Cornell Alleged Gang Rape Case

This is the sort of allegation that--when I was young and naive--I simply assumed was veridical.

   Being older and having more experience with such reports, I now incline to expect them to turn out to be bogus.

   Sounds an awful lot like the UVA fraternity gang-rape hoax.

  However, apparently there's a record of these guys sending out messages to other fratboys inviting them to join in...

   OTOH, I've heard that in some kind of interview she gave pretty immediately after the incident, the girl claimed that it was unequivocally consensual...

   And finally: later she claimed it was unequivocally rape.

   Of course I don't have any rooting interest in this. It should be kind of a tough case for the left, because they adamantly defend the kinkiest, dirtiest, perviest sex...and their principles (such as they are) entail that You Go Girl if she did just feel like pulling a train that night...

   And, actually, I'm with the left on that one.

   People like a lot of kinky stuff.

   Given the opportunity to have sex with multiple women in one night, college me would have been down like a clown, Charlie Brown...

   Of course there's a bit of an asymmetry there...I'm just sayin'...

   Forced to bet money, I'd bet that it was most likely consensual, but, then, ashamed, the girl changed her mind. And, if it's true that she first claimed it was consensual, I'd be disinclined to convict the guys.

   Though: having sex with a woman right after another guy did: totally gay.

   Just so we're clear.

   Not that there's anything wrong with that...

   As goes without saying, all rapists should burn in the fiery pits of hell.

   And: if the girl was so intoxicated that there was any question of her consent...also the hell thing.

   But I'm skeptical that's what we're actually dealing with here.

   But, to be clear again: we'll know a lot more as more information comes out.

The Bee on the Mass Lesbian Bar Drama

link

Wilfred Reilly: Dems Can't Shake Their DSA Problem / The Party That's Not Crazy First Could Be In Power For 30 Years

Right on the latter point.

Somewhat right on the former.

   As I've said myself many times, just about all one of our major parties has to do to win is not be crazy.

   But neither can seem to pull it off.

   The biggest difference, though, IMO, is that the crazy on the left is pervasive, multi-leveled, and gives every sign that it will be persistent--even if the Dems try to conceal it when elections roll around.

   And, as for the first point in the title above goes: it's not the DSA that's the problem. Again: it's pervasive, persistent, etc. The Dem's problem is that they capitulated to the cult of Woketarianism. The DSA is just saying the same things the whole left has been saying for a decade--they're just a little more radical and a little more up-front about it all. Oh, well: they're also socialists. But the predominant form of crazy on the left is Woketarianism--a cultural view, not an economic one.

   Now, the GOP's current form of crazy is Trump. It's a pretty localized form of lunacy--and when Trump's gone, it will almost certainly be gone, too. 

   Also: Trump is a double-edged sword. Sure, he says and does all kinds of loony shit that we absolutely cannot have a President saying and doing...but he's basically sane about the issues, and he's done far more good than harm. And the good he has done has largely been about rolling back the genuinely crazy and destructive shit the Dems have done.

   Note: not all of it has been about rolling back Woketarianism. Some very important things he's done have involved rolling back crazy shit the old-school regular Democrats have done. E.g. they've been moving toward wide-open borders for a quarter century. And their massive taxpayer-funded fraud/funding apparatus through NGOs, USAID, et al.  We can't blame the woketards for those...

   BUT: as I've also been saying--well, lots of people have--Trump is getting worse and worse, and closing the crazy gap with the Dems.

   So things are getting really spicy in American politics...

   If the Pubs could have managed to nominate, say, DeSantis (who I supported)...well, he's sane...and he seems to be every bit as dedicated to thwarting Woketarianism as Trump.

   But Trump is a force of nature, and they couldn't pull it off.

   I think we're in a position now such that people are less-alarmed about the Wokes--they're old news and kind of on the run. But Trump is a clear and present danger...

   Anyway: I agree with Reilly about what I'd say is the main point: the first party that can start acting sane will win big.

   Unfortunately, before that happens, I fear that the Dems will win big. Probably in November, and in '28.

   Then we'll be largely back where we were in the Biden years...at least for awhile...

White Paint is Racist blah blah Exclusion blah blah Power blah blah

This is the kind of pseudointellectual Continental bullshit that has ruined so much of academia...and escaped containment during the Great Woketarian Freakout.

With these people you always know what they're going to say and you never know what they're going to say--it's always the same set of bullshit obsessions...but applied in ever more ridiculous ways.

BCP: The Crazy Massachusetts Lesbian Bar Freakout

The real thermonuclear cray-cray kicks in around 5:00:

The Return of Rachel Dolezal

Believing in "transgenderism" became obligatory...believing in transracialism, however...VERBOTEN!

Dolezal's case came out soon after the Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner case...but the left decided that they were COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, BIGOT!!!111 Dolezal is, of course, exactly as full of shit as Jenner, no more, no less... But the Woketarian left is rarely constrained by white supremacist notions like consistency, coherence, and factual accuracy...

Turley on Vance and Obamacare "Straight-Up Fraud"

This doesn't seem like Turley's area of specialization to me, but I tend to trust him:

Lindsey Granger may well be right about Trump commuting sentences of Medicare fraudsters--I don't know what's going on there. I think this is one of the guys she's talking about. But, like Robbie S., I want all the fraudsters caught and prosecuted. I'm not interested in defending Trump. I'm interested in stopping all the fraud. Her consistency point isn't entirely irrelevant--but it doesn't show that they shouldn't be stopping the other fraud, too. Also, she keeps saying that they are going after these people only because they haven't used their benefits--which doesn't seem to be true. What Vance and Oz were saying is that they have several different reasons for thinking there's fraud in these cases--including that the alleged people in question were signed up by "brokers," that they have never used their benefits, and that they've been unable to contact them though they've tried in several different ways:

Jeffrey Blehar: Red Harvest: Preparing for the Worst in the Senate Elections

This seems about right to me--but I don't know anything more about elections and polling than any other politics-obsessed American boy...

I'll say this much:

Trump did it before and he can do it again!...

...lose us the Senate, that is.

I don't know anything much about Texas politics...but I find it hard to believe that any reliably blue state would elect James Talarico.

And, of course, we know that polls are almost always blue-tinted.

Anyway--I think a 50/50 split is a pretty decent guess, FWIW.

Campus Lefties vs. Civility

That's the long and short of it re: this organization called "Uncivil."

They seem to think that it's a big problem that many campus organizations promoting civil dialog are funded by "right wing and pro-Israel" (heaven forfend!) individuals and groups.

   But, really, the left has been bitching about civil discourse for at least a decade. Civility, you see, is a [insert bad things here] white supremacy / razizt, / bourgeois...it's "respectability politics"...not even making that up...

   Whatever other reasons the left has against rational inquiry and civil discussion, one is: the leftist vanguard just doesn't believe in such things. Since it doesn't believe in objectivity, it can't. It believes that all such things are mere fronts for "power." Reason is an illusion. All that matters is ideological victory. This view is all over the left--though the more center-left tends to motte-and-bailey it as convenient.

   A friend of mine and I held a conference back in '20 (just as rumors of COVID began to circulate on civility and rational discourse...can't remember the exact name/title right now... (I mean we just missed COVID hysteria... A week or two later it wouldn't have come off.) We had four interesting panelists, and the whole thing was built around them. Just two days, maybe 100 people involved tops. But anyway, after the first speaker's talk, the very first comment was "I can't help but notice that you're all white men..." This bullshit is a fucking cancer on universities. A throw-away, veiled ad hominem (because whites: bad; men: bad). What was funny was the speaker said "Well, I'm actually half-(East)-Indian" (I think it was Indian.) Another speaker said "Well, I'm Jewish." The third said that he, too, was of some sort of mixed heritage. The fourth speaker was like Guilty as charged--I'm white. I managed to hold my toungue for once, not wanting to blow it all up after one hour... Then the other guy who put the conference said: The first person we tried to get was such-and-such, a woman, but she couldn't make it... 

   Goddamned retarded bullshit. Pseudo-reasoning. This is what people learn in the weaker regions of the humanities and social "sciences": just shriek white! male! REEEE! at everything.

AJW: Robbie Suave vs. Lindsey Granger on The Austin ICE Shooting

Robbie and AJW are right.

Lindsey and the left are completely wrong:

First, AJW makes a great point: when an illegal alien (or other preferred demographic group) is shot by the authorities, Lindsey &co. pick the most innocuous thing he was doing at the time and pretend that's why he was shot. Oh, he was just respiring at the time and ICE SHOT HIM FOR IT...

AJW also points to one of the many things that bugs the shit out of me about this: Lindsey waves around poll numbers suggesting that 60% of Americans are "uncomfortable" about ICE enforcement...but, among other problems with such an appeal: that comes after almost a decade of hard-core, tearjerking propaganda by the left. (In addition to the fact that it just makes no goddamned sense at all... The left is basically arguing that criminals shouldn't be arrested if they resist. Morons.)

As done as I am with Trump, lefties keep reminding me that the alternative is much, much crazier.

McCarthy: Only Congress Can Intervene in Trump's Truth Social Profiteering

I'm sick to death of this guy.

He's done great things...perhaps more than any President of my lifetime (maybe except Reagan)...

But he just can't stop doing and saying stupid, sleazy, shitty things, too.

I also continue to think that the fact that no one in his administration seems to be able to talk sense to him is one of the more worrisome things about him.

As I've said, I do think he's got some justification for trying to accrue more money--it's obvious that the Blues will go after him and his family when he leaves office. They may never know peace. So there may be something of an excuse.

But it doesn't excuse him enough--not even close.

The Lying Liars in the MSM: The Austin ICE Shooting

I can't believe I even thought that the MSM's obvious bullshit even might be somewhat true.

All they do is lie:

WSJ's Lamest Story Ever?: "MAGA" Podcasters Are Tuning Out Trump; What They're Talking About Now"

Lame. Speculative. AI.

The comments are almost uniformly a rabid TDS meltdown.

Don't get me wrong: I'm so sick of Trump's bullshit that I find myself checking the Trump Term Countdown with some frequency...

So I get it.

I've got stage IV Trump fatigue. I keep hoping for some temporary-but-semi-serious health problem so he'll GTFO of the White House. Give us Vance, for the love of God...

But those comments sound like they're from the NYT or WaPo. They're outright talking about going after him and everyone in his administration after 1/20/29...

Trump's damaging our alliances, stoking resentment, and talking like a crazy person.

But being crazier than him is not the answer.

And, of course, he's put us on a trajectory toward a Democrat House...and, possibly, God help us, a Dem Senate as well...

He's done so many good things that it's absolutely baffling what a bad President he's turned into. Almost all because he just can't control himself--in particular, his mouth and thumbs.

I suppose he's bet it all on the Iran regime breaking. But it knows it just has to hang on until after the election. That's what they did to Carter. And now to Trump.

Anyway.

The gratuitous insanity re: e.g. the Kennedy Center and the Arc d'Trump...WTF???

If he really turns toward the darkest timeline, I say he demolishes the former and uses the rubble to build the latter...

Anyway. He kept the Dems out of power temporarily, and he's rolled back many of their catastrophic initiatives...so good on him for that... But now it's almost as if he's decided to just wreck the GOP. He's virtually turned into the Woketarian Democrats' bestest "ally." (There's another word the left has ruined...)

Stepfanie Tyler on Sydney Sweeney: Possibly the Greatest Tweet of All Time

Sydney Sweeney is the funniest stress test feminism has ever encountered bc I was taught that tHE PaTriArChY reduces women to their bodies, denies them individual agency and imposes rules on female sexuality based on what everyone else thinks women ought to be. Meanwhile Sydney is independently wealthy, produces her own projects, owns businesses, chooses to monetize her own sexuality, gains power from doing it and appears completely uninterested in anyone’s permission. And somehow the feminist response is thousands of women materializing to explain that her body is AcksHuAllY a collective political resource and she has a responsibility to use it in ways they approve of bc otherwise she’s “setting women back 100 years” (fucking LOL) So congratulations ladies! You defeated the patriarchy by becoming an enormous decentralized committee of women policing another woman’s sexuality, scolding her for appealing to men and reminding her that her individual choices must remain subordinate to what is best for Women As A Class. Perhaps the funniest part is that the men supposedly enforcing this grand patriarchal system are mostly standing off to the side like “Sydney seems great, let her cook” while the Feminist Liberation Committee is furiously drafting new regulations for what she’s allowed to do with her own gigantic knockers. Incredible operation. You guys are fucking killing it. Extremely boss babe. Very liberation. No notes.

— stepfanie tyler (@stepfanie) September 15, 2026

Greenland Deal: Thoughts

1. I don't understand foreign policy.

2. Seems like a very good outcome.

3. Well done Trump team.

4. I simply cannot believe that Trump's lunatic threats to invade helped this along.

5. But see (1).

6. Thank you Denmark; you were the bigger man, and you've helped NATO and the West bigly.

7. I do wish we owned Greenland.

8. There's often method to Trump's madness...but you gotta wade through a lotta madness...

9. But see (1).

Ryan McBeth on Trump's Greenland Deal

Seems plausible to me:

Pretty typical Trump: there's method in his madness...but, boy, you gotta wade through a lotta madness to find it...

ACTBlue Apparently Opened the Door Wide to Foreign Donors

link

Appearances are not always deceiving.

I think the Democrats are exactly what they seem to be.

And that includes: an absolute shit-tone of fraud. They pump out ever-increasing amounts of tax money to their network of sleazy, radical NGOs, and straight to their voters and donors via all sorts of "welfare" programs. Some of that (enormous amount of money) then comes back to them as donations. It's a massive grift/graft operation. They also directly fund all sorts of what are essentially leftist indoctrination efforts, including through K-12 and universities. I think they see everything as a "whole-of-society"...or "whole-of-the-universe" matter--everything they do is a part of their overall effort to achieve what they now deceptively call "(social) justice"...

   And I'm not going to be a bit surprised if it turns out that the same moral sensibility infects their attitude toward votes and voting.

   So, though we've never found the kinds of Big Fraud that indicates that they are actually stealing national-level elections...I'm not convinced it's not there. Though I'm also not convinced that it is. I just don't think we can rule it out, knowing what we know about the Dems.

   I'm not saying that the Republicans are better--though I doubt their approach is the same. Maybe it's more about big influence-peddling (see e.g. the allegations about Trump jr.'s wedding being paid for by a Russian oligarch). I just don't know. Currently, I doubt they're as bad--but currently I'm firmly in my Republicans-suck-less phase...so...

   Look: the Democratic party has been taken over by the radical left rather as the Republicans have been taken over by Trump. The radical left sets the tone and agenda for the Dems rather like Trump sets them for the Pubs. And the radical left does not really "believe in" nations and citizenship. They think the distinctions are arbitrary and should go away. That's what got us to the basically wide-open borders of the Biden administration. If you think the Dems wouldn't take foreign money if they could get away with it, I'd want to know what your reasons for believing that were.

   There is simply no doubt that there are many upstanding, patriotic Americans on the blue team. But the party seems to me to have become a substantially criminal enterprise. 

   None of this is to say that I in any way approve of Trump's apparently indiscriminate violation of the emoluments clause--though, as I've said, I do understand it. He knows--we know, too--that he and his family and associates will be ceaselessly attacked by the left once he's out of office. I'm not sure any amount of money can protect them--see the "E." Jean Carroll case... Anyway: I'm just not talking about Trump right now.

   Blah blah blah. As usual this could all be wrong.

Spanberger is Terrible, Episode MCXVIII: Overrides Youngkin's Order Keeping Crazy/Pervy Males out of Girls' Sports, Locker Rooms, Restrooms

She did it unannounced, too.

Unless she crazy--or a cultist--she knows it's wrong.

Transgender "theory" is a pseudoscientific, cultish ideology. Many such issues are complicated. Many are close calls. Many are things about which sane, intelligent people can disagree. I think politics is filled with such issues--I think there are say more of them than is commonly thought...

...but transgenderism is not one of them.

Trump sticks his oar in, as per usual

OTOH:

Here's a guy who actually seems to know what he's talking about--Jacob Coxon.

   Blue-teamers, already having taken up an anti-data-center position, may have just decided to go with that--they seem to be the AI doomer party.

   Red-teamers, of course, must take up the opposite position and scoff at them. And now that Trump's scoffing, I reckon their position is pretty much set in stone.

   To make matters worse, the blue team has taken up a long line of sciencey-sounding doomer positions over the last 50 years, telling us we were all going to die from: overpopulation, acid rain, hole in the ozone layer, global cooling, global warming, COVID doomerism...you know the story.

   The blue team does love to go all doomer about issues such that doomerism supports some other thing they want to do--e.g. destroy capitalism, cut out fossil fuels...stop the data centers...

   The red team then tends to just take up the opposite of whatever position the blues have taken up...which sometimes leads them in the right direction (e.g. skepticism about climate apocalypticism, rejection of COVID hysteria)...but sometimes just the opposite (e.g.: the blues love Ukraine...so we love Russia now!!!)

   Anyway. Aside from this kind of induction over blue-team episodes of hysteria (and their general irrationality over the last decade), the reds don't have a lot to go on here...

   My position is currently:  I'm listening to the computer geeks. Obvs even they don't know exactly what's going on...and many of them have ulterior motives...but everybody else is just blowing smoke.

   Trump too, as should go without saying.

   I wonder what good could come from an analogy with AI chess? How long did it take to become unbeatable by even the best the meatsacks can throw at it? Can Magnus Carlson ever beat it anymore? I don't know... And what if the competition weren't a mere game...?

   Anyway.

   I think it's stupid for the average person to pooh-pooh AI doomerism.

   One of these days, the doomers are probably going to be right.

   And needless to say: AI could very well be the Great Filter...

   Finally: I have no idea what I'm talking about.

AI Companies Sound the Alarm

No particular link to this one...everybody's discussing it all over.

Many on the right (Trump, Robbie Suave) are pooh-poohing concerns. A common line is: the companies are just doing it as part of a rent-seeking op...

   Now, I decided long ago that I wasn't going to rush jump on the AI bandwagon like so many in philosophy. So I write on the basis of little knowledge beyond reading interweb-level stuff on this...

...But I just want to say:

Sometimes people say things because they believe they are true, and not as part of some sneaky move to get something for themselves.

I trust the AI engineers and eggheads on this a lot more than I trust Generic Internet Yakker #304.

That's all I got.

NR: Trump's Reckless $5k "Dividend"

Jesus Christ.

He's gone completely off the rails.

The Lysenkoization of *Nature*

link

9/11 + 25

WSJ: What They Teach Teachers in Grad School

link

I've read that undergraduate courses in education aren't much better. Ed schools are renown for low standards and politicized curricula. My university's Ed school kept its BLM badge prominently displayed on its website for years--until we got a governor and a President who began pushing back against Woketarianism. A casual perusal of its website still reveals a decidedly leftward lean. For example: an announcement of a new children's book by two faculty, which is described, in part, thusly: "a series of children’s books that explores how students can learn mathematical concepts conceptually through a global perspective." There is, of course, no good reason to force globalism into kids' math classes. Imagine the reception of a kids' math book on the importance of enforcing national borders, or of a free market economy...

Apparently one of the most-assigned books in Ed courses is Pablo Frieri's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (Also the 3rd-most-cited book in the social sciences). The book is just as bad as it sounds. It's basically a book on how to turn teaching into Marxist indoctrination. (Also, it reads as if it were written by a mediocre high school student.)

McCarthy: Taking Venezuela’s Oil: If America Becomes a Rogue, the Future Is Dark

Trump the anti-hero strikes again...

Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse.

Becket Adams: The Professional Fact-Check Is Dead

Word.

   The Washington Post "Fact-Checker" was just more Washington Post.

   I went to a talk by three journalism/SComm profs at my university ca. late 2019(?). They all sang from the same hymnal: trust the MSM and the fact-checkers. Afterward, I went up and showed them the search I had done on Russian "collusion" at one of the big fact-checkers...all ten results on the first page ruled that Trump was wrong...eight of those ten had been proven wrong in the previous couple of months e.g. by the Mueller Report. Turned out that two of the three were late for meetings...

   The decline and fall of Snopes was particularly sad, I thought. 

Will Lawrence (MI): Yet Another Dem Candidate Trying to Evade his Extremist Positions

Eliminate police and prisons. Oh and: the nuclear family...and the single-family home...the sources of all evil in the world...

Listen, sane, sensible people don't take up and throw off positions overnight.

This isn't a matter of Lawrence just changing his mind.

His assertions of his radical positions were passionate and freely-made...his retractions tepid and clearly forced by considerations of electability.

We've all gotten mad and said things we rejected in a cool hour. But it's obvious that the wave of woke leftists suddenly retracting the views they enthusiastically espoused for a decade isn't motivated by a sudden outbreak of sanity on the left.

They still have the same basic sentiments and principles they had last year.

And even if they publicly repudiate those positions to get elected, they'll still be legislating as far to the left as they think they can get away with.

John R. Puri: Trump Says More Insane Things About the Economy

facepalm

Ms. Wiles...for the love of God...take his phone away...

Use physical force if you have to...or park a big jamming van outside the White House...

But you've gotta do something...

*Nature* Beclowns Itself Yet Again--This Time Re: Jason Arday

This is a bit surprising even to those of us who have come to expect bullshit from Nature editorials...

Trump Freaks Out over Claim That His Endorsements Have "Mixed Results"

Whatever, dude.

Remember how you lost us the Senate that one time?