13th September 2023
John Hinderaker at Power Line.
Earlier today, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. released this indictment of the Democratic National Committee. Why, he asks, is the Democratic Party opposed to democracy? Why is it rigging the primary process? I am not certain whether what he says about the DNC’s machinations is correct, nor am I sure what he considers to be real democracy. (For example, it has never been true that the candidate who gets the most votes across all of the primaries wins the nomination.) But his willingness to take on the DNC, recalling how that body conspired to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination in 2016, will be a real headache for them:
Posted in Democrats: Party of Plundering and Blundering | Comments Off on Democrats Hate Democracy
13th September 2023
Washington Free Beacon.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D., N.Y.) office says she isn’t married. But she has described her fiancé, Riley Roberts, as her “spouse” in forms filed with the House Ethics Committee in 2023, which has a strict definition of that term—”someone to whom you are legally married.”
That could become a problem for the left-wing darling, since willful misrepresentations on the documents are a no-no—they could subject her to criminal prosecution, the forms state—and members of Congress are required to disclose the financial information of their spouses, which Ocasio-Cortez has declined to do.
But taken at face value, four legal filings submitted to the House Ethics Committee pertaining to AOC’s overseas travels in 2022 and 2023 suggest the pair have been legally married at least since Jan. 13, 2023. If that is the case, the “Squad” member can no longer leverage the so-called boyfriend loophole to evade public disclosure of his finances. While lawmakers are required to disclose financial information about their spouses, live-in romantic partners and fiancés are exempt from the rule.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Is AOC Married? Her Office Says No. Her Legal Filings in Congress Say Otherwise.
12th September 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
12th September 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
12th September 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
12th September 2023
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
12th September 2023
Read it.
Samsung claims its new product is able provide domestic hot water of up to 75 C when the outdoor temperature is between -10 C and 35 C. It relies on an enlarged heat exchanger that the company claims is capable of transferring more heat compared to a conventional outdoor unit.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Samsung Unveils Monobloc Heat Pump For Residential Applications
12th September 2023
Read it.
The FDA assembled its outside advisers to take another look at phenylephrine, which became the main drug in over-the-counter decongestants when medicines with an older ingredient — pseudoephedrine — were moved behind pharmacy counters. A 2006 law had forced the move because pseudoephedrine can be illegally processed into methamphetamine.
Those original versions of Sudafed and other medicines remain available without a prescription, but they’re less popular and account for about one-fifth of the $2.2 billion market for oral decongestants. Phenylephrine versions — sometimes labeled “PE” on packaging — make up the rest.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on FDA Advisers: Common Decongestant Not Effective
12th September 2023
ZMan points out some inconvenient truth.
Whenever the downward trend in Western intelligence gets discussed, the focus is always on the right side of the curve. America is no longer able to get to the moon because NASA is full of diversity, but it also lacks the smart guys it used to have to solve the necessary problems. In other words, the West is no longer able to make these great leaps because the decline in human capital has reduced the number of geniuses that are always needed to make those leaps.
At the heart of this line of thinking is the assumption that a society can only be successful if it is moving forward toward something and expanding in terms of material prosperity and cultural progress. This may be true, but it is one of those assumptions that has been handed down so many times that no one remembers who made the original claim or why they made it. Why must the economy always expand? Why must humanity expand its domain to the stars?
One reason to ask those questions is to think about the other side of the bell curve that gets neglected in these discussions. What happens to a society when the supply of stupid people increases? The model of societal intelligence is always a smooth normal distribution, so when the number of smart people declines it means the number of stupid people must increase. The curve moves left. What is the impact on society when the curve moves beyond some critical point?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Staircase Wits
12th September 2023
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
11th September 2023
Read it.
Scientists have transformed cancer cells into healthy muscle tissue in the lab using CRISPR gene-editing technology — and they hope new cancer treatments can be built on the back of this experiment.
In a study published Aug. 28 in the journal PNAS, researchers found that disabling a particular protein complex in cells of rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) — a rare cancer in skeletal muscle tissue that mainly affects children under age 10 — in the laboratory causes the tumor cells to turn into healthy muscle cells.
Although the research is still in its early days, this process of “resetting” cancer cells into healthy cells, broadly known as differentiation therapy, has already been tested in other types of cancer, such as bone and blood cancer. Four drugs have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat the latter disease and generally work by inhibiting a specific protein in the cancer cells.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on CRISPR Used to ‘Reprogram’ Cancer Cells Into Healthy Muscle in the Lab
11th September 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
11th September 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
11th September 2023
Bush institute exec pushing ‘civility’ pledge leaked Steele dossier to media outlet in 2016 (Fox)
Trump Is Really Old, Too (N.Y. Times) Yeah, but he’s not senile. Frank Bruni employs handwavium to distract from the real issue.
The key to understanding Donald Trump’s enduring appeal is Vince McMahon (Popular Information)
Pretrial-palooza underway for Trump (Washington Poop)
Prosecutors drop foreign-agent case against Trump transition adviser (Politico) Sometimes the witch-hunt works, and sometimes it don’t.
Trump is explaining exactly how wild and extreme his second term would be (CNN) I, for one, am looking forward to it.
Christie: I’ll Hound Trump if He Skips Next Debate (NewsMax) He might even notice. “Dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.”
Prospect Fading for Quick Start of Trump Georgia Trial
Trump advisers plot aggressive new tax cuts for second White House term (Washington Poop) He’s got my vote.
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
11th September 2023
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
11th September 2023
Read it.
No one will argue that Sept. 11, 2001, wasn’t the worst day the United States has endured this century – an unspeakable tragedy that brought out an incredible amount of raw emotion, with images and memories forever burned into our brains.
The next day, it was like we were living in a different country. The outpouring of patriotism was off the charts, with more flags than you’d see on the Fourth of July, while people wore red, white, and blue ribbons. Emotions were still running high, but there was a sense of unity that had been missing for years. By the end of the week, a joint session of Congress made it look like we were living up to the “united” part of the United States of America, with politicians working across the aisle.
Twenty-two years later, all that togetherness is forgotten, leaving a country completely polarized. The “aisle” in Congress no longer exists, having become an impenetrable wall. And now, the wall being constructed by elites is one between conservatives and liberals in every neighborhood.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Sept. 12, 2001: The Last Great Day In America
11th September 2023
The Investigative Project on Terrorism.
“You have the watches, but we have the time,” is a phrase by the Taliban referencing the twenty-year war in Afghanistan. It also underscores the American challenge in fighting the ideological war. That challenge is a short scope, a limited range distance through which we measure either progress or failure. Meanwhile, the enemy is patient and always planning. While generational wars fueled by ideology are difficult concepts for most people to sit with, there is one man who is a symbol of the ideological war against Islamist extremism: Salman Rushdie.
Of the many narratives that surface about Islamic extremism, the one that most captures public attention is the controversy around Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. Any creative work on Islam, like The Satanic Verses, will struggle to be understood given that Islam itself often isn’t understood even by followers of the faith. Absent that, Islam is a belief system vulnerable to a mercurial nature of politics and culture that flanks the faith — a characteristic that is ironically also fast defining the American sociopolitical landscape.
Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on How the 34-Year-Old Fatwa Against Salman Rushdie Marks the Timelessness of the Islamist War Against the West
11th September 2023
Sarah Hoyt.
The first time I heard of Rick Rescorla, was on 9/11. I was an Austen fan group at the time, and was on the chat board. One of the women on the board was one of Rescorla’s co-workers, and he’d just saved her.
Since then, I’ve tried to remember him on 9/11.
And 22 years, on, I remember 9/11. while our “leadership” tries to leave us wide open to be hurt and destroyed by anyone who decides they don’t like us, it’s important to remember 9/11, and most of all the heroes of 9/11.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Shines the Name, Shines the Name of Rick Rescorla
11th September 2023
Quillette.
The voyage of discovery that science offers can take us furthest when it is open to the best and brightest, regardless of who they are and where they come from. Great scientific minds often emerge from unexpected backgrounds. Many scientific disciplines remained effectively closed to ethnic minorities and to women for far too long. But over the past 50 years at least, science has opened up and a host of affirmative action programs have been created to encourage women and minorities to consider careers in the field.
For some activists, however, these efforts have not gone far enough. In response, universities, industries, and research institutions have instituted a vast bureaucracy designed to promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: a behemoth that is growing at a rate far exceeding that of investment in new faculty and facilities.
This has resulted in some disturbing new trends in academia and scientific institutions more broadly. In a desire to include women and minorities, white males are often excluded, and too often women and members of minority groups are tokenized by being promoted primarily for their gender or skin color.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Academia’s Missing Men
11th September 2023
Gates of Vienna.
Michael Copeland has compiled an eclectic set of references concerning the ninth surah of the Koran, whose violent commands abrogate all of the earlier peaceful verses.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Koran: Read Chapter Nine
11th September 2023
The American Mind.
Instead of attending the commemorative observances at any of the three sites where the 9/11 terror attacks took place, President Joe Biden will be in Alaska on September 11 this year. It is the first time an American president will not appear at the locations of the largest terrorist assault in American history.
This is of a piece with the forgetting of 9/11, about which I have written previously. Ultimately, the retreat of the attacks into the mists of history is inevitable, and it will certainly mean that future generations will think differently, or not at all, about that day.
But as I noted a year ago, it’s not the forgetting per se that is of interest. It’s the rapidity and the completeness of that forgetting, and the fact that a large portion of the country never forgot. They still see the day as yet another marker of the U.S.’s moral depravity, which has never been the case previously with any foreign attack.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Shanksville, U.S.A.
11th September 2023
Reuters.
A Dutch court sentenced a Pakistani former cricketer to 12 years in prison on Monday after he was tried in absentia for urging people to murder Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders.
The court ruled that statements by 37-year-old Khalid Latif should be regarded as incitement to murder, sedition and threat.
Latif lives in Pakistan and has not attended any stage of the trial or been detained in the Netherlands.
Needless to say, Geert Wilders is not a ‘far-right politician’ except in the eyes of the Narrative media.
Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Pakistani ex-Cricketer Sentenced to 12 Years for Threatening Dutch Far-Right Leader
11th September 2023

Hint: These are not being committed by Presbyterians or Baptists.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
10th September 2023
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
10th September 2023
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
10th September 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
10th September 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
10th September 2023

Those who say that money can’t buy happiness are shopping in the wrong places.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
10th September 2023
Vanity Fair.
In a new book, former Secret Service agent Paul Landis, largely silent for 60 years, says he found a bullet in Kennedy’s limo. A sometime presidential historian explains why that’s so significant, if true.
I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning.
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
9th September 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Trump Derangement Syndrome
9th September 2023
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
9th September 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
9th September 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
9th September 2023

There’s no pleasing some people.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
9th September 2023
John Derbyshire.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is feeling the heat being generated by the tens of thousands of illegal aliens pouring into his city, causing excruciating administrative and budgetary dilemmas for the city government. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for New Yorkers. In fact it’s hard not to laugh at the fools.
They have brought these misfortunes on themselves by voting for an Open Borders party to run the federal government and for local politicians who cherish New York as a Sanctuary City with a local ordinance guaranteeing sheltered accommodation to anyone who asks for it.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on “The City We Knew, We’re About to Lose.” Why NYC Mayor Adams Was So Wrong About Immigration’s Impact
9th September 2023
Read it.
The Huffington Post was envisioned from its inception as a progressive answer to conservative talk radio and various right-leaning voices being amplified by new technology. Most specifically, it was designed as a counterpoint to the Drudge Report, a widely read and highly profitable website with populist sensibilities. The players involved in planning the new venture belonged to a select clique of Hollywood liberals and political activists in Arianna Huffington’s orbit.
Among the cast of characters were film mogul David Geffen, a prodigious Democratic Party donor, along with Democratic political consultants Peter Daou and James Boyce. Jonah Peretti, a 30-year-old marketing whiz kid (and future BuzzFeed founder), was present at HuffPo’s inception, as was Kenneth Lerer, a New York investor who secured most of the money for the new venture.
The least likely member of the core group was Andrew Breitbart, a creative and energetic conservative blogger in his mid-30s who had worked on the Drudge Report himself. Although he passed muster with the group because he was relatively liberal on social issues, Breitbart’s real connection to the enterprise was that he had known Arianna Huffington since the 1990s — when she was still an outspoken conservative. The most charismatic collaborator, of course, was the eponymous founder herself.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Rise of Unapologetically Partisan News Reporting
9th September 2023
Read it.
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss was a bigger shock to the Washington DC deep state Blob than Donald Trump’s victory. But the dynamics of this trauma operated at many levels. At the most superficial level was the hysterical response of Democratic Party rank-and-file women who regarded Donald Trump as the most extreme and horrifying embodiment of an archetypal “bad daddy.” This was all sheer psychodrama of course, but women are engrossed with psychodrama — generating it and relishing it — which men often fail to appreciate.
In cases of madness, there is often a dark, sordid secret behind the weird behavior that presents outwardly.
In the group madness provoked by Hillary Clinton’s loss, the dirty secret was that she had actually bought the Democratic National Committee in 2016, meaning the machinery that runs the party. She used lavish contributions to the Clinton Foundation to accomplish that. And Hillary along with her foundation — and husband Bill, who had been reduced by late career misadventure to a kind of political fashion accessory — had committed any number of grave crimes against our country over the years, especially during her service as Barack Obama’s Secretary of State. Think: Skolkovo… Uranium One…. In 2016 Hillary used her ownership of the DNC to underhandly de-rail the likely Democratic primary winner, Bernie Sanders, from being nominated.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on America’s Closer T\to “Imploding Under the Weight of Its Own Absurdities” Than Many Realize
9th September 2023
The Foundry.
Despite a government program set up in 2017 meant to dispose of Arkansas’ used tires while being self-funding, these eyesores—and some argue, health hazards—are literally piling up around the state.
This was completely predictable.
Yet no amount of failure can convince even the best-intentioned politicians and bureaucrats that when it comes to matters of the economy, their ability to plan almost always falls short. The so-called Tire Accountability Program is just one more example.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Free Enterprise Is What Will Solve Arkansas’ Used Tire Problem
9th September 2023
Read it.
For the past several years, my friends in public health and science have expressed astonishment and professional disorientation at the behavior and messaging of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The scientific journals are part of this.
They simply couldn’t believe the brazen manipulation of science for political purposes. They couldn’t believe that so many people within these agencies and journals went along with it for reasons of career protection. They’ve been appalled that science and public health have been deployed in this way.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on How Deep Runs The Corruption?
8th September 2023
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
8th September 2023
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
8th September 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
8th September 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
8th September 2023
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
8th September 2023
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic