ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY: Last American jurisdiction with a total handgun ban?
Archive for 2014
September 10, 2014
IT’S COME TO THIS: Psychologist: Minorities Are Obese Because of Racism.
AT AMAZON, deals out the wazoo on Pest Control Products. A dead bug is a good bug.
TWEET OF THE DAY. Uh oh.
In charge of successfully coordinating a global take-down of the psychopaths who wish to see the west burn ➡ pic.twitter.com/ll7a2s1z8b
— LittleMissRightie (@LilMissRightie) September 10, 2014
UPDATE: Okay, actually, this might be the Tweet Of The Day.
@EdAlvarezB @instapundit @voxdotcom I got a Mercedes-Benz ad at top of page. Lol. pic.twitter.com/JwLHJIZI7r
— Rob Sterling (@Mr_Sterling) September 11, 2014
FIRST-WORLD FEMINIST PROBLEMS: Vancouver feminists up in arms over Naked Sushi. From the photo, I agree with Vancouver model Jessica Perry, who says, “Personally, I find it something quite beautiful.”
There are no photos of the angry feminists, clothed or otherwise. But there’s much more here, including much mockery.
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Emails: IRS worker got $138,000 to do ‘nothing’ — and union saved her job.
THIS IDEA MUST BE ANTI-WOMAN, NOW THAT REPUBLICANS ARE ENDORSING IT: Sell Birth Control Over-the-Counter. “Over-the-counter birth control is an idea whose time has come — if Democrats will let it.”
ADVICE: Stop Dressing Like A Slob When Traveling. I don’t wear a tie, but I do generally wear a nice sportcoat. I feel like you get treated better when you don’t look like a slob. Also, I like the pockets for boarding passes, etc.
On Facebook, Jon Ham comments: “The most graphic example I’ve ever seen of how far we’ve come since the ’60s as far as dressing for travel is concerned is in the surfing movie ‘Endless Summer.’ These two surfer dudes travel the world to find the best waves, but whenever they got on a plane, they put on coats and ties.”
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Tips for guys on how to stop raping (that won’t protect them from being accused these days). Well, now that rape has been redefined as “any interaction with a man, even far short of sex, that a woman regrets,” tips from a few years ago are bound to be obsolete.
CYBERWARFARE: A War Of Zeros And Ones.
ON THE UPSIDE, IT WOULD STILL DO LESS DAMAGE THAN OBAMA HAS: Stephen Hawking Fears Higgs Boson Doomsday, and He’s Not Alone. “The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100 [billion] gigaelectronvolts (GeV). … This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light. This could happen at any time and we wouldn’t see it coming.”
STEPHEN GREEN: Dear Apple: Why A Watch?
EVERYBODY LIKES A NUMBER OR A PRECISE LOCATION, EVEN IF THEY’RE HOOEY: Turns Out Cell Phone Location Data Is Not Even Close To Accurate, But Everyone Falls For It. “A rather depressing story in The Economist notes that, thanks to this kind of ignorance (combined with bogus cop shows on TV that pretend cell site data is good for pinpointing locations), cell site location data is frequently used to convict innocent people. The story opens with a ridiculous example, in which a woman was pressured into a plea bargain based on totally false claims about tower location data.”
ILYA SOMIN: Assessing a possible Scottish secession. “I think it’s clear that Scottish independence isn’t inherently objectionable. Whether it is actually a good idea is a much tougher call.”
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Indestructible Starfish Robots Could Save Your Life One Day. So I’d kinda be disappointed if that weren’t the case.
THE FRACKING BOOM: DOING WHAT THE “STIMULUS” FAILED TO DO: Boom in Energy Spurs Industry in the Rust Belt.
Related: Data on $800 billion in stimulus spending will disappear this year. How convenient. Certainly an excellent contrast between the America that works and the one that doesn’t, a comparison I’ve noted before.
Plus, unlike the stimulus, the fracking boom provides politically incorrect jobs for burly men.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The World At War.
IN THE MAIL: From David Lat, Supreme Ambitions: A Novel.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Escort Passport 8500X50 Black Radar Detector, $189.99 (44% off).
And, also today only: Up to 50% Off Select TRENDnet Networking Devices. I have one of their little travel routers. It’s nice.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 489.
AUSTIN BAY: Barack Obama’s Revived War On Terror. You know, we should have just elected Cheney in ’08. It would have saved a lot of wasted motion.
Related: Two Administrations In One! “Huh — it was just a month and a half ago when the Obama administration begged Congress to prevent it from going to war in Iraq.”
UPDATE: For extra comic relief: Obama Will Fight ISIS With George W. Bush’s Legal Theories.
A haiku:
Frowning at Isis
Obama tries old tools
Dick Cheney smiles.
Okay, not a great haiku. But still . . .
ANOTHER UPDATE: From the comments:
New War on Terror,
I evolved on Gay Marriage,
I’m now Dick Cheney
Well, more like Dick Cheney’s slower little brother or something.
THE AMERICAN INTEREST: Pierre Omidyar, Glenn Greenwald, and Their War on Israel.
When it comes to the Middle East, however, The Intercept’s slant becomes far more pronounced. While the war between Israel and Hamas was raging, for instance, it published around a half-dozen pieces about Gaza that proffered a one-sided view, to put it in the most generous possible terms.
In one of those articles for instance (“Cash, Weapons, and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack“), we learn that the war, which in fact began with the Hamas kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers and then rocket fire from Gaza directed at Israeli civilian centers, supposedly began as the result of an “Israeli attack on Gaza.” The “aggression” was sponsored by the “indispensable, direct involvement of the U.S. government,” which “has long lavished overwhelming aid on Israel, providing cash, weapons and surveillance technology,” all of which “enable Israel’s military assaults” and its “massacres” of Gaza’s “trapped civilian population.”
In another piece (“Terrorism in the Israeli Attack on Gaza”) we are instructed that the term “terrorism” is much misused. Indeed, as applied to Hamas and the Palestinians, it is nothing more than a “fear-mongering slogan.” Israel is the party using “massive, brutal force against a trapped civilian population, overwhelmingly killing innocent men, women and children,” and if anyone deserves to be called terrorists, it is the Israelis. “The most generous claim one can make about what Israel is now doing in Gaza,” writes Greenwald in yet another contribution, “is that it is driven by complete recklessness toward the civilian population it is massacring.”
Augmenting this commentary is Greenwald’s prolific Twitter output (at last count, more than 48,000 tweets), in which his hatred of the Jewish state takes its most pristine form.
Greenwald’s published some interesting stuff, but I’ve never believed that he has the best interests of the West at heart.