Read it.

When Eric Holder was attorney general for President Barack Obama, the Department of Justice used the federal ban on marijuana possession to arrest and imprison Californians who were legally growing under the state’s medical marijuana laws.

But never mind—that Donald Trump sure is a monster! Concerned about what Trump might do to increase enforcement of immigration laws and to loosen environmental regulations, California’s state legislature has hired Holder from his law firm, Covington & Burling, to serve as outside legal counsel. Mind you, California has a very powerful and expensive crew of state-level attorneys, but what’s an additional $25,000 a month (for now)?

Don’t think of it as selling out — think of it as cashing in.

Read it.

I rather think it was.

Don’t shop at Target. Just sayin’.

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The assumption seems to be that the root of all medical innovation is university research, primarily funded by federal grants. This is mistaken. The private economy, not the government, actually discovers and develops most of the insights and products that advance health. The history of medical progress supports this conclusion.

Read it.

Well, if he’s short of eating money, he can always step outside his office to one of the free-food courts at Apple HQ.

Read it.

It’s time once more for the Great Race! No, not the excellent Jack Lemmon/Tony Curtis comedy. I mean the media/alt-left’s quest to make everything in America about race — except when it’s about race in a way they don’t like.

Then it’s not about race at all.

Read it.

Black Lives Matter.
“Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon!”
Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.
“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
“F**k white people!”

If you recognize any of those phrases and don’t like them, you’re a racist and you need to check your privilege. You’re what’s wrong with America, and you’re on the wrong side of history. Shame on you. Shame, shame, shame.

But wait, there’s more!

Read it.

Not discussed: What possible reason you might have for caring about that.

Read it.

An example of the modern neurotic notion that being abnormal somehow makes a person morally superior.

James Miller is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

Sara Seager is a brilliant astrophysicist at M.I.T. who is dedicated to discovering more earthlike planets in the universe. Her life’s work has been committed to finding habitable planets light-years away from our own lowly blue home in the Milky Way.

…

The unasked but pertinent question here is: More visible to whom? Seager seems to be operating under the assumption that any contact with aliens is a good thing. Her optimism is untempered with caution. Has she not seen Independence Day, Mars Attacks!, or The Day the Earth Stood Still? If we can’t count on foreigners on our own terrestrial rock to be peaceful, what chance is there that nonhumans will be less hostile?

Why take a chance? That’s all we’re sayin’.

“Muslims are laughing at us! They say: Your daughters and granddaughters will be in our harems!”

Istanbul massacre offers a glimpse into the rise of terrorists from Central Asia

Iranian Man jailed for protesting against acid attacks goes on hunger strike for 65 days

The Balkan Route Reopens

Turkish court sentences two army officers to life in prison over role in July’s failed military coup

London postman who joined Isis charged with involvement in massacre and war crimes after denying killing

Cops Gun Down Three Female Suicide Bombers To Stop Attack

Izmir explosion: Blast reported outside courthouse in Turkish city  Those dratted Christians, always blowing stuff up.

Istanbul nightclub shooting suspect ‘probably Uighur’, authorities say as dozens more arrested

Austrian City Reports Unprecedented Number Of Sex Assaults On NYE  Will the Islamophobia never cease?

The pioneering women of Beirut’s roller derby team  You can’t make this stuff up.

Mosul Dam could collapse at any minute ‘killing 1.5 million people’

BBC’s The Real Housewives of Isis comedy sketch divides public opinion  Kind of like Hogan’s Heroes in Auschwitz.

Saudi Arabian women release video mocking kingdom’s driving laws

At least 9 killed in Baghdad car bomb attack

The Rockets’ Red Glare in Malmö

Suspected Muslim Militants Spring Hundreds From Prison In Largest Jailbreak In Country’s History

Another Subway Station, Another Stairway: Elderly Woman Pushed Down the Stairs in Hamburg

Female Kurdish fighters announce new training academies for Arab women to take on Isis in Syria

Pakistani Man Facing Hate Crime Charges For Sending People Christmas Greeting

Saudi Arabia flogs foreign workers for burning bus protest over unpaid wages

Istanbul attack: Turkey kill 18 Isis militants in Syria 24 hours after nightclub shooting

Scale of Iraqi civilian casualties inflicted by Isis revealed by UN

German Police Union Leader: “These People Should Be Deported”

The Routes Used by Organized Crime to Traffic “Refugees” Into Europe

Migrants Set Fire To Italian Refugee Center, Block Exits For Staff

Obama ‘Isn’t Doing A Damn Thing’ To Fight ISIS, Says Turkish Leader  Well, he’s talking a lot.

“The Convoy of Light”: New nasheed from the Islamic State’s Ajnad Media

Syria rebels suspend talks over alleged truce violations

Beyond ISIS: Europe’s Salafists Nurturing Jihad

M62 shooting: Man shot dead by police named locally as Yassar Yaqub

Istanbul terror attack: Police detain eight after Isis claims nightclub massacre

Istanbul terror attack: Police detain eight after Isis claims nightclub massacre

Turkey’s Misdiagnosed Kurdish Problem

Suicide Bomber Detonates Truck at Day Laborer Pickup in Baghdad

ISIS Nightclub Shooter Executed Victims At Point-Blank Range For 20 Minutes

Isis suicide bomber offers work to Baghdad labourers, then detonates massive device as they gather round

ISIS Rings In The New Year By Killing More Than 100 People

Turkish Gov Clerics, Along With ISIS, Spouted Anti-NYE Sermons Before Istanbul Nightclub Attack

ISIS Gunman Caught On Tape As He Opens Fire On Nightclub

Vermont Residents Don’t Want To ‘Foot The Bill’ For Syrian Refugees

At least 3 killed after suicide bomber attacks checkpoint near Somalia international airport

At least 22 killed after suicide bomber targets crowded Baghdad market

Kebab Riots in Poland

ISIS Wants To Gas The UK, And It May Have The Means To Do So

More than 1,000 migrants storm border at Spain’s Ceuta enclave

Cologne police deny racial profiling after mass screening of North African men  And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

Nigerian girl, 10, used in suicide bomb attack on New Year’s Eve

Istanbul terror attack: Witnesses tell of people ‘soaked in blood’ fleeing on ‘night of horror’

Two injured in shooting at Istanbul mosque, according to reports

Istanbul Attack Is Turkey’s Fourth Terror Incident In Less Than One Month

Istanbul nightclub attack: President Erdogan says Turkey will ‘fight to the end against terror’ as manhunt continues

Isis will eventually lose the battle for Mosul – but by then it will look like Aleppo

Istanbul nightclub attack: At least 35 dead after gunmen open fire at New Year’s Eve party

Gunmen Dressed As Santa Massacre 35 People In Istanbul Nightclub Terror Attack

Afghan Refugee So Incensed By Bible Reading, He Knifes Old Woman

ISIS claims responsibility for Baghdad bomb blasts, at least 28 killed

Illegal Alien Charged With Raping Teenage Girl Has Been Deported, Removed 19 Times

Afghan Woman Beheaded For Shopping Without Husband

Afghan Teens Convicted of Gang Rape in Sweden Won’t Be Deported, Because It’s ‘Too Dangerous’

Berlin Terrorist Claimed Welfare Under Several Identities While Planning Attack

Read it.

A Middle East studies scholar once told me that only those trained in the history of the Middle East or in religious studies (like himself) are qualified to speak, write and teach about Islamist terrorism. His point was that too many non-specialists were “muddying up the discourse.” I reminded him that the patron saint of Middle East studies is Edward Said, and his Ph.D. was in English Literature. I might have also mentioned that the Middle East studies professors have done a fine job of muddying up the discourse without any help from others.

Read it.

Historically, cities have overwhelmingly represented one thing to people of ill will: Targets.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Read it.

Do tell.

DHS Inspector General John Roth blasted TSA officials in unusually harsh language for demanding the IG inconsistently redact information about the TSA’s security practices in part because agency officials refused to maintain airport security cameras because they believe that isn’t TSA’s responsibility.

Look for … the Union label….

Read it.

The U.S. Navy’s biofuels program has “failed to demonstrate any operational or strategic advantages over petroleum and have actually increased costs” for the military, according to a new report by defense experts.

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

In 2011, President Barack Obama ordered the Navy to diversify its energy sources by using biofuels. The Obama administration based the decision on former Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis’ call to “unleash” the Corps from “the tether of fuel.” Mattis is now President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense.

I doubt that Mattis was calling for more cronyist ‘green’ initiatives.

Just think of what he might have done if he hadn’t gotten the Peace Prize.

Read it.

That’s why Greeks and Italians rule the world! Oh, wait….

That’s why there are so many Greek and Italian Nobel Prize winners! Oh, wait….

That’s why the Greek and Italian economies are on top! Oh, wait….

(What would we do without ‘scientists’?)

And remember that the toilet roll dispenses OVER, not UNDER.

Read it. And watch the video.

I guess it’s a love crime, then. Who knew?

Featuring yet another fat ugly black woman. Where do they find them?

Check it out.

Hint: It involved hockey sticks.

Read it.

Moral: Don’t live in a city run by Democrats. Duh.

Harvard’s George J. Borjas brings the settled science.

For decades Borjas has been shocking the system in his own way, arguing—carefully, with the support of intricate statistical analysis—that immigration comes with tradeoffs, particularly reduced wages for the native workers who compete with immigrants.

To most academics, that’s heresy. To many others it might sound like common sense—and at last we can experience Borjas’s ideas in a widely accessible form. After focusing for years on academic research, Borjas is bringing his findings directly to the public through a new book called We Wanted Workers, a rejuvenated blog (gborjas.org), and the occasional op-ed in mainstream publications such as Politico.

Read it.

I predict that this will end badly.

Read it.

Regional grocery chain Publix Supermarkets officially decided to conceal an issue of The National Enquirer that heavily features President-elect Donald Trump’s face, according to a Tuesday report from the Palm Beach Post.

One think you have to say for Donald Trump, he’s wringing all of the hidden crap out of the body politic.

Watch it.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Read it.

“The fact is ObamaCare was a lie from the beginning,” he said in the typo-ridden tweets, calling Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer the “head clown” of Democrats he accuses of blaming other people for the healthcare mess they created. Republicans are setting an aggressive agenda to repeal and replace parts of the health care law as the new Congress gets started.

This is why people voted for Donald Trump. He says what they’re thinking.

Read it.

Well, that would pretty much put the nail in the coffin for New York City.

Read it.

Well, since we don’t have any concentration camps now that FDR is gone, perhaps we could send her to Iran instead; presumably, for a lesbian Marxist, the experience would be much the same. Unfortunately, since it would be Muslims, her progressive head couldn’t process it and would probably explode.

Either way, problem solved.

Isn’t it remarkable that most of the people whining loudly about how scared they are of Being Oppressed Under Donald Trump are people who Donald Trump would never even notice, much less be moved to do anything about? The guilty flee where no man pursueth.

Alberto Mingardi riffs on a Kevin Williamson article.

In the 19th century, people of a liberal bent tended to support a wider franchise because they maintained that if everybody had a say in decision-making, the quality of decisions would go up. It was easy for kings and aristocrats to send a country to war: they had limited skin in the game, as they tended to observe the battlefield from distance. Let those who are going to die for the king’s honour and pride decide; they might prove more aware of the costs of their rulers’ decisions.

But a big part of the argument for democracy was in fact an argument for a better informed political discussion. Those who believed in expanding the franchise also believed in popular education and a wider diffusion of political gazette. Democracy and mass literacy should lead us towards saner policies: to become better able to engage the government as intellectually prepared citizens.

Here we are. Does better education really make politics saner?

I would argue: Yes, if it really is education. But what we have today isn’t education, but indoctrination, less obtrusive and therefore more insidious than what occurred in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and other totalitarian states.

Economist Alex Tabarrok takes a look.

Chuck Norris Versus Communism is a great documentary about art, the power of heroes and the end of communism in Romania. After the communist regime was established in 1948, travel was restricted, the media were censored and the secret police watched everyone. Romania was cut off from the rest of the world. In the mid-1980s, however, smuggled VHS tapes of American movies began to circulate. Underground groups would gather together to watch samizdat movies like Rocky and Lone Wolf McQuade.

…

The action was exciting but perhaps even more revealing were the ordinary scenes of supermarkets stocked with food, at a time when Romania was racked with severe rationing. City lights, beautiful cars, and the ordinary freedoms of worship and belief casually portrayed all impressed on the Romanian viewers the starkness of their own situation.

I am reminded of the scene from Moscow on the Hudson where a Russian defector, played by Robin Williams, goes into a grocery store and asks where is the line for bread? The clerk says, ‘There is no line for bread. Bread is on aisle 4.’ Williams hyperventilates and passes out at the sight of forty feet of shelves with nothing but bread on them — and no line.

Makes you wonder how all the people who prefer socialism to a free market can be so stupid.

Read it.

The Internet – or the portions of it that I frequent – has lately become somewhat exercised (and among my friends rather entertained) by the news that Simon and Schuster has a quarter-million book deal with one Milo Yiannopoulos, leading to much frothing at the mouth in certain circles, as noted at the Passive Voice

Of course, Passive Guy kindly links to the original Guardian article which – surprise! – wasn’t written by our favorite village person of alternative intellect or whatever the current approved terminology is. No, the Grauniad’s latest effort is by a gentleman who is apparently in charge of the Chicago Review of Books, and who wishes it known to all and sundry (can you say virtue signaling? I knew you could) that his eminent publication will not be reviewing any S&S books.

…

Presumably all the Grauniad’s readers know who constitutes “the literary world” – namely their august selves. There are some nonconformist souls who happen to think that the definition is a bit broader and includes all authors, all publishers, and even (GASP!) readers. Leaving this question of terminology aside, take note of the description of Mr Yiannopoulous as “America’s most infamous internet troll”. Five words. Damn near as many lies. He’s British, he’s not a troll, internet or otherwise, he’s not infamous despite having a certain amount of notoriety, and he’s certainly not the most infamous anything I can think of right now.

Read it.

NYT restaurant critic Pete Wells wrote a scathing zero-star review of one branch of LocoL in California and has received a backlash as a result – some people have even canceled their subscriptions to the paper.

Part of the reason people have responded so strongly is that LocoL is a restaurant with honourable intentions – the idea behind the mini-chain is to offer good quality, healthy food at affordable prices to some of the poorest, most neglected neighbourhoods of the US.

…

Fans of the restaurant jumped to LocoL’s defence, arguing the critic had been unnecessarily harsh.

“Lovely takedown piece on a small company genuinely trying to make underserved communities better through food, innovation and employment,” commented one person on Facebook.

There is the ‘progressive’ mind in a nutshell (emphasis on the ‘nut’): If a restaurant is founded on Politically Correct principles, then it doesn’t matter whether the food is any good.

On the other hand, any tendency for someone at the New York Times to engage in Actual Journalism is good news. (As is anything that tends to get people to cancel their subscriptions, I say, but that’s just me.)

Read it.

Good fences makes good neighbors. I’m sure I heard that somewhere.

Read it.

San Antonio, notes Texas Public Radio, is “the largest city in the country without a rail system to move” its residents. As a result, the article implies, people are “stuck behind the wheel,” and the article’s headline asks, “Should San Antonio Reconsider Rail?”

Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, of course, suggests that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” But more important, the article is guilty of the Politician’s Fallacy, which is: “1. We have to do something [in this case, about congestion]. 2. This [rail] is something. 3. We have to do this [build rail].”

Before jumping to any conclusions, San Antonians should ask how well rail is moving people in other cities. The first point to note is that, when TPR says that San Antonio is the largest city not to have rail, there are only six larger cities to consider. We don’t think of San Antonio is being the nation’s seventh-largest city, but it is true because Texas cities have strong annexations powers, so tend to be much larger than cities elsewhere. Houston, Dallas, and Austin are also among the nation’s eleven largest cities.

Read it.

If a white guy gets tortured by black guys and nobody reports on it, did it really happen?

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If a lawsuit filed in state court in Jersey City, N.J. is successful, some teachers’ unions in the Garden State may no longer be able to bill taxpayers for that work. That’s because the state constitution prohibits government from giving taxpayer funds to private entities without a public purpose.

The new lawsuit is the latest example of a practice that is firmly ensconced among federal employees’ unions and is now being challenged with some success at the state and local government level. Some estimates put the cost of official time to the federal government at as much as $1 billion.

Under “release time,” teachers don’t teach, they instead perform unknown advocacy duties on a daily basis without having to dip into members’ dues.

Read it.

You simply can’t make this up. The mood was grim on Wednesday’s Hardball as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Mother Jones editor David Corn, and New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wallowed in how President-elect Donald Trump created a landscape where the news media is so distrusted that people might soon not trust movie times in newspapers.

Read it.

From the abstract:

This article speaks to a post-human feminist museology. It argues that considerations of a feminist museology would benefit from engaging with post-human feminist dialogues currently unfolding within academia. Dynamic political landscapes and global circumstances challenge dualist paradigms. Theorizations of museums are not exempt from these challenges. Critiques of androcentricity indicate that feminist theorizations have never fully centred on “the human”, but always already contextualized how we affect the world, and how the world affects us. Discussions in this article follow Barad’s agential-realist theorization of the material-discursive practices that shape our understandings in and of the world, and Haraway’s notion of diffraction that engages the material and re-tools recordings of object histories as entangled human and non-human processes that can be taken apart and reassembled, making different possibilities possible. The article demonstrates that museological alternatives that emerge from conversations about entanglements not only aim to move beyond the paradigms they have been circling within for so long, but towards a re-thinking of museology and cultural heritage museums. Thus, considerations of a feminist post-human museology re-imagine museums as entangled becomings that make different possibilities possible.

Really — you can’t make this shit up.

Read it.

Graphic footage captured on Facebook Live showed a white man being tortured in Chicago by African-American assailants as they laughed and expressed their disgust for white people and President-elect Donald Trump.

Some black lives don’t matter.

Read it.

You know the answer. Gimme a G! Gimme an O! Gimme a V!….

Any business decision as significant as the relocation of a major production facility is the result of many factors. Still, one factor stood out when the Carrier executives met with Mike Pence, then the governor of Indiana, in March of last year. After the meeting, Pence told an Indianapolis TV station that Carrier CEO Robert McDonough said decision to relocate had nothing to do with the business climate in Indiana, but that they were frustrated with the “rising red tape” in Washington D.C.

Around the same time, Jim Schellinger, president of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, wrote a letter to Sen. Joseph Donnelly, D-Indiana, claiming that “extensive federal regulations were the leading factor of the decision to relocate 2,100 manufacturing jobs” to Mexico, according to The Washington Post.

Read it.

Councilmember Kshama Sawant posted an open letter to her “fellow activists” on the City of Seattle’s taxpayer-funded website, urging participation in anti-Trump “Occupy Inauguration” protests organized by the Socialist Alternative Seattle. More than 3,500 people have already committed to joining the protests, according to the event’s Facebook page.

How many Victim Bingo boxes can she check? Try your luck.

Read it.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) officials issued “new, confusing and burdensome” data security requirements that are “inconsistent with established federal healthcare law,” according to the non-profit government watchdog Cause of Action Institute.

The group’s comments came in a statement Wednesday after it filed an Amicus Curiae brief on behalf of 10 doctors in a federal court case. The FTC’s regulatory overreach has harmed medical patients’ welfare and put a cancer-detection laboratory out of business, the doctors claimed in their brief.

Your tax dollars at work. Aren’t you proud?

Sarah Hoyt vents.

For four generations now, most people were taught Marxist/progressive shibboleths as though they were the revealed truth of the universe. Even teachers who don’t realize that’s what they’re teaching tend to drip through concepts like class struggle and the idea history comes with an arrow pointing at a progressive future, and even the idea of the Government as a benevolent entity that solves all things and fixes all things, from society to science.  Of course most of all the educational-industrial complex sells the idea that it’s wonderful, indispensable, and you should definitely give it way more of your money.

The problem is that when people go out into the world, they keep being forced into situations where this isn’t true, and where their nose is rubbed into the fact that what they were taught is nonsense.  Some (most perhaps) avoid thinking about it or acculturating by becoming bitter and cynical and deciding the world is irredeemable because it doesn’t match their head-picture.  And some fight back with memes.

Memes are perfect for this, because, like proverbs, they have the feeling of revealed truth and therefore stop the discomfort of having to face, you know, real reality which doesn’t match received culture.

Read it.

The E.P.A. is one of the reasons that Richard Nixon will burn in Hell for all eternity.

Read it.

For some reason, a widespread belief exists that the president of a college or a university (or even a 2-year junior college) deserves to live a life of luxury.  No fewer than 30 higher education presidents are earning over a million dollars a year, compensation that rightly should outrage families indebting themselves to pay tuition.

Many black people, perhaps out of a sense of racial disadvantage and corruption from living in a largely Democrat world, feel entitled to all of the money they can squeeze out of the system. This is especially prevalent in politics — note the number of black Congress members who have been indicted in the last ten or twenty years — but extends to other Crustian occupations, such as journalism and academia.

Meet Dr. DeRionne Pollard, president of Montgomery College, the biggest junior college in the state of Maryland.

She is, of course, a lesbian, as is almost requisite in this degenerate modern age.

For some reason, the African-American culture seems to teem with fat ugly black women in positions of authority. (See Congress, NAACP, etc.) Perhaps that is an ancestral relic of similar power structures in West Africa.

The OFloinn shows you the way.

My favorite:

The Talking Heads of the MSM will continue to explain to the public the inexplicable loss of the election by the Space Princess. They will continue to natter on about Russian interference (without specifying what that interference actually consisted of) and about Angry Misogynistic White Men (without discovering any large upwelling either of males or whites among the tallied votes). No one will mention triple digit increases in the price of health insurance under the “Affordable” Care Act or the proposal of a No-Fly Zone over Syria, where the Russians constituted the primary fliers — and hence of the palpable risk of a shooting war with Russia. A few folks in Otto’s Bar and Grille, where the Talking Heads are explaining things, will put down their beers and say, “Ain’t you the folks who were so wrong about who was going to win? So why should we listen to you now?” The Talking Heads have no good answer, and so they talk louder. Everyone stops listening to them.

Runner-up:

The New Witch Hunts will continue as people purge themselves on anti-social media by confessing the sins of other people, often creating these sins de novo from rumors and snippets of quotes. A few will long for the days when confession was under the seal of secrecy. The New Donatists will declare more sins to be lifelong unforgivables and will denounce those who forgive as being haters and ‘phobes.

Steve Sailer looks behind the curtain.

A paradox of the current nationalist rebellion is how worldwide it is. Three years ago, I pointed out in Takimag in a column entitled “Nationalism Is a Blast”:

In 2014, the global winds are blowing in favor of conservative nationalism.

One reason it’s happening over much of the planet is because the various establishment elites have become so homogenous [sic] in their ideology, unconsciously egging each other on into more extremism. For example, after the normally cautious Angela Merkel made her historic refugee blunder in 2015, Hillary Clinton repeatedly endorsed Merkel’s foolhardiness, even as the German leader herself came to regret her imprudence.

Read it.

If there’s anybody more arrogant than a Democrat who just won, it’s a Democrat who just lost.