Read it.

Ex-police superintendent Garry McCarthy, speaking on “The Cats Roundtable” radio show Sunday, alleged that BLM contributes to a “state of lawlessness,” reports the New York Daily News.

“The simplest way to describe it is that we have created an environment where we have emboldened criminals and we are hamstringing the police,” he declared on the radio show.

McCarthy insisted that Black Lives Matter encourages people to not listen to police officers’ commands.

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

Read it.

But nobody cares about Christians any more.

Joe Bob Briggs checks the facts.

Using fact-checking as a weapon is like using your own Breathalyzer results to say somebody else is drunk.

Read it.

The Antiplanner’s friend, Benita Dodd, reviews the Atlanta streetcar on the second anniversary of its inaugural run. It was supposed to cost $72 million to build. It cost $97 million. It was supposed to cost $1.7 million a year to operate. It actually costs $5.3 million.

It was projected to earn $420,000 a year in fares. During its first year, it earned nothing because it was free. In the second year, the city began charging $1 a ride, and it earned under $200,000. When it was free, it carried 2,600 riders a day. After they began charging, ridership fell to less than 1,500 a day, less than half the projected number.

It normally runs on Saturday nights until 1 am. Last Saturday, “to accommodate large crowds” for New Years Eve, the city stopped running it at 4:30 pm. (Despite the absurdity of the claim that not running the streetcar will accommodate large crowds, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reprinted the city’s press release word for word.) Naturally, after all these great successes, the city wants to build 22 more miles of streetcar lines.

Whenever you see an official estimate of cost for a government works project, double it and add 50% to get the accurate amount that it will eventually cost.

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An order closing a government lab that manipulated energy data for nearly two decades didn’t represent a “loss of confidence” in federal scientists, according to the issuing official, even though a subsequent memo by another agency executive described in gruesome detail an irretrievably mismanaged and dysfunctional operation.

The stop-work order and a subsequent review was issued after a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) chemist was caught manipulating energy-related data at an agency lab from 2008 to 2014. Another chemist manipulated data at the Colorado facility from 1996 to 2008.

“Lastly, the [program office] would like to convey to the [lab] analysts that these actions are not [emphasis theirs] a reflection of a loss of confidence in them or in their abilities,” the March 2015 stop-work order said.

Read it. And watch the video.

John Christy is the Alabama State Climatologist and a climate scientist with the University of Alabama. In 1991 he received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement for his contribution to global temperature monitoring. In 1996 he received a special award from the American Meteorology Society.

You want climate science? We got your climate science, right here.

Read it.

New York City celebrated the new year by opening the insanely expensive Second Avenue Subway. Just two miles and three stations long, this subway line cost nearly $4.5 billion, or more than $35,000 per inch, making it the most expensive subway in the world.

Of course, not all of that money went for digging tunnels and laying track, which cost “only” $734 million (which is still more than $5,000 per inch). The three stations cost $800 million each. But that’s not all: to complete the Second Avenue subway, the city also spend $500 million on engineering and $800 million for “management, real estate, station artwork, fare-collection systems and other sundry items.” If the entire New York City subway system cost that much, it would have cost more than $500 billion, or roughly the cost of the entire 47,856-mile Interstate Highway System in today’s dollars.

Read it.

As reported in last night’s news feed, 48 Iraqi migrants were discovered in the back of tractor trailer traveling from Bulgaria to Hungary. They were detected at a customs station in Romania, and are now in custody in Bulgaria.

There are several things about this case (and other similar cases in the last few months) that cry out for more attention:

• These are just the ones who were caught. How many other loads of “refugees” go undetected and arrive safely at their final destinations in Europe?

• These puir, puir Iraqis wanted to go to Hungary, or so they said. But every other migrant trying to get into Europe is trying to get into Germany, Sweden, or Britain. Was Hungary supposed to be a transshipment point, with a final destination elsewhere?

• Moving migrants into Europe in trucks or freight cars is a risky and expensive business. Who is paying for it? Surely not the “refugees” themselves. Are the Open Society Foundations (or their surrogates) involved?

• In order to get these enrichers into Europe, it is almost certain that organized crime is involved. Which criminal outfits are most active in this business? The Kosovars? The Albanians? The Turks? The Bulgarians? Or someone else?

• The entire operation is being conducted on behalf of someone with an interest in replacing the population of Europe. What person or group is pushing this?

Read it.

I guess wishing doesn’t get as far in real life as it does in a Disney movie.

Read it.

Thank God for all those strict gun control laws in Chicago, or the place would look like Texas.

Read it.

This is the famous SJW ‘virtue signalling’ whereby people of progressive bent do a token bit of ‘solidarity’ so that they can feel good about themselves without, you know, actually doing something.

Read it.

Here’s a study you won’t find in any of the major-media headlines. According to the Director of the Centre for Studies on New Religions (Cesnur), Massimo Introvigne, Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world, with over 90,000 Christians killed in 2016 alone.

An oldie but a goodie by Eric S Raymond.

One very notable pathology is a form of argument that, reduced to essence, runs like this: “Your refusal to acknowledge that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…} confirms that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…}.” I’ve been presented with enough instances of this recently that I’ve decided that it needs a name. I call this general style of argument “kafkatrapping”, and the above the Model A kafkatrap. In this essay, I will show that the kafkatrap is a form of argument that is so fallacious and manipulative that those subjected to it are entitled to reject it based entirely on the form of the argument, without reference to whatever particular sin or thoughtcrime is being alleged. I will also attempt to show that kafkatrapping is so self-destructive to the causes that employ it that change activists should root it out of their own speech and thoughts.

The revolutionary heart of Communism is not the theatrical appeal: “Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain.” It is a simple statement of Karl Marx, further simplified for handy use: “Philosophers have explained the world; it is necessary to change the world.” Communists are bound together by no secret oath. The tie that binds them across the frontiers of nations, across barriers of language and differences of class and education, in defiance of religion, morality, truth, law, honor, the weakness of the body and the irresolutions of the mind, even unto death, is a simple conviction: It is necessary to change the world. Their power, whose nature baffles the rest of the world, because in a large measure the rest of the world has lost that power, is the power to hold convictions and to act on them. It is the same power that moves mountains; it is also an unfailing power to move men. Communists are that part of mankind which has recovered the power to live or die–to bear witness–for its faith. And it is a simple, rational faith that inspires men to live or die for it.

It is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Ye shall be as gods.” It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and Man’s relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.

— Whittaker Chambers, Witness