BLACK JOBS Z0MG

   Of course the left loves language-policing. And of course their strictures are often ad hoc and impressionistic. See e.g.: Mitt Romney, "binders full of women." Everybody knew what he meant. There was nothing wrong with it. It was slightly ambiguous and infelicitous. But Democrats turned it into a scandal. Does Romney think that women are kept in notebooks????????? And BINDERS in particular???

   Similarly, they've seized on Trump's comment that illegal aliens are talking "black jobs"...and now Democrats across Twixxer are pretending not to know what he meant. "What's a black job?," they are asking, not quite being able to authentically feign puzzlement...

   Here's a wee hint: it's: a job had by a black person.

   But, despite the absolute lack of a puzzle here, the Blue Team won't accept that for an answer.

   They'll never let go of an opportunity to suggest--or outright assert--racism of a Republican candidate.

   Everywhere on Tixxer, black Democrats are posting pictures of themselves in suits, academic regalia, medical scrubs... Here I am...I'm a lawyer/professor/doctor...do I have a black job???

   Answer: If you're black, then yes.

   This is one reason people don't pay any attention to criticisms of Trump anymore...so much of it is just so damn stupid.

   I mean...the black family, black culture, Black Entertainment Network, historically black colleges and universities...this type of locution has never caused problems in the past...but...well...you know...

   Note that the important point here isn't that Trump said something true and important--especially to blacks... The important point isn't that many blacks are, indeed, in direct competition with illegals for jobs... Oh, no. Au contraire, mon frere... The important point is that THE BAD ORANGE MAN he...he...SAID SOMETHING! He said something that, though perfectly ordinary, CAN BE SPUN INTO SOMETHING THAT SOUNDS VAGUELY AWKWARD AND UNCOMFORTABLE!!!111oneoneone

   And, boys, and girls, it is via imbecility of this and many other kinds that so many people have been led to say: fuck all y'all and all y'all's horses that ya rode in on...

   I'm voting for the outlaw...

   

Ruy Teixeira: No, Democracy is Not on the Ballot

   Teixiera is an old blue-team strategist who has come to see and admit that his (former?) team has lost its shit.

   The Blue Team has convinced itself that Trump is a threat at a fundamental level--he is a threat to democracy. Of course, Trump made this view rational on 1/6/21. Needless to say, not being Hitler, he's never as bad as they say he is. But his actions after the election and surrounding the riot were way, way over the line. Put him out of consideration, IMO.

   However, I also think that the Blue Team is a much bigger and even more fundamental threat--e.g., most prominently, to free speech. Trump's one stupid spasm did nothing but help the Blues. The Blue Team's relentless attacks on free speech, however, have been very effective. They've succeeded in stifling speech, e.g. by colluding with social media platforms, and they're well on their way to institutionalizing their highly-partisan and anti-speech views on "disinformation." They've managed to stifle expression by informal means as well, but promoting political correctness and cancel culture. They informally control what can and can't be said at universities--and, increasingly, in other institutions.

   And that's not even to mention the even more fundamental issues of political correctness per se, Lysenkoism, relativism, and general subordination of the epistemic to the political...

   Anyway: yes, though Trump is beyond the pale in some respects, the left is, IMO, beyond the pale in at least equally important--and perhaps more important--respects. 

   So we face a choice between two unacceptable options.

   All we can really do is try to figure out which unacceptable option is worse.

   Again: the left is good at it, and is well on its way to undermining fundamental liberal and American principles. Trump is bad at it. It's appalling that we have to choose between Trump and the radical, irrationalist, illiberal left. But here we are. Trump already threw is tantrum and it did nothing but hurt his side. Even if he were to win this year, he couldn't do it again in '28--he wouldn't be eligible to win again. The left's efforts, however, have been stunningly successful and are ongoing.

   Obviously, I could be wrong.

   Nobody's got very strong ground to stand on about this battle of the craptastic crackpots.

   As I've said many times: I now think of this as a battle between two future administrations, not two men. We know that a Democrat administration (no matter who the front man is) will take us several more miles down the road to the dystopian progressive utopia. Once you've subordinated facts and evidence to radical politics, there's no limit to the havoc you can wreak. Fifteen years ago, no one would believe that the flagship plank in the Democrat platform would be Women have penises... Trump's a loon...but more or less a mid-90s Blue Team loon. At least he's still vaguely tethered to reality. So we can let the Blue Team keep the wheel, and be assured that four years from now we'll be deeper into the anarchic madness of Crazy Town...or we can hand the wheel to the nutty reality-show salesman and conman who at least knows that we need to turn this shit around and get the hell out of here...even though we know he's likely to crash off of some other cars...and trees...and buildings and shit on the way... Though--he did a pretty good job last time. He didn't do enough, and didn't save us from the nutters...but he didn't wreck us, either...contrary to what the Blues assured us he'd do...

   Supporting Trump is likely to be the wrong/stupid thing to do...but at this point, it's sort of every man for himself--we've each got to take our best guess at which stupid course of action will screw up the nation the least.

Oklahoma: All Schools Must Incorporate the Bible and Ten Commandments into Curricula

Here we go...

The right-wing backlash has always been inevitable.

I avoid that argument because it is basically the only argument center-leftists will use against the extremist left. I think the left has to learn how to criticize its leftmost wing. They've got to learn that the radical left is crazy and wrong. They've got to learn to say that, and not dodge it, pretending that the left can only go wrong by helping the right.

   No enemies to the left is an absurd principle, and it's part of a web of crazy that help drive the left always leftward.

   So, though I've always realized that there'd be a backlash, I've got big-picture reasons for not emphasizing it.

   But, anyway: here it comes, as we always knew it would.

   Also, however: I think this will be slapped down pretty fast. The First Amendment provides extra protection against right-wing religious lunacy. The let's cultish quasi-religion isn't officially a religion, however, so we have less protection. 

   And: this one move in OK schools (and a few other states will follow along) hardly stacks up against pervasive, powerful progressive influence on all our institutions.

   Furthermore, the Deep Academy (and its K-12 analog) will radically blunt the edge of this crackpottery.

   Also, I wonder whether this is just a kind of strategic move by OK to force acceptance of religious charter schools? Just a hunch.

   Nevertheless: very bad news.

Biden and the Debate: Another Consequence of the Blue Team / MSM Alternate Reality? Or a Setup to Ditch Bide? Or What?

There are a couple of hypotheses floating around about Biden's debate performance:

[1] He just had a bad night / he had a cold / he has a stutter.

[2] This is just another case of the Blue Team "living in an alternate reality," refusing to acknowledge facts--but in this case, the facts became undeniable.

[3] The MSM has been covering up Biden's decline; consequently, it was rational for most voters to believe he was fine.

[4] This was all a setup by the Blue elite to ditch Biden.

   I don't know what the hell's going on.

   I mean, I think there's an element of [1] in the mix. And I'd expect him to bounce back in a second debate. He could hardly do any worse. The stuttering thing is bullshit. Of course the progressive-left's go-to strategy is pleading weakness/disability/impairment/disadvantage. They're already shrieking about How dare Trump make fun of Biden's disability!!!111. And we didn't hear about the alleged cold util he started to crash and burn. And, apparently, he went to the Waffle House after the debate and shook a bunch of hands...

   Some combination of [2] and [3] are, I think, pretty likely. Exaggerating your guy's strengths and minimizing his weaknesses is pretty much universal. And the contemporary Blue Team has really gone off the rails with respect to reality generally. This is very much exacerbated by the role of the MSM--really just another branch of the Blue Team--repeating the Blues' doxastic preferences back to it... The Blue Team has set itself up for inevitable disaster.

   But, of course: I was convinced that the Red Team was exaggerating Biden's decline. And I think he's a very bad President. So I had an incentive to think he was in steep decline--but I didn't. So...[1]+[3]? I dunno.

   But I'm warming up to [4], too. The deviation from the standard debate schedule and format...holding the debate so early, and before the convention...and the mass, open panic about ditching him... I'm skeptical about such explanations usually...but in this case, I'd say we can't really rule this out...

   Taibbi writes:

It is hard to believe that Biden’s circle didn’t know this was going to happen. It’s not particularly easy to believe in a scenario in which he was intentionally thrown in a wood-chipper as a trigger for this seemingly coordinated assassination last night and this morning. The scenario that makes the most sense to me at the moment is that Biden’s inner team thought they could pull this off — he’s survived so many previous tests, like the State of the Union — but a waiting gang of party vultures, led perhaps by figures from Chicago, decided to pounce mid-debate and put calls into media mouthpieces before the end of the event. This looked, in other words, like a genuine coup, with party figures agreeing in Shakespearean fashion to take frail Caesar out before his convention coronation.

Biden Deserves Respect

And this is not just because of the debate.

This has been bugging me for a year or so now.

Numero uno:

The President deserves respect.

Numero two-o:

Our elders deserve respect.

Both of those can be overridden in extreme cases...but they are strong rules of thumb.

I think Biden has done a terrible job as President...but about a third of the country always thinks the President is doing a terrible job. It's not an excuse for disrespect.

And to be as vicious toward an 80-year-old as the right has been / is being...

NFW, bros.

NFW.

I Was Wrong: Presidential Debate 1 2024 Edition

Though I mentioned this, I should be clearer:

I was wrong about:

1. Joe Biden's cognitive decline. 

   I've been quibbling with conservatives about this for about a year in other venues. I thought it was being overblown. It's clear that he's declining...but I was very wrong about how steeply.

Very, very wrong.

2. Trump's pathological bullshittery

   I actually think the guy is often funny--and when he's talking to ordinary people, he can extremely genuine and likable. (I do think that matters...but I'm not sure how much.)

   But I try to get out of listening to him speak publicly because I find it so angrifying and exasperating.

I'd almost forgotten how bad he is when he's winging it about his own achievements. 

   There is a difference between lying and hyperbole. And Trump's more inclined toward the latter. But, strictly (and not even so strictly) speaking, those are falsehoods. And he just asserts them over and over and over. He'll often say something true--or have an important truth easily-available--e.g. My economy was very good, or Many legal experts thought Roe was bad law, or Many people wanted to send abortion back to the states...but he can't stick with them. Even when he states them, he has to rapidly, pointlessly, and counterproductively escalate his rhetoric: I had the best economy ever, the vast majority of legal experts thought Roe was bad law, Everybody wanted to send abortion back to the states...

   It's maddening. It's pathological. It's dumb as hell...

   Even when he had Biden dead to rights on important points, like the "very fine people" hoax, he had to leave victory behind and move on to dumbassery: You made that up, Joe!

Biden didn't make that up, ya damn nitwit...the left basically spontaneously made it up, as it often does. The whole damn left has been running around saying that shit for seven years. Why do this?

   Over and over again, Trump turns truth into lies, and steps on his own good points...because of this pathological inability to just say a true thing and shut up. He's got to escalate.

   Part of it, I think, is that he just doesn't know the details and numbers. He knows he did something at the VA...he doesn't know how much he improved what by...so he reverts to his natural state of spewing superlatives...

   But: the reports of Biden's political demise are, I'd guess, being greatly exaggerated. He's capable of seeming reasonably energetic...and dangerous...as in his Red Address...(thought that's almost ancient history by now, I guess...) He could come out in the next debate and kick Trump's ass. CNN could change--or break--the rules and "fact check" Trump in real time. A smart debate coach could, I think, pretty easily equip Biden to verbally Judo (note: not actually how Judo works) the hell out of Trump...

Anyway. It ain't over yet.

Debate 6/27/24.2

Yeah, I know I said I probably wouldn't watch it...but there it was, right on the teevee...I couldn't resist.

I tuned in just before Biden phased on early in the debate. That was painful to watch. I actually looked away from the television and winced. I don't respect him...but he doesn't deserve this. I shudder to think what Putin and Xi are thinking this morning.

Anyway, everybody on the blue team other than a few real dead-enders is abandoning Biden in a panic and asking how to go about switching candidates. 

This morning's RCP betting odds are brutal:

Trump 54.8%
Biden 19.2

And then the rest:

Newsome 10.8

Harris 4.5

Obama 4.0

Whitmer 2.3

...

ANY of those others ends up the Dem candidate, I expect I'll have to send a lot of money to Trump and volunteer doggedly (as I (in retrospect, probably foolishly) did for Obama...but on the other side...).

Joe Biden, terrible as he's been, is not the problem.

The problem is the Democratic party.

Or, rather: the problem is the Democratic party as it stands today, possessed by the spirit of unhinged, anti-rationalist, hard-left, Orwellian progressivism.

Imagine Newsome being the candidate... Which is to imagine the USA being California'd. 

shudder

That is a truly horrifying prospect.

And how would they get around Harris, anyway? A black woman with a shot at the Presidency?

Hell, Harris might be better than Newsome...

Whitmer? 

Please, God, no...

Michelle Obama?

A reductio ad absurdum of the United States of America.

Kennedy?

Well, I'd at least consider him...

What a mess.

Presidential Debate 6/27/24

Holy crap.

Trump was in fine, Trumpy form--semi-coherent, hyperbolically hyperbolic, largely interested in Trump.

Biden was a disaster.

I've pooh-poohed the age issue...no more.

I was absolutely shocked by that early non-answer in which he babbled briefly and then just locked up.

He improved greatly from there--but, then, he really couldn't have gotten any worse.

Also:

Biden's a liar.

Trump's so incoherent and such an inveterate bullshitter that most of what he says barely even has a truth-value. But if you take all his little hyperbolic quasi-claims seriously, he really did spew dozens of lies...but half the time I can't actually tell what the hell he's trying to say.

Biden outright lied yet again about the "very fine people" claim. Then he repeated the "suckers and losers" lie from Kelly.

Let me say it again:

They lie about what Trump says even when what he says in on video.

You've got to be nuts to believe any such claim about something he allegedly said in private.

Anyhoo.

Trump mainly just babbled. He did make some solid points. His incoherent babbling is mostly in the vicinity of a pretty good set of ideas. But his performance wasn't really good enough to win a Presidential debate...

...against any candidate other than octogenarian Joe Biden...

He pretty much wiped the floor with Biden just by seeming fully alive.

Pretty much all you need to know is: 

Democrats are panicking.

Donna Brazille basically spent her whole time trying to deflect questions about replacing him.

Trump won bigly.

...for better or worse...

David Rozado: Wikipedia is Politically Biased

Yes, of course.

National Review: Julian Assange Is No Hero

link

Mark Joseph Stern: SCOTUS "Gave Biden a Chance to Fight Disinformation; It's Too Little, Too Late"

Stern is one of the biggest idiots on dino-lefty sites like [snicker] Slate.

Which is, of course, saying quite a lot...

I didn't finish it, but there's the link.

Come to think of it, I have no idea why I even started it...

Nate Silver: There's Currently About a 55-60% Chance of Trump Winning

Yay?

Murthy v. Missouri Decision Drops

Well, this is damn disappointing.

But I don't think it's right to criticize a decision without even having read it. It bugs the hell out of me when people criticize the conclusion of a decision with no understanding of the arguments. So see me refraining from that?

Basically the majority just said no standing. So that's something.

Debate Prediction

 Ha ha ha don't be ridiculous.

Who can predict what'll happen with Trump on the stage? 

I'm sure you'll see a lot of predictions, given that talk is cheap. Would anybody make a fairly detailed prediction and put significant money on it? 

I sure wouldn't.

I won't be surprised if Trump blows it. This just isn't the kind of thing he's very good at IMO...though some people look for rhetorical wins, and he's capable of skewering people in certain bone-headed ways. Any decent candidate could absolutely shred Biden. And imagine what somebody like Vivek could do... 

If Biden has a good night, and Trump is too assholish, of course, it'll be a win for Biden. 

And expectations for him are so low that I'd think he wouldn't have to do much to win.

OTOH, the polls are looking pretty grim for him--maybe he sort of does have to hit a home run to win...

Dunno.

I'm not sure I'll even be able to make myself watch it.

Well, I guess I do have sort of a prediction...

I predict a shitshow.

Is CNN Refusing to Update Its Electoral Map Because Biden is Losing?

Kinda hard to think of another explanation.

Yglesias: Elite Misinformation is an Underrated Problem

This is a pretty good post, and I recommend it. The fossil fuel "subsidy" point is particularly poignant.

However...

If I were going to write a post on "elite" misinformation, I'd think I should include some of the more blatant contemporary examples...such as:

(a) Police are unjustifiably killing thousands of black Americans every year.

(b) Women can be male / men can be female.

(c) "Climate science" predicts near-future human extinction because of climate change.

Again, e.g. the fossil fuel example is good, and of an interesting type. But that's the kind of thing that someone like Yglesias can discuss critically without being "cancelled." But your good former-liberal-now-"progressive" blue-team types can't come out and say what every rational person knows: that exactly zero women have penises. Yet again: it's good to know about the fossil fuel thing. And absolutely agreed: the blue team bullshits about the value of child-care subsidies to everyone else. And the red team is kinda wacky about the ability of tax cuts to pay for themselves. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed.

   But when the elite consensus now at least formally seems to include views on the order of up is down and night is day...well...call me crazy...but I think those are too important to be left out of such a discussion.

Indivisible: "The Radical Leftist Network that Hijacked Dems in an Effort to Stop Trump at All Costs"

Breitbart, so...caveat lector...

But there seems to be plenty here to be concerned about. Prima facie reason to dig farther, at least.

Turley: Biden is a Threat to Free Speech; Trump Should Call Him on it

Yes.

Any GOP candidate but Trump would be able to absolutely shred Biden.

With Trump, of course, it's a crap shoot.

Biden's Surgeon General Declares Guns a "Public Health Emergency"

link

The medicalization of everything is a problem in itself (that I've long complained about). 

An additional problem is that the left uses its control over the medical establishment to push its worldview and policy preferences.

Now, see...I would have thought that guns would better be considered a public safety issue...

But progressives don't want that. That would force them to acknowledge and address black crime and black-on-black violence. 

And that they absolutely do not want to do.

What they want to treat it as a morally neutral problem. Hey, dude pulls a gun on you to take your stuff...you shoot him...two acts of gun violence...that's all...

Right, wrong, aggression, defense...words, words, words.

Freedom, rights, all that shit...forget it. Gun violence is like the flu. There's no good flu or bad flu, no justified or unjustified flu...it's just something we need to control and try to eliminate. 

Somebody breaks into your house and you shoot them...you just perpetrated gun violence, jack...

Defund the police and replace their authority with that of the omnipotent medical state...

From the people who bought you kiddie brainwashing and castration...

Snopes Admits That Trump Didn't Call Charlottesville White Supremacists "Very Fine People"

The left has repeated the "very fine people" hoax at every opportunity for seven years.

They're repeating it over and over to this day.

Biden leaned heavily on it in the 2020 debates.

It's taken seven years for Snopes--the formerly-great fact-checking site--to finally admit it was a lie.

Of course this is barely noteworthy, as it's just one example of the outright lies propagated by the left about things Trump has (allegedly, but not actually) said and done.

The Twixxer left is already pushing back, fabricating elaborate sophistries about how Trump did too actually say it!!!111...

But, of course, he didn't. In fact, he explicitly said that he was not saying it (and did not believe it). 

In this respect, it's a lot like Russiagate / the Russian collusion hoax--leftists were falling all over themselves about how awesome and definitive the Mueller report was going to be...until Mueller came back with a conclusion unfriendly to their TDS-addled preconceptions. Now Reddit, Twixxer, etc. are filled with lefties still insisting that what they wanted to be true is true--sometimes with no explanation, sometimes with elaborate nonsense trying to justify their antecedent doxastic preference. 

My favorite reaction on the left to the Mueller report was: The Russians got to Mueller!

Now I'm waiting for: The white supremacists got to Snopes!

I've argued before (you can look it up; I'm too lazy) that Trump was probably wrong about there being "very fine people" / non-racists at the Unite the Right rally. But also that that doesn't matter. Trump recognized that a lot of ordinary people opposed the renaming of the parks and elimination of the statues, and he was talking about them. Some may have been there after all...but by the day of the rally, it had become clear that UtR had become a far-right crapfest--and that Antifa, Antifa-lite, and other lefties were going to be there to attack the UtR demonstrators. Most--and perhaps all--normal people were driven away. 

But Trump didn't know that.

And, as others have pointed out: the dispute is about what he was saying, not what was true. 

He was saying that there were normal people there protesting the taking down of the statues.

Though that was a reasonable belief, it probably turned out to be false.

Actually, that's not even clear--he may not have meant to speak of UtR in particular; he may just have been speaking of the two sides of the issue...

Finally: this is how our elite-left overlords operate. People right of the far left can say reasonable things, but they'll be spun as crazy. IF the evidence is so overwhelming that the lie can't be maintained forever, they'll drag their feet as long as possible and admit error--if at all--only well after it could make any practical difference. The left can say utterly insane things, and they'll let them pass. They can say, to take the most prominent example, Women have penises and--apparently--get away with it for a decade at least. Imagine if the right had said something that crazy! Every blue-team source would pounce on it immediately and pummel it into the ground...as well they should... But there is exactly no chance whatsoever that it would take the MSM and its adjuncts seven years to shoot down some blatant and damaging misinterpretation of Obama or Biden.

"Admiral" "Rachel" Levine Pressured WPATH to Remove Age Restrictions from "Transgender" Standards of Care

What they want is the unrestricted ability to brainwash and sexually mutilate children, without regard to age, and without parental interference.

Related:

   According to a long and astonishing/horrifying thread by Chad Felix Greene, he had sex with many men when he was 14, and they all knew his age. He writes: "LGBTQ culture has no socially imposed boundaries on it...Teen sex workers are the norm in LGBTQ centers...Progressives view children as sexual beings and independent from their parents." [I only seem able to link to the first tweet in the thread--but you can find the rest if you're interested.]

   These are, of course, claims we were all taught, as good liberals/Democrats, to dismiss out of hand.

   I have no idea whether Greene is telling the truth. (I'd say I don't know why he'd lie...but if there's one thing I've realized over the course of the last decade or so: people lie for reasons you just couldn't have guessed...) Greene may be wrong for all I know. But fighting one's way out of the liberal/progressive/leftist/blue echo chamber is a long process of realizing that many propositions you were taught to accept uncritically are false, and many you were taught to dismiss reflexively are true...

Trump Endorses Ten Commandments in Schools, Calls for Religious Revival

facepalm

Dumbass.

Intersectionality Watch: Climate Change Threatens Democracy

The left loooves mixing and matching its obsessions.

"Queer Temporality"

These are the kinds of weak, midwit ideas that form the core of the recent-Continental-inspired orientation that took over the humanities and qualitative social "sciences" in the '80s.

   It's not that there's no idea there at all...it's, rather, that it's such a weak and uninteresting idea that nobody should spend more than about five minutes thinking about it. And, of course, the phenomena she's talking about is actually fairly common, and affects most people in some way or other...but it's typical of literary leftist academia to care about it only with respect to something like PC sexuality. Look, all sorts of people pass some ordinary life milestone or other early or late or in some other non-standard way...people graduate early from high school, or late from college, or they switch careers, or they find love late in life or buy a house late or have to move around a lot or...on and on and on... "Queer" people experiencing the same general kind of thing almost everybody else experiences in some way is only particularly interesting if you have some antecedent special interest in "queer" people...which, of course, the academic literary left does...

*Nature* Takes On 'Climate of Fear' Permeating Sex and Gender Research

link

When operatives of the religious right tried to get "intelligent design" even mentioned in low-level high school and university biology courses, they were ridiculed mercilessly--laughed off campus. The blowback was hurricane-force. And rightly so. (Even though I, myself, have some views that could be described as distant cousins of ID...)

The left has propagated dozens of crazy ideas, including the much more radical and insane idea* that sexes are not natural kinds...and they've succeeded in getting these ideas into the minds of millions of little children, high school students, and undergraduates. They've transformed research by not only getting these laughable ideas taken seriously, but suppressing efforts to refute them.

This is one reason the left is currently so much more dangerous than the right.

*More radical than ID, that is.

Robert Pondiscio: How Public Schools Became Ideological Bootcamps

link

Boston Children's Hospital Says Children Know They're "Trans" "From the Womb"

Worse than insanity.

   An apparently normal, rational person...someone smart and focused enough to make it through medical school...yet she believes something only a lunatic should be able to believe...

At least outright crazy people are obviously so--ranting and raving and drooling on themselves.

People like Dr. McGregor are apt to do much, much more damage...

[Prior linklink]

Michael Lind, "The Left's Campus Protest Scam": All Campus Protests Aim at Increasing the Number of Leftist Faculty and Consultants

Well, a whole damn lot of 'em, anyway.

B. Duncan Moensch: The Photo-Negative Ideology

Pretty damn interesting--though I don't have any real fix on the main argument, nor anything interesting to say about it. All I can say, really, is: after one fast read, it seems worth reading again, and more carefully.

   Well, one thought I had was: I'm not immediately convinced by his argument for the proposition that most Americans (basically) don't owe some sort of debt or owe some kind of restitution for slavery. Rather, I tend to think of it as more of an institutional responsibility (if we have it)--the United States owes it (maybe), and, hence, its citizens. But that's a can of worms. I mention it only to briefly explain my doubts about his argument. Responses to that point on his behalf are pretty easy to think of. 

   Anyway.

Backlash Watch: Louisiana Posts the Ten Commandments in Every Public School Classroom

At least I expect that the courts will rule against this.

Compared to the leftist indoctrination that pervades public schools, this is pretty small potatoes, IMO. And the First Amendment doesn't seem to protect us against the left's secular religion.

Which is not to say that this Ten Commandments thing isn't batshit crazy...for it is, it is...

Apparently Texas, Oklahoma and Utah are threatening to follow suit.

On the Teevee: "Your Son's Tumor Was Caused By Racism"

The clip from a show ("New Amsterdam") starts around 1:00:

Colin Wright: SJWs Just Make Up Sophisticated Sounding Terms for Bullshit

Yes.

This is one of the main pillars of the left. It basically comes out of recent Continental philosophy and literary theory. These are very linguistic/languagey movements. They love neologisms and are envious of the epistemic authority of science. They can't really replicate it, but they are good at replicating the linguistic trappings of expertise. So they basically created a network of neologisms that, to the casual observer, looks a lot like the technical vocabulary of, say, high-energy physics. Then they just bull their way forward and rely on dogmatism and shrieking to overrun any remaining opposition.

   Even more important, I'd say, is the free-associative method of "reasoning" that basically allows them, via verbal legerdemain, to "justify" any conclusion they want. If your method is loosey-goosey enough, you can get (in some sense of 'get') any conclusion you like. It's a long-standing joke that a sufficiently clever Freudian can find penises and perversion in anything anyone says. And literary theory is notorious for this sort of thing. This is the free-associative method that let's progressive leftists "find" racism in literally everything. This is the irrationalism at the core of the whole thing.

   Recent Continental philosophy and radical leftist politics are, in effect, inseparable.

Today's Stupidest Thing of All Time: Scientific American Doesn't Think You're Panicking Enough

facepalm

   The mind, it reeleth.

   Leftist catastrophism has become a problem in its own right. It's now semi-separable from all the crusades, causes and platform-planks its designed to advance. Sure, this post is really about pumping up COVID hysteria, Trump hysteria, climate hysteria, and disinformation hysteria toward the ends of promoting preferred leftist policies in those areas. (The word 'Trump' never appears...but the man, the myth, the demon lurks behind most of the sentences.) But creating a pervasive climate of dread is the general means to those various ends.

   The left is deeply Marxist, and, as such, it is deeply committed to his playbook. Exaggerating or fabricating crises is the first step toward revolution. Widespread fear and anxiety is a prelude to throwing out the system and ushering in a radical new one. Fears is the route to utopia. Fear and anxiety are somewhat generic, as well, and the left knows how to direct them toward whatever goals seem achievable at the time.

   The right did this shit to us in Iraq, though in a more focused way. Remember how we couldn't wait for the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud? They played us like a violin, despite the ineptness of their game and the patent thinness of their case. The left is much more adept at this shit, and its angling for far more widespread changes. What they really want is the upending of Western civilization...though they'll settle for the creation of an (allegedly) omnicompetent state run by the elites and their activist toadies/masters... A state in which hate speech and wrongthink are things of the past, candidates with wrong positions are de facto excluded from the race by media "fact"-checkers, everyone is masked and vaxxed all the time...you live in the pod...you eat the bugs...you own nothing and you're...well, fuck your happiness, actually. But maybe you will be. I mean, you mostly do what they tell you to already...so they'll just tell you to be happy...

   Anyway.

   I've got things to do, believe it or not. 

   And I'm trying to resist the urge to dig into the cosmically stupid details of this cosmically stupid SciAm post...but that's really a waste of everyone's time.

   Just read the thing.

   It wears its absurdity on its sleeve.

   My favorite bit, though: the bit about how the left must be the truth-tellers, because reality.

   Imagine the worldview of a leftist who could write such a thing...

   At any rate: progressives are very angry at you for not responding properly to their various efforts to hysteriate you. They are very, very disappointed.

   So get out there and be afraid...be very, very afraid...

   Finally: among all the insane and horrifying things about the PC left, perhaps the most horrifying is its totalitarianism. Its crazy ideas must be injected into everything. The very idea of science being something separate from politics is anathema to the left. Scientific journals (e.g. Nature) and venues for the popular discussion of scientific goings-on (e.g. SciAm)...all must be Lysenkoized. The very idea of apolitical venues is liberal [spit]...counterrevolutionary... Everything is political. The personal, of course...the historical...the educational...the medical...the scientific...everything. You're never, say, just working on a logic problem or trying to fix your lawnmower. You're always, simultaneously, either fighting racism, or the patriarchy, or phallogocentrism, or whatever...or you're promoting them. So there you are, reading a novel. Are you fighting racism? If no, then you're an oppressor, jack...

 Of course this view entails that you should never be doing anything but fighting "oppression." The part of fixing your lawnmower where you're actually fixing it is the part where you're not doing your job as a good leftist. They say that every math class should include "antiracism"...but the view, if made even vaguely consistent, actually entails that there should be no math classes. If you spend 15 minutes on calculus and 30 minutes on "antiracism"...that's 15 wasted, immoral, politically incorrect minutes you should have been devoting to Doing The Work(tm)...

Madness.

Utter madness...

Melinda Gates: Why Biden Has Earned My Vote

Duly noted.

Fox News Poll: 3-Point Shift Puts Biden Up By 2

Everybody on the right is dismissing this out of hand--but IMO it may be the Bragg conviction finally showing up in polling. RCP averages still put Trump ahead in all battleground states, but I'd be kind of surprised if that held.

Aris Roussinos: How Will The Ukraine War End?

This seems very reasonable to me...though I understand basically nothing about the situation, to be clear.

   One of my many concerns about the contemporary right is that (seems to me, at least) it has responded to the radicalization of the left basically by emulating its structure: it now seems to be tugged around by its own brainless radical minority*--not as radical, not as crazy, and not as powerful as the vanguard of the progressive left...yet, anyway. That radical minority seems to have mindlessly taken up the opposite of whatever position the progressive left takes up--at least with regard to e.g. Ukraine, COVID, and the vax. The left rightly took up the cause of Ukraine. The vocal minority I'm talking about on the right then became outright anti-Ukraine and, in fact, pro-Russia. They've even come to heroify Putin, spinning him into some kind of defender of Western civilization and Christendom. (In fact, I've read that Putin has been pumping up Russian Orthodoxy as a cynical political move; again, I know nothing about this...) (Now, I actually think that, for all his flaws, Orban seems pretty clear-headed about resisting Woketarianism...but that's really a sidebar...) The left freaked out about COVID (partially as an anti-Trump strategy, IMO), so the right decided it was nothing...in fact, some claimed it was literally nothing...that the entire medical establishment had just mistaken the seasonal flu for a whole new virus... It's still an article of faith in that group that the vax is killing millions of people every year. Some of them also like referring to COVID as "the plandemic," indicating that it was intentionally released by...George Soros...or Klaus Schwab...or the CCP...or some combination of the above.

   Anyway, God knows what Trump will do about Ukraine if he wins. He might well allow the vocal, anti-Ukraine right to convince him to cut aid to Ukraine entirely. He might (as one of my friends has suggested) appoint Tucker Carlson Secretary of State... We just don't know.

   OTOH, his foreign policy seems to have been pretty good the first time around. Better than Biden's, I'd say, and, at least in some notable ways (e.g. Iran) better than Obama's. Fantasies about Trump doing something really crazy just don't seem to be supported by the evidence from his first administration.

   Well, anyway, as I say over and over: I fear Trump because I don't know what he'll do. I fear Biden because I do know what he'll do... Though of course that's not quite right. We really do know a fair bit about what Trump will do...even if his standard deviation seems worrisome. And Biden has actually been worse than I thought he'd be. I knew his administration would do a lot of the stupid shit it's done (e.g. rewriting Title IX--something anyone could see coming from a mile away), but I certainly didn't foresee him inviting hordes of illegals to surge to the border...and I didn't foresee him turning our exit from Afghanistan into a second fall of Saigon. 

   Blah blah blah

* This sort of thing happens a lot, and has certainly happened to the right in the past. It happened with the religious right in the '80s and the neocons after 911... So maybe it's dumb to see what's happening today as an emulation of the contemporary left. Maybe it just happens all the time.

Newsweek "Fact" Check: Did Donald Trump Praise Hannibal Lecter?

I mean...if you've gotta rely on Newsweek for fact-checks, you're already in trouble...

But at least you'd think they'd be on their best behavior for them.

But you'd be wrong...

Donald Trump! Dictator, bloodbather, bleach-injector, Hannibal Lecter fan...

Jeez, it's hard to believe how terrible this guy is! It's almost like somebody is making it all up... 

Real Clear Polling Average: Trump Leads in All Major Battleground States (MN: Tied)

One side-effect of a Trump landslide might be to slap some sense into the Democrats.

Happy Summer!

YAY

a day late or whatever

J. Peder Zane: If Character Matters, Then Biden Flunks the Test

I doubt some of the stories (e.g. Reade's). But there's plenty of reason to think that Biden isn't the swell guy we're told he is. 

And that's before any mention of influence-peddling...

The Most "Inclusive" List of Pronouns EV-AR!!!!

'Honk' pronouns!

'Catboy' pronouns!

'Hor'/'horse' pronouns!

'Meow'/'meow' pronouns!

'Bork' pronouns!

'90'/'90' pronouns!

'.Exe' pronouns!

'Rabi'/'rabid' pronouns!

']' pronouns!

'Fawn' pronouns, 'cat' pronouns, 'possum' pronouns, 'racoon' pronouns!!!!

ALL THE PRONOUNS!!!!!!!!!!!

NRO: Biden's Lawless Mass Amnesty

It's like the Dems wake up every morning and ask themselves: How can we force Smith to vote for Trump?

Today's Stupidest Thing of All Time: Rebecca Traister, "How Did Republican Women End Up Like This?"

LOOOOOOL

Of all the stupid things I read from the left these days, this has to rank among the stupidest:

Can you provide a definition for the word woman?” 

Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn lobbed this query at Ketanji Brown Jackson during her 2022 Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Blackburn was doing her bit for her party’s effort to enforce transphobic gender conformity, positioning herself as a defender of womanhood as something fixed and narrow. When Jackson declined to provide Blackburn with a definition, noting that she was not a biologist, the senator took the opportunity to dial it up a notch. “The fact that you can’t give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about,” Blackburn said with lip-smacking satisfaction.

Two years later, Republicans remain cruelly closed to the realities of gender fluidity and trans existence. But how the party understands — and represents — womanhood more broadly? Well … that’s getting weird. As we cruise toward November with two ancient white men on the presidential ticket and the rights of millions of people who are not white men in the balance, the public performance of Republican womanhood has become fractured, frenzied, and far less coherent than ever.

Really, it's almost impossible to believe that anyone can be this laughably wrong about something so obvious. (And here I'm talking about the idiotic author of this idiotic piece of idiocy, not KBJ, who is probably just trying to avoid a shitstorm.)

   How dare a Republican woman ask a potential Justice whether the sky is blue??? And when said potential Justice refuses to answer because she knows that her political faction is now so insane, and so gripped by political correctness, that a shitstorm would ensue should she answer truthfully...and when said Republican woman (a Senator, no less) sees that she has proven her point...well...Republicans pounce!

   "Can you tell us what winter is, madame potential Justice?"

   "I am not a climatologist, Senator."

   "You realize that's crazy, right?"

   "I am not a psychologist, Senator."

   "But you live on Earth, right?"

   "I am not a planetologist, Senator."

   "Is winter typically warmer on average or cooler on average than summer?"

   "I really couldn't say, Senator..."

   MY GOD, HAVE REPUBLICAN WOMEN NEVER HEARD OF SEASONAL FLUIDITY? WHAT ABOUT TRANS-SEASONALITY? HOW CAN THEY BE SO BLIND TO THE REALITY OF CLIMATOLOGICAL IDENTIFICATION?? SO CRUELLY FIXED ON A NARROW DEFINITION OF SEASON-NESS?????

I've been sick at my decision to support Trump (who, though only about 20% as bad as the TDS-riddled Blue Team thinks he is...is still, IMO, not fit to be President)...

Then I remember that the American left has lost its goddamned mind...

Byron York: "You Can't Explain Away" Biden's Wandering Around / Phasing Out on All Those Videos

Yes, you can, and York does so himself in the post. I'd guess the title isn't his.

   Biden is old and feeble. Probably too old and feeble to be President. And his phasing out--or whatever it is--isn't good. But it could just be normal old stuff. And what's he going to do? At least he wasn't pretending to dance like Mr. Kamala...

   But there are clearly alternatives to the He's lost it explanation in every case: he's just doing normal old guy stuff.

   Anyway, as I've said, I'm not sure that Democrats should care much. He's a rubber-stamp for progressive-left policies while he's in office...which is what they seem to want. If he wins he'll likely turn it over to Harris, and she'll likely do the same. As long as he listens to his cabinet and the Joint Chiefs, if I were still on the Blue Team, I'd prefer an old, slow Biden to Trump.

Annual Grumbling about "Juneteenth 'National Independence Day' "

As I've said before: great holiday...in principle. And I'd happily fly my flag and celebrate it...if it were known as something more accurate like 'Emancipation Day.'

   However, coming two weeks before the Fourth of July, and, apparently, very carefully misnamed/misdescribed as "National Independence Day"...no dice.

   And why add 'national', one wonders? In the relevant sense, Juneteenth is Texas-specific. Again, it seems like a part of an effort to trump July 4th. (Oh, mere Independence Day? As opposed to National Independence Day?)

   This seems to fit the left's M.O. too well. It's too reminiscent of the so-called 1619 Project's efforts to replace 1776 with 1619 as the birth-year of the nation.

   This is too close to the kind of interpretive meaning-digging argument beloved of the left...so I'm wary of it... But it is how they think... And in this case, I gotta say, I think this is fairly likely to be what's afoot.

   Or maybe these people have just made me paranoid...

Triggernometry: "Brianna Wu" Claims He's Seen the Light, Opposes Woketarian Madness

[Now with more link!]

"Wu" (ne John Walker Flynt) was one of the main players in Gamergate. He was caught faking his own harassment, among many other things. Now he claims to have seen the light and recognized woke madness for what it is. I find the guy to be absolutely unworthy of belief--regardless of whether we go on demeanor or history. But people make mistakes, and publicly acknowledging them is good... So good on him for that.

   But I don't believe him.

   I mean, I believe what he actually says--which is that he now views cancel culture and the insanest reaches of the American left to be nuts...because it turned on him... If you really listen to what he says, it's: Hey, I'm still and extreme progressive Dem, but now I don't like the leftiest left because it came after me because I support Israel...and I think that loony sub-faction is going to lose us elections...

   So, anyway, yeah: I believe that part. 

   But Wu is trying to represent himself as more than that...and gain the trust of people like me. 

   No dice on that, bro...

   Incidentally, Google or Bing 'Gamergate' some time. What you'll see is that the left has managed to completely suppress the truth about it. The Wikipedia article is outright nuts...it wouldn't be much different if it had been written by Zoe Quinn herself... In fact, merely producing a 100% biased entry isn't enough--Wikipedia actually titles the entry:

"Gamergate (harassment campaign)"

When merely producing leftist propaganda isn't enough...you gotta shove that propaganda right into the title of the post...

The Gamergate wiki seems to have been taken down. "Rationalwiki" is, as usual, even more overtly insane than Wikipedia. And hit after hit on Google and Bing are posts repeating the party line.

   If the Orwellian progressive left doesn't horrify you, you aren't paying any attention at all.

Why Some in Silicon Valley are Turning to Trump

link

John Murawski: 'Transgender' is Falling Out of Favor with Activists

It's all Newspeak.

And here's a tip: never use the language of the oppressor.

Every single term progressives try to push on society contains some kind of sophistry.

Refuse to use it--even if it superficially seems innocent.

   And speaking of 'transgender,' remember back a couple of years ago when the lefties were insisting that the term 'transgenderism' was politically incorrect / "transphobic"? Typical of the left, they had some vague, hand-wavy dissatisfaction with the term so they made up some shitty arguments and then insisted that everyone else accord with their preferences. I refused, of course--but many complied. We were informed that "some trans people" felt that 'transgenderism' was too clinical, and made their very being or whatever sound like a clinical condition. So we were instructed not to say things like:

Trangenderism is nonsense

but, rather:

Transgender is nonsnse.

Though, needless to say, we are never to say either of those specific things!

But anyway: the rules of grammar and clear communication must bend to the PC whims of the looniest and least-rational sector of the population...

Of course the most notorious bit of progressive Newspeak is 'transwoman' / 'trans woman' (and the corresponding 'transman' / 'trans man'). Once you've accepted such a term you're halfway to TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN!!!111 Which, of course, they are not. The term 'trans women' makes it seem analytic that TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN!!!1111 Every time you use the term in a way that's consistent with progressive Newspeak, you're helping to establish the term. 

Of course, since "trans women" are, in fact, men, it would make more sense to refer to "trans women" as trans men...or, well, just men... And I suggest that this should be one of the ways in which we combat these instances of Newspeak--just invert their meanings so that they make more sense. E.g.:

Caitlyn Jenner is a trans man.

Makes a lot more sense that way, and doesn't play into the hands of the Orwellian left.

Coleman Hughs: On Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, and Reasonable Doubt

link

My view has stabilized (at least for some time, and for now) at:

(a) Chauvin clearly did not receive a fair trial

and

(b) I suspect he should have been found innocent.

(Though, as I understand it, prosecutors and the DoJ piled on so many charges, and maneuvered him so into a corner on sentencing, that it will be difficult or impossible for him to appeal. Which is evil.)

   Hughes is very good, of course. Balko, as it turns out, is a jackass.

   I tried to read Balko's first essay some time ago, but it was just so nasty, hysterical, dogmatic and annoying that I didn't finish it. It was just making me less receptive to counterarguments. I could tell by the tone that Balko couldn't be trusted. So there was no reason to read it unless I was going to check every assertion. I figured I'd wait until Hughes and Weiss had a chance to reply. The few arguments I did read fairly carefully in Balko's piece were shit. Or, at least, there wasn't enough to them to tell whether there might be something to them, if you get my meaning.

   It's hard to believe what a haphazard, unfair, irrational process a trial can be unless you've been through one. Someone very close to me was, and I was part of it. He was found innocent--the correct verdict--but only as a result of what was basically several accidents, misunderstandings, coin-tosses, and bits of luck. His lawyer turned out to be virtually incompetent, despite having come highly recommended. The police lied, didn't do their jobs (e.g. didn't interview the only independent witness (who then died before the accused even had a real (though incompetent) lawyer), then the cop basically admitted that he lied (i.e. that he had said that the accused said something that he really didn't remember him saying)... It was basically the opposite of what you're led to believe by the teevee...

   I watched part of the Chauvin trial, but not much of it. But what I saw was enough to convince me that justice wasn't necessarily being done. And, as I've said before, the mere fact that there was no change of venue was enough to make me conclude the trial wasn't fair. The courthouse was surrounded by an angry mob...a cityfull of angry mobs...and everyone knew what was going to happen if the jury returned a not guilty verdict... (Not to mention the BLM sympathizers on the jury...)

Anyway.

I have a few quibbles with Hughes's essay, but he's way more in the right than Balko.

Ten Taboo Topics Dividing Psychologists

Some smart people among the authors.

link

The most taboo conclusions in psychology?:

1. “The tendency to engage in sexually coercive behavior likely evolved because it conferred some evolutionary advantages on men who engaged in such behavior.”
2. “Gender biases are not the most important drivers of the under-representation of women in STEM fields.”
3. “Academia discriminates against Black people (e.g., in hiring, promotion, grants, invitations to participate in colloquia/symposia).”
4. “Biological sex is binary for the vast majority of people.”
5. “The social sciences (in the United States) discriminate against conservatives (e.g., in hiring, promotion, grants, invitations to participate in colloquia/symposia).”
6. “Racial biases are not the most important drivers of higher crime rates among Black Americans relative to White Americans.”
7. “Men and women have different psychological characteristics because of evolution.”
8. “Genetic differences explain non-trivial (10% or more) variance in race differences in intelligence test scores.”
9. “Transgender identity is sometimes the product of social influence.”
10. “Demographic diversity (race, gender) in the workplace often leads to worse performance.”

All of these except for 3 are, IMO, very likely to be true. 3 is false, in my experience. But it could be true,...and I am going on my rather limited experience there. It would certainly be weird if all the pressure and all the mechanisms that have been set up with respect to hiring and promotion didn't at least even things out...but, again: possible.

   Well, 10 could be false. I'd have just guessed that it had little effect. As the term "diversity" is used currently, there's no reason to think it will lead to better performance with respect to most tasks...but I didn't think it would lead to worse performance. Haven't read the paper, though, and don't know what 'often' comes to here.

Ed Kilgore: Trump's Conviction Shows There's No 2024 Game-Changer Coming

Eh, he kinda really only seems to think this should be accepted as a "rebuttable presumption." Whatever that means.

link

But this seems pretty clearly wrong to me, FWIW:

[1] The conviction may already be a "game-changer," for all we know. I'd think it'd take some time for its effect to show up in the polls--most people really aren't even paying attention. Also, the Dems have apparently decided to repeat the "convicted felon" mantra ad nauseam--and that could work. And we don't know what sentencing would be like. You'd think that Merchan wouldn't risk another bit partisan move...but that's just a hunch. He might well sentence Trump to the hoosgow, or house arrest, taking him off the campaign trail.

Anyway: I'm not one of those people who think it's going to help him...nor that it'll have no effect...

[2] And, of course, that's the thing about most "game-changers": you don't see them coming. Trump's a loose cannon, in case you haven't noticed, and God knows what he'll say or do next.

[3] And there are all sorts of possibilities that could "change the game" in the other direction: Biden getting visibly worse--being incoherent in a debate, falling down, whatever. Something new coming out in the Hunter trial. God knows.

Anyway, I kinda doubt Kilgore is all that serious about this "rebuttable presumption." Seems like kind of a throw-away post.

Another Poll Has Trump and Biden Tied in the OD

A Fox poll, so

I mean, I assume Fox polling leans red, but I've never really paid any attention to it.

Also it's on the heels of that Roanoke College poll.

Thomas C. Stewart: The Day I Went Head-to-Head With Donald Trump

I'd like to believe this--that Trump is a smart, knowledgeable, tough negotiator... 

It's certainly consistent with some things we have good reason to believe--e.g. his business success and some video we have e.g. of him speaking to NATO. 

But it also seems at odds with a lot of things we know--e.g. that he's an inarticulate bullshitter, and a log of smart people who have worked closely with him think he's an idiot.

Me, I think he's a smart doer, not a smart talker. 

But (a) being President also requires that you be a reasonably smart talker, and (b) his most serious defect, according to me, isn't is intelligence, but his temperament.

Shellenberger: Trump, the Democrats, and Breaking Democratic Norms

I basically agree.

Falcon 9 Lands for the 300th Time

(Via Instapundit)

Falcon 9 lands for the 300th time pic.twitter.com/syimP1jcxl

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 8, 2024

Joe Nocera on the Trump and Hunter Biden Trials: Collecting Scalps is Just What They Do

If this is true, it's even more appalling than the fact that it's what they did to Trump--because, according to Nocera, they do this to everybody.

Hunter Biden Laptop ROOSKIE DISINFORMATION Supercut

Absolutely worth watching.

They hamstring Trump with two years of bullshit about "Russian collusion"--with the media's...well...collusion...

When it all turns out to be bullshit, the left denies this and continues to spew the lies...as if their own investigation never happened.

When it turns out to actually be a Democrat dirty trick, this barely shows up in the media at all; to the extent that it does, Dems just avert their eyes.

When actual evidence of Biden wrongdoing appears, the media, in...well...collusion, again...with...well...I mean...I guess you could say deep state operatives...dismiss(es) it, without evidence, as "Russian disinformation"...

I'm no Trump fan, all things considered...but the Blue Team is playing us all...and mostly getting away with it.

D-Day+80 Years

I didn't post this yesterday because I really just couldn't think of anything to say.

This seems unbelievable.

I really have nothing else to say.

I can't really think about it being 80 years ago without getting a kind of vertigo...

Wikipedia is Leftist Bullshit

Wikipedia spends a hell of a lot more time on criticism of right-leaning political figures than left-leaning ones.

This is just one manifestation of its obvious, marked bias.

To figure out how much, we'd have to have a way of identifying comparable political figures on the right and on the left--or a way to identify, say, the top-100 right- and left-leaning figures, and then do word counts. I'd also bet lots of money that Wikipedia emphasizes refuting objections against lefty figures--not so for right-leaning ones.

Anyway.

Dan McLaughlin: "I'm A Lifelong Republican Outraged By This Sham Verdict--But I STILL Won't Vote For Trump"

Not much substance here, but the sentiment is reasonable, IMO.

Though, speaking for myself, I don't so much plan to vote for Trump, nor even against Biden, but for a Trump administration over a progressive Democrat administration. The latter--as we have seen--is and would be a disaster. Trump is unfit for the Presidency in my opinion. (Though: so is Biden.) But this emergency situation has made me downright coldblooded. Trump shouldn't be anywhere near the Oval Office...but putting him there is the only way to stop the slow-motion destruction of the nation by the Blue Team. This isn't about Trump anymore. This is only about the USA.

IMO

Excellent Read: Martin Gurri, "The Aristocrats Who Martyred Trump Are Not As Smart As They Think They Are"

I can't recommend this highly enough.

Stanley Kurtz: Politicization in K-12 and Student Walkouts

link

I say: Broad institutional neutrality has to be enforced in public schools and universities--and ought to be the policy at all such institutions.

Euphoric Recall: The Shameful Lawfare of Letitia James and Arthur Engoron

link

   Let's not allow Alvin Bragg's absurdly unjust case against (and conviction of) Trump make us forget Letitia James's absurdly unjust case against Trump.

   Beriaism now has to take its place alongside Orwellianism/Lysenkoism as a fundamental plank in the illiberal, irrationalist platform of the contemporary progressive left.

Taibbi: [The Trump Verdict is] "A Sham Case and Everyone Knows It"

link
   The more I read about it, the more disgusted I am.

   Taibbi cites this excellent post by Chris Bray.

   The long and the short of it [my summary, not a quote]:

Alvin Bragg and his assistant NYDAs began with the decision to "get" Trump. Bragg campaigned on it. Then they spent years combing through records to find something they thought they might be able to get him for. They finally came up with some candidates, but then couldn't figure out how to make a case that Trump was guilty for doing them. So they worked and worked and cooked and cooked, and brainstormed different ways to connect the dots...until they found some vaguely plausible stories they could tell that might convince a jury that he'd done something wrong...

Then, of course, they managed to get an anti-Trump, pro-Biden judge appointed to the case (not randomly chosen, as is the normal method of selection)...and then they kept part of the charges secret until closing arguments, so that, in a sense, even after his conviction, Trump can't be sure what he was convicted of... 
   So we're back where we always seem to end up (IMO): Trump still shouldn't be President...but the contemporary Progressive-elite-Democrat axis of evil is so very much worse that we are, IMO, left with little choice but to support the bad Orange Man...

Lysenkoism at the Lancet: Formerly Great Journal Adopts PC Gender Woo

facepalm

My God, it's like fallacies on parade...

How can the gatekeepers of medical science be this embarrassingly confused?

It's the same old stuff I've taken apart innumerable times. So I won't bother again.

Well...not right now, anyway...

Holly Mathnerd: How to Think About Trump

This is pretty much right on target IMO.

The biggest difference as of now seems to be: I do plan to vote, and do plan to vote for the Bad Orange Man. HM seems fairly likely not to vote, but would currently vote for BOM if she did.

We agree that it's a terrible choice and a terrible decision to have to make.

Trump Post-Verdict Fundraising Up To $52 Million

(1) Allegedly.

(2) Holy shit.

(3) Closed the funding gap (?)

Well, serves 'em right. The verdict is a joke, and it is just more confirmation of what lots of us are worried about: the totalitarian trajectory of the progressive left.

Elie Honig: "Prosecutors Got Trump--But They Also Contorted The Law"

Again, we now pretty much know what happened.

   The question is: will it be overturned? 

   I'm vaguely under the impression that the original verdict may get some kind of presumption--but what I actually know about all this is: exactly nothing.

Honig watched the whole trial--as, of course, did the jury. But, among the many weird and amazing things here, are:

(a) I would have thought that Trump would have to be tried and convicted on at least one of the three possible violations associated with NY election law section 17-152. That Bragg could basically stealth try a second case--on which the overall conviction depended--as a sidebar or subroutine without securing at least one separate conviction for any of the three alleged other violations...and that the jury did not have to specify nor agree on which of these alleged crimes Trump had committed...just seems absolutely crazy to me.

(b) The fact that Bragg so obviously set out to "get" Trump, ran on that platform, and then cobbled together this Rube Goldberg case seems like the sort of thing that should get a DA himself prosecuted.

(c)  The fact that he was basically permitted to keep part of the case against Trump secret until (just before) closing statements.

Anyway.

   Even if Trump had been found not guilty, it wouldn't have mattered to the Blue Team. Look what they did when Mueller found no evidence of Trumpian "collusion" with Russia:

Accused Mueller of also being a Russian asset, then said well, it wasn't exoneration...then cherry-picked certain parts of the Mueller report and (laughably) argued that those had in fact, proven "collusion," then went to the Senate report and argued that that had proven collusion... It is as if the Mueller investigation never happened. Before its conclusion was announced, it was the gold standard for such investigations. After it failed to produced the desired conclusion, it was memory-holed.

   They are never going to accept any contrary hypothesis with respect to Trump. He's an evilwhiteracist, a felon, a Russian asset...and anything else they can dream up. This is an axiom, not a conclusion.

   And this yet another plank in the totalitarian platform the left is building. Now they're channeling the spirit of Beria: shown a man, they find a crime.

   It's not all that easy to make yourselves worse than Trump--but the Blue Team asked us to hold its collective beer, rolled up its sleeves, and got the job done.

Turley: Bragg's Thrill Kill in Manhattan Could Prove Short-Lived on Appeal

This This is a pretty good summary of the picture that's emerged since the verdict.

Steven Calebresi: Trump's Manhattan Convictions are Unconstitutional

Man, this conviction is just getting shredded.

Liz Wolfe Torpedoes Libertarian Candidate Chase Oliver Re: "Trans" Mutilation of Children

Jacob Sullum: The Prosecution's Story About Trump Featured Several Logically Impossible Claims

link

Taibbi: Trump and 'Falsely'

IMO this is exactly right.

   The MSM--especially the NYT, WaPo, CNN, etc.--aren't that far from just stamping everything Trump says with FALSE or LIE...even perfectly plausible opinions well within the realm of reason--and assertions normally taken to be rather outside the realm of strict truth or falsehood.

  It's as if, on Opposite Earth, the conservative MSM stamped everything HRC said in an analogous way. My opponents are "a basket of deplorables"...FALSE! Clinton's opponents are not literally in a basket; human beings are seldom in baskets; no basket exists that is large enough to contain all Republicans...

Awesome Illegal Alien Tells the Truth About Illegal Immigration While Basically Standing on the Border

After he's here for a while he'll learn that you're not supposed to say this stuff:

NEW: A Turkish man who crossed into Jacumba, CA illegally w/ a group of other Turkish men told me he paid $10k to a cartel, & expressed shock at how easy it was to cross the U.S. border with no resistance, telling me Americans should be “worried” about security & who is crossing. pic.twitter.com/Qb1a9BiDuV

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) May 23, 2024

HRC Did the Same Thing Trump Did (But An Order of Magnitude Worse) and Got a Slap on the Wrist

Hey, don't forget--hell, I almost forgot--that Hillary did sort of the same thing Trump did...but a long metric shit-ton worse...and got a slap on the wrist--an $8k fine. 

   The Clinton Campaign actually produced a slurry of (a) pure political fabrication and (b) Roosky disinformation and used it to illicitly influence the election--and then to hamstring the Trump Presidency. This dirtiest political trick of 21st-century American politics was swept under the rug by the American media. Mark Elias was clearly guilty of making false statements about it to the FBI...but a partisan DC jury just plain let him off. (Again: it may not be possible for such trials to be fair in DC or NYC.)*

Incidentally: I couldn't remember how much Hillary was fined, so I--and I knew this was stupid when I did it--clicked on the Wikipedia link, thinking surely they can at least get this right.. 

shudder 

That shit is astonishingly dishonest. The entry on the Steele Dossier includes a long, irrelevant, single-source section rehearsing arguments by Philip Bump (lol) for the conclusion that teh Trumpz Towerz meeting wuz worst then teh Steel Dossier!!!111oneone...

But, then, it's my own fault. I knew better. Anything closer to contemporary leftist obsessions than Golgi bodies or the Battle of Cowpens...well...Wikipedia simply can't be trusted...

(I mean...I'd guess they do get the $8k figure right...somewhere...but I didn't have the patience to wade through the bullshit...)

* Hey, also don't forget: Trump crowds chanted "lock her up"...so that was just as bad as the "hush money" travesty of justice! Just the same! His crowds chanted it, but Trump made absolutely no move to do it...so...actually trying to lock Trump up...just the same!

Jeez, they've really lost it.