Read it.

When you REALLY ‘speak truth to power’, power has a tendency to smack you a good one.

Actually, this demonstrates the modern definition of ‘ethics complaint’: a complaint that somebody actually has ethics.

ZMan point out some inconvenient truth.

In the modern vernacular, the sociopath is someone who lacks empathy, remorse and an understanding of right and wrong. The sociopath sees no difference between the truth and a lie, only their utility. Additionally, they never think about the consequences of their actions. A sociopath sees no harm in telling people that his brain juice will prevent concussions. The veracity of his statements are meaningless. What matters is how well it moves product. People ending up with brain damage as a result is never considered.

The key thing about the modern sociopath is the ambivalence toward the truth. They think saying something is the same as doing something. What matters is if the words get the listener to do what the sociopath wants them to do. Standing in front of crowd, making false claims, is fine if it causes people to buy product. If the truth sells more product, then the truth is better. From the perspective of the modern sociopath, the difference is about the results, not the accuracy of the statements. The truth or a lie, whichever works.

Now replace “sociopath” with “politician” and “product” with “votes” and you have the modern managerial democracy.It’s not that our politicians lie. It’s that for them, a lie is indistinguishable from the truth. That’s why they seem so utterly shameless. Shame requires a sense of right and wrong, a knowledge that what you said or did is intrinsically wrong. For the people who rule over us, right and wrong only exist in the context of their own ambitions. Something is “right” if it benefits the person in the moment.

Read it.

Colbert is sort of a Gold Standard for how stupid left-wingers can be. There is no opinion too silly for him to promote.

Read it.

Hey, if firearms suddenly become inoperable, this knowledge will come in very handy.

Read it.

Apparently the way to fight sexism is with even more sexism.

Uh, right.

Read it.

I find it difficult to take seriously a guy who wears earrings.

Read it.

To those on the Left, shrieking for the government to make the pain stop by exerting more control — you celebrities, politicians, editors, and yes, you goodthinkful liberals that I know personally here in New York, many of whom I have called friends — I’ll say this:

While you were, over the last half-century, systematically destroying, displacing, denouncing, and dismantling the historic American nation and its civil society — all moral norms, every basis of public commonality, all respect for our history and heritage, public expression of religion, the nuclear family, sexual restraint, and every natural structure and category and hierarchy that held civilization together and gave young people a framework within which to learn dignity and duty and gratitude and belonging and meaning and self-control — while you were doing all that, what did you think was going to happen? And now you want to “fix” the moral and social wreckage you’ve created by disarming us against your future predations upon our rights, our culture, and upon the society we still hope, against hope, to restore and preserve?

Go to hell. This sickness is your fault, not ours. You will not degrade us any longer. If you want our arms, come and take them.

CNN’s Stelter Contrasts Unifying Winfrey with Divisive Trump  Trump isn’t divisive; it’s the Trump-haters who are divisive. The only thing that Winfrey unifies is the group of people who want to find goodies under their seat. (The perfect Democrat candidate….)

CNN Reporter Literally Goes Dumpster Diving For Collusion Evidence In St. Petersburg  It’s GOT to be here SOMEWHERE.

Donald Trump ranked worst president in US history by nearly 200 political scientists  And in 100 years they’re all going to look like the partisal political hacks that they are.

The Flawed Nationalism of Donald Trump  This approach would be more convincing if publications like the Atlantic (and the people who write for them) didn’t believe that all nationalism is flawed, and any nationalism that points to America is positively evil.

Is Trump the Worst President Ever?  John Hinderaker fisks this traditional Lefty anti-Republican trope.

Donald Trump criticised for ‘playing golf’ while Florida shooting victims funerals took place nearby  As if his not playing golf would have avoided the usual criticism.

WashPost: Abused Wife in Democrat Candidate School Saw ‘Ugly Parallels In Trump’  I saw ugly parallels to Mugabe in Obama, too. So what?

Joe Scarborough: Attacking Trump Is ‘What We Do’  That’s pretty obvious.

Trump presidency is ‘code red’ level threat to US democracy, says Thomas Friedman  Journalistic hysteria.

Donald Trump is flailing like never before thanks to Robert Mueller – and a coalition of angry high school students  Apparently wishing will make it so.

Read it.

If you don’t like the evidence you find, find some evidence you like.

That’s climate change!

Read it.

Perhaps this will start a trend.

Read it.

Nancy Pelosi was heckled by a town hall attendee in Phoenix, Arizona Tuesday.

“These are kitchen table issues for America’s families,” the House Minority Leader stated while voicing her opposition to the tax cuts signed into law by President Trump. “Most people are not in deadening poverty, but some are. Most people have to struggle to make ends meet.”

“How much are you worth, Nancy?” a woman yelled over Pelosi’s screed.

“No, we’re not talking about that,” Pelosi shot back. “I’m a mother of five, I can speak louder than anybody.”

So her first impulse is to shout down the person questioning her. Good to know. I guess her definition of town hall meeting is ‘I speak, you shut up and listen’.

It should be noted that Pelosi is one of the wealthiest members of Congress and the wealthiest female member.

She and her husband have a combined net worth in excess of $100 million.

I see no evidence that she agrees with Bill Gates that she ought to be paying higher taxes. Maybe the money is all in her husband’s name.

Juliette Wade tells you more than you ever wanted to know.

This week’s topic was inspired by our brief chat about the character Kalr 5 in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword, who is a total connoisseur of dishes. They feature in Alice in Wonderland, and they get their own special scene in The Hobbit. But there’s a lot more to think about here.

Read it.

The U.S. Army West Point academy has posthumously appointed fallen Parkland JRTOC student Peter Wang to its class of 2025, Brittany Wallman of the Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.

UPDATE: US Army Awards Medal Of Heroism To Student Who Lost His Life Saving Others In Florida School Shooting

Alex Tubarrok, a Real Economist, looks at the Unintended Consequences of politicians meddling.

In a market economy bidding tends to move resources from low-valued uses to high-valued uses. Regulations that prevent bidding freeze resources into low-valued uses–that’s bad for the resource owners and bad for society as the total value of production is reduced but it can be good for the consumers of low-valued uses.

Read it.

Or, more accurately, what they assume is his’stance on gun control’. I doubt that any one of them, or any one of the adults shepherding them along, know the first thing about what Trump’s ‘stance on gun control’ might be.

If some nutcase had come by with a rifle, they’d have been in real trouble. ‘The bodies were just lying there. I can take a hint.’

Mr Trump is at his Florida golf club.

Yup. And he’ll spend less time thinking about their ‘protest’ than he will on how many eggs to have for breakfast.

These kids need to learn that Lefty virtue-signalling doesn’t get anything useful done.

Read it.

These people are genuinely insane. They get paid to say this crap.

I’m glad to see Bill Kristol has wound up on CNN, where he apparently belongs.

Read it. You may or may not want to watch the video.

Let’s see Black Lives Matter deal with that.

They’re Joking, Right? NPR Game Show Says Trump’s Slashing Medicare, Medicaid  It MUST be true,  because TRUMP!

Scarborough Speaks For Shooting Victims And Uses Their Suffering To Bash Trump  On Planet Scarborough, a thing is of interest only insofar as it can be used to bash Trump.

The Media Attacked Trump For Smiling In Photos With Shooting Victims – Obama Did The Same

Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty Compares Russian Trolling to Pearl Harbor Attack  If they want to get rid of Trump, they have to gin up a crisis.

WashPost Column Blames ‘Word-Abusing’ Trump for NBC’s Flubs at the Olympics  Uh-huh.

Anti-Gun Students Hold ‘Lie-In’ Outside White House  Somehow it’s Trump’s fault that their community produced a nutcase who shot up a school. I’d love to know what they think he can do about that, and why they think that it’s the job of the President of the United States to solve their problems.

Russia and Trump campaign may still have colluded, suggests top Democrat  I THINK it can, I THINK it can….

Washington Post Claims Last Week’s Indictments Destroy Trump’s Denial Of Collusion  Huh?

Read it.

It’s no coincidence that a soup kettle was the symbol for feeding the poor, rather than, say, a roasting pan or a skillet. Soup has always been one of the most economical ways to provide nourishing, filling food to a large quantity of people. Although he was hardly the first person to come up with the idea to feed the poor, an interesting fellow known as Count Rumford is often credited with establishing the first real soup kitchen.

Read it.

I grew up in a time when Washington’s birthday was not only observed on February 22, but was celebrated with the Fannie Farmer chocolate axe honoring the mythical story told about Washington by Parson Weems. In 1968 Washington’s Birthday was moved to the third Monday in February by virtue of the Uniform Holidays Bill. It has subsequently become known as the nondescript Presidents’ Day by which we know it today.

Read it.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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Lawrence Tribe, advancing into senility and realizing that he’s never going to get on the Supreme Court, has found out that teenagers actually buy the BS that the Democrats are selling.

I’m surprised that he can even read that with a straight face, much less tweet it. Teens between 14 and 18 are responsible for most of the stupid things that occur in schools and in urban gangs. (Of course, none of those deviants make it to Harvard, so Tribe would never have encountered them.)

Read it.

And rightly so.

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Well, that’s a relief.

Read it.

A number of workers in Silicon Valley are planning to leave the tech hub due to a discomfort stemming from a uniform way of thinking in the industry and region, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The workers already are or plan on indirectly following the lead of Peter Thiel, a President Donald Trump-supporting venture capitalist. The billionaire entrepreneur recently announced he is leaving Silicon Valley for the slightly less liberal Los Angeles area to escape an allegedly pervasive discrimination against conservatives and some libertarians.

Citing a number of influential investors, and a couple of tech workers and startup entrepreneurs, the WSJ reports Thiel’s geographic “defection” is emblematic of an apparently larger trend.

“I think the politics of San Francisco have gotten a little bit crazy,” Tom McInerney, an angel investor who now resides in L.A., told TheWSJ. “The Trump election was super polarizing and it definitely illustrated—and Peter [Thiel] said this—how out of touch Silicon Valley was.”

Y’all come to Texas — we got plenty of jobs here and affordable housing.

Read it.

What’s a progressive to do?

Two words: Home School.

(One question that is never asked: Will it prevent such things in the future? Because that’s not What It’s All About.)

Read it.

Absolutely. Every school that declares itself to be a ‘gun-free zone’ ought to be required to have a big sign outside that reads VICTIMS! GET YOUR VICTIMS HERE! CAN’T HAVE AN ATROCITY WITHOUT VICTIMS!

Of course, that’s not what the article’s about — but it’s what the article ought to be about. So I helped.

Read it.

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

It has the added advantage that when the SWAT team breaks down your and shotguns your dog, the pellets will break the hives and give the cops some Surprise Karma.

Read it.

This is like saying that butterflies are putting pressure on an elephant. It is doubtful that the elephant even notices.

Read it.

Nothing stands in your way, Bill. You’ve got a pen and a check book. Start writing.

Steve Sailer reports the news you won’t hear anywhere else.

In 2015, under the Obama administration, ICE inspected the documentation of Labor Network’s employees at Cloverhill. In May 2017, the Trump administration sent letters to about 800 employees, saying they weren’t authorized to work in the United States, records examined by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Those Hispanic employees didn’t return to work, leaving the bakery desperate to fill their jobs. So the company turned to another placement agency, Metro Staff Inc., and it provided Cloverhill with workers screened through the government’s “E-Verification” program. Most of those new employees are African American.

Ed French, owner of Elgin-based Metro Staff Inc., says his company became the main provider of workers for the bakery and that about 80 percent of them are black

Dem Congressman Calls Trump ‘A Psychopath’ Over School Shooting Remarks  More psychic psychiatrist illusion.

Read it.

Building tall stuff with wood seems to be all the rage.

Eventually perhaps we will be able to persuade buildings to grow themselves.

Eric S. Raymond gives us some good advice.

A useful way to sort the decision challenges we face is into situations of high uncertainty versus low uncertainty. These call for vary different adaptations. In a situation of low uncertainty there is a single optimal choice; your effort should go into determining what it is and then executing it as hard and fast as possible. Unless uncertainty rises during execution (for example because you discover you made a serious mistake in your problem analysis), deviation from plan is most likely to be a mistake. Buying options is wasteful.

In a situation of high uncertainty you don’t know what your best choice is up front; there’s a broad range of possible ones that might be optimal, and there may be choices you can’t yet see. In this situation, what you need to do is enable yourself to collect on as many of the options as you can identify and afford to buy. Your hope is to be able to narrow the range of conditions you need to cope with as you learn more.

Read it.

Well. Let’s see whether it works.

‘Hispanic Gunman Cruz Conducts School Massacre in Florida’

For purposes of White Oppression, Hispanics apparently count as white, especially in Florida — until they don’t.

Of course, if you want actual facts, go read Guns & Violence, Again…, where JayMan runs the numbers.

UNRWA: the Greatest Obstacle to Peace

Saudi Diplomat: Muslims Are Losing The Digital War Against ISIS, And No One Seems To Care

Indonesia bans Valentine’s Day celebrations as police detain couples and raid schools

Shin Bet Investigation Exposes Depth of Turkey’s Hamas Support

Hungary’s right-wing government plans law allowing it to ban organisations that help immigrants

Taliban urges Americans to pressure Trump and Congress to pull troops from Afghanistan

Chelsea bomber Ahmad Rahami sentenced to life in prison

NIGERIA: Disarm, Disperse And Hide

Turkey Stokes Unrest Over Jerusalem Recognition

Bomber Sentenced to 2 Life Terms for Manhattan Attack

‘Proud’ ISIS Terrorist Sentenced To Life In Prison For New York Bombings

Iraqi Militia Turns ISIS Suicide Bomber To Dust In Fiery Explosion

The West Embraces the Hijab as Muslim Women Risk Their Lives for the Right to Choose  Can’t wait to see Nancy Pelosi in a hijab. I doubt that you’ll ever get one on Beyoncé, though.

Instead of winding down, why is Syria’s war getting worse?  Perhaps because Syria is full of Muslims.

Ahed Tamimi: Israeli court to try Palestinian protest icon who slapped soldiers

Saudi Arabia Tries Distancing From Terroristic Islam By Giving Up Control Of Largest Mosque In Belgium

ISIS Bro BACK In Prison For 10 years After Breaking Parole Right Away

Islamic London: “Run, Hide, Tell”

This Extraordinary, Courageous Young Woman Stood Tall In The Face Of Iran’s Brutal Theocracy

Swordsman Attacks Catholic Church In Indonesia

Immigrant Gang Attacks in Sweden Escalate

US-Backed Syrian Kurds Capture Last Of British ISIS Fighters Known For Gruesome Killings

The Islamic State Strikes in Melbourne

GOP Senator Calls For Sanctions Against Turkey Over Jailed Americans

Hundreds of foreign women who joined Isis captured by Kurdish forces in Syria

Turkey Assails US Over Ties With Syrian Kurdish Militia

Islamists Endorse Deadly Turkish Assault on Kurds

Read it.

Except that, like ‘renewable energy’, it can’t match the price of doing things the old way.

So it’s just a pipe dream at present.

Read it.

The only thing the NRA trains people in is gun safety.

They WANT it to be true, therefore in their minds it IS true.

Can’t Let It Go: CNN Hung Up on Collusion Despite Mueller Indictments

Trump Skipping Golf To Honor Victims Of Florida Shooting  Not that he’ll get any credit for it.

Read it.

Well, if the kids aren’t in school, then there won’t be any ‘school massacres’.

Maybe that’s God giving us a hint.

I’m SURE future school shooters will be swayed by this protest. Just SURE. (Unfortunately, that’s all they know how to do.)

Read it.

When Mark Gaskell moved to California after working in coffee-growing regions in Central America, he noticed coffee plants growing in gardens and wondered if large-scale production was an option.

In 2001, Gaskell, farm advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension, established transplants and discovered that the sub-tropical plants could thrive in the Golden State. He recruited Jay Ruskey of Good Land Organics to help with trials, hoping coffee could be a valuable niche crop to help sustain small farms.

Ruskey started growing coffee in 2002 on his Santa Barbara, Calif., farm and quickly became a passionate coffee farmer.

“We learned that we had the ability to grow very good coffee with a very unique flavor,” Ruskey explains. “There is a misconception that you can’t grow coffee outside the Tropic of Cancer.”

Matt Welch at tReason mag understands the dialectic.

Trump, an outsider con man who hustled his way into the most prestigious insider job in America by mastering the art of the troll, has not to date found his social media equal among the hydra-headed opposition. The president pecks out impotent bluster designed to inflame the haters, and Democrats, journalists, and establishmentarian Republicans take the bait every time.

Journalists are experts at giving the impression that they could do anything you can do better, if they only they put their minds to it.

Read it.

If the Democrats have a motto other than ‘white people suck’, it’s ‘if it moves, tax it’.

Democrat politicians ought to be banned from speaking in public on the grounds that all of their hot air contributes to Global Warming.

Read it.

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

The N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist ketamine has attracted enormous interest in mental health research owing to its rapid antidepressant actions, but its mechanism of action has remained elusive. Here we show that blockade of NMDAR-dependent bursting activity in the ‘anti-reward center’, the lateral habenula (LHb), mediates the rapid antidepressant actions of ketamine in rat and mouse models of depression. LHb neurons show a significant increase in burst activity and theta-band synchronization in depressive-like animals, which is reversed by ketamine. Burst-evoking photostimulation of LHb drives behavioural despair and anhedonia. Pharmacology and modelling experiments reveal that LHb bursting requires both NMDARs and low-voltage-sensitive T-type calcium channels (T-VSCCs). Furthermore, local blockade of NMDAR or T-VSCCs in the LHb is sufficient to induce rapid antidepressant effects. Our results suggest a simple model whereby ketamine quickly elevates mood by blocking NMDAR-dependent bursting activity of LHb neurons to disinhibit downstream monoaminergic reward centres, and provide a framework for developing new rapid-acting antidepressants.