Carolina 73 - Tech 74

Oof.

Bad game. Bad loss. Bad reffing. Bad everything.

Gotta say though: despite the fact that Carolina has been winning, and has been fun to watch, they have not actually been playing that well. All that talk about the Final Four and whatnot...just not really warranted by what we were seeing on the court, IMO. They've definitely had some good games, and shown end-of-game focus and toughness...but their competition just hasn't been that great. And I've considered us to have been as much lucky as anything. We pulled away late to respectable leads in some cases in which we prooobably should have, instead, had a comfortable lead and cruised to wins.

And let's face it: Tech is just shit this year.

The officiating was not great--and that final no-call on the RJ layup was significant...but...

...the problem started and ended with the Heels.

Hard to see how you can miss so many shots while turning the ball over so much. It didn't seem that they had possession long enough to put up that many bricks...

Just bad, bad, bad.

Hubert's weird substitution patterns in the first half killed their momentum when they had it...and they never got it back. I'm sure he was trying things out with an eye to the future...but that may well have cost us the game.

Oh well.

They'd better play better--a whole lot better--on Saturday, or it could get really ugly.

[Addendum: RJ was absolutely mugged on the final shot. Even the announcers couldn't believe it was a no-call.]

No, Biden is Not Going to "Start" "Another" War

Some conservatives be like "is Biden really going to start another war?"

Presumably they're talking about Ukraine, Gaza, and, now, Iran.

Obviously Biden hasn't started any of these conflicts. Of each one, it's been claimed by some that the attacker wouldn't have attacked if, say, Trump was in office. I don't buy that. It's just speculation so far as I can tell. 

   Though there are strategic advantages associated with seeming unpredictable...so I guess maybe.

   Some do argue that Biden should have responded to drone attacks on U.S. troops more forcefully...and that seems reasonable.

   But, anyway, presumably now we are going to come down on Iran's catspaws like the Very Fist Of God...

   Why not destroy Iran's navy again?

   Fuck those assholes.

Greenwald: MSM is Dying Because They're Propagandists and Liars

But he's wrong when he says that good journalism isn't good if no one is reading it.

UN Court's Perverse "Genocide" Ruling on Holocaust Remembrance Day

As I've noted, Israel clearly meets the jus ad bellum criteria, and so was justified in retaliating against Hamas in Gaza. Whether they meet the jus in bello criteria [eg. proportionality] depends on facts about their conduct of the war that we don't know. But I'm willing to trust them, at least provisionally.

   But the idea that they are conducting a genocide is simply absurd.

[Oh and: we know Hamas is lying about casualties. (Though I have no doubt there are many.)]

Michael Goodwin on Biden's Immigration Ploy

link

I'm basically in favor of turning down this nonsense from Biden. We know he, like the vanguard of the blue team, is quasi-open-borders, and we know he's just trying to (a) pretend otherwise for the looming election, and (b) find a way to split the blame for the last three years with the Pubs. Now...the GOP deserves a hell of a lot of blame for the illegal immigrant invasion. But they shouldn't throw Biden a life-preserver on the issue. Let him burn. Win the election, retake the House and Senate...er...and a pony... And then build about 1,000 miles of fencing, ramp up deportations, and pass meaningful legislation. Which means, at least: NOT another amnesty.

Carolina 75 - 'Noles 68

That was a nail-biter.

Glenn Elmers and Ted Richards: Totalitarianism, American Style

Agreed.

Texas Rallies the Red States Amid Immigration Crisis

Good on Abbott, on Texas...and on federalism.

   About ten years or so ago, when I was still a centrist Democrat, I started writing that the Dems' position on illegal immigration was becoming harder and harder to distinguish from an open borders position. I got a lot of flack for that, but I was right. And I don't see how that can be denied now, ten years on.

   I've also long suggested that yearly legal immigration should be reduced by a number of people equal to the number of illegal aliens coming into the country the previous year. To be clear, I don't think this is a good idea. But it's a way to put pressure on the Dems to stop the madness. (Note that this suggestion would reduce legal immigration to (below) zero...)

   This is yet another issue such that, say, twenty years ago, no one could have predicted how radical the American left would become. It's now fairly common for progressives to not only oppose building more fencing, but to advocate tearing down the fencing we do have--and to argue that border barriers of any kind are inherently immoral. The Biden administration basically invited the whole world to illegally cross the border. A Democratic Presidential candidate in 2020 threatened to cross the border himself and lead a group of illegals back into the country. How did the blues so completely lose their minds about this?

   It's astonishing how many crazy positions the left now openly adopts. And astonishing to me that they aren't some fringe faction, but now basically set the agenda for the Democratic party. In 2016, I repeatedly insisted that this simply would not happen. 

Shows what the hell I know.

Jury Awards E. Jean Carroll $83.3 Million in Trump Trial

Insanity.

Apparently the left has a significant cadre of crazy women willing to act as the last line of defense against conservative men.

NYC and D.C. are also apparently places where the courts can be more-or-less freely used as instruments of lawfare.

Of all the baffling things about Current Year, perhaps the most baffling to me is that the big blue machine continues to make Donald Trump--Donald freakin Trump--the--apparently, anyway--least-horrific option for President.

My head hurts.

Andrew McCarthy: The GOP is Now the Trump Party...and it Can't Win

I basically agree with this, too.

Though recent polls cast doubt on the subtitle.

J. Peder Zane: Trump Is Not The Cause Of The Chaos

IMO there's significant truth in this...though it's far from the whole story.

Yes, of course the blue team has lost its mind. That's a given. And, yes, their attacks on Trump--like their attacks on all those who thwart them or even merely disagree with them--have been unhinged.

But Trump gives his enemies a lot to work with, to say the least.

The left basically sets out to make its opponents lose it. And, in the end, they succeeded with Trump.

IMO they shouldn't be rewarded for that success... But, OTOH, Trump's become significantly worse/trumpier since he lost the election.

Trump Wins NH Primary

link

Back From Sabbatical

It's weird how glad I am to be back. I didn't think I'd be glad to be back. I was ready for more sabbatical! (We don't actually have sabbatical sabbaticals... Because my university kinda sucks. Rather, we have an informal departmental program that pays for part of one semester off every six years or so. We pay for the rest by teaching a few extra students every semester.) But anyway, having been back for a week now, I can say: I didn't realize how much I missed my colleagues, the majors in my upper-division courses, and teaching the latter. I'm not that crazy about my intro classes. But they're not that bad. They're ok. But anyway, I'm just really damn lucky. It's not the job I dreamed of, but it's probably better than I deserve.

Heels 85 - Wake 64

RJ is just out of his mind. 36 points. By the end he's just jacking them up from like four feet outside the line and getting all net. LOL between him and Cadeau, most of our baskets were running floaters. It's almost like have two Ed Cotas. Cadeau came in with all that buzz about his passing--which is, indeed, good...but that guy is deceptively fast, and almost seems to get to the hoop at will. But RJ is just on another level right now. He was out there breaking ankles with double crossovers... I always think that the era of truly great Carolina point guards must be over...and then lo and behold...R.J.M.F. Davis...

   And of course one of the greatest and most fun things about this team is that everybody can and does score. Bacot, Ingram, Ryan...and the bench, too: Trimble, J-Witt, J-Wash.. 

   This is just a super damn fun team to watch. Clearly the most enjoyable team since '17...maybe even since '16, which was a contender for my all-time fave...

   Anyway. Almost too bad they're so good... I didn't want to have to fret about making the Final Four this year...

Lorenzo Z. Ruiz: "Give Me a Vengeful..."...Yet Whiney and Aggrieved..."Harvard"

That of the victim is the only defensive--or, rather, offensive--stance they ever take.

tl;dr, FYI...

Canine Border Crisis

I'm one of those people whose heartstrings are tugged more readily by animals--especially dogs--in destress than by humans. Probably means I'm a bad person, but there it is.

DeSantis Drops Out, Endorses Trump

Well, there it is, then.

Both my boys, Vivek and Ron, are out.

Trump is basically unacceptable.

Haley looks less acceptable all the time.

No current Democrat is acceptable. I'm skeptical Biden will be the candidate. Kamala is ridiculous. Newsome would be a catastrophe for the nation. There's even talk, again, of Michelle Obama...which would be utterly absurd...though, in a way, a fitting celebrity counterpoint to Trump...

Of course there's always the loony libertarian party...

But once we get down to this level, who cares?

Deane Waldman: Why Are Facemasks Back?

Sketchy and intemperate, but I still basically agree.

   Left to bet, I'd still bet that masks do something. But there's just not enough evidence that the costs are worth this basically conjectural benefit.

Full Transcript of Devin Archer Testimony Released; Biden Lied About Everything. Impeachment Fever--Catch it!

TDS on Parade: Robert Reich Loses it at the Suggestion that Trump was "Kind of Right" About Some Things

LOL

Progressivism just plain makes you stupid.

Jamie Diamond, CEO of J. P. Morgan Chase noted--quite reasonably:

“Take a step back, be honest,” Dimon said. Trump “was kind of right about Nato, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China. He wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues.”

Um, yes. And that's to put it mildly.

Reich--who lost it long ago--spends the entire article embarrassing himself yet again.

Now he's little more than the TDS leprechaun... 

Are Our Elites Insane? -- Some Survey Data

Apparently they are either insane, or totalitarians, or insane totalitarians...

The promised link isn't in the story, but it goes to this page at Rassmussen Reports.

Consider

These “elites,” so defined [basically: people with graduate degrees from the Ivy league, Chicago, Stanford, or d00k], are living in another world than the rest of us. They are extraordinarily loyal to the regime; 84% of them approve of Joe Biden’s performance as president. I wouldn’t have thought you could get that high an approval rating if you sampled the Democratic National Committee. And 70% of the “elites” trust the government to do the right thing most of the time; that rises to 89% among those who are “the most politically active members of the elite.”
These elites even trust journalists: 79% have a favorable opinion of them, as do 84% of the “Ivy League elite.”
When it comes to policy, these people are crazy. Forty-seven percent say that America suffers from too much freedom, compared with only 21% who think we have too much government control. Among the Ivy League elite, 55% say America is too free, with only 15% saying we have too much government.
So how do the elites want to limit our excessive freedom? A shocking 77% say they favor the “strict rationing of gas, meat and electricity.” That basically means living in a poor, totalitarian state like the USSR. And by 89% to 10%, the Ivy League elites want to see “strict rationing” of these most basic commodities.
These “elites” are fascists. Large majorities want to ban gas stoves (69%), gasoline powered cars (72%), non-essential air travel (55%), SUVs (58%) and air conditioning (53%). The Ivy League elites are even worse: the corresponding numbers are 80% for gas stoves, 81% for gasoline powered cars, 70% for non-essential air travel, 66% for SUVs, and 68% want to ban air conditioning. There is no polite way to put it: they are fascists.
There is more at the link. The people whom Rasmussen has identified are obviously dangerous to our democracy. If they take over, we are finished. More study needs to be done to figure out who, exactly, they are, so we can root them out and negate their influence. In the meantime, some moderate measures probably need to be taken. Like abolishing the Ivy League.

Utter.
Madness.

Extremely Interesting: David Samuels: The American Crackup

I don't necessarily agree with everything here...but I think it's really damn interesting.

Trump Wins Iowa Caucuses

link

Not great.

I'd be very happy with either DeSantis or Ramaswamy.

Trump became unacceptable after his post-election-loss freak-out.

Haley just keeps revealing herself to be less and less acceptable.

Of course any currently plausible Democrat is unacceptable. 

So this will probably end up being a choice between two unacceptable candidates.

The Worst Article of All Time Du Jour: Judith Butler: "Why Is the Idea of 'Gender' Provoking Backlash the World Over?"

facepalm

Z0

MY

G0D

Look, that may be one of the worst things I've ever read, even by the standards of pomo-y Continental-y literary pseudophilosophy.

It's terrible...but at least it goes on and on

and on

and on

That's the sort of thing that it would be somewhat amusing and somewhat gratifying to take apart line by line...but it would waste and enormous amount of my increasingly decreasing time...and would really do no one any good. Anyone who can be at all persuaded by a giant steaming pile of lefty, faux-academic bullshit like that probably can't be reached by actual, rational argument. It's almost impossible to believe that such incoherent gibberish has conquered the USA and much of the free world...

But here we are...

Oh, here's maybe my absolute favorite bit:

Anti-gender movements are not just reactionary but fascist trends, the kind that support increasingly authoritarian governments. The inconsistency of their arguments and their equal opportunity approach to rhetorical strategies of the left and right, produce a confusing discourse for some, a compelling one for others. But they are typical of fascist movements that twist rationality to suit hyper-nationalist aims. [my emphasis]

Let me respond to that with a meme:

Someday, maybe I will go through that stinking cesspool of academic-left Newspeak, just for fun.

But not today.

Today, I just don't have the stomach--nor the time--for it.

Bruce Gilley (Interviewed by Peter Boghossian) on The Case For Colonialism (etc.)

Lance Morrow: Can Harvard Learn Anything From Ralph Waldo Emerson?

A blatant violation of Betteridge's Law of Headlines...

Carolina 103 - Syracuse 67

Well that was fun.

I really like this team.

I think everybody make be a little giddy after this game. Even neutral commentators are suddenly putting us in the Final Four. Thus, inter alia, harshing my low-expectations mellow. I'm not sure that's a rational reaction to beating Pitt, Clemson, State and Syracuse.

But, yeah, the Heels are looking really good, I have to admit.

Experts Undermine Expertise: COVID Lab Leak / Fauci Edition

link

   More Lysenkoism / political correctness.

   The Zoonotic hoax--and it was a hoax--seems to have been largely driven by a kind of pro-China / "anti-racist" political correctness. Perhaps because the left has adopted a strange, generally anti-Russia/pro-China stance--no stranger than right's strange anti-China/pro-Russia stance. Me, I'm anti-China/anti-Russia. Or, to be more precise: Anti-CCP/Anti-Putin. 

   Anyhoo...

   Don't forget that the progressive MSM were right there to lie to us--"systematically," to use one of their new favorite words--yet again.

   And don't forget that politically correct language-policing went right along with the more substantial lies. The bizarre insistence that 'Wuhan virus' and 'China/Chinese virus' were not merely out of step with scientific terminology but SHOCKING AND RAZIZT was crazy enough in and of itself. But, as usual with progressive Newspeak, it was also part of more substantive deception--absolving China of responsibility for the pandemic. And, hey, don't forget the frantic effort to argue that COVID was actually spawned elsewhere, much earlier than it showed up in Wuhan... How'd that ever work out for 'em?

Taibbi: More Lunatic Trump Coverage by the MSM; or: No, Trump's Attorney Did Not Argue That the President Has Legal Immunity from Prosecution for Political Assassinations

I can't believe I kind of believed those headlines when I saw them.

Note to self: never, ever believe anything the MSM says Trump said; ditto for any of his hirelings.

Trump's Hold on Rural America is Key to His Resiliance

Why?

I don't know.

   I guess rural America is just slow to adopt (aka: more judicious about adopting) both the good ideas and the bad ideas of urban/elite America. 

   Trump's basically a celebrity--as was Obama, and as are many or most successful Presidential candidates. Moreso with Trump, of course. He's kinda like the constellation of progressive celebrities on social media hawking their half-baked, ill-informed, invariably trendy and lefty-feely political preferences. Except he's basically an old-school conservative-ish Democrat. The Democrat party has rocketed to the radical left. Trump decided to shift parties, and now he's their celebrity anti-Dem / anti-lefty. He's right about a lot--or, more to the point: he refuses to be sucked into being wrong about so damn much. And, unlike most people in public life, he can't be whipped into line by screeching hoardes leftistly calling him racist (etc.) He's got an admirably fuck you attitude. It makes him an asshole. But it also keeps him from being a sheep. Just watching a prominent politician refusing to quake and bend the knee before mobs of shrieking cultists and their agents...it's bracing. Even if the guy is an asshole. In fact, to stand up against such mobbish screeching, it helps to have a kind of assholish streak. (And, I mean, I should know...) 

   That might come close to making it seem like I think that rural Americans are righter about this purely because of their virtue--and Trump's. Which is almost certainly false. It's probably a mixture of virtue and vice, rationality and irrationality.

   Also, to be clear: I currently think that Trump is unsupportable. But I still think that any plausible Dem is unsupportable. What we got there is yer basic Kobayashi-Maru-type situation. We're damned if we do, and damned if we do the other thing, too. It's damnation all the way around. It's support the loony jackass who has a decent platform, or some representative probably to be named later of the Party That Lost Its Mind. I still basically think that the loony jackass is the less-shitty bet. There's no way I will vote blue again unless/until they break the grip of the progressive left. Will I vote for the lesser (very great) evil (again) this time around? Dunno.

The Worst Article Of All Time Du Jour: Charlie Warzel: "Plagiarism is the Next 'Fake News'"

This is so hilariously leftastic that I may not be able to resist the urge to go through it in detail.

Plagiarism is bad because the right might weaponize it! Oxman? Plagiarism! Gay? Well, yes, she violated "Harvard's strict standards"...but the case is "nuanced." "Fake news"? Originally coined by the good guys...but then Trump started using it [scowl]. Left: good, of course. The right? Filled with "hyper-partisan ideologues and politicians"...

   This dude even deploys one of my favorite lefty tropes: he trots out the "alternative facts" canard while tut-tutting about disinformation... As I've pointed out many times: (a) Trump didn't say it, Conway did; (b) What she meant was very clear: that Trump et. al. were looking at different evidence than the Parks Service was. She clearly did not mean that We live in different realities. This is almost a reflex on the left now: taking anything Trump (or, in this case, his spokeswoman) says, put the stupidest and worst possible interpretation on it, then repeat it over and over again until it becomes part of the left's disinformational background (see also: inject bleach, All Mexicans are rapists.) Now, Conway was bullshitting. There's really no other important information to look at. But that's a very different matter.

   Which reminds me to remind you: 

"Fake news": ha ha so stupid. Trump, am I right? Propaganda against Our Noble Media.

"Disinformation": a high holy word for a high holy cause. Progressive. [salutes]

Trump's Laughably Bad Attorneys

If I were Gorsuch, I might have a right mind to recuse myself from any relevant case.

Just to make the point.

Trump Goes All Birther Again--This Time on Haley

Trump is freaking bipolar. And bad Trump is very, very bad.

And stupid. 

Making accusations like this that aren't going anywhere just reminds everybody how mean-spirited and stupid he can be.

It also opens him up to more plausible versions of the left's ceaseless mantra, directed everywhere, and at everyone to their right--like some kind of crack-brained parrot, they can't seem to stop repeated that's RAY-cist...that's RAY-cist...that's RAY-cist...

Ted Cruz is a really white whiteboy, and Trump tried the same shit against him.

He famously tried it against Obama...but there was a history of genuine reason for doubt in that case (see e.g.: the famous book jacket blurb.)

It's not racist. It's just stupid.

Or, well. Who knows what's in what passes for Trump's mind... I don't doubt that there are some racist attitudes flying around in there. But that just makes him similar to most humans.

Another stupid aspect of the situation: Trump apparently got this dumbass idea from The Gateway Pundit. Now, TGP did, at one point, seem to hit a stride such that it wasn't issuing pure-D dumbass misinformation. But that seemed to me to be an anomaly. TGP has a history of being the stupidest of the stupid...among the most feverish denizens of the wingnut fever swamp.

Anyway.

Trump continues to make himself look unacceptable...even as compared to [Democrat to be named later]... And that ain't easy to do.

Ramaswamy Forces MSM to Face Its Lies (on Russiagate, COVID origins, Hunter's Laptop)

Ramaswamy asks MSM reporters whether they will admit that they were wrong about Russiagate, COVID origins, and Laptopgate. As VR notes, the overall thrust of their reporting is provably wrong--and has been for quite some time. But, even to this day, they do not recognize / will not admit that.

Really, this is astonishing.

Carolina 67 - State 54

Go.

Tar.

Heels.

and

Go to hell State.

The big one. State in Raleigh. 

Beating State never gets old, despite our recent winning streak against them.

One of Roy's great attributes was: his desire to beat State like a rented mule never slackened.

Anyway: this Carolina team is capable of winning ugly. Unlike some other Carolina teams of late. 

Much of that is because they are committed to defense--and good at it.

Not a good shooting night for either team. And certainly not State's best performance. But the important thing in this case is the W...

Lee Fang: "The Right Has Embraced Cancel Culture; Did It Ever Really Believe In Free Speech?"

Yeah, I think this is a reasonable characterization of the Gay/Ackman/Rufo incident. I'm not sure it's optimal, but it's reasonable.

   I do think that the idea motivating the anti-Gay initiative can be seen as similar to or basically the same as the central idea of cancel culture: Disagree with our politics and we will destroy your career and/or your life.

   OTOH, the criticism was focused on her position and professional work. My hazy view at this point is that it wasn't that different than ordinary rough professional battles. Such stuff wouldn't be odd at all in, say, Presidential politics. Gay was a representation of a bad and dominant policy idea (DEI), she made some controversial statements (before Congress, no less) qua Harvard president, and then the other side revealed that she'd engaged in professional shenanigans. It's all within the realm of some kind of professional warfare. I'm not sure I can think of any good reasons against it...though I'm not really happy about it.

   Anyway, some things I've mostly already said:

(a) Something like "From the river to the sea" is clearly protected by the First Amendment.

(b) It's alleged to be what the left calls a "dog whistle" (when the non-left does it.) (Of course, they think everything that isn't over RAZIZM HATEZ ZBEEJ!!!111 is a "dog whistle"...). Roughly: it's basically code for something it doesn't say overtly. And that something is: Kill the Jews.

(c)  The best gloss on Stefanik's grilling of the university presidents is: You all are being inconsistent. Your speech codes punish shit like "microagressions" (lol), but not "From the river to the sea."

(d) Even if the Rufo/Ackman attack on Gay is cancel-culture-y, they can deploy a sauce-for-the-gander defense. As long as such folks are willing to stop if the left stops, I think they are on solid ground.

   

   So, was Gay right that "context" determines whether "From the river to the sea" constitutes harassment? Dunno. Usually appeals to "context" are bullshit, in my experience...but she may well have a point here. OTOH, given that Harvard seems to think that utterances like "Where are you from" and "All lives matter" constitute harassment...not to mention using English pronouns in standard ways...well...kinda hard to consistently defend "Kill the Jews." No wait...I mean "From the river to the sea." As usual, the deck is stacked in favor of the left. But the problem here is that universities like Harvard have adopted crazy leftist standards of harassment when it comes to speech the left dislikes. The solution is: stop doing that. It's not: ok, adopt equally crazy standards when it comes to speech the non-left dislikes. Though forcing Harvard to make that choice moves the ball downfield even if they choose crazy restrictive standards across the board. Because that's unsustainable. Maintaining crazy and asymmetrical leftist standards probably IS sustainable, unfortunately. So forcing consistency--even crazy restrictive consistency--is a step in the right direction. Or so it seems to me.

   But it's complicated, and I could be wrong, obviously.

Progressive Media Outs Bill Ackman's Wife's (Apparent) Plagiarism in Retaliation for His Role in Outing Claudine Gay's Plagiarism

No time to go into details about this now, but:

(a) All plagiarism should be busted.

(b) People who plagiarize in their dissertations should lose their Ph.D.s

(c) It certainly looks like Oxman (Ackman's wife) plagiarized.

(d) There is an effort to defend Oxman with some of the same lame arguments used to defend Gay.

   One of the main arguments used by both sides is: this was just lazy or inattentive failure to include quotation marks.

   I'm sure that has happened in the history of scholarship. I'm sure just about every stupid error humans are capable of has been committed at some point. But, in the main, that's not what's going on in such cases. For one thing, the lengthy passages quoted by Oxman would be enclosed in quotation marks, but would be inset/indented and single-spaced in the familiar way. One could also make a formatting error of that kind. But neither such error should happen repeatedly. 

   And, note, in the passages in question, some of Oxman's own words are interspersed with the copy-and-paste bits from Wikipedia. (Of course using Wikipedia as a source in and of itself is odd...but that's really kind of beside the point.)

   The mix of her words and the words of Wikipedia...that seems very unlikely to have happened accidentally. Again: it's possible (e.g. she might have copied from Wikipedia, forgotten, then come back over the passage in the interminable, mind-numbing process of repeated editing, and partially "revised" them.) But it doesn't seem likely.

   Anyway, this has all turned into just another left v right slapfight, with each side using bad arguments inconsistently and ad hoc to attack the other side's heroine/avatar or defend their own.

   Finally: though it's no defense of Oxman, going after her to punish her husband for outing Gay's plagiarism is the height of scumbaggery. It is, of course, just a new innovation of cancel culture. Ackman helped oust Gay from Harvard's presidency, so three scumbag reporters went after him personally by seeking to destroy his wife's reputation and career. These are truly horrible people. Cancel culture, like so many other aspects of political correctness / Woketarianism, attracts vicious and horrible people, and fans the flames of horribleness both in the already-horrible and the not-already-horrible. 

   Now, apparently his wife is genuinely guilty--and, so, should pay the price. But that doesn't mitigate the disgusting awfulness of going after her to get at him. Oxman's guilt and the left's repulsive horribleness are two different issues.

   One might try to respond by arguing that going after Gay for plagiarism is roughly the same sort of thing. People were angry about her views on putatively antisemitic speech, so they tried to find some other angle of attack, and found her plagiarism. I do think there's a similarity of structure in these arguments, but Gay's scholarship is still about Gay, and about her professional conduct. But things get a bit unclear to me at this point, so I'm not too sure about this. 

   Even if that argument is onto something, Ackman, Rufo et al. can fall back on a sauce for the goose defense: you lefties do cancel culture all the time. You made these "rules," and you can stop this at any time by just stopping. But until you do stop, we're going to play by your rules. But that defense is suboptimal from their rhetorical perspective, because, while it's a defense of their actions, it's not a defense of Oxman. 

?

I'm not at all sure that's right, but no time to puzzle it out now.

   

    

Politi"fact" Follies: Did the Democrats Spend 4 Years Refusing to Acknowledge Trump's 2016 Victory?

Politi"fact" strategy #101: 

If the actual answer to the question puts the left in a bad light, interpret the question in a bone-headed way--the most bone-headed way, if possible.

Barr: January 6th Rioters Prosecuted Far Too Broadly

That is my impression as well.

The difference is: Barr's opinion matters a lot; mine is semi-informed and valueless.

Barr often strikes me as the Last Reasonable Man in Washington...

Carolina 65 - Clemson 55

I haven't been posting about hoops this season. It's only on the periphery of my attention right now--but this is one of my favorite Carolina teams. My favorite at least since 2016-17. They're just lots of fun to watch. Just about everybody can shoot, we're athletic enough, and they seem to get along well. We're also good enough to have a good season...but not so good that they're going to seem like a disappointment if they don't make the Final Four.

TDS Watch: TRUMP TO IOWANS RE: SCHOOL SHOOTING: GET OVER IT!!!1

I can't believe that, after all this time, still, some small part of me still falls for these jackass reports about horrible and ridiculous things that Trump "says"... The more rational part of my mind tells me what to expect. But some little part of me still kind of expects the media to not be overtly lying...I still think it's possible that he might have said what they say he said.

   The progressive-left/MSM summary is summarized in the headline above, and it's repeated in story after story. The Rolling Stone story is a pretty good representation of the general reaction [because Rolling Stone sux so bad...]. It goes like this:

Shocking and basically false headline

Less hysterical and overtly false--yet still rather misleading--account in the body.

Becomes  a generic anti-Trump story.

[Here's the Grauniad...but it's so consistently stupid that I almost don't count it anymore.]

No, he didn't tell them to "get over it." He didn't even say "get over it"--though he did say those words. That's just a fucking lie.  Granted, it's not as much of a lie as they usually tell about the things he says. At least they got the words right this time...but, of course, they chose to quote the words so as to convey a message wildly different than the message he was clearly trying to express.

   After a long and clearly heartfelt expression of sympathy, he says, rather softly (for him) "...have to get over it." That's a way of saying, roughly (But) (we) have to get over it. WHICH IS FUCKING TRUE YOU MORONS. People say things like that all the time... Things like "we have to move on," or "but we have to go on living our living our lives." And, of course, THEY'RE RIGHT.

   I'm not saying it was an optimal thing to say. But it was perfectly fine, and the kind of thing people say all the time. 

   I'll repeat something I've said since before I became a reluctant Trump semi-supporter: if Trump is so bad, why do progressives have to repeatedly (nay, almost continuously) lie about him? Including especially the things he says? 

   Me, I think the real Trump is bad enough. Bad enough to, say, never want him to be near the Presidency. But he's not nearly as bad as the left and its pet media say he is. And he's still--plausibly, at least--less bad than the progressive left--including its media, and the Democrat party they now control--pretend that he is.

January 6th and How the Press Became the Enemy of the People

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I basically think this is right.

   To be clear: many on the left say that Trump (legally) incited the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 with his speech at the Elipse. That's just another anti-Trump lie. The problem is not that. The problem is that Trump lost his shit after the election, believed or pretended to believe a bunch of crazy shit, said that shit over and over, and laid the groundwork for the riot and widespread distrust of elections.

   And I don't think someone who would do such a thing should ever be even considered for the Presidency.

   But, to play the broken record again: we'll be faced with a comparative decision in November. And the other side is still, IMO, worse. 

   The progressive left in general--and especially academia and the media--did the same thing and more of it in 2020. It laid the groundwork for--even ignoring everything else--the BLM/Antifa riots that cost at least $2 billion in damage and caused dozens of deaths at least. They set the stage by relentlessly pushing the lie that police are wantonly mass-murdering blacks in the streets of America. They promulgated lies about the Trayvon Martin case, the Michael Brown case, and the George Floyd case. They laid the groundwork for increased racial division, the corruption of the justice system, and the riots. And they are continuing to do so. Conservatives have not, IMO, been chagrined enough by the Capitol riot--but at least they haven't generally approved of it. OTOH, the left did generally defend / semi-approve-of the Floyd riots. Then the riots themselves were used to further the same insane agenda that has caused them. My university, for example, has undertaken sweeping changes--an "Equity Initiative"--and, when you look for justification, there is little more than an assertion that...people wanted sweeping changes after the Floyd incident. Voila! Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a justificatory rabbit out of my descriptive hat!

  I've argued in the past that the Floyd riots were at least comparable to the Capitol riot--they certainly caused more damage and death. Though of course they weren't as bad symbolically. And many have noted that, if the 1/6 riot was an insurrection, then so were at least many of the Floyd riots. 

   Stone also points out something that hadn't dawned on me: in '20 leftists set up "autonomous zones" in American cities, declaring them no longer part of the USA. That's far more insurrectiony than the Capitol riot. 

   And, of course: the Floyd rioters were generally treated with kid gloves, while the Capitol rioters have been relentlessly hunted down and prosecuted, often for absurd charges like "parading." (And, again: roughly comparable things happened on the left during the Kavanaugh hearings.)

   And there are still approving references to BLM everywhere on my campus...

   Anyway. I'm not so much defending Trump and the Capitol riot retards. 

   Rather, I'm arguing that the two sides are at least comparably bad. One way in which the left is more dangerous is that it pervades our institutions now, and controls the media "narrative." Given a choice between a loony Trumpian outsider hostile to the insane ruling faction, or a malleable, semi-senile, Bidenian puppet of that faction...well, I guess I'll have to go with the former...as nauseating as that is to me.

UNC Profs React to Claudine Gays Resignation: When You're Black You Have to be "Two toThree Times Better"

link

Dr. Deborah Stroman thought Harvard President Claudine Gay would survive the fallout since the war started in the Middle East.
On Tuesday, she was proven wrong.
"Leadership is lonely and then when you're there and by yourself," said Stroman, a woman of color herself at UNC's Gillings School of Public Health. "When you have a Ph.D. and you are a senior leader at a university, there's little room for small mistakes in public."
She is also a racial equity trainer.
"There's a saying in the Black community that your ice has to be colder," she said. "Just the sense that wherever we show up in spaces as leaders, we have to be two to three times better. How do you inspire people to want to go into higher ed, to be administrators too when you see this time and time again."

False.

Gay was held to one of the minimal standards of academia--a standard to which everyone else is scrupulously held. A standard to which whites are scrupulously held...since that's the real issue here.

I'm perfectly willing to accept that blacks in academia face certain challenges that e.g. whites don't face. Though the evidence is mixed, I, personally, believe that stereotype threat is a real phenomenon. 

But the prohibition on plagiarism is not one of them.

Nor are publication requirements. 

The fact is that, in academia, a reasonably competent person who is black has enormous advantages over a merely-reasonably-competent person who is white. A merely-pretty-good white candidate is not even going to get an interview for a faculty position in Harvard. Many merely-reasonably-good white candidates get no jobs at all upon completing graduate school--at least in philosophy. 

Consider: when my cohort hit the job market, the males were getting a handful of interviews each. I think I got 1.5 interviews my first year on the market. (One job was, believe it or not, in some way that I never really understood, half full-time and half adjunct. (So I guess I got 1.75 interviews.) I did an on-campus for the experience, and to see the PNW, and because I had nothing better to do. But when asked whether I'd accept the job, I said "I don't know.") The women in my cohort got a torrent of interviews. One got so many interviews at the APA that she had to turn several down--she simply didn't have enough time-slots at the three-day conference to do them all... And they were certainly not better than the male candidates.

Anyway.

This isn't just about blacks. The whole "progressive stack" comes into play. Comparable straight white dudes basically go to the bottom of the stack of applications. (It might help if you're non-straight...but I've seen at least one case in which it didn't seem to help at all.) Women and other "diversity candidates" go toward the top. A black woman, for example--or a "queer" black woman!--is going to go to the top of the list. 

Bottom line in the present case:

A white, male Claudine Gay has approximately no chance whatsoever of becoming president of Harvard. Or becoming a full professor at Harvard. Or getting tenure at Harvard. Or maybe of getting hired by Harvard at all.

So this nonsense about "needing to be two to three times better" is...well...just that. Nonsense. In fact, the very opposite is true. Black candidates currently have enormous advantages in academia.

Of course not only will no one say this in academia, most people will not even allow themselves to see it. Such is the power of the cult.

Jason L. Riley: The Criminal Justice System Isn't Racist

Despite the hard left slant of academia, this is confirmed over and over.

Marvin Minsky is on a Newly-Released Epstein List?

Is this for real?

What kind of list is this supposed to be?

I can't find the link now...I assume it's bullshit...but it's pretty hilarious.

There's a name you'd never expect to find on such a list in a bazillion years.

No disrespect to Professor Minsky's memory--I'm calling bullshit on this right now. But the list is floating around. I think it's just people who allegedly got a ride on his jet or something.

AP: Republicans Pounce!...on: Claudine Gay

As the conservative adage goes:

When Republicans do something wrong, that's the story.

When Democrats do something wrong, Republican criticism of them is the story...

The left has taken over academia and is destroying it...but that's ok! The real threat is from conservatives who had POLITICAL MOTIVES for pressuring Harvard to apply the same standards to Gay that everyone else is subject to... 

This is all, of course, a threat to ACADEMIC FREEDOM(tm)...a roughly liberal concept like free speech that the illiberal progressive left only invokes when it's in their interest to do so. 

Then there's the THEY'RE RACISTLY ASSUMING GAY WAS A DEI HIRE angle. Counterpoint: irrelevant. Also counterpoint: Gay was obviously a DEI hire. This is how academia works now. I don't know anything about her hiring, and I'd be willing--in fact eager--to bet $1,000 that she was a DEI hire. In fact, I'd have eagerly taken that bet before I found out that she only has like 10 publications in about as many years. You don't get tenured at Harvard with a record like that. Much less hired as president.

DEI pervades academia now. Appeals to The Holy Trinity pervade academia. Almost every announcement of anything, every policy proposal, every everything invokes the Trinity. And, of course, the Trinity may not be questioned. DEI is an all-purpose justification for anything--a kind of justificatory wild card that authorizes faculty, administrators and students to push for and implement any left-friendly policy. Hire more nonwhite males? DEI! Hire yet another person doing CRT? DEI! Hire a woman who "does" feminism, gender, etc? Despite having hundreds of women already "doing" that? DEI! (The university will never be "diverse" until everyone "does" race and "gender"...) Want to hire more useless administrators of some kind? Just say "DEI"! It doesn't matter! It doesn't have to make sense! We were told that we had to hire a bazillion more shrinks because STUDENT MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS...oh, and DEI! Wut? Shut up, I explained!

Er...well anyway, that story is laughable. 

As ("It's Good To Be") The King might say: it stinks on ice.

Lance Morrow: Trump vs. The Woke: Let the People Decide

Well, of course I agree with this. I basically just keep saying it over and over:

   In America in 2024, who, or what, is the real threat? Mr. Trump? Or the left? It’s a harder question than either side will admit.
   The justices should entertain the possibility that the ambitions of the progressive woke and the soft-left elites have introduced an intolerant ideology—and a habit of mob behavior—that has done lethal damage to freedom of expression and thought, to say nothing of excellence, in American universities, public education, corporations, cultural institutions, big media and government. Their doctrine, damning Mr. Trump’s MAGA as the Bad America—Mr. Hyde to the left’s virtuous Dr. Jekyll—tolerates no viewpoint that disagrees with its own. Self-righteous progressives, needless to say, don’t recognize themselves in that reading of their saintly program.
   It’s Mr. Trump who lies, the left will say. It’s undeniable he does. But, the Trumpian right replies, progressive America has become an entire culture of lies: Nothing is true except “my truth”—and the party line. Men aren’t necessarily men and women aren’t necessarily women. Doctors or midwives merely “assign a sex” to a newborn. Mediocrity gets an upgrade; a student worthy of a C-plus under the old regime may now graduate summa cum laude. One must never hurt the feelings of mediocrities. An appeal to excellence is racist oppression. Western Civ has got to go.
   The Trumpian threat emanates from one egregious man and his massive following, citizens who, however, don’t consider themselves or their leader to be a threat at all but, rather, the better bet under these dreary circumstances. The faithful of the progressive left, every bit as cultish as Trumpians are alleged to be, consider themselves and their doctrines as the path to righteousness.

One of the innumerable things that concerns me about the illiberal left is that almost all of my peers--those who live in academia and its penumbra (so all literary intellectuals, bureaucrats, non-profit employees, policy wonks short of economists, etc.) seem to think that the choice between Trump and the Dems is easy and obvious. Trump is the devil, and the Dems are perhaps suboptimal (because not leftist enough...) but they're fine and always the default choice. The complete failure to acknowledge or even recognize the madness that has infected the left is horrifying. As I've said in the past: I understand those who say This is a horrific choice, but as best I can tell the Democrats are the less-bad of our terrible options. What I can't understand is thinking that the contemporary Dems are anything less than horrific.

   Don't get me wrong, there are Trump-worshippers on the right. Usually they also think that the election was stolen by outright fraud and the vax is killing millions... Those people are also cracked. And I say this despite the fact that I recognize full well that the left has created a demonic, fictional Trump. But anyone who thinks that guy is basically The Messiah is nuts. He has strengths. And he did a generally good job the first time. But he's always been a gamble. And his post-election freakout should make voting for him a last resort.

   Blah blah blah.

   Anyway, Morrow concludes--and I agree:

There’s the problem: The case for disqualifying both the flawed and tainted Mr. Trump and his flawed and tainted opponents on the left (including Mr. Biden) is strong. In a perfect world, that’s what would happen. But in such a bind as this—in this depressing equilibrium of negatives—a decision for one side or the other would require the Supreme Court to disenfranchise half of the country. The sane course is to disqualify neither. Let the people vote on it. And let all sides hope that by 2028, the country will have brought forth a new generation, offering a better choice of leaders and, let us say, more grown-up ideas.

How Tax-Exempt Nonprofits Skirt U.S. Law to Turn Out the Democrat Base in Elections

Not only are these organizations tax-exempt, many receive federal grant money. Universities are a good example.

That means that people like me, now very much opposed to the Democrat agenda, are paying tax money that is then used to help elect Dems and enact their agenda.

It also, of course, gives Democrats in government an incentive to send more tax dollars to these organizations.

Me, I'm against most GOTV campaigns anyway. I mean, of course parties are going to conduct them, and that's whatever. But the kinds of campaigns conducted by universities and (other) nonprofits seem to me to encourage more participation by lower-information voters. Most of these people seem to me to have no f*cking clue what they're voting for or against. Anyone who has to basically be badgered into voting probably doesn't care about politics and/so doesn't know anything about it. As I've said many times, I don't think it's your civic duty to vote. In fact, I think its your civic duty not to vote if you don't know what the hell is going on. Though I do think it's your civic duty to know what's going on...

Ukraine and Talking Out Your Ass on (Foreign) Policy

I was completely wrong about whether Russia would invade. Ukraine. I though it just wasn't going to happen. I was also wrong to even have an opinion on it. What did I know? About that, that is?

   Answer: nothing.

   Most people know very little about the situation in Ukraine--so far as I can tell, anyway.

   My own understanding of it is laughably thin. Mersheimer makes an interestimg case that we basically provoked the invasion by flirting with Ukraine's entry into NATO. And that Russia's actions were prudentially rational. Could be.

   I supported arming Ukraine initially. I didn't see how we couldn't. Some Biden supporters have argued that this is an adept foreign policy for which Biden deserves credit. Could be. I didn't and don't think so because I didn't see any plausible alternative. But new hyper-isolationist Trump might disagree. The point, I thought, wasn't so much to win as to raise the cost of invasion so that Russia is less likely to try it again. But it also seemed possible that Ukraine might win.

   Eventually--but it took awhile, and a slap upside the head by Glenn Greenwald--I came to think that the situation was being misrepresented, and that Ukraine had taken back pathetically little territory. And that was when they were strongest. 

   Now I think that I should have kept my mouth shut about all of that, and, instead, tried to learn something about WTF was going on.

   So that's what I'm trying to do now.

   Forced to advocate policy/action, I suppose I'd taper off support, encouraging Ukraine to construct its own system of trenches and tank traps. At least one smart friend thinks "we should be willing to fight to the last Ukrainian," brutal though that policy would be. I swerved in that direction for awhile.

   Now it seems to me that the situation is again being misrepresented, in that we're mainly getting the Brave Ukrainian Freedom Fighters story. But I've read that actually Ukraine is basically impressing soldiers, even pulling people off the street. Throwing old men and even women into the meat grinder against their will. 

   If this alternate account of the war is reasonably accurate, I don't think we can continue to support it. Just War Theory holds that fighting must have a reasonable chance of success. But as the Ukraine situation looks more and more like a futile slaughter (on both sides), I'd think we'd need to end support.

   But that's all conditional on a certain representation of the facts on the ground...and none of it is particularly well-thought-out. It's all kind of just bullshitting about the situation.