So retarded I couldn't even finish it: "Democracy and Belonging Forum:" Regularización Ya!, a fearless migrant-led movement driving policy change in Spain

The stupid...it buuuuuuurns.....

PJW: The Moroccan Invasion of Spain

I'm not the biggest fan of PJW's style...but it's a good video.

If nothing else, watch the insane ravings of Irene Montero at 11:30:

Taibbi: The ferocity of the COVID coverup is a thing to behold

I say yet again:  political correctness / Lysenkoism--the subordination of facts and evidence to leftist ideology--is the most central characteristic of the left.

   It was always clear that they were delusional about COVID origins. It was always clear that they were promoting their delusional view for political reasons. Even recent revelations that opponents of the lab-leak hypothesis knew at the time that they were lying has not shaken the left's commitment to the zoonotic hypothesis.

Charles Hilu: Trump lashes out against the harsh reality of Senate math

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As a commenter at NRO notes: the SAVE America act is important, but the filibuster is more important.

As another notes, Trump thinks he can just bully his way through, as he has done in business. He's usually right...hard as that is to believe...but he's just not temperamentally suited to the Presidency.

He's doing a ridiculous amount of good. I wish he'd focus on what he can do instead of obsessively trying to do what he can't.

TIM HORTON'S "TRANSPHOBIC" DONUTS

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Leftism is an acquired form of mental illness.

Jeffrey Blehar: Cambridge can--but evidently won't--catch Jason Arday

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I said Arday was in the Ed school...but it's worse than that...: He's a "sociologist of education."

Those are either the two most disreputable academic fields or damn close to it...

Kathleen Stock: Jason Arday, Cambridge's DEI Darling

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   Arday is clearly unqualified...even in perhaps the weakest discipline in academia...(and that's saying something...) He is undeniably a DEI hire. He is a serial fabulist--and his tall tales aren't even minimally credible. He is the poster child for academic Woketarianism and in particular DEI. Cambridge has embarrassed itself but it simply will not admit it. It and he have their defenders. Here, for example, is a mess of thermonuclear cringe, an open letter in Arday and Cabridge's defense.

Here's an embarrassing paragraph:

It is difficult to ignore the question of motivation. When a distinguished Black academic is repeatedly subjected to baseless allegations after being fully exonerated, it signals there is an attempt to undermine Black people who hold positions of influence.

Contrariwise:

It isn't at all difficult to ignore the question of motivation. Regardless of anyone's motivation, the charges against Arday are devastating. And at least most of them are far from "baseless"--they are supported by extremely strong evidence. Cofnas carefully documents Arday's extensive plagiarism, for example. But Cambridge and at least some of the relevant journals are helping cover it up. No ordinary academician would be afforded the opportunity to go back into a published paper filled with plagiarism and add references. He has not been "exonerated"...much less "fully" so. Rather, at least many of the accusations are clearly true. So, again: motives need not come into this.

...however...

When an obviously unqualified academic is obviously hired because of his race--and, perhaps, his tall tales about disability ("neurodivergence")...and when it has been proven that he plagiarized and lied...and when the leftist establishment nevertheless refuses to accept the plain facts of the matter...

...well...it's just the opposite of what the authors and signatories of the open letter would have you believe.

Obviously.

   Contrast Arday and Cofnas: the former is--well, see above. Cofnas is smart, intellecutally independent, fearless, and astute. But Cofnas is white, and has the temerity to speak politically incorrect truths. Arday is black, and checks all the woke boxes. Cofnas was chased out of Cambridge and is lucky to have found a position he hasn't been run out of...yet. Arday's indefensible actions are being defended by Cambridge et al...

I thought academia might more or less be done embarrassing itself.

But I was wrong.

"Liberal Currents": Thermonuclear Leftardation

I just stumbled across this.

facepalm

Unbelievably idiotic.

Ukraine: Viper Takes Down Su-30; Special Forces Hack Rooskies, Get Them to Shoot Down Felon w/ Their Own SAM

Unconfirmed by me, but I tend to trust Max Afterburner:

Alicia Nieves: The Left's War on Anti-Crime Tech

"Progressive paranoia costs lives"

I haven't thought enough about e.g. Flock cameras--though it's an issue in my town.

I agree with what Nieves says about the left...but I'm not sure whether they're right or wrong about the cameras and similar things.

Certainly conservatives, liberals and centrists are split on such issues. Libertarians tend to be unified and against such technology. As goes without saying.

My main objection to these new sub-movements on the left is that--as usual--they seem mainly concerned to support criminals and criminality. Progressives lean libertarian when it comes to defending criminals--but not ordinary people. They're against Flock cameras...but also against voter ID. They're libertarian about the cameras, and about gunfire detection technology...but not about gun ownership by law-abiding citizens. Very selective libertarianism...and generally in the wrong direction.

Me, again: I don't know. As Sowell says, there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. Flock cameras are good and they're bad. If we could be assured that the information wouldn't be used for any purpose other than catching serious criminals--that the information would be locked up except to catch murderers, rapists, child-abductors, etc--I'd be inclined to favor it. But, of course, I don't trust the government nor the relevant companies to do it that way...

So I don't know...but I'm inclined to be against them on general principle...but willing to be convinced.

James Taranto: SCOTUS Should Say It Plainly: A Man Cannot Become A Woman

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Actually, this is even slightly more fundamental:

Women cannot be male

Men cannot be female.

I spent way too much time on Saturday arguing in the WSJ comments with a paradigmatically loony progressive about this. He (or she?) didn't know even the most basic things about the issue. He just accepted the blue-team talking points. Foremost among his confusions--one of the most important bits of leftist dogma: that man and woman are "genders." As I explained--repeatedly and to no avail:

[a] Man and woman are species/sex/maturity kinds (or categories), like buck and doe, boar and sow, bull and cow, stallion and mare... We have such terms for almost every species that is important to us--humans foremost among them.

   Unfortunately, 'gender' is multiply ambiguous--and that's largely by design. It functions as an equivocation engine, and the left switches around among different senses in order to obfuscate. If we eliminate the obviously defective senses of the term, and keep the meaning fixed, their arguments collapse immediately.

   As I've said for a decade, there is a sensible, defensible sense of 'gender'--basically the first one used as a technical term in such discussion: that is: the genders are masculine and feminine. These not "cultural," but, rather, behavioral kinds (though culture spins them a bit--as it does so many things). Men are typically more masculine, women more feminine. If we stick to this meaning, some of the left's central claims actually turn out to be true: these things lie on a spectrum; there's an intermediate state that could be considered a third gender: androgyny; one can, to some extent, alter them at will--by acting more masculine or more feminine. However: they have nothing essentially to do with being a man or a woman: acting in masculine ways can't make a female a man; acting in feminine ways can't make a male a woman.

   This dude I was arguing with even denied that the following definition is circular:  a woman is someone who thinks himself/herself to be a woman. I had to explain that, if the definiendum appears in the definiens...then that's circular...

   There's nothing like being [a] a pompous jackass who [b] has no earthly clue WTF you are talking about...

   Anyway, Taranto is right, of course. But the denial that men can be female and that women can be male, is slightly more fundamental. So it would be slightly better to focus on that.

Rich Lowry: Yes, the DSA Has a Communist Problem

Not so much a problem, really...it's just who they are...

Charles Cook: The DSA Wants to Abolish America

That's no exaggeration.

If this in any way surprises you, you haven't been paying attention.

Here's what I'd like to know:

What percentage of Democrats would support these DSA insurgents if they thought they could win with them?

Because there's nothing really new about these people--other than that they're rather more clear-eyed and up-front about their ultimate goals.

To be clear: I have no doubt that most Democrats oppose the "dismantling" of the United States. I'm less sure what percentage agrees with at least some of the DSA's insane goals. Look: Democrats are now mostly "progressive"...and "progressives" have been pushing these goals for at least a decade ("depolicing," "decarceration," radical DEI, abolish ICE, amnesty (ergo: de facto open borders). Many progressives have basically favored abolishing the Senate--by e.g. turning it into another House, abolishing the filibuster, etc. This DSA idiot doesn't mention abolishing the electoral college, but I have no doubt they support it. I'm sure they'd be all about trashing at least the first two Amendments...

"Entryism" aka Infiltration, the "French Turn," "Boring-from-Within"

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Roughly analogous to: the long march through the institutions.

Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee is noted for its "realignment" strategy efforts within the Democratic Party in the 1970s, while its modern-day successor Democratic Socialists of America is primarily focused on running its members on the Democratic Party platform (e.g. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib), or endorsing other democratic socialists at doing so (e.g. Bernie Sanders).

Scott Pinsker: The Great MAGA Reversal on Ukraine

About time.

IMO conservatives have been really stupid about Ukraine.

In fact, many--the Tucker Carlson wing, I guess--have been downright pro-Russian.

Abject stupidity.

I'm not saying that it was reasonable for Europe to think we should come bail them out on this one. But Trump's treatment of Zelensky has been shameful.

We should be happy for Ukraine to bleed Russia dry.

Or, rather: Putin.

I don't hate the Russians, of course. I hate their psychopathic president.

Anyway. Better late than never, I reckon.

Allysia Finley: The Republicans Who Enable Socialists

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I'm more and more sympathetic to conservatives who think we should just cut all such programs.

Undoubtedly, we'd end up cutting some we'd want back--but deal with that if/when it happens.

The massive outpouring of tax dollars to inefficient and corrupt programs that ultimately fund and otherwise sustain Democrats is worse than just a waste of money. I'd rather see it piled up and burned.

DCj: WE'RE LITERALLY IN HITLER'S FIRST 100 DAYS !!!!!!1111

But, hey, on the bright side: time travel...

Kurt Micelli: Trump Lucks into a Plan to Reform the AMA

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DO EET

  Absolutely do not stop. Do not slow down. In fact, put the pedal to the metal. For Trump's myriad flaws, he's doing a creditable job crushing the cult and undoing its works. Transanity and DIE are among its most heinous.

   If Harris had won, these things might have been further solidified, for all the backlash against them. We haven't won this--not by a long shot. Rooting it all out of our institutions will take hard work, intelligence and stubborn persistence. But this is a battle for the USA, the West, and sanity. Transanity seems to be on the run, and I've always thought it was too insane to survive...DEI is less overtly Orwellian. It's already burrowing farther in and surviving the backlash merely by e.g. changing words on university web pages.

Cathryn Townsend: "Epstein's Gifted Scientists" (A Screed on Race Realism)

LOOOOOOLOLOLOLOL

I guess you shouldn't expect too much from an anthropologist writing on a venue called "Liberal Currents"...but this is a weak effort by just about anyone's standards.

Not really the first part, so much, which is about famous academicians who hung out with Richard Epstein. That pretty much seems like legit reporting. The most surprising bit to me was when I looked on of the pix from the "Lolita Express" and thought Hey, that looks like Dan Dennett...which, indeed, it was. Alongside Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins...

   Anyway, smart money says none of these guys knew what Epstein was up to. And lemme tell ya: it's easy to seduce academicians with money, attention and flattery... That's probably the really embarrassing part of the whole thing. According to one participant, the only girls they saw were young, but of legal age. And, of course, no old farts can be blamed for being entranced by young, attractive women.

   But the essay becomes downright laughable when the author comes around to her real point: trying to link Epstein up to race realism. Of course she uses the politically correct dysphemism "scientific racism"...which isn't even vaguely accurate... She gives no arguments against race realism, but, rather, relies on the reservoir of negative emotions and hysteria that drive so much of leftism. REEEEE Heterodox Academy!!11 REEEEEEEEEE Nathan Confas!!111 REEEEEEEE IQ differences!!1111!! REEEEEEEEE Steve Sailer!1!1! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.....

   It's all pretty pathetic. But it's all the Cult really has on this one. Lysenkoism is the lifeblood of Woketarianism... And, since they're wrong, they're really gonna have to go all-in on this one. They're in too deep. If large numbers of people start letting themselves actually consider the evidence, major pillars of leftism will come tumbling down...

Nathan Confas: DEI Fraud and Coverup at Cambridge

Almost unbelievable even if you're already hip to the DEI scene. That shit is made of fraud. Fraud is what it is. This guy, Jason Arday, concocted a bogus backstory about not speaking a single word before the age of 18. He became (for realz) a professor at Cambridge before the age of 30. In the Ed school...so...asterisk...but still...  His "research" looks like unmitigated woke bullshit...and it's almost all plagiarized. His punishment? He was permitted to insert citations after publication. In one case he seems to have been permitted to rewrite the paper...again, after publication.

   If I were ever found to have done such a thing...well first I never would...and second I'd commit seppuku if I did...whether it was ever discovered or not...but still: I'd be fired so damn fast I wouldn't know what hit me. As I should be under such circumstances...

   Confas was a student (postdoc?) at Cambridge, but was (IIRC) run off campus when it was found that he had drawn very naughty, politically incorrect conclusions about race. Arday is manifestly incompetent and a serial plagiarist. And he has a faculty appointment there.

   Unfuckingbelievable.

O NOEZ! Homeschooling Keeps Women at Home!

...with their children...where many of them would prefer to be.

Feminism used to hold that women should be able to work outside the home if they choose to...

...now it holds that women who don't do so are defective.

I'm hardly a friend of hard-core conservative Christianity.

But homeschooling is no longer just for those folks--as the schools have become shittier, more dangerous, and more insane/woke, more and more people are choosing to homeschool.

And I've written against both creationism and Woketarianism publicly.

Creationism is wrong.

Woketarianism is insane.

Now, both views tend to come with shit-ass epistemic defense mechanisms.

Creationism often (but not always) comes packaged with fideism and a dogmatic epistemic admonition not to question the view.

Woketarianism usually comes with extensive, insane epistemic defense mechanisms including political correctness / Lysenkoism and a radioactive mishmash of skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and "social constructionism." Also, it's commonly implanted via indoctrination/brainwashing. It seems to me to be much more difficult for people to get over it.

Finally, of course: send your kids to public schools, they might convince him that he's a girl, possibly leading to lifelong medical mutilation...

WATCH: Jennifer Welch doubles down on her attacks against homeschooling, calling it “patriarchal step of the fascist project” made by those “dumber than a box of hot rocks” and “dead-ass broke” women refusing to divorce “piece of shit, closet-case husbands”....

“And I stand by… pic.twitter.com/40WNQ4oUYF

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 20, 2026

Illegal Alien Attempts to Abduct Loudoun County Woman

Oh, sorry...I meant "undocumented non-citizen"...

Wouldn't want to hurt the fee-fees of an attempted rapist...or perhaps murderer...

The woman fought the sonofabitch off.

Your blue future.

Webster's Dictionary of the English Language, 1828 Edition: Definition of 'Woman'

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WOMAN, noun plural women. [a compound of womb and man.]

1. The female of the human race, grown to adult years.

And the rib, which the Lord god had taken from the man, made he a woman Genesis 2:22.

Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible.

We see every day women perish with infamy, by having been too willing to set their beauty to show.

I have observed among all nations that the women ornament themselves more tan the men; that wherever found, they are the same kind, civil, obliging, humane, tender beings, inclined to be gay and cheerful, timorous and modest.

2. A female attendant or servant.

WOMAN, verb intransitive To make pliant.

Funny how they'd neglect to include anything about male women...

Of course the Woketards are in a bind here.

Sometimes they pretend that everyone has always known that women could be male...but we all know that's false. And this is easily refuted by the fact that no sources anywhere ever claim such a thing before very recently...

Or they may have made some kind of empirical discovery...which isn't the case.

Or they may have discovered some conceptual/philosophical arguments that prove the point--but they haven't. Their arguments are total shit, and when confronted with this fact, their standard response is: oh, you haven't read enough feminist philosophy and don't understand the rich complexity of the view. Which is bullshit.

Or...and this is what they're really doing: they're just trying to change the meaning of the word. Which will make exactly zero women male...though it will basically alter the language such that the sentence 'some women are male' no longer means that some women are male...but instead means that some people who are (either women or men pretending to be women) are male. Which is, of course, true...but it doesn't mean that some women are male.

Mandami Really Does Aim to Seize the Means of Production

Hey there, Gary. Here’s a video of the currently sitting Mayor of New York City saying that “winning Socialism” is the most important purpose of this project, with the end goal being to “seize the means of production”. Can I get a comment from you on this? https://t.co/7NxYfP6roZ pic.twitter.com/kndQyUfK8P

— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) July 24, 2026

Shellenberger: The Utopian Dream that's Destroying Society (on Purpose)

Rahm Emanuel wants you to believe that the last decade of Democrat madness was all because of socialists

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It was socialists who led the charge to defund the police, open the borders, abolish prisons, release violent criminals onto the streets and degrade the flag.

Hey, Rahm...

[a] You left out: brainwash and maim children; force both children and adults to attend indoctrination sessions in which gender ideology, CRT (and other racist ideas) were represented as known facts; embed GI, CRT, etc. in the policies and structures of K-12, universities, the military, and government; perpetrate and cover up the Russiagate hoax; promote lies and authoritarian policies re: COVID and lockdowns; force DEI into every institution; undermine the First Amendment (e.g. under "misinformation" rubric); generally promote political correctness and the Lysenkoization of science; promote climate apocalypticism; defend left-wing riots and terrorism (e.g. Antifa)....one could go on...and on...and on...

[b] It wasn't just socialists who did these things. There has been widespread support among Democrats. Stop trying to pretend that your party is innocent. You have been promoting this nonsense for at least a decade. Now suddenly you're alarmed because some young insurgents with very slightly more radical views threaten your grip on power in the party.

As others have noted, it sure looks like Emanuel is thinking of trying to snag the Dem nomination for '28. Which isn't going to happen. Especially given something a WSJ commenter points out that I didn't know: his middle name is 'Israel.'

Given that, dude, you might as well just go enjoy retirement.

There is exactly zero chance of the Dems nominating you.

NRO: NJ's Damning Admission on Illegals' Voting

Funny how blue state voting "errors" always benefit the Dems...

What're the odds?

   Though I think there's a good chance this really was mainly error.

   OTOH: it's error NJ would be more likely to uncover if it benefitted the Pubs...

   Thing is, being generally slack about voting benefits the Dems. So blue states are generally slack about voting. As usual, I'd say: the vanguard of the left seeks to "dismantle" America, and undermining the security of our elections and trust therein is a good tactic. (Note also leftist proposals that children be allowed to vote, and even that everyone in the world be allowed to vote in American elections (because America's actions allegedly affect everyone.)) The less-radical parts of the left--e.g. mainstream Dems--won't go for that...so for them it's repackaged as ways of increasing voter turnout. Better that a million illegals vote than that one bum on Skid Row fails to cast a ballot!

   I've generally thought that Trump and the Trumpy Pubs have exaggerated the problem. But, as The Editors argue, that doesn't mean it isn't a problem.

   And: I suspect that voter fraud is rather like public assistance fraud. Blue states have roughly the same attitude to both (better to lose $millions to fraud than that one child go without...etc.)

  And: just as we're finding that public assistance fraud is more widespread than we thought, I hypothesize that voter fraud will ultimately turn out to be more common, too.

Canada: Assembly of First Nations Call for the Criminalization of Residential Schools Denialism

Thing is, of course, that the stories about mass murders, mass graves, etc. at Canada's residential schools are false.

So, political correctness again: the subordination of facts and evidence to leftist political dogma.

Here's something I posted in the past about "experts" on residential school "denialism."

Typical lefty academic douchebags.

You may be surprised to learn that "residential school denialism" isn't really about claiming that the mass murders and graves are fictional... Oh no:

"[It's about] denying survivors' experiences, how they experienced their institutionalization as a child, but also the so-called intent of residential schools," she said.

Fraser said she sees denialism when people suggest the residential school system had good intentions, as well as when people question the motives of survivors who share their stories.

She said denialism will still exist even after all the facts about residential schools are accepted.

"The ideology of denialism is going to continue beyond residential schools because we still live in a sociopolitical context that justifies colonialism," she said.

"In order to interrupt the rejection of Indigenous knowledge, whether it's about residential schools or something else, we will need some kind of a radical transformation in society."

This is one of my main disagreements with the left: its retreat into bullshit subjectivist and relativist pseudo-philosophy when it starts losing arguments. The residential schools story is bullshit...so, hey, let's just ignore that and focus instead on disagreeing with the beliefs of contemporary Canadian Indians...

   And, of course: all appeals to "indigenous knowledge" actually mean: indigenous belief. Or, rather: the beliefs of such people.

   And ya gotta get colonialism in there!

   I'm kinda surprised they didn't work in the "two spirit" nonsense... 

Erin Shaw: Bans on "Divisive Concepts" Threaten to Stifle Speech

Absolutely right.

Period.

No 'ifs,' 'ands,' or 'buts'...

Er...

...but...:

The point of those policies was actually to block indoctrination, as is clear if you read the seminal ones from e.g. Florida.

So how could someone aim at No leftist indoctrination and end up with No promotion of divisive concepts?

Two ways:

First, We might be tempted to say No promotion of concepts at all, only discussion...but the case is at least provisionally closed on many issues. E.g. the approximate shape of the Earth, that evolution occurs in at least some form, that the Battle of Lexington was in 1775, and so on.

Second--and speaking from personal...oh, sorry...of course I meant "lived"...experience: whenever you argue against leftist indoctrination, leftists respond that there is no clear line between teaching and indoctrination. This is really just a rhetorical ploy to allow them to keep indoctrinating students...but actually they're right...because there are relatively few clear lines between any two such things. Nature is filled with lines...but blurry ones. Generally not clear ones. 

   And it's on this latter ground that the battle ought to be fought.

   Don't avoid engagement here. If you do, you'll always be running from it. And you'll run to even shakier ground--like a prohibition on discussing "divisive concepts"...

...except, again (and of course) the original policies banned promotion of them, not discussion of them..

...and the promotion/discussion distinction is basically a way to discuss the teaching/indoctrination distinction...

   Look, here's what's really up, so far as I can tell:

   It's perfectly permissible to just teach/tell students that p if/when p is true...or at least it seems to be, and the case is at least provisionally closed. It is NOT ok to just teach/tell students that p when p is controversial...and especially when it is extremely so.

   But what the left has been doing is actually taking ideas that are not only NOT proven nor even well-established...and just teaching/telling students--and adults--that they are established facts. And, worse: they've been teaching/telling students (and adults!) that the case is closed and that obvious falsehoods are true. E.g. (again, their flagship dogma) Women have penises...

   It's generally a judgment calls whether to represent something as proven beyond any appreciable doubt...because, again, what we really have is a spectrum of degrees of proof. And we can't couch everything we say in preponderance of evidence language.

[subroutine: if we try to do that, we fall into a regress. Instead of Earth is round (actually it's an oblate spheroid), I say The evidence clearly indicates that Earth is round. Well, why is the nature of the evidence get exempted from these considerations? It, too, is something that must be established...so if I wanted to do the same thing for every question, I'd have to say: the evidence clearly indicates that the evidence clearly indicates that Earth is round... and so on. Or: so far as I can tell, the evidence clearly indicates that Earth is round. Anyway: at some point we just have to say something straight up and drop the evidence language...]

   To cut to the chase: in schools and "training" sessions run by the left, it's been promoting its wacko, poorly-evidenced theories as proven facts. The rest of us are demanding that that stop. We'll always face the generic problem, discussed above, about when to treat things as at least provisionally settled...but that's a completely different problem. What has to stop is what the left is doing. The other problem is never going to go away. But when challenged, they pretend that what they're doing is an instance of the generic problem...which it isn't.

   Almost every time I've spoken out against indoctrination at my university, someone has responded in a way that attempts to blur the distinction between the generic problem and the specific leftist indoctrination problem--and that's how we end up with the "divisive concepts" approach. It's a way of answering the left's sophistical defense of indoctrination. But, again, that's a confusion.

   The above is all written in one draft, as usual, but it's a bit more haphazard than usual. But I don't have time to revise it.

   Bottom line: there are some clear cases of indoctrination, and it's those that must stop. My own university got busted for a clear case of indoctrination of student orientation leaders (or maybe resident advisors) when it foolishly taped one of the session. It clearly showed two grad students basically telling the undergrads that leftist doctrines about "privilege" and whatnot are true. No qualifications, no indication that they were speculative, controversial, leftist views...they simply said things like "Here is a list of groups with 'privilege'" and so on. That was a clear instance of indoctrination. 

   Anyway, I think the bans were better than nothing, though obviously just band-aids. They helped blunt the edge of pervasive leftist indoctrination...but they're no substitute for going right at the problem. 

   Final note: when our faculty senate was drafting its condemnation of such policies, I spoke against the resolution. I noted that, after years of leftist indoctrination, it had never even considered condemning that...and noted that the real goal was blocking indoctrination...and I moved that we add a clause condemning indoctrination. Another faculty-member said that it was too hard to distinguish between teaching and indoctrination. I responded that, difficult as that might be, indoctrination was still bad, and that we should condemn it, so that the criticism of divisive concept bans wasn't interpreted as a defense of indoctrination. My motion was soundly defeated. That's the situation in microcosm right there...

[Case in point:  the president of the AAA says that the case is closed on the number of sexes, and that for anthropologists to teach students that there are two of them is like turning astronomy classes into astrology classes...]

Rubio Knocks It Out of the Park Again: Left-Wing Terrorism

He's exactly right. The progressive establishment, including the MSM, throw the term 'far right' around at the drop of a hat, using it to describe anyone to the right of Obama. They rarely describe anyone as 'far left.' Leftist propaganda and idea-laundering organizations like SPLC and ADL produce reports propping up the myth that almost all terrorism is right-wing. 

Oh yeah, and:  Rubio '28...:

Megan McArdle: The Interview that Exposes Academia's Cluelessness (A Must-Read!)

No time to discuss this right now, but I say: read it and follow the links.

   I'm not sure that Anth is actually the worst offender...that I don't care much about. The real problem is that the problem of lightweight Lysenkoism is such a massive problem in academia. And the interview with the President of the American Anthropological Association is, indeed, both representative and embarrassing. Professor Rouse comes across as a clueless, sophistical Lysenkoist...which I guess is better than a clever sophistical Lysenkoist, really...

   Stupid ideas in the service of bad politics has taken over the academy. This is a crisis. There was more caterwauling in the media over the relatively minor threat of teaching creationism in biology courses back in the '90s. That would have been stupid, and I spoke out against it publicly...but it was nothing like what we've seen in the academy since the '80s... It was bad then, and it's catastrophic now.

   The comments on the McArdle story are instructive--they are so idiotic and clueless that I couldn't read more than a few...but it tells you where the mind of the average progressive's at...

Here's a link to the Boghossian et al. report

Inez Feltzscher Stepman: The Quietly Competent Side of the Trump Administration

Agreed.
Eliminating the doctrine of disparate impact seems to me to be one of the most important things the administration could do. I certainly hope it comes before the Supremes while there is still a sane majority there--who knows what the future holds?
Nuking DEI is also very important--though it's also important to realize that DEI is just a catspaw. The real problem is institutional capture by the radical left. (In academia, anyway--the only institution I can speak of with any authority.) DEI was just a broadening of the left's "diversity" ploy that's decades old. Before that, it was "multiculturalism." Now they're turning to "decolonialism." Their tactic is to come up with happy-sounding rubrics to advance their radical doctrines. I'm sure they're already at work producing new ones. Making up and redefining words is something they're good at--and it's been bizarrely effective for them. But that's a whole different topic, really... Also, of course, we have plenty of evidence that, in academia, at least, only the "Diversity," "equity" and "inclusion" language is being abandoned--the ideas and policies remain, under different words (e.g. "justice," "belonging," "access.") My own institution is still pushing "equity", apparently confident that it can get away with that one so long as the other two aren't conjoined with it.

Basic Logic: An Honest Review of Women's Suffrage

I'm certainly not convinced...but a lot of this is plausible and coheres with a lot of what we know:

HMD: The Scourge of Teen Takeovers

link

I continue to think that the central aspect of the left's insanity is its refusal to acknowledge plain facts. Everyone knows what's going on here...except for leftists...secure in their echo chamber...

They have an almost superhuman ability to simply ignore facts that are right in front of their noses.

It'd be funny--if it weren't so repulsively idiotic--that they continue to try to blame such stuff on the pandemic...

HMD:

Democratic elites have been telegraphing a message to black teens: as victims of white oppression, you are not responsible for your misbehavior. Theft is a reasonable response to a rapacious economic system; violence in the name of racial justice is understandable. The average teen may not follow politics closely, but the sentiment behind Brandon Johnson’s 2025 pronouncement about law enforcement (“It is racist; it is immoral; it is unholy—and it is not the way to drive violence down”) is widespread enough to penetrate even the hermetic world of teen culture.

and:

Teen takeovers are not a mystery. They are the predictable result of a culture that increasingly refuses to hold lawbreakers responsible for antisocial behavior, especially if those lawbreakers are black. Every institution that once imposed discipline—the family, the schools, the juvenile-justice system, the police, even public opinion—has been weakened. Despite elite hopes, government programs cannot substitute for the habits of self-control and respect for law that make civil society possible, however. Until those habits are restored, Americans should expect more takeovers and a widening divide between jurisdictions willing to enforce basic norms and those that are not.

When I was young, I though that it was conservatives who refused to face facts, and liberals (which we had then) who were intellectually honest and willing to recognize unpleasant truths. I honestly don't know whether that was ever true...but that's the way it seemed to me.

Now, of course, it is just the opposite.

Conservatives today aren't intellectually pure as the driven snow by any stretch of the imagination...but the left has simply come unhinged...

Peter van Buren: Why the Dems Can't Kick the "Trans" Obsession

Look, this is a litmus test. Transgender ideology is a set of obvious, undeniably-false falsehoods, contrary to science and ordinary human experience, similar to Night is when the sun is up, Puppies are adult dogs, or Most people are left-handed... No one believes that women have penises on the basis of good reasons. Most who do believe it believe it because the party has told them to--and they have, over years of being on the left, developed the ability to more-or-less believe on command. Most female transgenders who believe it believe it for roughly such reasons--transgenderism among women and girls is typically a social contagion. Most male transgenders are fetishists with autogynophilia...and they believe it (if they really do) as part of a fetish. Many lefties don't believe it at all--they just pretend to in order to remain a member of the cult in good standing...to avoid excommunication and "cancellation"...

   So long as Dems maintain their commitment to transgenderism, they're unfit to be elected on account of woketarian madness. If they refuse to back off of even the most obviously false, obviously insane dogma of Woketerianism, you shouldn't even consider giving them your vote...and we haven't yet even mentioned the boatload of other idiocies they've accepted as tenets of their tribe...

   One of the delusional beliefs on the contemporary left is that it is the right that has radicalized. In fact, of course, the right has moderated, perhaps most notably on non-heterosexuals and same-sex marriage. The right moved left--i.e. toward the center--as the left rocketed leftward--i.e. toward the lunatic fringe. The left is so radical it doesn't even know where it's been moving...it can't even admit its own radicalization... Maybe this is what it has against the DSA insurgents...they admit they're radical...though they don't disagree much with the contemporary Democrat mainstream... Or maybe it's because they mean it when they say, e.g., Defund the police...whereas the Democrat party picked it up as a fashionable slogan...which they did, to some extent, support with practical measures...but they doubt it enough to at least have the good sense to motte-and-bailey it when pressed...and now deny that they ever even mouthed the words...

   Oh, and: let's not forget that the Democrats' embrace of transanity has led to the brainwashing and sexual mutilation of thousands or tens of thousands of children in this country alone... I'm more interested in the madness at the theoretical level...but that madness has had horrific practical consequences... If we believe absurdities, we will commit atrocities...

RIP Mitch McConnell [NO!!!!], Lindsey Graham

[LOL how the hell did I get the idea that McConnell was dead??? He is not. Congrats on being alive, Senator!]

Without McConnell, Merrick Garland would be a Supreme rather than Gorsuch. (Obama and Biden are already responsible for the three worst justices on the court--one of whom seems barely qualified, another of whom seems outright unqualified...all of whom were chosen for DEI reasons...)

Perhaps Graham's finest moment, IMO, came during the Kavanaugh hearings. Dude was absolutely right on. It was a disgusting spectacle.

RIP to both.

Lott: Trump's Immigration Enforcement (and Other Policies) Really is (are) Slashing Violent Crime

B...b...but...the Undocumented commit 10,000% less crime than AmeriKKKans!!!!!!

Ed Kilgore: The Dems' "Long-Awaited Pivot to the Left?" [sic]; or Rejection of the Dem Establishment?

What I want to do here is nitpick at a fantastically loony suggestion embedded in the following:

The big debate raging among Democrats this year is whether the renewed energy being exhibited by the progressive wing of the party reflects an ideological development or something else. Unsurprisingly, there are many voices suggesting a long-awaited “pivot to the left” by Democrats is finally underway, as Ben Davis, a Democratic Socialist who worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign, wrote in The Guardian:

After the last month, Democratic leadership should be seriously taking stock of their position. The energy is on their left. The people are on their left. Democrats want fighters, and they want a politics rooted in the collective struggles of the masses, not decided in smoke-filled rooms. We still need moderate Democrats to win those pesky median voters, for now. But the party’s leadership is deeply out of touch with its base. A leftist wave is cresting across the country. [my emphasis]

 LOLOLOLOLOLOL

A long-awaited pivot to the left????

How far fucking left are you thinking there is left to go?

They're barely balancing on the left edge of sanity as it is...

It is beyond any serious question that the Dems lurched far to the left over the course of the last decade+. It makes little sense to suggest that anyone has been waiting for any such a thing...

Unless, of course, you don't think they lurched far enough...

...or:

Want them to move leftward economically, too.

I think it's probably both...but mostly the latter.

Many Dems are incapable of recognizing/admitting how far left they went...but there's just not a lot of left left, socially speaking, after Women have penises, DEI, mass censorship campaigns and quasi-open borders...

What they seem to want now is for the party go socialist, too.

Or at least what they often mistakenly think is socialism--a Nordic-style expansive social safety net / welfare state...

See, I think economic leftism, confused and disastrous as it usually is, is at least sane--unlike the "Great Awokening." We want socialism is the sophomoric battle cry of losers and the economically uneducated...but, unlike Women have penises and Abolish the police, it's not outright nuts.

Miranda Devine: Democrats Haven't Learned a Thing from the Biden Fiasco

link

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this all to me is that anyone would put a pudgy, doughy pic of himself like that on a hook-up app... 

WSJ: How the Smithsonian Lost America's Plot

Nothing about this surprises me.

I haven't read the report yet, so in some sense I reserve judgment. But I'd actually be surprised if it weren't generally right. A by-now-familiar mishmash of leftist political ideas, derived largely from now-rather outdated Continental philosophy, French literary theory, feminism, postmodernism, and critical theory has become the quasi-official ideology of the intellectual left. These ideas are pretty thin gruel, but they cohere with leftist politics, and they're easy to master. Once you learn a few names and a few simple rhetorical moves, you're set. You can pretend to understand the philosophical underpinnings of any subject, even if you've never read a word of Aristotle or Descartes. It takes little training and even less brains to simply issue an accusation of racism (or sexism...or "transmisogynoir" or WTF ever...) against anything you dislike or disagree with. Name-drop Fanon or Judith Butler. Memorize a few quip-templates like "As Foucault has shown, everything is power," or "It is long past time that we decolonize x." It's much more demanding and time-consuming to refute such bullshit than it is to introduce it into a discussion. And it generally functions like one of those smoke bombs villains deploy in comics and movies--when dialectically cornered, just throw some of that into the discussion and escape in the confusion...

Such ideas are fine to discuss in philosophy seminars--though the time would be better spent on almost anything else. Part of the problem is that the ideas are so poorly-justified and of such low quality. It's more like a collection of curiosities. But to dogmatically accept such curiosities as orthodoxy across so many areas is madness. Bad ideas are one thing. Unquestioned orthodoxies are another. The two together are very bad indeed.

WGL: Statewide Injunction Issued Against VA "Assault Weapon" Ban

Suck it, gun-grabbing VA Dems:

War's Back On

link

Platner: Effete Lefty, Working Class Cosplayer

Honestly, it hadn't really/fully occurred to me that the Woketarian cult still had any illusions about representing actual working stiffs. I recognize it once it's said...but, in fact, as others have noted (I didn't recognize this, either): it's, at its core, a coalition of effete upper-class pseudo-intellectuals and the poor.

The great secret of the last hundred years is that Progressivism is an elitist, technocratic ideology crafted by academia. It has NO working-class foundations at all. This desperate search for a believable marionette is hopeless. https://t.co/67jlMdrSEr pic.twitter.com/jtKhtMxUDV

— Jeffrey A Tucker (@jeffreytucker) July 7, 2026

Emily Sturge: Rice University offers Taylor Swift course analyzing ‘nationalism,’ ‘whiteness,’ and gender

Here's the thing about this:

We see two academic trends interacting:

[1] The tendency to view/teach every topic through the same leftist political (to use their favored metaphor) "lens."
[2] The tendency to make pop culture and other such trivia the object of scholarship and teaching.

The latter fad was, IMO, kind of cool at first--when it constituted a minor deviation/break from weightier/stodgier topics, many of which, one might argue, had been done to death. I fulfilled my lit requirement by taking a course on sci-fi/fantasy. Now, that obviously isn't quite on the order of doing a class on Taylor Swift...but let's say it's in the same general vein. (Note: I made a mistake blowing my only lit course on a genre that's not terribly serious, and that I already knew pretty well. I should have been reading Dickens and Tolstoy.)

   One problem in play is that now these frivolous courses and areas of "research" have proliferated. People are doing Ph.Ds on such shit, and making them their areas of specialization. What was once kind of cool--like a professor making humorous or off-topic asides in class--becomes tedious and destructive when overdone. And that shit is way overdone in the academy now. The proliferation of "Me Studies" is similarly stupid/bad/frivolous.

   Anyway, dumb and wasteful as that latter fad is, it's less bad than the former.

   Look, theoretically, you might have some interesting things to say about pop music. But this sort of thing is--as in the case at hand--usually just another opportunity to beat the same drum the professor is already beating. In this case, at least: "nationalism," "whiteness," and "gender." Race! Gender! Colonialism! Capitalism! Oppression! It's just going to be the same kind of propaganda and indoctrination that they're engaged in anyway...but without reading or studying anything inherently worthwhile. At least in a normal course, the students might be listening to Bach or reading As I Lay Dying... Not that I'm excusing propaganda and indoctrination in those courses. I'm just saying that at least the students might get something from them on the sly...

   To be clear, it's not that every course and every class is such shit...but way, way too many are. It's analogous to Scientology taking over the academy. It would be a disaster if even 5% of courses were given over to it--and if it showed up in so many courses that it was clearly being represented as the academic orthodoxy, the consensus of experts, the taken for granted background...

   I'm tired of hearing myself complain about this BS...but BS it is, and complaining is, IMO, warranted.

Doomer Circlejerk: STOP. USING. AI. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

IT'S MAKING YOU LOSE YOUR COGNITIVE THINKING ABILITIES

Sav Guthrie: Austin's New $125m Public Library Overrun by Bums

Your blue future:

WGL: The Glock Ban: When the DOJ Starts Throwing Haymakers on CA

Trump's Independence Day Speech

I still haven't had the heart to listen to it.

Please let it not be crazy...

Lefties: "Brave Black Woman Surrounded by White Supremacists is Like Rosa Parks!;" Facts: Actually, She Just Committed Some Really Gross Indecent Exposure

It’s been revealed that the black woman Democrats put on a pedestal for “bravely” riding a train with Patriot Front members was engaging in indecent exposure on the train moments before the photo was taken and has a lengthy arrest record. pic.twitter.com/xk0gm1bbmA

— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) July 6, 2026

COVID Hysteria, a Very Special Retrospective: IF UR UNVAXXED UR AS GOOD AS DEAD BETTER MAKE A LIVING WILL, CORPSE-BOY

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVAXX URSELF, SHEEPS!!!!!

For the record, I'm still neither pro- nor anti-vax. I asked about getting it two years ago, when I was at the doc anyway...but they had run out.

This crap is pretty typical of our times:

There are hysteriacs on both ends of the spectrum. But the left-hysteriacs control the prestige institutions with the loudest megaphones...so their hysteria is more repulsive.

Though TBF the right-hysteriacs are REEEEEEEEally hysterical... Don't forget about all the microchips-in-vaxxes, 4G and blood clot lunacy. I even read someone in the depths of Free Republic claiming that, if you left the vax out-of-refrigeration, it would resolve into tiny aliens (described as being like teensy versions of the bugs in Starship Troopers...).

   Though it's one thing to find lunacy in the depths of fringey, super-conservative websites...and quite another to find it at Newsweek and Emory and CDC...

Patriot Front Fever...Catch It!

LOL I gotta say, I can see this going either way...but John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte's argument is pretty elegant:

In the same we know the moon landing was real because of it weren’t, the Russians would’ve said so, if these were actual right wingers, the corporate media would have doxxed them by now.

That is a very excellent point.

   We know the right's done similar stuff...e.g. the tiki-torch riot. But we know the left has run false flag ops just like this one--when Dems sent staffers to stand by Youngkin's campaign bus pretending to be tiki-torch-rioters...

   As many are pointing out, one difference between us and the left is that the left supports outright terrorists--so long as they're on the left (e.g. Antifa, BLM rioters, Bill Ayers et al.)...whereas the right thinks these "Patriot Front" clowns are...well...clowns. Or Feds. Or false-flaggots...

   However, some are saying we'd support arresting them...which is false.

   They haven't done anything illegal, no matter which side they're on.

   Let 'em do their thing...whatever it is.

BCP on the Latest Patriot Front Cosplay / Freakout

Honestly, I don't know whether "Patriot Front" is a blue team psyop or not.

We know that the lunatic right has done pretty much this before--in the tiki-torch riot march across UVA grounds the night before the Unite the Right rally. (Reminder: I consider those two things to be very different. UtR proper had every right to rally at Lee Park. They had a permit and everything. I don't know about the legality of the tiki-torch riot...but, to be perfectly honest, I would have had a strong urge to kick their asses...so...maybe I'm inconsistent on this one. So sue me.)

   Anyway, the shrieking lefty just before 1:25 is funny. But the really crazy shit comes after 1:25. Pretty much everything those two jackasses say is gold, baby...GOLD. They compare the picture of the black woman in a subway car filled by the Feds "Patriot Front" guys to a famous pic from integrating Little Rock schools. Now, in the latter pic, a black woman is surrounded by shrieking white racists...whereas in the former pic, a black woman is in a subway car filled with peaceful, polite cosplayers. Hell, even if they're for realz racists, they're not bothering her in any way. Perhaps the best part is when one of the lefties says "it's too early to start talking about Pulitzer Prizes..."

LOOLOLOLLLOL

Which isn't true at all!

Hell, go ahead and give the photographer a Pulitzer!

You get to keep those even if your story (or picture, presumably) turns out to be complete bullshit.

Neither the Post nor the NYT gave back Pulitzers they got for participating in the Russiagate hoax...so even if these guys are all on the SPLC payroll...hey...Pulitzer prize!

Some Grauniad Moonbat: "I Used to Revere the Great Experiment that is the United States; After Trump, I'm Not So Sure"

I went into this with a good attitude, since I think rational people can accept the idea expressed by the headline.

But meh.

Really not so good.

I'm sick and tired of Trump's bullshit.

But compared to the threat posed by the left, Trump's not such a terribly big deal.

Even though I agree that, when NOT compared to the contemporary left, Trump's shenanigans do seem--in some cases at least--to be a pretty damn big deal.

But any such article ought to start out by noting that the left spent the last decade trying to destroy free speech in America--and pretty much succeeded in destroying it everywhere else...

Trump, OTOH--with help from the likes of Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi--smashed those efforts.

He also gave us the best and most consequential SCOTUS of my lifetime.

Also: I pretty much lost interest when the author asserted that the Iran war had left Iran stronger and the U.S. weaker. The latter claim might be worth discussing. The former is pure TDS...

And don't forget: I don't think Donald Trump is fit to be President.

This is kinda the Trump paradox: who can someone so obviously unfit for the office in so many ways be doing such a good job in so many ways?

Well, the obvious answer is: because the other party has lost its fucking mind, and many of his best acts are just rolling back their obviously insane policies. It doesn't take a Washington or a Lincoln to recognize that men aren't women, and that any government programs saying otherwise absolutely have to be slapped down hard.. To take just one notable example...

Well, anyway.

NBC News: "Trigger Warning" for Using the Terms 'Biological Male', 'Biological Female'

What they ought to give is a redundancy warning.

INSANE: NBC’s Craig Melvin offers a trigger warning for trans people watching...

“Just a quick note here. The terms that we’re using here during our reporting, biological male, biological female, the high court put those terms in quotations in their decision and their dissent.… pic.twitter.com/Hx15swCfJ6

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) June 30, 2026

A P-40 Fires Its Guns Again

One of my absolute favorite fighters.

One of my main daydreams as a kid was flying with the Flying Tigers.

Republican and Democrat Coaches on: 'Merica!

Truck Nutz on Air Force One...actually a pretty good idea...

Happy 250th!

I remember the bicentennial well--it's part of what prompted my interest in early American history and American political thought.

Celebrate, ya 'Mericans!

Conservatives and the Left: What If Each Ran the Country?

Look, when it comes down to it, a nation run by conservatives wouldn't be as much fun. Probably: no legal weed. Significant penalties for getting caught with it. No sexual revolution. Let's say: no hookup apps, social stigma discouraging casual hookups and high body counts (gross term). Teh gayz: back in the closet with you! Prayer in school, abstinence propaganda. Probably not free pr0n on the interwebs all over the place... Flag-burning: illegal. Illegal aliens: all deported. Maybe some creationism in bio classes. Lower taxes and lots fewer public services. No abortion. I dunno. I'm not really thinking of all the things... It'd be a much churchier place. Much more straight-laced.

   Anyway, the point is: not a super-fun place.

   I'm against it.

   OTOH, imagine a world in which the left got what it wanted: socialism. Gender ideology brainwashing in schools and the brainwashed kids getting sexually mutilated left and right. DEI for everything everywhere, including NSF and NIH grants. CRT and indoctrination into it everywhere. Open borders and no deportations. All science ideologically infected--possibly by law. Universities fully converted into re-education camps. Extremely high taxes, especially on the rich and corporations--including punitive "wealth taxes." Censorship a la Biden's "mis-/dis-/mal-information" bullshit pervading government and media. Money lavished on leftists NGOs that then distribute it to leftists to feed it back into the Democrat party--and shower it on other countries for drag queen story hours in Ulan Bator and everywhere else... No controls on elections...draconian control of firearms, criminals released willy-nilly...

   In short: a catastrophe.

   Conservatives are wacky in their own way. And I don't want them to have unbridled control of the country.  But we know they won't destroy the country, because they used to control it and we did just fine.

   Leftism is made up primarily of these components: (a) insane policies that have never been tried, but which will obviously lead to disaster (e.g. decarceration); (b) policies that have been tried over and over and failed every time (e.g. socialism), and (c) people with mental problems (see: the psychological differences between progressives and conservatives).

   If you wanted to draw up a blueprint for the destruction of the USA, ergo the West, ergo the world, you really couldn't do any better than the blueprint the contemporary left is already trying to implement.

   We know conservatism won't destroy us because we've been there, and it didn't. Nothing similar can be said about contemporary woke leftism. In fact, it's more likely than not to lead to our destruction.

Mandami's Rent Freeze Leads to Bankrupt Landlords and Fewer Apartments for Rent

Leftists don't believe in the rest of science...so why should they believe in the law of supply and demand?

"Transgender" Mayoral Candidate (Hamilton, Ontario) "Scarlett" Gillespie Uses "Emotional Support Sock Puppet"

 Mr. Gillespie pretends to be a woman. He is also a "sex worker," and also goes by the name 'Jelena Vermillion.'

Leftism is a type of insanity.