TDS Watch: Trump / Iran / Nuking CA

As linguistic as the left is, they do not even try to interpret Trump's words correctly.

The general insanity of the left comes from its inextricable association with recent Continental philosophy. Relevant here is "the death of the author"--you can interpret any "text" (which means: anything at all) any way you want. Because authors' intentions are irrelevant, and every interpretation is as good/bad as every other...

Daft, retarded relativism.

TDS Watch: Trump Did Not Invite Iran to Nuke California

The real story here is that, even after a decade of the left and the MSM generally lying about Trump and the things he says...I briefly wondered whether this one might be true...

   Though, it's to some extent on Trump...because...who knows what they guy might say? After threatening to invade Greenland...well, who knows, I guess?

   And, again: if Trump's so terrible, why does the left have to lie--again and again and again--about the things he says? He really does say plenty of crazy shit, after all...

Your Blue Future: Seattle "Zombie" Bites Chunk Out of Woman's Forehead

link

In Memoriam: Tom Hill

link (scroll down)

I tried to post something when Tom died, but I just gave up.

He really was an exceptional person.

I could go on and on about him. I only took one course from him, and, since I migrated out of ethics after my first year, he wasn't on either of my committees. But we were actually reasonably close--in the way that many students were tight with many profs at Carolina at the time. The atmosphere, back in the day (ca. mid-'80s - mid-'90s) was just great. I had many good discussions with Tom, and mostly remember just hanging out and talking about philosophy in the coffee room. Tom and Robin were also tight with other professors who I was tight with--and who were on my committees. They all lived out around Chatham county, where Mike Resnik got me into road biking the summer before I shoved off for a job.

   Well, anyway.

   Someday, maybe, I'll try to write something.

   Tom really was just a helluva guy.

Joe Nocera: Last Night, College Athletes Lost [when the "Protecting College Sports" act was passed]

I don't know what to think about all this.

I can say: I think college athletes probably deserve to make what they're worth.

And also: I don't like college sports anymore.

I guess the illusion of amateurism was necessary for my enjoyment of them.

I've never cared much about football, actually, but I've absolutely loved college hoops (I went to Carolina for grad school, after all).

I also think that football is too expensive--and I kinda think it's too violent. Hell, I like the UFC...and football's often a bit much for me. So I'm a wimp in that respect. A lot of those hits just seem over the top to me...

But anyway.

Universities aren't what they're supposed to be anymore. They're more like some kind of crazy businesses that I barely understand anymore--despite having spent my life in them.

OTOH, you can argue: by turning them into what they now are, more people are more educated than they would otherwise be...

Though if we go down that road, we sort of need to talk about grade inflation, the general crapification of universities, ideological capture by the left...etc.

Hell, I don't know what to think.

Elon

After the first Falcon 1 rocket exploded 33 seconds after launch in March 2006, Elon Musk did something that his employees did not expect. He personally called the family members of the engineers who had worked on the rocket. Not the engineers. Their families. The engineers were at the launch site. They had watched their work explode in the sky. They were processing the failure in real time with their colleagues. They had each other. Their families were at home. Their spouses and parents had watched on a livestream or heard the news secondhand. They had no colleagues. They had no context. They just knew that the thing their husband or wife or child had spent 3 years building had just been destroyed in 33 seconds and they didn't know if anyone was hurt. Elon called to tell them everyone was safe. That the failure was a known risk. That the team would try again. That their family member had done extraordinary work and the explosion was not a reflection of their ability. One engineer's wife said the call lasted 4 minutes. She said Elon sounded tired but calm. She said he didn't minimize the failure or exaggerate the optimism. He stated the facts and said "your husband is brilliant and we are going to fly again." The engineers learned about the calls later. Several described it as the moment they decided to stay at SpaceX. Not because the CEO called their families. Because the CEO understood that the family at home absorbs the weight of the failure without any of the camaraderie that makes it bearable for the team. The rockets get the headlines. The families hold the weight in the dark. He called the families.

— Race 🕊️ (@multiplanet1) September 30, 2026

Election Time On the Senate Races

Nail-biter:

Alan Dershowitz: "Why I Left the Democratic Party--And Why California Voters Should, Too"

link:

I think the Democratic Party today is the most dangerous party in my lifetime. I lived through McCarthyism, and the latter stages of segregation. But I’ve never lived in a more dangerous time for civil liberties, decency or meritocracy.

I'm a generation behind Dersh, so I didn't live through McCarthyism. But I have seen--since I've been old enough to know what was going on--widespread communist apologism, anti-communist extremism, the rise of the religious right, political correctness, the lie-up to the Iraq war, and Trump...and, yeah, the rise of the Woketarian cult is the most dangerous of the lot, IMO...and that's the problem with the Dems: they capitulated to the lunatic left. And I agree with him that this is the most dangerous time (in the last 50+ years) for civil liberties, decency, and meritocracy...but, more importantly: for sanity and reason.

   Stop me if you've heard this one: it's the Orwellianism of the left that's the biggest threat.

   Trump plays so fast and loose with the truth that you can basically just ignore what he says when he's on one of his rolls...

   But the postpostmodern left has conducted a decades-long campaign to subvert the very ideas of truth and reason, in favor of a kind of cultish, totalitarian politics that subordinates everything to hard-left dogma. They repeat their leading ideas ad nauseam: science is political, the personal is political...everything is political. The latter, in particular, is like a mind virus that people brainlessly repeat having given it exactly no serious thought. It's bad enough that it's laughably false...but it's also the left's excuse for politicizing everything. Criticize them for politicizing the news media, and their response is: everything is political! Get it? They can't be criticized for replacing accurate, objective journalism with leftist propaganda...because that's the way it has to be...there is no alternative. Everything's already political anyway...so all they can do is try to make it reflect the correct politics...i.e. leftist politics...

   What a crock of shit.

   The vast majority of the universe is apolitical. The percentage the is political is so small as to be effectively zero. Zoom in on Earth, and even just on human life, and the percentage that is inherently political is very small indeed--even from the perspective of a politics-obsessed nerd like myself. Most of my life--and almost all of the truly important things in it--are non-political.

   What the leftists respond to this is, basically, that, for almost any x you can name, you can imagine it becoming a matter of political controversy. The trees in my front yard theoretically could, for example. But, of course, that doesn't mean that the trees in my front yard are political. They are not essentially political. Though they could become contingently so. Is science political? Well, the question is ill-formed. Science itself? Inherently? Or have some things about science become embroiled in politics in various ways? The left doesn't even know what it's saying. They're very good at being unclear. Here's the fact: politics should not influence scientific reasoning. It should not influence which conclusions science draws. That's the issue. And it's easily settled.

   Eh, I gotta get to work. I don't have time to ridicule this stupid bullshit to the degree it deserves.

[But anyway:

   Trump's a loose cannon, the Pubs are doing nothing to control him, it's a giant mess...but his administration continues to produce good policy and to undertake long-overdo initiatives...and the Dems remain in the thrall of the Orwellian left...and now the socialists, too. One of the best things Trump did was give us a good SCOTUS. But Thomas and Alito are old. We absolutely cannot afford to lose the Senate now. Imagine a court with two more Sotomayors...or, saints preserve us, KBJs...

   The best thing we can do right now is minimize the power of the left--which means minimizing the power of the Dems.

   I still expect the Dems to return to sanity someday...but not any day soon....]

WSJ: The U.S. Economy is Accelerating (?)

I have no understanding of any of this.

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.