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.

SCOTUS: Good News, Bad News: States Can Keep Boys Out of Girls' Sports; But We're Stuck With Birthright Citizenship

What's insane, of course, is that this is happening anywhere...and that it had to go to SCOTUS to be defended... "Transgenderism" isn't a real thing--or, you could say: it's a mental disorder. Some people do wish they were the opposite sex...or like to cosplay the opposite sex...but there's no such thing as a male girl or woman, and no such things as a female boy or man.

Anyway: no surprise here. Sanity prevailed at SCOTUS on this one.

OTOH, it looks like we're stuck with birthright citizenship...which was a cool idea...but it's doing significant harm to the nation. We'd have been a lot better off if the Supremes had ruled the other way...but their job isn't to make the most beneficial ruling. Their job is to stick to the law.

   Now...seems to me like there's pretty good reason to doubt the standard interpretation of the 14th Amendment...but obviously my half-assed understanding doesn't exactly outweigh the judgment of the majority of the Court... No surprises here, either.

French Politician: U.S. A/C Responsible for European Heat Wave

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL no

The IPCC has said that no individual weather event can be linked to global warming...and, in fact, it's not at all clear that any general type of weather phenomenon can be linked to it--other than warming itself. Certainly not the notorious--and fictitious--increase in hurricane frequency/severity. Maybe, they say, heat waves are related--but the data are equivocal.

   As for U.S. a/c causing this--oh, sorry...I mean "being not unrelated" to it--no. It didn't cause even 1% of it.

   This is just more religious faith from the cult.

   And, listen: I think we overdo it with a/c. I don't see why some people and some businesses keep it freezing in their homes and stores. We always kinda just used a/c to take the edge off--and lower the humidity. People walk around in 80 degree weather outside just fine...what'd be wrong with keeping your a/c at that temp most of the time? 

   Now...we don't do that anymore. One of our dogs, Ajax, is a big furry monster of a GSD+?...and he likes to sleep under my desk...and that's upstairs. And they need it cool at night sleep. So now we keep it down more near 70. But, then, we drove dinky little econobox cars for years, back when we believed climate apocalypticism...so now our attitude is: fuck it. Also we have two trucks. Also fuck it...

Never Forget: AZ Police Officer Philip Brailsford Outright Executed Daniel Shaver and Got Away With It

Sonofabitch should have rotted in prison.

That article is shit. Brailsford and other cops were yelling contradictory orders at Shaver, and pointlessly making him crawl towards him. He had his hands up and was begging them not to shoot him. His loose basketball shorts started to ride down over his butt, and, obviously not thinking, he moved to pull them up. Then Brailsford (and perhaps other officers--I don't remember) did not merely "fire his gun"...he mag dumped Shaver--still on the ground, hands up, begging not to be killed.

   It was murder.

   I hope Brailsford gets what he deserves some day.

Geraghty: Iran Makes a Mockery of the MOU

What a mess.

Though, honestly, I understand almost nothing about the situation.

Heaton: Gavin Newsome Called Trump a Socialist. Is He?

Lowry: The Perverse Genocide Charge

link

Darializa Avila Chevalier Believes All the Crazy Things

Among other things, she accepts the central aim of the extremist left: "the total eradication of Western civilization."

   Radicalism and insanity are rather difficult to distinguish. There's a hell of a lot of overlap between them...

AAUP Finally Admits It's a Lefty Advocacy Organization

Well, not quite--but it apparently has admitted that it's ideologically non-neutral. Like so many shitbag leftist organizations, it dishonestly represents itself as "anti-Fascist," when it's actually hard left.

   I joined the AAUP when I got in some hot water for co-authoring an anti-DEI report for the Virginia Association of Scholars...not that I'm sure that AAUP would have defended me for that. But I was just erecting whatever defenses I could manage at the time. 

   But a little contact with the AAUP makes it impossible to deny that they're a bunch of illiberal leftists and PC/Lysenkoists. Like the rest of the hard left, they don't even believe that objectivity is possible...

Supremes Strike Down HI "Vampire" Firearms Law and "Spirit of Aloha" Justification

link

I'm not wild about displacing local modi vivendi...

But the "Spirit of Aloha" justification can't trump constitutional rights.

And, of course, Alito is right: Second Amendment rights are often treated as "disfavored rights"...but they can't be. Second Amendment rights are equal to First Amendment rights. And it would obviously be irrational to allow censorship of controversial speech because something something "Spirit of Aloha"...

Legal carriers aren't the problem.

If you want to reduce gun violence:

[a] Put criminals in jail

[b] Come down hard on illegal carriers--including (maybe especially) juveniles.

These things work.

[Sorry: it's called a "vampire law" because it requires people legally carrying firearms to as permission before entering private property.]

VA "Assault Weapons" Ban Injunction: "An Absolute Ass Whooping"

Great work by John Crump et al.!

And another big loss for the radical VA Dems.

Unfortunately, the Dems will, of course, appeal.

Fortunately, Jay Jones will be in charge of that...