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Archive for 2016
December 27, 2016
HMM: WHAT’S THE COMMON FACTOR? Boxing Day fights: Violence erupts in over a dozen US malls.
UH OH: Leaked Document: U.S. Colluded With Palestinians 10 Days Before UN Settlements Vote.
This is a big deal. Is it true? The State Department denies it, natch, but it fits. And the leak is quite damaging. This is what you get when you spend eight years ignoring communications security and then try to pull a fast one. I guess that’s called “smart diplomacy.”
UPDATE: Even National Journal says Obama’s just helping Trump win in 2020 here: Obama’s Parting Shot Against His Party: By thumbing his nose at Israel as he leaves office, the president shows he didn’t learn anything from this year’s election.
Obama never cared about his party except as a tool for his own ambitions. In fact, he’s better off with a Republican in the White House and a weak Democratic Party. Democrats are just beginning to figure this out. . . .
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: This Is What I Think And This Is What Other People Think Scholarship Looks Like. Relating to current Emolument Clause discussions.
TRUMP STOCK RALLY SPOOKS LIBERALS. “The S&P stood at 2,129.92 on election day, and closed at 2,268.88 today. Of course, the stock market rises and falls for reasons that have nothing to do with politics. But liberals’ claims that Trump’s election has nothing to do with the rising market are refuted rather decisively by today’s news that consumer sentiment has reached a 12-year high.”
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Baby’s skull rebuilt at Stony Brook with help of 3-D printer model.
HOPEFULLY THE 49ERS AREN’T THINKING MUCH ABOUT IT, EITHER: Kaepernick insists he’s not thinking about future with 49ers.
Naturally, AP’s article contains zero references to the former quarterback’s dramatic transformation from gridiron warrior to fulltime social justice warrior.
SOWELL PATROL: 14 Amazing Thomas Sowell Quotes in Honor of His Last Column.
YES, LET’S USE CARRIE FISHER’S DEATH TO GO FULL SJW ON HER FELLOW CELEBRITIES EXPRESSING THEIR CONDOLENCES:
Because there’s never a wrong time to shame someone for doubleplusungood crimethink, not least of which when they’re in shock, mourning the death of a colleague. That way, they’ll really learn their lessons.
When George Lucas wrote Star Wars, he viewed North Vietnam as the good guys and the America of the ’60s and ’70s as the evil Empire. And in the last quarter century, the American left have been busy trying to inflict communist speech codes on the rest of us. Now they’ve spread to attacking their own, including fellow leftists, such as Martin. It’s a shame Martin deleted his tweet – he should have kept it online to demonstrate that he won’t be bullied by the PC police.
LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT MEEE! Top Twitter Troll Shanley Kane Attacks Carrie Fisher.
Flashback: Milo Yiannopoulos: The Madness of Queen Shanley. “We effectively allow these far-left social engineers, who spend their lives trying to make men feel inferior about their gender and skin colour (yes, the irony is lost on them), to say what they want and behave as they please out of misplaced middle-class guilt—a sneaking suspicion that they probably have a point. But they don’t: they’re bullies and attention seekers, hawking snake oil.”
Related (From Ed): On Christmas Eve, Kyle Smith of the New York Post asked, “When did epic self-absorption become an admirable trait?”
I don’t know the definitive origin story, but that trend was certainly accelerated exponentially when it was discovered to generate enormous clicks on the Internet.
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WHAT HATH MERKEL WROUGHT: 6 Syrians, 1 Libyan arrested in Berlin for attempting to set homeless man on fire on Christmas Eve.
I KNOW WHO I’D RATHER FLY WITH:
The guy in front of me tried to get his saber through airport security. The results were predictable. pic.twitter.com/TfsE3az8T3
— Jillian Melchior (@JillianKayM) December 26, 2016
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is the 30-30 Winchester Outdated?
HE’S EMINENTLY MOCKABLE: Israeli Ambassador Mocks ‘Expert at Fiction’ Ben Rhodes.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Woman accused of having sex with a Dachshund. Okay, to be fair, I doubt it was rape since what I’ve observed of dog behavior suggests that they’re not too fussy.
Related: Police: Woman recorded herself having sex with two dogs. In both cases, I don’t see why this isn’t constitutionally protected “intimate behavior” under Lawrence v. Texas.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: Words of wisdom over the years from Dr. Thomas Sowell.
MICHAEL WALSH: In the Wake of Trump’s Election, Consumer Confidence Soars.
Unexpectedly!, as Obama’s hagiographiers at Bloomberg would say. Around this time in 2008, Time magazine and other leftists were busy describing BHO as the next FDR, but as Amity Shlaes, the historian of the Depression that FDR prolonged by eight years warned, business and consumer uncertainty during a regulatory-obsessed socialist regime is a great way to keep a stagnant economy from catching fire.
BODY OF WORK: 14 Other Movies Featuring Star Wars Actress Carrie Fisher.
Her best performance was probably in When Harry Met Sally…, which went on to inspire a thousand inferior romcoms. And her “Mystery Woman” in The Blues Brothers set up the funniest scene in an already very funny movie.
SACRAMENTO STRONG-ARM: California Now Mandating EVs from Volkswagen.
PRIVACY: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case.
Amazon’s Echo devices and its virtual assistant are meant to help find answers by listening for your voice commands. However, police in Arkansas want to know if one of the gadgets overheard something that can help with a murder case. According to The Information, authorities in Bentonville issued a warrant for Amazon to hand over any audio or records from an Echo belonging to James Andrew Bates. Bates is set to go to trial for first-degree murder for the death of Victor Collins next year.
Amazon declined to give police any of the information that the Echo logged on its servers, but it did hand over Bates’ account details and purchases. Police say they were able to pull data off of the speaker, but it’s unclear what info they were able to access. Due to the so-called always on nature of the connected device, the authorities are after any audio the speaker may have picked up that night. Sure, the Echo is activated by certain words, but it’s not uncommon for the IoT gadget to be alerted to listen by accident.
It’s unclear from this story whether Amazon could have gotten the data but declined to do so, or if the data was encrypted in such a way that the company could not have retrieved it even had they wanted to. If it’s the former, then Amazon could be in legal trouble for failing to comply with a warrant — and Echo customers might want to think twice about having an “always on” device networked to Amazon’s servers.
NATURALLY, HE RESPONDED BY MAKING IT HIS LIFE’S GOAL TO MAX OUT AMERICA’S CREDIT CARD: “Little-known pol Barack Obama had his credit card declined at a rental car counter 16 years ago — an embarrassing moment that nearly led him out of politics, the outgoing president revealed.”