Jerry Pournelle, who actually has some expertise in this area, shares some thoughts.

Signals from one server to another san often be recorded as they go by. With enough effort some of that can be read. Is that hacking? The Russian Intelligence Community is itself divided, between the successors of the State Security Committee (KGB) and the military intelligence organization (GRU). Both still exist but I think under different names; the KGB was successor to the ministry if the Interior, and went by MVD, NKVD, and a other names; there was also a party intelligence agency under the Soviets; I believe its assets were mostly absorbed by the KGB, which itself divided into an internal and an external agency, like the British MI 5 and MI5. Of course there are the remains of the old spy nets in the US and Canada; they are officially disbanded, and you can believe as much of that as you want to.

What they don’t have is infinite resources. They have enough to go after the low hanging fruit like a private server used by the Secretary of State, but hacking the Democratic National Committee with a goal of influencing an American election?

Read it.

Should be about right for Obama, then.

Steve Sailer gives us a peek behind the curtain.

We need some new conceptual categories to complement Fake News, such as Lame News: articles that have been intentionally hamstrung to avoid triggering Social Justice Warriors. Here’s a factually correct and somewhat informative New York Times article about a hippie town in British Columbia.

…

But the first thing that has been cut out of the article is any direct mention that this is another example of Leftwing White Flight. You and I are familiar with the concept (e.g., Portland, OR and Portland, ME), and thus we can notice that almost everybody in the article fleeing to remote Nelson is white. But most poor dumb NYT readers are clueless that there is such a Thing as Leftwing White Flight and this article isn’t going to bring up a conceptual category that would make them uncomfortable.

Second, why are all these nice white people unable to afford to live in Vancouver anymore? Well, you know and I know it’s because of Canada’s massive legal immigration levels causing Asian immigrants’ demand for housing in Vancouver to drive prices through the roof: the Law of Supply and Demand applies to immigration-related realities, just as it applies to everything else. But if you do a text search for “MIGR” you won’t see any words like “immigration” or “migrants” in the article.

Worse than ‘fake news’ is purported ‘news’ that doesn’t tell you what’s actually going on.

Read it.

If there’s anything American capitalism is really good at, after all—for better or worse—it’s figuring out ways for consumers to pay for things that they otherwise couldn’t afford, and may not even need. That new iPhone? Pay for it over two years in connection with your cellphone service contract. A new house? How about a 30-year mortgage, or even an interest-only adjustable rate mortgage? A new car? Lease it for three years. College tuition? Try a section 529 tax-deferred savings account, student loans, and financial aid.

Leave cancer or diabetes aside for the moment. With all due respect to Professor Gawande, Harvard, and the New Yorker, it’s just hard for me to believe that in the absence of Obamacare, the expense of pregnancy will suddenly become out of reach to ordinary Americans. Somehow, hundreds of millions of Americans managed to become pregnant in the more than two centuries that the republic existed before 2010, when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed. If the law is repealed, we’ll find a way to reproduce again afterward.

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With the near-collapse of Maryland’s co-op — called Evergreen Health — at least 989,000 individuals nationwide have lost their health insurance coverage when the nonprofit co-ops stopped selling insurance to customers, according to TheDCNF’s tally.

The losses cost taxpayers at least $2.2 billion in upfront federal loans awarded by the Obama administration to 24 nonprofit co-ops under Obamacare. The co-ops were intended to help keep health care costs down by providing non-profit competition with commercial for-profit insurers.

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Of course. You don’t keep records for a slush fund.

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Of course. They know he’s on the Team.

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Don’t see why — they can just make up new climate change data the way they made up the last set.

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The glut of “fake news” filling the web doesn’t make it any easier. America’s insatiable appetite for quick headlines and prior-confirming news feeds has made it all but impossible to identity that pesky thing we like to call “truth.”

This is especially so when it comes to the progressive penchant for histrionics.

Take a recent Huffington Post confessional for instance. “How I Ended Up in a Psych Ward on Election Night,” written by 38-year-old science journalist and Hillary superfan Benjamin Ryan, details how political fandom can go awry. Ryan, who looks so insanely metro even gays would call him a faggot, actually experienced suicidal thoughts on Election Day when his queen was felled by the gruff man’s-man Donald Trump.

Joel Kotkin debunks the myth.

Some aspects of Trumpism do exhibit some classic fascist modalities — emphasis on personal charisma, attacks on vulnerable minorities, rage against comfortable and self-satisfied elites. Yet, at the same time, some of the most histrionic attacks on Trump come from people who, rather than rejecting authoritarianism, really fear only his politically incorrect version of it.

During the election, Trump supporters did not generally disrupt Clinton rallies, but disturbances by progressives were somewhat common. After the election, the most hysterical forebodings about free speech came from the very college campuses — along with the left-leaning social media — that have not exactly been friendly to free speech.

The Left only worries about Fascism the way Coke worries about Pepsi.

Read it.

But it was more important to have a corrupt liar in the White House just because she was a woman.

Steve Sailer reads the New York Times so you don’t have to.

It’s psychologically stressful being a Good Person these days: there’s Fake News, there are all the Muslim girls and NFL players being attacking by roving mobs of Trump voters, the Kremlin is sending secret messages to your Republican uncle that he must receive via his dental fillings the way he keeps coming up with wisecracks when you try to talk to him about how evil he is …

And then there’s the constant menace of Racist Objects.

Makes you wonder sometimes how the people who write for the Times manage to get through the day without committing suicide. Just hatred of normal people, I guess.

Read it.

A “Marxist” “collectivist” “worker-run” restaurant in Grand Rapids, Michigan, closed its doors this week after customers complained that they could no longer tolerate the bizarre hours, high prices and long lines.

That sounds like every Marxist administration ever.

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Out of idle curiosity, I’ve been asking friends, people my age and younger, what they know about war — war stories they’ve heard from their families, facts they’ve learned in school, stray images that might have stuck with them from old TV documentaries. I wasn’t interested in fine points of strategy, but the key events, the biggest moments, the things people at the time had thought would live on as long as there was anybody around to remember the past. To give everybody a big enough target I asked about World War II.

…

So what did the people I asked know about the war? Nobody could tell me the first thing about it. Once they got past who won they almost drew a blank. All they knew were those big totemic names — Pearl Harbor, D day, Auschwitz, Hiroshima — whose unfathomable reaches of experience had been boiled down to an abstract atrocity. The rest was gone. Kasserine, Leyte Gulf, Corregidor, Falaise, the Ardennes didn’t provoke a glimmer of recognition; they might as well have been off-ramps on some exotic interstate. I started getting the creepy feeling that the war had actually happened a thousand years ago, and so it was forgivable if people were a little vague on the difference between the Normandy invasion and the Norman Conquest and couldn’t say offhand whether the boats sailed from France to England or the other way around.

Read it.

If you quit, even for just a month or so, the news-watching habit might start to look quite ugly and unnecessary to you, not unlike how a smoker only notices how bad tobacco makes things smell once he stops lighting up.

For one thing, you don’t have to listen to so many Democrats pretending to be impartial.

Read it.

Hint: It was a scam to buy more votes from the SWPL crowd.

Back in January, President Obama asked Congress to set aside $4 billion for computer science education, in what would have been the federal government’s largest targeted funding for promoting the subject in schools. The proposal seemed designed to generate more headlines than actual funding — and now, nearly a year down the road, that largely seems to be what’s happened.

Not mentioned: The threshold question of What business is it of the Federal government to spend money on computer education?

Read it.

Victor Davis Hanson: “Trump had all the right enemies. All the people you don’t like, don’t like Trump.”

Read it.

The reason why there’s a “consensus” that climate change is happening is because it’s such a huge career detriment for a scientist to be skeptical of global warming. The E.P.A. spends billions of dollars a year on climate change research and the research money only goes to scientists who believe (or claim to believe) in climate change.

Once Trump controls the E.P.A., he can redirect the billions of dollars to research skeptical of climate change. And suddenly, overnight, we will see large numbers of skeptical scientists appear out of nowhere and there will no longer be a “consensus.”

Follow the money.

Read it.

A sensible approach would be for the federal government to take the lead in rebalancing America’s allocation of population and resources by taking a good hard look at whether so much federal activity needs to be concentrated in Washington, DC, and its suburbs. Moving agencies out of the DC area to the Midwest would obviously cause some short-term disruptions. But in the long run, relocated agencies’ employees would enjoy cheaper houses, shorter commutes, and a higher standard of living, while Midwestern communities would see their population and tax base stabilized and gain new opportunities for complementary industries to grow.

Read it.

The Reductio ad Hitlerum (see also Godwin’s Law) has been a standard tactic of argumentation by left-leaning folks for a number of decades. Ever since the presidency of George W. Bush — and perhaps going all the way back to Ronald Reagan — it has been the primary method of dealing with any opinions even slightly to the right of those held by the people who employ it.

With the election of Donald Trump, the lefties are falling all over themselves to validate Godwin’s Law whenever they possibly can. If Nigel Farage was the Political Figure Most Often Depicted as a Nazi in 2016, surely Mr. Trump will win that coveted prize for 2017.

Read it.

“What appeals to me about Trump is the same message that appeals to all Americans that voted for him,” Perez, 32, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Trump’s message is about putting America first and doing what’s best for the American people, even if it’s not the best for me.”

He’s a first generation immigrant from Mexico City now residing in Utah on a student visa.

“Some friends of mine make fun of me for supporting Trump and his ‘racist policies,’” he added. “But when we discuss it deeper and they think about it, they agree it’s natural to feel protective of your home.”

Read it. And listen … if you dare….

Because your day wasn’t annoying enough.

Read it.

Last week the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government could not be held financially responsible for issuing erroneous warnings about the source of an outbreak of foodborne illness that caused the loss of millions of dollars of tomatoes.

The warnings, issued by the FDA in 2008, turned out to be wildly inaccurate and deeply damaging.

Government employees routinely take actions that would put private actors in jail or cost them huge fines. And yet they skate — nobody gets fired, nobody goes to jail.

Guitar-Shotgun Hybrid.

Portion Control Pasta Basket.

Magnetic Tool Holder. I have something like this for knives in my kitchen, but this is the first time I’ve seen one for actual tools. But it makes perfect sense.

Foldscope Paper Microscope.

Pocket Saw. I think I saw one of these in Batman’s utility belt.

Read it.

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

On the other hand, I have a hard time getting excited about this.

Read it.

An aggressive push in the liberal media to push a narrative of widespread “fake news” may have backfired as members of the liberal media now face that same “fake news” label being applied to their own reporting.

People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Read it.

The ‘fake news’ is all coming from the DemLegHump Media.

Read it.

Trump spent a grand total of $600 million in his bid for the White House, according to official FEC reports, much lower than the estimated $1.2 billion former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised and spent in her massive attempt to win.

Trump spent $94 million of that during the final month of the campaign, smaller than the nearly $132 million Clinton spent on just ad buys nationwide. Clinton’s last-minute spending push left her with only $800,000 in the campaign spending account — meaning she spent most of the money raised.

So all the hand-wringers pissing and moaning about The Effect Of Money On Politics can just STFU.

Sarah Hoyt is always worth reading.

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me about the left is what I’d call “Sh*t sentimentality” and a crazy desire for the past.  Growing up, they made me read jobs about how bad some jobs were: cleaning lady, assembly line, miner, server.  BUT now they’re wailing that those jobs will vanish.

There are two keys to this: first, they are truly contemptuous of their fellow men.  The modern leftist is not a worker, nor a man of the people, he is an intellectual, someone who did very well in the indoctrination factories we call schools.  This encourages him to think anyone who doesn’t think like him is stupid, but more importantly, it encourages him to think anyone who doesn’t do well and mind-and-pen tasks is stupid.  I know.  I would have succumbed to that temptation if I hadn’t grown up in a village, where there weren’t enough people to insulate me from contact with people in manual professions who, sure, thought I was nuts reading as much as I did, but who could think faster and better than I in non-intellectual/abstract subjects.

And the second is that the left, thinking they’re smarter, think they have an obligation to “look after” the less intellectually fortunate.  Which is why they are all bent out of shape about these sh*t jobs disappearing.  I mean, yeah, they suck, but how can the left/bureaucrats come up with new jobs to replace the lost ones?  How will they look after the unemployed?  And how can we not care that technology is killing jobs????  How can we not want to beef up the welfare state to look after these poor people too stupid to do anything else?  We’re monsters, I tell you, monsters.

Ammo Grrrl shows how it’s done.

And, oh, the fun things you’ll find in that pantry! On this shelf, lurking behind the powdered sugar, a weaponized chunk of brown sugar! Yes, yes, I know there’s household hints on how to soften it again, but I’d rather just go ahead and spend that $1.29 to replace it and read a good book. I may keep the bag in my nightstand next to my .45 as something I can throw if I run through all the cartridges in my four magazines. (Plus one in the chamber.)

Also found in the pantry are several small cans of beets, expired for just two years, that were purchased because they were supposed to be good for some darn thing or other I read about somewhere. Nobody in my entire social circle will eat beets. Even my farm girl bestie, Angela, insists that “beets taste like dirt,” though I have never asked her how she knows that. The Paranoid Texan Next Door has MILK that is more than two years old, but, call me crazy, I threw the beets out.

Over here are several varieties of stale crackers in opened boxes that SOMEBODY – I’m not going to mention any names here, but his initials are Mr. AG – failed to seal up properly. It is hard to keep crackers fresh when the boxes look like they have been broken into by some very impatient, ravenous raccoon and the little tab will therefore no longer fit into the slot.

Read it.

If you’re like me — and let’s face it, you are, in more ways than you care to admit — you live your life by one simple precept. One thought, over and over, that helps you navigate through your day: What would Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. do?

I don’t have to tell you that you failed to ask yourself that question on Nov. 8, America. And Joe is very disappointed in you.

Compare the treatment of Joe Biden in the DemLegHump Media (fawning indulgence) with that received by Dan Quayle (savage scorn and ridicule). Note that Joe Biden said ten times the number of Stupid Things than Dan Quayle is reputed to have said.

Marvel at the current search for Fake News by the primary purveyors of it in the modern world.

Read it.

Not that it matters — to Social Justice Warriors, everybody from outside of the First World is effectively a child and must be looked after (at YOUR expense) by Smart Liberal White People.

Joe Bob Briggs explains it all.

You’ve never been a billionaire. You don’t know where to start.

I’m here to help.

EU Report: Up To 1,750 Jihadis Have Returned To Europe

More than 150,000 people ‘condemned to death’ at hands of Assad regime, city’s council head says

British police must investigate ‘honour killings’ of UK women committed abroad, MPs say

U.S. official: 50,000 Islamic State militants killed to date

The SPLC Considers The Most Deadly Islamic Terror Attack Since 9/11 A Right-Wing Plot You can’t make this stuff up.

An ISIS video tells its followers to attack Shiites and Americans in Bahrain

EU says member states can start deporting refugees and migrants back to Greece from March

Graz: Austrians Celebrating Christmas Beaten and Whipped by Afghans

Immolated on the Street in Kronshagen

Soldier wounded in November suicide attack on Bagram Airfield dies

Culture-Enricher in Berlin Kicks a Woman Down the Stairs of the Subway — Just for the Hell of It

Keith Ellison’s Saudi Arabia Trip Included Meetings With Radical Cleric, Bank That Funds Suicide Bombings

ISIS Claim Of Record High Number Of Suicide Attacks Shows It Is Growing Desperate

Austrian government plans to jail and fine refugees who lie about nationalities

Women in Lebanon protest law allowing rapists to marry their victims to escape punishment

DHS: Hamas-Tied NJ Imam Must Prove Why He Shouldn’t Be Deported

An Afghan woman goes from refugee to military pilot

Obama’s Iraq Sob Story Skips His Role In ISIS Rise

Poll: Half Of Italians No Longer Feel At Home Because Of Immigration

After the Candlelight Vigils: Where Islam and the Left Meet

Bringing Christmas to the Anarchists and Muslims of Nørrebro

Bulgaria: Gang-Rape of Children in the Harmanli Asylum Center

Refugee Allegedly Rapes And Kills German Woman, Her Family Says To Send Donations To Refugees

Muslim Cleric: Trump Hates The Same Terrorists I Hate

YouTube Censors Video Of Pro-Israel Muslim As ‘Hate Speech’

Notorious Iranian General Now Directing Operations On Front Lines In Syria

Saudi Arabia Caught Red-Handed Funding US Enemies In Afghanistan

Prominent Mideast Studies Profs Sexually Harassed Students

Iran jails fashion bloggers and models for ‘spreading prostitution’

The Syrian bishop who saved 226 Christian hostages from Isis

Saudi Arabia sentences 15 people to death over Iranian spy case

Bulgarian Demographer: 100 Million Migrants in Europe by 2050

How to Keep Iraq’s Unruly Militias Under Control

German government calls for calm after asylum seeker accused of rape and murder ignites anti-migrant backlash

Man radicalised by hate preacher jailed for attacking schoolboy in London street  ‘Radicalized’ always makes me think of ‘Sanforized’.

New ISIS Spokesman Makes Chilling Promise As Coalition Descends On Capital Cities

Ohio Man Who Screamed ‘Allah is In Control’ Supposedly ‘Not A Terrorist’  Sure, I believe that.

The Dead Girl and the Sick Country

Ohio man to be sentenced in plot to attack U.S. Capitol

Russian field hospital hit in Syria’s Aleppo, nurse killed

Welcome to Munich, the Groping Capital of Europe

Australian Court Rules Muslim Women Must Testify Without Veil

So many people are dying in Aleppo the graveyards are now full

Female Isis suicide bomber uses children as decoys to attack Libyan forces

Afghan Refugee Arrested For Rape, Murder Of Top EU Official’s Daughter

CDU Member to Chancellor Merkel: “For the First Time in My Life, I Feel Real Fear”

When Asked About Mosques, Italians Say: Close Them ALL!

Mother of British teenager killed fighting for Isis starts group to help parents counter radicalisation

The Islamic Crusade and the Clueless West

Nadia Murad: Escaped Yazidi Isis sex-slave on why she will continue to fight persecution after group vows to recapture her

Close the “Radical” Mosques, And the Salafists Pray in the Streets

Bulgarian Epidemiologist on ISIS’ Biological Warfare: What Frightens Me Most is Illegal Migration

Ohio State Attack Sheds Light on Somali Community’s Struggle With Terrorism  They don’t appear to be struggling all that hard.

The Iraqi Parliament’s Outrageous Legitimization Of Shia Death Squads

Aleppo: Children killed while trying to escape battles between rebels and regime forces advancing on Syrian city

Confronting Al Qaeda: The Sunni Awakening and American Strategy in al Anbar

Turkey’s Slide into Authoritarianism

European Police Force Warns ‘Several Dozen’ ISIS Attacks Planned For Christmas

The Gore Effect is real.

About 10 “Keep It In The Ground” activists waved signs next to a busy road in the Denver area, calling for the Obama administration to stop issuing leases so companies can drill on public lands. Activists say drilling only exacerbates global warming.

The irony, however, is activists stood outside about 4 inches of snow with temperatures hovering in the 20s — in degrees Fahrenheit. The official low temperature was negative 10 degrees early Thursday morning, according to the National Weather Service.

Enviro-Nazis, of course, say that local weather doesn’t disprove their Globalclimate Warmingchange position, conveniently ignoring their own predilection to cite local hot weather in their own support.

This phenomenon is called the “Gore effect” — coined after a global warming rally held by former Vice President Al Gore in 2004 was met with frigid weather. A similar rally held by Gore in 2006 in Australia was also hit by cold weather.

It’s not just Gore who’s held freezing global warming rallies. Yale anti-fossil fuel campaigners postponed a protest in early 2015 due to “unfavorable weather conditions and other logistical issues.” New Haven witnessed a negative 9 degrees when the event was canceled.

This cold snap was suspiciously close the the trip AlGore made to visit the Trumps only days previously.

Read it.

He has succeeded in getting NBC and the Democratic Party to leap to defend the honor of big corporations, job loss, and overcharging on government contracts.

Not a bad day’s work.

Read it.

Ethnicity is central to China’s national identity. It is the Han, 1.2bn of them in mainland China alone, that most people refer to as “Chinese”, rather than the country’s minorities, numbering 110m people. Ethnicity and nationality have become almost interchangeable for China’s Han, says James Leibold of La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. That conflation is of fundamental importance. It defines the relations between the Han and other ethnic groups. By narrowing its legal labour market almost entirely to people of Han descent, ethnicity is shaping the country’s economy and development. And it strains foreign relations, too. Even ethnic Han whose families left for other countries generations ago are often regarded as part of a coherent national group, both by China’s government and people.

Waiting for the Social Justice Warriors to take an a REAL raaaaaaacist society — Red China.

Read it.

The SWPL chickens come home to roost.

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More real science to confound the fantasies of Globalclimate Warmingchange.

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And the browshirts of the Left are on the march….

Yet Trump is the New Hitler.

If Republicans had done that to Hillary Moore would be one of the first to scream bloody murder.

Read it.

Since the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United States has carried a disproportionate share of the burden for defending the West. Indeed, today, in addition to America, only four allies meet the 2 percent of GDP NATO defense spending requirement: the United Kingdom, Poland, Greece and Estonia.

…

Enter candidate Donald Trump. From March 21 to March 29, 2016, Trump made his feelings about NATO members’ failure to live up to their defense spending obligations abundantly clear. In the Washington Post, he stated: “NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe but we’re spending a lot of money. Number 1, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed.” He told the New York Times, “NATO is unfair, economically, to us, to the United States. Because it really helps them more so than the United States, and we pay a disproportionate share.” On the Charlie Sykes radio show, Trump escalated the rhetoric: “We are getting ripped off by every country in NATO.” Then, at a rally outside Milwaukee, he laid out the consequences of continued allied inaction: “Either they have to pay up for past deficiencies or they have to get out.”

Trump’s comments on NATO were criticized by his Republican competitors, and Hillary Clinton brought up Trump’s NATO views repeatedly in the presidential debates. Trump was accused of undermining the NATO alliance and causing our allies to lose confidence in America’s commitment to them. But something amazing started happening: America’s allies began pledging to increase their defense budgets. For example, on October 15, Germany said that it was going to spend €1.5 billion on five new corvettes to patrol the Baltic Sea, and that the ships would be dedicated to NATO missions.

Read it.

Sure, open up the border! Let ’em all in! What could go wrong?

Read it.

The biter bit. Pass the popcorn.

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At an extraordinary meeting of the normally staid State Lands Commission on Tuesday, a series of lawyers, local residents and surfers lined up to encourage the commissioners to follow their staff’s recommendation and use the extraordinary power of eminent domain to force Vinod Khosla to sell a parcel of land that covers the only entrance to Martins beach in San Mateo county.

The Sun Microsystems cofounder, who is worth $1.5bn, bought a 90-acre plot of land alongside the popular surfing spot in 2008 for $32.5m before closing public access in 2010. It has been tied up in legal disputes ever since.

Despite the state of California passing a specific law designed to force Khosla to open up access or sell the relevant piece of land (and bypass his novel legal strategy), he has refused to back down during two years of negotiations and talks have gone nowhere. That finally led the commission’s staff to make the extraordinary recommendation to the commission that it use its power to force a compulsory purchase. If voted on, it would be the first time in 78 years of existence that the commission would have done so.

But after 90 minutes of testimony and nearly an hour in closed session, the commissioners backed down and instead asked staff to “report back on the specific steps and process elements associated with the condemnation.”

In Hillary Country, he who has the gold makes the rules. Democrats talk a good fight about ‘power to the people’, but when the chips are down the guy who has the chips gets his way.

Read it.

And the hits just keep on comin’….