Yuval Levin takes a step back.

There are, very broadly speaking, two ways to think about why elites tend to aggravate the broader public in democratic societies: We might call them the sin of exclusivity, and the sin of unaccountability. The first is a function of the fact that it is very hard to enter the elite strata of our society (and any society), and the second is a function of the fact that the people who occupy those elite strata think they can do whatever they want without regard to the consequences for others. Our elites tend to obsess about the first a lot more, but it is the second that really drives populist resentment. And in our time, we have been trying to address the first in ways that have only worsened the second.

Read it.

The Left sees democracy as a bus. Once it takes you to your desired stop, you get off. That means they demand people keep voting on their issues until the people get the correct result. Once that happens, no more democracy.

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If it should surprise you that this would appear in a British newspaper, bear in mind that the proglodyte affection for telling other people what they ought to do knows no bounds.

If you didn’t know that Jambalaya had a ‘conservative past’, read on.

Read it.

And sometimes not even then, I say.

Ace of Spades sounds the alarm.

I love the smell of conspiracy theories in the morning.

None of these cabals ever thinks of contacting me. I’m offended.

Read it.

Why O’Rourke won’t be the nominee, no matter how many teeth he has.

Trump defends ‘Judge’ Jeanine Pirro after Fox News host taken off air over Islamophobic hijab comments  They had to put ‘Islamophobic’ in the headline so that you wouldn’t mistake it for actual reporting.

Minnesota Democrats Reportedly Want Ilhan Omar Out — She Blames Trump  I like him already.

Dan Rather Laments Trump’s Media Platform: ‘Manure Spreader in a Windstorm’  Says Mr. ‘Fake but accurate’.

‘My Father Was His Kryptonite’: Meghan McCain Launches Tirade Against Trump  More like his coprolite.

Trump angrily complains about being ‘blamed’ for far-right terror attack in New Zealand  This is news?

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Points out that these Children’s Crusades are only sock-puppets for the Usual Suspects.

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

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A cloud on the horizon no bigger than a man’s hand….

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How green is that?

Trump to be left off 2020 ballots unless he shows his tax returns, Washington says  I doubt that this will survive the inevitable legal challenge.

Brexit Is An Obsession With The British Media The Way Trump Derangement Syndrome Is With The American Media

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Apparently it’s because we’re fed soft food as kids.

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And not only you, but everybody.

Although widely held, the belief that merit rather than luck determines success or failure in the world is demonstrably false. This is not least because merit itself is, in large part, the result of luck. Talent and the capacity for determined effort, sometimes called “grit,” depend a great deal on one’s genetic endowments and upbringing.

This is to say nothing of the fortuitous circumstances that figure into every success story. In his book Success and Luck, the U.S. economist Robert Frank recounts the long-shots and coincidences that led to Bill Gates’s stellar rise as Microsoft’s founder, as well as to Frank’s own success as an academic. Luck intervenes by granting people merit, and again by furnishing circumstances in which merit can translate into success. This is not to deny the industry and talent of successful people. However, it does demonstrate that the link between merit and outcome is tenuous and indirect at best.

Ecclesiastes 9:11.

Read it.

In the news today is the story of a boy who threw an egg at an Australian senator, who was making remarks about a mass murder in New Zealand. So today, emotionally involved Americans are yelling at each other as if we need, every day, to demonstrate that murder is bad. Who has convinced us that there is a spectrum of positions on murder which are worthy of public debate? Journalists and political activists.

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Mice get all the good stuff.

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I once asked my granny whether she had ever wanted to go back to Ireland. She responded, ‘Why? There’s nothing there but losers and the descendants of losers. Anybody with an ounce of gumption left long ago.”

So there you have it.

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And there are some groty ones.

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Pull the string and watch the mouth move.

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The vast majority of glass products are made of soda-lime glass: window panes, jars, bottles, all kinds of glass. Soda-lime glass is cheaper to make than borosilicate glass, which is undoubtedly why Pyrex started experimenting with it. However, borosilicate glass is not only harder, stronger, and more durable than soda-lime glass; it’s also more resilient to thermal shock. Thermal shock is what happens when a temperature change causes different parts of a material to expand at different rates, and the resultant stress can cause the material to crack. If the temperature change happens rapidly materials like glass can shatter or seem to explode. Resistance to thermal shock is part of why Pyrex became so popular for cookware; you could move a hot glass pan into a cool spot without worrying about it cracking or shattering. It’s also part of why laboratories prefer to use borosilicate glass rather than conventional soda-lime glass. Pyrex cookware currently sold in the United States goes through a thermal tempering process. In theory, this should strengthen the glass.

In practice, the difference between the performance of borosilicate glass and soda-lime glass is significant.

Bryan Caplan mounts his favorite hobby-horse.

Read it.

For more than a century we’ve counted on calories to tell us what will make us fat. Peter Wilson says it’s time to bury the world’s most misleading measure

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Waffle House does not care how much you are worth, what you look like, where you are from, what your political beliefs are, or where you’ve been so long as you respect the unwritten rules of Waffle House: Be kind, be respectful, and don’t overstay when others are waiting for a table.

A celebration of a key element of American culture.

I have eaten at Waffle House restaurants many times, and never been disappointed.

Read it.

WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! Women and minorities hardest hit. Film at 11.

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Which is why Wikipedia is the start, not the end, of your intellectual journey.

Read it.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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Jeff Bezos is not stupid, and he learned the Microsoft Lesson quite well. Governments at all levels are ready and willing to screw business entities unless their wheels get greased, and that has been a constant for time out of mind.

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We have the technology.

Read it.

Members should login to the Members’ Area and visit the Download Amon Hen and Download Mallorn pages.

Troparion — Tone 3

Holy Bishop Patrick,

Faithful shepherd of Christ’s royal flock,

You filled Ireland with the radiance of the Gospel:

The mighty strength of the Trinity!

Now that you stand before the Savior,

Pray that He may preserve us in faith and love!

Kontakion — Tone 4

From slavery you escaped to freedom in Christ’s service:

He sent you to deliver Ireland from the devil’s bondage.

You planted the Word of the Gospel in pagan hearts.

In your journeys and hardships you rivaled the Apostle Paul!

Having received the reward for your labors in heaven,

Never cease to pray for the flock you have gathered on earth,

Holy bishop Patrick!

Read it. And watch the video.

And why not?

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Bias? What bias?

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I suspect that they want to get in before the wall is built.

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If the situation were reversed, do you think she would do the same for him?

Not in a million years.

Read it.

Real estate brokers in New York are worried that foreign second home buyers are feeling “under assault” and may buy elsewhere as a result of “class warfare” in the form of a new planned tax, according to a new Bloomberg article. The proposed tax in New York is going to apply to properties of over $5 million that are owned by non-residents of the city.

And well they might. New York, like London and San Francisco, is increasingly becoming a ‘shell city’, comprising two classes of people: Those rich enough to afford to live there, and those too poor to go elsewhere. The basis of city finance, of course, is the rich, without whose taxes the city would be broke. This does not seem to impede the efforts of tax eaters to persuade the rich to go elsewhere, or to stay away, by means of oppressive taxes and regulations. How soon before New York winds up like Detroit? Not long, I’m thinking.

Democratic presidential candidates line up to target Mike Pence after Biden’s ‘decent guy’ comment  They must leave no Republican unsmeared.

Bill Maher Says It’s ‘Very Trump’ For Democrats To Ban Fox News From Hosting Debates Figure that one out.

AOC Blames Trump for New Zealand Tragedy  Of course she does.

CNN Panel Uses NZ Shooting to Compare Trump to White Supremacist, Shooter

Read it.

Russia’s most likely target in the near future is either Finland or Sweden; although both are members of the EU, they are not members of NATO. By attacking a non-NATO country, Putin does not risk a proportional response in accordance with Article 5. But by targeting a European country, he can expect to reap the rewards of public approval at home from voters who are desperate for a victory. This is a simple cost-benefit analysis that Putin has conducted, openly, many times before. Each investment of Russian force has paid dividends. Finland and Sweden meet both requirements.

Read it.

So we can count him out for the nomination. But there’ll be a lot of sweet opportunities for featherbedding at donor’s expense — sort of an encapsulation of Bernie’s entire record in the Senate.

I’m good with that.

Read it.

Now: Imagine that this guy had a Glock….

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Every now and then the Snowflake Mob turns and attempts to devour one of its own. I have very little use for Chelsea Clinton but nobody deserves the kind of crap that the Snowflakes perennially put people through.

An interesting compendium from ZeroHedge News about the Tax Exodus phenomenon.

It is constantly astonishing to me that when people leave a state because the taxes are too high the immediate response of proglodyte legislators is to jack up taxes on the people who are left in order to make up for the consequent shortfall.

California presents an even odder case. Tech hipsters like working for the Future Five (Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft) because places like Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco are so ‘vibrant’, but one wonders how long that will survive the increasing dystopian features like mobs of vagrants and piles of needles and crap on the streets. At some point people are going to wake up and say ‘Well, the quality of life I moved here for isn’t all that great any more; maybe I’ll try Austin.’

Read it.

I’d vote for him.

Gotta love Australians.

From the Financial Post.

This story has all the elements of a fiction novel. Unfortunately it’s real. Piece by meticulously researched piece, B.C.-based independent researcher Vivian Krause spent almost 10 years exposing the story. Every detail has been corroborated, including with American and Canadian tax records, together with documents and statements from the perpetrators themselves.

Translate that into English. Go ahead, give it a try.

ZMan looks at the latest pseudo-Kennedy.

Beto O’Rourke, the Irish playboy who tried passing himself off as a Mexican in his run against Ted Cruz in 2018, has declared for President. The boomers in the Progressive commentariat are rushing to their fainting couches, as they are sure he is the Hispanic-ish John F. Kennedy or Robert F. Kennedy, depending upon which end of the 60’s they remember best. Watching a geriatric old fool like Chris Mathews fawn over O’Rourke is a reminder why the Germans gave the world the word fremdschämen.

It’s a good reminder that the Left is more burdened with yesterday men than right-side of the political divide. Even the cuckiest conservative is not comparing a guy like Ben Sasse to Reagan, Goldwater or Eisenhower. Progressive boomers still have a bust of JFK in their house and talk about where they were when he was shot. They are a walking, talking museum displays of a bygone era. That’s why they are gushing over O’Rourke. He’s the last white man of any standing in the Democrat Party.

It’s amazing how much more reactionary Democrats are than Republicans. They want to return to the days of Good Union Jobs when the only good union jobs left are working for the State. They want to cancel the Industrial Revolution by getting rid of automobiles and planes and returning to bicycles and trains. Whenever they see the word ‘orphanage’ they think it’s 1844, and whenever they see the word ‘immigrant’ they think it’s 1895. It’s as if the 20th century never happened for them.

Rod Dreher looks at the New Zealand atrocity.

One of the biggest lies we hear whenever there is a mass terror attack, such as the one against New Zealand’s Muslims, is that the killing was “senseless.” It’s not without reason when ISIS does it, and it’s not without reason when people like Brenton Tarrant, the alleged NZ shooter, do it. The acts are evil, but not senseless; there is a rationale for what they do. To be clear: do NOT read me as saying Tarrant’s acts “made sense” in the general sense of the term; I’m speaking narrowly here, to mean that causation is at work. We need to know this so we can better combat things like this.

I suspect that calling it ‘senseless’ absolves the snowflakes of any obligation to understand the perp’s point of view. It converts a deliberate act on the part of an individual into something random like a tornado or a flood: We can’t understand it, so we hold a candlelight vigil and place some flowers and move on.

• Tarrant identifies himself as an “ethno-nationalist eco-fascist.” He says he was first a communist, then an anarchist, then a libertarian, and finally an eco-fascist. He’s 28. This is not a stable person.

And the communist phase came first. How many ‘unstable persons’ consider themselves communists right now?

• He says his aim is to accelerate history by frightening people and creating conflict. In particular, he wants to cause the US to move to take away people’s guns, and the Second Amendment supporters to respond to this violently.
• He said he chose the firearms for his attack specifically to incite an argument within the US, leading to the left attempting to confiscate guns, thereby starting a civil war.

This is certainly working in New Zealand — the first thing the NZ government did was proclaim its intent to put further restrictions on gun ownership.  (The question no one is asking; How many people would have been saved if one of the people in that mosque had been armed?)

• This was a brutal slap: “Above all, don’t be stale, placid, and boring. No one is inspired by Jeb Bush.”

Can’t argue with him there.

Here’s the chilling part: Everything Tarrant identifies as qualities of a disintegrating Western civilization is true. You may think that declining numbers of ethnic Europeans is a good thing, or something that has no particular moral meaning. But it really is happening. So are all the rest.