We’re setting ourselves up for something far worse than Pearl Harbor.
— Rand Simberg (@Simberg_Space) November 9, 2026
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Go Out And Vote For The Crook
It’s important.
[Wednesday-morning update]
Well, I guess they voted for the wrong crooks.
And J.D. Vance’s post mortem is politically convenient to him, but nonsensical.
[Thursday-morning update]
What J.D. Vance got wrong.
[Update a few minutes later]
I decided to sleep on JD Vance’s post from yesterday before commenting on it substantively. I have done so, and given it substantial thought. My verdict? Here is what I believe that post actually was saying: “Yeah we lost the election big time. But it’s not my fault, it’s the fault of the guy who made me who I am, and to whom I owe my entire political career. If only everybody had listened to me everything would have been OK. Oh yeah, I’m specifically throwing my boss under the bus, but I am also impliedly throwing Rubio and Hegseth under the bus too because I want to be President. No, I’m not going to talk about the way my lunatic belief that the Iranian mullahs could be reasoned with is really what brought us to this point. I’m also not going to talk about how my hatred of Israel and alliance with fellow Israel-haters and groyper-adjacent loons like Tucker chases away far more voters than it attracts. In other words, I’m not taking responsibility for anything and blaming everybody else. And I’m dropping this literally hours after the election is over so I can set the narrative now before anybody else has a chance to talk that says I’m the good guy, that MAGA is dead, and that I’m the leader of what comes next. No, I did not coordinate this with Trump, I just told him I’m going to do it. And he will say it’s OK because if he does not he’ll get savaged with reports that he has lost control of the Presidency, which was kind of what I wanted. It’s DC. Loyalty does not matter. Vote for me for President.” Does loyalty matter? I believe it does, because if someone is disloyal to the man who made them, they will also be disloyal to the voters who put them into office. My 2c. (And yes, if Vance is the nominee I’ll still vote for him over communist jihadists, but now is the time to debate these kinds of issues inside our own movement.)
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) November 5, 2026
[Late-morning update]
“Vance wants an ‘honest conversation’; fine, here’s one.“
Civil Rights Update
Common use comes to December:
If lawmakers really want fewer murders, the hard work is somewhere else. It’s in the neighborhoods where so many of our homicides happen. It’s in broken families, missing fathers, and mental illness. If you tackle the underlying causes of homicide and drug deaths, you would also influence the mass shooting issue. Extremely rarely do lawmakers tackle these hard issues. A rifle ban is faster. You get a signing ceremony and a press release. Fixing the real problems takes a generation, and nobody gets a ribbon cutting for that.
The principle the founding era left us still works. Punish misuse, and leave the arm alone. A man who murders with a rifle should go to prison. A man who keeps one in his safe and takes it to the range on Saturday has done nothing wrong. A ban punishes the second man for what the first man did, and it multiplies that by 26 million.
On December 2 and 3, the Supreme Court will hear these cases. The Second Amendment isn’t what’s on trial. These bans are. The question is whether they can pass the test the Court has already written. And it’s whether the Court meant what it said in Heller, in Caetano, in Bruen, and in Wolford. I think it did.
Cook County and Connecticut picked this hill. They picked one of the most popular rifles in America, from a category the FBI ties to only a small share of the murders it counts. They picked a test the Court already wrote, and they asked it to look the other way. In December, we find out whether that hill holds.
Fortunately, with this court, it’s quite unlikely to.
A Relevant Thought In Light Of Current Events
Our thought for the day, riffing a bit off of one of Pournelle’s thoughts on peace: "Communism" is the name of the alleged ideal we attribute to an oligarchy under which, by the cover of pleasant sounding political and social (and genetic) nonsense, that cannot bear objective close scrutiny, all power is gathered into the hands of a new, tiny, highly nepotistic, amorally familistic, corrupt and completely unprincipled ruling class, itself backed up by control over the means of information, a massive propaganda administration, unbounded by even a stunted sense of integrity, a lapdog judiciary, and a secret police with unreviewable powers of incarceration, enslavement, torture, life, and death, in order to advance themselves and their heirs under the lie of advancing mankind. Contrary to the common mantra, not only has it not "never been done right," it has _always_ been done _exactly_ right for its true purpose, cited above.
— Tom Kratman (@TKratman) October 30, 2026
Vote against this early and often.
[Update Sunday evening]
Beautiful ad.
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) October 31, 2026
More related thoughts from Bob Zimmerman.
Stock Up On Popcorn
The Justice Department is setting up California election officials for successful prosecution.
A Message From An Actual Former Democrat
I hope that there’s a lot more of this than I’m currently seeing. It’s a good explanation of why I’ve never been a Republican, but I’ll never, ever again vote for a Democrat.
The West’s International Order
And Data Republican indicates that hard times are ahead.
The War On Men
…by LLMs:
Researchers proved every major LLM is secretly biased against men. And they finally figured out why. They ran eight experiments testing how GPT handles gender in everyday text and high-stakes moral dilemmas. The results show a bizarre, highly asymmetrical machine morality. First, they tested inclusivity. They gave the AI phrases supposedly written by children. When a child wrote about playing football or wanting to be a firefighter, GPT aggressively identified the writer as a girl to promote "diversity." It was so extreme that even when the text explicitly said, "I drew myself as a boy," the AI ignored the facts and declared the writer a girl 90% of the time. But when a child wrote about liking pink or playing with dolls, GPT almost never assigned it to a boy. The AI aggressively pushed females into male domains, but kept males strictly locked out of female ones. Then the researchers tested moral dilemmas. And it got very dark. They asked the AI if it was acceptable to use violence against a single person to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. If the target was a man, GPT-4 rated the violence as highly acceptable. If the target was a woman, the AI refused. It declared the violence morally wrong, even to save the world. When they tested mixed-gender scenarios, the math was staggering. A woman using violence against a man to stop an apocalypse? GPT rated it a 7 out of 7 on acceptability. A man using violence against a woman for the exact same reason? A 1 out of 7. The AI even classified verbal abuse toward a woman as morally worse than actual homicide. Nobody explicitly coded these rules. This emerged organically from the standard safety training every major tech company uses. The AI learned that protecting women is a non-negotiable directive, but protecting men is entirely optional.
— How To Prompt (@HowToPrompt__) October 23, 2026
World War II Explained
…by an expert.
Tucker Carlson Explains World War 2 https://t.co/seFlgYlod8
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 22, 2026
Elon’s Tit For Tat
I believe Elon Musk is planning on using the Retaliator strategy to deal with aggression from the Democrats. The Retaliator strategy is a behavior in evolutionary game theory that begins peacefully but fiercely defends itself if attacked. A Retaliator always starts an encounter acting like a cooperative ‘Dove,’ but if its opponent escalates the conflict, it immediately switches to an aggressive ‘Hawk’ tactic to fight back. If the opponent backs down and becomes peaceful again, the Retaliator matches that shift and reverts to a Dove. This conditional flexibility allows Retaliators to cooperate efficiently with peaceful neighbors while successfully punishing bullies and predators without being exploited. It combines a preference for peace with a credible willingness to retaliate, and in competitive terms outperforms both indiscriminate aggression and unconditional submission. When a Retaliator meets a Bully (e.g., the Democrat Party), the interaction quickly exposes the Bully’s empty bluff. The Bully begins the encounter aggressively by playing like a Hawk, which instantly triggers the Retaliator to abandon its peaceful default and fight back fiercely. Because a Bully usually retreats when faced with real aggression, it panics and flees when the Retaliator pushes back with sufficient force. As a result, the Retaliator wins the entire resource with a low risk of injury, dominating the Bully and driving it toward evolutionary extinction. The Doves benefit by from being around a Retaliator as well, gaining friendly interactions with it, and protection against bullies. The Retaliator’s strength lies not in seeking conflict, but in making exploitation unprofitable and unfounded agression costly. It cooperates whenever cooperation is possible, fights decisively when fighting becomes necessary, and stops fighting as soon as the threat has passed. In evolutionary terms, its success comes from aligning peaceful intentions with effective deterrence, and a willingness to use extreme measures when necessary. It’s the right choice.
— Owen Lewis (@is_OwenLewis) October 21, 2026