Read it.

The Slippery Slope Argument is often called the Slippery Slope Fallacy, usually by those favorably disposed toward the bottom of the slope and anxious to get there as quickly as possible with a minimum of tumbling and bruising along the way. But it is really neither a fallacy nor an argument.

History is replete with examples of “give ’em an inch and they’ll take a mile.” The pre-war course of Hitler’s micro-aggressions provides a nicely Godwinesque illustration of a slippery slope. Give ’em a Saarland, and they’ll take a Bohemia. Recall also that Griswold v. Conn. legitimized the sale of contraceptives to married couples only, precisely on the grounds of the privacy of the marriage bond, and the thought that this might lead to unmarried couples using contraceptives was dismissed as slippery slopitude. Ho-ho, that will never happen! Likewise the forecast was poo-poohed that such availability would eventually weaken the whole concept of marriage and turn women into sex objects. And yet, here we are. So too the late Daniel Pat Moynihan’s “defining deviancy down.”¹

Taki fisks the New York Times.

The latest Times ploy to undermine the American military is a very long, close-to-10,000-word diatribe by three of its “reporters” accusing an American SEAL outfit in Afghanistan of having committed a crime while training Afghan police officers back in 2012. The paper charges the SEALs with having beaten up an Afghan civilian—read a Taliban suspect—who later died after his rough treatment. It was never made clear despite the overheated verbiage who among the Americans and Afghans administered the beating. I would guess it was Afghan policemen, but the SEALs get the rap. The Times is calling it a cover-up. But Capt. Robert Smith, who thoroughly investigated the incident—he is now a military assistant to the secretary of the Navy—opted to drop all the charges.

The Navy, unlike the grubby Times, does not convict without definite proof, and while the victim was involved in perhaps planting a bomb, and having been captured and interrogated by both Afghans and Americans, the Navy dropped the charges. But not The New York Times. After all, the men involved were Americans, white and brave. Lying is a way of life among Afghans, so the SEALs had to have a very long and boring article, followed by an editorial, condemning them. Sulzberger and his motley crew should be forced to go and live in that pleasant land for some time, but that’s not how the world works. Incidentally, some Afghan pilots undergoing training in America have defected—yes, that’s the operative word—and have disappeared somewhere in our pleasant land without a trace. All I can say is, who can blame them? I’d rather be a fugitive in Uncle Sam’s land than a pilot in Afghanistan any day.

Read it.

Recent opinion polls in the West Bank reveal that a majority of Palestinians there approve of the current “knife terrorism” campaign and that most Palestinians would vote for Hamas if elections were held right now. This is no secret to the current (Fatah) leaders in the West Bank and one reason they support the knife terrorism so energetically and effectively. While Hamas is hated by the people of Gaza, West Bank Palestinians don’t experience that daily while they do endure the corrupt and inept rule of Fatah. The Fatah media campaign has also convinced most Palestinians it is Israel that is refusing to negotiate peace when in fact it is the Palestinians who turned down two peace deals in the 1990s and instead tried terror campaigns to get more. Both of these “intifadas” failed and Fatah has sold the illusion that the third intifada (the “knife intifada) will succeed. Since 2000 Palestinian media constantly pushed the idea that Israel has no right to exist and must be destroyed. Palestinians who disagree with this must either emigrate or keep silent. For most Palestinians its easier to praise the knife. The knife terrorism campaign has, in three months, left 22 Israeli dead and over 250 wounded. But 130 Palestinians have died (mostly in failed attacks). Palestinian media depicts unsuccessful attacks that result in attackers being killed or wounded as Israeli attacks against random (and innocent) Palestinians.

Read it.

Efforts to screen refugees trying to get into Europe and the United States has uncovered yet another scam developed by Moslem refugees seeking asylum in the West. Unfortunately for the scammers a growing number of the screeners have prior experience (often while in the military) with the mentality that produces these cons. The latest one involves refugees from Afghanistan presenting “night letters” from the Taliban threatening death if they did not help the Islamic terrorists or get out of the area. Such documents were quite common until 2011 when the Taliban stopped using them. But the refugees are presenting night letters, often hand written on Taliban or ISIL (al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant) stationary. Scans of these night letters exchanged by different screeners showed that many of these documents were apparently written by the same person. Some investigation back in Afghanistan found that these letters were for sale to Afghans seeking to head to the West and gain asylum. This sort of thing is neither new nor unique to Western screeners or lawyers.

Read it.

The University of Louisville is being ripped for a job posting for a professor that it said could only be filled by an “African-American, Hispanic-American or Native American Indian.”

The website Inside Higher Ed, in a story with the headline “Whites, Asians Need Not Apply,” reported Wednesday that the posting raised legal questions about limiting job searches only to specific racial and ethnic groups, The Courier-Journal says.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

The ad for an assistant professor in U of L’s physics and astronomy department was abruptly removed from higheredjobs.com Tuesday after the department got a complaint that the preferences didn’t include people who have disabilities, the story said.

So it wasn’t Politically Correct enough. That’s good to know.

Cindy Hess, a university spokeswoman, said the ad was in error “because we did not intend to exclude any group or persons from applying for the position.” She added that the job will be re-posted, the story said.

Well, really, they did, they just didn’t want to be so public about it. I’ll bet you a paycheck that the person ultimately hired won’t be white or Asian.

Read it.

When a CBS News segment featuring a focus group of American Muslims aired Friday, it highlighted their relationship to terrorism, with a particular fixation on how much responsibility they felt to condemn terrorist attacks.

But in interviews with The Intercept, two Muslim Americans who took part in the group complained that CBS edited out parts of the discussion where they raised their own concerns — including critiques of U.S. militarism, surveillance, and entrapment.

They also said that Frank Luntz, the right-wing pollster who led the focus group, silenced members of the group when they criticized discriminatory U.S. government policies.

When Luntz asked the group how they respond to attacks such as the recent one in San Bernardino, New York City activist Amelia Noor-Oshiro told The Intercept she asked Luntz, “Why don’t you ask that to people who actually commit acts of terror? Why don’t you ask that to White America who are responsible for a majority of domestic terror attacks?”

That didn’t make it into the on-air segment.

Read it.

The super-rich ruler of Brunei has told residents of his country that if they plan on celebrating Christmas, they could face up to five years in jail.

In fear the the religious holiday will affect the faith of its country, the tiny oil-rich nation’s Sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, has banned the public celebration of Christmas.

Any Muslims caught celebrating Christmas, and non-Muslims who are discovered organising celebrations, could face the lengthy prison sentence.

While non-Muslims are allowed to celebrate the holiday within their own communities, they must not disclose their plans to the nation’s Muslims – which make up 65 per cent of the 420,000-strong population.

Read it.

A psychopath, according to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), which is often used as a diagnostic tool to determine levels of psychopathy and antisocial behaviour will often display some or all of several key signs.  Psychopaths are often pathological liars, have very high self-estimation, are impulsive and fail to regulate and take responsibility for their behaviours.

Hillary Clinton. Ask me a hard one.

The first thing that Wells shares about his behaviour is that how he acts is strongly dependent on the circumstances. He deliberately changes how he acts according to the situation he finds himself in.

Any politician. Another easy one.

The process of becoming friends with someone that Wells describes seems extremely superficial – every move he makes is calculated. Any favours or nice things he does to someone he is ‘close’ to seem to be purely part of a carefully conceived process which aims at eventually being in control of their relationship and making them useful to him.

…

“Psychopaths are often charming, and can emulate emotional intelligence, drawing in the unsuspecting and vulnerable but without becoming truly emotionally engaged.”

Bill Clinton. I’m on a roll.

Read it.

The idea that Western people should feel indebted to Islam for keeping Greek and Hindu learning alive is common enough. But does it make any sense at all?

Hint: No. The reason Greek and Hindu learning needed ‘keeping alive’ in the first place was that Islam had stomped its boot down on the existing Greek and Hindu civilizations in the Middle East and northern India, which were doing just fine as they were. In fact, Islam destroyed the culture of ancient Persia, and all of its potential contribution to human progress was totally lost.

Read it.

A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found yet more evidence for the notion that skyrocketing college tuition costs are the result of all-too-generous student loan policies.

The study, authored by Grey Gordon and Aaron Hedlund, used a computer model to measure the effects of various economic forces on college costs. According to the model, no factor had more to do with rising tuition prices than loan subsidies.

“Looking at individual factors, we find that expansions in borrowing limits drive 40% of the tuition jump and represent the single most important factor,” wrote the study’s authors.

Read it.

I’m still scratching my head about the results of the omnibus budget that passed last week, in which it appears Republicans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

As is traditional.

I’m not sure I agree with brother Paul here that Paul Ryan is essentially a double agent for the Democrats, but at the very least Ryan and the rest of the GOP leadership need to give a better account of things. It is possible that they can’t give a better account, without making things worse. At the very least, we should add the word “omnibus” to the word “comprehensive” as terms that should be expunged from our legislative vocabulary and practice. Better luck next year? Can we please get back to the prescribed practice of passing separate appropriation bills for the major departments of government as the law calls for, instead of this annual ritual of an “omnibus” bill that is always a defeat for our side?* Maybe, though surely the Chicago Cubs can be forgiven for laughing at the GOP right now.

I think that there is a contact poison on the handle of the Speaker’s gavel that changes the DNA of whoever touches it to act like a Democrat.

Read it.

Most people who are rich chose their parents wisely. Bill Gates might not have ever figured out 1960s-style computer science but he had the foresight to pick a father who is one of the richest, most prominent lawyers in the state of Washington. And before he and Paul Allen made the deal with IBM that gave them a monopoly on the PC operating system, Bill had the foresight to choose a mother who was personally acquainted with John Opel, CEO of IBM Corporation. None of this would have worked if Bill hadn’t been willing to take tremendous personal risks. Should Microsoft have failed, of course, Bill Gates would have had nothing to fall back on but a million dollar trust fund from his mother’s parents (bankers) and the resumption of his degree program at Harvard College.

In case you haven’t noticed, Scott Adams is a National Treasure.

Read it.

Well, here’s some good news: We now have proof that the Obama administration acts as though it were on a wartime footing. Bad news? It’s acting that way here at home.

The New York Times reports that the administration broke the law when it used social media to gin up support for a clean-water rule. Through a campaign on Twitter, Facebook, and similar media, it tried to get people to share messages supporting the rule, a practice known as astroturfing (which generates fake, as opposed to real, grass-roots support). The Government Accountability Office, which investigated the campaign, concluded that the EPA engaged in “covert propaganda.”

This isn’t the first time the administration has tried to use psy-ops against the American people. In its early days, the White House Office of Public Engagement teamed up with the National Endowment for the Arts to encourage artists to produce art supporting the president’s initiatives. HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius warned insurance companies there would be “zero tolerance” for criticism of White House health-care policies.

Read it.

The Democrats held their presidential candidates’ be-in on ABC this past Saturday night. Time has posted a transcript. I have posted the video below. The be-in made for difficult viewing, but reading the transcript isn’t much easier. It’s painful.

Hillary will of course be the Democratic nominee. She seems to me an increasingly absurd figure. I find it hard to take her seriously, but she’s as serious as cancer. When it comes to anything approaching truth, she’s certainly as deadly. I’m getting ready for Hillary.

…

Those who know their ancient history will recall that Hillary expressly rejected the sedentary role of women as homemakers in the first Clinton presidential campaign of 1992. The ISIS manifesto makes it clear that women are to be subordinate to men. There will be no female leader of ISIS. The very idea of such a role for a woman would strike them as an absurd abomination.

If Hillary Clinton is elected president of the United States, she is therefore highly likely to become ISIS’s best recruiting tool. Regardless, ISIS can go to hell, and it should be among the next president’s first orders to make sure they do.

Read it.

A former top official of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) is trying to whitewash the Hamas charity’s true history in a detailed self-interview published by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), a virulently pro-terrorist and anti-Israel publication.

Shukri Abu Baker was HLF’s chief executive, but now is serving 65 years in prison for conspiring to provide material support to the terrorist group Hamas. Jurors in Dallas determined that under Baker’s control, HLF illegally routed more than $12 million to Hamas.

But, Baker claims, the case “was an insult to the American judicial system and ravaged the lives of those who were only trying to alleviate suffering.”

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, upholding the convictions of Baker and four co-defendants in 2011. The court cited evidence which “contradicted a sworn declaration from Baker wherein he had denied that he and other HLF board members had any connection with Hamas.”

The Other McCain discovers that his Bullshit Detector is ringing loudly.

Let me state clearly what should be obvious to longtime readers: I don’t like it when kids at elite colleges claim to be victims of oppression.

Self-pity as a basis for political activism is a very bad idea and should be discouraged. Generally speaking, young people are ignorant and foolish. Being highly intelligent is not a substitute for experience, and youthful enthusiasm should never be confused with actual knowledge. Do not tell me you are a victim of oppression if your Daddy is rich enough to send you to a school where tuition is $50,586 a year….

Read it.

I admit that I never even heard of Putin killing journalists until after Trump received a glowing endorsement from Putin, then all of a sudden this makes Trump evil because Putin murders journalists. I tried to research this on Google, but found nothing.

News to me, too. Mind you, I wouldn’t blame him. I have a little list….

This blog post by Anatoly Karlin puts things into better perspective. Our supposed “ally” Recep Erdo?an is the one who has been imprisoning massive numbers of journalists. We really need to kick Turkey out of NATO ASAP. (Turkey was a decent place when the secular military controlled it, but now that they have a democracy of Muslims the country is clearly going to hell.)

Quite agree, quite agree. In fact, I suggest that NATO itself is obsolete now that Communism no longer controls Eastern Europe. But that’s me.

Read it.

Read it. And watch the video.

The following brief documentary clip from German television concerns an investigative mission to the Maldive Islands, not far from the southern tip of India. The filmmakers made their pilgrimage there to do some fashionable research into “climate change” on the low-lying islands, but discovered the Great Jihad instead. And got themselves thrown out of the country for their pains.

Lord Ridley looks at the Zuckerberg ‘charity’ kerfuffle.

We have reached new depths of cynicism when a couple say in a letter to their newborn child that “our hopes for your generation focus on two ideas: advancing human potential and promoting equality” and some people can only sneer. Much of the carping is deeply confused. The Zuckerbergs have been criticised for not handing their shares to a tax-deductible charitable foundation now, which would net them a big tax break up front, and in the very same breath for not handing over their fortune in tax.

Welcome to my world.

The greatest beneficiaries, by far, of vast business ventures such as Facebook are not the founders, but the customers. When Lancashire entrepreneurs made cotton textiles affordable for all, it was all who benefited; when Rockefellers did the same for oil, or Carnegies for steel, again the overwhelming majority of the benefits flowed to the customers. One study, by William Nordhaus, found that entrepreneurs end up with less than 3% of the societal value that they have created. Some goes to financiers, but the vast bulk of the benefit turns up as consumer surplus.

Likewise with today’s magnates: the fortunes amassed by the Messrs Gates, Jobs, Bezos and Zuckerberg are as nothing to the value that has been captured by their willing customers in the form of better services delivered far more cheaply and easily.

So let’s ditch the zero-sum mentality and remember that an entrepreneur who makes something that was once a preserve of the rich cheaply available to ordinary people has done an act of philanthropy through his business, even if he also makes a fortune in the process. To reach the number of followers anybody can now have on Facebook once required either a large sum of money to spend on paper and stamps and secretaries, or an even larger sum to buy a newspaper or a radio station.

Good luck convincing the Usual Suspects that. Let’s start with Hillary Clinton.

Read it.

This makes an interesting contrast to Scott Adams’ Master Persuader analysis.

Tyler Cowen has a new wrinkle on the ‘gun control’ debate.

Sarah Hoyt reflects upon evolution and politics.

In a way when the left started its long march through the institutions they were just practicing ancient hunting practices, with Western Civilization as its prey.

Now their long march might or might not come to fruition, but you can’t avoid realizing that for people whose ideas are at best silly and at worst downright harmful, they’ve achieved remarkable success by taking over what they could and grooming their kids to take over more.

…

However, again, for a philosophy whose proudest achievement is the killing of a hundred million human beings (and that’s lowballing it, as Colonel Kratman says) to take over those many institutions and not to be laughed out of polite (or worse, impolite) society is a testimony to the effectiveness of the long march.

Read it. And watch them.

Read it.

I researched and wrote the article “The threat from ‘Minnesota men’” before the San Bernardino massacre, but the things I learned along the way may have some bearing on it. “Minnesota men” have been in contact with ISIS and sought to enlist in the cause. In April the FBI arrested six of them who were on their way to join the jihad. We’re a little ambivalent about the FBI’s success in apprehending them. Now they’re going to remain here and they really, really don’t like us very much.

One can learn a lot from reading the criminal complaint charging the six and the underlying FBI affidavit summarizing the investigation. They are posted online here. ISIS is recruiting here and may even have a presence in the United States. The FBI has stated that social media and encrypted communications have expanded beyond their capacity to keep up. If apprehending the six represented a stroke of good fortune, we won’t always be so lucky, as events in San Bernardino have proved many times over.

Read it.

I’d typed “Oxford” into the text box, picked my ground zero (Lloyds Bank – don’t ask me why) and my choice of 30 virtual nuclear weapons, clicked on the big red DETONATE button and then watched as a dark stain spread across the Google map towards my favourite pub and my home only 15 minutes’ walk from the city centre. While the pub is hit by a wave of thermal radiation that causes third-degree burns, my house just survives, as do – rather surprisingly – the leafy Victorian suburbs of Summertown, and industrial Cowley, home of the Mini. The casualty figures spin round like a roulette wheel before stopping at 15,430 fatalities and 24,000 injured, out of a population of about 160,000.

This is the hit Google Maps mash-up that calculates the effects of the detonation of a nuclear bomb on a town or city of your choice. It was designed by nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein, Assistant Professor for Science and Technology Studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and author of the nuclear secrecy blog Restricted Data, to help to fill in the information gap about nuclear weapons that he believes opened up after the end of the Cold War. Since it was launched in 2012, more than two million people have visited the site – 250,000 of those solely on the anniversary of the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. Now, around 25,000 people a day are seeing a radioactive version of the future.

Read it.

The first Europeans to penetrate the Amazon rainforests reported cities, roads and fertile fields along the banks of its major rivers. “There was one town that stretched for 15 miles without any space from house to house, which was a marvellous thing to behold,” wrote Gaspar de Carvajal, chronicler of explorer and conquistador Francisco de Orellana in 1542. “The land is as fertile and as normal in appearance as our Spain.”

Such tales were long dismissed as fantasies, not least because teeming cities were never seen or talked about again. But it now seems the chroniclers were right all along. It is our modern vision of a pristine rainforest wilderness that turns out to be the dream.

What is today one of the largest tracts of rainforest in the world was, until little more than 500 years ago, a landscape dominated by human activity, according to a review of the evidence by Charles Clement of Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus, and his colleagues.

After Europeans showed up, the inhabitants were decimated by disease and superior weaponry, and retreated into the bush, while the jungle reclaimed their fields and plazas. But, thanks to a combination of deforestation and remote sensing, what’s left of their civilisation is now re-emerging.

They reveal an anthropogenically modified Amazonia before the European conquest. “Few if any pristine landscapes remained in 1492,” says Clement. “Many present Amazon forests, while seemingly natural, are domesticated.”

And once again the romantic fantasies of the enviro-Nazis are show to be ignorant lies.

Read it.

The town of Albertville, in Savoie, is well known for its production of Beaufort, a firm cow’s milk cheese, and one of France’s flagship food features.

Since October, the skimmed whey left over from the Beaufort production in Albertville is being transformed into a biogas, a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide, which generates electricity and warm water.

Read it.

IN this age of terror, we struggle to figure out how to protect ourselves — especially, of late, from active shooters.

One suggestion, promoted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security, and now widely disseminated, is “run, hide, fight.” The idea is: Run if you can; hide if you can’t run; and fight if all else fails. This three-step program appeals to common sense, but whether it makes scientific sense is another question.

…

A vivid example of freezing was captured in a video of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. After the bomb went off, many people froze. Then, some began to try to escape (run), while others were slower on the uptake.

This variation in response is typical. Sometimes freezing is brief and sometimes it persists. This can reflect the particular situation you are in, but also your individual predisposition. Some people naturally have the ability to think through a stressful situation, or to even be motivated by it, and will more readily run, hide or fight as required. But for others, additional help is needed.

Those who have been properly trained, either deliberately or through combat experience, will not freeze but rather react, typically in a violent counterattack.

Read it.

As we reported last night, our neighbors over in Augusta County made national headlines when their “Islamophobia” caused the closure of the county’s schools. The parent of a student assigned to copy out the shahada complained, and the controversy went viral on social media. The resulting uproar caused the school board to shut down all the schools in the district yesterday, “out of an abundance of caution.”

The superintendent didn’t say what he was being “cautious” about, but you can bet the recent events in San Bernardino and Paris were in the forefront of his mind. Even a provincial school official must have noticed by now what angry Muslims tend to do when non-Muslims say or do things they find insulting to their religion.

To put the incident in perspective, consider what the equivalent assignment might have been if the topic had been Christianity. A rough equivalent would have been to copy out John 3:16 as presented in the King James Bible:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Or possibly the first of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3):

Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.

To be strictly analogous, the first would have to be copied out in Koine Greek, and the second in Hebrew.

Can you imagine a public school in the United States handing out such an assignment in the year of Our Lord 2015? It would end the career of the teacher, and possibly those of the principal and the district superintendent as well.

Read it.

The chief benefit of a business school is that it gives training and practice in working with a team — including how to compensate for the slacker(s) with which every team seems to get saddled — and in making presentation to a group without choking.

The law school trick of the Study Group is also vastly underused by undergraduates.

The New York Post is on the case.

Who needs a White House press secretary when The New York Times will cover for the president, no questions asked?

…

Obama, the Times reported online, “indicated that he did not see enough cable television to fully appreciate the anxiety after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, and made clear that he plans to step up his public arguments. Republicans were telling Americans that he is not doing anything when he is doing a lot, he said.”

What? The president of the United States of America didn’t realize how people felt in the wake of two terror attacks because he doesn’t watch enough news?

Pathetic as that excuse is, far worse is that the Times soon removed the passage from its online story, and kept it out of Friday’s print version.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

Cue freakout by enviro-Nazis.

Plastic is piling up in ecosystems all over the world, not just oceans and lakes. Its harmful effects on wildlife have been widely documented, but a few animals — like bowerbirds and hermit crabs — are doing what they can to recycle it. And according to a new study, wild bees in Canada have joined the effort, using bits of plastic waste to build their nests.

These tiny insects can’t recycle nearly enough plastic to put a significant dent in the problem, but their resourceful use of polyurethane and polyethylene is still a rare, encouraging example of nature making the best of manmade plastic pollution.

Theodore Dalrymple turns over a rock.

There is no racist like an antiracist: That is because he is obsessed by race, whose actual existence as often as not he denies. He looks at the world through race-tinted spectacles, interprets every event or social phenomenon as a manifestation of racism either implicit or explicit, and in general has the soul of a born inquisitor.

…

Outrage supposedly felt on behalf of others is extremely gratifying for more than one reason. It has the appearance of selflessness, and everyone likes to feel that he is selfless. It confers moral respectability on the desire to hate or despise something or somebody, a desire never far from the human heart. It provides him who feels it the possibility of transcendent purpose, if he decides to work toward the elimination of the supposed cause of his outrage. And it may even give him a reasonably lucrative career, if he becomes a professional campaigner or politician: For there is nothing like stirring up resentment for the creation of a political clientele.

Antiracism is a perfect cause for those with free-floating outrage because it puts them automatically on the side of the angels without any need personally to sacrifice anything. You have only to accuse others of it to feel virtuous yourself. There is no defense against the accusation: The very attempt at a defense demonstrates the truth of it. As a consequence of this, it is a rhetorical weapon of enormous power that can be wielded against anybody who opposes your views. It reduces them to silence.

Read it.

Whenever Senator Mike Lee, or some other Leniency for Drug Dealers stalwart, defends his sentencing reform legislation, he points to the case of one or two drug felons who received a sentence that seems unduly harsh. Such cases aren’t impossible to find.

But invoking them raises an obvious question and then a more subtle one. The obvious question is: if this sentence is egregious, why hasn’t President Obama commuted it? The more subtle question is: does this poor fellow languish in prison because supporters of sentencing reform want to use him as a talking point?

These questions come to the fore in light of Obama’s latest round of commutations.

PumpTube.

Jackfish Survival credit card holder.

Mossy Oak Camo Rings and Accessories. I am not making this up.

Car Battery Tester.

Lightsaber Tableware. I am not making this up.

Netflix Socks.

Earthquake-Proof Bed. More here.

Read it.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer toy.

David Friedman turns over a ‘progressive’ rock.

It has long been known that increasing the concentration of CO2 increases the yield of C3 plants, including most crop species. The usual estimate is that doubling CO2 concentration, roughly what is projected for the end of this century, increases yield by 30% or more. This is an inconvenient fact for people who want to argue that AGW will reduce food supplies. Clearly what they need is a scientific article to cite, proving that CO2 is actually a bad thing for crops.

And they have one, in Nature no less: Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition.

…

If, with a doubling of CO2 (the abstract does not say what concentration was used in the experiments), crop yield goes up by 30% but the concentration of two minerals goes slightly down and the yield of protein only increases by 24%, that is a “threat to human nutrition.”

A striking example of propaganda disguised as science.

Read it.

Progressives and Terfs are both wrong: sex differences in behavior have biological roots – men and female brains are different. I mean, if male rhesus monkeys like toy trucks and females rhesus monkeys don’t, as they do, it’s hard to attribute to social pressure. Boys are much more likely to like rough-and-tumble play, blah blah blah. The stereotypes are true. Trans men aren’t little girls inside, anymore than someone with a Napoleonic complex is ‘really’ Corsican. They’re just crazy. Now that craziness probably has some biological origin, but we don’t understand it. Even if it does, it is likely that the form of that craziness is shaped by social influences, just as Malays run amok with a bloody kris rather than going postal with a Glock.

It is possible to support a theory with implications you don’t like if it happens to be true. Although maybe that’s a guy thing.

If you want to make your stupid dream real, you need to have a realistic picture of the world. If you want a society in which men and women have the same brain, or one in which feminism actually works, you would have to make it so, with advanced biological engineering. John Varley writes fiction: so did Joanna Russ.

Read it.

The history of the looming anti-Muslim backlash that never arrives is instructive. Logically, the original post-9/11 anti-Muslim backlash should have been the largest and most ferocious of the various backlashes, and indeed George W. Bush, members of his administration and members of Congress frequently warned Americans not to blame all Muslims for the acts committed by Al-Qaeda.

I’m sure you’ve seen the breathless headlines “Guns Now Killing as Many People as Cars!!!!!!” in the Drive-By Media. (Of course, actual humans had no role in these killings, except as victims. I suppose Society’s To Blame.)

Reason magazine actually gives us some context:

Read it.

For that special someone, no need for a fruit cake or fugly sweater. Now you can send lumps of real coal, gift-wrapped with a bow and anonymous note.

Yes, coal—the bad boy of fossil fuels, the bane of environmentalists—gets new life this holiday season as the anti-present for the despised (or those with a sense of humor.)

I’m sure the address for Hillary’s campaign headquarters is on the Internet somewhere.

Freeberg has some good ideas. Read The Whole Thing.

1. FRONT LOAD the effort. If the current block of time you’re using, as in right now, this very moment, is not allocated toward a defined purpose already, find something on your unfinished-tasks list that will fit into it. The time has to be burned somehow. If you have stuff that has to get done, burn the time on getting the stuff done. Simple, right? Procrastination is cute and all, but when it leads to consequences that impact others, that means you have taken it too far.

…

10. Begin with the end in mind. What exactly is it you’re trying to do? Are you laboring toward a goal — see #5 — or are you just frittering away time doing whatever you like to do?

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Oklahoma and Nebraska argue that Colorado’s licensing and regulation of marijuana businesses violates the Controlled Substances Act and therefore the Supremacy Clause. They brought their complaint directly to the Supreme Court because they think Colorado has created an interstate conflict by allowing the production and distribution of marijuana that may end up in Oklahoma or Nebraska. Federal law gives the Supreme Court “original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States.”

Verilli rejects Oklahoma and Nebraska’s contention that the smuggling of Colorado cannabis creates an interstate controversy. “Where the plaintiff State does not allege that the defendant State has ‘confirmed or authorized’ the injury-inflicting action, there does not exist a ‘controversy’ between the States appropriate for initial resolution under this Court’s exclusive original jurisdiction,” he writes. “Nebraska and Oklahoma essentially contend that Colorado’s authorization of licensed intrastate marijuana production and distribution increases the likelihood that third parties will commit criminal offenses in Nebraska and Oklahoma by bringing marijuana purchased from licensed entities in Colorado into those states. But they do not allege that Colorado has directed or authorized any individual to transport marijuana into their territories in violation of their laws. Nor would any such allegation be plausible.”

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Sounds to me like a self-correcting problem.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

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Well, obviously Britain needs an active Black Lives Matter movement. C’mon, let’s get with the program!

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The colorful, laminated sheets (which can be viewed in this Campus Reform article) are divided into four topic areas officials thought family might ask about, including student activism, Islamophobia, the Harvard’s controversial house master title change and black murders in the street.

The placemats offered helpful responses like: “When I hear students expressing their experiences of racism on campus, I don’t hear complaining. Instead I hear young people uplifting a situation that I might not experience.”

Apparently the world is not yet ready for meal-time lessons on the Party Line.

If they were to think first, then act, they wouldn’t have this problem.

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Year after year here in our Dusty Little Village (DLV), the education establishment puts an initiative on the ballot to increase property taxes for schools. For eight years and counting, it has failed. It will fail again.

Most of us Geezer-Americans have scant interest in donating even more to educate half of Mexico or to fund all the Diversity Drones and special programs whose gentle ministrations crank out the annual crop of psychotic ninnies infesting our colleges.