Read it.

But he does have the power to pull the U.S. out of it. Good luck to the rest of you

UPDATE: Now that Trump has pulled the US out, the Iran nuclear deal will eventually collapse – here’s why

Steve Sailer does a review.

You might assume that if race were an arbitrary social construct, then America would be beset by constant disputes over who qualifies to benefit from racial quotas. If race is all just Foucauldian mind games, then surely blacks must be getting exploited by whites, right?

And yet, Americans don’t actually have much trouble agreeing on who qualifies as black and who does not.

That is not widely understood, though. Like the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes story, it is hard to notice how limited in number are the controversies in the U.S. over whether some racial preference beneficiary is really black or not. (The most notorious one in recent decades was set in isolated Spokane.)

…

It would be interesting to see if anybody ever gets dropped from the ranks of African-American just because their ancestors kept marrying white people, as long as each person in the chain of descent identified as black. I’m not familiar with that ever happening.

Read it.

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

Read it.

Of course not. That’s not the Narrative.

Read it.

A Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group is launching an online archive giving the public a sneak-peek at how state attorneys general and activists conspired to engage in climate litigation against energy companies.

ClimateLitigationWatch will publish documents involving court cases against the energy industry. The group’s website also offers the first searchable database of records showing activists and politicians working hand-in-glove on litigation aimed at throttling oil producers.

The project, which the Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO) kick-started, will also release profiles of the people involved in the litigation, along with trading cards detailing their role in current cases. AGs Maura Healey of Massachusetts and Eric Schneiderman of News York will almost certainly be included in the profiles — both of whom are at the center of the lawsuits.

Read it.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Instead of putting rumble strips on a road in a small Dutch village to warn drivers who veered onto the shoulder, officials installed musical strips.

Workers painted the stretch of road near the village, Jelsum, to “play” music from the regional anthem when tyres rumbled along the raised strips. But soon, the biggest rumbling was coming from the village as residents begged authorities to make it stop.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

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

‘Morning Joe’ Tries To Flip Schneiderman Accusation On Trump

The Media Get Trumped: President’s Polls Improve Despite 90% Negative Coverage

John Oliver: Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump ‘Both Want to F**k Ivanka’  This guy is supposedly a comedian.

Former Obama Official Says Iran ‘Has Shown More Credibility’ Than The White House  Except that whole lying about nuclear research thing. Or perhaps he meant the Obama White House.

BIZARRE: ‘The View’ Asks If Schneiderman Sex-Abuse Scandal’s a ‘Tipping Point for Trump?’

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

This is actually pretty slick.

Read it.

Coates was essentially saying that the publication could still have intellectual diversity without conservative opinions, as long as it shifted the goalpost in the other direction—i.e., by including more perspectives that were further and further left.

Levitz takes this ball and runs with it, providing two basic arguments for doing so: first, most conservative opinion writers are completely irrelevant to the conservative movement as it exists the age of Trump; and second, conservative arguments are obviously wrong and thus not worth debating at all.

Freeberg blows the whistle.

And — ya know what? It isn’t because of some revulsion impulse, as in “Ooh ick, they’re different from me, cooties!” I want to know if liberals were involved in this push-poll, or academic research, or survey, or such-and-such a “fact checking” web site, or “study.” I’m asking the question so I can figure out whether or not to take the findings with a large grain of salt. This is what we all should be doing.

I’m not the only one with the concern, after all. I think if we’re going to be honest about it, we all have doubts in the back of the mind when we hear “a study found.” We’ve just been conditioned over time to nurture some heady fear against asking the obvious question: Did the researchers know what they were going to “find” before they started doing any research?

We’ve also been conditioned not to notice the obvious, that liberals are the people who do exactly that. They “learn” what they want to “know.” You ever try telling them something they don’t? Give that a try, then come back here. I’ll wait.

Read it.

And there it is.

Read it.

The Mossad operation in January that got half a ton of top-secret Iranian nuclear weapons program documents out of Iran and back to Israel in less than 24 hours has provided Iranian leaders with multiple aftershocks. For one thing most Iranians don’t care about the document theft. No Iranians were injured in the operation, it was assumed to have been made possible by the widespread corruption in Iran and an Iranian religious dictatorship that seems to care more about destroying Israel than improving the lives of Iranians. When news of the Mossad operation were made public by the Israelis at the end of April the public opinion polls in Iran showed that most Iranians didn’t care and those that paid any attention to the matter felt it was just another example of how incompetent their government was and why change was needed. The Iranian government was justifiably concerned that publicizing these documents, as Israel was now doing, would lead to the cancellation of the 2015 treaty that lifted sanctions on Iran. The American president will announce the new U.S. position on May 12 th and it does not look good for Iran. The stolen documents show that the nuclear program did exist and apparently is still underway disguised as many different scientific research projects.

Mika Brzezinski Calls Rudy Giuliani A ‘Train Wreck’ Who Is ‘Making It Up As He Goes Along’ [VIDEO]  Gee, I was about to say the same about Mika.

NYDN’s Lupica Attacks Trump, Pence and ‘Church of the Gun’ Attendees at NRA Convention  Which is CLEARLY in sportswriter Lupica’s area of expertise.

Joy Behar Says Trump Is Using A ‘Big Lie’ Like Hitler  Or, closer to home, like CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post….

Chief Hypocrite Scarborough Demands GOP Apologize to America for Defending Trump  No, I don’t think that’s gonna happen.

GLAAD Media Awards Winner Call America a ‘Leaderless Country’

Read it.

I guess he wasn’t around when Michelle got her no-show ‘diversity coordinator’ job after Barack was elected to the Senate.

Read it.

The Party of Hate lives up to its name.

Read it.

Boy, those strict British gun-control laws are sure effective.

Read it.

Perhaps they were just making a break for it. Has anybody gotten in touch with their embassy?

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

I have a list of environmentalists that it’s welcome to nosh on. Just sayin’.

Read it.

Got it in one, except that Jane never spent any time in the U.S. military.

Read it.

You know, as they do.

If you’d like to see life for a Democrat forced to speak the truth all the time, watch the Jim Carrey movie LIAR LIAR.

It’s especially poignant since Jim Carrey is both a Democrat and a liar.

Read it.

The left has won the culture war and is roaming the countryside shooting the wounded. The latest example takes place in Phoenix, where the city is compelling two artists to create artwork they don’t agree with — and forbidding them from speaking up about it.

Painter Breanna Koski and calligrapher Joanna Duka became friends at a Bible study and, realizing their mutual love of art, created a business named Brush and Nib Studio. They create announcements and invitations for special occassions, primarily weddings. After meeting with the couples to better understand them and their desires, Breanna and Joanna handcraft unique custom designs celebrating their marriage.

This bespoke business fuses the pair’s passions but they quickly ran into trouble with the government. According to a City of Phoenix ordinance, Brush and Nib is compelled to create unique artwork celebrating same-sex weddings, even though Breanna and Joanna believe the Christian teaching that marriage should be limited to one male and one female. Worse still, the law prevents them from speaking about their traditional view since mere speech is thought to be discriminatory.

First Amendment? What First Amendment?

Read it.

Damn. So close.

On the other hand, I really don’t have anything against New Zealand. So there is that.

Read it.

This is an ‘up your nose with a rubber hose’ moment that would not be happening if Trump weren’t President.

Perhaps G. Gordon Liddy would have been a more in-your-face pick. But it’s close.

Read it.

But he’s one of the Cloud People, so it’s okay.

Prediction: Nobody will get fired, nobody will go to jail.

Read it.

Debby Witt referenced this in a comment on Maxine Waters but I think it deserves a prominent position of its own.

Resting Bitch Face, or RBF for short, is an increasingly rife cultural advent describing a facial expression, or lack thereof, conveying a particular mix of irritation, judgment, or boredom

…

In 2016, researchers studied the phenomenon using software that detects micro-emotions and found neutral faces identified as having RBF showed four times more contempt than other, genuinely neutral, faces. This showed as a subtle raising of lip corners and tightening around the eyes, which researchers concluded must similarly be registered by the brain. They suggested future research should examine why some people have RBF, what it means in terms of a person’s psychology, and why people react so badly to it.

A lot of people on the Left, especially those affiliated with ‘civil rights’, have this as their default expression. It is not a good look.

Scott Adams: ‘The greatest untapped resource that black people have is that white people like to help.’

Read it.

Of course they do. ‘Nice family you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.’

Read it.

Those of you who need this, you know who you are.

Personally, I’d let the guy drown. Natural selection can’t work if we keep butting in.

Unless there were money involved, of course; let’s not get extreme, here.

With thanks to Debby Witt, a kindred soul, who finds all of this stuff so you don’t have to. (If you’re not reading Debby’s blog, you’re missing half the fun. The important half.)

April Diary.

In case you need a Derb fix. I know I did.

Don’t forget the Support John Derbyshire link over there on the right.

Read it.

Bear in mind that the Left’s definition of torture is when room service is late.

I suspect being forced to watch re-runs of Seinfeld constitutes torture, but nobody asked me….

Read it.

The ‘sanctuary cities’ movement spawns a red-headed stepchild.

Read it.

Madame BitterBeerFace sticks with the Narrative.

Are there any pictures in which she is not grimacing? I’ve never seen any. I guess that look works for her.

Read it.

‘You’re a Deviationist!’ ‘No, you’re a Deviationist!’

Let’s have the NRA supply the feminists and the transgender activists with modern weaponry and see who comes out the winner.

Read it.

Sorry, no time for that, Zuckerberg is hot on the trail of Hate Speech. Hey, man, ya gotta have priorities.

Read it.

Hey, man, ya gotta have priorities.

ZMan pulls back the curtain.

A famous line from the movie The Usual Suspects is “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Even after all these years, it turns up in comment sections and social media. It is a good line to have in mind when thinking about who is actually ruling over us. In America, our elites have spent a very long time convincing us that there are no elites. The fact is though, every society has an elite and it is usually a stable, semi-permanent one. The people in charge tend to stay in charge.

…

Of course the real reason elites tend to get what they want is they are better than the rest of us. They are smarter, better socialized and they have greater access to the stock of knowledge relevant to being in charge. Americans despise the idea of a ruling elite, so the people in charge spend a lot of time pretending they don’t exist. It’s why our form of democracy works so well. The people keep voting for different candidates, but the people in charge never change. That’s what we are seeing with Donald Trump right now.

Read it.

Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

Compliments of Harry Connolly, whose books you ought to read.

Read it.

Feel free to read the article if you wish — I’m sure it’s very interesting and informative — but that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m about to get META on your ass; hang on tight.

The Independent isn’, really. Like most ‘media’ enterprises these days, it’s fashionably Lefty, although not as bad as The Guardian, which serves as the official Voice of the Labour Party the way that the New York Times and The Washington Post tag-team for the Party of Hate. (A term that I got from Scott Adams that I really like.)

The headline is the first giveaway — something like a ‘supermud brick’ would be pretty cool, but it wouldn’t be important enough to write about in so hip/cool/cutting-edge a publication as The Independent. It has to Solve a Problem in the Modern Capitalist World, preferably one that chiefly affects the UnderServed (women and minorities hardest hit, etc. etc.). Did you know that there was a ‘world housing crisis’? I didn’t. And I still don’t; Lefty journalists don’t even get out of bed for something that’s not a Crisis, preferably a World Crisis, and if they don’t see one they cobble one together, because that’s what they live for. (And what their paychecks depend on, although coals of fire wouldn’t get them to admit it.)

‘Cut carbon emissions’? A twofer! Now, just why cutting ‘carbon emissions’ is such a good thing is never addressed; they are Leftists writing for other Leftists and can presume that their target demographic is au courant with the latest Crises, of which presumably ‘carbon emissions’ is one. (Betcha money it’s connected to Global Warming Climate Change; all of the Cool Crises are these days.)

I really like the subhed: ‘The world needs more affordable housing with lower environmental impact.’ Really? Why? Again, never addressed. You’re just supposed to know this stuff. Just what is ‘affordable housing’, anyway? ‘Affordable’ for whom? Donald Trump? Mustafa bin Laden in his home in the Sudan? We never find out. I seriously doubt that the writer of the piece could define it. Affordable Housing is just one of those political fetishes of the Left, like Reduced Inequality and Social Justice and Racial Balance and Diversity that are trotted out whenever the Chattering Class wants to get an Amen.

And why is ‘lower environmental impact’ such a concern? Housing, by its nature, has a high environmental impact, since you’re putting people where animals presumably could be living. The best ‘low environmental impact’ would be not to build housing at all, but move all the people away to where people are already living — someplace like, oh, Detroit, where there is plenty of existing housing that is at present unoccupied. But no. That would actually solve the problem, and we can’t have that.

This is what makes the Left so tedious. The world is full of Crises, and a proglodyte is morally obligated to obsess about every goddamned one of them every goddamned minute of every goddamned day. The entire country is turning into an open-air sanatarium full of people with Political Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.That’s bad enough; but they are deeply determined that you will at least pretend to be POCD as well — and that I find irritating in the extreme.

Ah, well. I’ll have supermud bricks from which to make a fortress for my Last Stand.

Read it.

The way things looked twenty years ago.

Read it.

Boy, those strict British gun-control laws really work, don’t they?

Read it.

Two hundred years ago, the treadmill was invented in England as a prison rehabilitation device. It was meant to cause the incarcerated to suffer and learn from their sweat. It would mill a bit of corn or pump some water as a bonus.

Whenever I see anybody on a treadmill, I ask myself, ‘Were you bad?’

John Hinderaker of Powerline blows the whistle.

When the Associated Press reports on embarrassing conduct by an elected official but discreetly avoids telling us what party (s)he belongs to, you can generally guess. This one is an entertaining example.

UPDATE: AP’s Scott Bauer Fails to ID Party of Dem Legislator Charged in Racial Incident

FBI sponsored meeting turns into anti-Trump rally

Don Lemon: It Is My Obligation As A Journalist To Call Trump A Racist  It is my obligation as a blogger to call Don Lemon a liar and a twit.

San Diego School Orders Defiant Artist To Revise Painting Depicting President Trump’s Head On A Spear

Sorry, Liberal Media, But You Own Michelle Wolf

Morning Joe Meltdown Over Sarah Sanders: ‘This is How Democracies Die’  Yeah, when supposed journalists act like the Thought Police.

France condemns Trump over claim armed civilians could have stopped 2015 Paris attacks  ‘Cheese-eating surrender monkeys’ is, I believe, the phrase.

Read it.

That explains a LOT.

Read it.

And you can’t complain because it’s Science. So there.

My body indeed has an firm idea of what I ought to weigh; no doubt the fact that I decided to carry a lot of that as fat rather than as muscle is a serious disappointment.