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Well, at least they don’t have all those racist white people running the country and being productive.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline dishes the dirt.

Sen. Kamala Harris styles herself a “progressive prosecutor.” But Harris wasn’t nearly progressive enough for Lara Bazelon, a law professor and former director of the Loyola Law School Project for the [allegedly] Innocent in Los Angeles.

In a New York Times op-ed, Bazelon rips Harris for her “regressive” conduct and positions during her time as a district attorney in San Francisco and then California’s attorney general,

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This kind of Vox-like explainer about a New York Times article appearing in the New York Times is pretty weird. Presumably, the NYT, having recently Watsoned for crimethinking geneticist James Watson now wants to Watson fellow crimethinker geneticist David Reich.

UPDATE: Gregory Cochran unloads on the NYT’s jihad to Watson geneticist David Reich

UPDATE: Primitive tribesmen complain about technologically superior invaders

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Apparently Cloud People don’t have to follow the same rules as Dirt People.

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On Thursday’s New Day, CNN senior political analyst John Avlon presented another of his infamous “Reality Check” segments, which is more akin to liberal spin than an actual effort to clearly inform viewers about the issues.

The CNN analyst argued against a border wall as he cited Politifact to dismiss claims of 2,000 homicides being committed by illegal immigrants in one year being reported by ICE for FY2018.

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Why? They don’t say. They just expect you to obey orders.

Pelosi Slams DHS Claim Of Being Prepped For SOTU: ‘I Don’t Care What They Said’  Facts have nothing to do with it, this is politics.

Fake Washington Post With Trump-Quits Headline Handed Out as ‘Resistance Fantasy’  Cargo-cult politics.

Teen Show ‘Grown-ish’ Hates on Kanye for Trump Support  Kanye is obviously not a Real Negro.

CBS Tries to Shame Karen Pence for Working at a Christian School

The Guardian: President Trump’s Fault that China is Still Burning Climate Destroying Coal

Cardi B berates Trump over US government shutdown: ‘We need to take some action’  With cleavage.

Racism On a Bun: ESPN Says President Served It Up to Clemson Football Champs

Democrats Attack Trump’s Plan To Bring Back Thousands Of Federal Workers  Even they don’t know what they want.

Rapper Cardi B Attacks Trump Supporters as ‘Racist Rednecks’

What has Trump tweeted today? The latest Twitter posts from the US President and what they really mean  #PsychicNewsNetwork employs actual psychics so that that you don’t have to make things up about Trump on your own.

PANIC! CNN Goes DEFCON-1 Over ‘Childish,’ ‘Cranky’ Trump Canceling Pelosi’s Trip  ‘Mommee! Donald hit me back!”

The Atlantic Dedicates New Issue To Impeaching Trump  My, what a surprise.

Mr. & Mrs. ‘Homophobe’ Pence: Media Slander VP’s Wife For Working at Christian School

John Hinderaker at Powerline as a great idea.

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Why is this woman still alive?

The Other McCain is there for you.

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

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When is a government shutdown not a shutdown? When there’s money available.

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Trump sent a letter to Pelosi informing her that she would not be allowed to use military aircraft to travel to Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan for a “public relations event” during the shutdown. The president added that Pelosi would be allowed to fly commercial to make the trip if she so chooses.

Pelosi’s dick isn’t long enough to get into a pissing contest with Donald Trump.

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That sounds fair.

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How can they tell? It reads just like the regular Washington Post.

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Another National Review cuck wrings his hands because the sky is falling.

Actually, prior to TV, Presidents sent a written message to Congress in accordance with the Constitutional requirement, and it wasn’t a big deal. The only reason this feature is in the Constitution is because the Founding Fathers were seeking to enact the Whig view of the current British parliamentary system, and this was the analog of the King’s Speech before each session of Parliament.

All Trump needs to do is send over a message ‘Doing well. See you next year.’ and leave it at that.

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And then when the shut-down ends, they’ll get back pay, so what’s not to like? Get a government job!

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Congresswoman #BitterBeerFace seems to think quite highly of herself.

Somebody needs to let her know that any hedge fund manager on Wall Street could have her whacked for what he pays for Starbucks for one year, and the only reason no one has done that is because she isn’t worth it.

Ann Coulter has some fun.

Today, “white supremacy” is nothing but a comfortable fantasy the left developed to explain its sick preoccupation with white people.

Talk about a manufactured crisis! The same people who love to snicker about Fox News viewers worrying about Sharia law sweeping the country are convinced that mythical “white supremacists” are hiding under every bed.

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I guess they weren’t all that advanced.

The most advanced weapon I can think of is a battalion of radical feminist professors trained to parachute behind enemy lines and persuade them to question their toxic masculinity.

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Now that the DSM lists severe hoarding as a disorder apart from OCD, psychologists are asking what explains its prevalence.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

I have Don’t-Give-A-Shit Disorder. I wonder what causes it.

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A Google executive sparked a fierce backlash from employees by using the word “family” in a weekly, company-wide presentation, according to internal documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Many Google employees became angry that the term was used while discussing a product aimed at children, because it implied that families have children, the documents show. The backlash grew large enough that a Google vice president addressed the controversy and solicited feedback on how the company could become more inclusive.

Sometimes I wonder how anybody at Google ever gets any work done.

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I am not making this up. I wish I were.

The Other McCain follows this stuff so you don’t have to.

Much of the current conflict within feminism over the issue of transgenderism can be traced directly to Professor Butler’s book and its pervasive influence in the so-called Third Wave of feminism. Feminist critics of transgender ideology generally align themselves with the “Second Wave” (i.e., the radical Women’s Liberation Movement of the late 1960s and ’70s), rejecting the claims of those who, following Professor Butler’s argument, assert that the category of “women” does not provide a definite subject for feminist theory because the meaning of “woman” is socially constructed. Professor Butler’s theory reflects the influence of French postmodernist philosophy, particularly Michel Foucault. Critics of Professor Butler are expected not to call attention to the fact that Foucault was a gay pedophile (or, at least, a defender of pedophilia) who died of AIDS in 1984, in the same way that we are expected to ignore that Gayle Rubin, another of Professor Butler’s key sources, praised NAMBLA and is an advocate of homosexual BDSM.

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The next time you hop on a ferry, take a look at the captain’s bridge. There may not be a human at the helm much longer. Ships around the world are beginning a transformation into autonomous machines, leveraging the same advances in artificial intelligence that are shaking up the automotive world.

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Today is the third anniversary of a particularly proud moment US history in which our President Obama smashed Pablo Escobar’s personal record for most cash plastic-wrapped on shipping palettes in a single delivery. Four hundred million dollars in mixed currencies arrived in Tehran at the same time that the departure of a plane with four Americans held hostage was coincidentally delayed.

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One would think that eventually you would get tired of the taste of vegans.

Ketchup can only do so much.

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See? Britain has morons, too.

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What Jonah conveniently fails to mention is that Trump is crushing domestic policy, so they need some other area in which to pee in his soup.

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‘Nice government job you got there. Would be a shame for anything to happen to it.’

My favorite comedian.

In case you don’t recognize the name, this is the guy who wrote the Chik-Fil-A song.

‘Nuff said….

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

As long as AlGore is around, this could be a useful skill.

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I’ve always had my suspicions.

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Richard N. Haass is the President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to that was he was Special Assistant to President George H.W. Bush and the National Security Council Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs. For that, Bush 41 gave him the Presidential Citizens Medal for developing and explaining US policy during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm.

In 2000 he called for a new “American Empire” to be designed and operated on the model of the British Empire of the 19th Century. He further said it would have to be “informal” because “American democracy could not underwrite an imperial order that required constant, costly applications of military power.” Now he has changed his tune a bit.

Since the French Revolution, radical democracies have succumbed to the temptation to spread the blessings of their particular flavor of government to all & sundry; America’s ‘neoconservative’ adventurers are only the most recent iteration of a very old story. John Quincy Adams is, of course, rolling in his grave.

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he entire editorial board of the Elsevier-owned Journal of Informetrics resigned Thursday in protest over high open-access fees, restricted access to citation data and commercial control of scholarly work.

Today, the same team is launching a new fully open-access journal called Quantitative Science Studies. The journal will be for and by the academic community and will be owned by the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI). It will be published jointly with MIT Press.

The editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics said in a statement that they were unanimous in their decision to quit. They contend that scholarly journals should be owned by the scholarly community rather than by commercial publishers, should be open access under fair principles, and publishers should make citation data freely available.

Eric S. Raymond is not happy.

The first thing to know is this: with only rare exceptions, any Western swordfighting you see in older movies is going to be seriously anachronistic. It’s almost all derived from French high-line fencing, which is also the basis for Olympic sport fencing. French high-line is a very late style, not actually fully developed until early 1800s, that is adapted for very light thrusting weapons. These are not at all typical of the swords in use over most of recorded history.

In particular, the real-life inspirations for the Three Musketeers, in the 1620s, didn’t fight anything like their movie versions. They used rapiers – thrusting swords – all right, but their weapons were quite a bit longer and heavier than a 19th-century smallsword. Correspondingly, the tempo of a fight had to be slower, with more pauses as the fighters watched for an opening (a weakness in stance or balance, or a momentary loss of concentration). Normal guard position was lower and covered more of center line, not the point-it-straight-at-you of high line. You find all this out pretty quickly if you actually train with these weapons.

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“Restorative justice” is a euphemism for trying to impose less punishment on disruptive students because these students are, as a group, disproportionately African-American. The motive for “restorative justice” is racial. The sociology/pedagogy brought to bear on its behalf is superstructure, to put it as kindly as I can.

Chris Matthews Pretends Trump Still Can’t Deny Being A Russian Agent

Trump Triggers the Liberal Food Scolds

WashPost Whacks Trump’s Texas Border Fashions: ‘Choice of Attire Was a Disaster’

MSNBC’s Hayes: Trump’s Base Wants ‘an Ethnically Pure America’

Donald Trump and His Team of Morons

Networks Trashed Trump With 90% Negative Spin in 2018, But Did It Matter?

Trump lauds footballers who ate ‘over 1000 hamberders’ at White House banquet, in early morning twitter outburst  This is tagged by The Independent as ‘Breaking News’.

Here are 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset  Max Boot, in the Washington Post, apparently failing in his attempt at replicating the Jeff Foxworthy comedy routine You Might Be A Redneck. Apparently anyone with even marginal name recognition can write trash about Trump and get it published (and presumably get paid for it).

MSNBC’s Heilemann on Trump ‘Russian Agent’ Denial: Maybe Lying Like Clinton, Nixon  Or maybe not. Maybe it’s MSNBC’s Heilemann who is lying.

‘Trump has turned the White House into a White Castle’: President roasted for serving Clemson fast food  No one who reads the Washington Post, much less anyone who works there, would be caught dead at a White Castle, of course, since that’s where the people in Flyover Country. (Due to the government shutdown, the White House is short-staffed, leading President Trump to order a feast of fast food.  Which Trump paid for personally, incidentally.)

What it means that Trump served Big Macs in the State Dining Room  Because, of course, since only people who write for the Washington Post realize What It Means, so they have to explain it to you.

‘Fox & Friends’ Celebrates Trump’s Clemson Fast Food Party By Ordering Their Own Fast Food

The Atlantic’s Hill Accuses Trump of ‘War on Black Athletes,’ Cites Only One Target  The only ‘black athlete’ actually named is Kaepernick, who is more of an athlete-wannabe.

CNN Panel Melts Down Over Trump’s ‘Sexist’ Salad Joke  It’s good to know that they’re keeping an eye on the important stuff.

Former Obama-Era Attorney Under The Impression Trump Can Be Charged With Crime For Leaving NATO  Scraaaaaape that barrel.

CNN Now Triggered by Sexist Dog Whistle “Salads”  Remember: If you hear the dog whistle, then you’re the dog.

Sunny Hostin Suggests Trump, 42% of Americans Are Racists Who Won’t ‘Let Brown People In’  Since when did ‘brown’ become a race?

No Need to Fear Terrorists: We Have Trump!

CNN’s Russia Coverage Is Rigged Against Trump

President Trump and the Kobayashi Maru

Why has comedy got so much worse in the Trump era?

FBI debated whether Trump was ‘following directions’ of Russia, transcripts reveal

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The imagery coming out of the White House has reached the media and Trump’s largest critics (I’m being redundant), who have harangued him for what they consider a pathetic display of congratulation, but I don’t know what could make the image more American. The context itself is even patently, on-brand American: College football players, anticipating dining with the president at the White House after they won a national championship during the longest government shutdown in American history; the billionaire-turned-president wearing his staple red power tie, paying for the fast food on his own dime.

McDonald’s is cheap, fast, and satisfying (even if the satisfaction is only emphemeral). The obsession with automation and convenience is an American one, and our food reflects this. When I have an intense food craving, it’s not duck confit or cassoulet that I want — it’s the addictive, guilt-inducing soul food that only an employee behind a drive-through window can give me. Big Macs and Whoppers are immediately accessible food for the working class, and Trump knows this — he could’ve easily afforded to purchase roasted russet potatoes and salmon, followed by other upscale-dinner norms of petite desserts with fancy coulis designs. He could’ve afforded a reception with rotating waiters holding glistening trays of hors d’oeuvres.

But he didn’t. He chose “great American food.”

At last, a writer at National Review who understands the dialectic. I suggest that Marlo will soon be looking for another job.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

Think of it as evolution in action.

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Fascinating. I didn’t know that Hawaiians had pizza. Huh. Learn something new every day.

I was at a Shakey’s in Virginia Beach in the halcyon days of my youth that had a banana pizza, but I think that was a special case.

I will say that the best pizza I’ve ever eaten has been made by Greeks. Take that for what it’s worth.

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Williams must be pushing for Dan Rather’s niche as Most Embarrassing Purported Journalist.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline is not afraid to ask the obvious question.

en. Kirsten Gillibrand is expected to enter the presidential race today. Reportedly, she will make the announcement on Stephen Colbert’s program, and then head to Iowa to campaign.

When the Democratic field is set, Gillibrand will likely be its second phoniest member, trailing only Sen. Cory Booker. In itself, phoniness is not necessarily a drawback. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards both made the national ticket.

The real problem for Gillibrand is the presence of her female Senate colleagues, Elizabeth Warren and (presumably) Kamala Harris, in the 2020 field. What will be Gillibrand’s case for preferring her to them?

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The best possible result — the deal was about the worst that could have been constructed by people deliberately attempting to create a bad deal.

Traditionally in Britain after a defeat of this magnitude the government resigns, the Opposition is invited to form a government, and they immediately recommend a dissolution and general election.

But that was then; this is now. God knows what will happen next.

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It’s not enough to be ‘black’ any more, you have to be the right kind of black for it to earn any Pokemon Virtue Points.

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Tencent is an archetypical Chinese tech company, creator of the ubiquitous QQ and Wechat chat-and-mobile payment apps. The company’s Communist Party Committee has gone all out with the hammer-and-sickle motif, placing the symbol on the chest of its penguin-with-a-scarf mascot. These charming tchotchkes were sent as gifts to journalists, according to a tweet from a journalist at another state-run outlet, Global Times.

The requirement to pledge loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is in fact inescapable. Middle-aged academics and local officials alike have resorted to posting praise of the Party in their private WeChat and other messaging groups. As ridiculous as they think these rants are, they are impelled to go “on the record” with their loyalty, even when communicating with their colleagues, in the hopes of staving off accusations of insufficient fervor for the party line of the day. There is even a “Clap for Xi Jinping” app.