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Proglodytes see it when the believe it.

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Does it straighten frizzy hair or something? I must confess that they lost me here.

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You knew this was coming.

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This is what happens when you elect Democrats — they ‘tax your asses off’, in Walter Mondull’s famous phrase.

If this thing passes, watch affluent people flee Chicago for neighboring lower-tax states, like Indiana and Wisconsin, both of which are within easy commuting distance — the North Shore and South Shore commuter trains are already in place.

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The new helmet, manufactured by Ceradyne Inc., utilizes advanced thermoplastic aramid and glass fabric composites, which provides better protection against a 7.62 Russian rifle round than legacy helmets and increases the amount of protection against high impact or trauma to a soldier’s head, according to Alex DeGroot, lead engineer for head protection.

I don’t see as much protection of the back of the head and neck as I would like.

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Unclear on the concept.

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A who’s who of famous names, from actresses to CEOs, have been arrested as part of a national college admissions cheating scam, according to court records unsealed in Boston Tuesday.

Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin are among the more than 40 people arrested for paying bribes to get their children into elite schools, including Georgetown, Stanford, UCLA, and Yale.

The scam, said prosecutors, arranged for children to be recruited as athletes, regardless of their athletic abilities. Academic officials, including the former women’s soccer coach at Yale University are also facing charges.

Prediction: All of the kids are white or Asian, and would have gotten in had it not been for the various preferences give to black, Latino, and other Fashionable Minority kids.

UPDATE: Feds Arrest Dozens, Including Actresses and Ex-Pimco CEO, In “Largest College Admissions Scam Ever Prosecuted”

UPDATE: How to Buy Your Way into the Ivies  The old way was less dangerous.

Tell me I’m wrong….

ZMan peels the onion.

It is a good example of how insider language works. To those into left-wing identity politics, the term makes perfect sense. A part of how they define themselves, even though they hold the whip hand on the college campus, is in terms of their victim status. The more you need the safe space, the more marginalized you are from the imaginary core, which is supposedly dominated by guys named Chad and Dylan. On the other hand, the outsiders find the whole idea weird and amusing. They don’t get it, because they don’t need it.

Charles Norman rips off the camouflage.

The number of American leftists who believe in conspiracy theories is close to 100% when you remember that Marxism is a conspiracy theory (in the villain’s role that was historically meant for Jews, Marx expanded the bad-guy tent and said it was a larger class, not just a race, that was out to get you). Likewise, Christians who believe Satan and devils to be personal beings, and not airy metaphors, have a built-in explanation for evil’s seemingly intelligent design throughout the ages. As Eric Hoffer said: “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”

The Birchers understood a deep truth that explained their twin interest in fighting communism and secret societies: The Communist Party was essentially a secret society. Historically, CPs have always obtained power in darkness or deceit, never through democratic mandate or with any transparency. In some communist countries, to know just who were members and party leaders, what the connections were and where key decisions went down, remains, to this day, a riddle for historians (especially in the history of the Chinese Communist Party).

…

In 2019, there is an entire cable network, apparently called MSNBC, that is dedicated to 24/7 Russian-infiltration conspiracies of this ilk.

Read it.

Well, I’m glad we cleared that up.

UPDATE: Greenpeace Co-Founder Explains Why He Called AOC A ‘Pompous Little Twit’

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The automatic reaction of the Left to disagreement is SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!

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The EPA will introduce its final proposal sometime this spring that strips a waiver California and other states have long used to set tougher vehicle emission standards than the federal government, forcing every state in the U.S. to comply with the same rules.

Since manufacturers aren’t willing to make two products, one for a restrictive state and one for less restrictive states, California’s tight regulations have basically set the standard for mileage requirements for the country. This is the same trick that AlGore used to give us those wimpy 1.6 gallon flush toilets.

The move to revoke California of its waiver comes as the Trump administration is also looking to freeze Obama-era efficiency rules meant to cut carbon emissions from the transportation industry. The EPA, along with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is finalizing a proposal to freeze vehicle efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, in lieu of raising them annually.

This could get entertaining. Proglodytes are finding out that centralizing power in Washington isn’t such a good idea after all.

Read it.

A new web tool released late last month by the creators of social network Gab touts itself as the “Wild West of the internet,” promising free, unmoderated discourse across all platforms.

The application, aptly named “Dissenter,” comes in the form of a browser extension and effectively creates an open comment section on every single web page on the internet. The catch: there is nothing website owners can do to modify, manage, or otherwise control the conversation.

This could get entertaining.

Change does not always mean improvement.

Steven Hayward at Powerline blog does a little analysis.

New York magazine has produced a list of the “best books to understand socialism” that is so stupefyingly inane that you wonder if this is intended as satire or a really big put on. But no—they are quite earnest about this list, because it was curated by “experts.”

I once attempted to read DAS KAPITAL but when I read the first page I realized that Marx didn’t know the difference between value and price and that rather spoiled it for me. Rather like reading a book on geography by somebody who believes that the world is flat, it may have some usefulness but it’s hard to get really interested.

I can only assume they dug up their “experts” at some kind of retirement village for red diaper babies suffering dementia somewhere in the Balkans, since most of these titles are really old and out of date. What would we do without “experts”?

Ace of Spades follows this stuff so that you don’t have to.

I sure do like the Three Little Pigs meme, though.

The Other McCain shows you how.

They have two standards — one for them, and one for everybody else.

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That didn’t take long.

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Well, he’s right that low-alcohol beer was a significant part of the medieval diet.

Is he going to get up in the middle of the night for Matins? That’s what real monks do.

Read it.

Political scientists can trace the history of a former mainstream party (the Democrats) by studying the living fossils in their midst.

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Of course Apple won’t provide a reason for taking it down other than some bland boilerplate about ‘not meeting our standards’ because if they gave an honest reason they could get sued.

Read it.

I’ve always had my doubts about Michigan people. My Brother The Communist lives in Michigan.

Game of Thrones actor Conleth Hill lashes out at Trump’s The Wall is Coming posters

STUDY: CNN’s ‘The Situation Room’ Is a Weeklong Promo for Dem Investigations

CNN Touts Claims Republicans Are ‘Dying of Whiteness,’ Racial Voting  And it’s all Trump’s fault, of course.

GMA Eagerly Hopes Republicans ‘Embarrass’ Trump With ‘Rebuke’ on Border Wall Funding

Who Wants to Play the Race Card Against Joe Biden?  Evidently Biden represents ‘Trumpism. Who knew?

Are You A Trump Supporter Who Wants To Eat In Peace? There’s An App For That

Mueller investigation: Why the next week could be one of the biggest yet for Donald Trump+

Dear Diary: Jim Acosta Doesn’t Waste His Chance to Cause a Scene in the Briefing Room

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Five will get you ten that it never happens.

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Let’s hope the bureaucrats and environmentalists get the message.

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He’s got my vote.

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I think he made his point. Women respond positively to money and power, always have, always will.

‘How to I love thee? Let me count the ways….’

Read it.

Well, we’re not all that happy. We still have to suffer under a lot of bullshit governmentalism.

Make up your mind, mom.

Read it.

In the Navy they taught us how to make water-wings with our dungaree pants (hence the bell-bottoms).

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Think of it as evolution in action.

Joel Kotkin turns over a rock.

The people who build our homes increasingly can no longer afford them. As the state elite and their academic cheering crew celebrate our progressive boom, even the most skilled, unionized construction workers, notes an upcoming study, cannot afford to live anywhere close to the state’s major job centers.

In fact, notes the study, soon to be published by Chapman University, not a single unionized construction worker can afford a median-priced house in any of the major coastal counties, including Orange, Los Angeles, San Mateo, San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Diego, Alameda, Sonoma and Napa. Even with incomes averaging over $73,000 annually, notes author and economist Dr. John Husing, most can afford median-priced homes only in the further reaches of the Central Valley or the Inland Empire, requiring huge commutes.

Read it.

Peggy Noonan advises us to “get ready for the coming struggle session.” What’s a struggle session? The term comes from Communist China’s cultural revolution of the 1960s.

Steve Sailer brings us a ripe one.

I’ve come around to believing that it makes sense to add on hate crime charges in the case of wholly gratuitous crimes like this that wouldn’t have happened without demographic animosity aforethought.

‘It would ultimately come down to the use of force’: What would happen if Trump refused to leave office?  Funny how nobody asked this question about Obama.

USA Today Sports Writer: NBA Owner & Would-Be President Mark Cuban Too Much Like Trump  I.e. He was a successful businessman, unlike all of the drones working for the Democrat nomination.

Julian Castro Responds To Omar’s Comments, Blames Trump  Yeah, well, Castro….

ABC News’ Terry Moran: Media, Democrats Face ‘Reckoning’ If Mueller Finds No Collusion

Schiff Acknowledges Mueller May Never Get Trump To Testify  That’s awfully white of him.

Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University, ruminates.

My favorite one-factor theory of social attitude (and value) change over the last few centuries is that increasing wealth has induced a drift from farmer back to forager attitude (and values). Which plausibly helps explains changing attitudes toward fertility, gender, slavery, crime, democracy, war, leisure, art, and travel. In this post I want to suggest a (to me) new hypothesis about forager attitudes, which could help explain some recent attitude trends.

Ace of Spades preaches the True Word.

Read it.

How? With TAXPAYER MONEY, of course! Why not? It’s FUNDING! It’s governement money! It’s FREE!

Everyone has a right to clean water, no matter what you look like, how much money you make, or which political party you favor.

The mating cry of the Social Justice Warrior.

Watch it.

I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning.

The guy has a great radio voice. He ought to do voiceover work.

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Good luck with that.

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More than you ever really wanted to know about primitive navigation.

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Trump keeps dominating the agenda, despite Democrat attempts to jerk everybody’s attention over to what they want to talk about. He’s very good at that. Occasional-Cortex is good at it, too, but she keeps wasting it on unicorn farts like the ‘Green New Deal’ that won’t go anywhere.

Read  it.

There are three related problems that make California economically tenuous, and a fourth that makes the situation worse:

1. It’s no longer the best place in the world to start a startup.
2. The gains from the existing tech industry increasingly accrue to a) passive investors, and b) lucky landlords.
3. The state government is a levered bet on tech compensation.
4. These three problems, which are interrelated, won’t show visible symptoms until well after they’re terminally un-fixable.

Read it.

Tom Wolfe had the right idea when he pointed out that “The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” Unfortunately I am not so sanguine about its future correctness, especially since the current version of European fascism is nothing more than 6th century savagery being imported from Africa and the Near and Middle East, and we are only a generation or two behind.

Read it.

Chickens, coming home to roost: flap flap flap….

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On Friday Rep. Doug Collins released the transcript of Bruce Ohr’s testimony to the House Oversight Committee this past August. I have embedded the 268-page transcript below via Scribd. Ohr appeared before the committee voluntarily, not under subpoena, in connection with its investigation of bias within the Department of Justice and the FBI. He is a key participant in the Obama administration activities that, taken together, amount to one helluva political scandal.

Read it.

All it takes is a sniff of blood and the jackals are upon you.