"Athena SWAN": Pure Retardium

facepalm

They really do have a knack for cringe.

Coulter: Trump's Right to Send the Guard and the Marines to LA

link

Yoo and Delahunty: Trump Should Win His Court Battle with Newsome Over Riot Response

I'm torn about this.

Prima facie, Trump seems right.

But I'm not sure it's legal and I'm not all that sure it's prudent.

But Yoo and Delahunty make a pretty strong case--or so it seems to the non-expert...or at least to a non-expert...

John Spencer, Jerusalem Post: Israel Needs an MOP from the U.S. [But Does it Need the B-2 to Drop One?]

link

But wouldn't it need a B-2 to drop it?

I asks myself: "self," I asks, "could a C-130 (or maybe a C-17 or a C-5) drop one-a them mofos? Paletize that sumbitch and just...bombs away! Then the Israelis could do it all themselves and we wouldn't have to get our hands dirty... It's whatcha call plausible deniability..."

"Sorry, Ayatollah, we got no Earthly idea where the IAF got that sucker. Coulda been from anywhere..."

Anyhoo, then I answers myself: "self," I answers, "I have no damn idea"...

Then I asks Google (well, Bing) the same thing...and it looks like the answer may be in the affirmative...

The Editors: Good Supreme Court Sense on "Trans" Hormones

link

SCOTUS Upholds TN Ban on "Transgender" Sexual Mutilation of Children

link

Conservatives love to bash Cocaine Mitch...but he should go down in history for preventing Obama from replacing Scalia with a progressive. Trump 45 deserves major kudos too, obviously.

   The insane thing is that this is even an issue.

Trump's Big, Fat Mouth...and Iran

Jesus, why can he not control his mouth?

Suggesting that Israel is going to nuke Tehran

Threatening Khamenei

"Unconditional surrender"????

Trump: the fatigue is real.

NRO: The U.S. Should Destroy Fordow--But Only If Israel Can't

This seems right to me.

This is not another Iraq/WMD situation.

Gotta stop always fighting the last war.

The Crapification of Academic Philosophy: New "Being 'Trans' in Philosophy" "Zine"

facepalm

Thanks, I guess, to the Mystic for sending me this.

The most ridiculous idea of the last 100 years has its hooks firmly in academic philosophy. Proponents of the view advocate it loudly at every turn...saner heads tend to remain silent. This is a general aspect of the left's ideological capture of academia: leftist views are freely espoused...and the espousers are lauded. Opposition, even to the most outlandishly absurd leftists views, is discouraged and commonly punished in one way or another.

Note the number of comments, just for one thing.

Perhaps people have just stopped even trying.

Note that, among the pearls of wisdom from this "zine" (what is this, the 1970s?):

"Being trans is not a controversial idea. It is a lived reality."

See?

I hope this allays any bigoted doubts you might have had, bigot.

None of this is controversial!

Thus it has been decreed...

And here's an even more ridiculous bit of anti-philosophical sophistry:

Philosophical conversations about trans people do not happen in a vacuum. They happen in a political context where trans people are relentlessly attacked and a material context where trans lives are particularly vulnerable. These contexts make it impossible to "just ask questions" about trans people. And trans people and our loved ones are not okay -- in, with, and because of our discipline.

You see, if you claim pathetic victim status, others much accept any metaphysical claims you might make about yourself. Once the victim card has been played, rational discussion must cease...but not just that...rather, "trans" ideology must be accepted as if it were true.
   The left is totalitarian. Its dogmas must be injected into every other activity, and its goals trump any goals that activity might have had. Medicine can no longer aim primarily at healing...that aim must be subordinated to "social justice." Same with math. Same with piloting an aircraft. Dispassionate rational inquiry cannot be conducted so long as anyone claims oppression...

   Progressivism, if taken to its "logical" extreme, destroys everything in its path.

At The Nation: Abolishing ICE is the Bare Minimum

I don't know anything about the arrest of NYC Comptroller Brad Lander. I'm perfectly willing to believe that ICE was in the wrong. I just don't know the relevant facts and arguments.
However...

This post at the Nation is symptomatic of the radicalization of the progressive left. Abolishing ICE is the bare minimum remedy, according to the author.

Which is roughly equivalent to:

Abolishing our borders is the bare minimum remedy for one (allegedly) bad arrest.

Obviously that's utterly mad.

Even assuming that the arrest was unwarranted, the bare minimum is something more along the lines of: disciplining (perhaps firing) the offending agents, and making Lander whole (e.g. by, well, giving him some money). I'm not saying that's the optimal response. I'm saying, rather, that it is utterly daft to claim that abolishing ICE is the bare minimum reasonable response. No one but an extremely radical radical could possibly think that was true.

Kenin M. Spivak: SCOTUS Must Restore Sanity on Gender (via the Skrmetti Case)

100% agreed.

This "gender" madness is the most insane thing I've seen in American politics in my life.

Though I'm rather frustrated with both our major politico-cultural factions, there is just no way to reasonable argue that they are equally loony. The blue faction has gone completely off the rails. The red faction, for all its myriad flaws, is mainly just trying to walk back the illicit and irrational gains made by the blues over the course of the last decade. One side wants to sexually mutilate children on the basis of an incredible, fantastical, preposterous bit of Lysenkoist pseudoscience that originated and was incubated in the intellectually weakest and most highly-politicized sectors of academia. And, we should add: that almost no one had even heard of a decade ago.

   In the ten years since, no even vaguely plausible arguments have been offered in support of the view. Its authority, such as it is, rests almost entirely on shrieking, insistence, ad miseracordium arguments, ad hominems against its opponents, and the testimony of ideologically captured organizations like the APA. We are told, of course--as is the M.O. of the left--that trans ideology is beyond question, so cannot be questioned. It is so ironclad that only a bigot would even consider criticizing it. But this is, of course, absurd. Gender ideology is perhaps the least-likely-to-be-true and the most poorly supported major idea of the last century.

   The more prima facie implausible an idea is, the heavier the burden of proof its proponents much carry. But in the case of gender ideology/pseudoscience, we begin with a wildly-implausible, perhaps even logically inconsistent idea for which no even remotely sound arguments can be produced. If we've ever been warranted in rejecting an idea, we are warranted in rejecting this one.

Gerard Baker: The Uses and Abuses of Political Violence

I think Baker is extremely reasonable, and that this is mostly right.

Trump Officials Reverse Guidance Exempting Farms, Restaurants from Immigration Raids

Good.

   Theoretically, of course, this could cause economic harm. Well...actually, we should expect any such policies to cause some economic harm. The relevant question is: when all costs and benefits are taken into account, which policy is better?

   This question seems to me to be a bit like the tariff question. Some people want to focus purely on the immediate economic harm without asking about further implications or economic benefits. I'm (tentatively) on the side of those who say: I'm willing to pay more for food if it means cutting down on illegal immigration. You'd have to be a bit thick to think that we can take any such major action without any costs... (Similarly: I'm willing to pay more for gew-gaws from Amazon in order to not be dependent on China for defense-relevant technology and manufactured goods.)

   A lot of this does come down to the question: what are the harms of mass illegal immigration? Of course the left does not want to recognize any harms...

   Me, I'd be a lot less concerned if illegal immigration was more randomly distributed across home countries/regions--and regions of the USA. It's a huge problem, IMO, that we're getting such a mass of illegals (a) from the same basic region, (b) from the Third World (where skills are lesser and crime is higher), and (c) they tend to collect mainly in the same region of the country (the Southwest, obvs.). We already see the effects of this with the LA deportation riots--the Southwest United States is, more or less, being colonized by Latin America. It should be obvious why this is bad. If it isn't obvious, you should probably think more about it.

   Look, like basically everybody, I'm all for reasonable levels of legal immigration--that should go without saying. One reason to control the flow of immigration is to raise the odds of assimilation. Just basically transporting a mass of unassimilated immigrants to some area of the country is a blueprint for disaster. As conservatives like to say: import the Third World, become the Third World. This stands opposed to what conservatives know as "magic dirt theory:" as soon as people step foot into the U.S., they become full-blown 'Mericans. Progressives semi-believe that because they are blank slatists...though they also semi-believe that it would be better if U.S. culture were destroyed/transformed into something different...a multicultural utopia... As is so often the case, progressivism overall is in a kind of superposition of doxastic states: half This won't harm the country!, half: This country deserves to be destroyed! (Obviously the former prevails among more normal Democrats. The latter, though, is prominently represented in the vanguard of the left).

   This might all work out alright anyway. Europe's situation is worse because it's importing a less-assimilable, more hostile and alien mass of immigrants. We're basically importing a bunch of Catholics. I'm all for studying the problem and, say, increasing the number of legal immigrants if we find out for sure that we're not doing the kind of harm I fear. But, as for now, given what we currently know, we have to say no. We're gambling with the very existence and nature of the USA. And that's an extremely stupid thing to do.

   I think a lot of the disagreement between right and left comes down to this: the left is willing to gamble everything on its utopian daydreams. Conservatives are not.

Lott: As Deportations Rise, U.S. on Track for Lowest Murder Rate on Record

link

Ok, it's John Lott, so he's got an orientation. I generally find his stuff reasonable...but I also tend to find his conclusions congenial...so make of it what you will.

   My own argument here is this: look at world homicide rates by country:

Even if you just took a (large and) representative sample of the population from Latin America and moved it to the U.S., then, under certain reasonable assumptions (e.g. that the higher homicide rates in LA are not entirely the result of poor policing), our homicide and murder rates would go up.

   Of course we also have very good reason to believe that progressive tend to suppress information that indicates that illegal immigration raises crime rates. Trivially: we know that the left routinely conflates legal and illegal immigration in order to muddy the waters of this and similar issues.

   This is a pretty routine application of political correctness--progressives like illegal immigration, and are willing to (at least partially) subordinate the facts and evidence to that political preference.

   Not to suggest that PC itself is routine--it's an extremely radical and irrationalist position. But this is a routine application of that view.

The Great John Ellis: The Public Needs Campus Viewpoint Diversity

I think this is right.

(Terminological quibble: Dump the 'viewpoint "diversity" ' language--we want a clean break from the PC/woketarian madness. I tend to say: heterogeneity of opinion.)

   Basically, the second-worst thing in play is government management of what is taught and who is hired in academia.

   The worst thing in play is the destruction of the soul of the university by ideological capture.

The Ideological Capture of Universities: The Professoriate Leans Overwhelmingly Left

Nearly 1 Million Illegal Aliens Have Self-Deported Under Trump, Leading To Higher Wages

Big if true.

N. S. Lyons / Nathan Levine: "American Strong Gods: Trump and the End of the Long 20th Century"

I find a lot of this very interesting.

   A fair bit of it is too sweeping, hand-wavey and conservative for me...but I do think it's interesting and worth considering.

   The stuff about Hitler as secular Satan, and Hitler's second career is damn interesting, I say. 

   But I'm skeptical of such big, sweeping accounts. Lots of places it could go wrong, and I'm not strong enough in history to catch mistakes on that front.

   I'm embarrassed to say that I've never actually read Poppers The Open Society And Its Enemies... I've read parts of it, but not enough to know whether Lyons/Levine is right about Poppers general view of the "open society"...but it's big if true. I thought Soros was betraying the memory of Popper...but it may be that he's actually got him right. And that would certainly make a lot of sense--he actually knew him well... I've really only read Popper's philosophy of science. And the stuff in TOS about the paradox of tolerance.

Rita Panahi/Ami Horowitz: Don't Forget--What the Left Really Wants is to Burn It All Down

Behold, The Left: "LET MY PEOPLE GO / PLEASE DON'T KILL ME / REEEEEEEEEE" Edition

Note the seamless transition between (a) LARPing the civil-rights era and (b) shrieking an ad miseracordium roughly of the form Please don't make me accept the consequences of my brainless, anti-democratic actions.

   Progressivism is harder and harder to distinguish from mental illness.

   In fact, this sort of thing is a form of mass hysteria / mass sociogenic illness.

   Donald Trump is a king and we are all facists for supporting him...because he and we want to make some rather minimal gestures toward enforcing our ridiculously generous and loose immigration laws so as not to simply allow the world's most important nation to disintegrate. Progressives are paragons of virtue for engaging in terrorist rioting in service of open borders and the destruction of said nation.. One side is a group of rational adults, the other side is shrieking children, lunatics, morons and cultists who refuse to acknowledge the obvious consequences of open borders. There is really no reason to take these people seriously.

   We're not even disagreeing about whether to deport abuela who's been here 20 years...we're disagreeing about whether to deport newly-arrived violent, criminal illegal aliens...

WSJ: Israel's Nuclear Good Deed Against Iran

Basically agree.

Edward Luttwak: Why Israel Had No Choice

Kind of a mixed bag, but I tend to agree.

MN Assassinations

Sounds like the murderer is on the red team.

"No Kings" Roundup at Insty

My faves:

"Number of kings holding steady at zero"

and

(In response to the hysterical 74-year-old:) "I don't think we should make policy to placate elderly lunatics"

Also note people noting that the "no kings" nonsense was all old white people, whereas the parade attendees were younger and more (to use the left's absurd code-speak) "diverse."

Of course I don't care about such shit...but, by the left's own standards...

I do wish these people understood--even if they understood nothing else about it--that they're making it more difficult to be objective about Trump, more difficult to take such criticisms of him seriously. Dude really is kind of a wreck. But when his opponents are shrieking and gibbering nonstop, repeatedly failing to make a damn bit of sense...it shoves many of us farther over to his side. But I don't want to be on his side. I want to be objective. It's more complicated than this, but there's a sense in which the unhinged left is Trump's best ally.

Trump's Military Parade

We had other things to do last evening, but I did try to just check in on the birthday parade for the Army and Trump. I tried about four different channels, including NBC and even Sky News...every one was either bashing Trump in some way or other--the parade was too expensive, it was going to tear up the streets in DC, it was overly militaristic...lots of dark suggestions that somebody, not saying who, might be a dictator...one channel said that people in the Army and NoVa were afraid to criticize the idea...

   Look, I wasn't and ain't wild about that idea. I don't believe it'll actually cost $40 million--that was the high estimate that all the channels were going with--but seems to me that $20 million would be too much. Even ten.

   I mean, I don't really have or deserve much of a view on the matter. Having a parade for the Army's 250th b-day/anniversary...perfectly good idea. Pretending that the dollars are the only thing that matters here is sophistry--you can pull that move on most things. Fireworks on the 4th--wasteful! Christmas decorations on Main Street--bah, humbug! F-16s overflying the World Series--just wasted $$$, Jack! But the proper standard is the established one--we do sometimes spend money on such stuff. It's also a mistake to try to justify such things in terms of specious "benefits" like pumping up patriotism--that's not the point, either. Not everything is done for some payoff--unless you conceptualize payoff so broadly as to make any positive aspect or consequence of something a payoff--which produces a lost contrast problem.

   Anyway, nothing inherently wrong with such an event. However, I do think it runs contrary to the administration's emphasis on cutting waste. And, though I like hearing the cultists wail and caterwaul as much as the next red-blooded American boy, they're going to be wailing no matter what Trump does. By all means, go ahead and provoke them. But maybe do it on the cheap.

Philip Klein: Why Israel Needed to Act Now

Well, this seems righter to me than the Russo piece.

One advantage to us of having Israel as an ally--though there's clearly a lot more in it for them--is that they can act as our slightly sub rosa proxy in such cases.

Hey, mullah-dudes, don't blame us...we can't control those guys...they crazy!

Again, I don't really deserve an opinion on this, but my gut is with Israel.

Jude Russo: Iran is Not Our War

I have basically no idea what to think about this.

I'm perhaps irrationally well-disposed toward Israel. (Though I don't think they're such a good ally.) I was also convinced--though not immovably--at some point in the past that Iran simply can't be allowed to get the Bomb. But I remember only the most general of the reasons that swayed me in that direction.

Anyway, I just don't know really know what to think.

That Tulsi Gabbard Video

WTF????

Roundup of Saturday's Stupid Parades, Protests and Potlucks

   First, Trump's military parade / birthday celebration in D.C. on the 14th. Two birthdays, (a) the U.S. Army, (b) Trump. Only one of these deserves a parade...and I'll bet they'd be happy to skip it...especially if they could take that $50 million and buy something useful...like ten-ish Abrams tanks.

   Then there's the latest leftist shriekfest, they're calling "No Kings"...because an accurate name like "Wide-Open Borders, No Questions Asked" might lead to noticing.

   Why pick Bastille Day, one wonders?

   Well, it could be the parade thing...but the contemporary left really does have its taproot in the French Revolution...

   Of course they're leaving out the rest of the slogan, which appears in various forms, but most notably: No gods, no kings, no priests, no demons. It's an atheist/anarchist slogan. I'd hit this point hard if I were the Trump team.

   Then, showing that stupid slogans die hard, we have "DC Joy Day." Make sure to bring your famous vegan, gluten-free fauxvacado salad...

   Of all these, I'd most like to cancel the parade. I'm all for celebrating the Army's origin, but not to the tune of fifty million bucks.

   And as for a parade for Trump's birthday: facepalm.

   As for the lefties: they keep swinging for the fences, trying to have one big, nationwide rally that somehow turns the tide...as if that's what's really missing from their strategy. Gee, people will probably go along with eliminating borders and implementing world government and transing our kids and shit if we just put on enough pink pussy hats and shriek "free Palestine" some more...

Or, as the meme says:

WSJ Bullshit re: the Deportation Dust-up

WSJ's news division is pretty lefty, as is well known. See e.g. this story on ICE and the new wave of Mostly Peaceful Social Justice Riots for Peace and Justice.

RIP Australia: No Guns, No Machetes

One fight among eight "teens" (aka yoots) and the state of Victoria bans machetes.

When did the West lose its goddamn mind?

RACISM AND SEXISM COST DEMS THE 2024 ELECTION

LOL@TheNation

I mean...in a sense--a very different sense--they're right.

People are fed up with the racism and sexism of the left. But those are only two of many stupid things we're fed up with.

Harris lost because the left went insane and the Dems rocketed leftward, accepting every stupid-ass, extremist idea accepted by the radicalized left over the course of the last decade.

The author makes a sophomoric (and not exactly correct) reference to Ockham's Razor. But parsimony points in the exact opposite direction. Here the simplest explanation is: the Dems adopted a shit-ton of stupid-ass ideas...and voters rejected them for it.

There's no need to appeal to racism and sexism.

But, of course: that's all the left does anymore. Basically their only argument is That's racist or some variation thereon.

And that's another reason they lost: seeing racism and sexism behind every bush it just another stupid-ass far-left tic.

And we're all--all the sane among us, anyway--tired of it.

Not that such stupidity is worth arguing with, but: they do realize we elected Barack Obama...twice...right? So the race of the candidate is pretty much out as an explanation.

And, of course, Harris and Walz were just awful. The surprising thing would be if two such terrible candidates were elected...

Tom Cotton: Send in the Troops For Real

Wish he'd published this in the NYT, just to watch their heads explode again. Not that they'd publish it after last time.

James Varney: A Visit to Immigration Court

Very enlightening.

The main tactic seems to be delay, delay, delay...then disappear if plan A fails.

Mad Mandy Marcotte: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE; or: STEPHEN MILLER IS RAZIZT!!!!!111111

Marcotte is consistently among the craziest at-least-semi-prominent people on the left. And her columns often provide a windo into the mind (if I may use such a word in this context) of the wacko, but relatively mainstream, progressive left. Kinda like how the Necronomicon provides a window into the mind of Azathoth.

   Anyway, I can barely stand to read her deranged ravings, and ended up skimming from pretty early on...nevertheless, I link for your possible edification, and that of future generations.

   But again: whence this plague of madness??? How did the left go so crazy so fast on so many fronts???

   If sociology or social psychology were worth a damn, they'd be frantically trying to answer this question...but I'm sure they aren't, as they are not only blind to this tectonic cultural event, they are part of its origin.

[Oh, incidentally, my favorite part is where she accuses Miller of attempted "demographic engineering...which...of course, is what the left is doing. Miller et al. are resisting this.]

HMD: Trump's Unapologetic Defense of the Rule of Law

I agree with pretty much everything in this.

But that includes this:

The authority that Trump invoked in activating the Guard—10 U.S.C. 12406—provides that “the president may call into federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws.” Trump’s order is confined to the “temporary” protection of ICE and other federal personnel, as they enforce federal law, and to the protection of federal property in places where protests against federal enforcement have occurred or are likely to occur. Another clause of Section 10 U.S.C. 12406 holds that “orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States.” Whether a president can activate the Guard for such a limited supporting-only function without going through a governor, without invoking further legal authority, and without violating the Posse Comitatus Act is an untested question that a court will rule on after a hearing this Thursday.
Tuesday’s mobilization of the Marines to protect ICE agents is equally complex, but even more politically fraught. This latest step in the escalating feud over law and order in California risks looking excessive, notwithstanding that violence and vandalism have been spreading to other cities both within and outside of the state.

We're in another Scylla/Charybdis bind here. It's easy for the sane among us to become overly fixated on the insanity on the left--the open borders, the valorization of law-breaking, including violence, the property-destruction, the selective enforcement of laws, the general deranged chaos the ideal of which has captured the mind of the left...and, so, to ignore the Charybdis of Presidential overreach and other kinds of lawbreaking.

   I don't have and don't deserve much of an opinion about this. I just want to know the answer. Even if Trump can send in the Guard (and, maybe, the Corps) it's not at all clear that he should. The people of CA voted for this. It's madness, but they did vote for it. And the states are the laboratories of democracy. I'm inclined to let Californians reap what they've sown...to shamelessly mix metaphors. I mean, if other states like what they see, they can emulate. I'm not sure how far things have to go off the rails before other states call the experiment a failure... God knows what it would take for NY or IL to draw such a conclusion.

   OTOH, California is kind of the Wuhan Institute of Virology of democracy...and the madness and stupidity and chaos it's cooking up are unlikely to remain contained. So there's that, too.

Wikipedia Watch: "Scientific Racism"

Studying Wikipedia would be a good way to study how the left takes over institutions. The leftist bias at Wikipedia is clear and extensive...and the history of the entries is well-documented. The tip of the left's spear at Wikipedia seems to be a smallish group of rabidly dedicated leftist editors who know the rules inside and out and use this knowledge to impart leftist bias to whatever entry they take an interest in. Then there are, of course, the mass of editors and readers that just go along with it all. If one of them gets uppity and un-spins an entry, the others will be there to swamp the correction and defend it with such rules-lawyering as to make Perkins Coie envious.

   Here's just one example, the entry on "scientific racism." The term itself, of course, is chosen to discredit the view that races are natural kinds. And, of course, there is no entry for race realism, the mere view that races are natural kinds, with no adjunct view about superiority or inferiority of races. Folding realism about race into the category "scientific racism" is just one more bit of progressive Newspeak. Needless to say, there is no entry whatsoever for the commonsense and most scientific view, the sane view, that races are natural, biological kinds somewhere beneath the rank of subspecies.

   The progressive view on race is that (a) races are "socially constructed," and (b) the view that they are natural kinds is racist. Of course "socially constructed" is itself a politically valenced concept, and is beloved of the left...and the phrase is used so indiscriminately and inconsistently that it means virtually nothing. The same old fallacious arguments are rehearsed--e.g. instances of the continuum fallacy--which, if valid, would "prove" that there are no natural kinds at all...

   So Wikipedia has taken the commonsense view, the most scientifically well-justified view, refused to give it its own entry, and folded it into a completely different view, formed by adding a moral component to the scientific view...and then named that view [Something] Racism. 

   And this is not just some podunk site, but the site that has become the most widely-read encyclopedia in history.

   Madness.

Jason L. Riley: The LA Riots Hand Republicans A Political Edge

Well, I should hope so. The rioters are basically foot soldiers of the left, part of the blue team. And the blue team looooves protests...and, let's face, it, riots. IF they are riots for "social justice." Remember the Mostly Peaceful Social Justice Riots for Peace and Justice after the death of St. George of Minneapolis?

   Riley acknowledges that overreach probably represents the gravest danger to Trump and the Pubs, and I wholeheartedly agree. And the blue team has the most sophisticated and effective propaganda apparatus in human history. So any borderline cases will be represented as clear instances of overreach, and any clear instances will be spun up into atrocities.

   Unfortunately, Trump is easy to provoke, and I expect overreach is more-or-less inevitable.

WSJ: RFKj Conducts His Vaccine Purge

sigh

It can be good to get an entirely new perspective on an issue...but...that's kind of a stretch to find a silver lining here.

Personally, I was hoping he would have gotten crossways with Trump by now and given the boot.

Ted Gioia: "The Collapse of the Knowledge System"

Not sure, but I think there's something here.

Have to say, though, that I'm a little puzzled that someone would write an essay like this, and specifically discuss universities without discussing leftist bias therein--perhaps the most identifiable source of bias in those institutions.

Well...I guess it's not too hard to form a hypothesis by way of explanation...

Ukrainian Viper+AMRAAM Splashes Russian Su-35S?

LINK!

Not clear what happened yet. Could have been a Patriot shoot-down...or some other thing.

But a shoot-down by an F-16 is the coolest option...so I'm going with that for now.

Jim Geraghty: LA Burns, Again

link

McCarthy: President Trump Has Legal Authority to Suppress the Siege in Los Angeles

I don't know anything about this...but, fortunately, Andy McCarthy does.

   Being decidedly not a lawyer, I can't tell whether his legal points are correct. But I've come to trust McCarthy--and, when his arguments touch on things laypeople can make judgments about, his case generally checks out.

   The Democrats, still suffering from radical moonbatitis, seem to have latched onto the 20 end of another 80-20 issue. It's easy to see only the good of this: it makes it less likely they'll take back Congress or the Presidency in the near future. However, overall it's bad, as I keep insisting. One of our two major political parties has lost its collective mind, and is rioting and supporting rioting in order to prevent enforcement of our immigration laws--at a time when we have recently been swamped by a flood of illegal aliens. In fact, this same faction is responsible for that flood. This lunacy makes them less likely to win elections...but they will win, sooner or later. And if they don't regain at least some semblance of reason, when they do, they'll implement the madness across the country.

   This isn't an issue that ought to divide us and generate opposition. Until about 15-20 years ago, Democrats were sane on this issue. But in that time, they've come to think that race is "socially constructed," all whites are racist by definition, women have penises, and children should be brainwashed into believing that women have penises...and into believing that maybe their own penile status is some kind of mistake and should be changed...

   Look, I know I've said this a million times. But you can disagree about the minimum wage, or rent control, or same-sex marriage, or tax rates, or saving the Snail Darter or spending more on infrastructure, or mass transit or...tons of things. But whether or not women have penises is no more up for debate than whether the sky is blue, or north is the opposite of south. Just because a mass of lunatics insists that p is true doesn't make p a legitimate matter of disagreement. The idea that we shouldn't have a border, or shouldn't enforce it, is, perhaps, not as abjectly insane as women have penises...but IMO it's not really all that much less crazy.

   The left hasn't just adopted one or two kinda kooky ideas--all movements have one or two kinda kooky ideas. Something big and important has gone wrong with the progressive mind. It seems unlikely that a large political faction would adopt so many batty ideas all at once basically by accident. I don't know what explains it, but it seems to me that there must be an explanation.

Michelle Goldberg: "This is What Autocracy Looks Like;" or: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Hysteria.

Goldberg's main points are:

[1] Orange Man: bad.

[2] Illegal aliens: good.

To be more accurate:

Goldberg is basically a progressive in good standing, ergo she thinks that, once someone sets foot in the country, they can stay for life. Deportations are inherently unjustified. Anything Trump does is wrong. So: Trump ordering deportations...super-DUPER eeeeevil.

That having been said, I guess we should focus on the least-hysterical points.

So: 

Is Trump justified in sending in the Guard and the Corps? 

The answer to this question seems to turn on two other questions:

[a] How extensive are the riots?

[b] Under what kinds of conditions have Presidents historically taken such actions?

[a]

I don't know. And I don't even know how one quantifies the extent / severity of riots. 

[b]

I don't know.

The MSM is, unsurprisingly, trying to minimize the riots, as they did with the BLM/Antifa riots of 2020. Conservative commentors clearly think they're pretty bad--bad enough to justify what Trump's doing.

Me, well, it looks utterly insane to me.

If I'm left to my own devices here, I'd say that sending in troops is probably the right thing to do...but I don't seem to be in a very good epistemic position from which to judge.

I will say:

Look, this is more-or-less what the left wants. Multiculturalism, baby! Chaos, open borders, outright refusal to comply with laws that support a social order they see as inherently repressive and wrong. The left is guided by a vision of a dystopian utopia--I think of the Blade Runner world, a kind of turbocharged urbanism, or NYC/LA on steroids, in which impossible skyscrapers and wealth and sophistication exist side-by-side with abject urban decay and multicultural fragmentation of languages and society.

   The left of my youth seemed to be reacting against the staid order of the suburbia of the '50s--real or imagined. Chaos was preferable to such order. Excitement to boredom.

   It is, of course, somewhat strange that the advocates of big, repressive government also crave anarchy. But here we are. Kids learning phonics in Kansas and actually learning to read...authoritarian repression! Burning down LA as a way of demanding and enforcing open borders...just totally cool, comrade...

Oh, hell, I don't know.

The left is now so insane along so many prominent axes that I just can't tell anymore--can't be sure I'm being sufficiently objective.

LA Police Chief Admits Officers 'Overwhelmed' as Thousands of Rioters Block Freeways, Torch Cars [and Assault Cops]

This is the left.

This is one of their main tactics. If they don't like something, they riot. It's obviously a form of terrorism--using violence to effect political ends.

And the aim of their rioting in this case is to prevent any enforcement of our borders or immigration system.

They don't say this explicitly, but it's an obvious entailment of what they do say--and do: sneak into the country by hook or by crook and you have a right to stay forever. Best to sneak in with your family, because then you're doubly protected: if we try to kick out the whole family, the left shrieks YOU'RE DEPORTING BABIES. If we try to just kick out one or more of the adults, we're BREAKING UP FAMILIES.

I've already got a serious case of Trump fatigue. But, trying though he is, at least his policies are generally sane.

Mean tweets > foreign invasion and occupation.

The left, however, is no longer even basically sane.

That ship already sailed with women have penises...

Any faction that says, in effect: Throw open the borders to the whole world or we start burning shit down deserves to be kept out of all elected offices...forever and ever.

LA Riots for Open Borders Still Going

This is like having riots in support of global warming, or the CCP, or ISIS, or Hamas.

Oh, wait...we do have that last one...

The left is, in effect, rioting to eliminate border enforcement. Which is tantamount to eliminating the border. Which would entail the eventual failure of the USA as a viable political entity.

This isn't hyperbole.

Somalia could survive with wide open borders, because no one wants to go there. Mali, Morocco, Malasia, Mongolia, Mauritania...all could probably do just fine with open borders.

Europe couldn't survive. America couldn't.

The left holds many of its positions by ignoring the obvious and immediate consequences of them. It's just another aspect of their ability/imperative to ignore politically incorrect facts.

Naomi Epps Best: Santa Clara University's Crazy Idea of Human Sexuality

Insane.

This is just one aspect of the left's crazification. It comes as no surprise to me whatsoever.

Their overriding idea is to inject their radical dogmas into absolutely every institutional nook and cranny. Their aim is to create and enforce a system in which you can't get any degree nor qualify for any position if you haven't been thoroughly indoctrinated with every crackpot woke/PC idea in existence. That's intersectionality, bigot!

   A somewhat smaller idea is: tolerance about sexuality is no longer merely about ordinary relationships between two people of the same sex. Rather, now it's about kinks--all the kinks. You must fully immerse yourself in them, and fully embrace them. You want to be a social worker, you've got to pass BDSM 101, bigot!

   I've encountered professors like the one in the story. Their classes are a way of pursuing their fetishes. There's no way any normal person would assign a ten-page, fully-detailed "sexual autobiography." That guy is using his position to get free pr0n from his students, plain and simple. And he's getting off making his students watch pr0n in his class. An undergrad gf of mine had a psychology course in which students were required to write a detailed paper about their sexual fantasies. This struck me, even at the time, when I was largely clueless, as more than a little weird...

   I'm actually all for sexual freedom. I have no problem with people being as kinky as they wanna be. You've got to go pretty far over the line before you lose me. But what we see in Mrs. Best's case is, in fact, way, way, way over the line.

   Unfortunately, this is how the left uses academic freedom--you can use your class to promote leftist politics, to create activists for the cause, to spread leftist propaganda...or as your own personal pr0n site... Now, of course you cannot critically discuss the leftist project...that is verboten...

Trump Sends 2,000 National Guard to LA After Riot

Or "protest"...

No--riot.

No borders, no country.

No enforcement, no borders.

The American left has just flat-out lost its collective mind.

ICE, ICE Baby: LA Riots Against Border Enforcement

TWANLOC

The Diamond Heels Are For Realz

Game 1 against AZ: 18-2.

They stomped the Okies.

Now this.

Michael Shermer: Why Woke Failed

Better title: Why woke is in remission...for now.

Trump-Musk Meltdown

facepalm

Weirdos.

Representative Becca Balint (D-VT): If We Continue to Crack Down on Illegal Aliens "We're Not Gonna Have Anyone to Wipe Our Asses" [When We Get Old?]

Hey, remember "Dark Woke"?

Maybe not. It only lasted about a week.

But perhaps this is supposed to be that.

Apparently Dark Woke was this idea that Woketarianism ought to curse more and just generally be cruder. The main ideas seemed to be:

• Trump is crude and he wins
• People dislike Woketarianism
• They dislike it not because its ideas are dumb, but because its expression is cringily, repulsively, cloyingly sanctimonious.
• So the left ought to be cruder

I'm not wild about crudity, especially by our elected officials. But I don't see making a federal case of this. It was a crude--or at least blunt--way of putting a point that Democrats make over and over: we shouldn't enforce our border because illegals work cheap and do things we don't want to do. I'm not a fan of the point. But I don't care that much whether it's expressed politely or impolitely.

   I don't really see that this is "saying the quiet part out loud," as Democrats make the point right out in front of God and everybody all the time.

   I guess I can't see making a big-ass deal out of this...to put the point rather crudely...

Joe Concha: "Media Cover Trump 92% Negatively, But Have Little Impact.........Here's Why"

link

Those little phrases that now routinely get tacked onto article titles...like "here's why"...bug me. Does anybody really think you're not going to offer a hypothesis about why the alleged phenomenon is allegedly happening?

   Anyway.

   It seems that Concha's explanation is that the MSM has lost credibility, so few believe them. I'd add an explanation of why they've lost credibility: because they are so obviously politically biased. We could test this hypothesis by asking how credible people think political stories reported by the MSM are as opposed to how credible they think the non-political ones are. 

   This reminds me of studies showing that, despite the leftist bias of universities, few students change their minds much about politics during college. In each case, one could explain the finding in terms of one group recognizing the bias of the group that is allegedly informing them.

   There are other possible explanations, of course.

NYP: "Deadly" GOP Cuts Won't Even Touch Medicare's 50% Growth Since 2019

link

Rikki Schlott: "Is It Any Wonder Liberals Are Having a Mental Health Crisis?"

link

Just repeating myself now:

[1] It's a little surprising--I don't know of anyone who predicted it--but not a lot surprising, since it seems to easily explicable.

[2] These people aren't liberals. They're progressives, i.e. anti-liberal leftists. But we know what she means.

[3] Politically correct progressivism (PCP) demands that people believe patently absurd things (paradigmatically: some women are male).

[4] PCP demands that people believe absurd things merely because they have been declared politically correct by the left. That is: because they are told to.

[5] PCP demands that people pay lip service to the absurdities even if they don't believe them.

[6] PCP has made it clear that anyone who deviates from its rules will be regarded as evil.

[7] PCP seeks to destroy those who disagree via brutal methods of social disapprobation and control.

[8] PCP declares whole groups of people oppressors regardless of their beliefs and actions.

[9] PCP promotes a bleak, pessimistic worldview that not only declares whole groups to be evil oppressors regardless of their beliefs and actions, but that predicts the almost inevitable destruction of humanity via ecological disaster (currently most popular: global warming).

There really ought to be ten things in a list...and I'm sure I'm forgetting something...but, then, maybe I'm forgetting more than one thing...

   Anyway: no, it's not really any surprise that progressives have mental problems. They're in the thrall / under the thumb of a deranged worldview. I don't see how you could believe and comply with such totalitarian insanity and stay sane. Hell, when this lunacy really started taking over in 2020, I thought I was going nuts just watching it happen...

New Progressive Lawfare Dropped: "Climate Homicide"

The left will use basically any angle, no matter how destructive and anti-democratic, to force its dogmas onto the rest of us.

Hirsanyi: "We Have No Constitutional or Moral Duty to Subsidize Harvard"

Agreed.

Also: it's a good idea to withhold funding from highly-politicized, ideologically captured departments and programs--which are generally those with low intellectual standards. The more ideologically captured and less rigorous a department is, the less valuable and more dangerous it is. Sociology is a good example. It has been firmly captured by the left, to such a point that one of the hottest debates in the discipline concerns whether it should mainly be scientific or mainly be activist. Other examples include almost all the "x-studies" programs and departments--women's-, gender-, queer-, black/African-American-, "Latinx-," "post-colonial-," and on and on.

   There is just about no reason at all for the U.S. government to fund academic programs dedicated to promoting bad reasoning and politically biased anti-liberal/anti-American/anti-Western attitudes. If these programs were intellectually rigorous and/or were producing actual knowledge, the question of funding might be a difficult one. But they are not. Anyone who has interacted with students and "scholars" in such disciplines know that their "arguments" rarely rise about "that's racist." Students who major in such disciplines often come out of college reasoning less well than they went into it, when at least they were guided mainly by common sense. What they learn is little more than extremist ideological nonsense. The "method," such as it is, is to seek out tenuous, free-associative, often accidental linguistic or metaphorical connections between non-leftist arguments and anything that might be interpreted as bigoted, no matter how implausible the connection might be. An actual example from Andrea Nye's Word of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic: logicians speak of "chains of arguments." Chains are used to enslave. Therefore logic is oppressive. Another from the same source: bad arguments are said to be invalid. 'Invalid,' if pronounced with emphasis on the first syllable, means a disabled person. Therefore, logic is "ableist"... This is not a strawman. This is, in fact, an extremely influential method of "reasoning" on the academic left.

   Of course anyone can learn to simply say "that's racist" in response to every challenge. It's a lot easier than actually learning to reason. Students who learn to "reason" in this way not only fail to learn to actually reason, they learn to replace actual thought and reasoning with mindless, rote nonsense. Left to their own devices, they'd likely be at least average reasoners. Instead, they are trained to be stupid.

   But, as Hirsanyi notes, it would be very difficult to withhold money only from such disciplines. Money, being fungible, can be shuffled around behind the scenes. So I don't pretend that such an approach is likely to work--I'm just saying it would be good if it did.

   Again I'll note: I'm not wild about the approach of the Trump administration. But we are facing the possibility not merely of the destruction of the university, one of mankind's greatest institutions, but, worse, of its transformation into a tool of Orwellian totalitarianism.

   The Trump administration is, again, the lesser evil.

   Though, of course, I could be wrong.

Olympic Boxer Imane Khalif Is, Indeed, Male

Quelle suprise

Gerard Baker: "Which is Worse, Trump or Harvard?"

Like Baker, my answer is: Harvard.

Trump is bad; Harvard is worse.

Obviously, I might be wrong.

Boulder Molotov Cocktail / "Flamethrower" Anti-Israel Terrorist Is Illegal Alien Admitted Under Biden

It basically wouldn't be possible for a single small event to more poignantly illustrate the madness of the worldview of the contemporary progressive left.

Ukrainian Drone Attack Lays Waste To Up To 40 (!!) Russian Strategic Bombers

This is just amazing.

...and they ain't makin' no more a' them Tu-95s ner Tu-22s... Reports say the Ukrainians took out 40 of Ivan's remaining Bears. Ukraine says that Russia hasn't made a single, whole, brand new strategic bomber since the USSR fell. We can infer that they're not going to start now...

   Sounds absolutely devastating.

   WSJ story.

   One of these strikes was 3,000 miles from Ukraine!

   Story says $2 billion in damage...but honestly, I'd have guessed more. These things are basically irreplaceable.

   Seems to me that one of the main goals is to make Putin less likely to continue this and less likely to pull such a thing in the future...and this operation is bound to do those things.

Youngkin's Vetos Dozens of Leftist Anti-Firearm Bills

Old news, but not sure I ever said anything about it.

   NoVa (and VA Beach...and Charlottesville...and, increasingly, Harrisonburg...) are wrecking the OD.

   But mostly NoVa.

   I was kind of hoping that Trump would go through with the threats to disperse the physical locations of government agencies across the country... Just make sure to disperse them into states where they won't tilt the place blue. NoVa is like a cancer on the Commonwealth, politically speaking.

   I actually tend to agree with some of the Dem bills--e.g. making parents/guardians responsible for leaving firearms accessible to minors with histories of violence.

   But, of course, none of the bills actually increased penalties for the actual people who actually commit violence--because laws against violence are racist, racist.

   In general, however, my view is: do not give an inch to the Democrats on any anti-firearm legislation. Because every step down that road is a beachhead. They will never be satisfied, they will never stop, until all guns are outlawed. Compromising with them is just conceding to them. It just brings them that much closer to their ultimate, totalitarian goal.

   We know what they want the country to be like--and we know they can't accomplish that without eliminating firearms. If they manage to undermine the Second Amendment, the First is next.

   The bills they really wanted to pass were the ones Youngkin vetoed--e.g. outlawing AR-15s, mags that hold more than 10 rounds, etc. etc. The whole standard (lets be honest) commie wish list of anti-Second-Amendment stuff.

   Good on Governor Youngkin--who's been just great--for vetoing this totalitarian bullshit.

   

   I just resolved not to buy any more guns this year...but, upon reflection, I'm questioning that decision...

Here We Go Again: Deported Australian Army Wife Story Isn't As Simple As The MSM Reported It

Every time a story like this--which is, really, just a minor variation on the Orange Man Bad theme--pops up, I kinda fall for it...despite knowing that we're probably not getting the straight dope. When the actual facts (often eventually) do come out, they're generally far less blue-friendly than we were initially told.

This one, it seems, is no exception.

Homeland Security Xweet.

Another Trump Freakout: Burning Bridges With Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society

As I--and many others--said during his first term: dude just does not have the temperament to be President.

IMO this is not a small problem.

link

link

   As I also said during his first term: somebody needs to wrest his phone from him. He needs somebody sensible to be in charge of filtering his Twixxer (etc.) posts.

   I mean, that won't solve the temperament problem...but at least it would knock the sharpest edges off his public statements.

   I'm glad we avoided the worse/worst option in November. But I'm not all that happy with our second-worst option.

New PC Shrieking Points Drop: ELON KILLED 300K PEOPLE Z0MG

facepalm

Link is to the American "Thinker"...which is devoutly conservative on every issue. But it's the links that are important.

   If we were gonna play this game, the biggest murder and misery tally would--given the lefties' rules--probably have to go to Biden's open borders policy. Not only are people dying and getting kidnapped and raped on the journey, but they all end up in the USA, the epicenter of world racism and other -ism-based evil and general awfulness. AND the carbon footprint of each person who moves from south of the border into the U.S. grows by something like an order of magnitude, thus hastening the Looming Carbon Apocalypse...

   But, anyway.

   All very stupid--but predictable.