PA Good (Well...) News

I didn't notice that the latest PA poll is Trafalgar, and puts the Bad Orange Man up by 2...

So, y'know...yay?

RCP Betting Odds: Even Steven

Looks like all the other metrics have swung in Harris's favor. But RCP gives a rolling average on polls, so most of their poll averages are behind the curve.

Kamala Harris Is Some Kind of Idiot

OMG.

Honestly, I'm astonished.

I really had no idea how terrible she is.

She's so godawful that my elation at her terribleness flashed into being and then out again in about a second, to be replaced by vicarious embarrassment...which was then replaced by genuine fear that she might win.

I've only been able to watch bits and pieces of the interview because they are such extreme cringe that I end up turning them off.

I honestly think she may be more of a dumbass than Trump is.

And, I mean, there's actually a sane, reasonable Trump buried in there, and it comes out every now and then when he's not hamming it up for the crowd and the cameras. And, of course, his policies are generally much better.

But Jesus Christ...Harris might be a legit moron. How could this sliced-and-diced 15 minute interview (cut from like an hour or something, apparently), by one of her own propaganda organs, be this bad???

I'm honestly in quasi-shock about it.

Kamala's Scripted, Softball CNN Interview...With Walz There To Hold Her Hand

That's an embarrassment even by the standards of American politics. What, six weeks now without actually talking to the press? The press that is completely in the pocket of the blue team, mind you...

And with Walz there to hold her hand, no less.

What the hell is going on?

Even I am amazed by this.

I listened to about 20 seconds of one of her answers and it was so painfully, cringely, stupid that I had to shut it off. I'll try again later...but right now I cannot listen to that shit.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm really starting to wonder whether she may actually be worse than Trump in this respect.

Ok, I heard part of the "What will you do on Day 1?" question. Stupid question, but completely standard. It's really a way of asking what your tippy top priority will be. There followed some verbal meandering about the middle class that was just...plain...dumb.

She had six weeks at the least to prepare for this interview! Fifty bucks says they gave her the questions ahead of time, too. And it was with CNN! They are little more than part of her Ministry of Propaganda!

What the hell?

Nicole Russell: "Trump is Losing a Winnable Election, and He Has No One to Blame but Himself"

Seems to me that this is all pretty much right.

   The guy just has no business being anywhere near the Oval Office. And the reasons for that are on parade almost every time he opens his damn mouth. Even someone like me who thinks that the current incarnation of the Democratic party is a clear and present danger to the nation, and who thinks that Trump actually did a good job up to his post-electoral-loss freakout...well, I'm not always sure I can actually vote for the guy. And believe me, I'd vote for just about anyone against the postpostmodern Orwellian progressive Democrat-Elite-Media Axis of Evil.

   Harris is awful. She has no policy positions on her website, she won't even really commit to policies, won't do interviews. She's running the Biden 2020 basement campaign--but worse. If elected, I expect she'd be even worse than Biden, even more of a rubber-stamp for the hard left agenda of the blue team. In fact, not just a rubber-stamp, but more of an active crusader for the deranged progressive-left worldview. We'll end up with more left-wing/DEI federal judges. And we'll likely end up with at least one more Sotomayor/KBJ-type Supreme. A Harris administration will do severe damage to the country.

   And yet...Trump.

   I hope I'm just being my normal election-year depressive-alarmist self. But this really does seem different. This election really does seem an awful lot like a Kobayashi Maru.

   Trump deserves to lose, and the Republicans deserve to lose for electing him. If the alternative were not such a horror show...if they were anything like the center-left Democrats of old, this would be an easy choice.

   Seems to me, anyway.

   Right now, anyway.

Dylan O'Donnell Retard River

 

"White Fragility" Author Robin DiAngelo Accused of Plagiarizing Nonwhite Scholars in Dissertation

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

But they were Asian, so it's probably ok by the lights of the left. 

THEY'RE WHITE-ADJACENT, BIGOT.

At least they weren't black!

Her degree is in education anyway, so...doesn't really count.

But here's the thing: you can spout idiotic bullshit for a decade...black is white...night is day...war is peace...men are women...and, of course, All whites are racist, America is made of racism, racism racism racism...and that's cool. You can even get tenure off that shit. And rich. But if you plagiarized any of it...you're cooked...

As you should be.

But...

Why does it take that?

Averting My Ears From Trump

I think it's very important to beat the Dems--my old party, as you may recall...

Sometimes--though not always--I think it's important enough to vote for Trump (again...)...

But sometimes, I hate to admit...I have to avert my ears from him in order to maintain my support. Or quasi-support. Or whatever it is for the guy.

Which is probably wrong.

I ought to face the fact that I maybe shouldn't support either of these moronic shitshows.

Then I remember how abjectly insane the Democrats have become, and I'm back where I started.

Trump is right about a lot. It's absurd to think he's Hitler, or evil, or doesn't care about America. Policy-wise, he's immensely better than the barking moonbats that have taken over the blue team. 

But he's just so goddamned Trumpy...

And what's up with this flag-burning shit?

That's protected expression, dude.

Not the most obvious case, certainly.

But that's the way it is.

So shut up about it.

RCP Betting Odds: Harris 50.3; Trump 48.2

link

"Kamala Harris and the New Politics of Joy"

facepalm

Democrats = Disney

The Cobra's Hood: My Half-Assed Hypothesis

As we all know, the mongoose is the most badass of all animals...only rivaled by the cheetah...and possibly the wolf/dog...

   Why does the cobra have a hood?

   Well, knowing absolutely nothing whatsoever about herpetology, my view is: to help prevent the mongoose from getting purchase on the back of its neck.

   This has been a mongoose moment from Philosoraptor....

Shanahan/Kennedy Disagreement. Operation Warp Speed: Trump Has Nothing To Apologize For

I seem to be in a distinct minority in thinking that Trump handled COVID pretty damn well. I didn't realize that the vax was only part of Operation Warp Speed. Trump's biggest mistakes--including of course the crowning error, the lockdown--were responses to the shrieking and pressure from the medical establishment--as represented by Fauci--and the progressive left. For once he compromised--but in that case it was a mistake. As I wrote at the time, we should have followed Trump's hunch about reopening at Easter. (Of course we should have implemented the advice of the Great Barrington Declaration...as I also wrote at the time.)

   In response to shrieking by Andrew Cuomo and the progressive left, Trump sent two hospital ships to NYC...I'm not sure either ever saw a patient. In response to their shrieking about ventilators, Trump (with Kushner as the point man) invoked the Defense Production Act, and set up a system to transfer ventilators immediately upon changes in local demand. All admirably in accordance with Federalism as well. The progressive myth that Trump somehow botched COVID--by not completely conceding to hysteria--is, well, a myth. His error was to give in too much. And, don't forget, when he did float the idea of travel bans early on, the left--as it always does in every case--shrieked racism...

   Then there was the burning issue of 'China virus'... REEEEEEE! MORE RAZIZMZ!!!!111

   The left really has lost its damn mind.

   Anyway, as for the vax: I'm the very farthest thing from an expert. Obviously. But, FWIW (not much) I incline to agree with Kevin Roche, the Healthy Skeptic: the vax is not as good as the left claims, nor (nearly) as bad as the right claims. It's pretty good, and, if you're old or otherwise not-exactly-healthy, getting it is a good idea. It's not a miracle cure...but it's not going to do any of the crazy shit to you that the right says it will. Contra Biden, it does not "stop transmission cold." But it will not, for example, put tiny magnetic aliens into your bloodstream... The wingnuts really have gone off the deep end about it. They think that reading a few anonymous, hysterical blog posts puts them in a better position to assess the risks of the vax than the FDA's VAERS. FDA has no idea what's going on!!!...but REDNECKPATRIOT1776 is all over that shit!

   Anyway, uh...what's going on with Shanahan? I have no idea.

RFK Jr. Suspends Campaign, Endorses Trump

Holy crap, it really happened.

RCP Betting Odds: Trump, Harris Tied at 49.2

This seems ok(?)

I'd guess we're at the height of the manufactured Kamalamania...so should expect it to subside.

Uh, right?

Well, of course, nobody knows.

So I should just wait and see.

I remind myself often that the other option is Trump...so...how much worse can she really be?

But then I fear that the answer is:  well, when you take into account her likely impact on the courts, including especially SCOTUS: lots.

Trump's appointments have, I'd say, largely been responsible for shielding us from the full force of the tidal wave of Woketarian madness. [Side-eye at Gorsuch...though his deviations have been principled, IMO.]

Anyway.

I guess we now all wait to see what RFKjr does?

Everything is Global Warming: Rich Dude's "Superyacht" Sinks--GLOBAL WARMING!!!!111

See now, I was going to go with white supremacy or transmisogynoir...

CNN's front-page headline:

A superyacht’s sinking in a hot spot for the ultra-wealthy is a sign of things to come, scientists say

Significantly toned down after the fold to:

This superyacht hot spot for the uber-wealthy is heating up — and becoming more dangerous.

Queer Nukes for Peace

Two major problems of the left are:

[1] An obsession with stupid ideas about race, sex (now: "gender"), sexual preference and related categories of "identity" (note: a stupid and inaccurate term).

[2] An obsession with extending the stupid ideas in [1] to all other areas of human life (and even beyond).

These twin stupidities have infected the humanities and soft social sciences since at least the '80s--and probably earlier. Now the twin stupidities have infected the rest of culture, too.

   [2] depends on or is at least bound up with:

[3] A literary style of reasoning that eschews actual analytical thought in favor of a kind of free-form, poetic reinterpretation of everything to bring it all under the umbrella of [1]

[1]-[3] are basically why college is now prone to making you stupider rather than smarter. The relatively more center left does not criticize its left wing, so such folk were led to argue, for years, that...somehow...miraculously...what people learn in college has no effect on their thinking. Colleges have no effect on "the real world." The bottleneck through which all of our "elites" pass leaves no imprint on them. Don't worry about the Orwellian madness on campus! It can't get out...

   So now government reports on nuclear weapons are as absurd as academic papers published in gender studies, lit-crit, and communications journals. The template is: find some topic and then make up some shit showing how it's all about race or "gender" or being gay. Or else, as in this case, how being gay (etc.) is better.

   Thing is about these idiots: you never know what they're going to say, and you always know what they're going to say. Their arguments are the utterest horseshit. It's the prose equivalent of free jazz so free that it's lost any claim to being musical. But you always know it'll be about everything being gay, or whites being bad, or some such thing. The endpoints are fixed by leftist politics. And they'll say absolutely anything to get to one of those endpoints. Or, rather, to give the thin, wispy appearance of having gotten there in some sense other than mere assumption.

Nicholai G. Wenzel: More Money Can't Solve Poverty

Seems plausible to me, but what do I know?

George Will: "Abracadabra! It's the Dueling Harris and Trump Economic Magic Acts

Seems about right to me.

Betting Odds: Trump Re-takes the Lead at RCP

Yay?

Is Kamala an Alcoholic?

Um...I didn't believe it at first...but...it's...kinda starting to look that way...

More than kinda, actually.

This is the sort of thing I normally immediately dismiss as crazy talk...

...but damn...

Check out the multiple videos under the initial tweet.

Throughout Kamala Harris's political career her biggest weakness was her sobriety according to those closest to her. In her first run for the presidency donors were especially reluctant to fund her campaign forcing her out of the race. According to various reports, Obama did NOT… pic.twitter.com/zzT3mVIW5N

— @amuse (@amuse) August 18, 2024

RCP Betting Odds: Harris 51.7, Trump 47.1

Extremely concerning...though (a) she's probably still getting a bounce, (b) she's got to talk policy at some point, and (c) Trump's support tends to be underestimated.

But a 51.7% chance of running the country into a ditch is far, far, far too high for comfort. 

OTOH, a 47.1% chance of Trump is no picnic either...

Michael Goodwin: The Liberal Media Will Do Anything To Get Harris Elected--Including Not Questioning Her

Yes.

Even if you think she should win, you've got to be concerned about the fact that the press has turned into the Democrat propaganda machine.

Lee Siegel: Why Lefty Journalists Think They Need to be Heroes

link

Borderlands

So bad I didn't even make it through the trailer.

Walz Did Not "Misspeak" About "Weapons of War"

No, this is bullshit.

I'm pretty annoyed at both sides in the Who's worse? battle between the Forces of Vance and the Forces of Walz...

Answer: Walz is worse. Incidentally.

I keed. 

Sort of.

But:

In this quote, Walz goes too far out of his rhetorical way to make it plausible that he misspoke:

"We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at."

He goes out of his way to insert "...that I carried in war..." That is not misspeaking. That is lying.

And he's got a clear reason to do so: to try to establish some extra authority about M4/AR-15-type rifles. I mean, we've all (or, well, most/many of us, anyway) got experience handling them. So he gets little cred beyond that of the average American firearm enthusiast. So he adds that he "carried them in war."

   How bad is this? Meh. Medium? I mean, he already seems to be lying / stretching the truth about his service record. And I guess this is of a piece with that. I dunno.

PC Watch: "Mpox"

Right, so the shift from "Monkey pox" to "Mpox" is at the very least PC-"adjacent" as our PC friends might say...

But isn't it really the 'pox' part that's bad? I mean...monkeys are cute little cousins...

It's pox that's gross.

Why not get rid of it?

Why not "Monkey spots"?

or "Monkey freckles"?

Something like that?

You might reply that they really are pox and there's no getting around that fact.

But may I remind you that "trans women are women"?

If you can get around the penis and the Y chromosome, you can get around the pox part...

We just basically get to call things whatever we want now--so why not take advantage of it?

Welcome to the Crazy Time

Everybody is so fucking crazy right now.

Twitter is mutual tweetstorm between the two sides, with each madly cherry-picking things the other said and putting the worst possible interpretation/spin...spinterpretation!...on them.

The lefties do this routinely--it's basically the central intellectual orientation of their movement... The righties aren't as routinely deranged about, nor as relentless...but they're fully capable of...sinking to the occasion.

I've recently been reading biographies of the early Presidents, up to Madison now. Now--with the possible exception of Washington, those guys were not perfect... But for the love of God what has happened to us??????? Do we actually have to choose between (a) a con man / reality tv host and (b) a deranged cult of child-castrators?

Somebody promise to put me out of my misery if either of them wins...

The Truth About Tim Walz's Military Service?

This is a plausible explanation of how what he did could be both (a) slimy and (b) legal.

It's Not So Much the Mean Tweets as the Crazy Ones

This is not exactly the sort of thing a rational person says...much less broadcasts on the internet to the entire nation:

RCP Betting Odds Flip: Harris 50.7; Trump 48

link

The GOP is Still the Stupid Party: Tim Walz / Military Service Edition

Among the many ways in which the Republicans are stupid and crazy:

At the first hint of scandal around one of their opponents, they completely lose their shit and start flinging wild accusations...

...making themselves look stupid and crazy...

...by being stupid and crazy...

   Look, I don't believe that Walz just somehow up and quit the National Guard on the spur of the moment because he didn't want to go to Iraq. This is called "going AWOL," and we have a whole prison set aside for that sort of thing in Kansas...

   The situation is complicated, and there are plausible arguments that what he did was in some way not kosher. But you jackasses can't wait two days to figure out the details? You have to immediately lose it and turn what seem like legitimate concerns into utterly implausible accusations? Seriously, this is a question that can be clarified and figured out. Flinging nutty accusations then just works against you when they are debunked. 

   Why not just--temporarily at least--stick with legitimate, provable criticisms like He let Minneapolis burn and He put tampons in boys' restrooms? 

Harsanyi: "Kamala Media Blackout Would Be Amazing If She Weren't Running For President"

Ha, agreed.

   The MSM is basically a Democrat propaganda operation. Perhaps you think this is a good thing--but you need, at least, to admit that it's true. They've gone after Trump for nearly ten years now--and I'm not thinking of the legitimate criticisms, but just the blue-team hit jobs. They ran interference for Biden during his basement campaign of 2020. They covered up his cognitive decline...then turned on a dime and shredded him when it became clear that the swindle was not working, and that he was going to lose. Then they turned on another dime and became part of the nauseating Kamala marketing campaign. Most recently, of course, they've been singing the praises of Walz--the most recent Greatest American Of All Time...

   Hirsanyi:

The Democrats’ new presidential candidate, who’s never won a single primary vote, might have been crowned but hasn’t given a real interview or even an extemporaneous political statement since Democrat bigwigs pushed Biden aside. In a functioning liberal republic, this would be pretty big news.
The last time the vice president of the United States had a press conference was December 2023. The last time sat down with any media was June 24, when she was interviewed by the sycophants on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Before that was the “Momala” Harris interview with Drew Barrymore, which might be the most cringe-worthy display of fawning in recorded history.
“What is the incentive for her [to take more questions]?” a person close to Harris’ campaign told Politico recently. “She’s getting out exactly the message she wants to get out.”
Indeed, it’s quite the paradox. The media continue to baby Kamala and get her message out to the public, so Kamala doesn’t feel the least bit of urgency in clarifying her record.
If they were so inclined, the naval-gazing media could probably get Kamala out of her shell by doing some honest, deep dives into her history and positions. If her lack of transparency were a daily top-of-the-fold story she would be compelled to speak.
Say what you will about Donald Trump, but he’s done scores of interviews and pressers over the past few months, many of them with antagonistic venues — including taking questions at the National Association of Black Journalists convention just weeks after surviving an assassination attempt.
Kamala hasn’t spoken to a hostile outlet in years. She won’t even take questions from her fans.
Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, is compelled to answer questions about a throwaway comment he made on a podcast before he was even in the Senate. Kamala just sends her minions to walk back major policy positions that would fundamentally affect every American. She staked out these radical positions only a few years earlier while running for the same office. Kamala isn’t triangulating her views for a general election, she is effectively negating an entire political history through press releases.
Kamala, for instance, says she no longer supports banning all air travel, meat, and combustible engines. That’s nice. Kamala says she no longer believes in decriminalizing illegal border crossings. Good. The media treat her new claims as indisputable. No questions asked. No explanations given.
Is Kamala still going to try to ban semiauto rifles through an executive order? Does she believe all Americans should “end up in the same place” no matter how hard they work? Does she support defunding the police? We have no clue. [My emphases]

[1] Kamala Harris's Candidacy is Flushing Out Racists and Sexists; OTOH: [2] the "DEI Candidate" Biz

   I'm just talking about comments on boards, not actual posts. And I'm not going to link to 'em.
   But they're there.

   I'm so used to the loud, proud declarations  of antiwhite racism on the left...and the nonstop barrage of false accusations of racism, sexism, and the rest of the Standard Litany of -isms and -phobias...that I almost forget that there really is actual racism etc. out there. I mean, you get tenure at Harvard for making pseudo-scholarly false accusations of racism...that shit is right out there in the open. They're proud of it. It's a principle. There's no avoiding it... Ditto sexism against men...and, increasingly, sexism against women by men dressed as women...

   But racism and sexism on the right are generally shouted or laughed down--or at least openly frowned upon and ridiculed until they slink away.

...usually...

   They just simply won't fly places like r/conservative comments. 

   But at e.g. Instapundit comments, that shit came out hard when Harris got the nod. Honestly, I was shocked. Normally commenters there are much more relaxed about race and sex. They'll say true things about them that could never be said on left-leaning boards. They're more relaxed with jokes and biting comments--but it generally doesn't go beyond that. But, anyway--that's changed. 

   And I don't particularly like points like this, but:  why? There are a hundred things you can criticize her for. Why go there?

OTOH, contra the lefties: calling Harris a "DEI candidate" isn't racist or sexist. She is a DEI candidate. Biden announced ahead of time that he'd choose a VP on the basis of sex and race. That's just about the definition of a DEI candidate...

   That doesn't mean she isn't qualified--it means that she was chosen (at least largely) for reasons other than merit.

   More to the point: it isn't (necessarily) racist to say that Harris is a DEI candidate. She is a DEI candidate. 

   And, of course, the point the left has frantically tried to erase from human thought: it depends on why you call her one. If you call Harris a DEI candidate because she is a DEI candidate, that's not racist. If you call her one because you dislike non-Caucasians, then, yeah. That's racist.

   See how that works?

   The most recent alleged research I've seen on this said that DEI hires aren't generally unqualified; but they do tend to be less qualified. Which...is an entirely predictable consequence of using hiring/admissions criteria other than pure merit.

   Anyway, I've noticed the above inconsistency among leftists at my own institution; their position is:

[a] DEI must be wielded with a heavy hand; it must be a major part of any hiring decision.

[b] No one has ever actually been hired because of DEI.

At any rate: being a DEI hire doesn't mean you're unqualified--and it doesn't even guarantee that you're less qualified. But it isn't the greatest sign. 

   Now, I do think that Harris is poorly-qualified and largely unaccomplished. She is, IMO, a terrible choice. If not for her preferred demographics, she wouldn't be in the running at all. She is certainly, undoubtedly, beyond any shadow of a doubt, not the best candidate the Dems could run.

   But most of those things could be said of Donald Trump.

   He's maybe something like the 10,000th most qualified candidate the Pubs could put forward. (Well...I'm actually not sure that's true... I think it's complicated. But I don't think 10,000th is a crazy guess.)

   Anyway.

   The Dems are way, way committed to DEI. They really have no grounds to squawk about it when people basically point out that that's what's going on in some particular case.

   Their position about this is also inconsistent. They not only demand that people be hired for DEI reasons rather than merit, they have adopted principles that say (a) there is no such thing as merit, (b) merit is a racist concept, and (c) no one is ever really hired on the basis of merit...but also, somehow: (d) you are not permitted to say that anyone is hired because of DEI, because (e) that means/entails/suggests that they were not hired on the basis of merit....

   Leftoids at my university officially had an already-passed faculty resolution retconned to remove a reference to (basically) DEI hires. They opted for saying something about how this made members of Preferred Demographics feel icky because somebody else might think they weren't hired on the basis of merit...

   Rhetorically, that's a smart move. But, of course, it's bullshit.

Tim Walz: "No Guarantee of Free Speech on Disinformation or Hate Speech"

Bullshit.

Apparently this jackass doesn't understand anything about First Amendment law.

This is the totalitarian left's new favorite attack on free speech.

Of course everything they disagree with is either "disinformation" or "hate speech" or both...

Tim Walz: “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech and especially around our democracy” pic.twitter.com/4pNBwb8Su7

— Matt Wolking (@MattWolking) August 7, 2024

Harris Picks Tim Walz for VP

1. I don't really know anything about him.

2. What little I know I really dislike. He seems like a thermonuclear woketard.

3. Shapiro really concerned me. Ditto Kelly. On the face of it, Walz is less likely to help the Dems win, but he seems to make it more of a disaster if they do.

Kamala on your 401k

via Insty:

Your 401k is getting unburdened from what has been.

— Real Developments, CFA (@pdubdev) August 5, 2024

B. Bee: Kamala Harris Become First Black Woman to Destroy the World Economy

LOL

Stock Market

Well that's just great.

I wish my knowledge of the stock market extended beyond up good down bad...

Harris and the First Amendment

She's just a contemporary progressive Democrat.

Which means: a soft totalitarian.

With dreams of hardness...

Bad Jobs Report + Shenanigans?

Wow.

And BLS always seems to adjust down later.

Bad report on its own.

I've wondered whether we were really adding any jobs or just regaining--if that's even a distinction economists care about.

Anyway.

Honestly, I could stand some bad news if it will lower the likelihood of the Dems winning in November.

I'm not proud of that...

Turley: "Leave Neutrality Behind: UT-Austin Embraces Advocacy Journalism"

The arguments these people use are idiotic.

They basically come down to:

Perfect objectivity is impossible

Therefore:

It's permissible for us to be as biased as we like.

This is a consequence of the totalitarian tendencies of the left. Forget about the facts: our ultimate aim is to push our politics--aka "social justice"... All other human aims must be subordinated to that goal. The aim of journalism isn't truth, it's advancing leftist politics. Ditto teaching.The aim of medicine is not promoting the health of the patient, but advancing leftist politics. The aim of science and scholarship isn't understanding the world, but advancing leftist politics. And that means: the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Does advancing leftist politics require lying? Of course it does--leftist political commitments are mostly at odds with reality. When reality and leftist political commitments conflict, as they usually do, it is reality that must yield. That's political correctness...

Most of us recognize truth and objectivity as goals/values, and, at least in a cool hour, we recognize that we err when we violate these commitments. Only the radical left is unconstrained by these goals--they don't (officially, anyway) recognize deviation from them as error. 

This is a kind of madness.

Carville on the Progressive Left: They're "Dead-Ass Wrong"

I've always liked Carville, despite the fact that he's a professional bullshitter. 

He's exactly right about the left:

Understand this, and I’m going to say this as clearly as I can: Anybody that has ever listened to anything that the progressive left has ever said has lived to profoundly regret it. Literally on every issue, they’re dead-a[ss] wrong,
And why is the border an issue? Because Biden listened to these people early in his term. They weren’t just wrong; they were catastrophically wrong. ...These people are not just wrong — they’re literally walking catastrophes. And the faster people realize that, the better off they’re going to be. And they don’t have very much power.

As for the last sentence, I guess he means: the Democrats could stand up to them if they wanted to...

They just apparently haven't wanted to. 

Olympic Boxing: Transanity?

I don't know what's going on, but I read that the alleged males boxing in the female division are actually intersexed. That's a very different matter than transanity. There are a bunch of different disorders of sexual development, and, apparently, there are at least some genuine borderline cases--borderline, that is, between male and female. One story about what's going on is that one of the boxers seems anatomically female, but has XY chromosomes, and perhaps didn't even realize this until fairly late in life. That doesn't necessarily mean that person should be allowed to box in the women's division...just, again, that this may not be mere transanity.

   Anyway, trans woo is bullshit, and I have no patience for it whatsoever. But it's apparently not clear that that's what's going on here.

70% of College Students Say "Speech Can Be as Damaging as Physical Violence"

Ok, I haven't looked at the actual survey, just this from Reason.

   The claim at the center of this dispute is poorly-articulated:

[S] Speech can be as damaging as physical violence.

So stated, I'd guess that [S] is true. Brainwashing (using only words) and indoctrination are probably more damaging than, say, a paper cut. Well, maybe not a paper cut...but a stubbed toe or something. I know you have to get to the point fast in surveys. Spend more than a few seconds explaining the question and the subject will probably bail. But I'll bet at least a few subjects were thinking something in the vicinity of [S].

   Champions of free speech don't have to reject [S]. [S] really isn't the claim at issue. The problem is that the left exaggerates the psychological discomfort some people experience from hearing certain kinds of speech, and conflates discomfort with psychological harm--and it does these things specifically in order to argue that those kinds of speech must be banned or otherwise controlled in order to avoid this discomfort.

   So we don't have to deny [S]. We should rather deny that discomfort resulting from intellectual disagreement is best characterized as psychological harm or "damage," and/or that the severity of the "harm"/"damage" is sufficient to permit the institution to regulate such speech. Even if some extreme examples of psychological distress caused by words can outweigh some trivial physical harms, that in no way means that you get to tell people that they can't discuss controversial topics, that they have to comply with nonstandard pronoun requests, that they can't wear MAGA hats, etc.

   That's pretty quick, but you get the idea.

White Woke Women for Harris: The Zoomening

TikTok Influencer For Kamala Harris: "As White Women, We Need To Use Our Privilege To Make Positive Change"

More -- https://t.co/M4oDo0Opap

"Being an ally means being willing to be uncomfortable. No one is more uncomfy than someone talking to their bigoted family members." pic.twitter.com/k1Kn6OGWAE

— RCP Video (@rcpvideo) July 29, 2024

RCP Betting Odds: Trump 49.7; Harris 44.4

Even worse than Silver's.

Silver: Election Now (Technically) a Toss-Up

Not good news in my current opinion...

Not that now is a representative time to be polling...but still...it seems to have gone from lead-pipe cinch to anybody's ballgame like flipping a switch.

Silver says odds now are:

Trump: 54.9%

Harris: 44.6%

He defines a toss-up as any case in which both candidates have a 40% or better chance of winning.

   On the bright side, I have so many reservations about Trump that I'm semi-ok with him losing...even though that will mean four more years of devastating Democrat administrative rule...and probably some SCOTUS pickups. Ugh. Also I really don't see the Dems coming to their senses without a big electoral loss to slap some sense into them. But that's pretty speculative.

Kamala(tm) Brand Multicultural Flavor Emergency Candidate Substitute: The Ad Campaign

I've gotten pretty good at distinguishing signal from noise in the mainstream news. Not great, but pretty good. But the MSM has turned up the propagandometer to 11 and hit BLAST. Phony Kamalamania is at deafening, mind-liquifying levels. Some polls seem to show that some of it is real--or quasi-real, in that it's catching on. It's astroturf...but astroturf is ideal from the perspective of the Dems. That's the way they like it. 

   Well, that's probably not a fair comment.

   I'm sure both parties would like to be able to turn excitement levels in their base on and off with a central switch...

   But, God, this marketing campaign is so nauseating.

   Trump, for all his myriad flaws, is succeeding (to whatever extent he is actually succeeding) despite not only relentless negative media spin, but outright lies. It's the Two Minutes Hate...but...y'know...eight years worth. 

   However bad he is, at least he is fighting against the empire of madness and lies. Even if he's kind of a dumbass about it.

   I really wish we had DeSantis-Youngkin. Or DeSantis-Gabbard. Or Youngkin-Vivek. Or Rubio-Vance...or, y'know, just about any other ticket.

   But you go to war with the general you have, not the general you want.

   The Dems are just way, way better at this stuff. And they outgun the Pubs to an absurd degree. We don't know what's going on yet, really: they've taken the smoldering embers of the Biden campaign and blasted it with a marketing flamethrower. "Look it's burning!!! White-hot Kamala-brand excitement!!!" Can they sustain this? Will it catch on? Well, early polls seem to say that it is-kinda. 

   Sure, her campaign slogan is basically I'm A Not-White Leftist Woman And Not Trump!...but, for the contemporary Democrat party, that may well be enough.

   And, c'mon...even if we do end up with the worse outcome...bad as that would be for the country...at least we'd be shed of Trump to some degree. F*cking dude is just exhausting...