Read it.

He’s right, you know. Think of some gang-banger sitting in stir for the next 20 years. Think he’d vote Republican? The question answers itself.

Read it.

Reminds me of the scene in Fellowship of the Ring where Merry and Pippin are bouncing the dragon firework back and forth. Hey, guys, eventually the firework goes off….

Read it. And watch the video.

The following video features clips from yesterday’s demonstration by global warming activists in Ottawa. In addition to their leftist knee-jerk racism — why are Indians touted as having a unique moral authority on “climate change”? — they are volunteering to fight for the right of their comrades in the Frozen North to remain frozen.

With an agenda like that, how can they lose?

Slate, of course, let’s us know the Party Line on the Planned Parenthood situation.

Tendentious sub-head: Forget Syria. The most dangerous religious extremists are migrants from North and South Carolina.

Let’s see: Just because there are dangerous people already in the United States is somehow an argument for our bringing in more from overseas. I’m sure it makes sense to the Bright People at Slate, but I’m afraid it says non sequitur to me.

From Wikipedia: “William Saletan, a Jewish native of Texas, graduated from Swarthmore College in 1987.” He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, so he apparently escaped Texas as soon as he could. I rather doubt he’s ever lived in North or South Carolina, so I guess that makes him an expert…?

Oh, and in 2004 he wrote a book — Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War. No doubt that explains why abortion is now illegal in the U.S. Oh, wait….

This guy appears to be a poster child for the ‘progressive’ ability to live in a fantasy world and write about it as if it were reality. I wish I could get a job like that.

Read it.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the Cleveland Board of Review last week, cementing the Ohio Supreme Court’s ruling that the “jock tax” applied to visiting N.F.L. players violated their due process rights. As a result, the Cleveland city government may be on the hook for millions of dollars owed back to professional athletes, according to data from the Cleveland Collections Agency.

The two former NFL players, Jeff Saturday and Hunter Hillenmeyer, both won their cases against a levy the Tax Foundation calls “arbitrary,” “unrealistic,” and “poorly targeted,” in the Ohio Supreme Court earlier this year. The Court’s decision in the former case struck down the tax Cleveland levied on Saturday even though he did not accompany his team, the Indianapolis Colts, to their game there. Calling the regulation “ambiguous at best,” the justices ordered the city to refund Saturday for the tax applied to his salary because he neither played in the scheduled game nor was present in Cleveland at the time.

In Hillenmeyer’s case, the justices took a more nuanced approach, finding the formula the city used to tax players unconstitutional, not the tax itself. Cleveland, grossly overstepping the bounds of its powers of taxation, argued that a 2% tax levied on the players entire salary, or 1/20th of their total salary, came from a calculation of the amount of games played in the preseason and regular season, 20, with one of those taking place in Cleveland. The court disagreed with this faulty logic, asserting that a NFL player’s total salary is derived from attendance at practices, off-season trainings, and a myriad of other duties.

Heh. Bloodsuckers lose one for once.

David Dayen, contributing writer for Salon, is shocked, shocked that Google is spreading its money around to buy a little influence.

I’m thinking that David Dayen doesn’t get out much.

I’m willing to bet that David Dayen is too young to remember the days when Microsoft was too apolitical to have a lobbying operation in Washington, D.C., and as a result got bogged down for TEN YEARS in a bogus ‘anti-trust’ suit prompted by people who were less pristine and more government-savvy. (Microsoft has since learned better.) Say what you will about Google, they’re not stupid, and they can learn from the mistakes of others.

(I’m waiting for the day when David Dayen, or some other squeaky clean do-gooder at Salon, does a similar expose regarding, say, the Clinton Foundation. I am not, however, willing to hold my breath waiting for it.)

Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist, has some harsh words about feeders at the government trough.

For the head of Planned Parenthood to self-righteously complain about the “politicization” of women’s health care as her organization receives tens of millions of dollars annually in government subsidies – money forcibly extracted by government from taxpayers and then given to Planned Parenthood – is an astonishing feat of hypocrisy. No one who is ethically mature demands money from Smith and simultaneously complains when Smith expresses opinions about how that money is spent.

People – such as this head of Planned Parenthood – who use politics to seize other people’s money and who then are surprised and angry when such money comes along with attached political strings are inconceivably naive (at best). They are akin to the person who orders a kosher ham sandwich – or, alternatively, they are akin to the would-be pet owner who wants a dog that flies and meows rather than one that walks and barks. Such people, in short, are detached from reality.

Actually, that’s not all there is to it. As long as ‘health care’ involves procedures that a large number of people, in conformance with traditional morality, regard as out-and-out murder, then ‘health care’ is going to be politicized, because what constitutes murder, under the law, is inevitably a political question.

The same problem would arise where there a large population of Muslims in the U.S. who made it a practice to behead apostates from Islam. They don’t regard that as murder, but justice, based on the law they know. The fact that non-Muslims consider it murder is of absolutely no interest to them, except as an annoyance.

Read it.

If you’re a hardcore Wu-Tang Clan fan, you can stop combing your couch for loose change and eating instant ramen: the single physical copy of the group’s secret album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin has been sold. Forbes reported the album’s sale through online auction house Paddle8 yesterday afternoon, and later confirmed that the album had been sold to a “private American collector” for a total somewhere in the millions.

The auction house hasn’t shared an exact number yet, but it confirmed that the price was high enough to make Once Upon a Time in Shaolin the most expensive single album ever sold. (It’s breaking a record previously held by Elvis Presley — Jack White bought a rare version of his first song ever for $300,000 in January of this year.) The sale was actually made in May, but it took months for the buyer and the Wu to sort out the contractual language and protections surrounding the album. In any case, the sale price is high enough to make you feel a little better about shelling out an extra 10 bucks to hear the new Adele record.

Cue whining by the Usual Suspects about the 1% getting stuff the rest of us can’t.

I am pleased that it was an American collector, not a Russian kleptocrat or a petrodollar Prince or a Slightly-Pink-Chinese tycoon.

Read it.

At the G-20 Summit in Antalya, Turkey, Barack Obama gave one of the most bizarre performances of his presidency. The November 16, 2015 speech was notable, first, for its gloating over imaginary successes at a time when failures are evident and, second, for the emergence of a new strategy against the Islamic State (ISIS).

In the gloating category, the president touted his administration’s handling of Libya 26 days after Congressional hearings exposed the lies of Benghazi, boasted of improving worldwide airline security 17 days after an ISIS bomb downed a Russian passenger jet, and hectored his political foes for suggesting he reconsider accepting thousands of refugees from Syria just 2 days after it was learned that one or more of the Paris suicide bombers had come to France from Syria as refugees. It was as though he was trying to eclipse the bad timing of his November 13 interview with George Stephanopoulos, when he claimed to have “contained” ISIS only hours before the Paris attacks.

But the short speech and the long Q&A session were even more remarkable for illustrating the administration’s deliberate tactic of attempting to embarrass and belittle ISIS verbally – as though words alone will halt its growth.

Worst. President. Ever.

Read it.

Brainiac hacker Samy Kamkar has developed a US$10 gadget that can predict and store hundreds of American Express credit cards and use them for wireless transactions, even at non-wireless payment terminals.

The mind-blowing feat is the result of Kamkar cracking how the card issuer picks replacement numbers, and in dissecting the functionality of magnetic stripe data.

It means criminals could use the tiny gadget to keep pillaging cash after cards have been cancelled at businesses that do not require the three or four -digit CVV numbers on the back of cards.

American Express has been notified and says it is working on a fix.

I should hope so. I am very glad I do not use an Amex card.

Read it.

Using a groundbreaking gene editing technique, University of California scientists have created a strain of mosquitoes capable of rapidly introducing malaria-blocking genes into a mosquito population through its progeny, ultimately eliminating the insects’ ability to transmit the disease to humans.

Wonder what pretext the eco-Nazis will use to bitch about: ‘Frankenbugs’?

Read it. (Well, watch the video.)

Darwin Award nominee.

Read it.

Funny how that works.

Actually, it’s not funny at all, considering how much we’re paying this clown.

Read it.

A suspected burglar who became stuck in the chimney of a house in California has died after the homeowner lit a fire without realising anyone was inside.

Think of it as evolution in action.

(Ponder the fact that British newspapers often have better coverage of interesting American news than the Drive-By Media.)

Read it.

A subtle hint not to visit a country where there is open warfare between police and drug dealers.

Jim Goad looks behind the headlines.

The weekend before last, Donald Trump egged on a frenzied crowd of sweaty Alabama rednecks as they beat, kicked, and bludgeoned a peaceful Black Lives Matter activist, while last Monday night five peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors in Minneapolis were shot by a group of armed white supremacists who came looking for trouble and fired wantonly into the crowd. This is all part of the ongoing terror and violence that our white supremacist society routinely rains down on noble, longsuffering black Americans.

Of course that’s all bullshit. But that’s the impression you’d get from reading most media accounts.

Let’s “deconstruct” these real-life events, shall we?

Read it.

The CIA recently has a crises on its hands when it was realized that finding out what is happening inside Russia has become much more difficult. This has been a growing problem since the 1990s but has gotten worse since Russia began invading its neighbors and reviving the Cold War era police state. All that went into high gear with the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and escalated in 2014 with attacks on Ukraine. Now Russia is threatening most of East Europe and the CIA finds itself blinded. The CIA is seeking to regain some of its Cold War era competence in this era and that is proving difficult.

Steven Hayward at PowerLine blog passes the popcorn.

I’m not sure what’s going to be more fun over the next 10 days—watching John “Long Face” Kerry prattle on, or reading the predictable stories in the media about how the conference is “deadlocked,” “going into overtime,” and announcing, at the 11^th hour, a “breakthrough!” that will save the planet—at least until we can all meet again next year to repeat the farce.

John Hinderaker at PowerLine blog points out some inconvenient truth.

Petrophysicist Andy May has prepared a poster-sized chart that shows the current state of knowledge about the Earth’s climate over the last 18,000 years, along with a history of human civilization during that time. You could spend a long time studying the chart, which tells you most of what you need to know to understand why climate alarmism, as currently manifested in the Paris conclave, is–scientifically speaking–a joke. You also should read his long post about the data in the chart. For now, I am simply going to post it. It is in PDF format, you can download it and study it at your leisure.

Read it.

A federal program, once launched, is impossible to kill. It doesn’t matter if the scheme wastes money. It doesn’t matter if the program doesn’t work. It doesn’t even matter if the program does the very opposite of what it is supposed to do. Every government program enters the world with an army of fairy godmothers prepared to fend off any effort to cut the cord. Hence, the staying power of ethanol.

Read it.

A 25-year-old woman whose car flipped over on Long Island on Sunday emerged from the wreckage relatively unscathed — only to be struck and killed as she later went back to retrieve her property, police said.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

Early one weekend morning in January 2014, Janet was sleeping fitfully in her parents’ home in Toronto. A junior studying elementary education at a nearby college, she had gone home for the weekend in a state of nervous collapse. For months, someone going by the name ‘‘Obnoxious’’ had been harassing her online. He had called her cellphone repeatedly and sent her threatening texts. Worst of all, he had threatened to ‘‘swat’’ her at school — to make a false emergency call to the police and lure a SWAT team to her door.

Janet was afraid to go to sleep; she kept thinking that he was going to swat her in the middle of the night. He said he was going to swat her family, too. Her father owned a bar, and her mother worked at a hotel. They were from China, and their English wasn’t great. They didn’t know much about her life online, and they would never understand why someone would stalk their daughter on the Internet.

Around 6:30 a.m., her father jostled her awake and said she needed to come downstairs. When she got to the top of the steps, she saw her family’s living room ‘‘covered in cops.’’ There were at least five officers in riot gear, guns drawn. They had bulletproof vests and pads and helmets with visors. She remembers the eerie silence of the officers — they said nothing at all. She had no idea what to do with her hands. ‘‘I was scared to move,’’ she says. ‘‘I wanted to go downstairs with my hands up. I was afraid they would shoot me. I was so scared. I feel like they just didn’t really let their guard down until I told them what happened.’’

It could happen to you.

Read it.

The Antiplanner tried to demolish this myth fourteen years ago in The Vanishing Automobile, but now Daniel Schleith, a geographer from the University of Cincinnati, is bringing it back. Schleith calculated the “minimum commute” that would be required in the nation’s 25 largest urban areas if jobs and housing in those areas were “balanced,” and compared that with the actual average commutes in those areas. The difference between the two is the “excess commute.”

This method makes two related and equally fallacious assumptions: First, that the only purpose of transportation is to get to and from work, and second that the only factor that should be involved in choosing a home location is proximity to work. In fact, commuting makes up only less than 20 percent of our travel, and the other travel we do is only one of the many factors that might lead us to choose a home location that isn’t as close as possible to work.

…

“In urban planning,” observed Yale political scientist James Scott in his book, Seeing Like a State, “it is a short step from parsimonious assumptions to the practice of shaping the environment so that it satisfies the simplifications required by the formula.” Unfortunately, too many cities have taken that short step and greatly interfered in peoples’ lives to try to shorten commutes.

Read it.

Whenever there is a high-profile shooting incident, liberals scan the news eagerly, hoping that political hay can be made out of it. With the Planned Parenthood murders perpetrated by Robert Dear, they apparently think they have hit the jackpot. Perhaps, in political terms, they are right, but I doubt it.

Unnamed law enforcement sources are being quoted to the effect that after his arrest, Dear said something like “no more baby parts.” QED! say Planned Parenthood spokeswomen. The Center for Medical Progress’s videos are to blame. But do liberals really want to argue that wrongdoing shouldn’t be exposed, for fear that a lunatic may take vigilante action against the wrongdoers? I don’t think so.

To take just one of countless examples, imagine that a nut tries to assassinate one of the Koch brothers–by no means a far-fetched hypothesis, given the insane hatred that has been stirred up against them by the Democratic Party. In that event, would the Democratic Party take responsibility for the acts of the crazed assassin and apologize for its attacks on Charles and David Koch? I doubt it.

Read it.

What’s the big deal? Just think of it as a really-late-term abortion. Turn it over to Planned Parenthood to be sold for parts. Problem solved.

Read it.

A prominent Kurdish lawyer and rights activist, who faced criminal charges for defending Kurdish rebels as not terrorists, has been shot in the head and killed in Turkey.

Tahir Elci, 49, was caught in a gun battle between police and unidentified gunmen as he delivered a statement calling for an end to violence between the Turkish state and Kurdish rebel group the PKK.

Two policemen were also killed in the shoot-out in Turkey’s south eastern city of Diyarbakir, with another 11 people injured.

If the Russians want to smash Turkey, I have no objection.

Read it.

Welcome to the fifth century. Be careful not to step in the Diversity.

Read it.

A firefighter who was allowed to graduate the Fire Academy despite failing physical tests has already gone out on medical leave — just 10 days into the job, The Post has learned.

Probationary firefighter Choeurlyne Doirin-Holder injured herself Monday while conducting a routine check of equipment at Queens’ Engine 308 in South Richmond Hill. Getting off the truck, Doirin-Holder missed a step and landed on her left foot, suffering a fracture, sources said.

I suppose it would be considered a cheap shot to point out that something like this was predicable and predicted. The mythologies of Political Correctness, which ignore actual physical differences between men and women in service of The Narrative, have as little mercy on their supposed beneficiaries as on their nominal enemies.

Doirin-Holder, who turns 40 this month, is one of 282 “priority hires” passed over in 1999 and 2000. Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis ordered they must get preference as victims of past discrimination against minorities.

Which is fine when it’s just a question of hiring and paying government workers who are members of politically favored groups (all of whom just happen to vote most often for Democrats — purely a coincidence, I’m sure), but when they’re actually called on to do the job, things get a little bit embarrassing.

Since she was injured on duty, she is eligible for a disability pension that would pay three-quarters of her annual salary, tax-free, if deemed unfit to return.

Thereby accomplishing the original political purpose without any benefit to the public. Win-Win!

Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist, examines one of the chief intellectual deficiencies of our time, which I have often discussed here under the title of “Aggregation Fallacy”.

A danger of collectivism of any sort – from formal collectivism such as state-imposed communism to informal and less-obvious forms of collectivism, such as gathering statistics on a nation’s “balance of trade” – is that it clouds thinking.  Collectivism not only masks differences that distinguish individuals who comprise whatever group is constructed, in whatever fashion, into some collective, it also causes people too easily to attribute thought and action to the group rather than to the individuals who make-up the group.

This is illustrated daily in most of what passes for News Media these days, in which some ‘journalist’ will cherry-pick some general statistic such as the number of deaths in a certain period in a certain general group, and then draw some tendentious conclusion, typically supporting a call for government action to infringe the rights and freedoms of people that the journalist just happens to dislike. “The Rich”, “The Poor”, “Working Families”, “Gun Nuts”, and “Fundamentalists” are common whipping-boys for this sort of treatment, although this sort of thing never seems to apply to groups that the Chattering Classes favor, like Muslims or Black People or Government Employees.

Last night at dinner the discussion turned to the hideous Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado.  My close and wise friend Lyle Albaugh observed that many “Progressives” tend to lump together into a fictional collective all people with some anti-government views.  So when a middle-aged white male violently attacks an institution, such as Planned Parenthood, that is an icon of the “Progressive” left, left-wing commenters, along with others with left-wing sympathies, often lump all limited- and anti-government folk together into some fictional group that is feared to be especially prone to commit violence of the sort that occurred last week in Colorado.  (Remember how, just after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Tucson in 2011 Paul Krugman blamed right-wing ideology for the crime?)

And, indeed, the perpetrators of crimes need not even belong, in any sense that a rational adults would recognize, to whatever group is being trotted out for the Two-Minute Hate, in order to sprinkle with magical victim-blood the objects of their disaffection.

Read it.

On June 24, researchers will meet with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a very specific reason: they want to test a drug that might slow the aging process. If they succeed, they will show for the first time that aging is in fact a condition that can be treated with medicine, which could boost progress—and funding—for anti-aging research. And based on some comments made by officials late last month, the FDA seems inclined to say yes, according to Nature News.

…

Aging researchers don’t claim to seek immortality; rather, they want to keep more people healthier for longer. Drugs that have been developed over the past decade have been ineffective and sold with false promises. But the researchers behind the proposed experiment, called Targeting Aging with Metformin (TAME), say they’re in a better position now thanks to animal studies that have hinted at particular physiological pathways that can lead to greater longevity.

Socialism is a disease. Getting old is a misfortune.

Read it.

Justin “Baby Doc” Trudeau is Canada’s newly-elected Liberal prime minister. Mr. Trudeau has vowed to bring 25,000 “Syrian” “refugees” into the country by the end of the year, and is exerting considerable political pressure in an effort to make sure his plan is implemented.

The new influx of migrants is not popular in all parts of Canada, especially out West.

Read it.

Test-taking is a dreaded experience that the country’s kids and young adults share with their counterparts across the globe. The ritual at its core doesn’t vary much: Students sit at a table or a computer desk (or sometimes, as shown below, on the floor), pencil and/or mouse in hand, the clock ticking away mercilessly. America for its part is home to what The Atlantic has described as an “alphabet soup” of standardized tests, including: the NAEP, SBAC, PARCC, ACT, and, of course, SAT. Testing has become increasingly notorious in the U.S., to the point that tens of thousands of parents across the country have opted their kids out of standardized tests.

I’ve never understood the angst in Certain Circles about testing. My first impulse is to assume that those who worry about tests are those who know they are likely not to pass (or whose kids are likely not to pass), and extend that into a presumption that the test-haters are achievement-haters who want everybody to get a trophy just for showing up, again as a sublimation of their own feelings (or knowings) of inferiority. I’m sure that has a lot to do with it.

In America, perhaps all the testing helps explain why “all-nighters” and Adderall abuse are the norm on many college campuses. But there is an unhealthy obsession with acing the test abroad, too. Fraudulent college applications are reportedly rampant among students in China—the birthplace of the standardized test—aspiring to attend school in the U.S. And hundreds of people in India were recently arrested in connection with a massive cheating scandal. (Many of those arrested were believed to be family members of the 10th-grade test-takers.) Meanwhile, as NPR has reported, “the relentless focus on education and exams is often to blame” for suicide among teens in South Korea, the leading cause of death for that demographic.

Another, perhaps complimentary, explanatory character flaw is an apparent desire to make sure that Da Poor Iddle Kiddies never have to face the bleak prospect of stress in their lives, as exemplified by the current Crybully Crisis on college campuses. (This is what helicopter parenting leads to: A generation of weaklings who take refuge in their fascist impulses.) My attitude toward somebody who would commit suicide because of a test is something on the order of think of it as evolution in action; if you can’t face a test, you’re not going to survive Real Life, so better quit now before you’ve wasted everybody’s time. But that’s me, and I’m a notorious hard-heart. Ask anybody.

I’ve always regarded a test as a puzzle to be solved, rather than a hurdle to get over. Like looking in a mirror, it gives you a better idea of who you are and where you fit. And that’s good to know.

Read it.

This review is somewhat dated but captures perfectly, I think, what I disliked about the series.

To my mind, the picture is too crude and the artist too pleased with himself. In Mad Men, everyone chain-smokes, every executive starts drinking before lunch, every man is a chauvinist pig, every male employee viciously competitive and jealous of his colleagues, every white person a reflexive racist (when not irritatingly patronizing). It’s not that you don’t know that, say, sexism was rampant in the workplace before the feminist movement; it’s just that, on the screen, the endless succession of leering junior execs and crude jokes and abusive behavior all meant to signal “sexism” doesn’t work—it’s wearying rather than illuminating.

I grew up reading fantasy and science fiction, so it doesn’t bother me to see a tendentious fantasy on screen — I can roll with it. I remember that time, and it brought back a lot of memories — my first job, right out of college, was with a Wall Street law firm, and almost all of the secretaries had ash trays on their desks — but I found it disappointing because of its heavy-handed assumption that everyone watching it would share its sniggering “Wow, life pre-Woodstock really sucked, didn’t it?” attitude, to the extent that it was almost a self-parody.

Nevertheless, it captures a lot of the truth of that time, primarily because the writers and producers included things that they might not have have if they been more perceptive.

This impulse might be worth indulging (briefly), but the problem with Mad Men is that it suffers from a hypocrisy of its own. As the camera glides over Joan’s gigantic bust and hourglass hips, as it languorously follows the swirls of cigarette smoke toward the ceiling, as the clinking of ice in the glass of someone’s midday Canadian Club is lovingly enhanced, you can’t help thinking that the creators of this show are indulging in a kind of dramatic having your cake and eating it, too: even as it invites us to be shocked by what it’s showing us (a scene people love to talk about is one in which a hugely pregnant Betty lights up a cigarette in a car), it keeps eroticizing what it’s showing us, too. For a drama (or book, or whatever) to invite an audience to feel superior to a less enlightened era even as it teases the regressive urges behind the behaviors associated with that era strikes me as the worst possible offense that can be committed in a creative work set in the past: it’s simultaneously contemptuous and pandering. Here, it cripples the show’s ability to tell us anything of real substance about the world it depicts.

Read it.

HAH!

Read it.

Don’t make fun of the crybullies or you’ll be targeted for retribution.

Read it.

Irony – it’s not just for breakfast any more.

Read it.

An Indian woman has allegedly been divorced by her husband by text message after confessing to being gang raped.

The woman, who remains unnamed, said she received a message saying “talaq” three times after telling her husband about the incident, according to The Daily Mail.

Sharia law states men can divorce their wives instantly by repeating the word “talaq”, or “I divorce you”, to her three times.

And the feminists say: [chirp] … [chirp] … [chirp] ….

A black Harvard Law Professor gets it right.

Questioners often seem to assume that I should feel deeply alarmed and hurt. I don’t.

The identity and motives of the person or people behind the taping have not been determined. Perhaps the defacer is part of the law school community. But maybe not. Perhaps the defacer is white. But maybe not. Perhaps the taping is meant to convey anti-black contempt or hatred for the African-American professors. But maybe it was meant to protest the perceived marginalization of black professors, or was a hoax meant to look like a racial insult in order to provoke a crisis, or was a rebuke to those who have recently been taping over the law school’s seal, which memorializes a family of slaveholders from colonial times. Some observers, bristling with certainty, insist that the message conveyed by the taping of the photographs is obvious. To me it is puzzling.

At least they have grownups teaching at Harvard Law, regardless of the arrested adolescence of the students.

What I find puzzling is how so sensible a piece got published in the New York Times.

Darth Vader Talking Cookie Jar.

Pocket Spectrometer.

Damaged Screw Remover.

Fever Scout.

Moonshine Maker.

Fake Freckles. I am not making this up.

Read it.

This is how you know someone is not ready for college.

A problem with a simple solution: Bag her up and ship her to Nigeria. Notify Boko Haram of the delivery details.

Read it.

If, of course, you happen to be one of those. I certainly am.

Read it.

Man’s best friend. Let’s see your cute kitty-cat do that.

Read it.

That explains the Apple mouse and keyboard. Even the Mac-fanatic tech journalists hate them, from what I’ve seen.

Read it.

I hope your Thanksgiving was as enjoyable as mine. We had our immediate family for dinner (minus one daughter who is living in Australia), so there was no potential for political disagreement, as we are all conservatives. Of course, I can’t imagine any family spending Thanksgiving arguing about politics in any event.

But the Democrats can. In fact, they encourage it. The Democratic Party has developed its own Thanksgiving tradition: advising its faithful on how to debate with their Republican relatives. That strikes me as completely bizarre, but then, if you think of Thanksgiving as Genocide Day, as so many liberals do, maybe it doesn’t seem like you’re ruining much.

This is rather amusing, but it does tell us quite a lot about Democrites:

1. Everything is political with them. Everything. That’s almost the definition of a totalitarian mindset.
2. Their supporters are so mentally absent that they need a crib sheet to remember what to say in favor of their own political positions. I’d hold off on further legalization of marijuana, which will only exacerbate the problem.
3. Note that there is no Republican counterpart.
4. They realize that their supporters are going to get pounded over the dinner table for their stupid positions and need to prepare beforehand. You’d think they’d connect the dots on that, but they never seem able to take the hint.
5. Apparently all Democrite kids are in Republican families. Who knew?

Read it.

Feinstein’s seven-year quest to convince Congress to sequester over 1560 square miles of the Mojave Desert into three new national monuments under her proposed ‘Desert Conservation and Recreation Act” has gone nowhere. Feinstein has argued that the area she wants designated as ‘Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains’ is home to mountain lions, the California desert tortoise and bighorn sheep. But the real effort is to ban off-roaders, hunters and miners.

Feinstein is the Nurse Ratched of the U.S. Senate.

Read it.

Note that this is not a person of pallor. Note also the tattoo.

Read it.

Saadiq Long is one data point in the quest for narratives. In 2013, liberal journalists wove the facts of Saadiq Long into the greater narrative that the United States was still an oppressive regime under Barack Obama. The “no fly list” was but one example, and Saadiq Long was on the no fly list. The cause of Saadiq Long was championed by MSNBC, Glenn Greenwald, Mother Jones magazine, and more.

As Patrick Poole at PJ Media reported last week, back in 2013, Saadiq Long wanted to return to his native Oklahoma to visit his ailing mother. Long had moved to Qatar and could not get home because he was on the “no fly list.” The media pressure eventually led the Obama Administration to remove Long from the “no fly list,” but he was eventually added back. Last week, Long was arrested in Turkey as part of an ISIS cell.

Funny how that works.

Read it.

But you knew that.

On Sunday, a 20-year-old Israeli woman was stabbed to death, another Israeli was rammed by a car and attacked with a knife and a third was assaulted by a knife-wielding teen affiliated with the Islamic Jihad terror group.

All three assailants were killed in the course of their attacks.

But the headline to the Times’ story about Sunday’s attacks did away with cause and effect, muddled victim and aggressor: “1 Israeli, 3 Palestinians Killed in Attacks in West Bank.” The online headline was later changed, but the print headline Monday morning was equally obtuse: “West Bank Faces Spate of Assaults That Kill 4.” The “West Bank” faced nothing. It was Israelis who faced assaults.

Read it. And watch the video.

As successive European countries impose strict border controls, it’s like a series of watertight doors closing along the route that “Syrian” “refugees” take to get to Germany. When one state blocks the flow and slows it to a trickle, the migrants back up at that border, forcing the host country to follow the same strategy.

The following report shows the backup at the border between Greece and Macedonia. The latter has recently tightened up its border, so that crowds of migrants are now encamped at the crossing, angrily waiting to be allowed to proceed onwards towards their destination. This video is a skillful combination of drone and ground-level footage, with no voice-over or commentary.