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.

Read it.

Well, let’s see whether it works.

All while valuing diversity, of course. And watch out for Global Warming!

Read it.

When they invade our rights, shoot them in the head.

Oh, sorry, did I say that out loud?

Well, anyway, that’s more effective than anything Chuck Grassley has to say. Betcha.

Read it.

Of Zimbabwe, certainly, and maybe South Africa.

Read it.

Hey, it might work. It’s all in how you ‘identify’.

Read it.

For their article How to Fix What Has Gone Wrong With the Internet, magazine The Economist features, well, a healthy sample of what has gone wrong with the Internet, including a paywall, intrusive popup ad, clickbait headlines in a sidebar, and a bottom-slider plea to subscribe to their ‘newsletter’.

Very efficient. You don’t even need to read the article.

Freeberg wants to know.

It would make me happy if today, just as a mental exercise, my fellow Americans imagined someone from a poor, undeveloped country addressed them directly and asked this:

What’s up with all these Americans acting like they’re oppressed? Or, “speaking out” on behalf of other Americans they feel like were oppressed. Why is it that so many Americans are under the impression so many OTHER Americans are somehow victims…when you guys have so much food? Could you please help me understand?

You know how to answer this question? I don’t.

Steve Sailer peers ahead.

We are constantly told that Central Americans are flocking to America to “escape violence.” Yet in Mexico the vast increase in criminal violence since 2006 has coincided with a lower level of emigration to the U.S., probably because the Mexican economy prospers from the drug trade. On the other hand, if disorder continues to spread in Mexico, the economy might well be hurt, which would make mass migrations to a once-again prospering America more likely.

…

The main rule of Mexican politics since the late 1920s is no Presidents-for-Life. The winning generals of the Mexican Revolution of a century ago kept assassinating one another in their peacetime struggle for supreme power, so in 1929 Plutarco Elías Calles founded the oxymoronically entitled Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to cartelize rule via a strict term limit of one six-year presidential term. Under the vaguely left-of-center syndicalist PRI, there was to be no need to murder your rivals: If you live long enough, your faction would get its time at the trough.

ZMan is properly dyspeptic this Independence Day.

Patriotism, properly understood, is a loyalty to the citizens who came before you. The emotional draw is gratitude for what they bequeathed. That implies a duty to preserve it for the next generation. If citizenship is just a meaningless transaction, then those citizens who came before us are no more important than the next guy who wanders over the border. Put another way, according to our rulers, our ancestors are strangers and so are our decedents. What possible reason would anyone have to be loyal to strangers?

It’s actually worse than that. The reason America is descending into a transactional land of strangers is that our ancestors decided to piss it all away. Why should anyone feel loyalty to the people who pushed through the 1986 immigration act? Why should we want to preserve what they passed onto us? If anything, we should take this day to dig up their bones and smash them to bits on the capital mall. That sounds harsh, but is there anything more monstrous than denying your decedents a chance to live the life you lived?

Tom Smith has it right.

The way to stop discriminating on race is to stop discriminating on race.

“Holistic admissions” is an admissions process that is sufficiently subjective, complex and unrepeatable that one can discriminate on the basis of race or anything else (prep school LAX, celebrity parents, etc., etc.), and no one will be able to prove it.

The Crust loves to be able to fudge things so that they can say one thing and do another, which always seems to benefit them rather than their Fashionable Victim Groups.

Hillary Clinton goes on a fact-finding visit to Israel. While she is on a tour of Jerusalem she suffers a heart attack and dies.The undertaker tells the Americans accompanying her, ‘You can have her shipped home for $50,000, or you can bury her here, in the Holy Land for just $100’.

The Americans go into a corner to discuss for a few minutes. They return with their answer to the undertaker and tell him they want Hillary shipped home.

The undertaker is puzzled and asks, ‘Why would you spend $50,000 to ship her home, when it would be wonderful to be buried here and you would spend only $100? The American diplomats reply, ‘Long ago a man died here, was buried here, and three days later he rose from the dead. We just can’t take that risk.’

With thanks to the Ace of Spades, who is always worth reading.

Ace of Spades is delightfully dyspeptic today.

Let’s face it, there is very little difference between fundamental Islam and Leftist-Democrat Progressivism vis a vis it’s totalitarian mindset and aims. In fact, there is a nexus between the two as has been thoroughly documented by Andrew McCarthy. Also of note, along with the Left’s desire to gain total political control by using open borders and Amnesty to supplant our culture and populace with a mass of illiterate peasants more than eager to vote for Santa Claus, that very same open border gives easy access to Islamic terrorists coming in from Central and South America. Hell, why even bother? For the past 20 years or more, our government willingly let them in through the front door to radicalize both the schools and prisons resulting in the fiend who could have created a bloody nightmare had he not been stopped.

This is precisely why you got Trump and this is why he had a travel ban, the illegal usurpation of power by Justice Punchy Macadamia Molokai Leper and his black-robed minions notwithstanding. That could not be allowed because, Emma Lazarus or something, and racist. Or perhaps they too understand what open borders really does to a nation. But if you commit the mortal sin of pointing all of that out, it’s you that will face the wrath of Sarsour the Hamas Louse and Alexandria “Loopy Velez” Ocasio-Cortez and the Thought Police who will make your life a living hell. Or worse.

Tyler Cowen sums it up.

10. Liberals are more likely to drink alcohol, conservatives are more likely to go fishing.

I can’t stand either; guess I’m out of luck.

Greg Cochran reviews an important new genetics book.

In this book, Carl Zimmer tries to lay out how our ideas and knowledge of genetics have developed over time, and where we are today. He mixes in discussion of the social impact of these ideas. Some of those discussions are reasonable, some are not.

…

Before I go any further – Zimmer is wordy. He has things to say, but he never uses one word when ten will do. The facts are always part of some long-winded human-interest story. If you like that sort of thing, you may like this book. I cannot say that I did.

The real problem with this book is that, to Zimmer and many other people, genetics itself is the enemy. The facts, not the discipline, particularly in how they apply to humans. We now know that everything is heritable, to varying degrees  — and the more that life is determined or influenced by genetics, the less blank the slate, the less that can be accomplished by egalitarian social policies (or by aristocratic social policies, for that matter). The facts of genetics are caltrops on the road to a ‘just’ society. Zimmer is moderately fair-minded, usually mentioning both criticism of genetic claims and the response to that criticism — but he still gives the impression of wishing these claims had never been made and dislikes scientists who discovered unpleasant truths.

The sad thing about modern science writing is that people don’t feel free to say what they want to say without a lot of tedious SJW base-touching and virtue-signalling, even when it’s not really relevant. Judges often speak of the ‘chilling effect’ of various infringements on Constitutional rights; but that’s nothing compared to the ‘chilling effect’ of the proglodyte cultural miasma we all wade through on actual useful intellectual endeavors.

Read it.

America’s cities all have the same dream these days: to be the next Silicon Valley. To court Big Tech, they have taken to showering some of the world’s most profitable companies with taxpayers’ cash.

On the surface the rationale seems obvious. Manufacturing is so 20th century: ship in the tech bros. Just 12% of engineering jobs are held by women in the US. That number rises to 27% for computer and mathematical jobs, but still if you know someone working in tech, chances are, they’re a man. and soon your rusty old mills will be designer lofts and your dying main street will throb with millennials, craft beer bars and gluten-free bakeries.

But while the mayor may get a photo op with Tim Cook or Elon Musk, do the numbers really add up for taxpayers?

Read it.

I think we can all agree that, wherever the ‘heartland’ may be, it’s not on either of the Left Coasts.

That clarifies things very nicely.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s something you’re worried about.

Most ‘refugees’ come from places where a hole in the ground is about the best you can hope for.

Perhaps we might want to think twice about raising expectations that might not be fulfilled.

Just sayin’.

ZMan sees through a glass, darkly.

Imagine if it was OK in the Senate for a back bencher to murder his rivals in order to gain a senior position in the Senate. That could be tempting to an upstart, but then again, killing off newcomers would suddenly make sense for those already in power. Having rules against murdering rivals protects all concerned, and by extension, the ruling class as a while. An orderly system of distributing power and promoting new people up the hierarchy encourages everyone in the ruling class to defend the ruling class system.

It’s why we always see so-called conservatives, for example, rushing to the nearest microphone to disavow challenges from their right. They always frame it is a choice between reasonable compromise versus unreasonable extremism. Their calls for civility are essentially a defense of the current order. The rules work for them, as it allows them to enjoy a one percent lifestyle as the in-house opposition to the Left. While not as gratuitous, Progressives will also call for civility when they sense a threat from their Left.

That’s what makes the debate on the Left about tactics, interesting to anyone on this side of the great divide. From the perspective of dissidents, politics is a spectator sport. There is no one speaking for our issues in the halls of power. Immigration patriots, race realists, populists and nationalists are all excluded from the political debate. On the other hand, the most radical Progressive crazies get at least an audience with the people in charge.

Read it.

Yeah — if America is such a sucky oppressive country, how come everybody else wants to move here? Will cross deserts with no water and food to get here?

Why are the Left encouraging poor Third World people to come here?

If they’re going to be so good for us, why are their own countries so bad?

Truer than you know.

Read it. And listen to however many of the videos as you can take.

Again from the site Mental Floss. (Again getting that disgusting visual.)

For the record: I like ‘We Built This City’. (It’s got a beat and you can dance to it.) The world of Big Hair was a better place.

Read it.

Identity Politics rears its ugly head.

Beto:

Bevo:

Draw your own parallels.

Read it.

It is very refreshing to see Hillary at last being blamed for something.

Freeberg dishes on the feminist war against masculinity.

Going Shakespearean with the lovey-dovey all-of-life-is-a-wedding-party bullshit, is not respectful to women. “A real man isn’t afraid to show his feelings and cry” is nonsense. Oh, there’s a tiny bit of truth in it, sure. Everyone is human and humans cry, I get that, but this tired litany has caused a lot of damage because of its excess simplicity. This little dig about not-afraid-to is just a way to invert reality, make manly things look unmanly and vice versa. You can’t flip reality like a pancake that way. And you know what, when you’re involved in something deeply personal that affects a lot of people — a death within a large family, for example — situations arise in which showing your tears really doesn’t help anyone. Aggrieved people need someone strong. They need it often, a lot more often than they need someone to help them cry. Crying’s like picking your nose. If you need to do it, you’ll find a way to get it done, you don’t need help.

Read it.

I’m comfortable with that.

Read it.

Once again, all eyes will be on the Supreme Court Wednesday morning to see if Justice Anthony Kennedy will retire. This is becoming an annual ritual of spring and summer as liberals in the press beg the swing vote not to give Donald Trump a chance to nominate his replacement. On April 29, 2018, The New York Times editorial pleaded: “How can we put this the right way? Please don’t go.” 

Paul Rahe is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

There will be midterm elections in November. It is the perfect time to separate the sheep from the goats and force the Democrats in the House of Representatives to take a stand against the species of incivility advocated by Maxine Waters … or stand in her defense. The people of this country have a right to know where the Democrats stand.