Wednesday, February 22. 2017
Mika said it, finally: ‘OUR JOB’ IS TO CONTROL ‘EXACTLY WHAT PEOPLE THINK’
Well, Mika, you aren't doing a very good job controlling me but maybe it's because I only occasionally listen to you.
David Cassidy: Dementia at 66 Not Uncommon
Why cities win and cities die
I Spent 20 Years Behind the Wheel of a Big Rig
The Ivy League must be abolished!
Billions Wasted: Structures Built For 2016 Olympics In Brazil Are Now In Ruins
Moving the Olympics around is stupid. I'm for permanent place in Greece
Milo's Mini Apology Tour
The Screwed Generation Turns Socialist - The Depression and WWII shaped the greatest generation, and postwar prosperity shaped the Baby Boomers. Millennials, battered by capitalism, move ever leftward.
If The US Won't Defend Market Capitalism, No One Will
‘Climate Change’ Could Bring Fish Wars!
Curry: Computer Predictions Of Climate Alarm Are Flawed
Ivanka Trump’s Perfume Soars to No.1 Bestseller on Amazon Despite Boycotts
Mar-a-Lago 3, Camp David 0.
LEFTIES FREAK OUT OVER THAT TRUMP MAY CUT FUNDS FOR "PISS CHRIST" AGENCY
Tucker Carlson Mocks Lunatic ‘Refuse Fascism’ Organizer Who Claims “Trump Is More Dangerous Than Hitler”
That gal is a piece of work. "We must resist for humanity."
The ongoing Oroville Dam crisis has received modest national attention, in part because the press hasn’t figured out how to blame it on Trump.
Trump’s Immigration Guidance: Dreamers and Parents of U.S. Citizens Are Safe for Now; Most Others Must Go
In a fundamental shift from Obama, the Trump position is that simply being an illegal alien is unlawful and serious; thus, any additional indication of outlaw behavior is sufficient to warrant deportation.
Democrats in disarray
San Diego Bishop Calls On Catholics To Become Social Justice Warriors Against Trump…
Reporting? Liberal Media Have Much More in Mind Than That
NYT Botches Mexico City’s Sinking Story
The arrogant thinking of liberal sports writers
Conrad Black: A Purblind Press, Unable To Admit Error, Boycotts the President
The Definitive Guide to Repealing & Replacing Obamacare
This Politician Makes the Most Sense on Illegal Immigration
From the UK: The Stop Trump protests are the ultimate virtue signal
Lose weight fast with Socialism: Venezuelans lost 19 lbs. on average over past year due to lack of food
How Sweden became an example of how not to handle immigration
Rioting erupts in immigrant-dominated Swedish suburb
Tuesday, February 21. 2017
Robert Merry has the best political analysis I have read on the 2016 elections. One quote:
... the country was at an inflection point. It desperately needed a new brand of politics that could break the deadlock and set it upon a new course toward its future and destiny. In such times, a gap inevitably emerges between the political establishment, guided by the lessons of the past (increasingly irrelevant lessons, as it happens), and the electorate, always ahead of the establishment in seeing the need for new political paradigms, new dialectical thinking, and new coalitions designed to bust up political logjams and set the country upon a new course.
The electorate is always ahead of the comfortable establishment because the electorate lives in the real world. Voters used Trump to mess up the status quo which had worked well for the wealthy, the press, the bureaucracies, the dependent class, and the politicians but not for the regular people who had been held in contempt. It was a legal insurrection, and today's protesters represent the tired old establishment. Interesting times. I wish Trump and his folks the best of luck.
Monday, February 20. 2017
Sunday, February 19. 2017
Greenfield on the Elites vs. the Americans:
If you live in the world of Facebook, Lyft, Netflix and Airbnb, crowding into airports shouting, "No Borders, No Nations, Stop The Deportations" makes sense. You don't live in a country. You live in one of a number of interchangeable megacities or their bedroom communities. Patriotism is a foreign concept. You have no more attachment to America than you do to Friendster or MySpace. The nation state is an outdated system of social organization that is being replaced by more efficient systems of global governance. The only reason anyone would cling to nations or borders is racism.
The demographic most opposed to President Trump is not a racial minority, but a cultural elite.
Saturday, February 18. 2017
 Photos of the week
Everything We Know So Far About the Howards End TV Show
Every vehicle in the presidential motorcade, explained
How Often Do Airplanes Hit Deer?
Cartwheeling Substitute Teacher Exposed Self To High School Choir Class
It's educational
Do as I say, not as I do - Chicago Public Schools
From California, a Progressive Cry for State’s Rights - The birthplace of the modern conservative movement is now the leader of a Trump resistance founded on federalism.
FRACKERS HAVE DONE MORE THAN THE SIERRA CLUB EVER DID
The rebellion at the EPA is far from over
Do agencies run this country?
Note to the Left: Four Years Ago, Conservatives Were Just as Depressed
Washington Post: We Aren’t Biased!
With One Tweet, Chuck Todd Reveals The Truth About the Mainstream Media
The NY Times Is Pretty Upset Over Trump’s Press Conference
Associated Press Runs #FakeNews Story About Planned Roundup Of Illegals By National Guard
A Sign That Obamacare Exchanges Are Failing
Killing ObamaCare the Cloward-Piven Way
Betsy DeVos: I'd be 'fine' if we could ditch the Education Department
Same here.Not a job for the Feds
No 'strongman,' Trump is besieged by institutions
Black Trump Supporter Blasts Sanctuary Cities: “All the Jobs Are Going to Illegals!” "When my people do a crime, they get three strikes, your people do a crime, they get amnesty"
Trump Declares CNN, NYT, CBS, ABC And NBC Are "The Enemy of The American People"
Epstein: My Biggest Post-Trump Fear: A Progressive Revival
The Anti-Trump ‘Resistance’ in Red States - “This isn’t a fad, it’s not going away, and there’s nothing coastal or elite about it.”
Has Washington Gone Crazy?
France's Le Pen faces new challenges from EU Parliament, UN
"Far right wing"? No she is not
Friday, February 17. 2017
That was some high-quality reality TV, spellbinding for many. Scott Adams: There are two clues that the Huffington Post is hallucinating and I’m not. From a commenter there:
Every conservative I've personally heard from thought his press conference was excellent and long overdue. I've listened to those on the right for many years complaining that Republicans never fight back when they are slandered and lies and misrepresentations are spread about them. Now, we have someone who will fight back hard and not just lie down and take it.
Naturally, heavily biased, partisan, unethical "reporters" are outraged that they can't just get by with doing whatever they feel like no matter how dishonest and manipulative without getting called out for it. At the same time, they are getting so explicit with their Trump hatred that even non-partisan people couldn't avoid noticing it. It's very hard not to admire Trump's guts. He'll go right into the lion's den and antagonize the violent lions without hesitation. The "press's" refusal to recognize how millions of Americans actually view Trump (and them) is one of the reasons Trump won.
Donald, the anti-hero and anti-politician, is one heck of a politician. Finally, the news is fun again and Washington a circus again. Journalists whisper "This is insane." Wrong again. Journalists don't get it. Why should they be expected to? They are just bystanders in life, outside the arena.
Thursday, February 16. 2017
Scott Pruitt's Game-Changing Call for Debate on Climate Science
In my view, climate science and weather science are interesting but not very important. If the tropospheric temps go up a degree or two per century, who cares? It's just a political hobby horse. If anybody thinks a "carbon tax" could change the earth's climate they are insane. It would enrich government, however.
Whatever causes climate variations in the present and caused drastic variations through the history of the planet, nothing can be done about it and, furthermore, who can define an ideal climate for the planet anyway? Nobody. All anybody can say for sure is that warmer is better than colder.
I see it as a sign of health that she hates the dumb job. Modern women do not want to be public ornaments to their husbands' lives or, in this case, political accessories. I think the Donald is ok with that.
Donald's new job has not enhanced her life. It has damaged her life. Where did this "first lady" idea come from, anyway? Is it like a sort of queen or something? I am glad Melania has no interest in being a celeb. She doesn't need it, and she seems shy anyway. She should live the way she wants, as best she can with the current restraints. Maybe she can trample this "first lady" thing just as Bill Clinton would have done had Hillary won.
Wednesday, February 15. 2017
 Florida wants to register canoes and kayaks
Insane government
Writing music for TV
Finding love on the subway
How many times have we all seen someone in a public space towards whom we intuited an instant attraction and compatibility? And did nothing?
Kate Shaidle's tolerable marriage
That is honest
Marriage and Money
More honesty
Univ. of Chicago goes kinky: Sex Week filled with flogging, petplay, rope bondage
Sounds like good clean wholesome fun, but what it has to do with higher ed escapes me
The Cohabitation Lie
Playing house is not marriage
It’s Time To Topple The Patriarchy With Revolutionary Love Or Something
Slavery and rape aren’t wrong when Muslims do it.
It's their culture
Boudreaux schools a Luddite
Superbowl ads are a reflection of the smug, arrogant pricks who made them.
DeVos: Everything They Said about Her Is False
Re Yale: Rename everything
Politics offers a terrible spiritual danger
VDH: The Deplorables Shout Back
Some object that Trumpism is pure nihilism and a vandal act rather than a constructive recalibration. Perhaps. But red-state America shouted back that if those who demanded open borders never themselves lived the consequences of open borders, then there would be no open borders. If those who proposed absolute free transfers of capital and jobs always expected others to lose money and jobs as the cost of the bargain, then there would be no such unlimited free flows. If the media were continually to stereotype and condescend to others, then they themselves would be stereotyped and talked down to.
For a brief moment in 2016, rural America shouted that the last shall be first, and first shall be last. Before we write off this retort that led to Trump as a mindless paroxysm, remember that it was not those in Toledo, Billings, Montgomery, or Red Bluff who piled up $20 trillion in collective debt, nearly destroyed the health care system, set the Middle East afire, turned the campus into Animal Farm, or transformed Hollywood into 1984-style widescreen indoctrination.
The Democratic Party Goes into Therapy
Trump Cabinet Science-Denial or Scientific Skepticism?
JUST AS PREDICTED: The Political Assassination of Michael Flynn
It's a war. Yes, The Empire Strikes Back
America's spies anonymously took down Michael Flynn. That is deeply worrying.
The Target on Steve Bannon's Back
Polls: Majority Thinks Trump is a "Strong and Decisive Leader" Who "Keeps His Promises;" Public Supports Ending Sanctuary Cities and Deporting Criminals -- Including Hispanics
Democrats Are Losing Their War With Trump
Now the left is going nuts again over Trump’s nonexistent storm troopers
Harsanyi: Why The Resistance Is The Best Thing That’s Happened To Donald Trump
"But no Muslim religious leader has yet stressed the crucial gap between divine purposes and dry legalism as powerfully as Jesus did."
Illegals: A stunning display of dishonesty from the left
Tuesday, February 14. 2017
 Six Plants and Animals Threatened by Pseudoscience
Why Americans Refrigerate Eggs
John Waters update
NFL Threatens to Deny Texas Super Bowl if Boys Are Not Allowed in Girls’ Bathrooms
Stepford School: Princeton students forced to abandon individuality, freshman says
Signs of Terminal Illness - From forced marriage to alcoholic excess, Britain’s airports display the symptoms of cultural rot.
Is the USA an Idea or a Nation?
Both, of course
Trump and Andrew Jackson
Cool. A quote:
It is fascinating how the intellectual elites of Jackson’s time had the same level of contempt for the common man as the arrogant ruling elite have for the “deplorables” inhabiting the towns and hamlets of flyover America today. Alexis de Tocqueville, a pretentious French intellectual, and contemporary of Andrew Jackson, treated Jackson, his presidency, and his supporters disdainfully in his book Democracy in America, written during Jackson’s presidency. The haughty condescension of the rich and powerful elite towards the plebs has spanned the ages, with the NYT, Washington Post and CNN scornfully filling the role of Tocqueville today.
No, Those Aren’t Swastikas On Your Sidewalk.
Americans have often moved to find a better life. It’s part of the American way.
Washington Post demonstrates importance of voter ID laws
From Andy McCarthy's Populism, VI: Populism versus populism:
In reality, the chief political “weakness” of conservatism—it is better to think of it as a challenge—is that modern Americans are conditioned to expect that government can solve all our problems, or must at least try to solve them. It is the lot of conservatives to resist solutions that are popular but barmy. Populism cannot change the fact that government is incapable of solving problems upstream of government—problems of culture and complexity that government amelioration efforts, however well-intentioned, often exacerbate.
Clinton reminds us why we’re lucky she lost the election
With One Simple Order, Trump Could Reduce the Healthcare Costs of the Uninsured by 90%
Don’t Block the Education Secretary, End the Department of Education
Liberals Threaten to Homeschool Kids After DeVos Confirmed as Education Secretary
The Democrats' Immigration Problem(s)
LIBERALS BEMOAN THE DEMISE OF LAST-MINUTE OBAMA REGS
For the Media, the Only Jihad Is Against Trump
Muslim-American Olympiad Detained By Customs Agents Before Trump Became President, Media Still Blames Trump!
Klavan: Yes, CNN IS Fake News
Sweden Builds Camel Park To Help Integrate Muslim Migrants
Hamas elects convicted murderer Yahya Sinwar as Gaza chief
Monday, February 13. 2017
 How the Anti-Vaxxers Are Winning
"The child is a sort of vicious, innately cruel dwarf."
Latin Jazz Is Booming. Look Beyond the Grammys to Find It.
Bucknell prof: If you invite Milo Y. to campus you should pay a ‘steep and lasting price’
Climate change made the modern horse, of course
Marijuana Sales Top $1 Billion in Colorado, Washington Combined
Ben Shapiro Uses Age To Counter Transgender Argument — ‘Why Aren’t You 60?’
Shapiro is the straight Milo
Tom Brady Under Fire for Sharing ‘Racist’ Poem By Rudyard Kipling
A Global Economy in Health Care Services? Good!
Automation can replace government bureaucrats and save taxpayers money
Lawmakers and Regulators Act Like They Hate Farmers Markets
Black Lives Matter Toronto Cofounder Yusra Khogali Explains Why Whites Are Subhuman
Rioters indicted
Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four Describes the Authoritarian Left Better Than It Does Trump
We Are Already Struggling to Keep Outrage Alive in the Age of Trump
Yes, CNN IS Fake News
No Republicans need apply: Totalitarianism in the classified ads
How Obama is scheming to sabotage Trump’s presidency
Al-Shabaab Magazine: 'We'll Keep Marching Till We Reach the State of Maine'
Maine? They'll love Maine.
Shoving Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals Right Back in the Left’s Face
Conservativism Is Now the Counterculture
The Intelligentsia Versus the Rest of America
" I do suspect, however, that if Harry Reid had cut off Ted Cruz’s microphone in 2013, the Nevada Democrat would have been hailed as a hero and genius."
The second civil war is coming
There’s An Alt-Left, And It’s Trying To Make America Ungovernable
How Canada is trying to capitalize on Trump’s immigration executive order
Asylum seekers fleeing US for Canada brave snow, extreme cold
If We Don't Let in Muslims to America, They'll Kill Us
France and its refugees
Instapundit Learns that Le Pen's Front National Is Actually Left-Wing
Ireland Has Already Started Banning Immigrants From Trump’s Travel Ban List
It’s come to this: Merkel now offering cash for migrants to leave the country
Trump's Right - NATO Is Obsolete For The US
Europeans Back Trump’s German Grievances
Zimbabwe 2.0: South Africa's President Vows To Redistribute White-Owned Land And Businesses
Sunday, February 12. 2017
Saturday, February 11. 2017
Steven Hayward at Powerline blog discussed the Finnis Connection of nominated Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch. Judge Gorsuch took time off from his former law practice to earn a PhD at Oxford under John Finnis. Finnis is noted for his book about how natural law is central to jurispridence. This learning by Gorsuch may portend a renewed attention to the 9th Amendment to our Constitition, a key part of our Bill Of Rights all but ignored since the 1930s. The concept of natural rights reserved to the people is the core of this Amendment, and Gorsuch's learning in this concept may resurrect respect for our inalienable rights, as the Declaration of Independence phrased it.
I'm glad to see this potential, as I wrote about the 9th Amendment here in 2012:
Continue reading "A Revived 9th Amendment At Supreme Court?"
‘A Sense of Dread’ for Civil Servants Shaken by Trump Transition
Did they imagine that they had tenure? When housing costs in Arlington and Maryland begin to decline, I'll believe it.
Friday, February 10. 2017
Thursday, February 9. 2017
From the standpoint of the State, if you are not producing tax dollars on their tax farm then you are a liability and a burden. In my view, government involvement with, and control over, important personal things like education and medical care is a dangerous road.
Euthanasia Could Save Canada Millions in Healthcare Costs
I occasionally write about food superstitions and various peoples' clinging to their various notions of "healthy food." It is all cultural, of course. In America, we have the food obsessionals and the indifferent gourmands, but most are overweight and all will die. Contra most religions (including the Christian Mass), there is no food magic or magic food. Exceptions to that statement might be foie gras and ice cream.
A good piece on the topic: Eating Toward Immortality - Dietary culture is just another way of dealing with the fear of death:
The act of ingestion is embroidered with so much cultural meaning that, for most people, its roots in spare, brutal survival are entirely hidden. Even for people in extreme poverty, for whom survival is a more immediate concern, the cultural meanings of food remain critical. Wealthy or poor, we eat to celebrate, we eat to mourn, we eat because it’s mealtime, we eat as a way to bond with others, we eat for entertainment and pleasure. It is not a coincidence that the survival function of food is buried beneath all of this—who wants to think about staving off death each time they tuck into a bowl of cereal? Forgetting about death is the entire point of food culture.
When it comes to food, Becker said that humans “quickly saw beyond mere physical nourishment,” and that the desire for more life—not just delaying death today, but clearing the bar of mortality entirely—grew into an obsession with transforming the self into a perfected object that might achieve a sort of immorality. Diet culture and its variations, such as clean eating, are cultural structures we have built to attempt to transcend our animality.
 Gwynnie's photo from yesterday. Buried in snow today
60 Denali Park pics. Wow.
In eastern Germany, the land of Luther, church pews are mostly empty - On the streets where Martin Luther preached, about 85 percent of residents have no religion, 40-plus years after Soviet rule ingrained a deep skepticism of God and religion.
Cool: Study finds ‘Snowball Earth’ event gave rise to oxygen based life
Musk is the new PT Barnum
Coffee and soda pop: Philadelphia Goes Over the Tax Cliff
Iceberg! Consider this: Some 40,000 icebergs are created each year. Out of that 40,000, the New York Times can’t find one—in our supposedly perilous age of rampant global warming—that actually constitutes a threat to our well being
Gravy Train Flows Wide And Deep At Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Agency
No Thug Left Behind - Obsessed with “racial equity,” St. Paul schools abandoned discipline—and unleashed mayhem.
Flashback: NAACP Gave ‘Racist’ Jeff Sessions Governmental Award of Excellence In 2009
Sen. Cotton’s immigration bill
Hillary
Rodham Clinton has had an odd career for a feminist icon.
The Left's Persecution of Real Refugees from Islam and Communism
Illegal Aliens Really Do Vote – a Lot
State Department Whistleblower: I Have Seen First-Hand The Abuse And Fraud In The U.S. Refugee Program
Defending President Trump Is Becoming More Difficult - The president of the United States should never stoop to petty personal attacks against anyone.
Whining is not dignified
Trump Destroys Leftist Judges by Reading Law Word-For-Word - Open border activists rewriting law from the bench
An inconvenient stretcher - Al Gore was wrong, among other important things, about ‘the tipping point’
Bernie Sanders Villainizes Small Biz Owner for Not Being Able to Afford Health Insurance
Sanders is ignorant about real life. New businesses do not make money. They hope to. Reminds me of Hillary's famous "We can't worry about every undercapitalized business in America."
Obamacare Exchanges Were in Big Trouble Before Trump
Hillary's 'Future Is Female' Femme-A-Goguery
Steve Bannon, Antichrist?
I've read Breitbart for years, never saw any white supremacy there at all
Not A Single Senate Democrat Stands Up To Teachers Unions
Goodwin: The Democratic Party has lost its mind — and its soul
Trump’s move to end Dodd-Frank disaster all about helping small biz
Dodd-Frank did nothing to end Too Big To Fail
Second Swedish cop opens up about migrants destroying his country
The American Climbing the Ranks of ISIS - John Georgelas was a military brat, a drug enthusiast, a precocious underachiever born in Texas. Now he is a prominent figure within the Islamic State. Here’s the story of his long and troubling journey.
Turkey: Erdogan's Grab for Absolute Power
And yet Turkey is one of the few nations in the ME which doesn't need a king. Still, I long for the return of the Ottoman Empire. Peace.
How to handle Hezbollah in Latin America
Bibi Netanyahu on meeting with Chuck Norris: 'Israel is strong but it's indestructible now'
Shock Poll: In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' Party Smashes Rivals
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George Washington:
Toons on top via Orwellian Happenings: Twitter Censors Trump,
A reason to