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I think this is an extended metaphor about politicians and journalists but I’m not sure which is which.

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Well, I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.

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Perhaps it’s just not looking in the right place.

Try under the street lamp. The light is much better there.

From HEADLINES YOU WILL NEVER SEE: ‘WWF says we have more wildlife than we require.’

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Footage could ‘desensitise’ young people to cruelty to animals, warns PETA.

Hey, dead vermin have rights, too.

I guess.

Or something.

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The narrowness of white, corporatised, homonormative queerness does not and cannot represent the needs and interests of all queer people, and is invested, instead, in making the movement palatable for the very people opposed to it.

I am not making this up.

I wish I were.

Read it.

Fr. Mark Hodges at LifeSiteNews reported on the latest religious innovation in Washington, DC. The Episcopal church in the diocese of Washington quickly passed a resolution at the end of January to stop using “gendered language for God” at the Diocese’s 123rd Convention.

Yeah, I too initially thought that this was about something completely different (but just as PC). Sometimes headline writers are better than they realize.

“By expanding our language for God, we will expand our image of God and the nature of God,” they stated.

I guess the assumption that ‘Father’ is a reference to, like, a masculine person is just so 2000 years ago.

The joke on Twitter was “So everyone gets to choose their personal pronouns now, except for God.”

Yeah, pretty much.

I wonder whether future generations of Episcopalians will ever be taught that they were once considered Christians. Probably not. The blow to their self-esteem would be apocalyptic.

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I am not making this up.

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Good luck with that.

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Of course, if you’ve been following Scott’s Periscopes, you already know this.

Joe Biden Calls Trump ‘A Joke’ In New Interview  Coming from the most complete joke in the Democrat party, that’s pretty ironic.

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace: Trump Is A ‘Hamburger-Eating, Zamboni-Riding Loon’  Where these people get their fantasies is a complete puzzle.

Stephen Colbert tells Trump he’s too chicken to meet with Mueller  When Colbert actually hits puberty it’s going to come as a great shock.

Trump supporters share more fake news than anyone else, study shows  They must have ignored the TV and Facebook. The ‘survey’ was ‘coded’ by academics — I’d like to see what they thought of as ‘fake news’.

CNN’s John Kirby Trashes Trump’s Military Parade As ‘Beneath Us’ The thing about Trump trolling for sleaze bags s that he always finds them.

CNN Fearmongering: Trump Wants Military Parade Like ‘North Korea’  Except that ‘journalists’ would see a Boy Scout troop as ‘like North Korea’.

Media And Dems Compare Trump’s Military Parade To North Korea  One of these days, they’re gonna catch that red dot, just see if they don’t.

Carl Bernstein Compares Trump to McCarthy, Calls Him ‘Authoritarian Demagogue’  No, that was Obama.

Read it.

That would be entertaining.

From California: Valentine’s Day cannabis-infused chocolate on sale in California

From the UK: Drug-related deaths hit highest level since records began, official figures reveal

After having been suppressed by civilization for centuries, Natural Selection returns with a vengeance.

Dem Senator On Trump: ‘Maybe He’s Been Watching Too Much North Korean Television’  Well, there’s less fake news there than on CNN or MSNBC.

Brzezinski Tells The President: ‘Please, For The Love Of God, Stop Talking’  I’m sure he feels the same way about her — as do I. I have this fantasy of him being about to wall her up in a cellar, but that’s probably to Poe.

Scarborough: Trump Calling Dems ‘Treasonous’ Could Inspire Violence  Like the attempt by a Trump-hater to massacre Republicans legislators, that kind of violence?

Stephanopoulos Defends Democrats, Desperately Tries to Connect Trump to Page  He’s just more obvious than most.

Joe Scarborough Manages To Contradict Himself In Under 2 Minutes, Can’t Decide Whether Trump Destroyed Or Helped The Economy   I can see where he would have a problem with that.

CNN Panelists: Trump is ‘Unpresidential’, ‘Whiny and Weak’  And yet he keeps winning — and your ratings keep dropping. How do you account for that? (Having CNN call you ‘whiny’ is like being called ugly by a frog.)

Joe Scarborough Tries To Goad Trump Into Talking With Bob Mueller  The fantasy here is that Trump pays any attention to Joe Scarborough, any more than Churchill paid any attention to Lord Haw-Haw.

CNN’s Karem Melts Down, Claims Trump Believs ‘Every Immigrant in this Country’ Is ‘A Killer’  Deep in that old proglodyte fantasy world.

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Justin Trudeau knows how to virtue-signal and mansplain at the same time.

But, like Bill Clinton’s sexual harassment, he’s a Servant of the Narrative so he gets a pass.

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Why not? It’s already turned a number of supposedly intelligent and well-education people into paranoid morons.

Odd how all the people were saying that the good stock market was due to Obama now say that the stock market drop is due to Trump.

I wish they’d make up their minds.

Read it.

A California judge ruled Monday the state couldn’t force a cake shop owner to bake a cake for a gay couple’s wedding, ruling that doing so would constitute a violation of free speech.

Superior Court Judge David Lampe denied the State of California’s request for a preliminary injunction that sought to force bakeshop owner Cathy Miller to design a wedding cake for a gay couple.

An outbreak of sanity in the Land of Fruits and Nuts.

Now let’s see if it lasts.

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I’m surprised it’s that low.

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But especially hard for ‘journalists’, apparently.

NBC news reporter Scott Budman tweeted the following on several billionaires:

Had a rough day? Mark Zuckerberg lost $3.6 billion today. Jeff Bezos lost $3.2 billion. Google’s founders lost $2.3 billion, each. Bill Gates lost $2.2 billion. (Source: Bloomberg)

I can’t imagine waking up one morning and having billions of dollars gone. It’s not like a rough day at the casino when you might lose a few hundred or a grand. That sucks, but you move on pretty quickly. Losing billions? How does a person even react to that. I understand they’re all still billionaires, but it’s mind-boggling to even envision.

The author of this article cites this as if it were a thing. It isn’t.

To say that ‘Jeff Bezos is worth $X billion’ is common but misleading — a more accurate statement would be: ‘Based on the price per share of Amazon stock at moment A, the stock  we think that Jeff Bezos owns (we can’t be sure) we estimate to be worth $X billion if he could sell it at that same price, which he probably couldn’t.’

These guys didn’t lose shit. What happened was that the most accurate available estimates of their net worth changed based on changes in the unit used for that valuation — but they are in exactly the same position today as they were yesterday and the day before.

We saw examples of the same sort of low-IQ thinking back in 1987, when a lot of people asked Bill Gates ‘How does it feel to lose $X billion?’; Bill, of course, who still owned the same portion of Microsoft’s capital stock as the day before, rightly treated at them as if they had grown two heads. He understood what was going on and they obviously didn’t.

This sort of thinking is one of the chief defects of ‘journalism’ as practiced today. ‘Journalists’ may have a college degree and work in an office, but their knowledge of the real world is in many respects vastly inferior to that of the average inhabitant of a trailer park. (This is a big reason why Trump so utterly flummoxes the inhabitants of the DemLegHump Media. He knows what he’s doing, because he’s done it before; they don’t, because they’ve never seen it done … and because they’ve never seen it done, it looks like something randomly plucked from the Take A Chance crd pile in a Monopoly game.)

I have very little respect for ‘journalists’ unless and until they demonstrate that they can count to 20 without taking off their shoes. That seldom happens.

Read it.

Ben Thompson’s Stratechery is a must-read site for tech industry analysis. This review of the Amazon/Berkshire Hathaway/JPMorgan Chase announcement, and its implications for the future, is a well-reasoned look at what might be going on here.

Imagine Amazon doing to health care what it did to publishing. One of the chief defects in the American health care system is lack of transparency — people can’t price shop because they don’t know, and in many cases can’t get, the actual prices charged for their health care because people aren’t the customers, insurance companies and employers are the customers; people are just the patients. (Nobody bothers telling your cat how much the vet charges, because the cat is not paying the bill.)

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Apparently it didn’t work. Pity.

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We have written many times about the fact that the Earth’s surface temperature record has been so badly corrupted that it is impossible to say whether claims like “2017 was the third-warmest year since thermometers became common in the late 19th century” are true. Temperature records are under the control of agencies like NOAA, which in turn are run by people whose careers are heavily invested in the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory.

This is a conflict of interest. It is as though I, when I was a lawyer representing parties in lawsuits, had the option of rewriting the documents on which the case is based, so as to favor my client. Would I have been able to resist that temptation? Well, maybe. But NOAA doesn’t. Over and over again, we find that the temperature records from decades ago have been changed, with no explanation and no transparency. We have documented this fact around the world, and always the “adjustments” are in the same direction–temperatures from decades ago are lowered, and recent temperatures are raised.

Bad data make bad models, and corrupt data make corrupt models. I don’t accept the existence of Global Warming any more than I accept the existence of the Soviet Union as a Heaven on Earth for Workers and Peasants, for exactly the same reason: An assertion supported only by tendentious lies is a tendentious lie.

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Someone stopped by my desk to see if I had a thought about the fact that Julian Pailate Tuimauga, who is charged with committing a hate crime against a black man in Auburn, isn’t white.

What I wish everyone would realize is the racism sprouting from white-supremacist ideology is so pervasive that just about everyone is exposed to it. Anyone can act in ways that support white supremacy or that reflect the view of the world it perpetuates.

When the justice system’s workings lead to a Latino, Asian or black cop fatally shooting someone without just cause, that person is just as dead as if a white officer fired the shot.

So apparently white people are to blame for one POC beating on another POC.

Well, nice to have that cleared up.

Read it.

While the liberal media remains obsessed over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a report on Telemundo raises another kind of red flag: the prospect that Mexican government officials and liberal activists in the United States are working together in their opposition to Trump administration immigration policies.

In a report on a January 26, 2018 meeting between Mexican executive and legislative branch officials with liberal Latino activists in Los Angeles, Telemundo correspondent Claudia Mendoza summarized the determination of both the Mexican government and activists to resist U.S. immigration law enforcement actions, both in the courts as well as at the polls.

Comedians Mock CNN Analyst’s Deranged (and Racial) Trump Rants

CNN’s Brinkley Frets Trump Has Fox ‘Echo Chamber’ Propping Him Unlike Nixon  Yeah, you can’t just pile on the Republican the way you could in the Old Days.

Velshi: Trump Attacking ‘Pillars Of Our Criminal Justice System’ Who have already been corrupted by Obama/Clinton. That’s his job as chief law enforcement officer.

ABC on Memo: ‘Just Because It’s Biased, Doesn’t Mean It’s Not True’  The Dan Rather ‘fake but accurate’ rationalization.

MSNBC Freak-Out: Democracy ‘Crumbling’ as Trump Follows ‘Dictator’s Playbook’  The ‘Dictator’s Playbook’ says you ought to be in jail by now. Maybe you got the old edition.

MSNBC: Trump Base ‘Don’t Need Rationality,’ Just ‘Russian Bots’  I think CNN is populated by Russian bots. Seriously– have you ever watched them? ‘Uncanny Valley’ in the flesh.

California Professor Teaches Students That Trump Is Just ‘Orange Reality Star’  They don’t make professors like they used to.

Schumer To Liberal Group: Trump ‘Most Dangerous And Worst Man In The Presidency’ Ever  Richard Dixon would breathe a sigh of relief, if he could still breath. Still, Jimmy Carter is still out there….

Laughable Charles Blow: Trump Already Has America in a ‘Constitutional Crisis’  Yeah, all the Democrats are adopting unconstitutional means to get rid of him. But that’s not Trump’s fault.

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You deserve a break today….

Read it.

If you spend any time on planes, you’ve probably noticed the surge of animals. There have been pigs, monkeys, turkeys, snakes and oh-so-many dogs, often sprawled across crowded cabins. Delta alone flies about 250,000 animals a year — not even counting those tucked inside carry-on bags or checked in cargo holds — more than double how many it flew in 2015.

The number of problems is rising, too. A large part-Labrador mauled a man on a flight to San Diego last summer. A recent Delta news relsease included some words that don’t normally appear in a corporate news release: “urination/defecation” and “barking, growling, lunging and biting.” According to a labor union for flight attendants, more passengers are suffering allergy attacks, and more are arguing, or worse, over animals.

I’m not going to claim that flying pets are one of the country’s biggest problems right now. That’s a high bar, after all. But I do find this situation to be a fascinating case study of how mass cheating can become acceptable — and how decent people can make decisions that are more selfish than they realize. It is one of the downsides of a modern culture that too often fetishizes individual preference and expression over communal well-being.

Read it.

If anyone is so concerned about Global Warming that they decide not to have kids, I totally support then in that decision. In fact, I think that they ought to be encouraged to leave the gene pool entirely.

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I am not making this up.

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Well. There it is.

Read it.

Perhaps by holding his breath until he turns blue. It’s traditional.

I say we ought to take him up on it.

Perhaps a GoFundMe campaign. I’ll chip in.

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‘Make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity; that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings’

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Hey, drunk illegals are dreamers to, you know?

Sure! Open the borders! Let ’em all in! What could possibly go wrong?

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That’s a lot of crumbs, Nancy.

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These are the people that Democrats want in charge of our health care.

You would have thought that the Post Office was sufficient counter-example, but no ….

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Because the game was played in Minneapolis, the $112,000 bonuses paid to each player on the winning team (and the $56,000 bonuses paid to the losers), will be taxable in Minnesota, which has some of the highest personal income tax rates in the country. Each member of the Eagles will end up paying about $7,200 of their Super Bowl bonus to the state of Minnesota. That comes on top of an estimated $23,500 federal tax hit for each of the winning player’s shares.

And that’s just the start. Minnesota also imposes a so-called “jock tax” on athletes that visit the state for practices and games. Income earned during the days leading up to Sunday’s big game will be taxed at the state’s top marginal rate of 9.85 percent. Only California has a higher jock tax, and even states with no personal income taxes—like Texas and Florida, both frequent Super Bowl hosts—still hit up professional athletes, coaches, and team staff with special taxes.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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The open borders philosophy is wrong, because, like the failed ideologies of the past century, it doesn’t account for unpleasant facts about human nature and society. The truth Communism missed is that human beings prefer self-interest to compelled altruism. The truth open borders advocates miss is that human societies are tribal.

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Anybody who follows British news, as I do, knows that already.

Notice how telling the truth about something constitutes an ‘attack’.

West Hunter continues his evaluation of Bryan Caplan’s new book.

For example, test scores convey useful information. They could help show that an applicant is smart even though he attended a mediocre school – the same role they play in college admissions. But employers seldom request test scores, and although applicants may provide them, few do. Caplan says ” The word on the street: putting high scores on your resume suggests you’re smart but socially inept. ” Who would understand that better than Bryan? So valuing conformity leads to totally arbitrary standards – they exist because they exist. Let me suggest another possibility: flaunting high scores risks irritating the drones in HR. HR tends be packed with underperformers and people that the corporation felt compelled to hire (AA). Few people in HR have high scores on standardized tests. Other employees routinely express contempt for HR/Personnel. In the immortal words of Lieutenant Callahan: ” Personnel? That’s for assholes. ”

In the long run, who you hire is truly important, so it seems odd that companies would routinely allot this task to feebs. Yet it happens. The same thing is true for college admissions – the people doing it are not that special.

(The headline is, of course, taken from the Tom Lehrer song, which was in turn taken from the title of the Yale alma mater Bright College Years, which Lehrer, a Harvard man, was intending to mock. We’re everywhere.)

Jim Goad comments on modern culture, as only he can.

After the glorious and undeniably hilarious election of my towheaded homeboy Donald J. Trump, a common lament among his eternally dyspeptic naysayers went something along the lines of, “I don’t want to live in a country where Muslims and Mexicans have to worry about being attacked by mobs of toothless racist rednecks.”

Well, good luck with that goal, hon, although I don’t think you need much luck. I don’t think that would have been a likely scenario, anyway, despite your wildest fantasies and most depraved yearnings. Those toothless racist rednecks don’t care about you, or even think about you, nearly as much as you would seem to like.

Here’s my dream: I don’t want to live in a country with a reigning moral code that extends blanket sympathy to Muslims and Mexicans but has nothing but scorn for “toothless racist rednecks.”

Joel Kotkin uses an incredibly mixed metaphor.

Ultimately all parties are coalitions of disparate groups and interests. Much attention has been on the divisions within the ruling GOP — libertarians, social conservatives and populist/nationalists. But with the Democrats poised to make a comeback this year, and perhaps gain control of all three branches by 2020, perhaps it’s time to analyze divisions that may determine the extent of their ascendancy.

Three different, and often somewhat hostile, tendencies now define the Democratic Party. These include the corporate oligarchs, causists obsessed with particular hot button issues, and (arguably the most critical to long-term ascendency) populists who bear much of the party’s social democratic message and legacy.

NYT: “The President’s Unparalleled War on Law Enforcement”  Since when are a few crooks in the FBI ‘law enforcement’?

CNN’s Stelter: Spying On Trump Justified If There Is ‘Fear’ Of Something ‘Suspicious’  And Trump Derangement Syndrome is all about fear.

Donald Trump will trigger constitutional crisis if he uses declassified memo to end Russia probe, Democrats warn  Well, not really.

ESPN’s Jemele Hill Race Baits Donald Trump To Al Sharpton On MSNBC   Some of the worst racists have the darkest skins, although not as dark as their souls.

Read it.

High concentrations of heavy metals, like copper and gold, are toxic for most living creatures. This is not the case for the bacterium C. metallidurans, which has found a way to extract valuable trace elements from a compound of heavy metals without poisoning itself. One interesting side-effect: the formation of tiny gold nuggets. A team of researchers from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the University of Adelaide in Australia has discovered the molecular processes that take place inside the bacteria. The group presented their findings in the renowned journal Metallomics published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Kind of like Congressmen that way.

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Most small business problems are caused by government interference.

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

Running down the sheep is the hard part. Those suckers are tricky.

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How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

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Really? Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson don’t appear to be having any problems with it.

I suggest that the DemLegHump Media prefer dumb SJWs to smart conservative, which is why their ratings are tanking.

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The Great Depression brought the failure of thousands of banks in the United States, and none in Canada. Comparing Canada and the United States suggests that there was something deeply wrong with the American banking system. But what was it? The short answer is that American banks were heavily regulated, contrary to Canadian banks.

Few things strike fear in the ‘progressive’ soul than the term ‘unregulated’. Read the news: Whenever something new arises, the first reaction by the Usual Suspects is a call to ‘regulate’ (i.e. impose political controls via government) it. The ‘progressive’ mind reacts to the prospect of human activity outside of politics the way the Pope reacts to the prospect of Mortal Sin.