A LONG TIME AGO IN AN AMERICA FAR, FAR AWAY: On this day in pop culture history, Star Wars entered our galaxy.
Archive for 2016
May 25, 2016
HOW TRUMP GETS ELECTED; HEADLINES SUCH AS THIS: No Humanity Left: Trump Supporter in Wheelchair Assaulted By Protesters.
HOW SKYNET IS BORN: Facebook Plans to Boost Its Translations Using Neural Networks This Year.
I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: First movies of droplets getting blown up by x-ray laser.
BLACK PRIVILEGE: Milo Yiannopoulos Assaulted By Crazy Student Protesters at DePaul, Cops Do Nothing.
DePaul University Black Lives Matter protesters shut down a Milo Yiannopoulos event on Tuesday night. They justified their illiberal actions on grounds that Yiannopoulos’s speech spreads hate and violence—which, incidentally, is true, given that the students retaliated by literally attacking him.
In video footage of the event, a female protester can clearly be seen striking Yiannopoulos in the face. This took place during the Q and A, which was interrupted by the female student and another activist, student Edward Ward. They were joined by ten other irate students. Yiannopoulos’s supporters tried to stop them, and police and security were called.
But neither the police nor campus security did anything to stop the activists. This was ironic, because DePaul had forced the College Republicans to pay several hundred extra dollars for security for the event, according to The College Fix.
Sounds like DePaul has created a hostile educational environment on account of race. I hope that some DePaul students file a complaint with the Department of Education, then publicize the response. You know that if the races had been reversed here there would already be feds onsite.
KATIE COURIC ACCUSED OF DOCTORING INTERVIEWS IN ANTI-GUN FILM.
Listen to the raw audio; it’s yet another reminder that anyone being interviewed should always demand to record separate audio and/or video. If if the producer or journalist refuses, you can pretty much be assured of what’s to come.
UPDATE: Via the Washington Free Beacon, here’s how Couric’s “documentary” presented the exchange with the Virginia Citizens Defense League. Compare the audio version of what happens after the same question, which can also be found at the Beacon’s link. As the WFB notes, “Misleading editing used to make gun advocates appear stumped by simple question.”
https://youtu.be/V6_9q8K2VK8
More: “What they were actually up to here is something ‘The Daily Show’ has been accused of for years, truncating long exchanges from interviews to make it seem as though the subject is an imbecile who hasn’t anticipated the most basic challenges to his position,” Allahpundit writes, adding, “By the way: Guess where Katie was last night to promote this hatchet job. Right.”
(Bumped and updated.)
WELL, YES: Government Recommendations Are Making The World Obese.
It’s all part of preparing people for the alien invasion and subsequent famines.
AT AMAZON, deals on SOG Knives & Tools.
I’D LIKE ONE AS A HOME-DEFENSE WEAPON, IN CASE I’M ATTACKED BY TERMINATOR ROBOTS OR SOMETHING: The Army Brings Back the M3 Carl Gustav.
BURIED LEDE ON THE FIRING OF TSA SECURITY HEAD KELLY HOGGAN: Whistleblowers were punished. “His agency is on the defensive after three former TSA employees testified that they were retaliated against after ‘directed reassignments,’ where employees who have highlighted wrongdoing within the administration are shifted to other assignments.”
WHO’S TO BLAME for the opioid epidemic. I’d be happy if we’d quit using the term “epidemic” for behaviors instead of infections.
WHY SHOULD CITIZENS FOLLOW THE LAW, IF THE GOVERNMENT WON’T? D.C. Attorney General Ignores Court Order, Refuses Gun Permits.
The D.C. Attorney General is Karl Racine.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Suburbs (Continue to) Dominate Jobs and Job Growth.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
A memorandum by a former Presidential aide depicts Hillary Rodham Clinton as the central figure in the 1993 travel office dismissals, a politically damaging episode that the aide said had resulted from a climate of fear in which officials did not dare question Mrs. Clinton’s wishes.
The newly released draft memorandum, written by David Watkins, the former top administrative aide at the White House, also sharply contradicts the White House’s official account of Mrs. Clinton as merely an interested observer in the events that led to the dismissal of the White House travel staff and their replacement with Clinton associates from Arkansas.
In the memorandum, apparently intended for Thomas F. McLarty, who was the White House chief of staff, Mr. Watkins wrote that “we both know that there would be hell to pay” if “we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the First Lady’s wishes.”
— “Memo Places Hillary Clinton At Core of Travel Office Case,” the New York Times, January 5th, 1996.
● “Hillary Clinton: ‘You’re fired’ won’t work in the White House.”
— USA Today, err, today.
HOW DO YOU GET TO CARNEGIE HALL? “DELIBERATE PRACTICE,” YOUNG MAN; “DELIBERATE PRACTICE:”
Why do some people achieve outsize success? Given the competitive nature of the modern world, it’s a question many have spent time thinking about. The usual answer is that success results from some combination of talent, luck, and hard work. Tales of prodigies and “naturals,” born ready to conquer the world, tend to minimize the importance of hard work, but the whole formula may need a rethink. That’s the message of Peak, a new book by Florida State University psychology professor Anders Ericsson and science writer Robert Pool. Ericsson has spent decades studying the concept of “deliberate practice,” the sort of hard, unglamorous focus on improvement that gets results. This highly readable book distills Ericsson’s work for a general audience, while raising thought-provoking questions about what talent really is.
Read the whole thing.
AND YET CHAVEZ WAS TREATED AS A HERO, AND PINOCHET IS STILL TREATED AS A VILLAIN: 5 Ways Capitalist Chile is Much Better Than Socialist Venezuela.
WHO CAUSED LAST NIGHT’S ANTI-TRUMP RIOTS? “Republican Dan Lewis, the President of the Albuquerque City Council issued this statement,” Larry O’Connor writes at Hot Air today. Here is Lewis’s statement:
“The violence that we’re seeing this evening is absolutely unacceptable, and it is not the fault of Donald Trump, his campaign, or the attendees at the rally this evening. It is directly the result of so called public interest groups, such as ProgressNM and the Southwest Organizing Project, fomenting hate. These organizations this evening devolved from community action groups to hate groups by every usual measure. This was not a protest – it was a riot that was the result of a mob trying to cause damage and injury to public property and innocent citizens exercising their constitutional right to peaceably assemble.”
“Thank you,” O’Connor adds. “And the statement from local Democrats? Can’t find one.” Well, other than their operatives with bylines at CNN, who describe last night’s riot as a mere “scuffle.”
Here’s an AP photo of the Albuquerque PD’s anti-scuffle brigade, who would eventually fire smoke grades (and according to some reports, pepper spray) at the mostly peaceful scufflers. Many more dramatic photos of the scuffle at Hot Air.
As John Hinderaker concludes in a Power Line titled “Electing Trump, One Riot at a Time,” “Liberals will try to imply that violence by anti-Trump rioters is somehow Trump’s fault, but they can’t sell that theory. Most people dislike riots and rioters just as much today as they did in 1968. Trump has risen to the top of the political heap in large part because of the enemies he has made. During the primaries, the more he was denounced by liberal reporters, the more votes he got. The same will happen in the general election if voters see that he is besieged by left-wing rioters.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Why Republicans Will Vote For Trump. If we keep seeing things like what happened last night in Albuquerque and at DePaul, lots of Democrats will, too.
IN THE MAIL: From Naomi Schaefer Riley, The New Trail of Tears: How Washington Is Destroying American Indians.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Up to 60% off Luggage and Accessories.
And, also today only: save 33% on a Dremel 3000 Rotary Tool and accessories.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1112. It’s a big one today.