That’s certainly my idea of Paradise.

Read it.

Low unemployment and booming economy just might have that effect.

They are right to worry.

Read it.

This is very curious.

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The ‘problem’ with MS-13 is the same as the ‘problem’ of the Yakuza in Japan: Both groups would effectively disappear if you just rounded up everyone with their distinctive tattoos and executed them. The reason the problem is a problem is that the people in charge aren’t willing to take the obvious action that would solve the problem.

This is a problem that all authorities, such as governments, have. Authorities have to abide by the rules; rule-breakers don’t feel obliged to do that. So long as the authority self-constrains by abiding by the rules, they are at a disadvantage.

This is why authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are always so apparently more orderly than others. Those in control of the regime only abide by the rules when they judge that it is to their advantage to do so. In the normal course of events, that is the case; most people are happier living under an authority that obeys the rules. If this rule-breaking is only indulged in when the group faces an existential threat by non-regime rule-breakers (‘criminals’), then most people will wring their hands and privately breathe a sigh of relief.

The difficulty arises when those in control of the regime don’t restrict themselves to breaking the rules only in the face of an existential threat, but whenever they feel like it; and that destabilizes the group as badly as, if not more so, than the existential-threat-group. Both the Nazis and the Communists run into this problem damned near every time. This is what gives rise to the term ‘kleptocracy’, which more often than not characterizes such regimes.

This is not a new problem — the Roman Republic died because there was no effective way to deal with an existential internal political threat other than by obviously breaking the rules; and the Roman Empire died  because this system eventually degenerated into one where the rules were defined as ‘whatever the people in charge want them to be’ (under the rationalization salus populi suprema lex, which begs the question of who defines what ‘salus’ means).

Modern societies try to avoid this problem through some combination of democracy and ‘checks & balances’. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Alexander Pope summed it up: ‘For forms of government, let fools contest; That which is best administered is best.’ No matter what the legal structure might be, if the people in charge of enforcing the rules just routinely ignore the rules, then you might just as well not have any rules, because the result is the same. So the key factor is the attitude of the people enforcing the rules. And that’s a cultural matter.

So the key is culture. My chief objection to Social Justice Warriors and their fellow travelers is that they feel perfectly justified in ignoring the rules when doing so helps them to attain their utopian end-state; they are the poster children for ‘the end justifies the means’. This is at odds with traditional American culture. That’s why it is perfectly accurate to characterize Social Justice Warriors as both unAmerican and anti-American (although of course they would deny it and really really feel offended by it, although distinguishing it from the myriad other things by which they are really really offended is often difficult).

Read it.

Guess it’s not that much of a problem, huh. Wonder why all the Chicken Littles are running around and shouting ‘OMG WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!’.

Read it.

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

Just bear that in mind.

Absolutely Nothing.

Read it.

There’s a thought for you: What would our child mortality rate look like if we were honest and included all of the aborted babies? What would that do to our life expectancy figures?

Read it.

That’s a no-brainer.

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Well, that explains a lot.

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The problem with being a radical is that there is always somebody more radical than you.

UPDATE: Jeremy Corbyn called ‘f****** racist and antisemite’ by Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge

UPDATE: Media Yawn as Top Liberal Leader in Europe Denounced as Jew-Hating Bigot

Read it.

Hey, me too.

Read it.

Better people than them have tried. I doubt they can do it even in just China.

Read it.

The problem with being the radical party is that sometimes the radicals take it seriously and think that the apparatchiks really mean it.

Can’t say that I’d be sorry to see the last of Feinstein. Pelosi next, maybe?

John Derbyshire is always worth reading. (See link in upper right corner).

We weren’t designed for these steamy climates. We flourish best in the shady temperate woodlands and windswept grasslands far from the equator. Leave the sun-baked deserts and muggy, buggy rain forests to the Sun People.

Though I live in Texas, my proper environment is New England. I don’t live there for the same reason I don’t live in California: It’s crawling with communists. (I hate communists more than I hate fire ants.)

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Steve Sailer jumps on board the soccer wagon.

Games such as soccer, rugby, American football, and Australian rules football started out in England as mob football, a pretty much ruleless contest played in a town’s high street with all the lads from one end of town vying against against all the lads from the other end of town, such as the the Up’ards and the Down’ards of Ashbourne, to move the ball to distant goals, sometimes miles apart. These games were kind of a cross between a modern rugby scrum and a mass migration.

Read it.

Given the ongoing degeneration of government schools these days, that’s a good sign.

Read it.

The phrase ‘balance of trade deficit’ don’t mean shit.

Worrying about it is like worrying that your checking account is out of money because you’ve run out of checks.

I said it first.

Read it.

I’d certainly like to think so. But I’ve been disappointed before.

Victor Davis Hanson explains it all to you.

Columbo comments:

So … there is a new sheriff in town. He does not walk ‘softly’. He carries a big stick. He isn’t diplomatic. He speaks candidly, which makes many cringe. He’s the stereotype of the “Ugly American” to half the world and it’s best defender to the other half. We are seeing some titanic shifts in the global world order as a result. The objective is more symmetry, a more even playing field and some new “heartland winners and coastal losers”. To me, this shift feels good. This shift feels right. This shift feels long over due. As VDH points out, if the global world order had not been so asymmetrical over these past decades, we probably wouldn’t have had President Donald J. Trump.

Read it. And vote for your favorite.

I’m inclined toward the Toyota Smugmobile, since it has that Georgetown mystique.

I understand that they used to come with an Obama sticker standard, but that’s probably just a rumor.

Heh. You first.

Charlie Kirk:

If you think your life sucks, just imagine being a Democrat – your spokesperson rotates between a 28 year old socialist, a low IQ con artist, a Marxist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, a criminal who lost the most winnable election of our lifetime, and a fake Native American.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Victor Davis Hanson takes a look.

The bizarre academic term “intersectionality” likewise followed, suggesting that gays, feminists, and minorities were united in focusing on supposed white-privilege pathologies. Yet no one quite new how to calibrate all the competing claims of victimhood by race, class, gender, and sexual orientation — as if a white transgendered actor should merit more grievance points than a black impoverished lesbian versus an Egyptian immigrant female CEO or a gay Latino policeman. Such musings are not caricatures, but the logic of the preambles to the usual progressive politicking, when a politico such as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama did not welcome a crowd as a collective of Americans but ticked off all the various identity-politics groups present, all with claims against the majority.

Unfortunately, “diversity” was never exactly defined — and perhaps could not be. The ad hoc buzzword now referred to all white people on one side who enjoyed supposedly innate skin-color-based privilege, set against almost everyone else — at least sort of.

Read it.

Hey, that’s where the money is.

Beto:

Bevo:

The choice is clear.

Read it.

Akhil was a straight-shooter when I knew him as an undergraduate, and I doubt that he has changed much since then.

I could certainly live with another Clarence Thomas on the Court.

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.

Read it.

Derb lives a far more interesting life than the rest of us are likely to, or would even want.

Read it.

I mean, really, we haven’t invaded anybody for years…. We need the practice.

Most dismiss the Trump Venezuela story as an example of Trump’s impulsivity on a matter that he does not fully understand. That may be true, although the idea itself is not without reason or precedent. It is also increasingly discussed by the many Venezuelans living in exile or fighting the regime from the inside. 

And ‘most’ are just plain stupid.

Trump is merely being a typical CEO, and asking an obvious question so that his staff are forced to articulate the reasons behind a position that everyone knows at the gut level is correct but that would benefit from bringing all of the data out into the open to be considered explicitly.

The problem here is that most ‘journalists’ are profoundly ignorant of how real-world organizations make decisions. Most of them wouldn’t know a cost-benefit analysis if it pissed on their legs.

Read it.

There’s a reason Microsoft gives every coder his own office. Bill Gates was a coder. Steve Jobs was a salesman.

Read it.

Natural Selection can be a real bear at times.

Read it.

Pluss appointing him to the Supreme Court would cause a lot of media and Democrat heads to explode.

Cognitive dissonance is not only entertaining but also a useful thing in making America safe for Americans again.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

No doubt Scott Pruitt is to blame … oh, wait….

Read it.

As the old saying goes, if you’re getting flak that means you’re over the target.

Every war has casualties. Thankfully this one was merely psychological.