Government has exactly two legitimate functions: (1) Keep people safe, (2) Keep people honest.

The next time you see or hear of ‘government’ doing something, ask yourself which of these two functions that doing is in service of. I think you’ll find that it’s merely somebody or group using the coercive power of government to make you do or pay for something that they think you ought to do or pay for without asking you first.

I like government shutdowns. Unfortunately a government shutdown never shuts down what it ought to.

One of the most common hobbies of ‘activist’ is the ‘demonstration’, during which a greater or lesser number of rude and ugly people wander the streets shouting and whining and waving signs and inconvenience ordinary people.

If you should happen to encounter one such, ask a participant what they are demonstrating. If you even receive an answer, it will be in the form of ‘demonstrating for [whatever]’. Respond, ‘I didn’t ask you what you were demonstrating for, but rather what you were demonstrating. If I demonstrate a pen, I show how it is used. If I demonstrate a washing machine, I show how it is used. So what actual use are you demonstrating?’

It ought to be fun.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

The events of the last 72 hours may be bringing the Trump Doctrine into sharper focus. Is there a “Trump Doctrine”? Trump would say it means “America First,” but his move to withdraw American forces of Syria and, it was reported late Thursday night, perhaps a large drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan, suggest he really means it.

What a shock. A President who puts America first.

Read it.

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins opened up about all of the hate and threats she received leading up to the confirmation vote for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during an interview with Martha MacCallum Thursday night.

Democrats: Party of Fear, Party of Hate, Party of Death

Stop the Islamization of Europe!

The Guardian Equates Murdered Israeli Soldiers With Suspected Palestinian Terrorists Killed By Authorities  You know, as they do.

Isis ‘massacres hundreds of prisoners’ as it makes last stand in eastern Syria

Dozens of Jewish gravestones desecrated with swastikas near Strasbourg

As Kurdish fighters move on last Isis-controlled town in Syria, Turkey threatens attack

Man dies after having both ears sliced off in Blackburn machete attack

Palestinian teenager killed as violence spirals in West Bank during Israeli manhunt for shooter

Strasbourg attack: French TV station apologises for playing ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ on air after police kill shooting suspect Cherif Chekkat

Google App Allows People To Report Blasphemy To Indonesian Government  For all your Shari’a needs.

Attack at French Christmas Market Reminder of Looming Threat Islamist Terrorist Pose in Europe

Cameroon attack: Two female suicide bombers detonate devices near Nigerian border

Kashmir: Rising violence in region as seven civilians killed by government troops

Sharia Swimming Rules Enforced Against Native German Family in Bremen

Strasbourg Death Toll Increases to Four

Exposing and Slut-Shaming: How to Enforce Sharia in the Netherlands

Syrian bomb blast kills eight in town held by Turkish-backed opposition forces

Islamic Terrorists Kill A Dozen Nigerian Soldiers In Clash

Children among thousands ‘slaughtered’ in clashes between herders and farmers in Nigeria, warns Amnesty

A Cornucopia of European Cultural Enrichment, Advent Edition

Janbaz Tarin: Man admits murdering wife and her mother in knife attack after it emerged he had secret family in Middle East

Forgotten Women: The displaced Syrian mothers still fighting for change – who say ‘I want you to feel our suffering’ Hey, maybe I don’t want to feel your suffering.

US Kills Dozens Of Somali Extremists In Major Airstrikes

The Strasbourg Terror Attack – Only the Names Have Changed

More than 60 Somali militants killed in air strikes, says US military

Janbaz Tarin: Man sentenced to life in prison after admitting to double murder of wife and mother-in-law

Teenage Isis supporter who encouraged girlfriend to behead her ‘disbeliever’ parents jailed

Enrichment, Rape, and Official Neglect in Sweden

Morocco: Two Scandinavian women found dead ‘with cuts to neck’ in remote High Atlas mountains

Hamas-Driven West Bank Violence Targets Israel and the PA

Sub-Saharan Africa becoming new battleground against violent extremism as jihad ‘goes south’

A Look Inside The Taliban’s Safe Havens In Pakistan

Islam: What We Are Really Up Against

Professor Hired Mercenaries To Rescue College Student From ISIS

Former Christian Altar Boy Opens Up About Why He Joined ISIS, ‘Right Of Revenge’

Trump orders full and immediate withdrawal of US troops from Syria  Good. Let them kill each other off.

Iran diplomats expelled from Albania plotted against dissidents, source says

WATCH: World’s Dumbest Terrorist Lays Out Entire Plan To FBI On Surveillance Video

Hate Preachers in German Mosques, Part 1

Kurdish-led Group Reportedly Considers Releasing ISIS Prisoners

ISIS Supporter Who Attacked Police With Sword Outside of Buckingham Palace Found Not Guilty By “British” Jury

Laura Ingraham, Jim Jordan Criticize Trump, Republicans On Border Wall Retreat  Let’s wait and see what happens, eh?

Forever War Betrayed: Washington is outraged that Trump is bringing boys home from Syria just because we defeated ISIS  The nerve of that guy.

How Russia has distorted the Trump balance sheet (and it’s not how you think)

Joe Scarborough Continues To Say Trump Won’t Run In 2020, Claims He Only Wants To ‘Line His Pockets’  Scarborogh is just working for free, of course.

‘Daily Show’ Tells Trump If He Wants To Put Kids In Cages He Should Start With His Own Children  Welcome to the SyFy channel.

Michelle Obama Says Trump Has Lowered The Presidential ‘Bar’  Hey, if Obama can get elected, anybody can.

Scarborough Suggests Trump Pulled Out Of Syria To Satisfy Putin  No doubt Trump goes to the bathroom to satisfy Putin.

Ann Coulter Moves Herself Into Trump Enemy Territory

BREAKING: Trump Moves Towards Shutdown Over Wall Funding  Oh ye of little faith….

Read it.

There is no manger without a dog ready to jump in it.

Read it.

A twice-deported illegal immigrant felon allegedly killed a man and injured numerous others Sunday, and authorities are blaming the criminal’s violent actions on California’s sanctuary state law for allowing the violence to occur.

Gustavo Garcia, 36, shot a farm worker in Tulare County in California Sunday before stealing $2,000 from an AA Gas and Grub mini mart in Exeter, The Washington Post reported Thursday. Garcia went on to shoot a woman in the parking lot of a Motel 6 in Tulare, spray bullets into a Shell gas station, shoot and kill a man at a second gas station in Visalia, and finally attack his ex-girlfriend’s house, the Post reported.

Read it.

Sheer numbers have radically changed electoral politics. Take California. One out of every four residents in California is foreign-born. Not since 2006 has any California Republican been elected to statewide office.

The solidly blue states of the American Southwest, including Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, voted red as recently as 2004 for George W. Bush. Progressives understandably conclude that de facto open borders are good long-term politics.

Progressives want open immigration for the same reason Tony Blair’s government wanted it — massive influx of underclass proletarians means increasing vote margins for the Party of Free Stuff.

Read it.

The media finally got a tour of Elon Musk’s plan to revolutionize transportation in Los Angeles — and it didn’t go well for Musk.

…

But the company is also hedging. Earlier this week, it told Nelson that the tunnel is just an R&D for the Boring Company, which Musk says is aimed at revolutionizing the tunneling industry, one of the most complicated endeavors in civil engineering. It’s probably good that the company has offered an alternative explanation for the tunneling, because the whole concept of developing an underground road network is flawed. Musk’s tunnels are a lot like a subway, but with carrying capacity reduced to practically nothing.

Read it.

I sure he’s fed up with them as well.

I love the photo. Democrat legislators all look like extras from a zombie apocalypse movie.

Read it.

We can blame Mickey Mouse for the long wait. In 1998, Disney was one of the loudest in a choir of corporate voices advocating for longer copyright protections. At the time, all works published before January 1, 1978, were entitled to copyright protection for 75 years; all author’s works published on or after that date were under copyright for the lifetime of the creator, plus 50 years. Steamboat Willie, featuring Mickey Mouse’s first appearance on screen, in 1928, was set to enter the public domain in 2004. At the urging of Disney and others, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, named for the late singer, songwriter and California representative, adding 20 years to the copyright term. Mickey would be protected until 2024—and no copyrighted work would enter the public domain again until 2019, creating a bizarre 20-year hiatus between the release of works from 1922 and those from 1923.

This is how our political process becomes corrupted. The Social Justice Warriors running Disney these days don’t hesitate to use their monetary muscle to screw the public.

Read it.

The inconvenient truth of future 5G networks is that their increased high-speed bandwidth, and the use of the millimeter wave spectrum (the radio spectrum above 30 gigahertz) to achieve it, comes at a price: Those radio signals barely propagate around the corners of buildings.

To overcome this issue, the strategy has been a combination of small cells with massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas to increase coverage. Small cell deployment will be so extensive that the Small Cell Forum predicts 5G small cell will overtake 4G small cells by 2024. The total installed base of 5G or multimode small cells will reach 13.1 million by 2025, constituting more than one-third of the total small cells in use.

Audacious Epigone looks at the reactionary Left.

This provides a nice opportunity for keeping credible the pseudonymous surname by parroting an observation Steve Sailer has made time and time again. One of his recurring themes is to point out that to the hivemind it is always 1965. When it comes to race relations it’s as though the last five decades never happened. The most recent lynching in the US occurred before I was born. Emmett Till, murdered in 1955, has been a perpetual bull since the Reagan administration.

Read it.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to shut down the government over funding for his border wall. But as the question of money for his campaign proposal once again roils Congress, one man thinks he may have found a solution: Crowd-funding.

Read it.

I thought that was why he got the award in the first place.

Read it.

Our children are being taught by the stupidest people we can find.

Read it.

Kim Stanley Robinson is an award-winning science fiction author and, like many such these days, a proglodyte.

If, however, we change our technologies and our economic system to better match the physical and biological realities of life on Earth, the resulting history could be quite amazing, what some are calling “a good Anthropocene.” That future would, in effect, be the story of humanity devoting itself to nurturing the health of the biosphere and creating a sustainable prosperity for all the living creatures on this planet. While not exactly utopia, that future could be called optopia—the “optimal place,” the best possible outcome given the current conditions.

Like many such, he has a conceited notion of how much control human planning has over human activity, and th monomaniacal desire to make everyone conform to his vision of the future that afflicts all Social Justice Warriors.

Like many such, he is fundamentally deceived by the Aggregation Fallacy, that there is some universal ‘we’ out there and that all ‘we’ have to do is decide that unicorn farts exist in order for them to magically appear.

An economic system is a complex interaction of the many components that compose it, and in particular the components who are intelligent and self-aware. It never occurs to people who want to ‘change our economic system’ that there might be parts of that economic system that don’t want to make those particular changes, and that they are perfectly placed to spend their days frustrating those changes in order to achieve self-centered personal goals. Markets work even when you try to distort or destroy them. Planners never seem to learn that simple truth.

Technology is something that occurs when it can occur, and it spreads and becomes permanent when social conditions are right for it. Humans have known about the power of steam since Hero of Alexandria, but it wasn’t until 1800 years later that the social matrix was in place to make steam power effective. Once that matrix was in place, however, the spread of steam power was inevitable. We can’t ‘change our technologies’ any more than we can change our economic system, precisely because they depend on multiple interactions of self-conscious agents who may (and often do) have a different agenda.

Read it.

I keep waiting for these ‘catastrophic global floods’ and rising sea levels and they never arrive. What’s up with that?

CNN’s John Avlon Claims Russian Social Media Posts Helped Sway Election  These all look pretty lame. Maybe they would have swayed John Avlon; they wouldn’t have swayed anybody that I know.

CNN’s Van Jones Calls Trump ‘Loudest Champion On Criminal Justice’ Following Senate Vote  But he’ll be right back to calling Trump a racist bigot tomorrow.

Ann Coulter Lays Into Trump Over Lack Of Border Wall  Ann needs to take a chill pill and get a massage or something.

Worm-like Panamanian amphibian that burrows its head in the sand named after Donald Trump

Donald Trump, unindicted co-conspirator  Unindicted because he hasn’t done anything illegal.

Trump’s week of chaos: Shutdowns, probes, legal woes — and it’s only Wednesday  And the ‘journalists’ just can’t quit talking about it.

Read it.

Adolescents always poop on the floor on their way out the door.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

Soon to be a major motion picture, I have no doubt.

Read it.

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

Read it.

In a city with one of the worst murder rates in the country, this is a reasonable position.

Is this a great country or what?

Read it.

That trick never works. Would you buy drugs manufactured by the equivalent of the Post Office? I wouldn’t.

Read it.

Smash Racism DC organizer Jose Martin, also known as “Chepe,” is a radical communist and Antifa leader operating in the U.S. He advocates for the violent overthrow of the government and for the murder of the rich and claims to have international involvement in left-wing movements.

Smash Racism DC is the Antifa group that protested in front of Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s house and berated Sen. Ted Cruz at a restaurant until he and his wife were forced to leave. It’s only one of the Antifa leader’s radical left-wing projects.

But the agitator has made great efforts to separate his fanatical personas from a third identity, his legal name: Joseph “Jose” Alcoff. Under that identity, the 36-year-old has worked as a payday campaign manager for Americans for Financial Reform since 2016, where he advocates for reforms of predatory loans before members of Congress.

Hey, a secret identity works for DC superheroes, why not for communist agitators?

Watch the interview on C-SPAN.

Carlson correctly points out that California has changed over the last 40 years from Reagan Country to a Latin American polity with a super-rich upper class and a degraded underclass with no middle class to speak of.

Steve Sailer reads the zeitgeist.

The prestige of the intersectional is pushing respectable opinion in anti-science directions, as seen in the resurgent prestige of astrology and witchcraft. Granted, perhaps it doesn’t matter all that much what lowbrows who like horoscopes and spells are into, but it probably does matter that actual sciences such as genetics, which had been the glamour field of the new century, are starting to be castigated by the prestige press as deplorable “race science.”

Read it.

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

Listening to Democrats is a sure way to lose money if you’re a taxpayer.

Read it.

As reported here a few days ago, a rent-a-riot funded by George Soros recently came to Budapest to stir up trouble, throw things, and light stuff on fire. The intention was to provoke a reaction from the Hungarian police so that the international media could bray in unison about the “neo-fascist regime” of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

It didn’t work out quite the way the globalist progressives planned. The Hungarian authorities showed restraint, the interlopers looked like thugs, and the majority of Hungarians continue to support the Orbán government.

But that didn’t stop the Soros forces from trying more tricks. Below are two videos, two reports, and a series of photos from our Hungarian correspondents.

Steve Sailer adds it all up.

SCORECARDS! GETCHER SCORECARDS HERE! YA CAN’T TELL THE VICTIMS WITHOUT A SCORECARD!

Reporter shouts at Sarah Sanders after briefing: ‘Do your job, Sarah!’  She ought to have said, ‘Dude, do yours!’.

Jon Meacham: Trump May Be Committing ‘Definition Of Treason’ Right Now.  Who is Jon Meacham? Got no idea.

Robert DeNiro lampoons Donald Trump once again, says the President is ‘like a nightmare that you remember’  Anything that gives De Niro nightmares has my vote.

Trump supporters turning on president over Mueller investigation into Russia ties, poll shows  A poll by CNN. No credibility problems there.

DC Circuit Judge Turns Down FOIA Request For Trump Tax Records

Robert De Niro Calls President A ‘Nightmare,’ Then Claims Trump’s Insults Aren’t ‘Even Witty’  But certainly more interesting than De Niro on his best day.

How the Democrats plan to use Congress to get hold of Trump’s tax returns

Yes, Donald Trump Is in Real Legal Jeopardy for Campaign-Finance Violations  David French is a National Review cuck who never passes up an opportunity to punch right.

Scott Adams points out that the Russians spent less on affecting the 2016 election than he did.

Sanders Asked If Trump Should Share His Opinions — Says, ‘That’s Why People Elected Him’  Wow, what a concept.

The pillars of Trumpworld are crumbling They hope, they hope, they hope….

Boy With Last Name ‘Trump’ Gets Bullied Into Changing It

Read it.

I realized one day that I’m a grown man with better things to do, with children who need a father who isn’t covered in third degree burn scars because some hippy in California is convinced leaking gas can vapors is what the real global warming problem is, and the industry is just as good at making leak-proof safety gas can valves as they are mousetraps, and generally speaking, dying in a burst of flames when a “safety” spout leaks fuel onto a hot exhaust seems like such an ironic and anti-climatic way to go.

Read it.

Critics of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke worry his recently announced resignation will leave his department governed by a less-publicized technocrat.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt could likely lead the Department of the Interior (DOI) after Zinke departs at the end of the year. Bernhardt is known to be hard-working and has years of experience navigating the DOI’s bureaucracy as a federal employee.

Democrats and critics worry Bernhardt will be just as or more efficient than Zinke at implementing President Donald Trump’s agenda without attracting as much media and watchdog scrutiny.

Be careful what you wish for….

Read it.

Not really news, but a useful reminder.

“I early learned that the root cause of panics was Democrats.’ — Whittaker Chambers, WITNESS

Read it.

How refreshing to see a Republican Governor act like a Republican, something John McCain rarely did.

And you know you can’t do that.

Spotted earlier today by a reporter for the Eastern Echo, one of the walls in the Free Speech Space reads “it’s okay to be white.” The message comes a week after a statement condemning anti-semitism was tampered with on the same wall.

“As soon as we saw that message, we knew it couldn’t stay up,” said Student Government Vice President Ethan Smith. “To whoever did this, I’d just say give it up. Your message is never going to take root here, and the EMU community isn’t even going to give it a chance.”

…

The message was painted over at 6:00 p.m. by members of Student Government and the Silver Linings Fellowship Group.

“Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, ‘social justice.’”
— Thomas Sowell

Read it.

Environmentalism is growing darkly anti-human, a misanthropy that has also seeped into science.

Vivid case in point: Science, one of the world’s most prominent scientific journals, just published an anti-human exceptionalism screed by Eileen Crist. Crist, who has a Ph.D. in sociology and not in any of the natural sciences, writes to warn that the end is nigh — and the reason for the pending catastrophe is “human supremacy.”

Victor Davis Hanson deals out some inconvenient truth.

The common target of all these populist pushbacks is an administrative and cultural elite that shares a set of transnational and globalist values and harbors mostly contempt for the majority of their own Neanderthal citizens who are deemed hopelessly unwoken to environmental, racial, gender, and cultural inevitabilities.

In a word, the Ivy League, Oxbridge, and the Sorbonne masters of the universe assume that the world is on a predetermined trajectory. We are to follow an arc of history bending toward state-managed social justice if you will—to end up as a sort of global Menlo Park, Malibu, Upper West Side, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Schwabing, or Kensington. No wonder, it is their ethical duty of transnationals to goad the fated, but sometimes stalled, process along.

Read it.

Since it won’t go anywhere in the Republican-controlled Senate, ‘swift posturing’ would be a more accurate description.

In Democrat-speak, ‘common sense’ = ‘unconstitutional’.

Read it.

I’m sure that the sun shines brighter on your day for knowing that.

Read it.

A prominent ‘Republican’ women’s political action committee that regularly receives national media attention for its criticisms of President Donald Trump and the GOP is bankrolled by three liberal billionaire donors and activists, Federal Election Commission filings show.

Republican Women for Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, was founded by Jennifer Lim and Meghan Milloy, both former employees of Republican organizations. The duo also previously founded Republican Women for Hillary and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in the past.