Read it.

And sometimes not even then, I say.

Read it.

Why O’Rourke won’t be the nominee, no matter how many teeth he has.

Read it.

And not only you, but everybody.

Although widely held, the belief that merit rather than luck determines success or failure in the world is demonstrably false. This is not least because merit itself is, in large part, the result of luck. Talent and the capacity for determined effort, sometimes called “grit,” depend a great deal on one’s genetic endowments and upbringing.

This is to say nothing of the fortuitous circumstances that figure into every success story. In his book Success and Luck, the U.S. economist Robert Frank recounts the long-shots and coincidences that led to Bill Gates’s stellar rise as Microsoft’s founder, as well as to Frank’s own success as an academic. Luck intervenes by granting people merit, and again by furnishing circumstances in which merit can translate into success. This is not to deny the industry and talent of successful people. However, it does demonstrate that the link between merit and outcome is tenuous and indirect at best.

Ecclesiastes 9:11.

Read it.

In the news today is the story of a boy who threw an egg at an Australian senator, who was making remarks about a mass murder in New Zealand. So today, emotionally involved Americans are yelling at each other as if we need, every day, to demonstrate that murder is bad. Who has convinced us that there is a spectrum of positions on murder which are worthy of public debate? Journalists and political activists.

Read it.

I once asked my granny whether she had ever wanted to go back to Ireland. She responded, ‘Why? There’s nothing there but losers and the descendants of losers. Anybody with an ounce of gumption left long ago.”

So there you have it.

Bryan Caplan mounts his favorite hobby-horse.

Read it.

Waffle House does not care how much you are worth, what you look like, where you are from, what your political beliefs are, or where you’ve been so long as you respect the unwritten rules of Waffle House: Be kind, be respectful, and don’t overstay when others are waiting for a table.

A celebration of a key element of American culture.

I have eaten at Waffle House restaurants many times, and never been disappointed.

Troparion — Tone 3

Holy Bishop Patrick,

Faithful shepherd of Christ’s royal flock,

You filled Ireland with the radiance of the Gospel:

The mighty strength of the Trinity!

Now that you stand before the Savior,

Pray that He may preserve us in faith and love!

Kontakion — Tone 4

From slavery you escaped to freedom in Christ’s service:

He sent you to deliver Ireland from the devil’s bondage.

You planted the Word of the Gospel in pagan hearts.

In your journeys and hardships you rivaled the Apostle Paul!

Having received the reward for your labors in heaven,

Never cease to pray for the flock you have gathered on earth,

Holy bishop Patrick!

Read it. And watch the video.

And why not?

Read it.

If the situation were reversed, do you think she would do the same for him?

Not in a million years.

Read it.

So we can count him out for the nomination. But there’ll be a lot of sweet opportunities for featherbedding at donor’s expense — sort of an encapsulation of Bernie’s entire record in the Senate.

I’m good with that.

Read it.

Now: Imagine that this guy had a Glock….

Read it.

I’d vote for him.

Gotta love Australians.

ZMan looks at the latest pseudo-Kennedy.

Beto O’Rourke, the Irish playboy who tried passing himself off as a Mexican in his run against Ted Cruz in 2018, has declared for President. The boomers in the Progressive commentariat are rushing to their fainting couches, as they are sure he is the Hispanic-ish John F. Kennedy or Robert F. Kennedy, depending upon which end of the 60’s they remember best. Watching a geriatric old fool like Chris Mathews fawn over O’Rourke is a reminder why the Germans gave the world the word fremdschämen.

It’s a good reminder that the Left is more burdened with yesterday men than right-side of the political divide. Even the cuckiest conservative is not comparing a guy like Ben Sasse to Reagan, Goldwater or Eisenhower. Progressive boomers still have a bust of JFK in their house and talk about where they were when he was shot. They are a walking, talking museum displays of a bygone era. That’s why they are gushing over O’Rourke. He’s the last white man of any standing in the Democrat Party.

It’s amazing how much more reactionary Democrats are than Republicans. They want to return to the days of Good Union Jobs when the only good union jobs left are working for the State. They want to cancel the Industrial Revolution by getting rid of automobiles and planes and returning to bicycles and trains. Whenever they see the word ‘orphanage’ they think it’s 1844, and whenever they see the word ‘immigrant’ they think it’s 1895. It’s as if the 20th century never happened for them.

Read it.

Wall for me, but not for thee.

The resemblance to Democrat politicians is NOT coincidental.

Read it.

Some people just aren’t impressed by the NeverTrumpers.

H/T Dave Zincavage.

Read it.

The perfect Democrat candidate.

Read it.

We have the technology. ‘There’s an app for that….’

Have cops quit randomly shooting black people?

Or have the Usual Suspects squeezed all of the juice out of that ginned-up ‘movement’?

Just askin’.

Steve Sailer has a great idea for a new show.

My teen comedy movie pitch: An entire college team made up of uncoordinated sports-hating rich dorks, whose parents had rigged their admissions into college by catfishing that their kids were super jocks, find out they have to actually play ball to stay out of jail.

Ben Thompson, a widely-respected tech journalist, looks at the Pocahontas Plan.

Unfortunately, Senator Warren’s proposal helps highlight why I have not gone further with my own: hers would create massive new problems, have significant unintended consequences, and worst of all, not even address the issues Senator Warren is concerned about (with one possible exception I will get to in a moment). Worst, it would do so by running roughshod over the idea of judicial independence, invite endless lawsuits and bureaucratic meddling around subjective definitions, and effectively punish consumers for choosing the best option for them.

Read it.

What if every college student had to major in three subjects, unrelated to one another?

Yeah, that’ll get you a job.

Read it.

Transportation policy debates are often characterized as highways vs. transit or automobiles vs. alternatives. But they are more fundamental than that. The real debate is between the engineering view and the planning view.

Engineers ask, “how are people going to get around and how can we make their travel safer and more efficient?” Planners ask, “how should people get around and how can we manipulate them into making what we think are the right choices instead of the wrong choices?”

More news from the Whitest City in America.

Charles Norman rips off the camouflage.

The number of American leftists who believe in conspiracy theories is close to 100% when you remember that Marxism is a conspiracy theory (in the villain’s role that was historically meant for Jews, Marx expanded the bad-guy tent and said it was a larger class, not just a race, that was out to get you). Likewise, Christians who believe Satan and devils to be personal beings, and not airy metaphors, have a built-in explanation for evil’s seemingly intelligent design throughout the ages. As Eric Hoffer said: “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”

The Birchers understood a deep truth that explained their twin interest in fighting communism and secret societies: The Communist Party was essentially a secret society. Historically, CPs have always obtained power in darkness or deceit, never through democratic mandate or with any transparency. In some communist countries, to know just who were members and party leaders, what the connections were and where key decisions went down, remains, to this day, a riddle for historians (especially in the history of the Chinese Communist Party).

…

In 2019, there is an entire cable network, apparently called MSNBC, that is dedicated to 24/7 Russian-infiltration conspiracies of this ilk.

Read it.

A new web tool released late last month by the creators of social network Gab touts itself as the “Wild West of the internet,” promising free, unmoderated discourse across all platforms.

The application, aptly named “Dissenter,” comes in the form of a browser extension and effectively creates an open comment section on every single web page on the internet. The catch: there is nothing website owners can do to modify, manage, or otherwise control the conversation.

This could get entertaining.

Change does not always mean improvement.

Steven Hayward at Powerline blog does a little analysis.

New York magazine has produced a list of the “best books to understand socialism” that is so stupefyingly inane that you wonder if this is intended as satire or a really big put on. But no—they are quite earnest about this list, because it was curated by “experts.”

I once attempted to read DAS KAPITAL but when I read the first page I realized that Marx didn’t know the difference between value and price and that rather spoiled it for me. Rather like reading a book on geography by somebody who believes that the world is flat, it may have some usefulness but it’s hard to get really interested.

I can only assume they dug up their “experts” at some kind of retirement village for red diaper babies suffering dementia somewhere in the Balkans, since most of these titles are really old and out of date. What would we do without “experts”?

Read it.

That didn’t take long.

Read it.

Well, he’s right that low-alcohol beer was a significant part of the medieval diet.

Is he going to get up in the middle of the night for Matins? That’s what real monks do.

Read it.

Political scientists can trace the history of a former mainstream party (the Democrats) by studying the living fossils in their midst.

Read it.

I’ve always had my doubts about Michigan people. My Brother The Communist lives in Michigan.

Read it.

Let’s hope the bureaucrats and environmentalists get the message.

Read it.

He’s got my vote.

Read it.

I think he made his point. Women respond positively to money and power, always have, always will.

‘How to I love thee? Let me count the ways….’

Read it.

Well, we’re not all that happy. We still have to suffer under a lot of bullshit governmentalism.

Make up your mind, mom.

Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University, ruminates.

My favorite one-factor theory of social attitude (and value) change over the last few centuries is that increasing wealth has induced a drift from farmer back to forager attitude (and values). Which plausibly helps explains changing attitudes toward fertility, gender, slavery, crime, democracy, war, leisure, art, and travel. In this post I want to suggest a (to me) new hypothesis about forager attitudes, which could help explain some recent attitude trends.

Ace of Spades preaches the True Word.

Watch it.

I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning.

The guy has a great radio voice. He ought to do voiceover work.

Read it.

Good luck with that.

Read  it.

There are three related problems that make California economically tenuous, and a fourth that makes the situation worse:

1. It’s no longer the best place in the world to start a startup.
2. The gains from the existing tech industry increasingly accrue to a) passive investors, and b) lucky landlords.
3. The state government is a levered bet on tech compensation.
4. These three problems, which are interrelated, won’t show visible symptoms until well after they’re terminally un-fixable.

Read it.

Tom Wolfe had the right idea when he pointed out that “The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” Unfortunately I am not so sanguine about its future correctness, especially since the current version of European fascism is nothing more than 6th century savagery being imported from Africa and the Near and Middle East, and we are only a generation or two behind.