Read it.

The move would mark a final blow to two taxes that were originally passed in the Affordable Care Act to help fund the law’s coverage expansion, but that have been repeatedly delayed and criticized by lawmakers in both parties.

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It’s all here. Unfortunately, so are more people than reside in any other state. Which you’d think would be fine since California is three times larger than Iowa and 18 times larger than New Hampshire, the two states that we waste so much time talking about every four years.

But alas, about half of California’s 40 million have flocked into three metropolitan area—LA, San Diego and San Francisco.

As one result, for a variety of revealing reasons, several hundred-thousand Californians are fleeing the state annually, including me. A personal mantra has always been to run toward new jobs and homes, not flee old ones. Truth this time, we have many reasons to leave our Southern California home of 20 years.

Read it.

Your tax dollars at work.

Greta Thunberg apologizes for ‘against the wall’ remark, plans a break from climate activism

The toxic rhetoric of climate change

Anger erupts at U.N. climate summit as major economies resist bold action  ‘Bold action’ is prog-speak for ‘spending your money on what we think is important even if you starve’.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, anti-impeachment Democrat, expected to switch parties after Trump meeting

Melania Trump’s indefensible defense of her bully husband  WaPo.

Cuomo Pushes Hashtag #DirtyDonald, Says Dems Didn’t Fight Hard for Impeachment  It’s not easy being Fredo.

CNN Analyst Gillum Protests Smerconish Comparing U.K. Labour Defeat to Dems in 2020  It illustrates why Florida rejected Gillum for Governor; he’s pretty stupid.

Nadler: Trump Is A ‘Threat’ To National Security

Schiff, Nadler Insist Impeachment “Not A Failure” Despite Plunge In Public Support, Interest

Read it.

It is written, of course, by a woman, as is (apparently) the entirety of GQ these days.

GQ apparently stands for “Genuinely Queer”.

If you are wondering whether or not we are rapidly approaching the end of our civilization, look no further.

A further illustration of Scott Adams’ premise that the business model of all publications these days is whatever it takes to get Clicks From The Woke.

Read it.

Boy, grabbing all the guns really made the streets of Britain safer, didn’t they?

“Tyrone and his friend started arguing over a phone charger, his friend then took a knife and stabbed him in his side the stab womb [punctured] his heart… 3 hours later Tyrone died in Hospital with his loving mother… by his side.”

A friend in need is a friend indeed.  In the U.S., the name ‘Tyrone’ would tell you everything you need to know about the vic’s ethnicity, but they may do things different there.

Read it.

Should old acquaintance be forgot….

One of the many reasons why Eric Holder has absolutely no room to be complaining about William Barr’s performance as Attorney General.

Read it.

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

I never worry about it, secure in the sure and certain knowledge that if microplastics become a problem for the environment Mother Nature will evolve a creature to eat them, as she always has in the past.

Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist.

Careful observers often and correctly note that, for many of its adherents, environmentalism is a religion.

Too many environmentalists disregard inconvenient truths that would undermine their faith that calamities are percolating just over the horizon. It might well be that humans’ “footprint” on the Earth is larger than ever; it might even be true that this larger footprint creates some health risks for us modern humans that our pre-industrial ancestors never encountered.

But it is undeniably true that we denizens of industrial, market economies live far better and far healthier than did any our pre-industrial ancestors.

…

What we almost never hear from self-proclaimed “environmentalists” is recognition of the upside of contemporary life. The commerce and industry that produce all the things that environmentalists ecstatically despise also produce incredible amounts of wealth, health and cleanliness — not to mention the leisure necessary for modern people to reflect upon and enjoy nature.

Read it.

“Natural Wine” means exactly nothing. A lot of those vineyards would be dead and gone if it weren’t for modern viticultural and wine-making techniques. It’s a marketing tool designed to attract exactly the kind of people who write and read the NYT, and has very little to do with the quality of wine in the bottle. Sure, some “natural” wines are good, just as some mass-market wines are good. But there are plenty of crappy “natural” or “organic” wines that taste like spoiled grape juice filtered through a hobo’s sock, but they command a market and a price premium precisely because pompous asshats at the NYT tout them as something special. They specialize in linking banal, everyday events and products with some heightened sense of the world around us, as if the bottle of wine one drinks or the toilet paper one uses to wipe one’s ass is in some way imbued with special powers to bring one closer to…something. Anything. As long as it isn’t one of us.

I don’t drink wine so I don’t have a sneer in this fight, but the position of the New York Times as a Voice of the Crust is so solid that I assume whatever they like is probably crap, and they haven’t let me down yet.

Read it.

As Scott Adams is fond of pointing out, the advent of digital analytics has changed the business model of publications from publishing things that people might want to read to publishing things that can be paired with scary headlines that will inspire clicks, the clicks that make money. The reason formerly reasonable science-oriented publications have turned into part of the Woke Mob is that they have discovered that if you want the clicks you have to serve the most easily outraged among the Great Unwashed, and those are invariably the Woke.

Read it.

For several months now, the Santa Clara District Attorney’s office has been investigating allegations that Laurie Smith, the Santa Clara County sheriff, has been engaged in the corrupt practice of granting concealed carry licenses to those who fork over cash for her campaign coffers.

The San Jose Mercury News has done a solid job of reporting on the ongoing investigation, and their latest report is a doozy. According to some recently released records from the sheriff’s office, it sure looks like Sheriff Smith and her staff have a policy that “favors those with power and influence”, as the paper puts it.

The key to Democrat Machine corruption is, as it always has been, favors by elected politicians in return for political support. For the Underclass this comes in the form of Free Stuff for votes; for the Upper Crust it comes in the form of cronyism for money, be it preference on getting pubic works deals or, as here, favors dependent on ‘who you know’.  Why it should come as a surprise that this logic operates as strongly in Blue State California as it does in New York, Detroit, or Chicago beggars belief.

ZMan pursues the crazy without fear or favor.

Feminism is a term that is exclusively associated with left-wing activism and generally associated with the more radical elements of the culture war. Modern feminists are the emotionally disturbed old maids in the human resource department, stalking about, looking for unapproved words and thoughts. These are the people purging social media of anything funny or interesting. While true, it disguises the fact that feminism is as much a part of the conventional Right as it is the Left.

Read it.

When the Soviet Union collapsed and its archives were opened, certain Cold War controversies became susceptible of definitive resolution. Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis titled his 1997 book on the subject We Now Know. By the same token, publication of the Department of Justice Inspector General report on FISA abuse and related issues should similarly bring closure to the Russia hoax touted by the Democrats and their media adjunct over the past three years. As to the status of the Steele Dossier and the invalidity of the FISA warrants taken out on Carter Page to spy on the Trump campaign, we now know.

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Remember: If you hear the dog-whistle, then you’re the dog.

Steve Sailer does some fisking of the New York Times.

The Times sometimes reads like the Babylon Bee.

Jared Diamond has some thoughts.

For most of our history we supported ourselves by hunting and gathering: we hunted wild animals and foraged for wild plants. It’s a life that philosophers have traditionally regarded as nasty, brutish, and short. Since no food is grown and little is stored, there is (in this view) no respite from the struggle that starts anew each day to find wild foods and avoid starving. Our escape from this misery was facilitated only 10,000 years ago, when in different parts of the world people began to domesticate plants and animals. The agricultural revolution spread until today it’s nearly universal and few tribes of hunter-gatherers survive.

The anthropological research I’ve read suggests that hunter-gatherers were better nourished, healthier, and had less of a daily workload than agricultural workers.

With son sitting with her, Rep. Martha Roby votes against Trump impeachment  Of course, she’s a Republican.

Impeachment is rare. Republicans’ histrionics are historic.  WaPo.

Leftwingers Matt Taibbi and Krystal Ball Assail Democrats, and Especially the Corporate-Owned Neoliberal Media, For Grotesque Errors and Lies in RUSSIA Collusion Hoax

The Media Told You For Two Years That Everything About the FISA Was Perfect and Beautiful: The Supercut

MSNBC’s Wallace: Impeaching Trump Is ‘About American National Security’

Impeachment Insanity: Democrat Asks Lawmakers To Imagine Girl Tied Up In Trump’s Basement

Can anyone lay a glove on Donald Trump?

After Horowitz

Biden Ignores Heckler’s Question About Ukraine, Tries To Link Trump To El Paso Shooting

Major Hillary-Loving Newspapers Now Endorse Trump’s Impeachment

Anti-Impeachment Democrat Jeff Van Drew Defects To GOP

Bloomberg calls for closing all coal-fired power plants to combat climate change’

The dangerous winds of trying to prevent climate change

Enviro-Fascism for Toddlers

Greta Thunberg: ‘Put World Leaders Against The Wall’ If They Fail To Take Action On Climate Change

NYT Editorial Board: ‘Impeach’ Trump, But ‘Resist The Pull Of Partisanship’

The guilty ones preventing good policy about climate change

‘Green’ energy relies on copper-nickel mining

Latest UN Climate Talks Collapsing

Read it.

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

For an alternative, try Castile soap. This can still be purchased from hippies over the Internet.

Read it.

I dare say he wasn’t the only clown in the room.

Read it.

Would you pay $1400 a month for a bunk in what is effectively a barracks?

Join the military and have the same thing but they pay you rather than you paying them. And you get free medical, free dental, and free food.

Just sayin’.

Read it.

California’s descent into the Turd World proceeds apace.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the suit was filed Tuesday in California state court on behalf of a high-school sophomore, two seniors, and a first-year student at Pasadena City College (several California social-justice nonprofits are also plaintiffs in the suit), all of whom it says would be strong candidates for more selective UC campuses except for their test scores.

Hey, I would have gotten into Harvard Law except for my grades. Maybe I ought to sue.

Read it.

New techniques for “densifying” wood can turn the ubiquitous substance into a super-material suitable for constructing buildings and body armor.

Read it.

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

Read it.

I should have thought that bins were exactly the right place for them.

Read it.

Take the scourge of the introduced cane toad (Rhinella marina) for example. As this highly poisonous amphibian disperses across northern Australia, the numbers of predators attempting to eat them are crashing. The most notable victims are quolls, goannas and certain snakes, which have been all but wiped out in some regions. Crows, however, have learnt how to eat toads by avoiding the most toxic parts.

If know-it-all do-gooders quite trying to ‘fix’ the climate, Mother Nature will take care of it, as she always has.

Read it.

The stars are coming out to push the activities of a “non-partisan” anti-corruption organization which aims to save America, state-by-state, by way of voting laws, campaign finance laws, anti-lobbying measures and such. The organization is called Represent.Us. Their eventual goal is to change federal laws.

They emphasize that it’s not fair that lobbyists have more influence on politicians than ordinary people. They don’t seem to push any measures to limit the unfair influence of celebrities on (and in behalf of) politicians, though.

Funny how that works.

Read it.

Apparently it did not go well.

Mother Jones.

(CityLab is a reliable Voice of the Crust who could be depended upon to support The Narrative in every respect.)

(Mother Jones is where people who think Bernie Sanders is a Trump apologist get their news.)

In today’s lesson, the modern clerisy discover that the Upper Crust they spend their time promoting really don’t give a shit about them when there’s money involved.

Check it out.

You know there had to be one.

Read it.

Scholarly research is in crisis, and four issues highlight its dimensions. The first is that important disciplines such as physics, economics, psychology, medicine, and geology are unable to explain over 90 percent of what we see: dark matter dominates their theoretical understanding.

…

The second dimension of the research crisis is that systems which are critical to humankind—especially climate, demography, asset prices, and natural disasters—are minimally predictable.

…

The third dimension is a chronic inability to reproduce research findings.

…

The final indicator of crisis in research is that progress in developing better theory and forecasting capability has stagnated since the 1960s.

Read it.

America’s surging politics of victimhood and identitarian division did not emerge organically or inevitably, as many believe. Nor are these practices the result of irrepressible demands by minorities for recognition, or for redress of past wrongs, as we are constantly told. Those explanations are myths, spread by the activists, intellectuals, and philanthropists who set out deliberately, beginning at mid-century, to redefine our country. Their goal was mass mobilization for political ends, and one of their earliest targets was the Mexican-American community. These activists strived purposefully to turn Americans of this community (who mostly resided in the Southwestern states) against their countrymen, teaching them first to see themselves as a racial minority and then to think of themselves as the core of a pan-ethnic victim group of “Hispanics”—a fabricated term with no basis in ethnicity, culture, or race.

Read it.

Gee, there’s an echo in here….

Read it.

Public Works has estimated that keeping all 24 of the city’s Pit Stops open around the clock would cost an extra $8.25 million a year. A funding source has not been identified.

I guess the money will just drop from heaven. I doubt that it will come from the politicians who created this situation in the first place.

The three-month test set up all-night Pit Stops at three existing locations: Sixth and Jessie streets South of Market, Market and Castro streets in the Castro, and Eddy and Jones streets in the Tenderloin. People going to the bathroom on streets and sidewalks is a constant problem in all three areas.

This is what happens when Democrats run your city.

Read it.

Your future under the Democrats.

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More than 65,000 surviving spouses of people who died in military service could soon be set to receive full survivor’s benefits, after a bipartisan effort to do away with the so-called “widow’s tax.”

The Military Widow’s Tax Elimination Act is a recently included provision of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), an annual bill that allocates government expenditures on the military. The provision reverses a 1972 decision that limited government benefits for families who qualified for two different survivor benefit programs.

Read it.

Maybe we can convince Oregon to secede with California.

Read it.

Gee, from all of the people wanting to get in, you’d never think that America was the Worst Country In The World, as Democrats keep saying.

Cuomo Gets Slapped Down by Former AG on Shady Bidens, Impeachment, FBI Spying  Poor Fredo can’t get a break.

Snopes Demands White House Explain Trump’s Retweet of Babylon Bee Mocking Dems  Hint: It was funny.

Joy Behar Blames NJ Shooting on the Right: Trump Letting ‘White Nationalists Out of Their Holes’  Funny how white nationalists had nothing to do with it.

House Judiciary Committee Votes To Move Forward With Articles Of Impeachment Against Trump

Democrats Aren’t Interested in Talking about Trump’s ‘Crimes’ Anymore

Obama Wanted To Know Everything His Trump Spies Were Doing, And It Looks Like He Did

Liberal Economists Predicted A Global Recession — Instead, We Have A Trump Boom

Trump Says Republicans Could Get Impeachment Payback On Next Democratic President  Not if the keep electing people like Mitt Romney.

House Democrats Attended Trump’s Holiday Party At White House Hours Before Filing Articles Of Impeachment  Coal in stockings all around, I’m thinking.

FLASHBACK: CNN’s Jim Sciutto Defended Steele Dossier More Than Anybody

World must reach ‘peak meat’ by 2030 to meet climate change targets, scientists warn

No One Actually Believes the Global Warming Hype

Greta Thunberg Is the Perfect Hero for an Unserious Time

CO2 Emissions Will Break Another Record in 2019 ‘Scientific’ American.

BURNETT: Climate-Change Alarmists Are Getting More Delusional In Their Predictions

CBS News Touts ‘Peak Meat’ by 2030 to Avoid Climate Crisis

EU claims success on flagship climate change policy – but Poland says no

Al Gore Says Democratic Candidates Should Absolutely Run On AOC’s Green New Deal: Report  That’s why AlGore is a loser and will always remain one.

After 30 years of failed climate politics, let’s try science!

The Arctic may have crossed key threshold in a long-dreaded climate feedback  ‘May’. So panic anyway.

Read it.

About 2 million books get published every year in the world. The indexed web contains at least 5.75 billion pages. So much to read, so little time. In a world obsessed with speed and productivity at all costs, it’s no surprise that someone came up with a solution. It’s called speed reading, and its promise is to help anyone read at speeds of above 1000 words per minute—much higher than the 200-400 words per minute achieved by the average college-level reader. Sounds fantastic. The problem? It’s completely bogus.

Read it.

They can start with the people who are leaving shit and needles on the street.

Read it.

The Left isn’t really into democracy if it means they lose.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

When not confined to a container, liquids will splatter, dribble, and ooze. They shape-shift into their surroundings as puddles and streams, largely beyond human control.

Lauren Zarzar is trying to make more obedient liquids. Zarzar, a materials scientist at Pennsylvania State University, designs liquids that she can tame—fluids that move or change shape on command. That could mean a tube of water that retains its shape inside a second fluid, or a droplet that separates into two different oils when triggered by light. At their most ambitious, these liquids could even become electronic circuit components. Researchers have already made all-liquid wires and antennas.

Read it.

Libertarians and other people with unpopular views sometimes wonder why most human beings are so conformist. Especially intellectually. It is almost impossible to get an average human being to question received views in their society. You can give whatever amazing arguments you want, but it won’t matter, because they haven’t accepted the whole enterprise of adjusting beliefs in light of arguments in the first place. You can’t argue a person into paying attention to arguments.