Read it.

As am I.Once the Soviet Union came undone, the reason for NATO vanished. Russia is not the threat that the Soviet Union was, and probably never will be. The rationale for including Turkey in a North Atlantic treaty organization is nonexistent, and only gets us into one of those entangling foreign alliances that George Washington warned us against.

Audacious Epigone points out a few inconsistencies.

Sometimes the campaign ads write themselves. Gather clips of top Democrats superciliously asserting that “in America, no one is above the law!” in the context of the failed impeachment coup. Follow with clips of top Democrats voicing support for issuing drivers licenses to people who are in the country in violation of the law….

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So what? I can’t name the President of Mexico.The last one whose name I knew was Vicente Fox, and I’m sure that was a while ago. I’m sure both of them could name the Prime Minister of Canada, as can I, because Kid Trudeau is always in the news on account of some gaffe or other. The fact that two serious contenders for the Democratic Presidential nomination can’t name the President of Mexico speaks rather to that guy’s successfully keeping his name out of the news rather than to their cluelessness. We learn of things when they are brought to our attention or when we research them; knowing the name of the President of Mexico might be a thing for the Secretary of State but I’m not convinced it’s all that important for a President.

Think of the world leaders whose names you actually know. Why do you know them? Typically because they are in the news, and that typically because they are causing trouble for the United States.

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Covid-19’s effect on global energy markets has been disastrous. OPEC slashed its oil demand forecast last week, and Goldman Sachs doubled down on its bearish oil take and has cut its oil price target by $10 to $53 for the year, as a result of a “demand shock” that is set to collapse Chinese oil consumption by 20%, or as much as 4 million barrels per day.

The sharp decline in demand in China, which by the way, is the world’s largest oil importer, is now stranding oil cargoes off the country’s coast and across Asia.

Modern ‘just-in-time’ production processes are easily jammed.

Human Activity in China and India Dominates the Greening of Earth, NASA Study Shows

Hawaiian residents will suffer greatly from new ‘climate saving’ carbon taxes

The media REALLY wants Trump to be a homophobe

Unsettled Climate Science: 30 Years Apace

Climate Prediction: “Take-off distances will get longer as the climate warms”

Tax-Cut Architect: Democrats Will Gut Trump’s Changes If They Win  But you knew that.

Oracle Workers Revolt Over Ellison’s Planned Trump Fundraiser

John Harwood Pronounces on Barr’s ABC Interview: ‘It Is Not Credible’

Sam Donaldson Endorses Mike Bloomberg on CNN to Defeat ‘Sick, Ignorant…Corrupt’ Trump  Millionaires of a feather stick together.

McCabe Says He Was ‘Unfairly Branded A Liar,’ Blames Trump For His Firing

DavidCarroll: ‘His Thumb on the Scales of Justice’: Chris Wallace

‘So Amazing!’ Katie Couric Gushes Over Bloomberg’s Insults of Trump on Maher Show

CNN Anchor Tells Nancy Pelosi That Trump Was Acquitted — She Interrupts, Claims He Wasn’t

Read it.

Scott Adams has a bug up his butt pretty constantly about this issue.

Read it.

OK, if you’re a naïve rube like me you might ask yourself what is a “throuple?” It turns out it’s a relatively new word formed by the blending of “three” and “couple” and it means “a long-term sexual relationship between three people” per a new entry into the Macmillan Dictionary. They must be ahead of the cultural curve from Webster’s.

Read it.

‘Rashaun Weaver’ tells you everything you need to know.

Severian lays out some wisdom.

The incorrigible ye have always with you, as somebody must’ve said. Social science types slice it different ways, call it different things — the free rider problem, the tragedy of the commons, etc. — but they all amount to the easily-observed fact that some folks just can’t play well with others. Not “won’t play well with others;” can’t play well with others. Any given population of sufficient size is going to have its unmanageable knuckleheads who are always working at cross-purposes against everyone else, who seem to just get off on causing chaos.

ZMan is on a roll today.

Then there is the issue of taboos, which is raised at about the ten minute mark of that YouTube clip linked above. Unsaid, but implied, is the claim that excluding certain people from dissident politics reinforces left-wing taboos on certain opinions. The claim is that excluding people, who are bad for the image of the group, automatically gives legitimacy to the left, by reinforcing left-wing taboos. In other words, trying to present a good image is playing by the Left’s rules on politics.

This is the error of all reactionaries. Instead of developing an internal logic that naturally results in a set of rules and standards, the reactionary simply responds to what he perceives to be his opponent. To be a reactionary in a society run by ideologues is to be a rebel without a cause. Whatever the people in charge of for, the rebel is against and whatever is taboo, the rebel embraces. The modern reactionary is someone who puts a leash around his neck and hands the other end to his opponent.

Preach it, brother.

Read it.

You can be forgiven for thinking the left’s fetish over “intersectionality”—the deliberate attempt to keep all designated victim groups in good standing with one another through a unified matrix of oppression—resembles a Bingo game run amok because no one ever actually wins a round. The best example right now are the identitarians attacking Pete Buttigieg because . . . he’s not gay enough, or something.

Eric Swalwell Won’t Rule Out Another Impeachment Over Roger Stone  Thereby underscoring that he has the IQ of a carrot.

MSNBC Terrified By Trump’s ‘DEATH STAR’ of ‘Disinformation’

House Democrats Ponder Impeaching Trump Again But that trick never works.

Navy sailors reprimanded over ‘Make Aircrew Great Again’ patches CNN.

New Hampshire man arrested after allegedly assaulting pro-Trump teen at polling site  Yet more anti-Trump violence.

Dems Demand Barr Resign, Float Second Trump Impeachment Over Roger Stone Controversy

MSNBC’s Jansing Laments GOP Doesn’t Know ‘What’s Right’

Jim Acosta Blames Trump For Kids Getting Bullied Just Weeks After CNN Settled With Nick Sandmann

New York Times: John Durham is Probing How John Brennan Put Together His Coup Effort, and That Is a Dangerous and Unamerican Violation of the CIA’s Privacy!!!!

‘Three-Penny Opera’: Ana Navarro Claims Trump/Barr Spat Was Orchestrated  Loserthink: Mind-reading. Since that’s what she would do, therefore that’s what Trump and Barr must be doing.

Pink Floyd’s Waters: Trump a ‘Tyrant, Mass Murderer’

Bad news for climate alarmists: global carbon dioxide emissions flatlined in 2019

We Just Endured Hottest January on Record, US Scientists Say  Tell Texas – it’s 39 degrees outside my window right now.

Hot on the trail of cold fusion as a solution to the climate crisis The Guardian.

Earth just had hottest January since records began, data shows  The Guardian.

Earth just had its hottest January in recorded history  NBCNews.

Global Warming In a Few Charts

Is Recycling a Waste of Time? As currently run, I would say so.

MSNBC Cherry Picks, Botches Data on Record High Temps in Antarctica

Read it.

Something funny has happened since the rise of New Urbanism as an architecture and design movement in the 1980s and 1990s. The New Urbanists’ resurrection of traditional pre-WWII American built forms—the walkable neighborhood main street with shops along the sidewalk and apartments above; the narrow, shady residential streets; the foursquare home with a quaint front porch—proved popular with the public. People gravitate to traditional design, not only for nostalgic reasons but because it follows principles evolved to meet humans’ basic psychological needs.

What hasn’t proven so popular among developers is actually challenging the basic spatial logic of suburbia, in which different land uses are strictly separated and everyone drives everywhere, on wide stroads that connect one pod-like “development” to another. This logic is wired into our zoning codes through things like parking minimums and subdivision regulations.

And so, the look and superficial feel of New Urbanism is increasingly just co-opted by developers of run-of-the-mill suburbia to make consumers feel like they’re being sold something other than run-of-the-mill suburbia. Call it Movie Set Urbanism.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Read it.

The New York Times posted a preposterous headline over Paul Krugman’s latest column: “Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist.” But he describes himself as a socialist. Our own Dan Gainor underlined the humor of this sentence with this joke on Twitter: “Paul Krugman isn’t a columnist.” Krugman admits Bernie identifies as a socialist, but he claims socialists really mean they’re social democrats, so don’t smear them with the S-word.

Read it.

With the recent federal lawsuits filed against California, New Jersey and Kings County, Washington, the Trump administration has finally launched a fierce counterattack against the sanctuary movement. States and local jurisdictions that provide a safe haven for dangerous criminal aliens and obstruct federal immigration enforcement are on notice.

Read it.

I watched the Democrats in New Hampshire so you didn’t have to. It was painful: hours of angry folks painfully reciting leftist talking points. It was like watching the Oscars except with old ugly people.

…

If you have not watched any of these sad displays called the “Democrat primaries,” let me sum them up for you. All the candidates try to top each other in identifying various victim classes. They tell the “victims” how much government money they will give them if elected, and whom they will get back at for them.

Read it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a nationwide fracking ban Wednesday as Democratic presidential candidates work to paint themselves as moderates ahead of the 2020 election.

She is obviously offended by U.S. energy independence and low gas prices. The Trump booming economy might also have something to do with it.

Read it.

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

After decades of Democrats and their fellow travellers complaining about rich Republicans of trying to ‘buy an election’, a guy is actually trying to buy an election — and it’s a Democrat.

Read it.

Tentative title Days of Whine and Poses.

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Say’s Law, as explicated by the great liberal political economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832), is the principle that supply constitutes demand, with the corollary that aggregate supply always equals aggregate demand. There’s no more important principle in political economy to get perfectly right – and assiduously avoid getting wrong – than Say’s Law.

Innovation always comes from the supply side, not the demand side. As Henry Ford famously said, ‘If I had asked customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.’ Have you ever walked into a store looking for the thing you don’t know you need until you see it? Hardware stores are like that, as well as places like The Container Store.

Read it.

It always strikes me when I run into a friend who is amused that I am a Costco member. For someone who grew up in a suburban area, even with the nearest Costco being a 45-minute drive from our house, shopping there was a no-brainer for my family. The reasons why Costco made sense for us are probably not dissimilar from the reasons of its ~100 million other members. Since its founding in 1983, the store has consistently delivered on providing value by selling almost any kind of product at competitive prices (among other things). In a ‘late-stage-capitalist’ landscape riddled with examples of, at worst, blatant greed, scams, and ripoffs, and at best, inadvertent marginalization from platforms, shopping at Costco is one of the few places that, according to its loyal customers, “feels like winning.”

If it has what you’re looking for (never guaranteed), Costco can’t be beat.

Read it.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the surgeon Dr. John H. Girdner started to notice something peculiar about his Manhattan patients. Girdner had left his home state of Tennessee to study at New York University and worked his way up the medical ranks, even attending to President James A. Garfield when he was shot. After twenty-five years of treating patients in the big city, Girdner decided to write his findings in a book. “A very large percentage [of people] lead an artificial life here,” he warned. “This manner of life has brought about a condition of mind, body, and soul, which I have endeavored to describe under the title of Newyorkitis.”

Read it.

“They do exist,” says Michael Alexiades, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, “and they don’t necessarily need to be 3D-printed.” Instead, medical-device companies like Zimmer or Stryker manufacture full replacements or sections of a femur, and surgeons can adjust the size of the implant to fit the patient. An artificial humerus, the big bone in the upper arm, also exists.

Read it.

It was a crazy idea: Take the bulk of the world’s books, scan them, and create a monumental digital library for all to access. That’s what Google dreamed of doing when it embarked on its ambitious book-digitizing project in 2002. It got part of the way there, digitizing at least 25 million books from major university libraries.

But the promised library of everything hasn’t come into being. An epic legal battle between authors and publishers and the internet giant over alleged copyright violations dragged on for years. A settlement that would have created a Book Rights Registry and made it possible to access the Google Books corpus through public-library terminals ultimately died, rejected by a federal judge in 2011. And though the same judge ultimately dismissed the case in 2013, handing Google a victory that allowed it to keep on scanning, the dream of easy and full access to all those works remains just that.

Read it.

DoNotPay, the family of consumer advocacy services meant to protect people from corporate exploitation, is launching a new app aimed at helping end our long national nightmare surrounding robocalls by giving you a burner credit card to get their contact details then giving you a chatbot lawyer to automatically sue them.

I like it. It has texture, and scope.

Read it.

Iran’s latest attempt to launch a satellite into orbit marked the fourth recent space launch operation in a row ending in failure, and yet Iran’s space program and Defense Ministry still praised the launch as “remarkable” and vowed to continue to program.

This elicited a response from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who on Tuesday repeated Washington’s longtime charge that Tehran is using the satellite launch program as cover to hone technology related to its ballistic missile capability. Pompeo said technological elements to the launch were “virtually identical” to those necessary a long-range ballistic missile.

Read it.

Nothing to see here, move along, move along….

Read it.

Sidewalk Labs, the architecture and urbanism arm of Google parent company Alphabet, has unveiled a digital model for what would be the world’s tallest mass-timber building, reaching 35 storeys.

Read it.

Beset by high housing costs, crippling taxes, astronomical gas prices, wildfires, and rolling blackouts, Californians are heading for the exits. That’s sparking anxiety in places where these Golden State migrants are relocating. A mayoral candidate in Boise, Idaho, recently suggested building a wall to keep out Californians, who account for 60 percent of domestic migration into the growing state. The election of increasingly progressive candidates in Colorado sparked talk there of the “Californication” of the Centennial State.

Early last year, the Dallas News described the “California-ing” of North Texas, citing a study showing that 8,300 Californians move to the area yearly. Texas governor Greg Abbott launched a petition titled “Don’t California My Texas.”

We don’t mind them coming here so long as they leave their crazy ideas back on the Left Coast.

Read it.

Guess Iran is still determined to make mischief.

Read it.

That’s what happens when Democrats run your city.

Read it.

I guess some cultures are more equal than others.

Global Warming Blamed For Evaporating Great Lakes; Now Blamed For High-Water Levels In Chicago’s “Climate Emergency”

Climate Lawsuit: UNSW Law Professor Sues Own Retirement Fund

Could a mini ice-age soon impact Earth?

Climate change may not claim as many species as we thought

An autopsy of the climate policy debate’s corpse

Trump Admin Faces Record Number of Lawsuits From States  Where were these people when Obama was wielding his pen?

Devin Nunes: Public Will Learn of More Unethical Actions by Mueller’s Angry Democrats In the Coming Weeks

CNN Really Wants Us to Feel Bad for Andrew McCabe After Trump ‘Attacked You Personally’

Anti-Trump Antifa Thugs Are Soon Going to Find Out What People Are Like When They Stop Being Polite and Start Being Real

NYT Accuses Trump of ‘Hijacking’ the News Cycle With Accurate Bloomberg Quotes

Richard Blumenthal: Stone Case Shows Senate Republicans Are ‘Explicit Enablers’ Who Could Allow Trump To ‘Go After Enemies’

The Media Couldn’t Be Less Interested in Van Attack Against Trumpers

Is Trump to Blame for Students Chanting “Where’s Your Passport?”, by Steve Sailer

Lead Juror In Roger Stone Trial Was Left-Wing Former Political Candidate Who Despises Trump; Buttigieg Wants Investigation Into Barr

CNN Declares Roger Stone Sentencing Controversy Is Worse Than Watergate

Conan O’Brien Captivated By Lefty Jim Carrey’s Disgusting Anti-Trump ‘Art’

CNN: Attacking Trump Is John Kelly’s ‘Public Responsibility’, Shows His ‘Integrity’

Forewoman of Roger Stone Jury Criticizes Trump In FaceBook Post; People Discover She Has Long Been a Rabidly Anti-Trump, Anti-Republican Zealot Who Ran for Congress as a Democrat and Tweeted About Stone Before the Trial

Alec Baldwin Compares Trump To Hitler In Rant About ‘Lawless,’ ‘Malignant Dictatorships’

Victor Davis Hanson.

Genius is often defined in myriad ways. One trusted criterion is the ability to do something extraordinary in a field where others could not — and doing something that perhaps will never be done again by anyone else.

Veronique de Rugy.

The New York Times published this excellent argument why we shouldn’t break up Amazon. It boils down to this: Amazon is a genius at giving consumers what they want, and because it faces a ton of competition, the company innovates like crazy. All that’s missing from this piece is the argument that government’s ineptitude at running Amtrak and the postal service, along with a great deal of other evidence of political operatives’ failure to achieve their goals, should make us skeptical of the ability of bureaucrats to break up Big Tech.

Read it.

In keeping with our storied history of presenting readers with plausible theories and allowing them to make their own decisions often times weeks, months or years in advance of the mainstream media figuring them out and/or having the courage to finally touch on them, we’re not surprised to see some of the critical questions we raised about the coronavirus origins weeks ago finally bleed into the mainstream media this morning.

ZeroHedge is a great site, and very entertaining — and that’s about all you can really expect fromthe ‘news’ these days.

Scott Johnson at Power Line has an adventure.

I have a pen and I have notes, to borrow a phrase. I have notes of comments made by President Trump at the White House reception for conservative media on April 24, 2017 on the occasion of his first hundred days in office. I used my notes to write up my account of the reception for Power Line readers in “At the White House with Trump.”

In a scenario out of Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, I was served at home with a subpoena by lawyers for plaintiffs in one of the “travel ban” lawsuits from the early days of the Trump administration. The subpoena would have taken my notes away from me. They were going to let me keep my pen.

Read it.

The Associated Press reported Wednesday afternoon that three high school girls in Connecticut had filed a federal lawsuit to prevent transgender athletes — read muscle-bound boys — from competing in girls sports. The D.C.-based gay magazine Metro Weekly reported the story in total LGBT-ese.

AP’s story ran on ESPN W, Time and numerous other media websites.

Scorecards! Getcher scorecards here! Ya can’t tell the victims without a scorecard!

Read it.

Apparently the people who are addicted to government benefits elected people like themselves to Congress to make sure that they goodies kept flowing.

Your tax dollars at work.

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I love these things.

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The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has finally decided — after more than four years — that the government can’t keep someone locked up indefinitely for contempt of court charges.

Former Philadelphia policeman Francis Rawls has been locked up since 2015 for refusing to decrypt external hard drives the government claims contain child porn images. The government’s claims are based on Rawls’ sister’s statements. She said Rawls showed her “hundreds” of child porn images that were located on these drives.

The government obtained an All Writs Order demanding Rawls decrypt the devices. This was challenged by Rawls, but unfortunately he did not preserve a Fifth Amendment challenge, so the Appeals Court let the government have its victory. It was a limited victory. It still had two locked drives Rawls claimed he could not remember the passwords for. But it also had Rawls jailed on civil contempt charges.

Rawls will be a free man again, but probably not for long. He challenged the indefinite incarceration, asserting that the law only provides for a maximum of 18 months in jail for civil contempt charges.

Read it.

An interesting new development.

Freeberg points out some inconvenient truth.

A scandal about Vindman would necessarily depend on this weird “job-as-property” viewpoint. The idea that once you have a job, it belongs to you, kind of like land. And if you ever lose it then that means someone committed some sort of crime against you. This is the weirdness that is America. Labor unions have indoctrinated us over the course of several generations that whether you’re legitimately fired or not, is up to some “for cause” verbiage in a rule book, not your boss. We’ve accepted it as normal that if the verbiage can be twisted and teased and interpreted the right way, then like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone you become the rightful sovereign, and possessor of that ultimate coveted prize: A regular paycheck provided by someone who really doesn’t want to give it to you.

We definitely need to have some kind of conversation about this.

Anti-Pipeline Protestors Block Major Bridges In Canada

A huge iceberg just broke off Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier OHNOWEREALLGONNADIE.

Shock Discovery: Some Plants can Adapt to Climate Change

Fungi That Absorbs Radiation Has Been Growing All Over Chernobyl Power Plant

Nanny McPhee star turned Extinction Rebellion activist Raphael Coleman dies aged 25  A short life but a scary one.

Global Warming Threatens Luxury Lifestyles Of The Rich  They don’t seem all that worried.