Posts Tagged ‘Atkins’
Friday, September 20th, 2019
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! I thought fall started tomorrow, but various reference sources say the fall equinox doesn’t actually occur until Monday, September 23.
Flash flooding hits the Houston area from Tropical Storm Imelda. “Gov. Greg Abbott has declared a state of disaster for 13 counties.” Plus a post office roof collapsed and I-10 was closed in both directions for a while east of Houston.
Democrats remain stuck on stupid:
What happens when a political party is hijacked by fanatics, ideologues, and hysterics who don’t care whether they win or lose an election?
They lose elections.
That’s where the Democrats are headed because they’d rather be “right” than clever. And when it comes to the issue of race, Democrats think they have a corner on “right.”
They’ve got a small problem, though. In order to appeal to the fanatics, ideologues, and hysterics to tap them for money and support, they have to at least give lip service to their warped views on race. And that includes calling you and me and about 70 percent of the American voters “racist.”
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
How New York Times ignored the real bombshell in the Kavanaugh book:
Not only did Christine Blasey Ford’s key witness and friend — Leland Keyser — state that she didn’t recall the party where Ford claimed she was assaulted, she also says she doesn’t remember “any others like it.”
Her words were strong: “It would be impossible for me to be the only girl at a get-together with three guys, have her leave, and then not figure out how she’s getting home,” she said. “I just really didn’t have confidence in the story.”
Even more, Pogrebin and Kelly uncovered a pressure campaign to get Keyser to alter her testimony, to back Ford. Keyser told the writers, “I was told behind the scenes that certain things could spread about me if I didn’t comply,” and they report on group texts containing ominous language about Keyser’s allegedly “f***ed up” life.
While the reaction to the allegations against Kavanaugh was almost uniformly partisan (Republicans rejected the claims; Democrats either believed them or thought they cast enough doubt on Kavanaugh to deny him the nomination), there is — in fact — a truth of the matter here. Kavanaugh did or did not assault Ford, and in any fair proceeding Keyser’s testimony would detonate like a bomb. Remember, this wasFord’s witness and friend. She’s a Democrat. And, moreover, there was now evidence of a pressure campaign that looked a lot like an attempt to suborn perjury.
And Pogrebin still doesn’t get what she did wrong:
Pogrebin is at the center of a discussion of gross journalistic malpractice after publishing a story Saturday night with colleague Kate Kelly that failed to mention that a woman who, according to a man named Max Stier, had Kavanaugh’s penis pressed into her hand at a campus party by multiple friends of his has said she recalls no such incident. That woman has also declined to talk about the matter with reporters or officials. Why even publish Stier’s claim, which was discounted by Washington Post reporters who heard about it a year ago, that he witnessed such an incident during a Yale party in the 1980s? Because of the narrative, Pogrebin says. “We decided to go with it because obviously it is of a piece with a kind of behavior,” she said on WMAL. Pure confirmation bias.
Though the woman at the center of the story wants no part of it, Kelly and Pogrebin published her name anyway (in their book, albeit not in the Times). “You’re kind of directing attention at a victim and she’s gonna be besieged,” Pogrebin said on the radio show, in explaining why the Times piece left the name out. “Even if people can ultimately find her name, it’s not necessarily important to make it easier for them to do so.” Oh, so publishing her name in a book does not constitute making it too easy for people to find this private citizen? It’s a separate but serious scandal. This woman has been made a public figure in a national story without her consent. Even if she were the victim of sexual misconduct, the Times would ordinarily take steps to protect her identity. Yet she has made no claim along these lines, and Pogrebin and Kelly outed her anyway. Is there no respect for a woman’s privacy? Is every woman in America to think of herself as potential collateral damage should she ever cross paths with any Republican whom Times reporters later tried to take down?
In her WMAL interview this morning, Pogrebin repeatedly refers to the woman as a “victim.” This word choice is instructive about Pogrebin’s thought process. Calling her a victim would be begging the question if the woman claimed this status for herself. She would then be only an alleged victim. But she isn’t even that. She has made no claim to be a victim, yet Pogrebin describes her as one anyway. This is a case of a reporter overriding her reporting with her opinion. Pogrebin then impugns the woman by saying she was so drunk that her memory can’t be trusted. She also says that “everyone” at the party was massively drunk and that their memories are therefore unreliable.
Does she hear herself talking? If this is true, it means Max Stier was also drunk and his memories also can’t be trusted. (Someone should ask Pogrebin whether she was present at this party about which she knows so much.) By what journalistic standard does a reporter discount what is said by the person with the most direct and relevant experience of a matter — the woman in question at the Yale party — in favor of a drunken bystander? If both the woman and Stier were drunk, why is his memory more credible than hers? If something like this had actually happened to her, wouldn’t she be more likely than anyone else to remember it? Maybe Stier is remembering a different party. Maybe he’s remembering a different guy. Maybe he made it up.
Trump’s Kulturekampf:
A new America supposedly is marching forward under the banner of ending fossil fuels, curbing the Second Amendment, redistributing income, promoting identity politics and open borders, and providing free college, free health care and abortion on demand.
An insomniac Trump fights all of the above nonstop and everywhere. In the past, Republican presidents sought to slow the progressive transformation of America but despaired of ever stopping it.
No slugfest is too off-topic or trivial for Trump. Sometimes that means calling out former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick for persuading NFL stars to kneel during the national anthem. Huge, monopolistic Silicon Valley companies are special Trump targets. Sometimes Trump enters cul-de-sac Twitter wars with Hollywood has-beens who have attacked him and his policies.
Trump variously goes after antifa, political correctness on campus, the NATO hierarchy, the radical green movement, Planned Parenthood, American universities and, above all, the media — especially CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times.
For all the acrimony and chaos — and prognostications of Trump’s certain failure — a bloodied Trump wins more than he loses. NATO members may hate Trump, but more are finally paying their promised defense contributions.
In retrospect, many Americans concede that the Iran Deal was flawed and that the Paris climate accord mere virtue signaling. China was long due for a reckoning.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation proved fruitless and was further diminished by Mueller’s bizarrely incoherent congressional testimony.
Some of the most prominent Trump haters — Michael Avenatti, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Antony Scaramucci and Rep. Adam Schiff — either have been discredited or have become increasingly irrelevant.
Trump has so enraged his Democratic adversaries that the candidates to replace him have moved further to the left than any primary field in memory. They loathe Trump, but in their abject hatred he has goaded the various Democratic candidates into revealing their support for the crazy Green New Deal, reparations for slavery, relaxed immigration policies and trillions of dollars in new free stuff.
In a way, the left-wing Democratic presidential candidates understand Trump best. If he wins his one-man crusade to stop the progressive project, they are finished, and their own party will make the necessary adjustments and then sheepishly drift back toward the center.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Democrats are lying about healthcare. For starters: How much ObamaCare sucks. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Democratic megadonor Ed Buck finally arrested after overdosing a third black man. This one, unlike the previous two, survived. He’s also been charged with running a meth ring.
Chronicle of an apocalypse foretold. And foretold. And foretold. And foretold. And foretold… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Why Britain should ditch the EU:
The real issue is far older and more important than whether 52 percent of Britain finally became understandably aggrieved by the increasingly anti-democratic and German-controlled European Union.
England is an island. Historically, politically and linguistically, it was never permanently or fully integrated into European culture and traditions.
The story of Britain has mostly been about conflict with France, Germany or Spain. The preeminence of the Royal Navy, in the defiant spirit of its sea lords, ensured that European dictators from Napoleon to Hitler could never set foot on British soil. As British admiral John Jervis reassured his superiors in 1801 amidst rumors of an impending Napoleonic invasion, “I do not say, my lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea.”
Britain’s sea power, imperialism, parliamentary government and majority Protestant religion set it apart from its European neighbors — and not just because of its geographical isolation.
The 18th century British and Scottish Enlightenment of Edmund Burke, David Hume, John Locke and Adam Smith emphasized individualism, freedom and liberty far more than the government-enforced equality of result that was favored by French Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It is no accident that the American Revolution was founded on the idea of individual freedom and liberty, unlike the later French Revolution’s violent effort to redistribute income and deprive “enemies of the people” of their rights and even their lives.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Hillary Clinton blames her 2016 presidential defeat on “voter suppression.” Which is a weird way to say “refusing to campaign in the Midwest.”
Poll of Palestinian opinions. I’m sure many will point out the 37-50% (depending on the question) who support war against Israel. I’m more interested in the 48% who believe in possession by djinn or demons. (To be fair, the percentage in America would probably be similar in 1973…)
Israel’s election is still up in the air. The liberalish Blue and White faction appears to have edged Likud 33 to 31, but 61 votes are required to form a government. Current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has 55 votes to form a coalition government with orthodox religious parties that Blue and White vows not to join a coalition with.
“Fmr DNC Chair Donna Brazile: ‘I get in trouble’ when I refuse to say that Trump is a racist.”
“‘Rats, All of You!‘ Comedians Bill Burr, Spade, Schneider Slam Cancel Culture.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
A tweet on the racist history of gun control:
How to get emails in a freedom of information act request from the LAPD. Bonus: In 2015, they were still using Groupwise… (Hat tip: Amy Alkon.)
Here’s a long study on the effects of red meat consumption. Conclusion?
Although meat has been a central component of the diet of our lineage for millions of years, some nutrition authorities—who often have close connections to animal rights activists or other forms of ideological vegetarianism, such as Seventh-Day Adventism (Banta et al., 2018 Banta, J. E., J. W. Lee, G. Hodgkin, Z. Yi, A. Fanica, and J. Sabate. 2018. The global influence of the Seventh-day Adventist Church on diet. Religions 9 (9):251. doi: 10.3390/rel9090251.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar])—are promoting the view that meat causes a host of health problems and has no redeeming value. We contend that a large part of the case against meat is based on cherry-picked evidence and low-quality observational studies. The bald claim that red meat is an “unhealthy food” (Willett et al., 2019 Willett, Walter, Johan Rockström, Brent Loken, Marco Springmann, Tim Lang, Sonja Vermeulen, Tara Garnett, David Tilman, Fabrice DeClerck, Amanda Wood., et al. 2019. Food in the anthropocene: the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Lancet 393 (10170):447–92. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31788-4.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is wildly unsupported.
Based on misrepresentations of the state of the science, some organizations are attempting to influence policy makers to take action to reduce meat consumption. Simplification of complex science increases persuasive power but may also serve ideological purposes and lead to scientistic approaches. According to Mayes and Thompson (2015 Mayes, C. R., and D. B. Thompson. 2015. What should we eat? biopolitics, ethics, and nutritional scientism. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 12 (4):587–99. doi: 10.1007/s11673-015-9670-4.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), manifestations of nutritional scientism in the context of biopolitics can have various ethical implications for “individual responsibility and freedom, concerning iatrogenic harm, and for well-being”. Well-meaning yet overemphasized and premature recommendations may eventually cause more damage than benefit, not only physiologically but also by unjustifiably holding individuals accountable for their health outcomes. We believe that a large reduction in meat consumption, such as has been advocated by the EAT-Lancet Commission (Willett et al., 2019 Willett, Walter, Johan Rockström, Brent Loken, Marco Springmann, Tim Lang, Sonja Vermeulen, Tara Garnett, David Tilman, Fabrice DeClerck, Amanda Wood., et al. 2019. Food in the anthropocene: the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Lancet 393 (10170):447–92. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31788-4.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), could produce serious harm. Meat has long been, and continues to be, a primary source of high-quality nutrition. The theory that it can be replaced with legumes and supplements is mere speculation. While diets high in meat have proved successful over the long history of our species, the benefits of vegetarian diets are far from being established, and its dangers have been largely ignored by those who have endorsed it prematurely on the basis of questionable evidence.
(Hat tip: Powerline.)
Bill Gates says not to break up tech giants. Well, he would, wouldn’t he?
Speaking of Gates, here’s a list of all the connections between Gates and Jeffrey Epstein. Plus lots of denials.
First Blood author David Morrell on the meta-genius of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, which I highly recommend seeing if you haven’t already.
Baby Shoggoth found.
“Snopes: ‘The Claim That Trump Is Hitler Lacks Concrete Evidence But Alludes To A Deeper Truth.'”
“Millennial Diagnosed With Tragic Inability To Even.”
Heh: I seem to have my own Fark logo now: 
. Fark used to be more-or-less balanced between left and right posters, but that went away several years ago (long before Trump), and now it’s overwhelmingly left-wing trolling. Every time the Clown Car update gets linked, there’s a tsunami of hate posting, “your blog sucks,” accusations of paying off admins, etc. Honestly, I suspect that all the rageposting is precisely why the admins greenlight the links…
Tags:2016 Presidential Race, Anthropogenic Global Warming, Atkins, Babylon Bee, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bill Burr, Bill Gates, Blue and White (Israel), Brett Kavanaugh, Brexit, Christine Blasey Ford, comedy, Crime, David Spade, Democrats, Donald Trump, Ed Buck, environmentalism, EU, flooding, Foreign Policy, Green New Deal, gun control, Guns, Hillary Clinton, Houston, Israel, Israeli Elections, Jeffrey Epstein, Jihad, LAPD, Leland Keyser, Likud, Microsoft, ObamaCare, Palestinians, Rob Schneider, Robin Pogrebin, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, technology, UK, vegans, Victor Davis Hanson, weather
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Guns, Jihad, ObamaCare, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court | No Comments »
Friday, August 9th, 2019
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! It’s been both super busy and super-hot here at BattleSwarm headquarters…
Leftward ho:
Ah, the good ol’ days of . . . April, or so, when conservative critics of the Democratic party could still count on being lectured to about the enduring moderation of Team Blue and chastised for paying so much attention to such figures as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America) and Senator Bernie Sanders (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America) and claiming that these self-described socialists are the socialists they describe themselves as being, who want to “abolish capitalism” (the stated mission of the Democratic Socialists of America) and the traditional family to boot (“democratizing the family to get rid of patriarchal relations,” in the words of the Democratic Socialists of America), all of which, the usual media scolds tut-tutted, was unfair. “The Democratic party is the party of moderates,” as Politico magazine editor Bill Scher argued.
Somebody must have slipped some psilocybin into the Democrats’ potato salad at this year’s May Day picnic. Open borders? Check! Eviscerating the Bill of Rights? Absolutely, with one of those weird barbed Uncle Henry gut-hook knives! What else? I hope that whichever debate moderator finally presses this crew about the limits of late-term abortion is over 35, because Elizabeth Warren was pretty clearly ready to roll up her sleeves and perform an impromptu D&E right there underneath the Art Deco adornments and heavy brocade curtains of the Fox Theater in beautiful downtown Detroit.
Speaking of the Democratic Socialists of America, Stephen Green looks in on those lunatics. “No perfume in the quiet room, no misusing doors, no talking to cops, no talking to the press, always display your credentials, beware of right wing infiltrators.” Plus the usual lunacy about pronouns, and triggering, and singing “The Internationale.”
Border control policies start working:
Monthly apprehensions of migrants in Mexico have begun to slow down, indicating that its government’s recent border crackdown is yielding results.
Authorities in Mexico apprehended 18,758 migrants in July, according to preliminary data from Mexico’s immigration agency, reported by The Wall Street Journal. While this number is more than double the amount detained in the same month last year, it is a decline from the record-setting 31,573 apprehensions in Mexico in June.
“China Wants to Hit Back at Trump. Its Own Economy Stands in the Way.”
China’s imports from the United States only a fraction of the trade going the other way, so it cannot match Washington tariff for tariff. Much of that trade consists of agriculture goods like soybeans, as well as specialized products like Boeing jetliners or the American-made chips for the smartphones China makes.
There are several things China could do. It could call for a boycott of American goods or stop buying Boeing planes. It could devalue its currency, which would in effect partially nullify American tariffs. It could make life much harder for American business and executives in China, or it could exercise its power over key parts of the global supply chain, like its dominance over key manufacturing minerals called rare earths.
Some investors on Friday signaled they expect at least one of those moves. China’s currency, the renminbi, fell to its weakest point so far this year. Shares of rare earths companies rose, while Boeing’s shares fell more than the broader market on Thursday.
But each of these measures has drawbacks. Perhaps the biggest among them is that China’s economy is growing at its slowest pace in 27 years. Many of the arrows Beijing has in its quiver could ricochet and hit its own factories and workers.
Plus the perils of weakening the renminbi. Also: “As they consider their moves, Chinese officials will also try to parse Mr. Trump’s negotiating strategy. Experts said his capricious style had flummoxed Beijing.”
How the media pick and choose which parts of the El Paso shooter’s manifesto to hype.
More on the same subject:
The manifesto is insane. Part of it discussed commonly debated issues such as the environment and the economy in ways that are well within the boundaries of political conversation going on today — indeed, that might have come out of the New York Times or many other outlets. Other parts of it mixed in theories on immigration from far right circles in Europe and the U.S. Then it threw in beliefs on “race-mixing” straight from the fever swamps. And then it concluded that the solution is to murder Hispanic immigrants, going on to debate whether an AK-47 or an AR-15 would best do the job. By that point, Crusius had veered far from both reality and basic humanity.
But the question is, was he inspired by President Trump? It is hard to make that case looking at the manifesto in its entirety.
Crusius worried about many things, if the manifesto is any indication. He certainly worried about immigration, but also about automation. About job losses. About a universal basic income. Oil drilling. Urban sprawl. Watersheds. Plastic waste. Paper waste. A blue Texas. College debt. Recycling. Healthcare. Sustainability. And more. Large portions of the manifesto simply could not be more un-Trumpian.
Dayton shooter was indeed a “Pro-Satan Leftist Who Supported Elizabeth Warren.”
How President Donald Trump changes the political calculus.
This is a colossal fraud, and it won’t work. The public doesn’t buy it; the candidates aren’t talking about it; when Congress returns in September, Lindsey Graham’s Senate Judiciary Committee will grill the authors of the politicization of the intelligence agencies, the FBI, and other parts of the Obama Justice Department as well as the propagators of the false Steele dossier and the fraudulent FISA warrant applications. Graham (R-S.C.), will get the publicity, and the bare-faced liars who chair the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), will be talking to themselves about their “solid evidence” of the president’s crimes. Weissman and the lesser Democratic Torquemadas couldn’t find them; Nadler and Schiff can’t declare what their evidence is (because there is none).
This is the last echo of this attempted rape of the Constitution and no one will be listening when the Congress returns in September. They will listen to the Graham committee’s exposés of the Democrats who acted corruptly, and they will notice the indictments when the special counsel, (John Durham, who unlike Mueller does have full retention of his faculties), starts bringing them down.
The president deliberately has escalated the controversy by attempting to make the four extremist freshman Democratic congresswomen the real face of the Democrats, and by pointing out, in the case of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the inappropriateness of Cummings’ assault on the integrity of the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
The president undoubtedly knows that he is playing with fire assaulting the most holy of the taboos of political correctness so explicitly, though his grasp of the political arithmetic is almost certainly correct. I assume he can reassure his own followers and whatever independent voters may be left in this fierce partisan crossfire that he is not racist. In sober times, it would be clear that no case whatever exists that he is a racist. But these are not sober times and he has contributed something to their insobriety, though—one must remember—in reaction to immense provocations.
Is the UK headed for a November 1st election the day after Brexit? (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
How Trump’s legal team of “nobodies” defeated Robert Mueller’s team of credentialed elites.
Liberals just come out and admit that yes, they do indeed want to seize the guns of law-abiding Americans.
More on “Red Flag” laws:
Active shooters are a rounding error. “If you feel the need to take training to protect your life and the lives of your loved ones, take a Defensive Driving Course.” (Hat tip: Karl Rehn.)
“AT&T employees took bribes to plant malware on the company’s network. DOJ charges Pakistani man with bribing AT&T employees more than $1 million to install malware on the company’s network, unlock more than 2 million devices.”
Two Amazon subcontractor drivers stole an estimated $10 million worth of goods over several years, selling many items through pawn shops.
“Minimum Wage Hikes in NYC Are Forcing Businesses to Cut Jobs and Raise Prices.”
Washington Post writer goes through Sugar Detox.
But here’s the part that blew my mind: I started to lose weight. Before the detox I weighed 166 pounds. Twelve weeks later, I hit a new low adult weight: 155. I’ve cinched in my belt a notch. My bloodwork looks much better (my triglycerides dropped by half in six weeks). And as my belly fat has reduced, I do feel better and more energetic.
The weight-loss and triglyceride reduction mirrors my own experience when I first went on Atkins.
Speaking of meat: the vegetarians who became butchers.
New York Times revenues continue to decline. I’m sure that somehow this is all Russia’s fault…
Leftwing protestors call for the murder of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Naturally Twitter suspended the account…of his reelection campaign, for showing videos of leftwing protestors calling for his murder:
Lunatic tranny balls-waxing lawsuit filer Jonathan Yaniv arrested for brandishing a stun gun.
Uber lost $5.24 billion this quarter. That’s with a “B”.
At least two people on Joaquin Castro’s list of San Antonio Trump donors also donated to him. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
”Democrats Propose Creation Of National Trump Voter Registry.
“Experts Warn We Have Only 12 Years Left Until They Change The Timeline On Global Warming Again.”
Tags:active shooter, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Amazon, AT&T, Atkins, Babylon Bee, Border Controls, Brexit, China, Crime, Democratic Socialists of America, Democrats, Donald Trump, El Paso, Foreign Policy, Guns, Joaquin Castro, Jonathan Yaniv, Kevin D. Williamson, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Mexico, minimum wage, New York City, New York Times, Robert Mueller, San Antonio, Social Justice Warriors, socialism, Texas, Trade War, transexual, triglycerides, Twitter, Uber, UK
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, November 30th, 2018
Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving!
Trump Derangement Syndrome is breaking up marriages as “woke” women leave their sane husbands. “Part of what causes fights is that I don’t want to hear his side, and he hates that. Mostly I tell him he needs to think about this more clearly before he talks to me about it, and then I walk away.” Golly, can’t imagine why their marriage isn’t a Hallmark movie.
Texas speaker-in-waiting Rep. Dennis Bonnen will speak at the Texas Public Policy Foundation orientation in January. “One of the open secrets about the capitol in recent sessions has been the degree to which the Straus/Gordon Johnson team despises TPPF. The Straus/Gordon Johnson team loathes TPPF more than any conservative organization. That includes Empower Texans.” That’s some bold talk…
MSBNC in action:
Hamas is still freaking out over that Israeli raid a few weeks ago. “Hamas officials suspect Israel has been operating a base inside Gaza, and Hamas is turning itself inside out trying to figure it out.”
ESPN has lost 14 million viewers over seven years. How’s that “all social justice warrioring, all the time” format working out for you? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Deutsche Bank offices raided:
In what appears to be the latest in a string of financial crimes and scandals that have generated some $18 billion in fines since the financial crisis, prosecutors are investigating whether two employees in the bank’s wealth management division helped clients set up accounts in offshore tax havens, including the British Virgin Islands, and possibly allowed criminals to move money through these shelters, some of which may have flowed through accounts at the bank (other employees may also have been involved, prosecutors said). According to Frankfurt prosecutors, the investigation, which stems from revelations contained in the ‘Panama Papers’, covers behavior that stretched through this year, meaning that it could become a blemish on the performance of the bank’s newly-installed CEO Christian Sewing.
Another jihad attack against Jews the media won’t label as a jihad attack:
GM’s destructive subsidies:
General Motor’s announcement that it’s cutting thousands of jobs and closing several plants has met intense criticism because the company was the beneficiary of a $50 billion government bailout in 2009—which wound up costing taxpayers $11 billion—even as the government awarded the United Auto Workers’ health-care fund a 17.5 percent stake in the restructured company. Like many big American companies, GM has been the recipient of government-subsidized largesse over several decades. One particular piece of this history is especially noteworthy now. Nearly 40 years ago, in one of the most egregious cases of eminent domain abuse in American history, GM built a plant on land seized from homeowners and businesses in Detroit, obliterating a multi-ethnic neighborhood known as Poletown—all for a plant that will now be shuttered so that GM can invest somewhere else in new manufacturing facilities.
Beset by foreign competition, America’s automakers began retrenching in the late 1970s, closing manufacturing facilities in and around Detroit even as the city struggled to rebound from the riots of 1967. Dodge had closed a giant plant in Hamtramck, a suburb that adjoins the Poletown neighborhood, and when GM announced that it wanted to build a new plant somewhere in America with modern industrial technology—though it was closing plants elsewhere—Detroit officials pleaded for an opportunity to find a site for the new facility. Mayor Coleman Young came up with a plan: seize some 1,500 homes and 144 businesses in Poletown, a low-income community of 3,500 where Polish immigrants had once settled. By the early 1980s, Poletown was a more diverse neighborhood, housing older Poles but also more recent immigrants and black Detroit residents. As the city deteriorated, Poletown remained relatively stable. “There is no place for us to go, no place we want to go,” two elderly residents told the New York Times in 1980, to no avail. To Detroit officials, Poletown’s appeal was its proximity to the Dodge site, providing some 465 acres for GM—if officials could just move out those inconveniently located businesses and people. To help make it happen, in April 1980 the Michigan legislature passed its infamous “quick-take” law, providing that government agencies could seize land deemed necessary for a “public purpose” and determine later how much to compensate the private landowners. That law accelerated the process of clearing out Poletown.
The Second Amendment was always an individual right.
Detecting a stealth aircraft is one thing, but shooting it down during the terminal tracking phase is another.
Don’t be Dick’s.
Things to be thankful for:
The cost of the ingredients of a Thanksgiving feast for ten are now said to cost an average worker their wages for under 2.25 hours of labor. A 16 pound turkey now costs less than what an average worker earns in an hour.
We live lives of such astonishing wealth that we scarcely notice it. Only a fool would rather be an Emperor in 1600 than a poor person living today. Compared to a king of several centuries ago, poor people in the developed world live in astonishing luxury. In the developed world, we eat fresh vegetables in midwinter, our homes are heated toasty warm in the winter and cooled and dehumidified in the summer, we travel in enormous comfort (no wooden wheeled carriages without shock absorbers for us, and indeed, we can fly to the other side of the world for a quite modest sum of money), our medical care is incomparably better, our beds more comfortable, our entertainment options beyond any ancient potentate’s wildest dreams. This is true even of quite poor people, at least in developed countries.
Whence comes this bounty? It is not because of union organizing, or minimum wage laws, or the triumph of the proletariat over the evil factory owners. Indeed, a few centuries ago, there were few mass production factories to triumph over.
No, the source of this bounty is productivity, and the engines of productivity are deferred consumption being invested in improved infrastructure (that is, capital accumulation), improved technology, and specialization. Thanks to our better means of making things and the sacrifices needed to construct those means, productivity per worker is orders of magnitude higher, and thus there’s more stuff to go around.
Centuries ago, it required something like 750 hours of human labor to produce a simple tunic; today it requires minutes of human labor. Almost no one is capable of truly internalizing this change. The shirt on your back once was a valuable capital good requiring four months of constant labor to produce. Now it’s not even worth repairing if it tears, it’s too inexpensive to replace it. Because of this change in productivity, even quite poor people in developed countries own many sets of clothing.
Centuries ago, there was barely enough food to go around, and often far too little, as a result of which starvation was common. It required constant labor by most of the population to produce enough food. Then, mechanization of agriculture set in, and the production of synthetic fertilizer, and pest control, and improved breeding methods; today, it requires very few people to grow more than enough food for everyone. There is so much food, in fact, that obesity has become a disease of the poor, an unprecedented development in human history.
So it is across the span of consumer goods. The amount of labor it requires to produce enough light to read at night has gone down by orders of magnitude, and the quantity of light produced by an ordinary lightbulb is 100 times greater than that of a candle at a tiny fraction of the price. Many goods didn’t even exist before; in my father’s youth there were no televisions, and now people can buy 4k 130cm flat screens.
(Hat tip: Borepatch.)
“The case against carbohydrates gets stronger.”
People have a hard time believing that weight control isn’t just a matter of calories eaten and calories burned. But there is an alternate hypothesis about obesity, which is what my group studies. The carbohydrate-insulin model argues that overeating isn’t the underlying cause of long-term weight gain. Instead, it’s the biological process of gaining weight that causes us to overeat.
Here’s how this hypothesis goes: Consuming processed carbohydrates (especially refined grains, potato products and sugars), causes our bodies to produce more insulin. Too much insulin, one of the most powerful hormones, forces our fat cells into calorie-storage overdrive. These rapidly growing fat cells then hoard too many calories, leaving too few for the rest of the body. So we get hungry, and if we persist in eating less, our metabolism slows down.
Snip.
We started the participants on a calorie-restricted diet until they lost 10%-14% of their body weight. After that, we randomly assigned them to eat exclusively one of three diets, containing either 20%, 40% or 60% carbohydrates.
For the next five months, we made sure they didn’t gain or lose any more weight, adjusting how much food they received, but keeping the ratio of carbohydrates constant. By doing so, we could directly measure how their metabolism responded to these differing levels of carbohydrate consumption.
Participants in the low (20%) carbohydrate group burned on average about 250 calories a day more than those in the high (60%) carbohydrate group, just as predicted by the carbohydrate-insulin model. Without intervention (that is, if we hadn’t adjusted the amount of food to prevent weight change), that difference would produce substantial weight loss — about 20 pounds after a few years. If a low-carbohydrate diet also curbs hunger and food intake (as other studies suggest it can), the effect could be even greater.
This result could explain in part why U.S. obesity rates have been going up for decades. Individuals have a sort genetically predetermined weight — lighter for some, heavier for others. Despite this, the average weight for American men has gone from about 165 pounds in the 1960s to 195 pounds today. Women, likewise, have gone from an average of 140 pounds to about 165.
“Half As Many Google Employees Protested Building Chinese Surveillance Tech As Protested Pentagon Project.”
Evidently Creepy Porn Lawyer is considered a crook even by his porn star client.
Actual headline, not from The Onion or The Babylon Bee: “PETA Defends Graphic Animal Mutilation In Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built.”
“Aides Force Ocasio-Cortez To Watch Entire Run Of ‘Schoolhouse Rock!’
Ricky Jay, RIP.
Tags:Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Atkins, Border Controls, China, Democrats, Dennis Bonnen, Deutsch Bank, Economics, ESPN, feminists, Foreign Policy, Gaza, Germany, GM, Google, Gordon Johnson, Guns, Hamas, Jews, Jihad, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Michael Avenatti, MSNBC, PETA, Social Justice Warriors, technology, Texas, Texas Public Policy Foundation, Trump Derangement Syndrome
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Texas | 1 Comment »
Friday, February 16th, 2018
This has probably been my busiest February on record. Enjoy a complimentary Friday LinkSwarm, try the waitress and tip the veal:
“It’s doubtful you can find a more succinct example of TDS than a seemingly inebriated Democrat Senator asking the aggregate intelligence apparatus, during a public session of congress, to give specific details of U.S. covert intelligence efforts to thwart Russian, Chinese and North Korean cyber-warfare.” Democratic Senator Jack Reed continues to long, proud tradition of questionable Rhode Island political figures…
In January, the first month under the Trump tax cuts, the federal government pulls in record tax revenues and runs a surplus. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
“The Genius Of Trump’s Food Stamp Proposal: You’re Not Supposed To Like Being On Welfare.”
Michael Leeden thinks the Islamic Republic of Iran is doomed. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Reminder: Everytown’s “school shooting statistics” are pure fabrication.
“Democrats Fleeing Blue States, Infecting Red States With Failed Liberal Disease.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Not only are a new German frigate’s computer systems FUBARed, but the ship can’t even float right.
Wired writer doesn’t understand the difference between “Islamist” and “Muslim.”
“In Wake Of Corruption Trials, Maryland Ponders Disbanding Baltimore Police Department.”
For Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez, illegal aliens are more important than bullet-proof vests for officers.
Asian student at Harvard discovers that identity politics is a dead end.
“Stop Trying To Shove Women Into STEM.” “There’s this big push to get girls into STEM — while there’s no commensurate push to get women into oil rig work, no complaints that there aren’t enough women hanging off the back of garbage trucks.” Also:
We’ve recently found that countries renowned for gender equality show some of the largest sex differences in interest in and pursuit of STEM degrees, which is not only inconsistent with an oppression narrative, it is positive evidence against it. Consider that Finland excels in gender equality, its adolescent girls outperform boys in science, and it ranks near the top in European educational performance. With these high levels of educational performance and overall gender equality, Finland is poised to close the sex differences gap in STEM. Yet, Finland has one of the world’s largest sex differences in college degrees in STEM fields. Norway and Sweden, also leading in gender equality rankings, are not far behind. This is only the tip of the iceberg, as this general pattern of increasing sex differences with national increases in gender equality is found throughout the world.
Moron thinks poor people are too stupid to cook food.
Do you need carbs for Thyroid health? Science says no.
Cool. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Texas Democratic state Rep. Dawnna Dukes’ campaign is more than $700,000 in debt due to legal fees from the (now dropped) felony charges against her. And she’s running for reelection.
Bill Crider, RIP.
Setting ablaze a giant matchsphere.
Every book I bought in the last half of last year.
Tags:Atkins, Austin, Baltimore, Border Controls, Crime, Dawnna Dukes, Democrats, Everytown for Gun Safety, feminism, Foreign Policy, Germany, Guns, Harvard, Iran, Jack Reed, Jihad, Maryland, Michael Leeden, Military, Obituary, Sally Hernandez, Social Justice Warriors, Tax Reform, technology, Texas, Travis County, welfare, Welfare State
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Welfare State | No Comments »
Friday, January 5th, 2018
Happy New Year!
How Donald Trump is restoring the S-curve.
What it’s like to be a New York Times reporter during the war on terror:
Success as a reporter on the CIA beat inevitably meant finding out government secrets, and that meant plunging headlong into the classified side of Washington, which had its own strange dynamics.
I discovered that there was, in effect, a marketplace of secrets in Washington, in which White House officials and other current and former bureaucrats, contractors, members of Congress, their staffers, and journalists all traded information. This informal black market helped keep the national security apparatus running smoothly, limiting nasty surprises for all involved. The revelation that this secretive subculture existed, and that it allowed a reporter to glimpse the government’s dark side, was jarring. It felt a bit like being in the Matrix.
It’s a long and informative piece, even if you don’t accept all of reporter James Risen’s analysis. And it really does show how badly our national security agencies leak…
The recently discovered vulnerability in Intel chips is really, really bad. And fixing it requires about a 5-30% performance hit on every OS that runs atop Intel processors. (Here’s a nice layman description).
More on the same topic from Borepatch.
“Crazy” like a fox: “The tougher the sanctions and rhetoric from the United States, the more flexible North Korea is becoming.”
40 companies offer Trump Tax Cut bonuses. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Germany outsources censorship. Evidently you’re not allowed to say anything critical of Muslims or “Muslim refugees,” ever. “How the Germans can’t see that such a law, in the hands of the wrong party, could be devastating is a mystery. I can only conclude such occurrences have no precedent in their country from which they could draw obvious lessons.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Scott Adams enumerates all the things President Donald Trump broke that needed breaking.
DACA isn’t what Democrats say it is.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinds Obama-era memorandums on state-level legalized marijuana. Popehat thinks this is, at present, mostly cosmetic due to the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment. I oppose federal marijuana prohibition on constitutional grounds: Regulating marijuana is not an enumerated power of the federal government, regulation is neither necessary nor proper (thus no 9th Amendment justification), and thus a matter entirely for the states absent any interstate commerce under the 10th Amendment.
“Mayor Sylvester Turner’s press secretary was suspended for two weeks without pay after she failed to turn over thousands of documents required to be released under Texas law. Darian Ward was asked to turn over emails relating to her work on non-city related projects, including a private side business called ‘Joy in Motion Productions.'” She must have gone to the Hillary Clinton School of Email FOIA compliance…
Dave Chappelle has a point. As gross, disgusting and socially unacceptable as having Louis C.K. masturbate on the phone with you is, if you let that dissuade you from pursuing a career in a field as hotly competitive as standup comedy, that’s on you. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
“Genetic Study Supports Carbohydrate-Insulin Model of Obesity.”
Perfect season.
Dibs.
Tags:Atkins, Border Controls, Borepatch, business, censorship, Crime, Darian Ward, data security, Dave Chappelle, Democrats, Donald Trump, Germany, Houston, Intel, James Risen, Jeff Sessions, LinkSwarm, Louis C.K., marijuana, North Korea, Scott Adams, Sylvester Turner, Tax Reform, technology
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Texas, unions | 2 Comments »
Friday, November 24th, 2017
I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy a short LinkSwarm for a short week!
“Unsealed court documents reveal that the firm behind the salacious 34-page Trump-Russia Dossier, Fusion GPS, was paid $523,000 by a Russian businessman convicted of tax fraud and money laundering, whose lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was a key figure in the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower arranged by Fusion GPS associate Rob Goldstone.”
Fusion GPS, the DNC and Hillary Clinton sampaign-funded organization behind the fake Trump dossier, has been paying journalists.
In this week’s MSM scumbag sexual harasser sweepstakes, both CBS and PBS fire Charlie Rose after sexual harassment accusations from eight different women.
And three more accusers just came forward.
You know the Arab-Egyptian Peace Treaty signed after the Camp David Accords in 1979? Jimmy Carter did his best to derail it.
Carter wanted his Geneva talks. He didn’t care that the peace process already begun by Sadat and Begin might lead to peace, Carter wanted his plan or nothing. You see Carter’s vision of a Geneva conference would be run by the U.S. and the USSR, and Israel would be facing the terrorist PLO, and Israel’s neighbors including, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and Jordan. It would not be a negotiation because when one considers that the Arab countries were Soviet satellites, and the Carter administration’s ideological orientation was anti-Israel it seemed to ensure the conference would be all the participants vs. the Jewish State.
Thankfully Carter couldn’t stop the approaching peace train. Within days Israeli journalists were allowed into Cairo, breaking a symbolic barrier, and from there the peace process quickly gained momentum.
Kevin Williamson examines more of the left’s Manson worship.
How congress runs its illegal sexual harassment slush fund out of the public eye.
Washington Post reporter Janell Ross helped secret Democratic donor conference “craft liberal economic message without notifying superiors.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Cop killer captured. Update: Authorities have now released the name of the slain officer, which was Damon Allen.
“California State Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra (D-Pacoima) announced Tuesday that he will resign next year after six women accused him of making unwanted sexual advances.”
Want to download Skype in China? Tough.
“Brooklyn College doesn’t want police using campus bathrooms.” Because snowflakes must make painfully clear that the people who keep them safe are beneath them…
Can a Ketogeneic (low-carb) diet cure diabetes? Evidence suggests a firm maybe.
Environmental activist convicted. “A Montana jury found Leonard Higgins of Portland, Oregon, guilty of criminal mischief and trespassing. Higgins could face up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine on the felony criminal mischief charge.” (Hat tip: Steve Malloy’s Twitter feed.)
Florida Woman Pro Tip: If you’re going to rob a bank, it’s best to rob one you didn’t formerly work at.
Larry Correia spells out exactly what writers “owe” their fans on unfinished series installments: namely “Jack” and “Squat.”
“As A Male Feminist, I Really Think I’d Absolutely Crush It If I Ever Had To Publicly Apologize For Sexual Misconduct.” Heh: “I’d use the word ‘apologize’ and say ‘I’m sorry.’ I’d check off all the boxes that feminist Twitter looks for in an airtight apology, and I’d continue expressing remorse in the ensuing weeks to wow the world with the magnitude of my self-reproach.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Rama?
Tags:Atkins, CBS, CBS News, Charles Manson, Charlie Rose, Crime, Damon Allen, Democrats, Egypt, Foreign Policy, Fusion GPS, Israel, Janell Ross, Jimmy Carter, Kevin D. Williamson, Larry Correia, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Middle East, Middle East Peace Process, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Raul Bocanegra, Rob Goldstone, Russia, Skype, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Washington Post
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 2 Comments »
Friday, December 2nd, 2016
Welcome to the last month of the year! (Insert standard “where has the time gone” lament here.)
Enjoy the traditional Friday LinkSwarm:
Kevin D. Williamson brings the wood:
The Democratic party is an odd apparatus in which most of the power is held by sanctimonious little old liberal white ladies with graduate degrees and very high incomes — Hillary Rodham Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Randi Weingarten — while the manpower, the vote-power, and the money-power (often in the form of union dues) comes from a disproportionately young and non-white base made up of people who, if they are doing well, might earn one-tenth of the half-million dollars a year Weingarten was paid as the boss of the teachers’ union. They are more likely to be cutting the grass in front of Elizabeth Warren’s multi-million-dollar mansion than moving into one of their own. They roll their eyes at Hillary Rodham Clinton’s risible “abuela” act, having actual abuelas of their own.
As in the Republican party, the Democrats have a restive base that is more radical than its leadership, more aggressive, and in search of signs of tribal affiliation. The Democratic base is not made up of little old liberal white ladies with seven-, eight-, and nine-figure bank balances, but the party’s leadership is.
Alan Derschowitz is not a fan of Rep. Keith Ellison’s DNC Chairman bid:
What should a political party that has just lost its white working-class, blue-collar base to a “make America great again” nationalist do to try to regain these voters? Why not appoint as the new head of the party a radical left-wing ideologue who has a long history of supporting an anti-American, anti-white, anti-Semitic Nation of Islam racist? Such an appointment will surely bring back rust-belt voters who have lost their jobs to globalization and free trade! Is this really the thinking of those Democratic leaders who are pushing for Keith Ellison to head the Democratic National Committee?
Keith Ellison is, by all accounts, a decent guy, who is well liked by his congressional colleagues. But it is hard to imagine a worse candidate to take over the DNC at this time. Ellison represents the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party, just when the party — if it is to win again — must move to the center in order to bring back the voters it lost to Trump. The Democrats didn’t lose because their candidates weren’t left enough. They won the votes of liberals. The radical voters they lost to Jill Stein were small in number and are not likely to be influenced by the appointment of Ellison. The centrist voters they lost to Trump will only be further alienated by the appointment of a left-wing ideologue, who seems to care more about global issues than jobs in Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. Ellison’s selection certainly wouldn’t help among Jewish voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania or pro-Israel Christian voters around the country.
Also, Derschowitz is not buying the “friend of Israel” blather put forth by Ellison defenders:
Ellison’s voting record also does not support his claim that he has become a “friend” of Israel. He was one of only 8 Congressmen who voted against funding the Iron Dome program, developed jointly by the U.S. and Israel, which helps protect Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets. In 2009, Ellison was one of only two dozen Congressmen to vote “present” rather than vote for a non-binding resolution “recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from, reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.” And in 2010, Ellison co‐authored a letter to President Obama, calling on him to pressure Israel into opening the border with Gaza. The letter describes the blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip as “de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents.”
Five Thirty Eight asserts that education levels one of the primary determinants of which counties voted for Trump.
More electorate analysis: “This is a case where the simplest explanation is the correct one: Donald Trump won because he did exceptionally (indeed, historically) well with the white working class, a bloc that until 2016 was resistant north of the Mason-Dixon line to voting Republican en masse.”
Fidel Castro’s murders by the numbers. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Could Marine Le Pen be the leftmost candidate in France’s presidential election?
Your government in action: health inspectors deny the homeless a free BBQ meal.
Rotherham, post-truth and the “alt-right”:
Some on the left in the West see certain ideas and even some easily verifiable truths, as plain dangerous, much like the totalitarian communists of yesteryear. Dangerous to public order. Dangerous to the ‘common good’.
Whilst this section of the left has always existed, it now seems to have become more ‘mainstream’. It seethes and obsesses within carefully-policed ideological echo-chambers. It dominates in universities, trade unions and the public sector. And whereas it was once mainly prevalent in fringe far-left outfits, it has now effectively co-opted the Labour party through its membership and leadership.
Anyone who has ever tried to engage with this section of the left will know that it doesn’t ‘do debate’ with conservatives on issues like immigration, multiculturalism and identity politics. For it, “the debate is settled”. Opposing views are intrinsically wicked. Such ideas are to be ignored. Muted. Blocked. Banned. Disrupted. Drowned out with fog-horns.
It does not feel it needs to win the argument nor does it see any reason to engage in one. Where it can apply ‘No Platform’ or ‘Safe Space’ schemes to stymie debate, it will do so assiduously. Where it can’t, it’s adept at innovating campaigns such as #StopFundingHate to help promote the censorship it craves.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Still more on How Trump got elected:
The privileged worked hard for Trump. Every time they described his people as uneducated white males, implicit dregs, they drove votes to Donald. And they so described the working class unceasingly.
It made him President. Good, bad, or indifferent, it is how he got in.
The privileged denigrated all whites unlike themselves. Then Hillary made her “deplorables” speech, confirming her contempt for half of America–those uneducated, shapeless, dull-witted proles in Flyover Land, obese, farting and belching, swilling Bud, watching NASCAR for god’s sake in awful trailers. And why not not sneer at them? Why did Hillary need their votes? Did not Rachel Maddow love her?
For Trump it was gold, pure gold. If he had written her speech, he could not have come up with a better line to destroy her. It was the purest product of the establishment’s hubris. She did it to herself. Sweet.
It made him President.
Black Lives Matter also did yeoman work for the Donald. As they and snowflake Brown Shirts and excited millennials blocked highways and beat Trump’s supporters and shut down rallies, and vandalized cars, and of course looted, they presumably thought they were working against the Trump Monster. Not a chance. Out there in the uncharted barbarian lands between Manhattan and Hollywood, in dark primeval forests where Cro-Magnons are still a rarity, people were sick of lawlessness, and of an establishment that tolerated it. It produced more votes, perhaps not for Trump or even against Hillary but against the class that she represented.
Immigration. Here Hillary and Obama did great work for Donald. As Obama frantically brought in as many “refugees” as possible from everywhere, anywhere that might not be compatible with the people upon whom he would force them, Hillary promised to import huge numbers of Muslims. It was luminously stupid politics, but politically she was luminously stupid, so it fit.
It is why she is not President.
She knew that the backward peoples of Flyover Land ought to want hundreds of thousands of Somalis and Pakistanis and who-knew-what to live with, and if they didn’t, she would force them and it didn’t matter because she had big donors and everybody in the media loved her.
However incoherent and ignorant Trump was, the Establishment was determined to elect him. Elect him it did.
(Hat tip: Borepatch.)
The end of identity politics? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
You know those sacred medicare funds? Obama has raided them to help take care of illegal aliens.
Germany’s security agency infiltrated by a jihadist. (Hat tip: Ace.)
The pension fund for Dallas policeman and firefighters is teetering on insolvency thanks to risky investments.
Don’t agree with everything in this John Gray essay on the closing of the liberal mind, published right before Trump’s election, but there’s a lot to chew over concerning the post-liberal world order, and especially the Labour Party’s relation to it. “Labour has become unelectable in any foreseeable future.”
Banks in India run out of money thanks to the idiot currency ban:
Many in north India who slept outside banks in freezing conditions woke up in the morning to be told only that no cash had arrived.
“I have been doing the rounds of banks for the past 20 days and have been unable to withdraw my own money,” said Balbir Singh, a junior executive in a private firm in New Delhi. “Even on payday the story was the same: the bank said it simply had no money to disburse, even though I have ample credit in my account.”
Turkish Lira collapses.
Global warming: “Since 1940 the sea level off of northern Washington has dropped about 15 cm. (6 inches).”
How Gary Taubes overcame the severe backlash over his famous expose of how low fat diets fail compared to low carb diets like Atkins.
Chicago’s real estate market expect to rank dead last. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Will Wallace Hall have the last laugh on his UT records request? (Hat tip: Cahman’s Musings.)
Smoking marijuana inhibits blood flow to the brain.
The science of the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Nothing says “class” like wearing an ascot, sipping a glass of wine, and spray-painting “Fuck Trump” on a supermarket wall.
The wit and wisdom of Robert Stacy McCain.
A startling factoid:
Less startling, still interesting:
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
A concise definition of the issue:
Tags:Alan Dershowitz, Atkins, Boston, Chicago, Christmas, Dallas, Donald Trump, Elaine Chao, Elizabeth Warren, Fidel Castro, France, Gary Taubes, Germany, Global Warming, India, Israel, Jihad, Jill Stein, Keith Ellison, marijuana, Marine Le Pen, Randi Weingarten, Robert Stacy McCain, Rotherham, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Trump Cabinet, University of Texas, Wallace Hall
Posted in Border Control, Communism, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, April 22nd, 2016
As today is a made-up celebration called “Earth Day,” be sure to have beef for dinner…
Reminder: “Officials at VA’s Phoenix hospital manipulated wait-time data to make it appear they were connecting doctors and veterans seeking appointments much faster than they actually were. This was done so VA managers at the Arizona facility could keep getting generous performance bonuses. They got their bonuses but dozens of waiting veterans died.” So how did the VA address the problem? They hired someone accused of doing the exact same thing at another hospital.
Huge ObamaCare premium hikes are coming down the pike in 2017. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
“The largest health insurer in the U.S. has started pulling out of select Obamacare exchanges.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Eight more ObamaCare co-ops are about to bite the dust.
Meanwhile, ObamaCare is helping enourage opioid addiction.
Thanks to Obama’s supergenius management, the Taliban are now winning in Afghanistan.
“The National Labor Relations Board suspended a top-ranking Philadelphia official after receiving complaints that he helped raise money from unions for his pro-union charity.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Following a congressional subpoena over Benghazi, Hillary’s state department staff hid requested files in another department. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Is Rhode Island closing 66% of polling places for next week’s presidential primaries? Something smells.
How Ted Cruz could beat Hillary Clinton. “Clinton is entering the general election with glaring vulnerabilities of her own. Her image is toxic to Republicans and independents, and her popularity among Democrats is now at an all-time low as a presidential candidate, according to Gallup’s polling. It won’t take a top-tier Republican candidate to win.” Also: “Cruz consistently runs far more competitively against Clinton than Trump does.”
“It’s not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.”
Donald Trump jumps on the social justice warrior tranny bathroom bandwagon.
Evidently accused pedophile Terry Bean is the one whose organizations are pushing tranny bathroom bills down America’s throats. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Trump convention manager Paul Manafort engages in the time-honored traditional rhetorical device know as “lying your ass off.”
Thomas Sowell on campaign lies and dodgy statistics.
“Although our panel’s original estimates had Trump finishing with 1,175 pledged delegates, my revised deterministic projections have him at 1,155, and the probabilistic version has him at 1,159.”
Ted Cruz has done heavy organizing in California.
Man indicted for selling school supplies to Detroit schools he didn’t actually deliver…with the connivance of several principles receiving kickbacks. Now, remind me: Which party has controlled Detroit for half a century?
Venezuela instituting four hours of blackouts a day, in addition to the previously mentioned three day weekends. That socialist paradise just keeps
Brazil impeaches their President.
Won’t someone please think of poor, penniless Boeing?
When low-fat dogma trumped science: hamburger study data showed exact opposite of study’s conclusions.
Navy chief starving Marine air corps.
“What Women Really Want Is The Patriarchy.”
“‘White Privilege’ Is a Racial Slur.”
“Walden is less a cornerstone work of environmental literature than the original cabin porn: a fantasy about rustic life divorced from the reality of living in the woods, and, especially, a fantasy about escaping the entanglements and responsibilities of living among other people.”
Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano erupts. Popocatepetl is less than 50 miles from Mexico City…
Goldman Sachs pays $5 billion fine to “settle claims that it misled mortgage bond investors during the financial crisis.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Pratt & Whitney pushing a B-52 engine upgrade.
The woman who can’t remember her own past. (Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
Lileks: “Who wouldn’t want to lounge around in a set from a 1970s failed Gene Roddenberry pilot?” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Son, that’s no way to treat steaks. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Afghanistan, Atkins, B-52, Benghazi, Boeing, Brazil, California, Crime, Democrats, Detroit, Donald Trump, Goldman Sachs, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Scandals, James Lileks, Libya, Mexico, Mexico City, Military, National Labor Relations Board, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Oklahoma, Popocatepetl, Rhode Island, Social Justice Warriors, Taliban, Ted Cruz, Terry Bean, Texas, Tranny Bathrooms, unions, Venezuela, Veterans Administration
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Military, ObamaCare, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions | No Comments »
Monday, August 2nd, 2010
For years, the federal government, doctors and nutritionists have treated dietary fat as Public Enemy #1, despite scanty science of a link between fat intake and obesity. Meanwhile, the same people were talking up carbohydrates as a perfectly healthy food choice at the same time when, by an amazing coincidence, Uncle Sam was dishing up tens of billions of dollars in corn and grain agribusiness subsidies.In effect, saying no to meat and fat meant saying yes to high fructose corn syrup.
So a significant portion of Americans start cutting back on fat and loading up the carbs. Then, a little while later, that ungrateful little heretic, Dr. Robert Atkins, has the insolence to point out “Hey, obesity is up, not down, and diabetes is going through the roof. Maybe fat isn’t evil, and maybe too many carbohydrates can make you fat.” The condemnation of the Government Medical Complex was swift and merciless, and only increased in vitriol when he came out with a diet that actually helped people lose weight.
Now comes word that it’s all been one big fat lie. (Preceding pun blatantly stolen from Gary Taubes’ ground-breaking New York Times Atkins story from 2002.) Very large and rigorous scientific studies increasing show no link between dietary fat and obesity.
But don’t expect a significant change in federal government diet guidelines anytime soon, since the Atkins diet is still politically incorrect among the “meat is evil” religious environmentalist crowd, which make up a disproportionate share of our ruling elite. Big government means never having to admit you were wrong…
Tags:agribusiness subsidies, Atkins, diet, health care, high fructose corn syrup
Posted in Regulation, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »