Columbia the Gem of the Ocean

I learned to sing this in elementary school. I don’t suppose they do that any more.

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Happy Ramadan. Be careful not to step in the diversity.

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Will the Islamophobia never cease?

Happy Ramadan. Be careful not to step in the diversity.

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Östersund is a town of 44,000 in central Sweden that has recently been culturally enriched with “Syrian” “asylum seekers”. As reported here back in March, police in Östersund have advised women not to venture out alone after dark, due to a wave of assaults and rapes.

Now, four months later, the authorities have acknowledged that the culprits in these assaults are asylum seekers, a.k.a. “New Swedes”. Furthermore, staying home at night hasn’t been sufficient protection, as more recent assaults against women have occurred in broad daylight.

Other Swedish towns are experiencing similar numbers of sexual assaults by culture-enrichers.

Happy Ramadan. Be careful not to step in the diversity.

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Young strong asylum seekers regularly storm the local food banks in Germany and demand halal food. Food bank workers and needy local elderly residents are being pushed out of the way, run over, ridiculed and laughed at (and probably robbed, too, along the way).

Happy Ramadan. Be careful not to step in the diversity.

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Happy Ramadan. Be careful not to step in the diversity.

Ross Douthat pulls the cork out.

Genuine cosmopolitanism is a rare thing. It requires comfort with real difference, with forms of life that are truly exotic relative to one’s own. It takes its cue from a Roman playwright’s line that “nothing human is alien to me,” and goes outward ready to be transformed by what it finds.

The people who consider themselves “cosmopolitan” in today’s West, by contrast, are part of a meritocratic order that transforms difference into similarity, by plucking the best and brightest from everywhere and homogenizing them into the peculiar species that we call “global citizens.”

This species is racially diverse (within limits) and eager to assimilate the fun-seeming bits of foreign cultures — food, a touch of exotic spirituality. But no less than Brexit-voting Cornish villagers, our global citizens think and act as members of a tribe.

They have their own distinctive worldview (basically liberal Christianity without Christ), their own common educational experience, their own shared values and assumptions (social psychologists call these WEIRD — for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic), and of course their own outgroups (evangelicals, Little Englanders) to fear, pity and despise. And like any tribal cohort they seek comfort and familiarity: From London to Paris to New York, each Western “global city” (like each “global university”) is increasingly interchangeable, so that wherever the citizen of the world travels he already feels at home.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the ‘elite’ colleges. Take any senior from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Duke, or Berkeley, and no matter what country they originally came from, no matter what the color of their skin, no matter what their native language, they’re all as alike as peas in a pod. A very elegant pod, but a pod nevertheless.

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Since 2015 European nations have been comparing information on known Islamic terrorists with the lists of the most recent Moslem refugees it had accepted and has found more and more e asylum seekers with Islamic terrorism backgrounds. This is most common in countries that accept these refugees via a UN resettlement program. Since 2014 intelligence agencies have been warning Western governments that ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and other Islamic terror groups have been sending members along with refugees entering, often illegally, Europe and the West in general.

Steve Sailer scratches his head over Trump Derangement Syndrome.

The various mainstream media frenzies over Donald Trump are becoming increasingly bizarre. For example, today’s seizure was over a Trump tweet about Hillary’s crookedness, which became widely seized upon by pundits as proof of Trump’s virulent anti-Semitism.

Why?

See the red star highlighting the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!”

It’s a … six-pointed star!

Obviously, Trump is using the red star to subliminally point out the fact that, as everybody knows, Hillary Rodham Clinton is Jewish!

Everybody does know that, right?

What? … Hillary’s not Jewish? … Really? …

Okay, never mind …

Hey! But what about red being the Jewish color?

Oh. I see.

As a wise man once said, ‘If you hear the dog whistle, then you’re the dog’.

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What if damaged teeth could heal themselves? That’s the inspiration behind a new project from Harvard and the University of Nottingham to create stem cell stimulating fillings.

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Maybe now the Animals Rights fascists will STFU.

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The FBI is being sued by survivors of the deadly attack on a church in Charleston who say that mistakes by investigators allowed alleged shooter Dylann Roof to purchase a gun.

If this actually works, prepare for the onslaught of suits against ICE for crimes committed by multiply-deported ‘undocumented’ aliens.

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24-year-old Miriam Cepeda is part of an unlikely group: young, Latina women who support Donald Trump for president.

Cepeda doesn’t just support Trump privately — she actually campaigns for him at the University of Texas in Rio Grande Valley and in the community, not far from where Trump has vowed to build his wall along the South Texas border.

Although she is the daughter of an undocumented immigrant, Cepeda told CNN she strongly agrees with Trump’s immigration and border security policies.

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Can’t have that….

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Hint: Surprisingly well.

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It’s never too young to indoctrinate the Children of the Crust with The Narrative.

The rich people who pay for this sort of thing deserve the kids they get as a result.

Unfortunately, we have to suffer them as well.

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Same day registration and other liberal “reforms” have made it easy for ineligible voters to cast ballots in many states. When law-abiding citizens point out that liberal policies enable voter fraud, the left’s response is always that 1) voter fraud hardly ever happens, so 2) you must be a racist. Typically subtle liberal argumentation.

Here in Minnesota, a case is pending in our Supreme Court that challenges same day registration and various actions by our Democratic Secretary of State that have enabled illegal voting.

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The lawyers representing plaintiffs in the case have done a great deal of digging, and have come up with names, dates and places–illegal votes that likely swung Minnesota elections toward Democratic candidates.

Funny how there are never allegations of voter fraud benefitting Republicans. I wonder why that is.

Minnesota’s Secretary of State, Steve Simon, has tried to frustrate investigation into illegal voting by refusing to turn over either to polling places or to the plaintiffs in the lawsuit the complete list, which the state maintains, of those who have lost their voting rights. It is hard to see any possible reason why this list should be a secret, other than the Democrats’ desire that convicted felons, who overwhelmingly vote their way, get away with voting illegally.

No news there. Think of a tattooed gang-banger sitting in a cell. Think he’s going to vote for a Republican? The question answers itself.

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In 2012, secretive robotics startup Momentum Machines debuted a machine that could crank out 400 made-to-order hamburgers in an hour. It’s fully autonomous, meaning the robot can slice toppings, grill a patty, and assemble and bag the burger without any help from humans. The internet flipped out.

Years of relative silence ensued, but in January, Hoodline’s Brittany Hopkins learned that the San Francisco-based startup had applied for a building permit to convert a ground-floor retail space in the SoMa neighborhood into a restaurant.

Bad news for ‘undocumented’ workers.

According to the job posting, Momentum Machines is looking for a self-motivated, conscientious applicant to take on the role of “restaurant generalist” at the restaurant.

It describes the ideal candidate as “autonomous,” which seems about right since future robotic coworkers will also be quite autonomous.

Note: One candidate. One.

In 2012, Momentum Machines created a prototype machine that allowed every part of a burger to be customized, from cook time, condiments, and thickness of patties, depending on the day’s menu.

And it doesn’t even have to speak (or understand) Spanish.

The prototype could replace two to three full-time line cooks, saving a fast-food restaurant up to $90,000 a year in training, salaries, and overhead costs, tech blog Xconomy reported after catching a live demo.

Thank you, minimum-wage increase. These robots wouldn’t have been economically viable without you.

Marshmallow crossbow.

Whopper ‘air freshener’.

Golchi modular bottle.

Magnetic shoe laces. I am not making this up.

The beard hat.

Omnidirectional wheels.

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

And don’t get me started on what government bureaucrats devoted to fighting poverty make a year.

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The U.S. Army is one of the most lethal fighting forces in the modern world. In 1991, it demolished the Iraqi Army in 100 hours. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S. Army marched to Baghdad in 18 days. The ratio of enemy combat vehicles destroyed to losses suffered by U.S. and coalition forces in both Iraqi wars was stunningly lopsided.  Both in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Army has shown a remarkable capacity to dominate across a large part of the conflict spectrum. Even the much-feared improvised explosive device (IED) threat was reduced to a manageable level through the amazing efforts of Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (now Joint Improvised-threat Defeat Agency) and a host of government laboratories and, most important, private contractors.

Unfortunately, the Army has shown itself to be equally lethal when it comes to starting and then killing major acquisition programs.  Over the past thirty years, the U.S. Army has cancelled some 20 major acquisition programs including armored fighting vehicles, helicopters, artillery pieces, communications systems, infantry weapons and munitions. If you count designs that never got out of the research and development (R&D) process that number more than doubles.

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According to a 2011 review of Army Acquisition, between 1998 and 2011, the Army spent more than $1 billion dollars annually on programs that were ultimately cancelled. The Army’s Big Five mistakes – the Future Combat System, Comanche Helicopter, Crusader cannon, Brilliant anti-armor munition and the Ground Combat Vehicle — cost the Army a total of $33 billion for nothing. The Army has a reputation for funding lots of R&D projects ever year. Yet, during this same period the Army spent between 22 percent and 34 percent of its annual Developmental Test and Evaluation budget on programs that were cancelled. The total loss of R&D resources on cancelled programs between 1985 and 2014 is estimated to be some $38.5 billion.

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How did a big-money Clinton donor get on an expert panel next to nuclear scientists?

Theory: Money may have changed hands. Just sayin’.

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Over the last decade the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has found it increasingly difficult to keep its head above water financially, often posting annual losses in the billions. A steep decline of mail volume due to the rise of online communications has reduced USPS’s role in the market place. As the Postal Service’s fiscal instability has grown, so have calls for USPS reform. Potential reforms range from shifting to centralized delivery, changes in governance, and full privatization.

Freeberg has been thinking.

I was making a bee line toward the checkout stands in a grocery store the other day, with a bottle of wine in hand. Just that. 1.5L of white wine, nothing else. And I found myself thinking about this scam we have going…supposedly we live under a system of just laws, because the laws are written and ratified by elected officials who are beholden to us. The reason I was thinking it was a scam, was because the self-checkout lanes were all empty and the human-monitored checkout lanes were all full. The lines were snaking backward, into the aisles.

You can’t buy alcohol in a self-checkout lane.

The problem is not that the law happened to be inconvenient to me, in the moment. There is a defense against that, that pretty much all laws are inconvenient now & then, that’s why they have to be laws. That much is reasonable. The problem is a question: Who the fuck wanted this? Whoever said “Without government, who’s going to stop me from buying alcohol in a self-checkout lane”? And while we’re pondering that one, we can think about another question that rises to confront us: With all the self-checkout lanes empty, and all the human-checkout lanes full, who does this law help?

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And why should they? It’s more important to value diversity and study people of color and transgenders.

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I hope that all of the pro-marijuana ‘Let’s legalize it! Then we can tax it!’ people are paying attention.

I still think some Puritanism is at work—it bothers activists that smokers find vaping enjoyable, as opposed to arm patches, nasal sprays and ten-step programs. But some readers reminded me of an even bigger and more cynical reason for the state’s approach: officials are addicted to their cut of tobacco-related revenues. Smoking rates are declining. As smokers give up their bad habit, anti-smoking programs lose tax dollars.

Taking dollars from government agencies and government-addicted nonprofits makes them as grumpy as taking the last pack of cigarettes from a habitual smoker. Even though the state passed several new laws—raising the smoking age to 21 and regulating e-cigarettes like tobacco, for instance—anti-tobacco activists have qualified an initiative for the November ballot that would go even further. The “California Healthcare, Research and Prevention Tobacco Tax Act of 2016” is, as its name suggests, all about hiking tax rates.

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Sue! Sue! It’s what we do!

After a jury ruled that Cinemark was not responsible for the 2012 massacre in Aurora, Colorado, the owner of the movie theater is seeking $700,000 from the victims of the mass shooting.

The original lawsuit made by the victims’ families argued that the chain should have provided more security to prevent the shooter from killing 12 people and injuring 70 others during the airing of The Dark Knight rises. Cinemark would go on to win the case on June 24.

Now, Cinemark has filed a “bill of costs” against the families requesting $699,187.13, The Denver Post reports. Under Colorado law, winners of civil cases are allowed to recover litigation costs.

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We believe job loss won’t be catastrophic but there will be some on the margins, and it’s a nasty experience for the people who do lose their jobs. They tend to lose them for the rest of their lives. But the fear is overstated. Computers don’t tend to replace whole jobs; they replace specific tasks. Also, it’s a relatively slow process to eliminate jobs. There are just as many bank tellers now as there were in 1980. It’s not a profession that’s growing and no one would recommend it for their child, but it takes quite a while to replace jobs.