Sussman Jury: 3 Clinton Donors, an AOC Donor, and A Woman on the Same "Crew" Team As Sussman's Daughter

Just. Fucking. Unbelievable.

In a way the most repulsive part is the bit about the "crew" team. 

Not basketball.

Not softball.

Not even soccer.

But "crew." 

So. fucking. perfect.

Travesty of Justice: Sussman Acquitted

 So no surprise here: the obviously, undeniably guilty Michael Sussman is acquitted.

It's been obvious the whole time that the judge was biased. It was made as clear as it could be that the jury was biased. And, thus, in a sense the verdict is no surprise.

This is the state of play in D.C. Everything--everything--is slanted in the Democrats' favor.

What a fucking travesty of justice.

Glenn Beck Interviews the Great Bill Barr

It's uncanny how much I agree with this guy:

Progressives on Teachers Grooming Students; From "How Dare You Accuse Us?" to "All Teaching Is Grooming" In Oh, Say, Three Months

This was roughly the arc with CRT and the politicization of education generally, too: from HOW DARE YOU? to Everybody does it! to It is an essential component of teaching and teaching is impossible without it in a matter of a couple of months.

AAUP Objects to Conservatives' Political Interference with the Left's Politicization of UNC

You almost couldn't make this up.

Earth in a "CO2 Famine"?

Kinda sounds that way. 

NAU Implements a 4-Course "Diversity" Requirement

This is madness.

   There's not really any such thing as learning about "diversity." There's nothing to learn. Everything anyone needs to know has been a staple of universities my entire life: to attend a university, you've got to learn to tolerate all kinds of people you may not like, and all kinds of views you may not agree with. And that's basically all there is to it. 

   What "diversity" courses and "training" and so forth actually do is: indoctrinate students--and faculty--with hard-left politics and philosophy. On the political side, that means: identity politics. On the philosophical side, that currently means: some tangle from the postpostmodern mishmash: poststructuralism, postmodernism, radical feminism, queer theory, or some version of critical theory. Currently probably: some version of critical race theory.

   And that's obviously what NAU is up to. This is like having a four-course Scientology or astrology requirement. Or 12 hours worth of communist indoctrination. It's certainly not learning about these theories--the people who teach this kind of stuff don't understand it and probably don't even know the standard criticisms. Much less are they capable--or willing--to lead students through the finer points of the theories' weaknesses. They can spout the dogma, but the very fact that they've been trained in disciplines in which this nonsense has taken over means that they almost certainly don't have the analytic abilities required to criticize it. One reason this stuff is so destructive is that it is built on shitty methods of reasoning, and students in the afflicted disciplines learn to think in these shitty ways. Talk to a professor who is devoted to this pseudo-scholarly religion and you'll see that just about the entire method boils down to: make up some interpretation, pretty much no matter how absurd, on which your opponent or his theory is racist. Learning this sort of thing actually makes students dumber than they were the day they walked onto campus.

Gas Stove Hysteria

When I was young and stupid, I'd take stuff like this seriously on principle. Even though this is the sort of thing about which I'd be skeptical, I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. Now I more-or-less automatically conclude that it's bullshit. If lots and lots of additional research comes to a similar conclusion over a long period of time, I'll take another look at it. But one study with PC overtones in the midst of climate hysteria...nope.

   I mean, it's possible, of course. Maybe gas stoves are unusually leaky, for example. But things'd have to be pretty damn bad to make it worth throwing a perfectly good stove in the landfill and buying another one. Reminds me of the "Cash for Clunkers" nonsense. Not to mention the utter implausibility that it could be better to burn (at best) natural gas 100 miles away, turn it into electricity, transmit it over the grid, and turn it back into heat. And: the power is pretty likely to be generated by coal or oil rather than natural gas. 

   Also, re: alleged adverse health effects: they sealed off the kitchen in mylar tents. Compare: we sealed off your garage with a mylar tent to concentrate the effect of your car's exhaust...  I mean...there can be reasons for doing that...but...

   I just don't pay any attention to this nonsense anymore.

WI GOP's Latest Meltdown

link

The Sig P320 X-10 Is Out

 DO WANT:

Law Enforcement Response to Uvalde Shooting Sounds Like A Clusterfuck

A grade A one.

No battering ram and took an hour to find a key to the room?

Unbelievable.

[To be clear, I think that drawing firm conclusions about a situation that turns on expertise that you don't have is very, very dumb. And many of the people screeching about the LEO response don't seem to know what they're talking about. Which is not to say that I believe there weren't serious mistakes. But I'm basically waiting to hear what experts say about it. But...no battering ram and an hour to find a key?? 

Sounds pretty bad.]

HEAT WAVES HOT ENOUGH TO COOK HUMAN FLESH!!!!!!11111 COMING SOON!!!!!!111

Patent bullshit.

Climate exaggeration just won't end

The Atlantic now tells us that "heat waves hot enough to cook human flesh are already happening this month"

No
Made-up
(which is why there is no link)https://t.co/pxk1xu5zeF pic.twitter.com/odQuP5QK5Z

— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) May 26, 2022

Andrew McCarthy: Sussman's Defense is Laughable

It's an open-and-shut case. But I will be somewhat surprised if he's found guilty given the overt bias of the judge and jurors.

WH Has to Walk Back Biden Comments about Taiwan--Again

C'mon, man

Clinton Did It

More on the Mook/Sussman/Clinton revelations from the Sussman trial.

   I took the Russian collusion business very seriously for awhile, and I really puzzled over this Alpha Bank stuff. But in late 2017 (or thereabouts), the whole deranged anti-Trump picture started to come apart. The patent lies about the Charlottesville Unite the Right incident was one factor. The patent absurdity of Russiagate was another. The fact that the left had come completely unhinged was another. Reading Sowell's Intellectuals and Society was definitely a nail in the coffin... 

   Well, anyway.

Rule for Criticizing the Left in Academia

(1) Do not criticize the left

(2) You may--and probably should--criticize the left for being insufficiently radical. This criticism is, in fact, always permissible. It actually means: we need to be more like we are than we are. You absolutely must make this criticism at least occasionally.

(3) Absolutely positively never ever criticize the left for being too far left.

(4) If you do criticize the left for being too far left, make it clear that you "agree with their ends"--you are "just concerned that" their means are not going to be effective.

(5) The most important way of not being effective is: helping the right; the primary and in some sense only way in which the left can fail is: helping the right.

(6) If you do criticize the left in any way that does not reduce to I'm afraid they may end up helping the right--and, to be clear: never, ever do that--you must clearly say--before, during, and after your criticism: But the right is worse. Or: At least they're better than the right.

Everything Woke Turns to Shit: Minneapolis Still Hasn't Recovered from George Floyd's Death

Rather: it still hasn't recovered from the central myth of BLM: that police are wantonly murdering black people in the streets.

Funny how the myths of the woke always lead to death, destruction, derangement and chaos.

PC and the COVID: Why Did The "Experts" Not Advise People to Lose Weight?

The "expert" response to the COVID-19 pandemic was distorted in many ways by political correctness. The conservative press reported from fairly early on that COVID was less deadly than it was being portrayed by experts and the MSM, and noted that hospitalization and deaths seemed largely isolated to people who were old, or overweight, or had other comorbidities. Everything else aside: official agencies and the MSM never--through the entire pandemic--advised overweight people to lose weight. That is: they, in effect, preferred more deaths to "fat-shaming."

   Now, being overweight basically destroyed my mother's life. I've got no sympathy for those who ridicule people for it. It's none of your goddamn business if someone else is overweight. And I think that there's a lot of aesthetic criticism of fat people that disguises itself as concern for health. But that doesn't alter the fact that it is unhealthy. And it doesn't excuse the failure of experts and the MSM to inform people that one of the best things they could have done (and could still do) to protect themselves from COVID is to lose weight. 

Rufo: School District of Philadelphia encouraged teachers to attend a conference on “kink,” “BDSM,” “trans sex,” and “masturbation sleeves.”

I'm about the farthest thing you can get from a prude.

My main objections to this shit, however, are:

(1) So much of it is grotesque and disgusting

and, of course:

(2) It has no place in schools. 

Look, you want to do the kinky secks, I do not care. It doesn't bother me in any way. You do you. None of my business. Just as my sex life is none of yours. But some people's preferences are adventurous and hot, and some's are adventurous and gross. That's just the way it is. And a whole lotta the stuff Rufo describes here is the latter. 

More importantly: stop with the goddamned mission creep. There is no reason whatsoever for this to be in schools. It's only in there because teachers want to promote it. It's not, obviously, in there because of any commitment to education per se nor free inquiry. 

As one session host explained, “there’s no age limit, because I feel like everybody should be able to access certain information.”

Because, see, there's all sorts of information that people can't have. To wit: anything that opposes the loony progressive-left worldview. Relevantly: any objection to (trans)gender ideology is literally murder/Hitler and cannot be tolerated in the public square.. Bigot. But telling kindergartenters that they should go get sexually mutilated...well...that's important information! Bigot.

LOL @ Vox: Still Flogging Gamergate

link
Gamergate isn't the point of all this, but the left refers to it as a premise--as if it had been established beyond all doubt that it was "a campaign of harassment" "against women"...and Brianna Wu. (Or "Brianna Wu"). 

   In fact, Gamergate was an early skirmish in the culture war. In fact, Gamergate was what happened when gamers began to push back against the lunatic SJWs taking over videogame journalism. In fact, in Gamergate, the progressive-left's new tactics were revealed: when the proles push back against your cultish madness, accuse them of prejudice and violence. In Gamergate, perfectly legitimate complaints about far-left lunacy were mischaracterized as "harassment" of women (and "women). 

   I actually dove into the thing at the time, and there's no doubt about it: the same lies and insanity we see everywhere now first showed up there. Or: it's the first case I know of. It was like the Nazis unveiling the Blitzkrieg in the invasion of Poland. Or something.

   Anyway. Since the crazies now control Wikipedia, and this seems to be the kind of issue on which Wikipedia is taken to be authoritative, their "narrative" (idiotic term) has been established as "fact." 

Though, who knows? Maybe someday the truth will out.

John Nolte: Washington Post Debases Itself With Eulogy to Biden's Fascistic Disinformation Board

Progressivism has become a self-parody.

The fact that this was written by Taylor Lorenz...[kisses fingertips]...it's...it's...[sniffs] [wipes eye] it's just beautiful, man...just....beautiful....

Hillary Clinton Personally Approved Disinformation Falsely Linking Trump to Russian Bank

The MSM is, of course, keeping this on the DL.

Do Testosterone Treatments Turn Democrat Voters More Conservative?

It wouldn't be the most surprising thing ever.

Insty: The Left Hates Elon Musk Because He Doesn't Tolerate Bullshit

And, of course, the progressive left is made of bullshit. 

The Derangement of the Democrats: Biden on Elimination of Fossil Fuels

To some extent, a reminder that high gas prices are not merely a foreseeable consequence of Democrat policies, but a conscious, intentional goal thereof.

   But beyond that: a reminder that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

No sane person who knows anything at all about these issues thinks that fossil-fuel use can be eliminated any time in the foreseable future. And the idea that their use can be eliminated before Biden leaves office is sheer delusion.

   But unhinged, fantastical, sci-fi utopianism has a grip on the leftist mind...even when it is catastrophically unrealizable. Maybe that's just another aspect of political correctness, the subordination of fact to leftist dogma/ideals. Maybe the "reasoning" goes something like this: x is in some sense an ideal state, ergo we must strive for x despite the fact that it is impossible and said striving would lead to our destruction. Or maybe it's just a confused ought-can argument:  we ought to achieve x, therefore we can achieve x. The latter sort of argument isn't hopeless, but much hinges on the first clause, obviously.

   Most of us would happily trade fossil-fuel use for cleaner alternatives if they were approximately as good--even if they were somewhat more expensive and/or less efficient. But that's not the choice we face. The problem here is mostly caused by political correctness and leftist crisis-mongering/hysteriogenesis. A reasonable, long-term goal has been turned into a destructive, utopian fantasy by the combination of (a) the left's high default levels of hysteria and (b) its habit of creating fictional crises to achieve pre-existing political aims. The reasonable view that We should work toward minimizing fossil-fuel use has been abandoned in favor of We must end all fossil-fuel use immediately or Earth will be reduced to a blackened cinder. And when that sort of unhinged thinking takes over, here's what doesn't happen:  we move toward a laudable goal more quickly. Here's what does happen: we do stupid things that overall make the world worse. It's a bit like the difference between Hey, you should get that thing on your arm checked out and If you don't cut off your arm immediately, you will die. The latter is not a more effective way of achieving the aims of the former. It is, rather, a blueprint for disaster.

It's Becoming a Genre: World-Renown Scientist's Career Ended by False Accusation of Sexual Harassment

"Me Too" cancel culture has marginally increased your odds of dying from cancer.

Turley: Sussman is Receiving Every Consideration Denied to Flynn

Absolutely unbelievable.

As with Russiagate generally, everything here is spun wildly in favor of the Democrats.

Turley resists the urge to point out that the judge is an Obama appointee.

Ann Coulter: the Democrat Origins of "Great Replacement Theory"

link.

   I'm not wild about either of these rhetorical strategies: "groomers," "great replacement."

However, rhetoric isn't my thing.

   Some points:

[1] Progressivism is actually so radical that it has moved closer and closer to each of the endpoints identified by those terms. That is: neither is exactly wrong anymore.

[2] The radical left never stops moving left unless forced to do so. (And even then it won't stop for long--it's merely pause or retrenchment.)

[3] There's at least as much truth in those two accusations as there is in the left's ceaseless accusations of racism, sexism and *phobia. I'm inclined to say there's more truth in them...but I'm pretty mad about it all, so I'm skeptical of that inclination. At worst it's a matter of giving the left a dose of its own medicine. 

(Though, given how crazy the medicine is, that's worrisome.)

   At any rate, here's Tim Wise, "antiracist essayist, author and educator" (note: "educator" = propagandist in Newnewspeak):

This week, the media’s leading expert on the crazies who believe in replacement theory is Tim Wise, popping up on both MSNBC and CNN to psychoanalyze the white “racists.” He’s been quoted, cited or praised dozens of times in The New York Times. This isn’t some fringe character, despite appearances.
In 2010, Wise wrote an “Open Letter to the White Right” that began:
“For all y’all rich folks, enjoy that champagne, or whatever fancy ass Scotch you drink.
“And for y’all a bit lower on the economic scale, enjoy your Pabst Blue Ribbon, or whatever shitty ass beer you favor …
“Because your time is limited.
“Real damned limited.”
Guess why! Wise explained:
“It is math.”
...
“Because you’re on the endangered list.
“And unlike, say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving.
“In 40 years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white people around who actually remember that Leave It to Beaver …”
...
“It’s OK. Because in about 40 years, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it.
“Nothing, Senor Tancredo.”
...
“We just have to be patient.
“And wait for you to pass into that good night, first politically, and then, well …
“Do you hear it?
“The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?
“Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.”

If this isn't a paean to demographic replacement, what is it? 

   As James Lindsay has said (roughly): a conspiracy theory is leftist policy stated without leftist spin.

   I'm not wild about counterproductivity arguments, but I'll indulge in one here, obliquely: here's a way to fight the crazy right: stop making their crazy theories plausible. Another way is: stop making it virtually impossible for sane people to discuss the fact that you're making such crazy theories plausible. 

Musk: Dems Now the "Party of Hate and Division;" "Woke Mind Virus Attempting to Destroy Civilization"

Right on both fronts.

He also notes that the Pubs are no great shakes--but that's barely relevant at this point. 

UCF Prof Nagy Fired for Politically Incorrect Speech Reinstated With Tenure and Back Pay

link

Goodbye, Biden Reincrazifies Title IX, Rolling Back Trump/deVos Protections

Goodbye, due process.

   This one can't be blamed on the recent rise of progressivism. This is really the fault of Obama's Department of Education--and Catherine Lhamon. 

   I guess this is the evolution of the Dems now: old bad ideas stick--or return--while new bad ideas are generated every day in the fever swamps of academia and the brainless depths of radical activism.

Biden's Ministry of Truth "Paused;" Big Sister Resigns

In Newnewspeak, that's:  "Disinformation Governance Board" and Nina Jankowicz.

Not that this matters all that much.

Never forget: The Democrats did that. 

Their most "moderate" candidate did that.

Just because it was total buffoonery doesn't mean that censorship and totalitarian, Orwellian grotesquery isn't deep down in their collective soul.

Mandatory "Diversity" Course at Illinois State

Identity politics indoctrination, plain and simple.

Andrew Doyle: How to Prevent Children from Being (Trans-)Indoctrinated

I somewhat agree.

I do think that humor is a component of a winning strategy--though of course the pomo-prog left has a rhetorical strategy for demonizing all disagreement: see e.g. "punching down"...

But I think Doyle is still too optimistic. I think it's going to take a lot more than just humor/ridicule. The combination of a mind-numbing array of pseudointellectual gibberish that tends to leave ordinary people baffled and speechless, plus accusations of racism etc. against all dissenters plus shrieking hysteria up to the point of even actual violence has turned out to be astonishingly effective. It's taken a massive investment of time and energy to even slow the advancement of the madness to a small degree.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Buffalo and the Myth of Racist America

link

Christina Buttons: Why I Joined The CA Exodus

link

Totten: Hofstadter's Paranoid Style Revisited

I'm skeptical, but this is a respectable semi-counterpoint to much of my recent ranting. Sorta.

As commenter SuperGrooveMachine points out, Totten botches/inflates the numbers in the very first sentence. So there's that.

I've never taken the Qtards at all seriously. Maybe I should. But, given that the pseudoscientific conspiracy theories of the left are taken as gospel truth in our elite institutions, and are realio-trulio driving the country toward disaster...well...it's hard to get too worked up about fantastical alternative mythologies that don't seem to have any hope of gaining power... But, of course, I could be wrong.

Albamarle Mom Says School's CRT(-ish) Curriculum Changed Her Son

Not for the better, obvs.

I've been told that I'm pretty bad at understanding the rhetorical situation in such cases, and that may very well be. But I'd say it's not so much the content that's the problem as the fact that this psychotic, racist pseudoscience is being represented as unquestionable knowledge. This may not be the right approach for K-12, but, of course, the scholarly idea is that you can teach about any view that somehow or other becomes of interest--but you must always teach about it objectively, considering strengths, weaknesses and alternatives views. Progressivism, however, misrepresents outre and idiosyncratic views as not only established truth, but as unassailable truth. [Note: one more time: this is indoctrination.]

   And again I'll note: it's not exactly CRT that's at issue, but, rather a chaotic and largely incoherent cluster of views, largely from Continental philosophy and "theory"/lit-crit that took over much of the humanities in the '80s. CRT is just the current flagship view. Postmodernism was the flagship back in the day. ("Trans")gender ideology is making a strong move on the outside. The flagship might be queer theory next year. 

Former First Ladx Worries Overturning Roe Will Strip Womxn to Their "Right" to Hxthcxre

 So ridiculous.

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.: What did the Steele Dossier Hoax Cost America?

A lot.

But it might as well never have happened so far as progressives and the MSM are concerned.

CA Regulators Reject Desalination Plant (During Historic Drought)

I don't know anything about this at all...but...50,000,000 gallons per day?? It just seems kind of implausible that this is really going to do all that much damage to marine life. Irreplaceable marine life, anyway. And: "too expensive for low-income consumers"? Really? More expensive than what water's going to end up being in ten years at this rate? 

But then you get to the punchline: environmentalists are fixated on "recycled water." Drinking pee is exactly the kind of thing that gives leftists a tingle down their leg. 

Again: I don't know anything about this and probably shouldn't be saying anything...but it all fits the profile, doesn't it?

National Review: America's Crisis of Self-Doubt

I agree with this.

Yet Another Anti-Conservative Study is Fake News

I don't pay the slightest bit of attention to such nonsense anymore.

Racist Mass Murder in Buffalo

God knows what to say about this sort of abject insanity.

Re: Inflation, Biden Has Done Everything Wrong All At Once

link

Hillsdale Charter Schools Take on Biden's DoE--And Public Schools and Teachers' Unions and The Whole Rotten, Destructive, Failing, Anti-Western Lot

Needless to say, the Empire is striking back.

Bernard Lane: The White House's Specious Gender Manifesto

Men cannot become women. Girls cannot become boys. There is no such thing as "transgenderism" in any sense beyond this: some males misrepresent themselves as female; some females misrepresent themselves as male. 

There has never been any real doubt about this among the rational.

The fact that the progressive left was able to immediately convince its foot soldiers to believe / pretend to believe otherwise is a sign of how profound the madness is--and how little regard progressives have for truth.

The fact that they have been willing to support the sexual mutilation of innumerable children in order to maintain the facade boggles the mind.

Given their control of all of our institutions, I'm skeptical that there will ever be a reckoning.

But if there is...

Oh and:  link

James Carden: The Company Men Behind Biden's Foreign Policy "Blob"

Interesting.

I know nothing about this, and had not heard the 'blob' terminology.

Funny thing about it is, a lot of it sounded pretty good to me up until the end--some cautious, level-headed people in charge...even Kamala Harris has, allegedly, got a good team.

But the end was surprising: the suggestion is that they are too conventional to find an offramp.

I have no idea what to think about that kind of point.

Anti-War.com: Right on Cue, NYT Goes All-In on War

I don't have and don't deserve a position on the Ukraine situation.

I have some half-assed inclination to believe what I heard John Mearsheimer say...but probably only because I don't know anything about what's going on. That is: NATO should not have flirted with letting Ukraine in. 

But once Putin attacked Ukraine, I don't see how any normal person can't root for the Ukrainians.

But that doesn't mean we should go all-in on a proxy war with a nuclear power...especially when we seem to have provoked it.

And: the obvious moral arguments are easy for everyone to see; but at least many experts argue that this has to (also?) be seen as a matter of realpolitik, as a matter of great power politics. There are people who really understand this stuff. Most of us are just kibbitzing on the basis of our moral outrage. (Note: no, I'm not sure 'just' belongs in that sentence.)

Anyway: right on cue, the NYT is beating the war drums. 

It's baffling to me how the very-lefty MSM always seems to eager to war.

The populist right is now agin' it--probably to some extent because the left is for it. But I guess that's always a factor on both sides.

Initially, I was for providing a lot of aid to Ukraine. But then I started suspecting that we were getting a rosy picture of the war. Though I'm not exactly sure why/how-much that matters...

I'm also not wild about another $40 billion for Ukraine.

It'd be different if the administration hadn't already been spending like drunken sailors...or if the economy weren't already in danger...or if we had any reason to believe the Dems might sober up sometime soon.... But they have and it is and we don't.

Well, tl;dr:  I don't know.

[Also: I have an ignorant inclination to agree with those who say that we should be doing more-or-less whatever we can to patch up relations with Russia in hopes of moving toward an anti-China alliance. That seems like a long-term goal that might only come to fruition, if at all, post-Putin...but what do I know?]

Did A Kindergarten Teacher in British Columbia Send Students Home With a "Masturbation Instructions" Worksheet??

Apparently so.

At some point merely calling this madness seems inadequate...

Of course every faction has its crazies. And this was apparently the act of one teacher, not sanctioned by the school. 

OTOH it's madness...

And, of course, as with so many of these isolated cases: it's continuous with the general views and direction of the postpostmodern progressive left. It's an outlier...but not all that much of one. And, since the radical left always pushes leftward, this seems to be where the entire faction will end up if it isn't stopped.

The Life Cycle of Russian Tanks

Someone actually made a David Attenborough style voiceover for this video of a destroyed Russian tank. pic.twitter.com/NBmEazYb4F

— Christian Borys (@ItsBorys) May 9, 2022

The Degenerate State of the Abortion Debate in the Era of ("Trans")Gender Ideology

A link that almost doesn't matter.

So the problem with ("trans")gender ideology is that it is either incoherent or false. Those of us who have pointed that out since the beginning have been vilified--though, of course, many stopped pointing it out long ago, when they couldn't take the heat. 

   "That view is incoherent/false" is not a permissible criticism in the age of political correctness. 

   It carries no weight.

   The progressive left cares little about truth--which its intellectual foundation considers suspect at best, relative (or fictional) at worst.

   The ACLU was lost years ago; it went over to the Dark Side when it came out against un-PC speech.

   The only criticisms--of TGI or any other PC thing--that are permitted are harm-to-the-"vulnerable" arguments. This is because the progressive left sets the terms of debates now, and everyone else with the temerity to debate at all debates tacitly accepts those terms. "Gender critical" feminists are--barely--permitted to object to TGI if they do so in terms like these: Men suck, partially in virtue of being dangerous to women; TGI puts men in women's "spaces," etc. That is, because they are leftists and accept that men are bad and endanger women--and they say so--they can't quite exactly be shut out of the debate by the left. If I simply stand up and say "This view is absurd"...which I do, actually...well, that is impermissible.

   I think radical feminism is a crock--except for a few things here and there that I'll admit I've learned from them. So I am hesitant to make common cause with them, even for so important a purpose. Somehow Women are adult, female humans has come to be identified as a "GC" view--though, of course, it's simply the truth recognized by everyone, always...except for the progressive left of the last 7.5 years...  

I feel as if I had another point. But I'm tired of typing.

George Neumayr: The Steele Dossier: Pure Democratic Farce

So for--what? two years?--all we heard about was Russian collusion! Russian asset! Russia, Russia, Russia!

   Democrats swallowed the obviously-fake Steele Dosseir hook, line and sinker. The MSM could talk of nothing else. When Mueller admitted there was no there there, they briefly floated a The-Rooskies-Got-Muller-Too trial balloon. Then they switched to: Well, he wasn't exonerated! Muller just said he couldn't find anything! That doesn't mean no collusion! That is: they decided it would be better to reject the foundational principle Innocent Until Proven Guilty than to admit that Trump was the former. 

   I knew people who for months or years could talk of nothing else. Until it turned out that Trump was--as an objective observer could already see--innocent. Then the excuse-making and ad-hoc-hypothesis-formulating began. Now, several years on and long after it's become clear that, in fact, "Trump's Russian collusion" was a massive Democrat-MSM-Deep-State conspiracy--an actual, realio, trulio conspiracy--many or most on the left seem oblivious. A combination of MSM silence and lies...and political correctness...allow them to be ignorant of / ignore the fact that they were wrong about the plain and obvious facts of perhaps the greatest political scandal in American history.

   It's that latter, really, that may be more a matter of concern: we now clearly see the important facts of what happened in Russiagategate. Trump is gone. It's a relatively cool hour. It is crucial that we admit the truth. But the Dems still can't bring themselves to do it. That'd be one thing if the MSM had an ounce of damn integrity. But it doesn't. It's a hard-left propaganda apparatus at this point. What's worse than a whole party/faction losing its mind about Russian collusion for two years? I'd say: not even being able to admit that's what happened. 

But here we are.

Parents Fight Back Against Transanity and The Gender Cult

link

John Schindler: Democrats' Most Undemocratic Disinformation Debacle

The party of disinformation puts a disinformatiocrat in charge of suppressing politically incorrect information.

File under: Shit You Couldn't Make Up.

Jonathan Kay: When Disagreement Becomes Trauma

Behold, the consequences of the radioactive synthesis of leftist identity politics and bad Continental philosophy.

   Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of all this to my mind is how the worst of literary-philosophical gobbledygook is treated as if it were not only intelligible but such a matter of course that policy can be based on it --to the point, incidentally, of destroying academia without so much as a discussion of whether that might not be the best idea ever. This is, of course, accomplished in part by banning disagreement. So you can't criticize the gobbledygook because the gobbledygook says you can't criticize it.

   Back in my day, nonsense like the following was the subject of endless ridicule by everyone in the philosophy department (other than the radical feminists):

Of course you don't have to be an analytic philosopher to deride such overt bullshit...anyone with more than half a working brain should feel like throwing up after reading it. It barely makes any sense at all. But almost more amazing is how many dumbshit ideas and crackpot buzzwords they manage to pile on top of each other. I mean, substantial parts of feminist epistemology get crammed in there in like two words--"situated" and "embodied" (knowledge). Oh, excuse me--"knowing." That stuff alone is so controversial that you'd never get past it in a decent philosophy department--or anywhere that hasn't gone completely woke stupid. Hopefully it'd be thrown out as soon as that shit arose. But in this thing, they just race off (as it were) to cram in another hundred or so buzzwords into the thing. Anyone who thinks that you get to plop down a document that presupposes seventy-five or a hundred radical ideas without argument...that somehow something like that could get presumption...well...no.

   But there it is. And that's exactly what happened. And I know from experience that you cannot reason with progressives about this stuff. If you say "You can't presuppose anything that controversial," they'll say that it isn't controversial!  It's been proven by the very most advanced and highly theoretical work in the social "sciences"...

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

The Party-Line Split on Trust in Science

link.

This weird split/divergence is because academia in general and science in particular have been taken over by progressivism. "Science" that impinges in any way on topics of progressive interest is now largely guided by progressive social and political dogma. As soon as progressives announce a new orthodoxy on on just about anything, "scientists" suddenly discover that "the science" supports that position. Climate change, transgenderism, even COVID spread at political protests. The leftist ideological capture of science makes the divergence predictable. It's not that science is proceeding normally and progressiives, being rational, "follow the science." It's that much science has been ideologically captured and now follows the prevailing politics. This is Lysenkoism, the absolute pinnacle (or nadir) of pseudoscience/antiscience.

Remember: The Green New Deal Wasn't Written as a Climate Plan, but as a Plan to Move the USA Toward Socialism

I mean, the thing's a farce anyway. But in this case, the intentions of the authors are even more important than they usually are. 

IMO generally it's important to keep in mind that the perpetual crises manufactured/trumpeted by the left tend to have something in common: they seem like they might be solvable by social programs the left already advocates. There's been a string of environmental false alarms since around 1960. "Experts" can't exactly settle on exactly what type of environmental Armageddon we face...but whatever it is, it requires more government, fewer fossil fuels, and a more NPR/food-co-op-friendly lifestyle...

Patricia Posner: "When Did 'Woman' Become a Dirty Word?"

There's an easy answer Posner doesn't give: since progressives took over the culture.

   Thing about progressivism is: it's a fusion of bad philosophy, bad politics, and bad social theory. And part of the badness of its philosophical side: it's Lysenkoist and opposed to not just free expression but even free inquiry. It's also radical and totalitarian. This radioactive stew of errors produces a set of ideas that are radically at odds with reality, but which are imposed upon society by the force of frenzied radicalism, including political correctness and "cancel culture." Which is to say: opposition to or even critical discussion of the insanity is met with shrieking character-assassination campaigns against the unbelievers. 

Extreme Poverty Rates Plummet Under Capitalism

Well, they plummet over time, anyway...

But I like free markets so yay.

How Not to Be Ignorant About the World

pretty good, but parts are skippable.

The Politicized Irrationalism at the Heart of Progressivism: A Case Study From the NYT

If you read this this with no thought at all...and you really, really want to believe it...maybe...possibly...this might sort of make sense. I guess...

   But this is really weirdly, mind-bendingly creepy. Overtly crazy? Subtly crazy? Just orthogonal to any reasonable point one might make? I'd have to think about it a lot more to explain it. The left's new buzzword/obsession-of-the-moment, "misinformation" woven in with its new hate-object of the moment, Elon Musk woven in with its favorite buzzword/obsession of the last couple of years: TEH WITE PRIVLIJ!!!!!!!1111... The Hot Air title really does capture part of the madness:  "Say, Why Didn't Elon Musk End Apartheid as a Teenager?" That really is what some of this lunacy boils down to. Another bit is in NYT's actual title:  "Elon Musk Left a South Africa That Was Rife With Misinformation and White Privilege." The suggestion seems to be that he gets no credit for leaving, and it either formed his consciousness, which is bad, or it didn't, which is also bad because reasons. Like, I guess, he was SUPER-privlij and so bad. Oblivious. God knows.

   It's this weaving of a semi-coherent tale, touching on the right buzzwords, and ending with a politically correct conclusion that is, IMO, characteristic of the postpostmodern mishmash and postpostmodern progressivism. This is the kind of cancerous literary method that has ruined the humanities and soft social sciences. I'm not sure I can think of a worse approach to reasoning to implant in the minds of the young. I really, really hate to both-sides it, because that's the only way you can criticize the left these days. But it reminds me of Rush Limbaugh's method--free-association filled with baroque epicycles, weaving in various conservative obsessions, eventually wending around to his preconceived conclusion: liberals suck in respect x. He didn't have a loony, repulsive lexicon of neologisms, though--I'll give him that much. The stupid terminology is like at least 10% of why people hate the left...

   Anyway. The story certainly isn't the most overtly insane thing I've seen from the MSM...but overtness isn't everything. It's notable for its particularly weird weirdness, and its illustration of popomo-prog methods of "reasoning."

Sarah Jones: The Supreme Court is a Tool of Tyrants

MSNBC is a tool of morons.

She doesn't understand the role of SCOTUS, she doesn't seem to understand what will happen if Roe is overturned, she doesn't seem to understand that Bush actually won the vote in FL 2000 according to all the media recounts after the fact. 

Judith Curry: A "Plan B" for Addressing Climate Change and the Energy Transition

link

Trump Endorses "Doctor Oz"

facepalm

Barr on the Biden Family's "Shameful Self-Dealing"

As I've made clear, I have a high opinion of Barr, and this all seems reasonable to me.

The media should have told--or, rather: should not have suppressed--the story, and the voters should have rejected Biden in part on the basis of it. Given the control of the media by Democrats, that didn't happen. But that doesn't change the fact that a criminal investigation doesn't seem to have been appropriate. 

   Also of interest, that this was the only time Trump "came up to the line:

"The only time the president came right up to the line, and I won't speculate as to whether he would have gone over it," Barr told the audience. "But a couple of weeks before the election, when Rudy Giuliani was parading around the laptop, I got a call from the president. He said, 'You know, this Hunter Biden thing — ' and I said, 'Mr. President, I told you I'm not going to discuss anything.' And he said, 'If that was one of my kids — ' and I said 'Goddamit, Mr. President, I'm not going to — ' and that was that."

More Gubmint and Crazier Gubmint: EPA Office of "Environmental Justice"

facepalm

Prediction re: first order of business: collaboration with the new Ministry of Truth declaring that the latest discoveries in gender studies prove that "Mother Nature" is actually Birthing Parent Nature...

Abortion Hysteria

I certainly understand this issue being important to people. And the hysteria on the left is no surprise. And certainly this isn't something I can blame on progressives (as opposed to whatever liberals might remain). 

Two observations, probably obvious to everyone:

   1. This one took me awhile to see: many on the left seem to think the leaked Dobbs decision would mean that abortion would become illegal everywhere in the country. They don't seem to understand that the question would be kicked back down (or up!) to the states.

   2. There's a whole lot of stuff out there, even coming from Democrat senators and the like, that shows no respect whatsoever for the legal question. That's to say: stuff that's unequivocally against the conclusion of the decision with no regard for the strength of the legal arguments. That's downright creepy IMO.

   Of course I haven't read Roe since undergrad Con Law, and didn't understand much then. And I haven't read the new decision either. But I know Roe is widely considered to be a weak decision, and my overriding attitude is: This needs to be decided on the strength of the arguments. And I'm not going to be surprised in any way if the Dobbs decision is right. 

   I've cheated intellectually with respect to Roe for a long time. I'm aware that it's probably bad law, but I'd like for there to be a right to privacy. And I incline toward keeping abortions mainly legal. Consequently--and dishonestly--I didn't get all worked up about the thing like I would have done if I'd disagreed with the conclusion. (Another decision about which I'm a big, fat cheater: Katzenbach v. McClung.)  

   Also, as I've said, I fear that this will save the Dems' bacon in November. 

   So that's bad.

[Addendum: I've even seen stuff that--again, without regard for the law or legal arguments--declared SCOTUS to have delegitimized itself with Dobbs (supposing it goes through with the decision.) It's all hysteria and emotion over there on the blue side of things. Which, more and more, seems par for the course to me. 

OTOH, there's this horrifying thing from Louisiana...

Sidebar: as others have noted: at least the left seems to have suddenly remembered what the word 'woman' means...]

Perverting Civics

Remember: it is the aim of the progressive left to destroy the USA. It's a feature, not a bug.

Bye Bye Roe? Bye Bye Midterm Ass-Kicking?

Well, Roe is widely recognized to be bad law. So overturning it is likely justified.

But this is the one thing I can think of that might avert the Biblical--and entirely justified--ass-kicking that seemed to be bearing down on the Democrats. So I've been dreading this. And here it is.

Charlotte Alter, Time Magazine: Free Speech Is a White Man's Obsession

Sorry...that should have been "free speech" (in scare quotes). That's the way Alter writes it most of the time.

It's almost beyond belief how brainless and antiliberal the progressive left has become.

Some Octopuses Have Developed Culture

Well, nice knowing everybody.

Except for you, of course, Gravett...

Derangement Watch: David Remnick, "A Role Model For The Midterms"

A torrent of delusional, fantastical nonsense pours from the left these days. But this is unhinged even by the prevailing, denigrated standards over there.

   I'm not going to waste time on it except to note:

[1] You have to be completely out of touch with reality to think that this is the Republicans' "culture war." It isn't the Pubs (not right now, anyway) arguing that it is imperative to teach first-graders grotesque and life-destroying falsehoods about sex. The culture war is, far and away, the doing of the extremist left, which now controls the Democrats.

[2] The author wrote the following with, apparently, a straight face:

McMorrow’s speech comes at a time when many are convinced that the Democrats are doomed in this year’s midterm elections and beyond. The foreboding is general, the prognostication stark: A Republican, Trumpian majority in Congress will stymie all substantive legislation coming from the White House and, out of a sense of vengeance, establish sham committees to harass Joe Biden. The House may even contrive a reason to impeach the President, if only for the fun of it. Biden has been polling badly since the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the spike in inflation. In 2024, Trump, or one of his epigones (Governor Ron DeSantis, of Florida, is the comer of the moment), will crush the incumbent––legitimately or otherwise, whatever is required. At that point, the hideous scenario concludes, we shall be entirely in the hands of a more experienced, more vindictive version of Trump 1.0. American democracy will not be imperilled [sic]. It will be erased.

"The anxiety," Remnick tells us, "is not to be dismissed."

Madness has gripped the left. Not utter nor abject madness--we have to believe that sense can be slapped back into them. But it's going to take a crushing electoral loss at the very least. That will bring on a different set of problems--but that's a bridge to be crossed when we come to it.