Read it.

Most European countries use a form of proportional representation, which means that voters select a party, not an individual, and the parties choose who from their ‘list’ will actually wind up in the legislature. This traditionally leads to confused programs, inconsistent legislation, and stuff that nobody really voted for. It also leads to short-lived administrations.

Read it.

Can the California grid handle the charging challenges for the EVs the state is promoting to be on the grid? The knee-jerk reaction to going green as fast as possible has the potential to crash California’s already fragile economy. No one’s even talking about the load it’s going to put on the current grid. The silence is deafening.

The Other McCain has the scoop.

All the “experts” on the Democrat side (most of whom are connected to the Clinton machine, in one way or another) believe Bernie Sanders can’t possibly defeat Trump, so they’re doing everything they can to stop him. Ask yourself why there’s been so much enthusiasm in the liberal media for Pete Buttigieg. That’s got all the hallmarks of a Team Clinton propaganda operation. After the attempt to launch Beto O’Rourke as a “rock star” candidate fizzled, Team Clinton looked around for some other available weapon to hurl at Bernie — they really hate Bernie — and apparently Buttigieg got the nod. Another hallmark of a Team Clinton operation? It’s failing. Despite everything his enemies have done to try to boost other candidates, Bernie’s support keeps growing. He’s gained more than five points, from 16.5% to 21.7% in the Real Clear Politics national average, in just the past couple of months.

Victor Davis Hanson.

Obama had hit on something in his move to the hard left. After he left office, unapologetic leftists were less coy (the old smear of “socialist” was now a term of endearment) and began to extinguish what little was left of Bill Clinton’s old, occasionally moderate Democratic party.

The reelection of Obama had convinced progressives that he had discovered electoral magic: record voter registration, turnout, and block voting of “minorities” that could overcome the old Perot, Reagan Democrat, silent majority, and tea-party dinosaurs in the critical swing states. This chemistry, they thought, would be inherently transferrable even to multimillionaire white establishmentarians like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden (but only if they were reeducated and thus made the necessary confessionals about their own white privilege and shared disdain for “deplorables” and “the dregs of society”).

Suddenly, everything seemed possible as woke activists, à la French Revolution, accelerated the possible into the already passé.

Read it.

Not something you encounter every day.

Read it.

Oh, he is, he is. But she is not one of ‘his people’ just because she lives in California.

Read it.

He knows where his time is most usefully spent. Always prefer your own rally to that of your enemies.

Read it.

China has become the third nation to reveal it had developed a system to fire missiles from a standard 40 foot shipping container. The Chinese version is apparently designed to handle the YJ-18C missile. This is the latest version of the YJ-18, which is normally used as an anti-ship missile and is very similar to the Russian Klub. The C version is said to have a longer range and meant mainly for land based targets.

The Chinese containerized missile system is very similar to the one a Morinformsystem-Agat JSC, Russian firm began marketing in 2010. That one fired a version of the 3M54 Klub cruise missile. The Morinformsystem-Agat system was called “Pandora’s Box”, and designed so that missiles were carried in and fired from a 40 foot (12.3 meter) shipping container. The launcher and the missile have to slide out of the container before firing, thus limiting where it can be placed on a ship, particularly your typical container ship. Each container contained a small compartment for the two man firing crew. You could get two or three of these shipping container Klubs on most cargo ships, turning the vessel into warship.

Read it.

You see, this is why we desperately need Reparations.

For the record, I think this is inappropriate But it’s no worse than some of the clowns and race hustlers that Democrat Presidents have given it to, so why not.

Scott Adams.

‘I just looked at the CNN web site and the top six items are about a K0rean boy band.’

Jonah Goldberg belabors the obvious for people who need that.

If I told you there was a movement to create a navy or an air force, you might respond, “Don’t we already have those?” If I said we need a movement to persuade bears to relieve themselves in the woods, you might say, “Wait. Isn’t that happening already?”

But if I said we needed to tax the rich, a lot of people’s first reaction would be, “Yes! It’s about time!”

In fact, there’s an astroturf movement based on precisely this notion. There was just a big conference, fittingly named the “Tax the Rich!” conference, hosted by a group called Patriotic Millionaires.

“Tax the Rich. Save America. Yes, it really is that simple,” they explain in their mission statement.

This slogan is simply dishonest; rich people do, in fact, pay taxes. Just under half (48 percent) of federal revenue comes from income taxes. If you define the rich as the top 1 percent — which is probably too narrow, depending on the region of the country — the rich pay a big chunk of that. In 2016, according to the Tax Foundation, the top 1 percent accounted for 37.3 percent of all income-tax revenue, a share that was greater than the bottom 90 percent of all payers of income tax combined. The top half of taxpayers paid 97 percent of income taxes.

Jim Goad pulls no .punches.

Say hello to Pete Buttigieg, who is so kind and helpful that his Twitter page phoneticizes his Maltese surname as “BOOT-edge-edge” so you don’t have to spend half a day trying to figure out how to pronounce it. Because his last name is so ridiculously inscrutable, many prefer to simply call him “Mayor Pete.” Buttigieg is the out-and-proud mayor of South Bend, IN, who declared his candidacy for president yesterday amid a wave of hype touting him as “the hottest thing in politics.” Almost entirely unknown a month ago, recent polls show him trailing only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in a cluttered field of Democratic candidates.

…

Like O’Rourke, Buttigieg is young—if elected, he’d become the youngest president ever—but what sets him apart from the rest of the Democrats’ unfashionably white males is that he is gay. Therefore, even though he’s Harvard-educated and independently wealthy, he’s “oppressed.” And in the modern Democratic Party, you’re not a winner unless you’re a loser, at least in historical terms.

Read it.

High speed rail is marketed as a sustainable alternative to air traffic. According to the International Union of Railways, the high speed train “plays a key role in a stage of sustainable development and combating climate change”. As a regular long-distance train traveller in Europe, I have to say that the opposite is true. High speed rail is destroying the most valuable alternative to the airplane; the “low speed” rail network that has been in service for decades.

The introduction of a high speed train connection invariably accompanies the elimination of a slightly slower, but much more affordable, alternative route, forcing passengers to use the new and more expensive product, or abandon the train altogether. As a result, business people switch from full-service planes to high speed trains, while the majority of Europeans are pushed into cars, coaches and low-cost airplanes.

High-speed trains are great for people who can afford the (usually heavily subsidized by the tazpayer) fares — and those who get discounted tickets like students, handicapped people, and the elderly.

Read it.

I don’t care who you are, THAT’S FUNNY.

Read it.

Since its official unveiling last month, critics have been teeing off on Hudson Yards, the $25 billion office-and-apartment megaproject on Manhattan’s West Side. The Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright calls it “bargain-basement building-by-the-yard stuff that would feel more at home in the second-tier city of a developing economy.” In Curbed, Alexandra Lange writes that it suffers from “no contrast. No weirdness, no wildness, nothing off book.” The New York Times’ Michael Kimmelman describes it as a “vast neoliberal Zion.”

‘Neoliberal’ is the new jargon for ‘libertarian’ (if you’re on the Left) or ‘liberal’ (if you’re on the Right).

Sometimes you can’t tell the jargon without a scorecard … and sometimes not even then.

However, among all the many reasons to feel salty about Hudson Yards, one perspective may deserve a place of privilege: the view from Harlem. Without their knowledge, the residents of a number of public housing developments helped to make Hudson Yards possible. The mega-luxury of this mini-Dubai was financed in part through a program that was supposed to help alleviate urban poverty. Hudson Yards ate Harlem’s lunch.

Women and minorities hardest hit, etc. etc.

Read it.

In response to Bezos calling on other companies to up their minimum wage.

Pass the popcorn.

Joe Bob Briggs.

There’s never been a better time to be a polygamist.

All over Africa and the Middle East they’re loosening up the laws so that a man can rack up as many marriages as he can pay for, although I think the strictly Islamic countries are gonna hold you to four women at a time. If you want that fifth one, you have to eeny-meeny-miny-mo the others and pick one to divorce. Sounds a little harsh, I know, but thankfully they make the actual divorce easy. I think all you have to do is go to the town square, scream out “I divorce thee” seven times, roast a pigeon, throw back a Red Bull, and voilà! you’re divorced! You don’t need Gloria Allred. You don’t need Raoul Felder. You don’t even need a Grand Caymans bank account. You might have to give her family a couple of goats, but that’s it.

Read it.

One of the benefits of running for office is that you can create hundreds of good-paying jobs for the Political Parasite Class, enhancing their resumés and owing you favors, using Other People’s Money. Win or lose, it’s all good.

Read it.

An overachiever.

Read it.

Just to keep things in perspective.

Read it.

Yeah, those girls really look oppressed.

Read it.

1. There would be much rejoicing.
2. We’d never see another Democrat President.
3. California would soon self-destruct like Venezuela and we could buy it back cheap.

Sounds like a win-win to me.

Read it.

If Democrats didn’t indulge in so much minority-based voter fraud, there wouldn’t be any opportunity to do so.

Read it.

Wow, you might think. That’s impressive! We keep hearing about long delays and antiquated care in the National Health Service, and here Jagger is able to get cutting-edge surgery in a matter of days!

Oops, never mind. Jagger flew to New York for the operation, a fact that his press representatives don’t seem eager to emphasize.

There are long lines of people from countries with ‘government=provided health care’ (Canada especially) trying to get treatment in U.S. hospitals and clinics.

I think it was Robert Conquest who said that everyone is a conservative about what he knows best. Likewise, the more you really care, the less wedded you are to liberal shibboleths. I need heart surgery? Goodbye, NHS. Some years ago, there was a woman who was a member of Canada’s Parliament. She was a fierce opponent of private medical care on the ground that the people should share health risks equally. Then she came down with a rare form of cancer. She was on the next airplane to the U.S.

Yup.

Ace of Spades is on the case.

Spoiler: This practice of mispronouncing names isn’t just embarrassing. It has a long and racist history.

Everything has a ‘long and racist history’ in the hands of proglodytes. And if it doesn’t, they just make it up.

Read it.

An interesting thought experiment.

I was somewhat disappointed that all of the discussion was about economics, and none about morality, which is the essential criticism I make against Communism, but that’s the modern world for you.

Read it.

You know you want to know how that came about.

Read it.

This a followup on Wadge’s Law

Every Computer Science course has a tendency to degenerate into a programming course.

This just begs to be generalized.

What about programming courses? Do they degenerate? To what?

For example, according to language teachers I’ve talked to, every, say, French course has a tendency to degenerate into a grammar course. What about other subjects?

My daughter, who teaches Chemistry, says that Chemistry courses (not hers, I assume) can degenerate into math courses. Apparently, it’s the same for other ‘hard’ sciences. Every now and then I walk through the Physics building and look at the posted assignment solutions. Calculus.

Change and decay in all around I see—
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

Even Vox admits it: Midwest is best.

You will notice that this and all other ‘moved from nowhere to the Big City’ stories deal with people who are ‘creative’, i.e. writers, musicians, actors, and other ‘artists’. Nobody ever grew up in Wide Spot, Nebraska, and said ‘I think I’ll move to Noo Yawk to pursue my dream of being a welder/carpenter/plumber/machinist/electrician’. In this particular case, what the  author loves, and what reconciles her to the move, is that she managed to find the essential components of her Left Coast rom-com lifestyle in, wonder of wonders, flyover country. She undoubtedly considers the term ‘vibrant’ to be a good thing.

The problem with such ‘creatives’ is that what they create doesn’t last — it’s not something you can hold in your hand, sell at a garage sale, or hand on to your grandkids. Except for the needle-point few who become rich/famous, it’s all ephemeral. I guarantee that in 100 years nobody will have any knowledge of what she has done — especially if, as seems likely, she leaves no children behind her. She is a Crustian from Crustian roots (father: college administrator) and such people do not leave footprints in the sands of time. Once she is gone, nobody will ever miss her, nor will any memory of her remain; and that’s a sad thing.

Read it.

My favorite animal pose is the ‘cat-loaf’.

Read it.

or us actual conservatives, one of the most tiresome aspects of our struggle to retake our country is our never-ending struggle to get the Fredocons who still populate our movement to take our own side in this fight. Exhibit A is the “Conservative Case For XXXX” phenomenon, in which XXXX inevitably equals some liberal goal, objective or obsession. We’re supposed to nod our heads and give in to the progs because, you know, it’s actually conservative somehow.

Yeah, you never see articles titled ‘The Progressive Case for [insert conservative value here]’.

The latest example is the article “A Conservative Case for Puerto Rican Statehood” that recently ran in National Review for reasons that remain elusive even after reading it.’

ZMan has a lot of fun with the cucks who run supposedly ‘conservative’ publications but who somehow always wind up supporting progressive ideas and programs.

Read it.

Of course. It’s all clear to me now.

Collard greens and corn bread are the way to lower the temperatures of the world.

Obvious when you think about it.

And don’t forget the watermelon, Can’t lower sea levels without watermelon. That stands to reason.

Read it.

But you have to bear in mind that Trump has accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during his term in office.

Just remember that.

Absolutely nothing.

Read it.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post over the weekend calling for greater government Internet regulation. Notably absent was any mention of breaking up the company. His implicit message: “one Facebook would be easier to control than lots of smaller competitors”. Fair enough, but we also wonder what Facebook has up its product development sleeve that allows it to so vocally call for increased regulation and the costs that will inevitably entail.

God save us from an Internet regulated according to the ideas of Mark Zuckerberg.

Read it.

We think of fat as bad—the less of it we eat, and the less of it we carry on our bodies, the better—but this isn’t the right way to think about it. Fat is not just for insulation and energy storage, it’s also for nutrient absorption, cell signaling, immune function and many other critical processes.

Read it.

We have the technology.