Archive for October, 2019
17th October 2019
Scott Adams lays it out. (Start at the 22:00 minute mark.)
What’s the crisis? Can somebody describe to me what the crisis is? Now, I’ve heard the speculative what-if crisis … the what-if speculative crisis goes like this: If people can’t trust the United States because of our President abandoning the Kurds, that will hurt us later, in ways that we can’t quite specify.
But will it? Is there a country that won’t do a trade deal with us because of this? No. Is there a country that won’t partner with us militarily because of this situation? No, cause what are their other options? Partner with us to defeat your local enemy, or don’t partner with us, and good luck.
It turns out that when you’re the strongest country in the world, people are still going to work with you, because the second choice is way worse.
Who is not going to work with the United States? No one. Which countries uncritically trusted the United States under all conditions when we promised we’ll do something? Which countries believed that we’ll definitely do something if we way we’ll do it? How about nobody? How about nobody believed that. Because at the very least we elect a new President every now and then. Is there some county that could trust that the next President won’t reverse everything that this President did? No. Nobody could trust that. We have a system–because democracy–our system guarantees that we can’t be trusted. We can never be trusted. Because we’ll just vote in a different government and we’ll have different priorities.
So there’s one thing that people can be sure of, that the United States can’t be trusted, forever, because our priorities change and our government changes. They all know that.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Where’s the Crisis?
17th October 2019
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Isn’t that what they like to say about people with whom they disagree, ‘with no evidence’?
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on MSNBC Alleges Voters Don’t Trust Female Candidates, Cites No Evidence
17th October 2019
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Chicago teachers are striking for the third time in seven years. The Chicago Teachers Union has rejected what Mayor Lori Lightfoot says is “the most lucrative CTU package in its history.” The union shunned 5-year, 24 percent teacher raises and continues to demand more, including thousands in new hires and additional benefits like affordable housing.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | 2 Comments »
17th October 2019
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Two U.S. jet fighters bombed an American military base in Syria Wednesday to keep Turkey from taking control of the facility, the U.S. military said.
The decision to conduct a pre-planned airstrike on the base formerly used to train U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters — LaFarge Cement Factory — came after Turkish fighters began to move in on the facility, according to Col. Myles Caggins, a spokesman for the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on US Bombs Its Own Base In Syria To Prevent NATO Ally Turkey From Using It
17th October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
17th October 2019
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The United Nations Human Rights Council has been a bad joke for a long time, with many of the world’s worst human rights abusers honored with membership. But tomorrow we will see the reductio ad absurdum, as Mauritania is voted onto the Human Rights Council.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Slave State Honored by United Nations
16th October 2019
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
16th October 2019
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16th October 2019
Babylon Bee.
I’m holding out for a plenary indulgence.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Pope Announces Any Time Spent Watching ‘The View’ Counts as Time Served in Purgatory
16th October 2019
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Every couple now goes to the wedding altar under the threatening shadow of potential divorce, and it is generally acknowledged that divorce is a punitive procedure by which aggrieved women are authorized to obtain a sadistic revenge against their ex-husbands. Because accusations of abuse give women greater leverage in divorce proceedings, we should not be surprised that (a) such accusations are often exaggerated or even sometimes fabricated from whole cloth, and (b) anyone who expresses skepticism toward these accusations will be accused of being anti-woman, an enabler of male violence against women.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Proving @RationalMale Right Again
16th October 2019
David Bahr is not afraid to ask the hard questions.
And so I made an inventory unique to WFB (though I encourage you to choose a Minor Prophet at random and try this experiment for yourself). I catalogued his intellectual and practical toolkit to see if I could think through whether or not it would have been sufficient to address our problems in 2019—and, say, the next few decades. Without going through the laundry list, let’s agree that Buckley was a master of the medium of his time. He understood television and print, and wielded both to great effect. He mastered the use of those tools and used them in specific ways. So did each of the Minor Prophets.
But how would they fare today, in a world of new modes and orders? A world of half-baked integralists, Bronze Age Perverts, and Lord knows who else? Do Buckley and Kristol and Reagan still matter to young conservatives, and therewith to the future of intellectual conservatism, as they once did? Are the next conservative intellectuals—serious intellectuals, mind you—stressing about AEI and WSJ internships? Do they have an online subscription to National Review? Do Jonah Goldberg, Ross Douthat, or David Brooks move them any which way? Can they name a Founding Father?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on What Good Is Bill Buckley Anymore?
16th October 2019
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I’ll bet you didn’t know that.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Where You Place Your Food in the Fridge Really Does Matter
16th October 2019
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Amazon has become a lucrative place to do business for many Hasidic Jews, offering anonymity to a largely insular community and allowing women to work from home.
…
“You open a store, you get five, 10 people,” said Mr. Khaimov, whose work space is filled with volumes of the Talmud and a set of tefillin, sacred leather boxes and straps used for morning prayers. “On Amazon you get 1,000 people. If your merchandise is a known brand, it sells pretty quickly. Once you start selling items it’s like a drug.”
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on How Amazon Has Transformed the Hasidic Economy
16th October 2019
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I could hardly recognize this once-captivating city of breathtaking views, delectable food, and cool jazz. Today it’s occupied by an army of homeless men and women who have turned Baghdad-by-the-bay into Bombay-by-the-bay with some of the dirtiest slums in America.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on San Francisco No Longer Feels Like It’s in America
16th October 2019
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Of course not. That would mean actually having to do some work beyond just being a Clinton.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Chelsea Clinton: ‘I’m Not Considering Running for Congress’
16th October 2019
ZMan looks at modern American politics.
Now, the reason the Left wins even when they lose is not because they are shrewd or even that the Right is dumb. It’s that they reject that central premise of popular government, where the losers accept the results of an election and the winners reach a fair bargain with the losers. For the Left, what is theirs they keep. What is yours they seek. This is the central cause of the ratchet effect in American politics. One side exploits the rules, while the other abides by the rules.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Walking Away From the Deal
16th October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
16th October 2019
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I guess she managed to make it past Harvard’s selection bias against Asians.
Presumably there aren’t any good Ruling Class training universities in China.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Xi Jinping’s Daughter Has Returned to US to Resume Studies at Harvard
16th October 2019
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I always used to love reading about the house kits that Sears used to sell back in the Good Old Days.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Get a Kit for a House on Amazon
16th October 2019
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Living in a Turd World County like California can be nerve-wracking.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on UC Berkeley Was About to Launch a Satellite. Then PG&E Said It Was Cutting Power
15th October 2019
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Send ’em back to Honduras, whethet they came from there or not.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on British Family Says They Entered the US Accidentally — CBP Surveillance Footage Says Otherwise
15th October 2019
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The SUV that fled after hitting an antifa thug then crashed into the local Democrat offices, where I guess it was abandoned.
Then antifa came and vandalized those offices.
How does the Democrat Party, which CNN’s Jake Tapper tells me is not at all supportive of antifa, react?
By making excuses for Antifa.
But they’re not aligned or anything.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Antifa Vandalizes Oregon Democrat Party Headquarters Will Graffitti Urging Violence Against Cops, and the Oregon Democrat Party… Defends Antifa’s Right to Grieve In Their Own Way
15th October 2019
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
15th October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
15th October 2019
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A teenager who was brutally murdered and then chopped into pieces, allegedly by a suspected MS-13 gang member, could still be alive today if local authorities had honored an ICE detainer, the agency said.
Carlos Orlando Iraheta-Vega, an illegal alien from El Salvador, was charged for the murder of a teenage boy in King County, Washington. Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) noted Iraheta-Vega, who has a history of arrests, would likely have been unable to allegedly commit the gruesome crime if local authorities had honored a detainer request by their agency.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Authorities Ignored Detainer on Illegal Alien Accused of Bashing Teenager’s Head and Dismembering His Body, ICE Says
15th October 2019
Babylon Bee.
We have the technology.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on New Smart Doorbell Will Argue With Jehovah’s Witnesses, LDS Missionaries for You
15th October 2019
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The most recent IRS data, from 2016, shows that the top 10 percent of income earners pay almost 70 percent of federal income taxes. However, after the estate tax, the federal income tax is the most progressive part of the U.S. tax code.
Americans also pay less progressive payroll taxes, corporate taxes, excise taxes, and at the state level, property and sales taxes.
Looking at all federal taxes, the Congressional Budget Office shows that the top 1 percent pay an average federal tax rate of 33.3 percent. The data shows tax rates decline with income, and the poorest 20 percent of the population pays an average tax rate of just 1.7 percent.
The left-leaning Tax Policy Center shows similar results.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The New York Times Is Wrong. The Rich Pay More Taxes Than You Do.
15th October 2019
ZMan is not optimistic.
That’s a good point to wonder if the West has not already entered a new dark age, in which superstition rules over rationality. The concept of the microaggression is something superstitious people living in a dark age would have understood. After all, a microaggression is the idea that certain words and phrases, incantations, will cause a miasma to develop around the people saying and hearing the words. This miasma or evil spirit will cause those exposed to react involuntarily and uncontrollably.
In fact, everything about political correctness and multiculturalism relies on oogily-boogily that people in the dark age of Europe would have found ridiculous. The people of Europe in the middle ages may not have had a sophisticated understanding of the natural world, but they did not think the dirt had magical qualities. Magic Dirt Theory would have struck them as laughably ridiculous. They may not have understood cognitive science, but they knew the apple does not fall far from the tree.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Growing Darkness
15th October 2019
Babulon Bee: A grim report indicated Wednesday that the count of people murdered by known hate group Chick-fil-A has risen to 0 this year.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
15th October 2019
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In an exclusive global series, the Guardian lays bare the tech revolution transforming the welfare system worldwide – while penalising the most vulnerable.
Fortunately for The Guardian’s business model, the poor we have always with us.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Digital Dystopia: How Algorithms Punish the Poor
15th October 2019
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The multibillion-dollar wellness real estate industry believes air purifiers, pollution sensors, and natural materials can breathe new life into high-end homes
The latest high-end real estate amenity: living longer.
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
15th October 2019
David Cole is delightfully dyspeptic today.
Sometimes you get the hero you need, sometimes you get the hero you deserve, and sometimes you get a worthless dumbass who is neither. And if you’re really unlucky, you might get a whole flock of worthless dumbasses. I speak, of course, of the “conservatives” who spend every minute of every day desperately trying to convince the world how safe and nonthreatening they are. “Frugality, morality, and God bless our troops. Who can hate that? Down with Trump! Please like me!”
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Can the Right Fight Without Saying White?
15th October 2019
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Quantum computers have the potential to someday far outperform our traditional machines, thanks to their ability to store data on “qubits” that can exist in two states at once. That sounds good in theory, but in practice it’s hard to make materials that can do that and stay stable for long periods of time. Now, researchers from Johns Hopkins University have found a superconducting material that naturally stays in two states at once, which could be an important step towards quantum computers.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Schrodinger’s Superconductor Naturally Stable in Two States at Once
15th October 2019
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If he were actually serious, he’d no longer be a billionaire.
“Go, sell all you have and give it to the poor; and come, follow me.”
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Pointless Virtue Signaling: Billionaire Marc Benioff: Capitalism Has ‘Led to Horrifying Inequality’ and Must Be Fixed
14th October 2019
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
14th October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
14th October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Antifa Activist Killed in Hit and Run; Antifa Says It Wasn’t Anyone on the Right; Antifa Tells Its Members Not to Talk to Cops About the Killing
14th October 2019
Mark Krikorian responds to Bevo Beto O’Rourke.
Robert Francis O’Rourke’s pledge last week to end the tax exemption for churches that don’t embrace same-sex marriage isn’t just the cry for attention of an also-ran. As the editors noted on Friday, several of his fellow presidential candidates have co-sponsored legislation that would limit religious liberty. (Pete Buttigieg did say on Sunday that he opposed O’Rourke’s proposal, though his comments seemed to suggest that the intersectional pickle of stripping mosques of their tax-exemption was the real problem.)
But the left’s totalitarian goals aren’t confined to religious institutions. Just last month the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing to make the case for stripping the non-profit tax status of organizations labeled as “hate groups” by the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center. These groups include not just those with a religious orientation, like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association, but also secular groups like the Center for Security Policy, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the Center for Immigration Studies (which I head). You can watch the September hearing here, including the tutorial by the sole Republican witness, law professor Eugene Volokh, on the bedrock constitutional principle of viewpoint neutrality: “There is no constitutional right to a tax exemption, but there is a constitutional right not to be discriminated [against] based on viewpoint in the grant or denial of a tax exemption.”
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
14th October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
14th October 2019
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A Person of Color behaving badly – what are the odds?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Man, 30, Who Ploughed Into Police and Cyclists Outside Parliament Jailed for Life
14th October 2019
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The murders sparked soul-searching over how a man who converted to Islam 10 years ago and had adopted increasingly radical beliefs escaped detection despite working at a police intelligence unit whose job is to identity terror threats.
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on French Police Arrest Five, Including an Imam, in Connection With Knife Attack on Paris Police Station
14th October 2019
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The dirty little nonsecret for years has been that modern dishwashers don’t clean dishes well. The culprit is federal efficiency standards, which have been tightened to use less energy.
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
14th October 2019
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Boy, banning guns sure made things safer in Londonistan, didn’t it?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Teenager and Man Stabbed in Separate Incidents in North London
14th October 2019
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Or maybe not. We report, you decide.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on 15 Slang Terms You Need to Know
14th October 2019
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Too extreme for the ACLU? Whoa.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on California’s New ‘Red Flag’ Gun Law So Extreme ACLU Deems “Significant Threat To Civil Liberties”
14th October 2019
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Maybe students are tired of being lectured on diversity.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Students Burn Author’s Books After Lecture on Diversity
13th October 2019
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What doesn’t fit neatly into GoFundMe’s salvation narratives are the limits of private efforts like Matt White’s. GoFundMe campaigns blend the well-intentioned with the cringeworthy, and not infrequently bring to mind the “White Savior Industrial Complex”—the writer Teju Cole’s phrase for the way sentimental stories of uplift can hide underlying structural problems. “The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice,” Cole wrote in 2012. “It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.”
The project you’re funding had also better be something that appeals to ‘progressives’ or you will be de-platformed in a heartbeat..
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on When GoFundMe Gets Ugly
13th October 2019
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Just when you thought it was safe to go back in Saturday morning….
University of Washington professor Holly Barker published her musings on the yellow sponge cartoon character and his deep-sea pals in an academic journal called The Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Island Affairs, which features “readable” articles focused on “social, economic, political, ecological, and cultural topics.”
In her article titled “Unsettling SpongeBob and the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom,” Barker’s chief complaint hinges on her perception that the show’s fictional setting of the town of Bikini Bottom is based on the nonfictional Bikini Atoll, a coral reef in the Marshall Islands used by the U.S. military for nuclear testing during the Cold War.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Prof: SpongeBob Perpetuates “Violent, Racist” Acts Against Indigenous People
13th October 2019
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People of Color behaving badly … what are the odds?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Former UGA Student Pleads Guilty to Running Million-Dollar Ponzi Scheme From Frat House
13th October 2019
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria