Brandon Johnson is an Idiot; Incarceration Works

This is just another patently absurd dogma you have to believe to be a progressive in good standing: taking criminals off the street and putting them in jail does not reduce crime. (Reduce crime outside of prisons, that is. I'm sure it does increase crime inside prisons.)

   Until the left starts taking facts seriously, there's just no hope of them coming to their senses. I mean...coming to your senses basically is taking facts seriously...

   I'm starting to think that the left and right aren't really two symmetrical factions. Rather, we have the reality/normal faction and the utopian/loony faction. One group generally takes reality as it is, and adopts principles and formulates policies in response to reality. The other faction is in the grip of loony theories, utopian pipe dreams, and normative preferences that are more-or-less adopted and formulated independently of reality. Consequently, of course, these principles and policies are often utterly idiotic and catastrophically dangerous. And, of course, to maintain commitment to these nutty principles, the adherents must commonly deny that reality is as it is.

   So, e.g., in the case of incarceration, most lefties aren't willing to say "Yeah, I just think that incarceration is wrong. I think we should let murderers roam free. It's better to have more innocent people murdered than to imprison the criminals." That's a hard core position held by some on the extreme left...but less-radical lefties find it easier to just delude themselves about the facts: "Incarceration is bad...and it doesn't work anyway..." And, given leftist control of media, universities, and the bureaucracy, it's easy to keep that idea circulating in the propagandosphere.

   Anyway, AJW is on the case:

Rampant Fraud and Other Criminality in MN, Especially Among Somalis--Thanks to Tim Walz, Keith Ellison, and the Rest of the DFL

Some good news: it's finally escaped containment, making headlines outside the conservative news ghetto.

Imaginary Trump Voters Who Didn't Vote for Trump's Long-Held Policy Positions

And I've got a bunch of Democrat friends--who I can't name--who are all like "I'm really starting to like this Trump guy...he's awesome!"

My favorite genre of liberal punditry is “Every one of my friends is an unnamed Trump voter and boy are they mad!” https://t.co/mEofBM5vR4

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) November 29, 2025

The Dems are relying largely on short, misleadingly-edited video clips of people screaming and resisting arrest by ICE.

That is, roughly:

 

Via Ed Driscoll at Insty's digs.

And, he adds: Who knew Trump had such a hardline ca. 2000 Democrat view on immigration?

Turns out that the new Democrat position is apparently: if you cry and shriek and resist arrest, this makes the law in question null and void...

Trump to Remove Protected Status for MN Somalis and Send Them Back to Somalia

Maybe better than the alternative, but I might prefer expedited hearings for anyone with such status, and immediate deportation of anyone found guilty. Plus: three strikes and you're automatically out.

   Undoubtedly some of these Somalis will make good Americans. But, also obviously, many are bad apples.

   What the left doesn't seem to understand is that many people from foreign and incompatible cultures are, well, foreign and incompatible. With America, that is. There is no good reason to allow such people into the country in the first place--but certainly no good reason to allow them to stay after they have demonstrated that they are, in fact, bad apples.

   But, as it stands, a Democrat judge--appointed by the previous DFL Governor--won't even let convictions for mass Medicare fraud stand. Imagine the Democrat opposition if we tried to deport the perpetrators...

   It takes a certain amount of hard-heartedness to survive in a violent and competitive environment. Most of us, in the USA, have it so easy that we don't understand that. Their soft hearts have turned also into soft heads. I'm all for being sympathetic to the plight of non-Americans. But only within certain parameters and limits required for the survival and flourishing of the country.

Brit Arrested for Touching a Firearm While in the U.S., and Posting About it on Facebook

The Airstrip-One-ification of the UK proceeds apace.

Stephen Miller: Immigration Imports Societies, Not Individuals

This is one of the things I'm afraid of.

   Not that I'm the biggest fan of either Stephen Miller or Breitbart.

   Mass immigration that produces ethnic and cultural enclaves of foreigners is a bad idea.

   Yes, this is, to some extent, how immigration to the U.S. has operated historically. And yes, it worked out fine.

   But the developments of vast Hispanic enclaves in e.g. Los Angeles, and crime-riddled Somali enclaves in e.g. Minneapolis are serious cause for concern. I'd halt any immigration that contributes to the growth of such enclaves.

   And this isn't even to mention what's happening in Europe--not just enclaves, but no-go zones for non-Muslims...and even police.

   Progressives are committed to importing large numbers of foreigners--the more foreign the better. Sometimes they will even admit that this is a largely aesthetic choice--they simply like the idea of living in a radically multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-lingual society. You can practically hear then squealing with delight at the idea of their local Farmer's Market slowly transforming into some kind of polyglot bazaar.

   Me, I don't let such aesthetic preferences influence my policy positions. I just want to know what will contribute to the survival and flourishing of the nation, and of our liberal Constitutional republic. And, of course, what will detract from that. There's no good reason to allow immigration that fosters the growth of sub-cultures that could detract from our flourishing. Foreigners have no right to move to the United States. so if we have any concerns about them coming here, that's a no.

   I'm more than happy for people to come here if they want to come and they will make good Americans. National origin, religion, etc. don't matter much to me--except mainly as indicators of whether individuals will make good Americans. But e.g. national origin and religion are sometimes just about the only indicators we have. The left's view is basically: let everybody in and hope for the best. But that is a stupid view. One reason they accept it seems to be that they think that the radical transformation--or destruction--of the U.S. wouldn't be such a bad thing. Especially since any such radical transformation will probably be in a leftist direction.

   My view has become: the U.S. in a perilous state. We're teetering on the verge of a collapse into totalitarian leftism and/or Europe-esque ethnic and religious fragmentation. We need to stabilize. And that means, inter alia, slowing immigration rates.

   Deporting all illegal aliens is obviously a good idea in itself--but it's also a way to slap down the insane left. That left is so used to running the country and deciding its direction that it is driven to hysteria at the thought that we might actually enforce laws of which it doesn't approve. Relentlessly enforcing them in the face of the hysterical, whistle-blowing leftist mobs is a way to break their spirit--a way to show them that they can't get their way simply by insisting on it.

   And, of course, as usual, I could be wrong about this. Perhaps mass, more-or-less indiscriminate immugration will work out fine in the end. I'm just not willing to bet on it. Because, unlike the left, I think that the destruction of the USA would be a catastrophe.

Ammon Blair: Trump's Third-World Immigration Pause is Common Sense

I don't know that it's common sense, but I'm inclined to think it's a good idea.

link

Trump to Pardon Drug-Trafficking Honduran Ex-President

What the hell is going on?

This administration is starting to seem like pure chaos.

Trump Closes (?) Venezuelan Airspace...Via Tweet

This just seems bizarre.

Must-Read: McCarthy: Military Lawfare is a Red Line

I agree with absolutely everything in this. Even the legal points I wasn't previously aware of comport with my half-assed understanding of the law in question.

   I'm quoting virtually nothing from it because I ended up quoting the whole thing. Instead, I'll quote just this minor, but extremely accurate, bit:

True to his nature, when Democrats light a fire Trump raises it to a conflagration.

   Again and again and again. Most notably, Dems have raised lawfare to a loathsome art...Trump grabs their easel and bashes them them over the head with it...

   Expanding this madness into military lawfare is beyond the pale.

   And, as McCarthy almost says: his erratic governance has likely already lost him the House. In which case he'll almost certainly be impeached for whatever reason the Dems can cook up--not that they'll be lacking predicates. He may even lose the Senate--in which case he could even be convicted. And if you think the rabid red MAGA crowd is loony now, just wait til that goes down...

   Me, I prefer to get rid of Trump and replace him with Vance...though I'm mostly for whatever will minimize Democrat power for another substantial chunk of time. (Still hoping they'll return to their senses.) Trump remaining in power with a Dem house would seem like a good option--the Pub House certainly isn't doing much. And it isn't doing anything to control Trump.

   One thing I do disagree with McCarthy about: he guesses that, to the extent that the "Seditious Six" had anything at all specific in mind so far as "illegal orders" went, it was blowing up drug boats. I guess they meant to allude to National Guardsmen in DC and other cities. But who knows? They were mostly just whining Orange Man bad...same as normal.

   And one addition: I think there's a better than even chance that the real point of the video was to elicit a Trumpian overreaction. McCarthy's right that this is the normal pattern of Trump's Presidency: Dems do something shitty, Trump does something shittier--or at least more overtly shitty. The Dems know they can get Trump to self-destruct by pulling stunts like this. And they're willing to accept the resultant harm to the country as basically a cost of doing business.

   Well, I knew who I was voting for. And this is him. The good and the bad.

Trump to Crack Down on / Eliminate Immigration from Third World Countries?

Hoo boy.

So very Trumpian.

That's to say:

It's nutty, precipitous, and, for all I know illegal.

But:

   It's immeasurably better than the Dems' recent approach to immigration, especially as exemplified by the most recent Democrat administration...which is to say: de facto open borders.

   I'd prefer a saner, more sober set of reforms that throttled back on Third World immigration, carefully vetting individuals and admitting only those who share our values and will be assets to the nation. Give priority to people from nations that tend to share our ideals--the UK and other Anglophone countries, Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc.  And: no public assistance for immigrants except in very special cases. And: immediate deportation for immigrants that commit violent and other serious crimes.

   Trump's semi-literate tweet is nauseating in the extreme, and this new policy can't be well-thought-out. Nevertheless, it manages to approximate something reasonable more closely than anything the Democrats can be expected to do any time in the near future.

   So here we are again, in the same situation we've been in over and over for most of the last decade: Trump wants to do something nutty...but less nutty than what the Dems are likely to do.

Carolina 58 - MSU 74

Both teams played pretty well, but MSU played weller.

In Response to Immigrant Knife Attacks, German Police Confiscate Swiss Army Knives from Elderly German Women

Fucking insane:

🇩🇪🎄 German police are now confiscating pocket knives from elderly women at Christmas markets.

Exploding knife crime in Germany, which the police openly says is tied to mass immigration, has led to a security state at German Christmas markets. pic.twitter.com/nRTQRIOr2d

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) December 17, 2024

The Catholic Church Sticks its Nose into U.S. Immigration Policy

Many Catholics have apparently been helping illegals cross the border. But this is higher-level (though less direct) interference.

   It's become fashionable for anti-ICE protestors to reference Christianity...but thank God--as it were--that we're a secular republic...

   Word on the street is that a lot of (non-Catholic) churches have gone woke. I know one guy who actually quit going to his long-time church on account of its wokefication.

Francis P. Sempa: 6 Dems' "Illegal Orders" Political Stunt Endangers America

I agree that this was total bullshit.

   If there had been illegal orders, that would be a different matter.

   But--with the possible exception of blowing up drug boats--there haven't been so far as I can tell.

   Seemed to me that the intended suggestion was that it was illegal for the National Guard to protect federal agents from leftist mobs. Which is bullshit. And, for that, I think there should be hard pushback against these idiots. The full-court press by the blue team against enforcement of immigration laws might just be the most insurrectiony thing I've ever seen in the U.S...though, of course, there are competitors...

   However: the talk of recalling Kelly to active duty just to court-marshal him seems crazy to me...beyond crazy... But I'd have to hear what people who actually know what they're talking about say...and I haven't.

   I hadn't thought of Sempa's point that this is of a piece with the loony Trump-is-Hitler talk, and with all the other vague suggestions of fascism--which are seldom fleshed out. That way his critics don't have to make specific charges against him.

Eldar Mamedov: The Europeans Pushing the Ukraine-into-NATO Poison Pill

link

I've moved from:

Fight to the last Ukranian!

to the Trumpian:

Just end the slaughter.

Again let me note how weird it is how often Trump is right.

Since I don't think Trump is a genius or anything, it's hard for me to see this otherwise than as yet another measure of how wrong the blues are about...well...just about everything.

Again I note: it wasn't always this way...

New New "N-word" Just Dropped

I thought 'retarded' was the new "n-word"...

And speaking of retarded...

DOGE Only Cut about 5-10% of Musk's Estimate

Well, as WSJ commenter G Busch notes:

When one of the two ruling political parties relies on its existance through patronship, efficiency and cutting waste becomes close to impossible. Case in point: Schumer vowing to "fight" for federal workers. How about fighting for the taxpayers who fund unneeded federal workers.

The Dems, overall, just seem to be opposed to cutting the size of government...except for cutting actually crucial things like police, prisons and the military...those, of course, should be "defunded"...

The NEH and other useless-to-counterproductive BS, however...vital!!!

Lowry: Ken Burns is Completely Wrong About the Iroquois's Role in the Creation of the USA

I don't know anything about this aspect of the history...but it wouldn't be much of a surprise if Lowry's right about this.

Becket Adams: When Myths Become Media "Facts"

These political pseudo-facts are just the tip of the iceberg, obviously.

Jamie K. WIlson: The Mis-Definition of Blackness: When 'Race' Stops Meaning Race

This is pretty good.

I've talked about all this stuff here before.

The left is committed to social theories of everything--social constructionism, basically. They do not like biological--and they especially do not like genetic--theories of any human characteristics...unless it's politically expedient.

   They don't want race to be biological, largely because they don't like many of the racial differences we've confirmed scientifically. But they also don't want race to be a fiction...because so many leftist academicians have built their careers on race. So they need a way to have their cake and eat it too. Their solution: race is real...but social.

   Of course this is nonsense. The concept of race is the concept of biological kinds. If races aren't such natural kinds, then race is a fiction. End of story. The social dodge never works. 

   But...races are real.

   They're natural kinds of a not-fantastically-important...but also not-inconsequential variety. 'Race' is a biological term for visually distinguishable groups that fall below the level of subspecies. And that's what races are.

   Politically incorrect...but, like so many politically incorrect things...true.

   Anyway.

   The left just keeps piling nonsense on top of nonsense, trying to obfuscate with neologisms and shitty arguments--two of their most beloved tactics.

   Well...I could go on. But I've said all this before, many times.

A Must-Read: Tal Fortgang: Incarceration Works

Reall--just go read this.

   Crime--especially violent crime--is extremely concentrated among a small population of repeat-offending, mostly young, males, who commit something like 25 offenses for each police contact, and have 5-30 prior arrests before they are imprisoned.

   Taking these people off the streets sooner is an effective--the only effective--way to appreciably reduce violent crime.

   As with almost every other major article of leftist faith, the idea that incarceration doesn't work--a mantra recently intoned by several lefties, including Brandon Johnson--is politically correct Lysenkoist fantasy. (Also: the idea that prisons are full of nonviolent drug offenders is utter horseshit.)

   Unfortunately, the problem is even worse than Fortgang lets on here: criminality is largely genetic. One of the best (the best?) predictor of criminality is paternal criminality.

   And, to make matters just about as bad as they can be: violent criminality is extremely concentrated among blacks.

   Of course this all makes if basically impossible to speak truth about the problem without flipping the left's freakout switch. Speak all (or perhaps any) of these truths out loud, and you will be declared a racist--needless to say. This is one of the most effective methods by which the left polices thought and prevents important truths from even being spoken--even being raised as possibilities. The left is very good at what it does--including controlling the public conversation and keeping politically incorrect truths out of it. Their first line of defense is to prevent people from even hearing of certain truths. Their next line of defense is to declare politically incorrect truths to be racist. Then they move on to "the science is settled!"...against the hatefacts in question... The very last thing they want is to have to engage in rational debate on the merits of their positions...because they know they're very likely to lose. So why risk it?

   Anyway: absolutely read the Fortgang piece...sez me.

Gordon S. Wood: Why America is a "Creedal Nation"

I desperately want this to be true.

Even up to a decade ago, I would have insisted that it must be true.

But one of the downsides of taking conservatism seriously is that it forces you to face many unpleasant facts--facts that most on the left...including even realio-trulio liberals on the center-left...tend to...well...not merely ignore...but, rather, not even imagine could be true...

Unfortunately, there's this. And this.

Which means that--if we speak at the level of groups--white men (fairly old white men in particular) are the only thing standing between us and a blue America.
Now, that wouldn't have been so bad in, say, 1990 when the blues weren't insane.

But unfortunately, these patters seem to have held up even post-ca.-2013, when the Great Blue Freakout began. Or began in earnest, at least.

Now, if you think--as, unfortunately, I currently do--that moving that far leftward will basically mean the end of the USA...well, then you face a catastrophic problem that most people--even those who see it and admit to themselves that they see it--would probably hesitate to describe out loud. To wit: if the Great Replacement (to use the right's term) / "the browning of America" (to use the left's term) continues, it will mean the end of America--substantively speaking.

This, I'd say, indirectly undermines the idea that America is a "creedal nation"--attractive as that idea might be. I mean...perhaps it's still "creedal" in some sense...but if basically every group but older white men reject crucial elements of that creed (limited government, free speech, the right to keep and bear arms)...then we might have to say something like: it's formally creedal...but...substantively...you've gotta have enough grown-ass white men to anchor the creed. Because majorities of women (unmarried women, anyway) and all other races reject the creed in question.

(And, look, I'm part of the problem in case that matters--it took (a) me aging into my 50s and (b) the left going completely insane for me to come to (or so I think) see what's what...)

Hey, say all this out loud and see what happens to you.

And if you're not even allowed to say it...well...you see where I'm going with this...

Colin Wright: The Latest Attempt to Disprove the Sex "Binary" Falls Flat

'Dichotomy' is a better term here.

Don't help give currency to the left's ridiculous use of 'binary'.

More to the point: Wright is basically right.

This is yet another case of the left (a Dr. Tautz in this case) using inapplicable arguments to try to bolster the left's failing case against the reality of sex. Tautz is basically making shit up. The reality of the male/female dichotomy does not require that males and females be 100% different in every way. He might as well argue that, since males and females both have two arms and two legs, the difference between maleness and femaleness is a "spectrum"...

T-SPLY: Leftist Mob Interferes with Federal Immigration Op in St. Paul; Agents Fight Back

They were executing judicial orders. One of their targets returned illegally after a previous deportation, which is a felony.

Dont' forget:

"No justice, no peace" is a conjunction, not a conditional...

Gotta love the bit where the guy weeps about how one of the illegals in question was "just trying to help is mother"...by entering the country illegally.

Oh, ok. Well, why didn't you say so?

I feel sorry for the guy...but it's not a legal defense.

We're just trying to protect our country...[sniff]...is that so wrong???

Dem Legislator Video on Refusing Illegal Orders; Trump's Response

My tentative view of this, in brief:

The Dems are absolutely right, and I thought everyone knew that: U.S. service members are, in fact, obligated to refuse to follow illegal orders.

However...the clear suggestion is that e.g. National Guardsmen have been given illegal orders. And that's loathsome and stupid. The Dems are misusing their military cred to push purely political lies. This is part of the Dems' de facto open borders position. They're trying to suggest that e.g. orders to defend ICE from leftist mobs are illegal.

And it does seem that they are coming awfully close to encouraging service members to defy orders from the Commander-in-Chief.

Trump's response:

No, he did not say that the Dems in the video should be given the death penalty.

But it was a stupid thing to say. It's stupid to say anything that might even suggest that...especially since the left is notorious for its verbal virtuosity when it comes to twisting language.

If it had been anyone but Trump, I'd say: it was just a way of explaining how serious seditious behavior is.

But with Trump, it's often hard to tell what the hell he's trying to say.

Though in this case I think the non-terrible interpretation is more likely than the terrible interpretation. If Trump thought they deserved the death penalty, he'd probably just say so.

Nevertheless, this is one of the problems with Trump--he often says things that are too damn close to being things he shouldn't say.

But, bottom line: 

The Dems are basically full of shit, despite the fact that what they actually say is true.

Somebody sane needs to have veto power over Trump's posts...for the love of God...

Anarcho-Tyranny: The Left Defends and Enables Violent Criminals, and Punishes Self-Defense

Instapundit link.

Don't forget: putting violent criminals in jail doesn't reduce crime!

...Putting law-abiding citizens who defend themselves from violent criminals in jail, however...

State Department: Mass Migration is an Existential Threat to Western Civilization

Well, see, that's the point of the thing...

It's a feature, not a bug.

VA Dems Will Try to Require Licensing to Purchase Firearms

The totalitarian left wants to minimize firearm ownership?

What a surprise.

Sohrab Ahmari: Mass MN Welfare Fraud Among Somalis Exposes the Failure of Assimilation...

...and Democrat mass immigration schemes.

Even setting aside the terror connection, the organised fraud on display in the indictments and guilty pleas is a reminder that social-democratic programmes are at risk when overwhelmed by ill-assimilated newcomers with no sense of duty and reciprocity to the host community.
But this isn’t a problem without a solution. As Barbara Jordan, the African-American lawmaker and civil-rights pioneer who chaired the Clinton-era Commission on Immigration Reform, argued, assimilation breaks down when the numbers pile up. When migrant communities can mass-import their own relatives via the so-called family preference programme, the result is ghettoised enclaves in which newcomers can pretend like they’re still living back home — only with colder weather and thicker welfare nets.
The best way to break this cycle is by significantly slashing the aggregate number of newcomers [immigrants] ; and shifting away from family-reunification to skills as the main basis for immigration. To put it bluntly: America doesn’t need Somali Uber drivers just as autonomous vehicles take off.
As for those already here, America might follow Denmark’s lead in actively breaking up ethnic ghettos, while, of course, mass-deporting anyone even marginally involved in such fraudulent schemes. Law-abiding Americans, including law-abiding immigrants, deserve no less.

The left's plan is to overwhelm the U.S. with difficult-to-assimilate and outright unassimilable foreigners. This plan is sold to the less-radical parts of the blue team with the following "arguments:" Oh, those poor people...why are conservatives so mean...?

   As is so often the case the left is driven here by ignorance, emotion, and anti-conservative/anti-white sentiment. Oh and: weaponized sympathy.

   Here is what we can't have: large enclaves of difficult-to-assimilate immigrants. That's a blueprint for disaster...which, of course, is what the radical left wants. The relatively more centrist left, as usual, derives its descriptive beliefs from its normative political sentiments: immigrants good, ergo [here insert whatever they must believe in order not to undermine the sentiment]. Sometimes that bracketed bit is: so all immigrants can be assimilated more-or-less without cost. But more often now it's: so assimilation is unnecessary. 

   Though actually what much of the left believes now is:  assimilation is bad.

   That's basically just another way of saying:  Multiculturalism! (hooray!)

   The left doesn't like people of European extraction, and it doesn't like Western culture. Its goal is to reduce Europeans to just one ethnic group among many--preferably no bigger than its worldwide percentage. So...like 10% of the U.S. population. And to reduce Western/U.S. culture to just one (minor) culture among many... So long as white people and American culture are "overrepresented (...y'know...in America...) America is racist, jack.

   Not to put too fine a point on it: that goal is basically equivalent to the goal of destroying the USA.

   The extremist left explicitly wants that--it could not possibly be clearer about it. The relatively more centrist left doesn't exactly want it...but also isn't all that alarmed at the prospect. And, when they have to choose between (a) the destruction of the USA and (b) supporting policies that might possibly get them called racist...they go with (a) every time.

Matthew Continetti: Will the GOP's Gerrymandering Push Blow Up in its Face?

There's a pretty good chance that it will.

   I detest Gerrymandering. But I angrily approved of the TX plan on the grounds that the Dems have moved so far to the crazy left that it was warranted in this case.

   Now, I knew that was wrong--or at least bad.

   That's the kind of thought that's generally used to rationalize Gerrymandering and similar shenanigans.

   Or...well...at least I was rather ashamed of that position.

   Anyway: it'll serve the GOP and people like me right if this does blow up in our faces.

   Also: we're just really not as good at this kind of thing as the Dems are. Probably not a great idea to challenge them to this kind of high-stakes slap fight. They've got a bunch of highly partisan judgest willing to do their bidding...the red team just doesn't seem to have as many of those.

   A much better idea IMO is to do a census that doesn't count illegal aliens toward Congressional representation. What kind of idiotic idea was that, anyway? I say: let the blue states bring in their beloved illegals--but give them not one single cent of federal money for them, and absolutely, positively, do not let them count toward House seats. And: allow red states to sue blue states that feed illegals into them. That is: if say, New Mexico acts as a pipeline for illegals pouring into Oklahoma, let OK sue NM for the cost of those illegals.

   VA Dems are poised to pass a large number of godawful bills as soon as Spanberger et al.--including all the new Dems in the GA--are sworn in. And one of their nefarious projects is Gerrymandering away all but one red Congressional district. But we've had Gerrymandering problems (generally favoring the red team, as I understand it) for decades.

   As ye sow...etc. etc...

AOC Loses Her Woke-Ass Mind About Young Men

She's cute alright...but dumb as a sack of hammers.

Bernie nods right along.

If you think the left is giving up on Woketarianism...well...they're not:

Education Grad School Makes Teachers Worse

For a long time I've said that studying in the disciplines captured by the left makes you dumber.

Evidence for the thesis:

Oh this is hilarious. Sad but hilarious.

This study finds (and others confirm) that a teacher earning a graduate degree has a NEGATIVE effect on student achievement

Attending a graduate school of education literally makes teachers WORSE at their job pic.twitter.com/Gyt8xSoS3k

— Daniel Buck, “Youngest Old Man in Ed Reform” (@MrDanielBuck) November 19, 2025

Mary Vought (Heritage Foundation): The Culture War Didn't Come for Wikipedia; Wikipedia is Fueling it with Lies

Wikipedia is a joke when it touches on anything beloved of the left.

   Its position on the culture war, and its own bias, mirrors the general blindness and bias of the left: somehow, the right started all this, and only it is biased.

   In fact, of course, the left started the culture war. The right didn't have to oppose gender ideology until the left cooked it up and injected it into every corner of the culture. The same can be said for DEI, CRT, climate change hysteria, radical feminism, and the rest of the left's crackpot worldview. In the 1980s, it was the right that started it--seeking to inject evangelical Christianity and creationism everywhere they could. But since then, the left has, by far, been the main culprit.

   Wikipedia seems good on many topics where leftist shibboleths aren't at issue. My longstanding idea has been to produce another site that corrects Wikipedian bias only as necessary. But just replacing it with Grokipedia'll work too.

Steve Sailer on James Watson, Ostracized and Vilified for Mentioning Politically Incorrect Facts about Race and IQ

They continue to vilify him and lie about the facts, even on his death.

   The NYT is especially reprehensible--as is a Watson biographer, Daniel Comfort.

   They just continue to blatantly lie about the state of scientific evidence. The combination of Lysenkoism and supercilious dogmatism is grotesque...repulsive...

   Cross the cult, commit thoughtcrime even once, and it doesn't matter that you, say, discovered the structure of DNA...nor that you've just died...they will continue to assassinate your character even as you're put in the ground.

RIP James Watson

The great scientist, ostracized for thoughtcrime, dead at 97.

Chris Bray: Limp and Theatrical Congressional Video Vaguely Urges Servicemembers to Disobey Lawful Commander-in-Chief; Also: Some Nonsense from the Catholic Church

The Democrats really are like that hysterical ex-gf you used to have...

Don't miss the bullshit from the Catholic Bishops

   Catholics are already interfering with U.S. immigration enforcement by aiding illegal border-crossers. The statement doesn't really warrant any response beyond Bray's. My response is really: mind your own business. This is a secular democracy. But, just to gesture at one point: no one is deporting anyone "indiscriminately." We're deporting people who are violating U.S. immigration laws--and, in fact, not even deporting enough of those. Rather, we're targeting only criminals and people with pre-existing judicial orders to leave. If other people are consorting with them, then we're apparently arresting them, too. Which is good. Don't consort with criminals, kids. Especially if you're here illegally.

   The really insane thing about all this is that such minor and clearly justified moves to enforce immigration law are causing such a mass leftist freakout.

   Now, I kind of doubt that the center-left would go along with the vanguard's de facto open borders policy for very long if they were in power...though...they went along with it when Biden was doing it... Anyway: some of this is actual support for open borders, and some of it is just opportunistic anti-Trumpery. The left objects to all sorts of things when Trump does them--but not otherwise. They were pretty much o.k. with Obama droning American citizens and wedding parties...but they're losing their minds over Trump making drug boats go boom...

   But it's hard to tell with the left anymore. It's such a mass of hysterical incoherence that it's almost futile to try to even figure out what they think--beyond Orange Man bad--much less justify it.

   Standard disclaimer: the right, such as it is, has its own problems... But at least, e.g. on this issue, it's easy to figure out what they think. Roughly: 

No open borders; enforce U.S. immigration law...at least a little bit...ok?...like kick out at least the rapists and ped0s...then go from there...oh and: build the wall (which means: more and better fencing).

   The left's position, near as I can figure it, is:

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE families belong together up up with liberation down down with deportation build bridges not walls no one is illegal on stolen land REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

   Though...one bright spot here is the left doing something vaguely pro-family... Of course the vanguard ultimately seeks to destroy (sorry...dismantle!) the nuclear family, per Marx...so...don't get too excited about this minor tactical backsliding.

   The braindead lefties e.g. on Reddit think that, if you can find footage of an illegal shrieking and resisting arrest, and ICE man-handling them in response, we should just stop enforcing the law.

Or, like the meme says:

37 Days in Jail for a Meme--in the USA

Seeing the title, I assumed this would be in the UK...

nope.

Interpreting this meme as a threat makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

MI Lefty Weirdos Freak Out Because TPUSA REEEEEEEEEEEEE

THEY'RE NAZZZI FASCISTS--AND ANTI-COMMUNIST!!!111--REEEEEEEE

Funny...all middle-aged cat women...

Continental Philosophy and the Crazy Left: "Upward-Thrusting Buildings Ejaculating into the Sky"

Feminism is central to the radioactive swamp of continental philosophy and radical leftist politics.

This is the kind of "thinking" that has wrecked academia.

Bonus/similar feminist crazy: "Skyscraper Seduction / Skyscraper Rape"

This shit is why it was so easy for the Sokal II trio to get their intentional nonsense published: the academic left has already made nonsense the standard.

Taibbi: The Epstein Circus Will Shatter Our Last Delusions

It already sounds pretty crazy.

Fareed Zakariah: When America Has an Affordability Crisis, It Tends to be in Places Democrats Govern

Seems right to me.

Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Debate: Resolved: Free Trade Makes Us Poorer

I already lean in his direction, but I thought Own Cass knocked it out of the park:

Eugene Volokh: The Illuminati Wants YOU!

Or, well, him anyway...

Kristopher Kaliebe: "Trans" Activists Now Have Veto Power Over Medical Education Courses

If you think Woketarianism is dead...well...you're wrong.

Miranda Devine: WTH is Going on With the Thomas Crooks Case?

This kind of stuff always strikes me as way more complicated than it might seem to laypeople.

The best explanation for seeming incompetence is actual incompetence.

Or, even better: difficulty.

I kinda think it's impressive that they even know as much about Crooks as they do.

But, TBH, it doesn't seem at all reasonable that we know as little about him as we do.

I'd have expected a full-blown public inquiry.

And, as a sidebar: if this had happened to Kamala Harris would it have faded away so quickly with so little fanfare? Kinda doesn't seem so, does it?

Finally: So...a furry / hentai fan who was apparently flirting with gender looniness?

Isn't it about time that this stuff got a lot more attention?

And, look: gender ideology/pseudoscience is just kind of the most flamboyant aspect of the crazification of the left. Just about no matter how you look at it, progressivism and mental illness are tightly associated. Their official doctrines are largely just insane...and psychological evidence shows that mental illness is rampant on the left--especially among women. Look at the abject insanity on display at their pro-Palestine and anti-ICE protests. The shrieking, the histrionics, the performative martyrdom and hysterical public displays of empathy... These people are not alright.

Suzy Weiss: Bye, Bye Body Positivity

This reminds me of a prediction I made a decade ago:

If actual sex changes ever become possible (and maybe also affordable and all that), gender ideology will disappear over night.

(In fact, it might not even require actual sex changes. All it would probably really require is really plausible simulated sex change. (As opposed to the butchery that seems to be going on now.)  But I'll ignore that for right now.)

But, anyway. If men could actually become women and vice-versa, even the lefties would stop pretending that guys merely wearing dresses and makeup are somehow women. Gender ideology is the kind of thing that happens when people really bad at philosophy want something to be true that demonstrably isn't. It's a cloud of nonsense words and laughably stupid arguments to cover up the incontrovertible, inconvenient fact that sex change simply is not possible.

Should we ever develop the sci-fi medical technology to actually do the thing in question, even the most devoted moonbat relativists will stop pretending that just saying you're a woman is what makes you one.

William McGurn: Affordability Costs a Bundle

link:

It makes for a confusing message. The classic free-market approach is to recognize that government’s job is to create the conditions for Americans to better themselves. The government ensures a sound currency, the rule of law and space for people to use their talents in the marketplace. We elect Republicans (or we used to) not because they better manage the economy but because they know it is hubris to assume that the smart people with political power can pick winners and losers and what the right price should be.
Look at the three markets that affect American families most: education, housing and healthcare. It would be hard to find markets that have had as much government involvement as these. And what a disaster that has been—especially in the Democratic strongholds of America’s big cities.
Take ObamaCare. When Congress was considering the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Americans heard reassurances that even its most ardent defenders couldn’t believe. Remember how ObamaCare would “bend the cost curve”—i.e., slow the rate of growth? How about “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it”? How the bill wouldn’t add a dime to the deficit?
None of that turned out to be true. So here we are, 15 years later, and Congress is debating whether expanded subsidies, sold to the public as a temporary measure during Covid, should expire.
Americans are better off now than we were under Joe Biden. But there lingers an unease over whether the American dream is really back. Americans aren’t going to like being told they are better off if they don’t feel it in their own families.

Yeah, there's really no snappy conservative response to the left's free stuff!

    I continue to suspect--fully realizing that I don't know enough about econ to be even thinking about such stuff at all--that tariffs might be a good idea in the longer term...but I also expect them to raise prices in the short term.

   I've hoped that the Dems would come to their senses at some point and move back toward the center. But now it's starting to look like they're going to lurch from one of their extremist views to another: from social extremism to economic extremism. From Woketarianism to socialism.

   Given the mood of many young adults--or what we're told that their mood is like--one can easily falling for the free stuff scam.

   One econ class, or reading one econ book, might cure a lot of them...

    ...but most of them will never take that class nor read that book.

Woman Attacked With Hammer by Illegal Alien; He Was Released by Biden Admin after Previous Criminal Activity

That thing that never happens happened again:

He had a roll of duct tape with him. Ergo he was intent on kidnapping and, probably, rape.

Do you feel culturally enriched yet?

John C. Eastman: A Constitutional Turning Point? This SCOTUS Term Could be Consequential

Whew.

That'sa lotta stuff.

Boo for forum-shopping.

Matt Miller: Rent Control and Why NYC has 50k "Ghost Apartments"

When I was young(ish) and stupid(ish), I leaned left(ish) on such things.

Then JQ got it into her head to renovate an old house downtown. We turned it into a duplex and lived upstairs. Then we renovated another house and rented out both halves of the duplex for a couple of years.

The experience completely changed my mind about this stuff.

If more people had been landlords, fewer people would lean left on these issues.

Short version: though the duplex brought in a lot of money, I pushed hard to sell it, and JQ finally agreed. We've been shed of it for a couple of years now, and JQ (though initially ambivalent) agrees it was the right decision.

renting is a lot of work, a big pain in the ass, and carries with it a lot of risk. We still had the duplex during lockdowns, and were very lucky that both sets of renters worked for the state. If rent had dried up for either unit, we'd have been screwed. As in ruined.

And one set of bad renters--of which there are many--can just about ruin your life.

John Mac Ghlionn: America's New Theology of Violence

Nihilism is a helluva drug.

TFP: Have America's Institutions Become Overly Feminized?

I don't know, but it's a plausible hypothesis.

If you're serious about it, infer testable consequences from that hypothesis. And test them.

Here's a little story about philosophy, FWIW:

When I got to grad school, Q&As after talks were verbal combat--and the Carolina department was known for being particularly combative.

Departmental feminists eventually started complaining about it, and I pooh-poohed their concerns.

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, I responded.

Also, I was really good at the combat...so...who wants to give that up?

Eventually I got sucked into the Peirce vortex...and, partially for that reason, came to agree with the feminists--though I was already stationed elsewhere.

Eventually, I started convincing people here that the (overly) combative model was not the best way to find the truth.

Independently, philosophy in general seemed to move in the same direction--maybe for good reasons, maybe for feminist reasons, I don't know.

Anyway, I think the change was good.

However...

Now philosophy has gone PC mad. It's less combative...but it's also a loony swamp of woke nonsense. Or has been for quite some time. But I basically don't pay attention to the fads anymore, as it's too repulsive and angrifying. I used to try checking in on places like the Daily Nous...but it was just too damn depressing.

Now...one hypothesis would be that the arc went from too masculinized to too feminized...that would be a fairly neat explanation...

But to figure out whether it's actually true, we'd still have to test the hypothesis that political correctness / woketarianism is feminine, and that it's feminization that led us to our current (or recent) loathsome predicament.

John Mac Ghlionn: The Armed Awakening of America's Radical Left

link

Sidebar:

Back in the day, I said that I thought that the right was making a mistake bringing AR-15s to political rallies. Well, now it's a thing and the left is doing it too.

Nice work, wingnuts.

Dan Zimmerman: Anti-Firearm Orgs Ready to Floor in VA as Soon as Spanberger Takes Office

link

I basically now think we should just oppose almost all efforts to further control firearms.

Concessions are not stopping-points to the left.

They're beachheads.

I'm not comfortable with this position...but there it is.

James Lynch: Trump Urges Pubs to Release Epstein Files to End "Democrat Hoax"

facepalm

I have never cared as much about this as I guess I should have.

It all seems terrible...but in the global scheme of terribleness, I guess I think it barely registers.

Maybe if I knew more about it I'd think differently.

I mean...it's pretty goddamned bad, obvs...but...

Anyway.

WTH is it with Trump?

He's just all over the map all the time.

Why the ceaseless chaos?

He could have prevented a lot of this.

Why the big detour into This is nothing just forget about it? 

Just to then come back to this, his original view?

The Dems haven't been any better--in fact, as per their recent usual--they were worse.

One year in and I've got chronic, severe Trump fatigue.

Jared Gould: Bizarre Assignments in Texas State U. Communications Class Show How Leftist Faculty Indoctrinate Students Via Class Assignments

A good example--but just one way in which this stuff gets infused into universities.

"Dr." Helen Webberley: Women's Sports is Ethnic Cleansing

I worry that, after hearing this sort of shit over and over for ten years, some people might become inured to it:

Dr Helen Webberley, the ghoul of Gender GP, is currently doing the media rounds.

This is the woman who, alongside sterilising children, posed in front of an image of a Nazi death camp, arguing that sex testing for athletics is equivalent to the Holocaust.

She belongs in prison. pic.twitter.com/CKOM0e3U3W

— James Esses (@JamesEsses) November 17, 2025

They're Still Pushing Transanity

'I feel sorry for your children...'

'Well I think you're borderline evil.'@BenLeo444 gets into a fiery clash with founder of https://t.co/1iyYqZN8uz Dr Helen Webberley, confronting her on support for prescribing puberty blockers to children and more. pic.twitter.com/6ZSWTDZhua

— GB News (@GBNEWS) November 17, 2025

Appeals Court Strikes Down OH School District's Retarded Pseudo-Pronoun Policy

As I informed our Faculty Senate in 2021, such policies violate the First Amendment.

(I told 'em they could pass it if they liked, but I wouldn't follow it, and if I was sanctioned, I'd take it to the courts...and they'd side with me...)

The Mirror: The Left's Macro-Cult: Recruited to Fight a Make-Believe War

TBF I have encountered Trump cultists. I guess I've said this before. Thing is, you have to really look for 'em. I've really only encountered them online. Whereas the cult of Woketarianism...is, well...look, it's a cult, man. Or, rather: it's so damn cult-like that there's not much sense mincing words about that.

   OTOH, most of the Trump voters I know have plenty of criticisms of the guy. I consider him the biggest roll of the dice of my political life. If he runs the country into a ditch, I won't be particularly surprised. I don't even think the guy is fit to be President--as I keep saying. But, damn...the other side has completely lost its shit. It's a cult. Or, rather: a large chunk of it is a cult. And TDS is rampant even in the other parts. TDS is itself cultish...it's like an anti-Cult: the cult of anti-Trumpness.

   That's another reason I'm frequently holding my breath about Trump: not only do I not want the country run into a ditch...almost even worse would be for those people to have grounds for thinking themselves to have been right. Anything that pumps more crazy into the cult would be very, very bad...

Anyway:

The Success of Trump's Border Policies

Via Instapundit:

🚨 HOLY SMOKES! The success of Donald Trump’s border in one image.

Migrant crossings at the insanely dangerous Darien Gap:

2022: 248,284
2023: 520,085
2024: 302,203
2025: 2,941 (!!!)

It’s a decline of nearly 100%.

The Gap is located between Colombia and Panama; it’s a… pic.twitter.com/8RAU3JDbYW

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 15, 2025

What won't be reported: there is a corresponding decline in rapes and deaths.

Migration is not compassion. It's an evil that has been perpetuated by our government and the UN. pic.twitter.com/XoaxuHwcMr

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) November 16, 2025

The most important thing here is preservation of American sovereignty and thwarting of the left's efforts to destabilize the nation, challenge our right to control our borders, and undermine the rule of law and the importance of citizenship.

   I basically never mention the benefits of border control to illegal aliens and aspiring illegal aliens themselves because I consider that a cheat. It's playing the left's game of weaponized compassion. Arguments about the good of the aspiring illegals themselves are basically beside the point. My position would not change significantly even if illegals were entering the country without risk.

   Furthermore, the "immigrants" themselves judge the costs of the trip to be worth it. Pointing to the costs doesn't really matter much without mentioning the benefits--and the fact that the people taking the risks think it's worth it. They themselves judge that the arduous trip is worth the risk...to sneak into the epicenter of world racism and terribleness... If only they had taken some courses in American universities, they'd see what a hellhole this is, and not be tempted to come...

   Finally: I, like most conservatives so far as I can tell, am not angry at your average, otherwise law-abiding illegal alien. I understand why they've done what they've done, I sympathize, and I would absolutely do the same myself were the tables turned. And they'd have--or should have--the same position I have now were the tables turned. I sympathize with them like I sympathize with poor people who shoplift to improve their lot. Doesn't mean that I think we should ignore shoplifting laws.

   This is another crucial case illustrating the crazification of the left. Conservatives continue to have the same, sane view that everyone had...before the left went nuts: legal immigrants are welcome; illegals are not. Twenty years ago, when I was still a Democrat, I called it, and virtually no one believed me: the Dems had already begun saying more and more things that sounded like they were on their way to a veiled open-borders position. And here we are. Well...we were already here 5-10 years ago. Now the blue team believes that it's wrong to stop people at the border and wrong to deport them once they're here. Which is tantamount to open borders. Which position will inevitably lead to the collapse of the nation.

   And our problem is nowhere even near Europe's problem.

   But, hey...better for the West to collapse than for people to think you might be racist! And what about those poor people...aw... Why can't you just be nice? Emotions emotions sympathy tears quavering voice emotions... See?

   However...

   Trump's policies do have benefits to the migrants themselves...even if they don't matter much to the arguments. And, of course, that's good.

William Jacobson: Trump's Compact for Excellence in Higher Ed: Trump Extends an Olive Branch; Academia Slaps It Out of His Hand

Agreed.

The compact is just about exactly what academia needs.

The fact that it is so opposed to it shows you pretty much what you need to know about the contemporary state of the enterprise.

I wish academia could govern itself

But the insane left has taken it over--and the left is incapable to correctly governing anything.

Psychobabble: Feminist Buzzwords: How Women's Studies Rewrote Reality

Rita Panahi, Lefties Losing It: New Gender Dropped! and: Some White Lefty (Literally) Kisses Jasmine Crockett's Feet

 (The comedian segment following the gender segment is extremely NSFW. Though it's worth skipping forward to 7:45...if you want an even lower opinion of our friends on the left, that is...)

The mental illness faction:

And trust me--either end it after this segment, or skip forward to 7:45.

Jeff Chan: 3 Beginner Tips for Reading Punches and Improving Head Movement

Melanie Phillips: How Academia Abandoned Evidence for Ideology

Decoy Voice: Protecting Illegal Alien Pedophiles with Anti-ICE Jazzercise...Etc.

My favorite new bit is lefties shrieking made-up shit about the law at ICE--"Show us your warrant!"..."You're kidnapping him!"..."You don't even know his name!"..."You're on private property!"...blah blah blah. The ICE guys just ignore 'em. News flash, dumbass: they don't have to show you their warrant...and in many cases they don't need a warrant. But if they do have one, they know his name--but you don't, asshat. You have no reason to think that they don't know it, and no way to confirm whether they do or not...and, of course: they don't care that you're there screaming incoherently.

   If I didn't even know anything about what was going on, I'd know which side to be on just from the deranged, narcissistic antics of the moonbats.

Jonathan Alpert: TDS is a Real Psychological Condition

No surprise here.

I have friends who are afflicted.

Though, to repeat myself: it's not like it's completely inexplicable... 

That guy'd make the Pope cuss...

Et Tu, GA? Georgia Cop Uses Correct Title to Refer to a Man Pretending to be a Woman; Tizzy Ensues

Fucking ridiculous.

There seems to not even be any proof that this happened.

But, to state the obvious: the dude is a man. He has no business in the women's restroom. Referring to him as 'sir' is correct. As is telling him to use the men's room next time.

Crazed Leftist Mob Outside Broadview ICE Facility

Arrest 'em all.

Let God sort 'em out.

Good Luck to Senator Fetterman

Not just because he often seems like the last sane Democrat, but also because he seems like a genuinely good guy.

Anti-ICE Riot in Chicago

Lowry: The GOP Can't Afford to Punt on Health Care

Boy do I ever not know anything about this.

Coulter: Epstein, Maxell, and Giuffre: The Depraved Details

Horrible.

I probably should have cared more about this.

Wokepedia: "The Talk"

The advent of police body cameras ought to at least have cast a bit of doubt on the ideas underlying this...but...well...Wokepedia...

   Oddly, there seems to be no page on John Derbyshire's "The Talk: Non-Black Version."

Psychobabble: The Rise of the Pathological Female

Huh.

I don't know much about such stuff.

But, if Spier is right about it, Woketarianism seems to be largely (though not entirely) this phenomenon ("cluster B personality disorder") en masse.

And that goes double for Antifa. If you've watched much footage of Antifa riots, this is exactly how they act--especially the shrieking threats that shift immediately to sympathy ploys when the former don't work, the shrieking of incoherent insults at those who oppose them--saying things that are much more embarrassing, objectively speaking, to the shrieker than the shriekee... Since this disorder is more prevalent among women, I suppose it's not entirely an accident that Antifa is mostly made up of (a) women, (b) effeminate men, and, of course, (c) men pretending to be women.

Anyway:

Mark Hemingway: Latest Epstein Emails About Trump Just Another Dishonest Democrat Misinfo Op

Red-team folks were all over this immediately.

Seems like another dishonest blue team misinfo op.

Maybe not...but, by now, after so many of these, it's the smart bet.

Shakos Metaheuristics: Why Foucault is Our Most-Cited Intellectual

I think this is somewhere in the vicinity of being on the right track.

He's not that good--so some explanation is required.

Contrary to what the author claims, Foucault is more aligned with the left than the right. The author points out that some righties (e.g. Moldbug) cite him...but they're exceptions.

Foucault likes external undermining explanations--that is, explanations of beliefs and institutions that show them to be irrational...and the left loves that shit. He was homosexual and into BDSM--and the left loves that shit, too...especially the academic left. It's kinda like why they like Freud: they want to talk and write about sex--especially kinky sex--and it makes their boring research and teaching more interesting.

   Also: it's easy.

   Not just because, as the author says, it makes it seem like you can understand things without learning statistics...but because it also means you don't have to actually learn to reason, as you have to do in real philosophy. You can just basically say sex and power over and over again. Every time you come up against a hard problem or complex argument, you can just pretend to find some kind of hidden "power" lurking in it somewhere. Even dimwits can pull that nonsense off. At it lets you feel like you outmaneuvered smarter people...

   Anyway, I'm running on no sleep, so I'm being sloppy...but this is pretty much right.

Christopher Wray: Antifa is Not "Just an Idea"

Obviously.

The DC Shorts: Is It Really All Liberal Women's Fault?

Eh...uh...

Shields et al.: Campus Bias Revealed in Syllabi

link

3I/Atlas: Looks Like No LGMs

I've barely had enough extra attention to even keep this story on the periphery of my awareness.

That's to say: I know jack shit about this story.

Trump HHS Nixes Biden-Era Rule Pushing Doctors to Form "Anti-Racism" Plans

Excellent.

"Anti-racism" is like "social justice"--it sounds like a politically neutral, morally unexceptionable idea.

In fact, it means, basically, leftist.

"Anti-racism" isn't opposition to racism. It's a far-left ideological position that is itself, in fact, (and among other failings) racist (against whites).

Joe Nocera: Inside Trump's Crypto Cash Machine

Sounds very not good.

But I know nothing about such stuff, so I'd at least have to hear something from another perspective.

Is this worse than the way the Clintons and Obamas cashed in on the Presidency?

I certainly hope it's not worse than the way the Bidens cashed in...

Anyway.

Sure sounds awful.

Eric Kaufman: Transgenderism is in Rapid Decline, Showing that It Was a Fad / Social Contagion All Along

Exactly no surprise whatsoever.

Two Big Problems with High Levels of Asian Immigration: Cheating and Voting

I tend to worry about the voting problem most. The cheating problem is more of a technical problem schools can and should be addressing. 

   But as for that other problem: a university with which I'm very familiar has an extremely namby-pamby test--more like a quiz, really--about how to use the library. It's given only in computer labs. All students must take it. Apparently certain Asian students will often just meet in the middle of the room and discuss the exam/quiz. The labs are monitored by students, who are often unwilling to break up or report such groups. The problem is bad enough that it has been discussed openly in committee meetings...which...given that like half of the faculty will call absolutely anything whatsoever racist...is pretty amazing.

Trimble out 6-8 Weeks with Broken Arm

Busted in practice, not against the Jayhawks.

ergh.

John Sailer: OSU's Activist Hiring Program

This is very much like what has been happening at my own university...where, let me say, I was one of only a very small number of faculty pushing back.

Leftist Mob Attacks TPUSA Group at Berkeley

This is just SOP for the left now:

And So It Begins: ABL on Lefty Cat Ladies Simping for Mamdani

Shudder:

Head of BBC Resigns Over Falsified Trump Video; Trump Threatens $1bn Lawsuit

In this case, Trump's entirely justified.

Illegal Alien with Past Firearm Felony Arrested for Shooting ICE Agent in Chicago

Throw the book at him.

Turley: Sixth Circuit Issues Major Ruling Striking Down School District's Pronoun Policy

link

The dissenting (female) Obama appointee's opinion is just stupid.

The idea seems to be that, if someone is likely to raise a stink about someone else speaking the truth, that can constitute sufficient legal reason to permit a policy that forbids speaking the truth.

Jim Geraghty: Dems Finally Fold in Pointless Shutdown Fight

Seems about right to me...but what do I know?

Turley: Punch-Drunk Pundits Reveal Plans to Pack Supreme Court

All it's going to take is one big win by the Dems...

WSJ on Trump's Dopey Tariff Bribe

Can you believe this guy was our least-bad option?

Laura Morgan: Campus DEI Persists, Even in Texas

"Health equity" in TX med schools.

IOC to Ban Men ("Transgender Women") from All Olympic Events

It's insane that this has taken a decade.

And don't forget: the left has not acknowledged--nor, apparently, has it even accepted--that it was abjectly, utterly, insanely wrong about this madness.

When the Dems Win

Here are some of the things we're being told that Dems might/should do the next time they win:

• Send Trump supporters to re-education camp for deprogramming (HRC)
• Prosecute all ICE agents (not the right link)
• Pack the Court
• Eliminate the filibuster (Trump doesn't want to wait that long)
• Grant statehood to DC and Puerto Rico

And--though they don't say it we know they'll do it because they already have:

• Throw the border open. 

Then there's all the other stuff that we know they want to do even if they're not saying it right now--e.g.: take your guns.

Of course if you sweep up stupid suggestions from various quarters you can almost always get a horrifying list...but some of these crackpot ideas seem to be developing some staying power.

Trump: $2k Checks for Everybody!

facepalm

Allysia Finley: Grade Inflation Produced Mamdani's Proletariat

I don't exactly buy this explanation, but it's floating around.

   More important, I think, is the package of loony theories and shitty, half-assed methods of reasoning that have ruled on the academic left for decades now. Students who major in pseudo-scholarly areas like gender studies and "social justice" whatever mainline the stuff. But anyone exposed to the humanities or social sciences or the twilight zone in between get some of it. So we end up with an intelligentsia--and a penumbra around it--indoctrinated with stupid ideas and taught to reason badly. And, of course, it's not a bunch of random bad ideas and bad reasoning: it's all leftist nonsense with some mangled Marxism at its core...which means: "the revolution."

   It's rather as if we'd allowed Scientology to take over universities. Some students have real majors and pay no attention to it, some major in "auditing" or "suppressive person"-ology...they end up stupider than when they went into college. But many students who don't become true believers just absorb a lot of it from the background.

Nick Fuentes

I know basically nothing about this guy.

Guess I'm going to have to learn.

Charles Cooke: The Great [Bilateral Trump] Derangement

Exactly right, I say.

   I think we all already know it--but it's good to keep saying it.

   Trump's rather like a vicious mastiff we released onto our land to terrorize and kill the wolves that have decimated our cattle. Every dog is sometimes lovable...but that doesn't cancel out the fact that he's a threat to us as well...

   Or maybe the Patton analogy is better. Patton was a nut and a dick...but what was our alternative? He was good at killing Nazis...which was Job 1 at the time...

   

   I continue to think this is mainly the left's fault. If they could just stop being outright insane, it would be less important to stop them, and so less important to support Trump. And their nonstop, irrational, lunatic criticisms of him push us to defend him too much... Again I ask: if he's so bad, why does the left have to lie about him virtually nonstop? It just doesn't make any sense...

   But, then, the left doesn't make any sense anymore...

   What's my point?

   Same one as always, I reckon...

   Or maybe:

   Yeah, there are the victims of TDS. And there are the Trump groupies/sycophants. But even those of us who more or less manage to keep it between the ditches can be overly excusing of Trump's vices. I myself, as is probably pretty obvious, cut the guy too much slack. My theory of myself on that point is: I jumped at every anti-Trump story for years after I finally came to mostly support him. Every time the blue team spewed out some bullshit story about him, I'd think Oh, shit, how could I have supported a guy like that? and I'd scurry off to read the allegedly gory details... And time after time it turned out to be bullshit. Not always, of course...but almost always. At least when it came to the truly allegedly devastating stuff. And all the time the left got more and more insane. And finally I just said fuck it. Life is short and you pick your poison and I'm not going to keep falling for this shit, Lucy-and-the-football-wise... 

   At this point, I've basically settled into: he's accomplishing quite a bit against some truly dangerous elements and factions. It's unlikely that anyone else would be doing more. And his failings are tolerable against that backdrop.

   I'm more or less just keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best.

   Such a strategy has obvious dangers.

Dan McLaughlin: On Donald Trump's Virtues

I basically agree.

The Sierra Club (and Two PC-Left Principles)

This happened with all sorts of lefty groups.

The (ridiculous) principle that helps rationalize (in the bad dumb sense) this: "intersectionality."

Or, rather, what we might call strong intersectionality.

The idea started with Kimberle Crenshaw (or one of those people). Originally, the point was: in some circumstances, different varieties of discrimination can interact to create a kind of discrimination that's greater than the sum of its parts. E.g. black women might suffer a kind of discrimination that can't just be decomposed into anti-black discrimination and anti-female discrimination. I read the paper, but it wasn't very good, and I don't remember whether her argument even works.

But this idea got blown up into the absurd idea I'm calling "strong intersectionality."

It goes like this:

It's impossible to mitigate one type of discrimination (oh...sry..."oppression"...) without addressing all types.

That, of course, is ridiculous.

It would mean that the Civil War did nothing to mitigate racist discrimination because it didn't address discrimination against women or homosexuals.

Just dumb.

Anyway, this provides the kind of thin justification the PC left thrives on. And it's used to turn organizations that address one issue the lefties like (in this case: environmentalism) into full-spectrum Woketarian train wrecks.

The dumb justification isn't even relevant in that case because environmentalism isn't aimed at opposing a kind of discrimination (though the left does some contortions to try to make it seem like it is in some cases).

LOL there's another one that's not quite so apt but I just thought it up and then forgot it while I was typing out the tirade above...

January 6th Bomber Identified?

link

I watched a little of the footage when it came out, and kinda thought that the person might be female, but decided I really couldn't tell from bearing and gait.

The stuff about the FBI being in on it seems poorly justified.

Anyway, I've got nothing to add. I've thought about this very little and read about it very little.

Trump is Ridiculously Wrong about the Filibuster

That's all.

It's just dumb.

The filibuster is a mechanism to save us from nutty radicals.

Carolina 87 - Kansas 74

Always love playing the Jayhawks...even though they've had our number of late.

Almost unbelievable that this was their first game at the Dean Dome.

Joe Lancaster: Even the FBI Thinks that Masked ICE Agents are a Bad Idea

link

Well, obviously a bad idea...but, as I've argued before, possibly the least-bad option.

The reason ICE agents wear masks--presumably--is that the psychotic, violent, terroristic left has spent ten years targeting the families of people it disagrees with. And attacks on ICE agents are through the roof.

As I've argued in the past: the left could end the masks tomorrow if it stopped being such a bunch of commie psycho totalitarian terrorists...it really is that simple.

And, of course: stop mob disruptions of ICE arrests.

BUT:

If ICE agents are going to wear masks, they've got to e.g. wear uniforms and/or display credentials and/or show up with local police backup or something that makes it possible for people to tell the difference between them and random criminals.

Telling you right now, I wouldn't comply with random dudes leaping out of cars with masks... That would end up being a bad situation. People would get hurt.

But the left is not going to top being psycho.

That's perfectly clear.

So other measures will have to be taken.

One other option: come down like the very fist of God on people who dox, harass, and impede ICE agents or their families. Just throw their asses in jail.

Round up everyone in the anti-ICE mobs and arrest 'em.

Anyway.

There are multiple ways to skin this cat. But if the left is serious about getting rid of masks, it's got to stop with the mobs and doxing.

But, of course, the left isn't serious about it. They looove masks--so long as they're the ones wearing them. The anti-mask stuff is just anti-ICE stuff. It's an argument of convenience to the left.

Switzerland Against Free Speech: Man Jailed for Saying that Skeletons Differ by Sex

link

Brünisholz is reportedly about to start a 10-day prison stint due to his voicing skepticism about claims that skeletons are transgender.
There is very little coverage of this story. Free speech cases are often downplayed by European media. So, we have only limited information coming from conservative sites.
In 2022, he responded to a Facebook post by Swiss National Council member Andreas Glarner on the controversy. Some, including academics in the United States, are now claiming that you really cannot gauge the sex of individuals from their skeletons.
The wind-instrument repairman thought that such claims were unfounded and posted a comment that said, “If you dig up LGBTQI people after 200 years, you’ll only find men and women based on their skeletons. Everything else is a mental illness promoted through the curriculum.”
Brünisholz then received a knock on his door from the Burgdorf police and then a prosecution letter for engaging in “hate speech” and “publicly belittling” comments based on sexual orientation under the Swiss Criminal Code. He was convicted and fined 500 Swiss Francs.
If true, this sounds like just another absurd use of a criminal charge to silence those with opposing views. However, a court actually convicted him and then another court upheld the conviction. He was ordered to pay a fine or go to jail. He is now going to jail for simply expressing his view, a view supported by many scientists and citizens.

What Brunisholz says here is:

[a] True

[b] In accordance with common sense

[c] In accordance with the best available science

[d] Well within the boundaries of acceptable speech by any reasonable standard.

The only standards it violates are of moonbat ideology.

SCOTUS Hears Appeal to Overturn Obergefell

This is a tough one.

Trump and SCOTUS Bring Sanity Back re: Correct Identification of Sex on Passports

It's madness that this is an issue at all.

If you can falsify your sex on a passport, why not everything else, too? Just make up whatever race, age, height, weight, name, nationality you like..

The PC left isn't going to see reason on this. We just need to crush them on this point: relentlessly slap it down everywhere it still exists--or wherever it tries to rise again.

As the philosopher says:

Facts don't care about your feelings.

Bitch.

Will the Democrats Kill Open Carry in VA?

Maybe.

I don't think it's particularly smart to open carry...but even less smart is letting the Democrats ratchet the anti-firearm laws farther to the left.

Turley: Scumbag* Dem Lawyer Mark Elias Argues That Electing Republicans is Evidence of Racism

Elias is scum.

*My term, more accurate than Turley's "controversial."

Jacob Sullum: Contra Trump, Trade Deficits are Not a National Emergency

I usually don't blame Trump for trying...but this argument just seems dumb.

I still don't quite buy the second part of Sullum's argument--that tariffs won't help...but I don't care that much about that point, and am not qualified to speak on it.

Of course there are probably complexities about the first point that I don't understand either...so I guess I really ought to be saying, at most, that the claim that it's a national emergency is prima facie dumb...

Also: the more often Trump wildly swings for the fences, the less inclined to support him I become. Occasionally is ok...too many times seems bad. But what do I know?

"Brandon:" Stoner Logic in Academia

I think this is pretty much exactly right.

I tend to characterize the method in question as literary, quasi-poetic, free-associative...I don't have a single fixed description. But stoner logic is good--maybe better. Good as a description of bad reasoning is what I mean, of course.

I say this despite the fact that I've never been able to sustain enough interest in Foucault to make it very far in any of his books...so it would serve me right to be embarrassingly wrong about him...

But I know enough about academia and the intellectual and political left to know that it's a good description of them...and they sure do love him...

Two other very significant methodological commitments on the left:

[1] What we might call "debunking irrationalism"--the eagerness to "show" that all our important (and conservative) human commitments are irrational, stupid and bad.

[2] The pervasiveness of hidden (and irrational) motives. (This is close to "the hermeneutics of suspicion.")

2 is one of the reasons the left loves Freud--and it seems to me to some extent Marx. I don't know how much of 2 comes from Freud, and how much was there before him. But they looooove them some hidden motives. Hence their "master 'argument':"  that's racist. Which is not really an argument at all, of course. You see, you--if you're white--are a racist, no matter how your thoughts, words and actions may belie the charge. You are. Admit it, racist. Just like the (apocryphal?) Freudian analyst who tells you that of course you'd be sick if you wanted to sleep with your mother...but you're sick and a liar for denying that you do, the leftist...well, you can see where I'm going with this... It's not exactly a novel point...

   And, of course, this applies to all your thoughts and reasoning as well. You may think you think that you believe that speech should be free--or, for that matter, that dogs are mammals--because that's the way the preponderance of evidence points...but you really believe those things because...[insert any half-assed explanation you like here: something something capitalism, something something power, something something sex, something something patriarchy, something something racism, something something whatever...]

This because: such external undermining explanations purport to show that your beliefs aren't rational..which means [something something abracadabra hey look over there...] viva la revolution!

Remember: the point is never the point...the point is always the revolution...

   So 2 is a convenient route to 1: a hidden motive means that your arguments are all bad--they are all mere rationalizations (in the Freudian sense).

   Or, put Marx-wise: my beliefs are science; your beliefs are ideology...

   Such arguments, with even a modicum of philosophical sophistication on the part of the speaker, and sufficient credulity or eagerness to believe on the part of the hearer, can be used to play-debunk any proposition...and, of course, this method (such as it is) is applied only to the bad propositions...not the politically correct social justice propositions...

   But, anyway, overarching all of this is stoner logic--i.e. a free-associative, quasi-literary method that accepts any vaguely plausible suggestion that seems cool or exciting or otherwise welcome.

   Leftist reasoning (like so much human reasoning) is guided by conclusions: any argument will be accepted so long as it can be represented as leading to a politically correct conclusion. Men suck, white people suck, yay abortion!, hoist the rainbow flag, capitalism bad...whatever.