Read it.

Anybody who feels that socialism is better than what we have now ought to put her money where her mouth is and move to Venezuela. I’ll gladly chip in for air fare.

‘Twitter is where I go to hate the opinions of strangers, and Facebook is where I go to hate the opinions of my friends.’

— Bethany Mandel

Read it.

But you have to remember that Trump has accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during his term in office.

Just bear that in mind.

Absolutely nothing.

Read it.

Imagine, if you will, that a well-connected figure within Barack Obama’s White House had considered the unilateral nature of the Iran Deal to be a clear violation of the Constitution’s treaty clause, and had taken to the New York Times to explain that they were, in consequence, working from within the executive branch to thwart it. The reaction to such an admission would have been explosive. It would have yielded uniform and vehement condemnation, without caveats or excuse. Again: It is not acceptable to claim that “extreme circumstances” justify this behavior — at least it’s not unless you would also justify an assassination or a military coup. That some people think that Trump is insane or unstable or unable to fulfill his duties in no way alters the fact that this, by the author’s own admission, is subversion. There are mechanisms in place to deal with an unfit president in the White House. This was not one of them.

Read it.

Modern leftists are, essentially, collectivists. I suppose it’s not surprising that collectivists would yearn for the last time that collectivism made any sense, which was when humans were tribal hunter-gatherers who were completely dependent on their chief and each other to survive. Sounds awful to me, but a collectivist might see such an existence as sort of romantic. Especially if they’re as deluded as Rouseau, who remarked on how healthy and fit all the Indians were, not realizing that anyone over 25 who was not in perfect health was unlikely to survive the next winter. So any primitive Native American that Rouseau was likely to encounter was likely to be extremely healthy. All the others were already dead. But those remaining were very healthy, presumably because they were so in touch with nature, right? It must be all the organic vegetables.

This would explain the apparent regressivist and reactionary viewpoint of most proglodytes. Planes and autos bad, trains and bicycles and walking good. Chemical fertilizers  bad, ‘organic’ good. Eating animals bad, eating vegetables good. Fast food bad, ‘paleo diet’ good. Machine-made bad, hand-made bad. If they could cancel the 20th century (and likely the 19th after steam power was discovered), they’d be all for it.

Read it.

I guess they were seriously pissed off.

Read it.

As if he cared.

Read it.

The term ‘ass-backwards’ leaps immediately to mind.

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. Nixon would scrub ‘eventually’ from that prediction.

Read it.

Betcha it never happens.

Betcha they waste millions failing to make it happen.

Betcha more California taxpayers flee to places like Texas.

If life could be improved by just passing a law, California would be paradise.

Read it. And watch the video.

One of the few times that politics turns into entertainment.

I’d love to have that guy as my Congressman.

Read it. And watch the video, obviously.

They’re making a big deal out of this because they have absolutely nothing else.

Bernstein calls on Kelly to resign following Woodward book  Sure, that’s gonna happen.

Mueller Is Looking for Proof of “Corrupt Intent.” Trump Provided It on Monday.  I must have missed where Saletan got his law degree.

Bernstein: Trump presidency a national emergency

Woodward book reveals ‘crazytown’ White House  Or at least claims to.

Trump suggests protesting should be illegal  Except, of course, that he didn’t.

Premature death could help explain why Donald Trump is president, suggests study

Rob Reiner interview: ‘If we’re not able to slow Trump down, he’ll be worse than Bush’

Trump rages over Bob Woodward expose and hints at US libel law change  Although he actually doesn’t, of course.

Stephen Colbert Claims The Only Stupid Southerners Are The Ones Working For Trump

Joe Scarborough Challenges Pro-Lifers To Come At Him Over Kavanaugh Handshake Controversy

Protesters Immediately Interrupt 2nd Day Of Kavanaugh Hearing

Michael Moore Blames Gwen Stefani For Trump’s Decision To Run For President  Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

Donald Trump’s cabinet ‘considered using 25th amendment to remove him from office’  Except, of course, that they didn’t.

What’s Motivating the Times’ Anonymous Op-Ed Writer Inside the White House?  Money would be my guess.

Read it.

Actually, the intellectual poverty of the Old Socialits was pretty impressive, too.

Read it.

No wonder the Church of England is coming apart.

Read it.

Bernie Sanders has introduced legislation to tax big companies the full amount of welfare claimed by their workers because of the low-wages they receive.

Titled the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop BEZOS) Act, Mr Sanders took direct aim at companies such as Amazon and its owner Jeff Bezos. While Mr Bezos’ wealth stood at $168bn, the Vermont senator said, many of his employees were forced to use food stamps and other federal and state benefits because their wages were so low.

The same effect could be had by abolishing the welfare system, which would save every taxpayer money. But Bernie isn’t about reducing government, he’s about increasing it.

Read it.

I didn’t even know that there was a ‘Dyson award’.

Read it.

President Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Speaker Paul Ryan have teamed up this summer to do something that hasn’t happened in two decades — write and pass department spending bills instead of lumping everything into a massive package.

The House and Senate are moving at a brisk pace to pass the appropriations bills, with the Senate leading, approving nine of 12.

Read it.

Two words: Martha Stewart.

Read it.

I’ll bet you thought Popular Science was about science, didn’t you? Well, it’s not! It’s about making you feel bad because you’re not on board the latest SJW obsession! So feel ashamed!

Read it.

As was confirmed during the hearings, Democrats planned these disruptions during a conference call over Labor Day weekend led by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and, furthermore, witnesses saw people being paid to stand in line to enter the hearings. In other words, Democrats spent money to make sure dozens of hecklers got into the Senate hearing room to stage these planned disruptions during the proceedings. This was thuggery — a hired mob using protests as a terroristic intimidation tactic. This is not “democracy,” it’s an invitation to chaos.

Read it.

Yeah, now that the maximum damage has been done to their reputations and careers … never mind!

Read it.

The Great Sort-Out continues.

The Identity Politics people make it a cornerstone of their ideology that voters, especially women and minorities (hardest hit), need candidates with which they can ‘identify’ and use as ‘role models’. So what will it say about the Democrat Party when all of its candidates are non-white? Or female? Where will they go for the white voters that they need to win?

Read it.

Did you know that the “okay” gesture with your index finger and thumb joined at the tip in a rough circle is some kind of (not so) secret symbol of white supremacy? Apparently just because Trump uses that gesture a lot when he speaks?

Remember: If you hear the dog whistle, then you’re the dog.

Paul Mirengoff of Powerline wishes they had.

According to Politico, Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee considered staging a mass walk-out. Supposedly, they debated doing this just hours before the hearing began. They settled, instead, on a strategy of disruption.

I wish they had walked out. Then, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to watch the proceedings. I’ll never get that time back.

Read it.

And then again, we might not. It’s not as if Reich has been great at the prediction game in the past.

Read it.

So far, in California, this low-grade but inherent hostility has not boiled over. Partly that’s because Silicon Valley has done a bang-up job of convincing the Left—and in California, only the Left matters—that they are the world’s first and only morally pure oligarchs. This is why, despite the enormous piles of cash ripe for expropriation, the Left has been very slow to practice its time-honored shakedown antics against the tech industry.

But they are starting to. And when they begin to draw blood, two things will happen. First, like Sauron frantically shifting his gaze to Mount Doom as Frodo drops the ring, the techies will realize that they can no longer ignore state and local politics but will have to try to take them over. Second, they will realize that they have few allies in the fight against the Left, because the ways in which they’ve transformed the state have driven out a lot of the people who might otherwise have stood with them, and the few who remain they’ve alienated with their arrogance.

Read it.

The Crust takes care of its own: Nobody gets fired, nobody goes to jail.

Read it.

Babies born with LCA have poor eyesight and are extra sensitive to light. In most cases, people with the “rare genetic eye disorder” go completely blind by age 40, according to a press release from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

LCA is caused by a mutated gene. The scientists figured out a way to transfer a corrected version of the gene to patients via innocuous viruses. They received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s first approval of a gene therapy for a congenital disorder in December 2017, according to the press release.

Read it.

n criticizing President Trump’s decision to withhold a cost-of-living increase for federal workers, Paul Krugman writes:

Federal workers with low levels of education are paid more than their counterparts in the private sector — but do you really want our government to emulate the always-low-wages policies of, say, fast food chains? More educated workers, on the other hand, are paid substantially less than private-sector equivalents, and CBO finds that overall the federal government pays only about 3 percent more than it would if it matched private pay schedules.

Four Pinocchios! An economist with less of a political axe to grind would have specified that federal wages are 3 percent higher, but that wages are only part of compensation. The same CBO report found that federal benefits are 47 percent higher than private-sector levels. Combine wages and benefits, and the average federal employee enjoys a 17 percent compensation premium. Furthermore, “more educated” federal employees are paid less only when we are talking about people with professional degrees and doctorates. Federal employees with bachelors’ and masters’ degrees still receive a premium.

Government employees are inevitably going to get better wages than they can get in the private sector because current political realities mean that they are increasingly drawn from Fashionable Victim Groups rather than on the basis of actual qualifications. (Ask grandad where the phrase ‘good enough for government work’ came from).

Paul Mirengoff from Powerline has the duty today.

It’s like watching a Monthy Python sketch, except that Monty Python is actually funny.

UPDATE: Dem. Senator Makes Stunning Admission About Protests During Kavanaugh Hearing

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) confessed that the interruptions occurring during Brett Kavanaugh’s hearing had been planned during several phone calls with Democrat leadership over the weekend.

I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you….

Read it.

Your tax dollars at work.

The key here is to give Democrat objections the same consideration that Republicans would get were the roles reversed, i.e. none.

Republicans, of course, don’t import noisemakers from the Underclass into the audience.

The Other McCain loves fisking feminists.

Jessica Valenti is a feminist and a liar, but I repeat myself. A couple of weeks ago, Valenti invited scrutiny of her truthfulness by responding to the murder of a young woman in Iowa. On Aug. 22, the White House issued this statement on Twitter: “For 34 days, investigators searched for 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts. Yesterday, an illegal alien, now charged with first-degree murder, led police to the cornfield where her body was found. The Tibbetts family has been permanently separated. They are not alone.” That message included a brief video of parents whose children were also killed by illegal aliens.

Ms. Valenti, a columnist for the Guardian and author of several feminist books, responded with an obscenity, calling the White House message “f—king disgraceful,” and then added this remarkable statement: “The deadliest demographic for American women isn’t immigrants — it’s husbands & boyfriends. But the truth about who kills women in this country isn’t politically useful for the White House.”

Well, since Ms. Valenti has invited an examination of the demographics of murder, let us ask: Who is killing whom in America?

Read it.

Restaurant owners are also worrying about increased immigration enforcement: Nearly 20 percent of workers are foreign-born.

That was easy. Ask me a hard one.

Read it.

You’ll notice that this sort of thing doesn’t happen in Texas, where the chances of encountering somebody with a CCL is pretty high. San Francisco, however, is pretty much an open-air Gun Free Zone. And of course the customers just stand around watching the proceedings like cows chewing their cuds.

It’s also the fourth time than this particular store has been robbed.

Understandable. It’s not as if the company is going to start arming their employees.

Read it.

How about that GREAT government-provided health care system? Don’t you wish we had one like it in the U.S.?

Feel the Bern….

Read it.

I never bought Nike stuff in the first place, so I’ve got nowhere to go.

Still, cutting the Nike logo off of a pair of socks strikes me as narcissistic  Virtue Signaling.

Read it.

The team demonstrated the system’s potential by searching around 1,000 reactions using combinations of 18 different starting chemicals.

After exploring only around 100 of the possible reactions, the robot was able to predict with over 80 per cent accuracy which combinations of starting chemicals should be explored to create new reactions and molecules.

Read it.

I guess they blew it.

Read it.

Politico indulges in some unicorn-spotting. I’ve never seen to many proglodyte buzz-words in one place.

The Daily Beast, however, isn’t buying it:  Hey, Democratic Socialists: More Big Government Won’t Work

Read it.

The New Yorker’s cancellation of Steve Bannon’s appearance at the New Yorker Ideas Festival shows that the New Yorker has no idea what it is doing. Not because it invited Bannon to be interviewed on stage by New Yorker editor David Remnick, but because Remnick reneged on the invitation only eight hours later, and because the reneging was so hasty that it cannot be presented as a thoughtful statement of journalistic principle. It looks more like the result of panic and fear, the emotions that Steve Bannon, by his own admission, exploited so successfully in 2016.

A Voice of the Crust wags a finger.

I love the way the link is constructed: ‘identity-politics-right-left-Trump-racism’. It’s as if they can’t construct a link to a Guardian article without including ‘Trump’ and ‘racism’ ‘in it. (I suppose they have editors to make sure people follow the rules….)

This does not mean racism is irrelevant; it matters, but social science suggests it does in more complicated ways than much commentary suggests.

Of course, if ‘racism’ is the persistent filter through which a large part of the political establishment views things, then it damned straight is relevant, although more as a mental disorder than as an actual thing.

Perhaps because straightforward bigotry has declined precipitously while more subtle, complex resentments remain, understanding how intolerance shapes politics requires examining not just beliefs, but also the relationship between beliefs and the environments people find themselves in. This distinction has important implications for how we interpret and address contemporary social and political problems.

Translation: Since obvious racism is becoming more and more difficult to uncover without looking like idiots, we’re going to keep digging and bloviating until we’ve convinced ourselves that it’s really there nevertheless; with any luck, we’ll take a lot of stupid people with us.

Rather than being directly translated into behavior, psychologists tell us beliefs can remain latent until “triggered”. In a fascinating study, Karen Stenner shows in The Authoritarian Dynamic that while some individuals have “predispositions” towards intolerance, these predispositions require an external stimulus to be transformed into actions. Or, as another scholar puts it: “It’s as though some people have a button on their foreheads, and when the button is pushed, they suddenly become intensely focused on defending their in-group … But when they perceive no such threat, their behavior is not unusually intolerant. So the key is to understand what pushes that button.”

So just because you haven’t done anything racist yet, nevertheless you’re really racist deep down inside and could break out in racism without warning at any time. Sort of a ‘climate change’ theory of racism.

What pushes that button, Stenner and others find, is group-based threats.

Such as, say, being hectored for racism by people who have nothing better to do with their time. Of course, it’s still your fault rather than the fault of the people pestering you, who only have your welfare in mind.

Building on such research, Diana Mutz recently argued that Trump’s stress on themes like growing immigration, the power of minorities and the rise of China highlighted status threats and fears particularly among whites without a college education, prompting a “defensive reaction” that was the most important factor in his election.

Of course, these aren’t actually real threats, no no no! They’re just manufactured threats that Trump uses to scare the people in Flyover Country to stampede.

This “defensive reaction” also explains why Trump’s post-election racist, xenophobic and sexist statements…

Of which there are none, except in the minds of his critics.

… and reversal of traditional Republican positions on trade and other issues…

Gee, they never complained when John McCain did it.

… have helped him – they keep threats to whites front and center, provoking anger, fear and a strong desire to protect their own group.

Yeah, Trump created Black Lives Matter out of whole cloth just to scare white voters.

John Hinderaker reports on the Minnesota State Fair.

I spent Labor Day laboring, but my wife and youngest daughter went to the Fair. They, of course, wouldn’t miss the seed art exhibit, and my wife took this picture of Seeds of Resistance, a sextafecta of leftism: Sun Not Oil (don’t try to turn the lights on at night), MeToo, Not One More, Pride, Water Is Life (not sure about that one, but it sounds environmental), and BLM.

Lanny Davis Defends CNN, Takes Blame As He Explains Trump Tower Claim Backtrack

Trump is failing to bring back American jobs  Really? That’s not what I see when I look at the unemployment figures.

Parkland Survivor David Hogg Helps Raise Thousands for Anti-Ted Cruz Billboard Featuring Trump Tweet  “Camera” Hogg is at it again. We ought to encourage the Party of Hate to waste their money campaigning against Ted Cruz in Texas.

Charles Hurt turns over a rock.

Listening to failed politicians hijack the funerals of two such respected American heroes as John McCain and Aretha Franklin so they could smear the sitting president really tells you all you need to know about those washed-up has-beens.

It’s what they do. It’s all they do. When all you’ve got is a hammer, you hammer in the morning, the evening, all over this land.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat, went on one of the Sunday shows to shred the good name of Mr. Trump’s latest nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh. (I will not say the name of the program because, honestly, I am embarrassed to have wasted precious moments of the Sabbath on such sleepy-eyed nonsense.)

Anyway, she claims to have read 148,000 documents that reveal Judge Kavanaugh to be so heinous as to be unfit for the high court.

OK, let’s say Ms. Klobuchar spent two minutes reading each document. That would be 296,000 minutes — or 205 days — reading these documents. Which is pretty remarkable considering Judge Kavanaugh was nominated 55 days ago.

There is another word for this. It is called a “lie.” And the person who utters it is known as a “liar,” even if the person she tells this “lie” to is so sleepy-eyed as to appear to be fully asleep.

Democrats lie. It’s what they do.

Read it.

‘They may have won all the battles / But we had all the good songs!’

My question is: How many would have shown up without the concert?

Read it.

Proglodyte notions of due process are much like those in Nazi People’s Courts.

Which is not surprising, when you think about it.

Read it.

Except in California, of course, which will have eliminated plastic waste by then.

I’m sure in San Francisco they’re working on methane generation based on human waste.