Feel Less Safe"

LOL

You really can't make this stuff up.

SITFU, cupcake. Life in a free republic means sometimes hearing opinions that hurt your fee-fees.

"Mass Formation Psychosis": Does It Explain The Crazification Of The Progressive Left?

link I don't really get it / see it. 

I'm ok with sticking with political correctness as the explanation--the subordination of truth to dogma, ergo the politicization/moralization of factual questions... But maybe.

Revolver: Meed Ray Epps pt. 2

Who is Ray Epps?

Easy: Ray Epps is a Fed.

2021 Worst Inflation In 4 Decades

link

It's ridiculously difficult to say which administration has been the worst of my lifetime. Clearly Carter and Bush '43 are in the running, as is Nixon. I still think there's no getting around the lunacy of the lies leading up to Gulf War Episode II: The Phantom Menace... But Biden, after only one year, looks like a strong contender for second place. 

Turley: "Preserve The Narrative": Public Rejects The "Insurrection" Claim In New Poll

Simple rule: don't believe anything the progressive left says.

Progressives: Not Quite Done Whining About The Batflu: "I Was Relieved When My Sons Got Mild COVID-19..."...Then I Realized There Were Still Ways To Whine And Pule

@LOLCNN

Attention, Citizens: You must continue to be afraid!

Lack of exaggerated fear will not be tolerated...

Cruz To FBI's Sanborn: How Many Feds Participated In The 1/6 Capitol Riot?

FBI: ...

Yikes https://t.co/XUZrdShBNQ

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) January 11, 2022

UNC Free Speech Alliance

link

Reuters Punishes Employees Who Refuse To Toe The BLM/PC Line

Facts and logic not welcome at Reuters.

The Elite War On Biological Sex

Entirely built on a few obvious confusions and a whole lot of screeching at those who refuse to go along with those confusions.

Tucker Carlson: Has NPR Achieved Peak Stupid?

I used to love NPR back in the day. Yes, they've always been at least a little goofy in that earnest, breathy, tote-baggy way. But I seem to recall even working the pledge lines for them once... I was one of those people they used to talk so much about who would sometimes find himself sitting in his car with one foot on the ground, waiting to hear the end of the story.

   About five or six years ago I had taken a bit of an unplanned hiatus from listening to them--we were renovating the house and my "commute" was only five minutes long, so I just fell out of the habit for, what? maybe a year at most. Probably less. When I did start back up again, something seemed wrong...there'd been a shift toward the stupid left. To some extent, probably, the hiatus had given me some perspective. At first it was just the occasional absurdly biased story...but it got worse. Fast.

   It didn't take long before my "driveway moments" became more about sitting in the driveway in stunned outrage rather than rapt appreciation. I said something about this to a much more moderate and level-headed liberal friend, and he said: Oh, yeah, I never listen to NPR anymore...

   I've accidentally stumbled across them again a couple of times per year, and, indeed, it always seems to be nonbinary this and systemic that. All utter nonsense. All made worse by NPR's breathy, rather breezy dogmatism. As if they were simply relaying the most obvious truths that no one would think about questioning. 

Anyway. Tucker gets it right:

Greenwald: "The Histrionics and Melodrama Around 1/6 Are Laughable, but They Serve Several Key Purposes" [extended]

I posted this before, but it was truncated.

As I may have noted a time or two over the past coupla years: when you've lost Glenn Greenwald...

Anyway, this:

   As usual, the prime beneficiaries of all of this, and the most dangerous one, is the U.S. security state. They need, above all else, an existential threat to justify their endless growth and unchecked power. All of the old villains are largely vanquished and stale (Communism, Al Qaeda, ISIS), while the proposed stand-ins never really panned out (Americans never woke up thinking about Putin). That is when they began claiming that the most serious threat was a domestic one: fellow American citizens who harbor “extremist” ideologies. Though they claim that it is right-wing extremists who pose the greatest threat — white supremacist extremists to be exact — the lists they disseminate of who falls under this rubric encompass essentially anyone — left, right or in between — who sees the world differently than Wolf Blitzer, Joe Scarborough and Chris Hayes see it: meaning dissidents, those who distrust the decrees of authority and wish to subvert rather than submit to establishment power. Claiming that the U.S. is facing an Insurrection and barely survived a "coup” is a script that could not be better suited to their interests.
   There are unresolved questions surrounding the 1/6 riot that are genuinely important and merit scrutiny. It is, for instance, confirmed that the FBI had at least two informants on the ground with whom it was communicating as the protest unfolded, but the full extent of the FBI's role — whether it replicated what it repeatedly did during the first War on Terror and then again in engineering the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — remains unknown. That is because the only bodies capable of discovering the answers — the DOJ and the Congressional 1/6 Committee — have no interest in finding out. The contrary is true: they have a strong interest in suppressing those facts because it undermines rather than advances their fear narrative.
   Fear is a powerful human drive — arguably the most powerful one. Humans need it to survive; without it, they would have died off thousands of years ago. It is embedded in our psyches. And any demagogue worth their salt knows how to stimulate and manipulate it. Fear — as we have seen throughout the last two years of the COVID pandemic — breeds acquiescence, subservience and conformity. It fosters not just a willingness, but an eagerness to submit to any authority promising to keep you safe from the threat and to banish and silence anyone dissenting from their decrees, on the ground that dissent is not just wrong but dangerous.
   What happened on January 6 was ugly and disturbing. But it was nowhere near an insurrection, a coup, or anything threatening American democracy (to the extent it can be said to exist) in a fundamental or sustained way. That core truth — that it was merely an angry protest that, like so many of its kind, organically turned into a three-hour riot killing nobody except four of the protesters — destroys its value. Only the false narrative that has been constructed over the last year and consecrated by today's inane festivities can convert this banal episode into some world-historic event that at once makes heroes out of those who were there to oppose it and justifies everything and anything done in the name of preventing its repetition. [emphasis mine] 

Speed The Spread

This kind of argument has been around, and is more salient now that omicron has taken over. (I suspect that's what I've had for two weeks now, though Binax says otherwise.) But this is the sort of argument you can't really evaluate without a lot of background knowledge. I mean, it's a nondeductively valid argument--which is to say that the information given does provide nondeductive support for the conclusion...but when such arguments fail (which is often) they typically do so on account of additional information not represented in the argument. 

But anyway: it's a reasonable argument, but without knowing that we have the relevant counterinformation, it's nothing but basically the first step in the discussion.

Noncitizen Voting

link

My view on this hasn't changed: it seems crazy.

OTOH, it was allowed in various parts of the U.S. from the inception of the Republic up into, apparently, the early 20th century. So that matters. 

A response: the reason it was legal was, apparently, in order to encourage immigration--something we no longer need to do. To say the least.

The vanguard of the left wants to destroy--sorry: "dismantle"--all nations. Especially the USA. (Though maybe not China...) Rank-and-file progressives normally don't explicitly share that goal. But they're brought to, in effect, support it via ad miseracordium arguments applied ad nauseam: aw, be nice. It's just not fair that citizens get to vote and noncitizens don't! How do you think that makes them feeeel? It's privilege!!! The point of the battle on this front is to progressively erode the difference between citizens and noncitizens--thus destroying the distinction between them.

Has COVID Vax Efficacy Turned Negative?

maybe.

Antibody-dependent enhancement is the kind of thing that I fret about--esp. given this weird obsession with forcing the vax onto people who don't need it. But these are completely uneducated fears. I understand basically nothing about any of this.

Z0MGcron Makes Biden's Vax Mandate Obsolete

Of course that's not the point. The progressive left insists that you do what they want you to do. Efficacy is not the point. The point is that they are passionately devoted to the proposition that the batflu is deadly to everyone, and to vaxxes and masks for everyone, always. As with just about everything else right now, they're wrong about all of it...but facts are conservative things, bigot. Refusing to capitulate to woke totalitarianism is NOT OK; facts are no excuse...

Google Demonetizes One Of The Best Sources Of Objective Climate Data

link

DrRoySpencer.com has been demonetized by Google for “unreliable and harmful claims”. 

What the site has is straight-up, unmodified satellite climate data. 

But it doesn't show what the left wants it to show.

Ergo Google has kicked it off of AdSense, cutting off its source of funding.

This is the progressive-left view of science, in a nutshell.

New Yorker: "Vaccine Mandates Have A Bad Day At The Supreme Court"

Odd that there is no mention of the radically false claims by Sotomayor about child hospitalizations and the danger of COVID omicron... 

The Puzzle Of Pervasive Progressive False Belief: SCOTUS/COVID Edition

link

   One of the most puzzling current phenomena, IMO, is that of pervasive progressive false belief. Of course everyone has many false beliefs, and falsehoods are rampant among most political factions. Once you add political commitment to ordinary, nonculpable error, everything just goes to hell. But I think it's notable that progressive COVID hysteria / error extends all the way up to the Supremes. That's just weird. 

   It's also weird that universities have bought into the hysteria so hard...or, rather, it would be if I still believed that universities are loci of rationality. Which I don't. Because they aren't. Now they are, largely or even mainly, cathedrals of Woketarianism. I've almost given up trying to talk sense to my colleagues about this stuff. It's fruitless and makes me look even kookier than I actually am. I believe my university has had one death from (with?) COVID since the pandemic began. Of course the vast majority of those in "the university community" are young and healthy and not in danger. Yet we pressure them to get the vax, and force them to wear masks inside. The faculty, as usual, speaks with the voice of the extreme left--thus always clamors for more restrictions and more fear. They cannot be reasoned with. The only thing that could change their minds, so far as I can tell, will be a general shift in the progressive-left orthodoxy. Which we now seem to be seeing. So that's something.

Shadi Hamid: "The Forever Culture War"

Not sure what I think of this. Worth a read, IMO.

Ray Epps, Fed

Fed, fed, fed.

Carolina 74 - UVa 58

Finally.

Trudeau: Unvaxxed Are Racist, Misogynist Extremists

******.

Taibbi: "A Tale Of Two Authoritarians": Or: How The Left Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Iron-Ass

I agree.

   (News writing has become a pre-fab profession, like assembling IKEA furniture. All you need is an Allen wrench and a list of the latest clichés. “Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election” has replaced “Trump’s efforts to coordinate with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” and “Trump’s false claims of fraud” has replaced “Trump’s false claims of ‘fake news.’” Part of the significance of January 6th is that it updated popular propaganda stock, which had grown stale.)
   I don’t mean to understate the seriousness of January 6th, even though it’s been absurdly misreported for over a year now. No one from a country where these things actually happen could mistake 1/6 for “a coup .” In the real version, the mob doesn’t take selfies and blaze doobies after seizing the palace, and the would-be dictator doesn’t spend 187 minutes snacking and watching Fox before tweeting “go home.” Instead, he works the phones nonstop to rally precinct chiefs, generals, and airport officials to the cause, because a coup is a real attempt to seize power. Britannica says the “chief prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements.” We saw none of that on January 6th, but it’s become journalistic requirement to use either “coup” or “insurrection” in describing it:
...
   The endless hyperventilating efforts to describe January 6th as a disaster on the order of Pearl Harbor or even 9/11 has been awesome to behold. Huffington Post nitwit S.V. Date even called it “1,000 percent worse” than 9/11, moving the decimal point over on the famous Team America joke...

Winsome Sears: Education As The Key To Black Success

Agreed.

Weird I Can't Remember A Day-Long Anniversary Extravaganza Of BerniBro James Hodges' Attempted Assassination Of The Entire Republican Congressional Baseball Team...

I'm pretty sure there none of the cast of Hamilton even showed up at all...

David Cole: Yes, Fauci Tortured Beagles

If this account is true, it gives real insight into media dishonesty.

   On Nov. 19, The Washington Post ran a 3,650-word “debunking” of the beagle story. The two authors, Pulitzer-winning Beth Reinhard and millennial newcomer Yasmeen Abutaleb, began by painting Fauci as the victim of “hate” and “death threats” as the result of a “misleading” campaign.
   Regarding the Fauci/NIAID beagle-torturing claims, Reinhard and Abutaleb (and the people they interviewed for the piece) dismissed them as “false,” “misinformation,” “bogus,” “conspiracy theories,” “ridiculous accusations and outright lies,” “dangerous to the entire field of science,” and “erroneous claims amplified by a right-wing echo chamber.” “Falsified misinformation” from “inflammatory right-wing media outlets and influencers” created “outrage that was supercharged” by “Republican operatives.”
   Yikes! Based on that verbiage, you’d think the Fauci/beagle story was, like…fake!
   But then you read the fine print in those 3,650 words and you realize that of the six beagle-torture studies WCW cited, five actually were funded by Fauci’s NIAID (including one in which beagles had their vocal cords cut “to protect the researchers from hearing loss” from the agonized wailing of the tortured dogs), and the sixth study claimed to have received NIAID funding when it was published in July, with the authors (and the peer-reviewed journal that carried the study) not “correcting” the claim of NIAID funding until Oct. 26.
   Armed with that, the smugs pounced (even though WaPo admitted that the funding correction only occurred because of publicity from the WCW campaign).
   So a rational person would conclude that WCW accurately reported on five studies and “trusted the scientists” on the sixth regarding their claims of funding, and because of WCW’s work, an erroneous claim of NIAID funding was corrected.
   It’s hard to see what WCW did wrong. Especially considering all the anti-WCW invective used in the piece.
   So I emailed Reinhard and Abutaleb. “Of the six beagle-torture experiments, we’re talking about five that were NIAID-funded, and one that wasn’t. Correct?”
   Reinhard replied, “Thanks for your sending your inquiry to postpr@washpost.com.”
   That was the extent of her reply.
   That woman won a Pulitzer.

... 

   Let that sink in. The WaPo called WCW’s claims “false,” “misinformation,” “bogus,” “conspiracy theories,” “ridiculous,” “lies,” “dangerous,” “erroneous,” and “falsified.” But the reporters agree that from July through October, WCW didn’t actually get anything wrong. Five studies were funded by NIAID, and the sixth claimed funding until the Oct. 26 “correction.”
   When the chronically corrupt PolitiFact also came to Fauci’s defense, I emailed the PolitiFact author, Bill McCarthy. Being a liar and hack, McCarthy refused to defend his piece (as in, he actually responded to say that he wasn’t gonna defend his piece).

The Campaign Of Lies By "Trans" Radicals Against Jesse Singal

link

"Trans" radicals always seem to have only about two arguments: (a) that's "transphobic"! and (b) you want teh secks with teh trans, no? 

If you've read Dreger's Galileo's Middle Finger, you know that they used the same bullshit arguments against their first target, Michael Bailey. 

In case you didn't realize: those people are batshit crazy.

"Weak Action On Climate Change Stressing Young People Around The World"

Or: pumping their heads full of hysteria about the fictional climate apocalypse might maybe have a little something to do with it, too... Maybe throttle back on the climate horror fiction, eh?

Joanna Williams: Is The University Over?

Don't be silly. Our friends on the left assure us that they have proven by the very most critical methods that there isn't even any such thing as political correctness...

Unscientific UnAmerican Strikes Again: Z0MG Citizen Militias!!!

link

So no real evidence that they're moving toward violence...

   Violent leftist anarcho-communist terrorist gangs deployed actual mass violence against Americans and the government for an entire year...wonder whether UnsciUnAm ran any stories on that? Unapproving ones, I mean...

   Her go-to criticism seems to be, roughly: Although these guys are generally against racism, they are unaware that leftist social scientists have proven that all real racism is institutional... Except, of course, for the personal racism in the heart of every conservative...

1/6 And The Unhingeing Of The NYT

This isn't wrong about everything...but it's all so laughably spun to the left that it might as well be.

Robert Kagan's TDS

Wow

   This thing just goes on and on and on. It's a brain dump of TDS items. Kagan's seen better days.

   Look: it's not that every concern he has about Trump is entirely groundless. In fact, there are substantial grains--or pebbles--or quasi-boulders--of truth in there. Trump does seem to have a certain demagogic potential. And there really are people on the right who just will not tolerate a bad word about him--I used to deny that, but I've seen their comments of late. Of course there's nothing unusual about that. There are Dems to this day who won't hear a bad word about Obama. And there was definitely a cult of Obama.

   For the zillionth time: it's not that I deny that Trump has bad characteristics. It's that people like Kagan spin them out of proportion, refuse to acknowledge his good characteristics and even better policies, and pretend that all his supporters are crazy or stupid or evil. And, most of all: they can't or won't see that the Democrat party has capitulated to an insane progressive left that actually has the potential to destroy the country. Trump's basically the least of our problems.

   But perhaps my favorite part of the essay is the bit where Kagan claims that the left's attitude toward the right is "subtle condescension"--whereas the right is plagued by "resentment."

   Of course in actual fact, there is nothing even vaguely subtle about the left's condescension. It is, in fact, outright contempt, and it pours forth from every institution. We are clingy deplorables as you may recall... I'd say a certain amount of resentment is permissible under such circumstances.

Greenwald: "The Histrionics And Melodrama Around 1/6 Are Laughable," But Sinister

Greenwald, on target again.

   The number of people killed by pro-Trump supporters at the January 6 Capitol riot is equal to the number of pro-Trump supporters who brandished guns or knives inside the Capitol. That is the same number as the total of Americans who — after a full year of a Democrat-led DOJ conducting what is heralded as “the most expansive federal law enforcement investigation in US history” — have been charged with inciting insurrection, sedition, treason or conspiracy to overthrow the government as a result of that riot one year ago. Coincidentally, it is the same number as Americans who ended up being criminally charged by the Mueller probe of conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, and the number of wounds — grave or light — which AOC, who finally emerged at night to assure an on-edge nation that she was “okay" while waiting in an office building away from the riot at the rotunda, sustained on that solemn day.
   That number is zero. But just as these rather crucial facts do not prevent the dominant wing of the U.S. corporate media and Democratic Party leaders from continuing to insist that Donald Trump's 2016 election victory was illegitimate due to his collusion with the Kremlin, it also does not prevent January 6 from being widely described in those same circles as an Insurrection, an attempted coup, an event as traumatizing as Pearl Harbor (2,403 dead) or the 9/11 attack (2,977 dead), and as the gravest attack on American democracy since the mid-19th Century Civil War (750,000 dead). The Huffington Post's White House reporter S.V. Date said that it was wrong to compare 1/6 to 9/11, because the former — the three-hour riot at the Capitol — was “1,000 percent worse.”
   Indeed, when it comes to melodrama, histrionics, and exploitation of fear levels from the 1/6 riot, there has never been any apparent limit. And today — the one-year anniversary of that three-hour riot — there is no apparent end in sight. Too many political and media elites are far too vested in this maximalist narrative for them to relinquish it voluntarily.
   The orgy of psychodrama today was so much worse and more pathetic than I expected — and I expected it to be extremely bad and pathetic. “House Democrats [waited] their turn on the House floor to talk to Dick Cheney as a beacon for American democracy,” reported CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere; “One by one, Democrats are coming over to introduce themselves to former VP Dick Cheney and shake his hand,” added ABC News’ Ben Siegel. Nancy Pelosi gravely introduced Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast of Hamilton to sermonize and sing about the importance of American democracy. The Huffington Post's senior politics reporter Igor Bobic unironically expressed gratitude for “the four legged emotional support professionals roaming the Capitol this week, helping officers, staffers, and reporters alike.” Yesterday, CNN's Kaise Hunt announced: "Tomorrow is going to be a tough one for those of us who were there or had loved ones in the building. Thinking of all of you and finding strength knowing I’m not alone in this." Unsurprisingly but still repellently: Kamala Harris today compared 1/6 to 9/11.
   That the January 6 riot was some sort of serious attempted insurrection or "coup” was laughable from the start, and has become even more preposterous with the passage of time and the emergence of more facts. The United States is the most armed, militarized and powerful regime in the history of humanity. The idea that a thousand or so Trump supporters, largely composed of Gen X and Boomers, who had been locked in their homes during a pandemic — three of whom were so physically infirm that they dropped dead from the stress — posed anything approaching a serious threat to “overthrow” the federal government of the United States of America is such a self-evidently ludicrous assertion that any healthy political culture would instantly expel someone suggesting it with a straight face.

Ace's 1/6 Rundown, Including Biden Calling Trump An Illegitimate President

Truth bomb.

It's different when they do it.

Kamala Harris: 2016 Election Was Illegit

FLASHBACK: Two years ago, Kamala Harris explicitly agreed with the claim that the 2016 election was "illegitimate," and that Donald Trump was an "illegitimate" president. pic.twitter.com/8HJJKqkin1

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 6, 2022

Seditious, Terroristic, Treasonous Insurrectionists Respect The Velvet Ropes

I miss the wisdom & wit of Norm Macdonald. pic.twitter.com/kUXNdsWmFJ

— Michael Berry (@MichaelBerrySho) January 6, 2022

NAS Statement On Response To COVID-19 In Higher Education

I agree, but I'm a member, and I don't think NAS should be getting involved in this.

Amy Wax: Affirmative Action: Past, Present and Future

Review of Heriot and Swarzchild, A Dubious Expediency.

VDH: Who Are The Real Insurrectionists?

Truth

"Through The Lens Of Equity"

These people are gross and stupid.

He was literally attacked by 60 Minutes for vaccinating people https://t.co/5dmwGg0pcn

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) January 6, 2022

The Cringe...It Buuuurrrrrnnnnnssss...

The Democrats invited the cast of Hamilton to sing for the J6 anniversary.

This is reaching levels of cringe I did not think were possible. pic.twitter.com/CH2uXKGMiN

— Mike Berg (@MikeKBerg) January 6, 2022

1/6/21 Never Forget

As Foretold In The Prophecy

pic.twitter.com/f6Mb5xNFPf

— Vincent Caruso (@vin_jc) January 6, 2022

1/6 Never Forget: The Worst Catastrophe Since The K-T Impactor Extinctioned 75% Of All Species On Earth

Do not turn on the television or you're going to barf.

And, again, for the record: I believe that the Capitol riot was a very, very bad thing.

But basically the Democrats can make just about anything repulsive.

Turley: Whatever Happened To Prosecuting Trump For Incitement?

Same thing that happened to prosecuting him for conspiracy.

Jonah Goldberg: "The January 6th Republicans"

I thought this--like most of Goldberg's stuff--wasn't worth finishing...but apparently Bari Weiss thought it worth at least reading. So I pass it on to you. Maybe he's right about the crackpot sub-sub-subset of Republicans--in fact, the sub-sub-subset of 1/5 protestors--who violently attacked the Capitol. Obviously, there's something bad wrong with them. But if he thinks he's talking about everyone who voted for Trump and supported his policies, he's high.

The Progressive Unhingeing From Reality: NYT/Capitol-Riot Edition

The mind, it reels.

Kim Strassel: Trump Erases His Legacy

This is still the best piece I know of from a year ago. The accompanying video is also excellent, IMO.

   It's a bit too much to say that Trump erased his legacy--but he sure as hell did more to erase it in one day--in the eleventh hour--than anyone could have thought possible. He snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and handed the unhinged Democrats a victory greater than any they could have hoped for, almost after the clock had already expired. He should probably be seen as a hero of the progressive left on account of the great victory he won them that day.

   Technically he didn't call for the riot, and technically the riot wasn't an insurrection. But it was bad--very, very bad. An abject embarrassment. And, y'know, a little insurrectiony...

   It doesn't compare to the years-long unhinged deluge of crazy that the newly-hard-left Democrats have unleased on the country--but 'tis enough; 'twill serve. It was utterly beyond the pale--not to mention that it put a rhetorical sword into the hands of our opponents.

   Trump very clearly laid the groundwork for the attack on the Capitol. He didn't call for it on that day, and, in fact, admonished the crowd to be peaceful. But that's not enough to make up for his weeks of saying things that made the attack seem like a plausible course of action.

   And his weak, half-hearted request that the mob stand down put the final nail into the coffin of his personal legacy.

   Now, the Dems did cheat. Denying that is just absurd. Illegally rewriting election laws, manipulating the pandemic to make elections less secure, outright lying about Trump and everything he did for four years...Russiagate...two absurd impeachments. the Dems are despicable. But that excuse doesn't go very far.

   And handing the Senate to the Dems...my God...

   Well, we gambled on a guy who's a train wreck. We won a lot. We also lost. The country was left much, much better off than it would have been otherwise. But, as Sowell says, there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. 

   The attack on the Capitol was a symbolic atrocity--and symbols matter. Substantively, it can't hold a candle to the harm the left has inflicted on the country over the course of the past six or seven years. Substantively, it can't even hold a candle merely to the BLM/Antifa/Floyd riots--which were also insurrections if the Capitol riot was. But, again, such comparisons only go so far.

   Oh, hell, what do I know?

Fed, Fed, Fed

Yeah, that guy's a Fed.

Get Ready For 1/6 Hysteria

I man not even fire up the internet.com tomorrow. The hysterics are going to be epic.

Classic Onion: Babies Are Stupid

Before it went Woketard:

Durham University Defends Student "Sex-Work" Training

[incredulous stare]

Why Is The Progressive Left So (a) Obviously and (b) Radically (c) Wrong about (d) Everything?

This is not normal. As much nuttiness as I've seen in American politics and society in my lifetime--usually more on the right, it seemed to me--I've never before seen anything like what's happening on the progressive left. Being wrong is one thing--in many or perhaps even most ordinary cases, errors are excusable. But the more obviously and radically you are wrong--and the more things you're wrong about--the less excusable...and even explicable...your error becomes. 

   My general explanation has long been political correctness--a general tendency to subordinate truth and reason to (leftist) political dogma. This is tightly associated with attempts to squelch disagreement/speech. Squelching disagreement is one of the surest routes to error. And all of this is tightly bound up with dogmatism, i.e. the refusal to honestly assess one's own and one's own party's beliefs and acknowledge error. My guess is that all this set up the situation we currently see on the left: a snowballing of crazy.

   This is not normal. And it's not going to be ok. 

   By that latter I don't mean that we're doomed. What I mean is: there is insufficiently good reason to think that this is all going to work out. If you think you can just opt out and rely on things to fix themselves, you're deluded. Fundamental planks in the insane platform of the progressive left are being built into government and society. Even if things were to start to turn around tomorrow, some of those planks are going to be hard to remove.

   To repeat: this is not normal.

RIP NYC

I don't see how Adams can fix things with a minion of Dr. Evil as the DA.

WSJ: Fix The Electoral Count Act

Seems right.

Gay / "Transgender" Grooming In (CA) Schools

The cult wants your kids.

It's a giant grooming operation.

CA makes it illegal to talk someone out of this stuff, but it's not illegal to talk them into it.

As I've said before, this is creepily like Satanic Panic 2.0...except this time it's for real...but the perpetrators are talking the victims into torturing and sexually mutilating themselves... And it is going on in schools, and it is being hidden from parents.

Jeffrey Lord: The BLM Riots Were The Real Insurrection

Not a big fan of Lord...but good point.

Coulter: The Daunte Wright NYT Readers Don't Know!

Progressivism canonizes another black criminal and sacrifices another white cop.

The fact that the left lives in a web of lies and delusions of its own spinning is one thing. 

The fact that it actively promotes racial disharmony is another.

Kara Alamo: Censorship FTW

link

How weird, another progressive argument for censorship.

John D. Sailor: "White Coats For Black Queer Abolitionist Socialism"

So, hey, good thing pomo-prog insanity is isolated to universities, huh? 

I don't mind leftists getting health care influenced by Woketarian pseudoscience/bullshit--I mean, that's what they want and deserve, no? 

But the rest of us should have the option of seeing doctors who have spent their medical education learning about medicine rather than indoctrination into the cult.

Global Warming Follies: No Chicago Blizzard

So...is this disconfirming evidence of the climate apocalypse? Or what?

Will Canada Try To Impose Its Looming Totalitarianism On Us?

Who the **** knows anymore?:

If the next presidential election reveals the U.S. hurtling toward possible violence and autocracy, should Canada try to intervene? https://t.co/4GcnQskumH

— The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail) January 2, 2022

Chris Matthews Tried To Warn Dems They'd Gone Too Far Left

And he barely scratched the surface.

And was, of course, vilified for it.

Justin Trudeau Is An Idiot, Episode MCXVIII: UNVAXXED = UNCLEAN

 Jesus that guy.

Peter Berkowitz: "David Brooks's Requiem For Conservatism's Most Recent Death"

Word:

   Yes, Trump is vain and thin-skinned. Yet rather than adopt an authoritarian agenda, the 45th U.S. president cut taxes, curtailed regulations, restored the rule of law to America’s southern border, appointed judges committed to interpreting rather than rewriting the law, and gave states room to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
   Yes, some thugs and kooks rallied around Trump. Meanwhile, other thugs and kooks gravitated to the Democratic Party. The swing voters who were decisive in Trump’s 2016 victory, moreover, supported him not out of “hatred of the Other” but in self-defense against the scorn that progressive elites directed at them, their communities, and their faith.
   And yes, many conservatives feel embattled. But not, as Brooks ridiculously alleges, because “they need to continually invent existential foes — critical race theory, nongendered bathrooms, out-of-control immigration.” Conservatives and Trump voters feel embattled because, even as a New York Times columnist writing in The Atlantic dismisses their political concerns as a matter of benighted and feverish imaginations, they can see with their own eyes that schools indoctrinate students in critical race theory; that progressive elites make transgenderism a signature cause not to protect the basic rights of a tiny minority but as a lever to overturn traditional moral limits and teachings; and that since Joe Biden entered the White House, soaring numbers of migrants have illegally crossed the nation’s southern border.
   Not the least reason to cultivate the conservative spirit is to counter the extraordinary excesses on the left to which progressives, in their recurring rush to bury conservatism, blind themselves and the nation. 

TDS And The Progressive Mote/Beam Problem [Slightly Updated]

I've lost at least some of my perspective on all this, but this at The Atlantic seems emblematic of the troubles on the left. I haven't read any of the main articles yet, but Goldberg's Editor's Note doesn't inspire confidence. Trump's a problem now, I agree. But such things are largely comparative, and Trump's far less of a danger to the country than is the pomo-prog left. Goldberg writes:

There is insufficient space in any one issue of this magazine to trace the Republican Party’s decomposition from Lincoln’s day to ours. It is enough to say that its most recent, and most catastrophic, turn—toward authoritarianism, nativism, and conspiracism—threatens the republic that it was founded to save.

What's happened on the left is more catastrophic, more authoritarian (in fact: totalitarian), and more conspiracist than what's happened on the right--and those are just for starters. That doesn't mean we should be unconcerned about the right and its potential for craziness. But, right now, anyway, it's a mote/beam problem. And, since basically all major institutions including the MSM are progressive, they're all basically blind to--or unconcerned with--the beam. 

   Another peculiarity is the idea that Trump is a threat to democracy--something we've heard repeatedly since he was so undemocratic as to win the election of '16...whereupon Clinton and much of the progressive left declared the election illegitimate. Then they spent the next 3ish years undermining that election with a conspiracy theory that actually turned out to be worse than a myth--it turned out to be a blue-team hoax. But somehow none of that counts. 

   Of course Trump did end up threatening democracy to some extent ca. 1/6--but the accusations predated that. And, yet again, the left was worse: the 1/6 riot was less damaging to the nation than the massive wave of riots pretexed on the George Floyd incident--and on the massive hoax/conspiracy theory propagated by BLM and the PMSM. And nothing done by conservatives can compare to the pre-election rigging perpetrated by the left--which included the apparently-illegal rewriting of election laws by progressive courts and the use of the pandemic as an excuse for making elections less secure. But any restrictions on voting are, of course, "voter suppression"...and, of course, that's the storyline propagated by the media. And this is not to mention the PMSM censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story--which is better evidence of Biden-China influence-peddling that we ever had for Trump-Russia collusion. But the media is progressive, and it only gives one side of the story--which it wildly exaggerates. The BLM/Antifa riots of 2020 were spun down into "mostly peaceful protests." The 1/6 riot was spun into an "insurrection." The killing of the criminal George Floyd was spun into a murder that demonstrated the "systemic" and "institutional" racism of the USA. The killing of veteran Ashli Babbit was spun into a story about brave USCP officers protecting our democracy. (To be clear: t's not that there's no truth in the progressives' version of both stories--but only some.)

   But wait! There's more:

But that belief was wrong. Which is why we asked Bart to examine, once again, the state of our democracy and the various attempts by Trump and other leading Republicans to claim power through voter suppression, subterfuge, and any other means necessary. His current cover story, “January 6 Was Practice,” suggests that we are close—closer than most of us ever thought possible—to losing not only our democracy, but what’s left of our shared understanding of reality.

Well, you know what I'm going to say about all that.  Even ignoring everything else, the progressive idea that it's conservatives who are threatening "our shared sense of reality"...well...that's kind of a meta-delusion. Progressivism has lost its grip on reality almost completely, and it's implemented a whole array of mechanisms for trying to force the rest of us to do likewise, buying into their more particular, first-order delusions. 

Blah blah blah.