Camping Out at Columbia's Commie Coachella

It's not just that college doesn't make you smart about politics...it's that it might just make you dumb...

Biden Reads the Teleprompter: "Four More Years...Pause"

Jeez, even I feel bad for the guy:

link

Almost worse was the pre-arranged, but still hesitant and half-hearted, "four more years" chant...

Healthy Skeptic:...Is Getting Fed Up With Vax Safety BS

His general conclusion seems still to be: the vax doesn't help as much as you might think or hope, but it's damn unlikely to harm you.

   I got the first jab, when the batflu was more dangerous and we knew less about it. But I've had the COVID at least once now, and maybe/probably twice. And I'm sure I've been exposed a lot. I'm not anti-vax, I just decided not to jump on the boosterama express. 

And, in case my psychological quirks/weaknesses are not sufficiently clear: to some extent out of contrariness. The more dogmatic/hysterical the pro-vaxers got, the less likely it was going to be that I took another one. Dumb...I guess...but, as a heuristic, I'm not really sure that Don't give in to the hysteriacs is really as bad as the orthodoxy would have it. (Though, of course: whenever you find yourself at odds with the orthodoxy, you're probably wrong....)

   I still think--non-expert that I am--that the pro-vax dogma was dumb. Shoving it onto healthy young people in particular. And without what would seem to me to be sufficient safety testing. (Again: non-expert here.) In fact, I still think we should have been in favor of vax refuseniks: they were humanity's safety net in case it had turned out to be a disaster.

   But the older you get, the more rational it would seem to get the vax. 

   But, since I can't even seem to manage to get a flu shot more than about one year out of five, I'm thinking that I'll probably be slack about this one, too.

"Donald Trump's Trial Will Only Help Him"

link

I don't know about "only"...but, on balance, it could well help him.

It's probably helping him with me.

I mean:

Here's Trump, unfit for the office. 

There's the left--hysterical, delusional, lying about virtually everything he says and does...and now, misusing the justice system--over and over and over--in an attempt to prevent Americans from voting for him. 

Right out in the open! Right in front of God and everybody! Shamelessly. Proudly. Some of these jackasses (e.g. the loathsome Letitia James) ran on doing this.

   So far as I can tell, their attitude is roughly: it doesn't matter how insane we are--he's unfit! You must ignore our shenanigans and focus on that unfitness.

   And, yeah, I think these are both true:

(a) The charges against Trump are a joke--a travesty of justice.

(b) Trump's unfit to be President.

   But here's a tip for the blue team: eventually, it becomes impossible or at least impractical to try to slice such things too finely. Eventually, your psychotic lawfare starts counting for him. And I mean: in favor of him for President.

And I mean: independently of the fact that, IMO, we should not be voting either for Trump or for Biden, but for/against the likely total state of a Trump or Biden administration. So, for example, in the Fall, I'll likely be voting not merely in accordance with the fact that Trump is less bad than Biden (in fact, I'm not sure he is), but in accordance with the fact that a Trump Department of Education will likely include more people like Betsy DeVos and fewer people like Catherine Lhamon...

   Trump and Biden are both unfit. (Which is not to say equally so.) But which faction do I want to have more influence on the federal apparatus? (I mean: the blues will apparently always run it. So really: do I want it to be deep blue (lol no)...or a little purplish?)

   But aside from that: I'm now probably voting against the faction that most egregiously weaponizes the justice system against its opponents...not even to mention anything else.

Did A DEI USSS Hire In Harris's Security Detail Attack Other Agents?

What the hell?

Ulrich Baer: "What Snowflakes Get Right About Free Speech"

More accurate title: "What Ulrich Baer Gets Wrong About Free Speech"

Summary:

Hey, Lyotard says it's ok to censor speech.

No human is illegal!

Trans women are women!--no disagreement allowed.

Joe Nocera: The Trump Jurors Are America At Its Best

Well, this is encouraging.

Climate Discombobulating: Gay Couples Hardest Hit

facepalm

Aside from the obvious stupidity of that--and not to put too fine a point on it--the reason for such third-rate Lysenkoism is the presupposition that something is worse if it affects gays more than it affects straights. And gay-married gays at that! I mean, if the climate were merely deconstructifying, that would be bad and all...but destructing inequitably? And, like, not on account of hitting evilstraightwhitemales more...but, y'know, the other thing... Unacceptable!

   So it's a progressive way of arguing climate change is even worse than you thought!...it's inequitying gays...

   I mean, if the alleged disintigration of the climate were inequitying evilstraightwhitedudes, that would actually be a plus--climate change as equitification...

   BUT IT'S NOT, BIGOT

   IT'S INEQUITYING THE GAYS

   AND THAT IS NOT OK

   This kind of postpostmodern bullshit pseudo-scholarship has been rampant in the weaker regions of the humanities and social sciences for decades, incidentally.

Council on Foreign Relations Debate: Should We Stop Funding the War in Ukraine?

I was doing something else when listening to this, and shouldn't have been. It required more attention than I could give it. But I came away still not knowing what to think. So the general trajectory of my thinking remains the same: I don't know, but, forced to say something, I'm weakly convinced by Mearsheimer. I'm sort of skeptical of Hitler/WWII analogies. Putin didn't exactly waltz into Ukraine this time. But the history--including the U.S.'s role in pre-invasion Ukraine--is basically opaque (or translucent at best) to me. I just don't know. People who specialize in roughly this topic can't seem to agree. I don't even rise to the level of dilettante here. There's no reason to take anything I say or think about it seriously. 

   The women on the pro-funding side did make a few really bad arguments IMO. Like the innovation argument. Seems to me that "Ukraine is so innovative! (eg drones and such)" is a pretty weak reason to think they can win--especially if that means: push the Rooskies out. If I'm playing a strategy game I need to win, and I can choose (a) the side with massive numerical and financial advantage or (b) the side that's very innovative...I pick (a). 

I continue to think that we raised to cost of this invasion so high that Putin would have to be nuts to try it again--or, God forbid, to invade a NATO country--as the pro-funding side of this debate repeatedly warns about. We could drive the Rooskies out if we wanted to--but it just doesn't seem to be worth it. Defending, say, Latvia or any other NATO member would seem to be a completely different matter.

It's miserably awful that we couldn't (or didn't) coax Putin over toward our side. The last thing we need is what seems to be happening--the emergence of a Russia/China alliance. (Well, really: a Putin/CCP alliance; this isn't so much the fault of the Russians or the Chinese, but of their leaders/governments.)

Bleh.

Confusion.

Biden Admin's Title IX Rewrite: Why You Must Not Vote For Democrats

They've simply rewritten Title IX to say what they wish it had said.

The left does not consider itself to be constrained by law. Law is to be freely interpreted to say what they want it to say, even when that goes against the plain meaning of the statute. 

Title IX could hardly be clearer:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

But the Biden administration (no doubt led by lunatics like Catherine Lehmon) have simply ignored what it says, and decreed that it also means "gender identity"--a pseudoscientific pseudoconcept.
   And, on top of everything else, they've turned it into yet another tool for undermining free speech. (Though those provisions will, I believe and hope, be grounds for SCOTUS to overturn this abomination.)  I don't use "preferred pronouns," and this won't change that. If my university or anyone affiliated with it wants to try to make me, I welcome it. We'll see what the goddamned courts have to say about it--it's compelled speech. I won't do it and the Supremes won't uphold it.

   A vote for the contemporary Democrat party is a vote for this type of totalitarian madness.

20 Minutes of Democrats Denying Election Results

Over 20 minutes of Democrats denying and questioning election results.

Hillary et al. calling President Trump illegitimate. Zero indictments! pic.twitter.com/1SigsxtLYK

— Eddie (@ICU1010) August 15, 2023

Biden Administration Rewrites Title IX: "Gender Identity" More-Or-Less Replaces Sex; Free Speech, Due Process Gutted

Look, the Democrats are simply fucking insane now.

This is utter madness.

I can't believe I was hesitant to vote for Trump.

I will enthusiastically vote for whatever candidate/party has the best chance of defeating the utterly insane Democrats.

The Department of Education should be eliminated anyway.

Trump on Gettysburg: Never Fight Uphill, Me Boys

facepalm

Bill Barr Plans to Vote for the Republican Ticket in November (So I Do Too)

Some time ago, I decided that I would very probably vote however Barr decided to vote. Barr and I agree that the progressivism that has conquered the Democrats is a grave threat to the nation. We agree that the effects of Trump's presidency were generally quite positive. But Barr has significant, direct experience with Trump, his personal defects, and his behavior after he lost the election of 2020. I have a very high opinion of Barr, and he seems to be in an excellent position to weigh the prospect of another Trump presidency against that of a Democratic one--probably Biden...or, more likely, partially Biden, partially Harris.

   And it certainly didn't seem like a foregone conclusion. When asked, last year, what he would do if Trump was the nominee again, he said "I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it." Which seemed to me to indicate the right attitude. 

   At any rate, he's said that he'll vote for "the Republican ticket." So that means I very probably will as well.

   Of course things could happen between now and November to change my mind. But I think it's obvious that a Democrat administration must be avoided, even if at a very high cost. And it's not Biden. Biden, godawful though he is, is one of the less-bad Democrats we might reasonably end up with. The problem is, as Barr correctly notes, the progressive agenda--in short, political correctness / Woketarianism. It's like a plague of madness that has gripped the blue end of the political spectrum. 

   The only question is: is Trump less-bad, or worse? 

   And I don't know of anyone better to make such a judgment than Barr.

   So there it is.

RIP Whitey Herzog

damn

Defund NPR

Turley makes the case.

   The NPR CEO has responded to Uri Berliner's expose by calling it...and I'm not even making this up...: "profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning." That's like a parody of leftist puling. I mean, I guess it might be "hurtful"--after all, as they say, the truth hurts. "disrespectful" and "demeaning" are just goddamn stupid.

   I fell out of the habit of listening to NPR for a couple of years during which I didn't have to drive to campus, but could walk. I was an enthusiastic listener for decades, especially during my sometimes long commutes. When I tuned back in ca. 2015 (? '16?) I was appalled. Or maybe 'repulsed' is better. Fairly soon after I started tuning back in, I was listening to one of their talk shows and heard one of their well-known talking heads (can't remember his name now) ab. so. lutely. lose. his. shit. at one of his guests who was questioning liberal gun-control orthodoxy. I mean dude completely lost it. Needless to say, if that had been an isolated incident, NBD. But the NPR I returned to was not like the NPR I had left. New NPR didn't just lean liberal...it was filled with politically correct bullshit about race (there was a whole show about "code switching" (honestly, how does the left come up with so many irritating turns of phrase?), for example), "gender," the bad Orange Man (REEEEEEEEEEEEE) and all the other leftist obsessions. Even a solidly Democrat friend of mine said to me, years ago, that NPR had become awful, and that he couldn't even listen to it anymore...

   Anyway.

   There's no way we should pay for that shit. 

   Lefties used to refuse to pay the tax on their phone bills because it allegedly was used to pay off debt from the Vietnam war. (That's not exactly true, as I understand it.) Anyway, maybe non-leftists should withhold the nickel or whatever of their taxes that is slated for NPR propaganda operations...

Turley: The Trump Trial in Manhattan is an Indictment of the NY Legal System

It's almost unbelievable how little vocal Dems on the intertubes understand about this case...which doesn't keep them from passionately denouncing the bad Orange Man, and declaring him obviously guilty...

Trump, for all his many faults, is far less dangerous than the contemporary blue team.

Beria is no longer with us--but "show me the man and I'll show you the crime" could well be one of their many mottos.

Disagree with the blue team, and you risk "cancellation"--i.e. psychotic public campaigns of lies and character assassination--more-or-less at best. If that doesn't work: lawfare. As Turley points out:

After an absurd $450 million decision courtesy of Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will bring his equally controversial criminal prosecution over hush money paid to a former porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.
Lawyers have been scouring the civil and criminal codes for any basis to sue or prosecute Trump before the upcoming 2024 election. This week will highlight the damage done to New York’s legal system because of this unhinged crusade. They’ve charged him with everything short of ripping a label off a mattress.
Just a few weeks ago, another judge imposed a roughly half billion dollar penalty in a case without a single victim who lost a single cent on loans with Trump. (Indeed, bank officials testified they wanted more business with the Trump organization).
Now Bragg is bringing a case that has taken years to develop and millions of dollars in litigation cost for all parties. That is all over a crime from before the 2016 election that is a misdemeanor under state law that had already expired under the statute of limitations.