CHOOSE THE FORM OF YOUR DESTRUCTOR: Did banning Glenn Reynolds kill Twitter? “This happens when your CEO plays Social Justice Warrior: your company goes to pot.”
RACIST COURSE OFFERINGS at the University of Wisconsin? We wouldn’t be hearing much about academic freedom if the races were different.
FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION: Artificial intelligence could cost millions of jobs. The White House says we need more of it.
THE DEMOCRATS ARE A RUMP, REGIONAL PARTY NOW: Final tally shows Trump lost popular vote by 2.8 million – but he BEAT Clinton by 3 million votes outside of California and New York.
Also, 
RICH GALEN REFLECTS on turning 70.
In the 1950 movie “Harvey,” James Stewart’s character, Elwood P. Dowd, says:
“My mother told me, ‘In this world you must be oh, so smart, or oh so pleasant.” For years I was oh, so smart. I recommend pleasant.”
I wish I’d have followed that advice.
Heh.
MICHAEL MCCONNELL WRITES THAT THE FAKE NEWS STORY CAN’T BE ADDRESSED WITHOUT MENTIONING the Boston Globe’s Trump-dystopia fake-news front page.
COMMUNISM WAS ALWAYS JUST NAZISM WITH A SYMPATHETIC PRESS: The centenary of the Russian revolution should be mourned, not celebrated: As its centenary looms, never forget the brutal oppression ushered in by the Russian Revolution. “No believable economist would claim that the Russian people benefited from Leninist or Stalinist social and economic policies. It is easier to project an upward trend for Russian living standards after 1918 had the Tsarist regime survived than to make a case that the Soviet system profited anyone, save the commissars. It has proved a common characteristic of communist regimes around the world that — to paraphrase Orwell — all pigs are equal, but some secure access to bigger troughs than others.”
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:
● What’s Giving Rise To All the Fake News?
—NBC News, December 10th.
● Scandal Plagued News Anchor Katie Couric Will Return to ‘Today’ Show.
—Heat Street, today.
No word how many jump cuts and Christmas poems begging for Obamacare Couric will employ while hosting the NBC show.
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THIS WHOLE ANTI-“FAKE NEWS” CRUSADE IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Facebook ‘fact checker’ who will arbitrate on ‘fake news’ is accused of defrauding website to pay for prostitutes – and its staff includes an escort-porn star and ‘Vice Vixen domme.’
That’s Snopes. And the other partners are even shadier! “The others include ABC News, the Associated Press and ‘fact-checking’ websites including Politifact.com.” Ew.
TOMORROW IS THE LAST DAY FOR TWO-DAY SHIPPING at Amazon.
DONALD TRUMP: Berlin Terror Attack Proves Me Right. “Innocent civilians were murdered in the streets as they prepared to celebrate the Christmas holiday. . . . ISIS and other Islamist terrorists continually slaughter Christians in their communities and places of worship as part of their global jihad.”
LIFE IN THE POST-ANTIBIOTIC ERA: ‘Nightmare’ Superbug May Have Spread Outside Hospitals.
AT AMAZON, Top Gift Ideas.
HEALTH: Processed meat ‘could be bad for asthma’
They can have my secchi salami when they pry it from my cold, dead hand.
KILLS GERMS THAT CAN CAUSE BAD BREATH, AND THE CLAP: The Mouthwash Listerine May Help Treat Gonorrhea. And it’s a good thing: “In the U.S., gonorrhea rates have reached unprecedented levels. A recent report showed that at 395,000 recorded cases, gonorrhea is up 13 percent from 2014, and the disease is mostly concentrated among young people ages 15 to 24 years old. . . . Antibiotic-resistant strains of the bacteria are also on the rise. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes this kind of gonorrhea has developed resistance to nearly all the medicines used to cure it,and that doctors are down to one last class of effective antibiotics.”
YOU’RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER BLOG: These Are the Media’s Top Ten Embarrassments of the Year.
(Keep in mind, the year isn’t over yet. Plenty of time left for further DNC-MSM embarrassment to come.)
This is a remarkable document not so much because of the individual “resolutions” but of the source—one of those nefarious multinational corporations that specifically tries to sell fake coolness and hipness to youngsters that progressives are always railing about—and the tin-ear quality of its overall effect.
Whole swaths of corporate America—especially in the entertainment industry—seem utterly convinced that their audiences are irredeemably stupid, racist, homophobic, and beneath contempt. All this, despite massive strides toward equality under the law and growing comfort with all sorts of ethnic, racial, sexual, and lifestyle diversity. For god’s sake, Donald Trump, whose surprising election is underwriting virtually all of this sort of thing, got a smaller share of the white vote than Mitt Romney did four years ago! He didn’t win the presidency because he was popular. He won it because the alternative was disliked by more people. That’s progress, of a sort.
The MTV vid goes beyond mere virtue-signaling into uncharted territory of contempt and spite that works to undermine all feelings of common cause that might actually make for an even more-open and tolerant United States. In this, it rivals the sort of remonstrations emanating from the pages of another hugely powerful corporate entity, The New York Times.
We are looked down upon by our inferiors.
FAKE NEWS:
Before you send an outraged tweet: Adam Saleh creates hoax videos for a living:https://t.co/rBpij4Bze0https://t.co/hZUm3eix0K pic.twitter.com/tM5KQkaWAa
— James Cook (@JamesLiamCook) December 21, 2016
I waited for hours to post this so you could have a chance to see how many in the media reported it as real news.
NON-BACKLASH: Michigan Student Made Up Anti-Muslim Hate Crime.
Several days after the U.S presidential election in November, a female student at the University of Michigan reported being attacked by a man who threatened that if she did not remove her hijab, her would set her on fire.
The student told police that the obeyed the man’s order before fleeing the scene and reporting the incident. She described the perpetrator as a white male between the ages of 20 and 30. University police alerted students of the alleged crime, and said they were “disturbed by this report of hate crime in our community.” The FBI was called in to investigate.
Now police in Ann Arbor have determined that the “hate crime” never happened. After conducting multiple interviews and reviewing surveillance footage, investigators found “numerous inconsistencies” in the alleged victim’s statements, which led them to conclude that she made it all up.
Well, it’s not like she was kicked off a Delta flight for speaking Arabic.
LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Children suffer from lead poisoning in 3,000 U.S. neighborhoods. I wonder what proportion of those are in Democrat-run cities?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why You Shouldn’t Warm Up Your Car.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: DOJ-FBI Fails to Investigate Crimes Against the Electoral College.
FASTER, PLEASE: The oil industry must brace for five energy “tsunamis” that threaten to drag prices as low as $10 a barrel in less than a decade.
The falling cost of solar power and battery storage, rising sales of electric vehicles, increasingly “smart” buildings and cheap hydrogen will all weigh on crude, Thierry Lepercq, head of research, technology and innovation at the French energy company, said in an interview.
“Even if oil demand continues to climb until 2025, its price could drop to $10 if markets anticipate a significant fall in demand,” Lepercq said at his office near Paris. Crude last slumped to that level in 1998.
“Solar, battery storage, electrical and hydrogen vehicles, and connected devices are in a ‘J’ curve,” he said. “Hydrogen is the missing link in a 100 percent renewable-energy system, but technological bricks already exist.”
Bring ’em on.
GERMANY AS A TICKING TIME BOMB OF RAGE: A raging essay by Ed West in The Spectator.
I can understand the human urge to protect the vulnerable, refugees and Muslims generally, from hostility as these awful events repeat themselves. It’s easy to sneer at politicians who come out with vapid theological comments, as I have in the past, but their job is to protect all the country’s citizens. I can also see why this urge might convince an intelligent person that Merkel’s migration policy has actually helped the fight against terrorism. But it’s extremely unlikely; all things being equal, hosting refugees does lead to an increase in terrorism, although the risk is smaller in richer countries, largely because they have better security services. It’s at times like this when I thank God for ours, who have saved countless lives in our country by preventing a good dozen attempts at mass murder.
WELL, YES: NY Times Editorial Calling To Abolish The Electoral College Is Historically Inaccurate Garbage.
It’s almost as if the New York Times editorial board was taken over by fools from Media Matters, Salon, Slate, and Think Progress. It is the only rational explanation for their unhinged rant against the electoral college in their Monday edition. It is bereft of any facts about the actual creation of the electoral college. Instead, it relies on revisionist history, claiming the electoral college was birthed due to slavery:
The Electoral College, which is written into the Constitution, is more than just a vestige of the founding era; it is a living symbol of America’s original sin. When slavery was the law of the land, a direct popular vote would have disadvantaged the Southern states, with their large disenfranchised populations. Counting those men and women as three-fifths of a white person, as the Constitution originally did, gave the slave states more electoral votes.
This kind of thinking is lazy in that it doesn’t seek to make an argument, but instead, projects on to others the motives the Times editorial can use to shame people into agreeing with them. “The Electoral College exists due to slavery. Why on earth would you continue to defend such a system?” They don’t rely on facts or logic. Their goal is to tug at emotional heartstrings and hope people won’t pay attention to their complete lack of historical coherence.
How’s that workin’ out for them?
LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Rejuvenating the Chance of Motherhood?
I’LL HAVE THE RIBEYE AND THE PORTERHOUSE: New study insists larger portions of beef and pork can actually be GOOD for blood pressure.
Indeed, nutritional guidelines in both the UK and the US advise eating no more than 70g of beef, pork, or steak per day.
But a new review of clinical trials from Purdue University has found quite the opposite.
According to the study, eating more than the recommended daily amount of red meat does not affect short-term heart disease risk factors, such as blood pressure and blood cholesterol.
In fact, they found unprocessed red meat to be a good source of nutrients for patients.
The science is settled. You don’t want to argue with science, do you?
MAD DUCK: Obama plans up to 18 more Guantanamo prisoner transfers before leaving office.
The Obama administration notified Congress it intends to send the detainees, nearly a third of the remaining 59 held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, to at least four countries, including Italy, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20, the source said.
The notification came just before this week’s deadline, which by law requires Obama to give Congress 30 days’ warning before moving prisoners out of Guantanamo. It will be the last in a flurry of recent transfers aimed at leaving as few inmates as possible for the next administration.
But the transfer plan – first reported by the New York Times – also signifies that despite Obama’s pledge dating back to the 2008 presidential campaign to close the facility, it is all but certain to be turned over to Trump. He has vowed to keep it open and “load it up with some bad dudes.”
Compare and contrast.
TERROR DOWN UNDER — OR JUST AN ACCIDENT? Van drove into Australian Christian Lobby’s Canberra headquarters and ‘exploded’
A van reportedly carrying gas cylinders was driven into the Australian Christian Lobby headquarters in Canberra on Wednesday night, causing an explosion.
There were no injuries suffered from people inside the building but the alleged driver was receiving medical treatment for his injuries, according to reports.
The vehicle was allegedly carrying gas bottles when it exploded about 10.45pm, News Corp reported. It was destroyed and the two-storey office building named Eternity House was badly damaged by fire.
ACL managing director Lyle Shelton posted two images online on Thursday morning of a vehicle he claimed had been driven into the group’s office in the inner-southern Canberra suburb of Deakin.
“A vehicle has rammed our office in Canberra & exploded all staff are safe,” Mr Shelton posted on Twitter.
“I do not know the condition of the driver. Prayers appreciated.”
That’s all that’s known so far.
WHY ARE GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM? Why Isn’t the Tech Industry Doing Better on Diversity? It’s Google’s and Facebook’s Fault.
BLESSED ARE THE CHEESEMAKERS: The Foolish Reason The Federal Government Is Storing A Literal Mountain Of Cheese.
For the past few decades, the feds have been keeping a literal mountain of cheese lying around for no ascertainable purpose. As of March 31, about 1.2 billion pounds of excess cheese had been accumulated in commercial cold-storage freezers across the United States — the largest such stockpile in history, according to the Washington Post. That’s 39 pounds of cheese for every man, woman and child in the country — so much cheese, in fact, that the government has been encouraging fast food chains to create new cheesy-centric products just to get rid of some of it.
Perhaps you remember Burger King’s Mac n’ Cheetos, a plate of Cheetos coated in fake macaroni-and-cheese goop, then deep-fried for your sinful pleasure. Yes, that’s a real thing.
So why, you may ask, are the feds subsidizing such monstrosities?
Turns out, the national cheese stockpile is a glaring example of how the federal government’s addiction to subsidies has gotten drastically out of hand.
Read (but don’t eat) the whole thing.
BAD IDEA: South Carolina Lawmaker Proposes Porn-Blocker Mandate for New PCs.
South Carolina state representative Bill Chumley (R-SC 35) has pre-filed a new bill in the legislature that would require all manufacturers and sellers of computers to pre-install and pre-activate porn-blocker software that can only be unlocked by paying a $20 fee to the state of South Carolina.
The bill, which Chumley claims is meant to fight human trafficking in the state, would fine any computer manufacturer who chooses to sell a computer in the state without the blocking software, unless that manufacturer pays a $20 fee per device. If the manufacturer complies with the install order, the machine could then be unlocked after the user pays a $20 fee to the State of South Carolina and verifies their age. Fines and fees collected from the scheme would be earmarked for the SC Attorney General’s Human Trafficking Task Force.
This unenforceable — and likely unconstitutional — proposal is really about shaming South Carolinians and taking their money.
It always comes down to money and power with these people.
AND SO THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE DRAWS TO A CLOSE: Percentage of Young Americans Living With Parents Rises to 75-Year High.
Despite a rebounding economy and recent job growth, the share of those between the ages of 18 and 34 doubling up with parents or other family members has been rising since 2005. Back then, before the start of the last recession, roughly one out of three were living with family.
The trend runs counter to that of previous economic cycles, when after a recession-related spike, the number of younger Americans living with relatives declined as the economy improved.
The result is that there is far less demand for housing than would be expected for the millennial generation, now the largest in U.S. history. The number of adults under age 30 has increased by 5 million over the last decade, but the number of households for that age group grew by just 200,000 over the same period, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Washington priced young people out of the housing market with the first bubble, and then priced them out again by re-inflating prices after the first bubble popped. If Millennials ever wake up to how badly Washington has screwed them, the political effects could be huge.
A — LITERAL — COP-OUT: Chicago police: ‘There are too many illegal guns.’
It’s the gangs who are doing the killing, and Chicago politicians are in bed with the gangs.
FAKE VIAGRA SELLERS HARDEST HIT: AT&T App Blocks Spam Phone Calls.
The service offers two solutions to stop robocalls. It can automatically block numbers suspected of fraud at the network level, preventing them from reaching your phone entirely, or it can deliver the call from a suspected number with a fraud warning on the display. The latter feature requires the user to be in an area with HD Voice support.
AT&T customers can activate the feature via their MyAT&T account or by downloading the AT&T Call Protect app. The app allows users to look at call details, receive spam warnings, block specific numbers and turn on and off Automatic Fraud Blocking.
The service requires an iOS or Android smartphone eligible for HD Voice. AT&T also warns that automatic blocking may block wanted phone calls, which means users would potentially have to manually whitelist certain numbers to make sure they aren’t blocked.
If you’re an AT&T customer, installing this app is a no-brainer.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Six 2016 Movie Flops Explained.
ANALYST: Twitter is ‘toast’ and the stock is not even worth $10.
The microblogging platform’s chief technology officer, Adam Messinger, tweeted that he would leave the company and “take some time off”, while Josh McFarland, vice president of product at Twitter, also said he was exiting the company. Both executives announced their departure on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, last month, Adam Bain stepped down as chief operating officer last month to be replaced by chief financial officer Anthony Noto, who has yet to be replaced. Twitter has also lost leaders from business development, media and commerce, media partnerships, human resources, and engineering this year.
The departures prompted Trip Chowdhry, the managing director of equity research at Global Equities Research, and a noted “uber-bear” on tech stocks, to issue a note on Tuesday claiming Twitter is “toast” and “not even a $10 stock”.
Twitter was fun in its freewheeling early days, a sort-of 24/7 cocktail party you could visit when it suited you. But it never was useful at driving web traffic, and its signal-to-noise ratio got way out of whack, just as the company was making ham-fisted efforts at monetizing a platform where there wasn’t much money to be made.
The social justice warrior stuff of the last couple of years was really just the stale icing on a badly made cake.
ANALYSIS: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The electoral college is thwarting our ability to battle global warming.
NINTH AIR FORCE DESTROYS A GERMAN RAILROAD YARD: Another photo in StrategyPage’s Battle of the Bulge series. This one doesn’t feature cold infantrymen, but it’s dramatic. Note the comment about the first day of good flying weather.
TRENDS: The New Swing Voters Are Suburbanites And Populist, And Both Lean Right.
Brad Todd:
Democrats in 2016 now know their coalition, and their platform, has become too urban and elitist. Hillary Clinton carried each of the nation’s 18 largest cities by large margins—and none of those margins was decisive in changing a single electoral vote. For example, even if she’d tied Trump in New York City, she’d still have won the Empire State’s electoral votes due to her 62,845-vote victory in the rest of the state.
Republicans, meanwhile, saw rock-bottom shares of the suburban vote go for Trump, revealing a vulnerability unseen for the GOP since modern suburbs were invented in the middle of the last century.
Both parties shed an important part of their historic bases in 2016 and their task now is to get them back. Smart analysts looking toward the next election should ask whether it will be easier for Trump to placate his educated affluent defectors in suburban cul-de-sacs or for Democrats to heal the party’s estrangement from white voters outside metropolises.
If Trump can deliver on his promise of Rust Belt jobs, then it won’t matter if he wins the South and the Midwest in 2020 by smaller-than-GOP-normal margins — just like it didn’t matter last month.
STEPHEN L. CARTER: ‘Rogue One’ Doesn’t Solve Sci Fi’s Big Problem.
When I left the theater after seeing “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” my first thought was: What about the Bothans? . . .
The good guys have stolen the secret architectural plans to the Death Star and must analyze them swiftly to find a flaw before it arrives and pulverizes their planet. And how exactly were the plans stolen? Rebel leader Mon Mothma tells us: “Many Bothans died to bring us this information.”
And the audience thinks, “I don’t know what a Bothan is, but they sure sound heroic.” But there is no further mention of the species, in that film or any others in the franchise. And, definitely, no sight of one.
OK. Fast-forward to now. “Rogue One” is a prequel to the movie now known as “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.” It tells the story of how the good guys got the plans to destroy the first Death Star. The tale is cleverly set up and quite engaging. There’s only one problem: no Bothans. Except for a single droid, everybody who matters in the heist is human.
Humans find humans more interesting. I suspect that Bothans feel the same way about Bothans. Though Ed Driscoll was unmoved by these particular humans: “About a third of the way through Rogue One, I came to my first conclusion about the movie, and I suspect I’m not alone: I don’t care about these characters.” Plus:
Why does any of this matter? Because the other conceit of the expanded universe is that the galaxy far, far away is full of all manner of intelligent life. But the Empire practices pure speciesism. All the posts of any importance are reserved for humans.
In the expanded universe, we are meant to see this as an obvious injustice. Speciesism is a trope for racism. The Empire practices segregation. That’s one of the reasons we are supposed to root against it. (The Empire would never have hired Yoda.) The Rebellion is integrated, humans and other species working together to throw off the oppression. That’s why we’re supposed to root for it.
But in “Rogue One,” the two sides are, on this point, indistinguishable. We see nonhumans among the good guys, but we never really get to meet them. You don’t have to be a sci-fi fan to see why the omission matters. There’s a symbolism at work here.
Well, Hollywood is basically the Empire in practice, but the Rebel Alliance in terms of self-image.
UPDATE (from Steve). As I posted in the comments section:
Bothans did not steal the original Death Star plans, and Mon Mothma wasn’t even in Star Wars: A New Hope. Also, it’s never made clear if Bothans are a non-human race, or humans from a planet called Botha.
“Many Bothans died” bringing the Rebel Alliance the news that “the Emperor himself” was on board the second Death Star during Return of the Jedi. The Emperor allowed that information to escape, killing some Bothans for plausibility one assumes, in order to set a trap for the Rebels — which would make for a great spy movie set in the Star Wars universe.
MIDSHIPTRANSPERSON NOT REPORTING FOR DUTY: Navy Abandons Plan to Use PC Job Titles After Sailors Complain.
FAKE NEWS: A fake story becomes a scandal in Kazakhstan.
“NEXT GENERATION” AUTOMOBILE HEADLIGHTS: Mercedes-Benz calls it Digital Light. The lights function like “HD quality” projectors. “With more precise light distribution, Mercedes not only wants to improve road visibility even more, but also project additional information onto the road on the fly.”
AMERICA, F*** YEAH! The Electoral College is actually awesome.
Ed Morrissey:
Unlike governors, whose state governments have total sovereignty within their borders, the presidency governs over states with their own sovereignty under the Constitution. The role of the presidency is at least somewhat limited to foreign policy and questions that are at least loosely connected to interstate issues and enforcement of other provisions of the Constitution. For that reason, the framers of the Constitution wanted to ensure that the president would have the greatest consensus among the sovereign states themselves, while still including representation based on population.
That is why each state gets the same number of electors as they have seats in the House and the Senate. It reduces the advantage that larger states have, but hardly eliminates it entirely; California has 55 electors while Wyoming has only three, to use the Times’ comparison. Rather than being an “antiquated system,” as they write, it’s an elegant system that helps balance power between sovereign states with national popular intent, and it forces presidential contenders to appeal to a broader range of populations.
The Founders’ genius endures.
REMINDER:
Here's what the election would look like without the electoral college: pic.twitter.com/KUB0BoTqDS
— MARK SIMONE (@MarkSimoneNY) December 20, 2016
JACOB SULLUM: Obama has not issued more pardons and commutations than any other president or the most in a single day.
The [New York] Times called Obama’s total of 1,324 pardons (which clear people’s records, typically years after they have completed their sentences) and commutations (which let prisoners go free early) “by far the largest use of the presidential power to show mercy in the nation’s history.” As clemency expert P.S. Ruckman Jr. pointed out on his blog, that was clearly wrong. Several presidents have issued more than 1,324 pardons and commuations, including Harry Truman (2,031), FDR (3,307), Calvin Coolidge (1,546), and Woodrow Wilson (2,453).
The Times also falsely suggested that there’s nothing unusual about the dramatic backloading of Obama’s clemency actions, saying “most presidents—including Mr. Obama—have waited until the end of their presidencies before issuing pardons and making grants of commutation.” In fact, Ruckman noted, “most presidents have granted clemency early in their administration and continued to do so every month of the term.” Obama, by contrast, has had many months and two entire years with no clemency grants at all. So far he has issued 94 percent of his pardons and commutations in the last two years of his presidency and 81 percent in his last year. Ruckman notes that the number of clemency actions this year is about 1,300 percent higher than the average for the previous three years, compared to an average fourth-year surge of 73 percent for all other presidential terms.
Why the backlog?
SO IT TURNS OUT THAT DEMOCRATS’ BIG WORRY IS THAT TRUMP WILL bring back the “Muslim registry” that existed under Obama. “The basic regulatory structure for the program still exists today, making it simple to re-list the countries and reinstate the program. Civil-rights organizations have been calling on the Obama administration to dismantle the program for years.”
BERLIN’S MOST WANTED: Police hunt ‘armed and dangerous’ Tunisian asylum seeker, 23, after his ID is found under lorry driver’s seat at scene of Christmas market massacre.
Police today revealed they are hunting Anis Amri, 23, a refugee who came to Germany earlier this year. His paperwork was found in truck’s footwell.
He is probably armed, ‘highly dangerous’ and a member of a ‘large’ Islamic organisation and has weapons training abroad, security sources say.
The suspect was also in contact with a ‘network of leading Islamist ideologists’.
Amri, who was born in the desert town of Tataouine in 1992 – a well-known ISIS stronghold close to the Libyan border – was apparently recently arrested for GBH but vanished before he could be charged.
In August 2016 he was arrested with a fake Italian passport and released but his phone was said to be monitored. He then disappeared in December, according to Die Welt.
A Facebook profile in his name shows ‘likes’ linked to Tunisian terror group Ansar al-Sharia, a Tunisian group with followers linked to extremists who murdered 22 at Tunis’ Bardo Museum in March 2015 and then 39 tourists at a beach resort in Sousse.
Amri has temporary permission to stay in the country but was due to face an asylum hearing.
I’d say it’s difficult to believe he was allowed to stay in the country, but it isn’t difficult at all.
TERRORISTS TARGET THE CHRISTMAS SEASON: It’s an icon target.
The Berlin Christmas market attack exhibits the same despicable calculation as Bastille Day in Nice. German citizens (belonging to the “Crusader coalition”) were the physical targets. However, the Christmas season — the Christian holiday — was the icon.
MY SECOND AMENDMENT PIECE, Permissible Negligence and Campaigns to Suppress Rights, is still #4 on SSRN’s Top Download list. And it’s within striking distance of #3! Thanks to everyone who downloaded it!
WHAT HATH MERKEL WROUGHT? Tunisian national ID’d as new suspect in Berlin terror attack.
The men in the bar aren’t in traditional Muslim dress; they’re dressed in jeans and tracksuits, and wearing their misogyny like a badge of honour. The women are curtly informed this is a cafe for men. One of the women asks a customer what his wife or cousin would do if they came into the cafe in search of a drink. They wouldn’t, he replied. They’re at home. The other woman reminds the men that they’re in France. No, they retort, here it’s the ‘Bled’, a word of North African origin meaning a small village in the sticks.
On leaving the bar the two women explain to the camera that in the last decade Islam in France has become a ‘penal code’ with an increasing list of interdictions, many aimed at subjugating women. As the pair talk a car full of men pulls up. The occupants say nothing; their gaze does the talking. Clearly intimidated, the women stop the interview.
This is what happens when you allow a lot of immigration and stress “multiculturalism” instead of assimilation. Compare.
GOOD: Keith Ellison’s tax cheating, scofflaw history comes back to haunt him. Although personally, I think he’s just the right person to be the face of today’s Democratic Party.
SOCIAL MEDIA: EU accuses Facebook of misleading it in WhatsApp takeover probe.
The issue regards a WhatsApp privacy policy change in August when it said it would share some users’ phone numbers with parent company Facebook, triggering investigations by a number of EU data protection authorities.
The Commission said Facebook had indicated in its notification of the planned acquisition that it would be unable reliably to match the two companies’ user accounts.
“The Commission’s preliminary view is that Facebook gave us incorrect or misleading information during the investigation into its acquisition of WhatsApp,” said Vestager.
Creepy.
THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID: GOP lawmaker: Bill Clinton ‘doesn’t want to let go.’
Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., argued Tuesday that former President Bill Clinton is trying to delegitimize President-elect Trump by reminding voters that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, when Clinton should instead by helping to unite the country.
Which is funny, because Bill never won a majority of the popular vote. Were his two terms illegitimate?
PROCUREMENT: Pentagon Arsenal Plane to Fly With F-35, F-22.
An “Arsenal Plane” networked to F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters would enable the fighter aircraft to maintain their stealth properties while still having substantial offensive bombing capability. If stealth fighters attach weapons to their external pylons, they change their radar signature and therefore become more vulnerable to enemy air defenses. If networked to a large “flying bomb truck,” they could use stealth capability to defeat enemy air defenses and still have an ability to drop large amounts of bombs on targets.
Such a scenario could also likely rely upon now-in-development manned-unmanned teaming wherein emerging algorithms and computer technology enable fighter jets to control the sensor payload and weapons capability of nearby drones from the cockpit of the aircraft. This would enable Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance assets to more quickly relay strategic or targeting information between fighter jets, drones and “Arsenal Planes.”
Aboulafia explained that air fighters being developed by potential adversaries, such as the Chinese J-20 and other fighters, could exist in larger numbers than a U.S. force, underscoring the current U.S. strategy to maintain a technological edge even if their conventional forces are smaller. An “Arsenal Plane” could extend range and lethality for U.S. fighters, in the event they were facing an enemy force with more sheer numbers of assets.
In the air dominance role, an arsenal plane should also serve as a flying warehouse for medium- and long-range air-to-air missiles. The arsenal plane would remain out of harm’s way, while stealthy F-22s detect enemy aircraft and guide the missiles to target — without losing any of their stealth characteristics and effectively with a much-increased anti-air payload.
LAWFARE: Families of three Pulse victims sue Facebook, Twitter, Google.
Family members of three men killed in the Pulse nightclub attack are suing Twitter, Facebook and Google, claiming that the social media companies allowed the so-called Islamic State to post propaganda and push its agenda, and saying that they are seeking justice for their loved ones.
The suit was filed Monday in a federal court in eastern Michigan on behalf of the families of Tevin Crosby, 25; Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40; and Juan Guerrero, 22. Crosby was a Michigan native, and Jorge-Reyes has a sister who lives there.
The three men were among the 49 people killed when Omar Mateen opened fire June 12 in the nightclub. In conversations with police that night, Mateen pledged his allegiance to ISIS.
Twitter in particular has been lax in who and what it allows online — except of course for certain conservatives and their viewpoints.
There’s a lot to worry about in the coming presidency of Donald Trump, but a few bright spots appear for those of us who want to run our own lives with minimal government interference. In particular, the naming of Betsy DeVos as the president-elect’s pick for Secretary of Education holds a lot of promise for parents who want to move past decades of crappy politician-directed schooling to gain more say in how their children learn.
To go by her enemies, DeVos offers promise, indeed.
DeVos is “best known for her anti-public education campaigns” the National Education Association fulminates in its official response to her nomination. The NEA goes on to take her to task for supporting “vouchers—which take away funding and local control from our public schools—to fund private schools at taxpayers’ expense.”
Oh, horrors.
“It is clear that DeVos, like the President-elect who has chosen her, is comfortable applying the logic of the marketplace to schoolyard precincts,” complains Rebecca Mead at The New Yorker. Encapsulating the nominee’s sinister vision for America, Mead draws a quote from an interview DeVos gave to Philanthropy in 2013 summing up her educational dream: “That all parents, regardless of their zip code, have had the opportunity to choose the best educational setting for their children. And that all students have had the opportunity to fulfill their God-given potential.”
Can’t you just taste the evil?
Well, if supporting vouchers and other means to choose the best educational settings for children constitutes the oncoming headlights of America’s educational doom, I say we throw ourselves right into ’em.
Actually, when it comes to real doom, public schools are already doing a hell of a good job.
Sadly, that’s true.
MAD DUCK: President Obama bans oil drilling in large areas of Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia from oil exploration and the potential for spills.
The announcement by the White House late in the afternoon was coordinated with similar steps being taken by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to shield large areas of that nation’s Arctic waters from drilling. Neither measure affects leases already held by oil and gas companies and drilling activity in state waters.
White House officials said the withdrawals under Section 12-A of the 1953 act used by presidents dating to Dwight Eisenhower cannot be undone by an incoming president. It is not clear if a Republican-controlled Congress can rescind Obama’s action.
How is it possible for one President’s signature to mean more than another, or that Congress suddenly can’t pass new legislation superseding old legislation?
In any case, it’s long past time for Congress to start reclaiming the powers it has ceded to the Executive — but don’t hold your breath.
ONCE THEY LOST, THEY CHANGED THEIR VIEWS ON A LOT OF THINGS: Robby Mook didn’t think [the Comey announcement] was a headwind the day before the election.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: More On The Department Of Education’s Decision To Cut Off Federal Student Loans For Charlotte Law School.
WAR ON SCIENCE: Congress: Obama Admin Fired Top Scientist to Advance Climate Change Plans. “A top DoE scientist who liaised with Congress on the matter was fired by the Obama administration for being too forthright with lawmakers, according to the report, which provides an in-depth look at the White House’s efforts to ensure senior staffers toe the administration’s line.”
WHEN YOU REALIZE HOW MUCH LEFTIES HAVE INVESTED IN POLITICS, AND IT’S CRAZY: When Trump’s America Doesn’t Feel Like Home Anymore.
“I feel personally hurt by my neighbors, by my friends, by my teachers, by my coaches,” Smiley says — all the people who defined her childhood in the “very, very conservative” town of Rockford, Michigan, a suburb of Grand Rapids with a population of around 6,000 people. “All the values of the Midwest — working hard and doing good and being kind — how can you turn your back on that … and vote for someone who has acted against and represents everything that is fundamentally against those values?”
You could ask them why they voted that way, but that would require talking to someone who is different from you.
YOUR OBAMACARE FAIL OF THE DAY: Another Obamacare Co-Op Exits Exchanges, Leaving Only 5 Co-Ops in 2017.
Evergreen Health Cooperative Inc. of Maryland announced earlier this month that it is withdrawing from the Affordable Care Act exchanges next year, leaving only five co-ops in operation. The co-op will not offer or renew individual health policies in 2017.
“After many months of working closely with Evergreen management, leadership at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and outside investors to find a workable solution, we have run out of time to meet the deadline for a January 1 effective date,” said Maryland Insurance Commissioner Al Redmer Jr. “We remain committed to a viable, competitive insurance industry in Maryland.”
This action will force 6,000 customers serviced by the co-op to be automatically enrolled in new plans. The co-op was awarded $65.5 million in taxpayer-funded loans in 2012.
Assuming the incoming Congress repeals ObamaCare, it will be a much bigger story that ruthless Republicans put the remaining co-ops out of business — and never mind that 18 others did little more than suck up tax dollars before going broke all on their own.
JUDICIAL WATCH: Austin Mayor, Feds Colluded as Texas Gov. Sued to Keep Syrian Refugees Out.
After the governor of Texas announced that the state would stop accepting Syrian refugees, the Obama administration went behind his back secretly conferencing with a mayor that offers illegal immigrants sanctuary and Syrians a welcome mat. The plan, evidently, was to continue sending Syrian refugees to the Lone Star State, even as the governor initiated litigation to halt the flow. This week Judicial Watch obtained records of the administration’s behind-the-scenes efforts to keep sending Syrians to Texas despite fierce opposition from state officials over the security threats created by refugees from an Arab nation that’s a hotbed of terrorism.
The White House looked to Austin Mayor Steve Adler, going around the governor to confer with a city leader who espoused the controversial Syrian resettlements, the records show. Shortly after Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the state wouldn’t accept any more Syrian refugees, the administration responded by colluding with Adler, according to records of a conference call between the mayor’s office and the White House. The administration also furnished Adler with “talking points” involving the refugee resettlement and the parties discussed Abbott’s lawsuit. It seems bizarre that the feds would discuss legal action with a town mayor operating in the state suing them.
“Bizarre” is spelled “Modus operandi” for the outgoing administration.
IS THERE ANYTHING TRUMP CAN’T DO? US liberals are now buying guns too. “Gun ownership has traditionally been associated with the right wing in America but the election of Donald Trump has prompted some left-wingers to join gun clubs – and even start preparing for the collapse of society.”
Well, we’re all soldiers of fortune now. But can I get them to stock up via my Amazon links?
HELPFUL ADVICE FOR LEFTIES, FROM BRENDAN O’NEILL: Just because you disagree with someone, it doesn’t make them a ‘fascist.’
The worst thing about 2016 — an otherwise bracing year of political upset and oligarchical tears — has been the mainstreaming of the insult ‘fascist’. Anyone who sticks it to the status quo, whether by rejecting the EU or plumbing for Trump over Clinton, risks being smeared with the F-word. Even the normally measured New York Times flirted with the idea that loads of Americans and Europeans might be fascists, or at least facilitators of fascism. Trump’s victory speaks to a possible ‘revival of fascism’, it said, echoing the fears of an army of observers and tweeters who see in Brexit and Trump the stirrings of a kind of Nazism.
The terrifying casualness with which the F-word is now flung about could be glimpsed in the Michael Sheen controversy. Achieving ‘peak luvvie’, Sheen said, in an interview with the Times, that he was cutting back on acting to fight the new ‘demagogic, fascist’ politics. Where is this fascism? Wales, apparently. A Times editor summed it up: ‘The great actor Michael Sheen is quitting acting and going back to Wales to battle the rise of populism and fascism’. So are there Blackshirts in Cardiff? Swarms of Hitler Youth in Merthyr Tydfil? No. These people are talking about Brexit voters. They’re talking about those largely working-class Welsh communities that said ‘Screw you’ to the EU. In the eyes of the snootier sections of society, these people are fascists, or midwives of fascism.
It’s been a hard year on the snooty.
December 20, 2016
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DEMOCRATS PANICKING AS REPUBLICANS START DOING THE SORTS OF THINGS DEMOCRATS HAVE DONE FOR YEARS: How Republicans’ frightening power play in North Carolina will go national.
JUSTICE: Pro-Trump Students at Babson Cleared After False Harassment Claims. “The school officially ruled that Rand-Ricciardi and Tomasso did nothing wrong. Babson did not, however, apologize to the students for Babson President Kerry Healey’s apology to Wellesley, or for several professors signing a letter condemning the now-disproven actions on the night of Nov. 8.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: The ABA’s Proposed 75% Bar Passage Rule And The Coming Legal Job Destruction Caused By Artificial Intelligence.
IT’S NOT TOO LATE: Shop Amazon’s Last-Minute Deals.
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION EXAMINES ITS CRISIS RESPONSE PROCESS: And well it should. Unfortunately, much of this article is devoted to the “We Don’t Have Enough Money” syndrome.
TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL: Lawyer speech code proposed by American Bar Association would violate the First Amendment.
FALKLANDS WAR FALLOUT: Britain and Argentina have agreed to “a deal to identify 123 Argentine soldiers buried on the Falkland Islands. The International Committee of the Red Cross has been negotiating an agreement on taking DNA samples from the remains of men who died in the 1982 conflict. The graves in the Argentine memorial cemetery, in Darwin, are currently marked as “soldier only known to God”.”
Why did this take so long? My bet: the Argentinian government’s perpetual use of the Falklands as a political distraction. The article makes that argument, albeit less directly.
TREATING DEPRESSION WITH BOTOX?
YES, BUT… Any Food Can Be Turned Into Beer.
The beauty of the craft beer world is the unbridled enthusiasm to brew something that’s never been tasted before. However, creating a beer with a familiar taste can be an almost greater challenge.
Take Shmaltz Brewing’s new Pastrami Pilsner. Created in partnership with Barcade, an East Coast chain of game-filled craft beer bars, the Pastrami Pils grew out of the simple desire to collaborate on something adventurous. Why did they pick pastrami? That detail has been lost to empty pint glasses.
Brewers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.
THE WAGES OF LEFTY MEDIA HATE: Man accused of Ithaca homicide: ‘I shot and killed Donald Trump purposely, intentionally and very proudly.’
ROGER KIMBALL on the purpose of art museums.
IF THE TEA PARTY HAD STAGED ARMED MARCHES DENOUNCING THE IRS, PAUL KRUGMAN WOULD HAVE CALLED FOR MARTIAL LAW: Black Panthers hold ‘human rights tribunal’ in Sherman Park. “Members of the Black Panthers of Milwaukee, some armed with guns, marched through the Sherman Park neighborhood on Sunday to protest what they called the ‘genocide’ of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement.”
UPDATE: Of course, lefties pretend.
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WHY LEFTISTS HATE TEXAS: Avik Roy: Texas Is a Model for a More-Libertarian, More Diverse America.
JUST DON’T TELL NOTORIOUS ROBOPHOBE MATT YGLESIAS: Sex robots could kill humans because they’ll be too good in bed.