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If Islamism (political Islam) was a sport, the convening members of the Muslim Collective for Equitable Democracy Conference in Washington, D.C. this week would be in the American Islamist Olympics finals, the dream teams of Islamist all-stars from a host of American Islamist lobbying groups.

Gone are the days of hidden dissimulation, or “taqqiya,” operating under elusive conference titles like “reviving the Islamic spirit” or “social justice,” or “fighting Islamophobia.” Now this new “Muslim Caucus” openly seeks Muslim power and all of whatever that means to them.

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This could get interesting.

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President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is capitalizing on recent plastic straw bans in Washington, DC and California by raising more than $200,000 selling reusable “TRUMP” straws.

The campaign’s official website started selling the 10-pack of branded reusable and recyclable straws this month for $15 per set. The straws reportedly sold out on at least one occasion.

Foolish me, I would have said that all straws are effectively re-usable.

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Joy Behar wouldn’t know a veteran if one pissed on her leg, which I’m sure a number of them would volunteer to do.

Like me, for instance.

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Used to be that ‘migrants’ could depend on Eurotrash NGOs and their ‘rescue’ ships to pick them up once they were out of Libyan territorial waters and take them to some Mediterranean port, so all they had to do was find something that would float and stay afloat for 3 miles.

Now that European governments are falling into the hands of nationalists who don’t want their countries invaded by Turd World ‘migrants’, that trick is no longer working, and ‘refugees’ are discovering that the usual minimal-flotation jury-rigs provided by the cartels who arrange their ‘migrations’ for a hefty fee aren’t good enough to make it all the way across.

Read it.

On Thursday the Department of Justice announced that for the first time in nearly two decades it will resume capital punishment, with Attorney General William Barr the process for the execution of five death-row in mates is set to move forward. It will mark the first federal executions since 2003.

‘Judge, he needed killin.’

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n a tweet, Wen stated that the board ended her employment due to “philosophical differences over the direction and future of Planned Parenthood.” She elaborated further in a message to her former colleagues. She had joined Planned Parenthood “to run a national health care organization and to advocate for the broad range of public health policies that affect our patients’ health,” including abortion. However, she wrote, for the board, “the priority of Planned Parenthood moving forward is to double down on abortion rights advocacy.”

Margaret Sanger’s original intent, in founding Planned Parenthood, was to reduce the number of babies from ‘inferior stock’, like black people.

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In his “Rich Habits” study, Thomas C. Corley found that 86% of wealthy people with full-time jobs worked at least 50 hours per week. They’re willing to work hard so they can make more money. And they often sacrifice work-life balance to increase their earning potential.

I’d be as rich as Bill Gates if I were willing to put in the hours that he was.

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And who doesn’t live Tater Tots?

ZMan breaks out the popcorn.

Politics in a modern democracy is mostly theater. The various actors hired by the wealthy, put on shows for the people. Today, we have entire television outlets dedicated to staging these performances. Sometimes the performances are intended to away public opinion on an issue. Sometimes they are intended to distract the public from something important. The Russian collusion hoax was intended to be a distraction, so the public would not think about the FBI corruption.

The difference between Hollywood and political theater is there’s a different measure of the return on investment. Hollywood can make a crappy movie that goes straight to video, but still make money, as long as the cost was low. Killer Klowns from Outer Space can be a success, even though it is a ridiculously bad movie, because it was cheap and has become a cult favorite. Hank Johnson worrying about Guam flipping over really does not work the same way.

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The hive known as Google is quick to punish those who undermine its authority.  Hours after Google engineer Greg Coppola appeared with James O’Keefe in a Project Veritas video, he was put on administrative leave by his company. In the video, Coppola said that he believed that Google News and Google’s search engine algorithms were biased.

My, what a surprise.

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If you’re an Austen fan, you’ll know what that means.

The rule of thumb for agricultural estates was 1 pound per acre, so 10,000 a year would be an estate of 10,000 acres (more or less). At the other rule of thumb (agricultural land was conventionally valued at ’20 years purchase’ or %5 return), this means a capital value of 200,000 pounds.

Read it.

A multination project to build a fusion reactor cleared a milestone yesterday and is now 6 ½ years away from “First Plasma,” officials announced.

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A 16-year-old boy and a woman in her 60s are able to walk and move freely thanks to a 3D printed implant developed by Utrecht’s UMC teaching hospital.

On CNN, NYT’s Friedman Frets Dems Losing to ‘Chump’ Trump

Democrats Pin Their Hopes On Mueller One Last Time

Dreaming Mueller Will Implore Democrats: ‘Don’t Give a Speech; You Must Impeach’

Before Testimony, ABC Eager for Impeachment: ‘Turning Point’ Democrats’ ‘Best Chance’

Washington Post’s Philip Bump Fantasy Shifts Counties for 2016 Hillary Victory

Carl Bernstein: Mueller Has The ‘Power’ To Change America’s Perceptions Of Trump  Oh, I think not. UPDATE: Remember When This Hearing Was Supposed to be Historic?

DC Media Consensus: Mueller Seems Senile and Unaware, and His Doddering Performance Suggests That the 18 Angry Democrats Working for Him Ran the Investigation Without His Supervision

Rashida Tlaib Wanted To Send Trump Back In 2015. Ilhan Omar Wanted Someone Deported Too

David Spade’s New Late Night Show to Avoid Trump Bashing  Then where will he get an audience?

Blundering John Dean Tells CNN: Mueller Report Found ‘There Was Collusion’  Oh? Where does it say that?

Debbie Lesko Accuses Mueller Of Using ‘Regurgitated Press Stories’ To Compile Obstruction Case

MOP-UP DUTY: CNN Defends ‘Bombshell’ Mueller Hearing as ‘Big Deal,’ ‘Really Bad’ for Trump 

Your Tax $ at Work: PBS Spins 2020 Could Determine Trump’s Status as ‘A Free Man’

Keep the Faith: CNN Boasts Mueller Hearing, Report Are Part of a ‘Watergate Roadmap’

Trump Administration Honors Imam for Saving 262 Christians during Terror Attack

NAACP Calls for Trump’s Impeachment

Huffington Post Features Steve Kerr’s Political Consulting, Trump Shaming

CNN Mess: Panelists Concede Trump Won Hearing, But Still Insist Dems Impeach

Mueller testifies – Trump wins

E. Jean Carroll Uses Mueller Hearing To Take Fresh Dig At Trump

Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months

As Climate Changes, Taxpayers Will Shoulder Larger U.S. Payouts to Farmers

Never Have US Health Professionals Been So Foolish

Record Cold Cripples Food Crops: Future Food Security at Risk

Eurostar trains breaks down as Belgium and Netherlands reach hottest ever temperatures

Forests and climate change: pine trees dying in France

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As George Carlin once famously said, ‘If you nail together two things that have never been nailed together before, some schmuck will buy it.’

Read it.

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

WARNING: None of these work on Congress. (They’ve been tried.)

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

It would be difficult to find a pair of tweezers big enough to handle George R. R. Martin. I’d try Amazon.

Read it. Watch the video if you have a strong stomach.

Persons of Color behaving badly! What are the odds?

Victor Davis Hanson.

Each week we are warned of a recession. And each week the economic news “unexpectedly” and “surprisingly” improves or stays steady — in ways well aside from the staples of continued near-record-low peacetime unemployment (3.8 percent), near-record-low minority unemployment, booming annualized GDP (3.1 percent), and a record-high stock market.

…

The subtext of the failure of all the Trump impeachment hysterias was not merely that they were based on emotional narratives rather than evidence and facts — empiricism has never been the forte of congressional frenzies — but that the public believed either that the removal of a successful president would stall the economic expansion or that it might show ingratitude for a domestic job well done. Democrats seems to have forgotten that voters are most interested in the economy — along with illegal immigration — and least concerned with their obsessions with climate change and the Green New Deal.

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So much for the Fight for $15! Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I-VT), campaign created a PR crisis for himself after staff complaints that they were being paid “poverty wages” got leaked to the press. That hypocrisy might have hurt him politically — if journalists had actually reported it. Although The Washington Post reported that his unionized campaign staff was upset over their pay, the networks and three national newspapers ignored the story.

Read it.

Restaurants in Emeryville say they can’t keep raising prices, but workers say $16.30 an hour is barely enough in Bay Area

Read it.

When Selene Nelson pitched some articles on plant-based food to magazine editor William Sitwell, he wrote back suggesting a series on killing vegans – and was forced to resign in the storm that followed. Here Nelson explains what it was like at the centre of that storm, and how it felt to meet Sitwell for The One Show.

They’re like a religious cult without the religion.

Read it.

Some food delivery services guarantee a minimum payment for their drivers, which seems like a good thing on the surface. Basically, the company will pay the driver the agreed-upon base payment, even if it’s a slow shift and they don’t actually reach that amount in delivery charges. But it also means that everything they earn, including tip, is going toward that base payment. In other words, your tip is saving the company from having to pay more of the base payment.

The best way to ensure that your tip goes into your driver’s pocket is to give them a tip that they can literally put in their pocket—namely, cash. If you don’t have cash around or like to keep your finances digital for credit card rewards or tracking purposes, you should choose a delivery service that promises to pay their employees the full amount of whatever they earn, including tip.

I always keep cash on hand for this very reason.

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The industrial elites have lost their way. In every major profession and institution, they once commanded vast, widely-admired projects that filled their lives with meaning and endowed the entire class with an unconquerable confidence. But the twentieth century couldn’t be preserved forever, like a bug in amber. The elites now face a radically transformed environment – and they are maladapted and demoralized. An inability to listen, an impulse to spew jargon in broadcast mode, a demand for social distance as the reward for professional success: such habits, which in the past placed them above and beyond the mob’s reach, now drag them down to contempt and mockery in the information sphere. Among the public, trust has curdled into loathing. The elites are horribly aware of their fall from grace – hence the conference – but being deaf to the public’s voice, they are clueless about how to respond.

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The plot thickens.

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According to the report, “Earlier this year clashes between farm owners and protesters forced the police to step in Western Australia, and the owners of a small goat farm in Victoria blamed closure on continual harassment by abusive “vegan activists”.”

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Increasing educational attainment has apparently not improved verbal ability among Americans. Instead, as educational attainment has increased, those at each educational level are less verbally skilled even though the vocabulary skills of the whole population are unchanged.

Witnesses say broken wind turbine caused several hundred acre fire

The Fake Science of Global Warming

Deadly fungal infection is first to emerge because of global warming, scientists believe

Leveraging Environmentalism to Impose ‘Hegemonic’ Marxism

Some perspective on the “massive heatwave” in the USA

Many Animals Can’t Adapt to Climate Change Fast Enough  Women and minorities hardest hit, etc.

House Democrats Reveal Climate Change Agenda, Ding Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Socialist Climate Policies’

Claim: Climate Activists Face an Ethical Dilemma Abandoning Air Tourism

CNN Contributor: Confronting Trump’s Base Is ‘Confronting White Nationalism’

Media Pundits Keep Giving Trump Lots Of Media Attention Over His Omar Tweets

Outsports Condemns Baseball Team For Allowing Spicer To Throw Out First Pitch On Pride Night  Those Trump cooties again.

Matthews, Guest: Trump, Base Are ‘Existential Crisis,’ ‘White Identity Cult’ Who Hate America  Perhaps Matthews ought just to commit suicide and put everyone out of his misery.

Mark Sanford Thinks He Can Do The Job Better Than Trump, Says He’s Mulling 2020 Run The farce is strong in this one.

Megan Rapinoe Said Trump’s ‘Crazy’ Tweets About Her ‘United Everyone Around’ The Women’s Soccer Team  Well, everyone with pink hair, anyway.

STUDY: TV Offered Deluge of Russia News, But Buried Anti-Trump Bias

MSNBC: ‘Sound the Alarm’ to Trump and Rise of Nazi Threat in 2020

Mueller’s FBI ‘Attack Dog’ Weissmann Begged Ukrainian Oligarch For Dirt On Trump

Cory Booker: Sometimes I Feel Like Punching Trump

Cory ‘Spartacus’ Booker Wants To Assault Trump; Blames Testosterone For Violent Fantasies

Blitzer Wonders If Trump Is Setting Up ‘Loyalty Test,’ Quotes Bible to Bash Trump

U. Florida Prof: ICE Is An “American Nightmare” Aimed At “Institutionalizing Racism”

Check it out.

Early Roman Catholic Church Song Generator

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Sources from within the NYPD and the officers union spoke with the New York Post about the “outrage” they felt toward both the criminals who carried out the attacks and the mayor, Bill de Blasio, who was out-of-state when the attacks occurred. Senior NYPD officials and union leaders have repeatedly criticized de Blasio for going easy on criminals and undoing some of the progress that happened under Mayors Bloomberg and Giuliani, where crime rates in the city began a dramatic slide (though, in recent years, crime rates have started ticking higher again).

Read it.

Following an extensive three-year investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar by investigative journalist David Steinberg, a House ethics complaint has been filed by Judicial Watch calling for a probe into potential crimes committed by Omar and her brother.

Read it.

While brainstorming ideas for a sustainable sneaker, the founders of Rens discovered they could spin high-tensile thread from old coffee grounds. Not only is this material better for the environment, but it offers some remarkable benefits to wearers as well. Fabric made from coffee is naturally odor-fighting and antibacterial. By combining the coffee with recycled water bottles, the team was able to create a shoe that’s also lightweight, breathable, and totally resistant to water. (It’s similar to the technology behind the Evolution hoodie, a sweatshirt that’s also made from coffee grounds and used water bottles.)

At $90, they still don’t beat my $12 sneakers from WalMart.

Read it.

When abortion is easy and cheap, cultures that value males over females (China, India, Muslim world. etc.) will wind up with a hefty surplus of males.

A hefty surplus of young males historically leads to war.

Just sayin’.

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Perhaps there’s room for ASAP Rocky in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. I hear it’s nice.

Joel Kotkin has his own unique take on the situation.

America’s electorate in 2020 has been dissected by race, region, cultural attitudes and gender. But the most important division may well be, in a nation that has become profoundly unequal, along class lines. All politicians, from Donald Trump to Elizabeth Warren, portray themselves as “fighting for the middle class” and “working families.”

Yet our increasingly neo-feudal America is best broken down into four broad groups — the oligarchs, the clerisy, the yeomanry and the serfs. The oligarchs dominate the economic realm, including control of information media. Below them are sometimes allied members of the clerisy, the well-educated middle class who set the country’s intellectual and cultural context.

Below them are the two most numerous classes — the property-owning yeomanry and, most numerous of all, expanding the new serfdom. Understanding these groups provides a valuable insight into 2020’s realities.

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More human activity has been found at L’Anse aux Meadows, the only confirmed site in North America where the Vikings had a settlement.

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While the Assad government has regained control of more than 70 percent of Syrian territory, they only have about half of the pre-war population (23 million). About 20 percent of that population fled the country, often deliberately encouraged by Syrian and Russian airstrikes and liberal use of artillery on residential areas. About two percent of the population has died in the fighting. About 11 percent of the population is in the Kurdish controlled northeast while 14 percent are in rebel controlled Idlib and nearby Turkish controlled areas in the northwest. Most of those in Idlib are anti-Assad Sunni Arabs and a few percent of those are armed rebels. Assad does not want these Syrian Sunni Arabs, but no one else does either. The Kurds are also armed and the best Syrian fighters in Syria. Plus the Kurds have American military support. The Kurds are willing to rejoin Syria as an autonomous Kurdish region similar to the deal the Iraqi Kurds have had since the early 1990s. Assad is inclined to accept that but Turkey, Iran and Iraq are not. In short, putting Syria back together again may be a work-in-progress for some time to come.

The Antiplanner does some fisking.

A recent article in the Atlantic rewrites history by claiming that the law forces Americans to drive automobiles. “Our laws essentially force driving on all of us,” asserts University of Iowa law professor Gregory Shill, “by subsidizing it, by punishing people who don’t do it, by building a physical landscape that requires it, and by insulating reckless drivers from the consequences of their actions.”

Read it.

A former juvenile court judge, a Democrat who took the bench after being declared the winner of a disputed 2010 election, was jailed Monday, and had to be taken out of the courtroom in Cincinnati, according to reports.

A deputy with her arms under the defendant’s shoulders pulled Tracie Hunter across the courtroom after she went limp. Supporters stood and yelled in anger, and deputies intercepted a woman who tried to rush to her.

There were more demonstrations outside the Hamilton County Courthouse, and civil rights activists said there will be boycotts or other actions in protest.

Aluminum Cans vs. Plastic Bottles: Which Is Worse for the Environment?

Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren want to force cities to adopt YIMBY polices. Can they?

Geothermal ocean warming discussion thread

Climate Change Democracy Deniers Strike Again

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Of course they do.

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I should hope so.

Ace of Spades is indignant.

And, second tweet — the New York Times headline blares that she says this guy (who is super anti-Trump, and anti-Trump’s statements about immigration, btw) told her to “go back where she came from,” but then, in the fourteenth (14th!) paragraph, concedes that she walked that back and said “I don’t want to say [that he said that]” and changes her claim to “he was making that type of reference.”

I want her to make formal charges (of what? Who knows) and swear under penalty of perjury as to what she’s claiming he said.

Read it.

Abortion Barbie is back in the ring.

This district has been Republican since 1979. They’re going to have to bus Democrats in from Austin and San Antonio.