0.5 Scaramuccis!

Katie, We Hardly Knew Ye

WSJ: To Russia, With Love, Signed Donald

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I don't understand much about what's going on here. But I suppose the diesel deal doesn't anger me as much as it does others--and maybe not as much as it should.

I don't think either party should cut deals with our foreign enemies to gain advantage in elections...but I've gotta say...if it keeps control of the Senate out of the hands of the Dems by bringing down gas prices...I kinda want to allow it...

I know.

That's bad.

OTOH, the Euros were buying Russian oil hand over fist until Trump pitched a bitch about it...some still may be. Not sure...

Anyway: Trump certainly has a bug up his ass about Ukraine. I just don't get it. I don't think anybody gets it. Maybe it's just his contrarian nature. Maybe he's still sore about the Biden/Ukraine business. God knows.

Anyway, I think WSJ (and everybody else) is likely right about this one and I'm wrong.

But keeping Congress--and SCOTUS--out of the hands of the current, unhinged Dems is...extremely important.

That's my excuse.

John Ellis: Radical Professors Have Poisoned the Electorate

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Ellis is basically right about academia, as usual.

I'm not sure about the causal link with DSA success, however.

There's some evidence that professors have little effect on their students' political views.

We should drain the swamp one way or the other--to be clear.

"Liberal Feel-Good Nostrums" Were Debunked by Social Science Long Ago

Starting with the Coleman Report in 1966, continuing with studies of prison rehabilitation, job training programs, causes of poverty, race differences in IQ, and causes of sex differences in occupational preferences. To name a few.

— Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) October 18, 2026

via Insty 

The Bee: Man Frustrated by Gas Prices Votes to Start Castrating Kids Again

Man Frustrated By Gas Prices Votes To Start Castrating Kids Again https://t.co/0ZirmXHPXF

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 17, 2026

American Scientist: New Flash: Science Has Always Been Political

By one Adam Shapiro--no idea if he is speaking for the magazine (note: not a journal).

One set of crackpot biases infect this piece of shit from beginning to end.

There's no serious thought evident anywhere in the thing.

Oh...I'll just point out, ad hominem, that Mr. Shapiro is also the author of these fine-sounding pieces of "science-writing:"

Rank Injustice: What Your Favorite Music Says About Inequality in Science
What Science Writing Owes to Its Religious Origins
Executive Order Hinders Scientific Inquiry
Did Intelligent Design Just Miss Its Corona Moment?
The Dangerous Resurgence in Race Science
What We Get Wrong About the Evolution Debate

Despite the standard, strategic, rhetorical FUD the left loves to use to obscure its bullshit positions and arguments:

The real question is: is science inherently political?

The real answer is: no.

Science is separable from politics, and good science is almost always separated from it.

The left's arguments are--as usual--terrible..and no one would ever accept them if they didn't have a political agenda lying behind them...

Leftist philosophers (" ") commonly argue for the pure and most dangerous variety of the view: that scientific arguments and conclusion should be affected by ideological preferences.

Everything else is just noise.

Nature (er...the journal...): Is Science Political?

I fear I can discern their answer from the brief descriptions of the episodes...but I don't have time to listen to them. I hope I'd be surprised.

The Lancet: Science Should Be Political

facepalm

Science has retardified itself.

This is something philosophy could actually have helped warn them against...but philosophy has done the same to itself.

In both cases, it's largely the result of these areas working with the left to further ideological capture.

First thing: what do you mean by Science is political?

Because the natural interpretation would be something in the vicinity of science is inherently political.

Which, of course, it is not.

Good science is apolitical--and some science is good science.

The drawing of the conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader.

The real problem is that the claim has no clear meaning. Does it mean that politics sometimes affects science? True...but it really can't mean that. It's implicitly universal. Science certainly affects politics...sometimes... Is that science being political? Or politics being sciencey? Or what?

The left loves to push the laughable claim that "everything is political."

Of course, however, almost nothing is political. The percentage of the universe that has anything at all of any importance at all to do with human political struggles and institutions is so near 0 that me might as well round to that. Humans have only even existed for a blink of an eye, in cosmic terms.

Of course it's always the left that pushes such absurd claims...because it wants and aims to politicize everything. And, when called on its bullshit, it defends it by claiming that everything is already political...so it's just a matter of which kind of political it will be...and, of course, the left's brand of political is allegedly (but not actually) preferable...

It's more or less at this point that the left starts confusing Everything is political with Anything might theoretically become fodder for political disagreement...which confusion is, yes, thermonuclearly retarded. But, having accreted around a core of bad Continental philosophy, pseudophilosophy, and literary theory, the left is nothing if not muddle-headed...

I should write something for real on this nonsense someday...

Oh and, of course: note that there is no reference at all to the left in the Lancet's editorial...despite the fact that the left has threatened to wreck science, off and on, since Lysenko...and it's probably never been closer to succeeding than it was during the "great awokening", perhaps peaking during the Biden administration. But who does get a personal shout-out as an enemy of science? Well, I'll leave that, too, as an exercise for the reader...

Columbia Journalism School hosts discussion of book arguing 'White America' was conditioned to lynch black children

There will, of course, be no genuinely critical comments...unless they're of the Hey, you missed some racism variety....which is to say: someone in the audience might seek to build some woke cred by making up some "racism" that the author didn't think of making up.

   This is likely to be a particularly egregious example of such bullshit...but universities--including public universities--are filled with this stuff. Leftist bullshit pervades universities sort of like religion pervaded Medieval universities. Nobody bats an eye at patent propaganda masquerading as teaching and scholarship.

Sweet-Ass Uchi Mata

Ok this is one sweet uchi mata:

The Cornell 7 "Gang Rape" Case Falls Apart; MSM Continues to Lie About It

As I guessed:

The MSM is still spinning and dissembling to try to avoid the politically incorrect facts of the case.

James B. Meigs: Politicians Play Orwell's Word Games

   Newspeak aims to control though by controlling language. Contra Syme in 1984, language cannot completely control thought--but as the left has demonstrated since the late '80s, it can be surprisingly influential. More recently: who would have predicted that the mere word 'transwoman' would have been as effective as it has been in encouraging acceptance of the patently contradictory idea male woman?
   The left's late-'80s term for its main project was 'political correctness,' (PC) a term taken from '50s-era communists. Apparently less-radical communists used it to ridicule their more-radical colleagues: political correctness (ideological orthodoxy) stood opposed to--and trumped--regular old correctness--truth, factuality, rationality, validity. We call basically the same thing 'woke'--but PC is better, emphasizing what is truly important about the movement.
   And, as Hannah Arendt has written: the abandonment of truth and reason central to PC is the true core of totalitarianism.
   Anytime the left says "social justice"--now often just shortened to "justice"-- they actually mean leftist ideology--and the rest of us should always point this out. "Economic justice" would really be, e.g.: prosecuting shoplifting, vandalism of public property, fare evasion, fraud, theft, &c. It would also comprise "allowing" people to keep more of the money they earn. In fact, leftists mean: taking money from people who earned it and giving it to those who didn't...and: to the cronies and catspaws of the left.

   Meigs is right--conservatives do it to. But on this score, their efforts are so puny and ineffective that it's almost misleading to even mention them. We should never suggest that they are at all comparable to those of the left. The left is an extremely linguistic and "intellectual" (in the bad sense) movement. That is: it's built on pseudoacademic bullshit and the manipulation of language and interpretation. The right has its own problems...but they aren't these. It's only somewhat of an exaggeration to say that the right's most famed attempt at Newspeak was 'freedom fries,' a jokey renaming of French fried in the Congressional cafeteria meant to poke France for refusing to go along with our ill-advised Iraq adventure. Hardly stacks up against 'transwoman' et al...

Galston: Rubio's Pagan Nationalism

Another great address by Rubio, IMO.

But Galston's cautionary point is an important one, I think.

Rubio could respond: of course I was emphasizing the Athens part of Athens and Jerusalem...

Helen Andrews: The Great Feminization Comes to Cornell

link

Gad Saad: Woketarian Associate Prof Elected Head of the APA (Psychology, not Philosophy)

(Incidentally, I have no idea who the president of the philosophy APA is...)

Her papers are all bullshit:

It used to be that you had to at least read the abstracts of psych papers to tell they were bullshit.

So in that respect, the Woketarians have streamlined things: now you can tell from the titles alone...

Santa Trump Wants to Buy Your Vote

Jesus Christ.

Make it stop.

Wilfred Reilly: When the Demand for Racism Exceeds the Supply

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There are a few crucial principles/ideas that define the radical left, including the episodes on the American left known as PC and "woke." Two of them are:

[i] Leftist ideology trumps facts

and

[ii] America is inherently/essentially/overwhelmingly racist.

   Only [i] makes it possible for them to continue to accept and promote [ii].

   I know many smart, reasonable, reasonably well-informed people on the left. But most of them simply cannot seriously criticize the left. Whatever their virtues, they cannot do more than issue the occasional half-hearted criticism of the left...and they absolutely cannot agree with the right in any but the most pro forma ways. Agreeing with Trump, of course, right out...

   I think any reasonable left-leaning person who honestly reflected on this incident would have a kind of epiphany. The passionate desire to find racism where there is none...and where there obviously is none...is telling to say the least...

   I tried to take these incidents seriously--just in case--but it was obvious from the get-go that they were almost certainly not lynchings. But the establishment fomented hysteria...until it became undeniable that it was all the utterest bullshit... 

   Here's the pattern, of course: they fan the flames of hysteria on the thinnest pretext...and fan and fan and fan...but it becomes more and more obvious that it's bullshit...then, eventually, they see it's not going to work (note: it's not that they stop because they recognize their claims are false...it's that they recognize their efforts aren't working...though they're not working largely because they turn out to be false)...and the project slowly fades away...

...of course they never admit error...and some of the hysteria sticks.

So, from their perspective, it was worth it.

Not optimal, of course--because they have been unsuccessful in creating another George Floyd incident and sparking "The Revolution"...

But it's a step in the right (i.e. wrong) direction...

Over and over and over the left tries the same basic ploy--interspersed with other old favorites (see e.g. the Cornell "gang rape") and the occasional new idea (e.g. let us sexually mutilate your child or he'll kill himself).

Madness.