NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: US Marines set up artillery base near Makhmour. “The United States Marine who was killed in an Islamic State (ISIS) rocket attack on Saturday was part of an American fire-base which had been set up near Makhmour. . . . The fire-base is home for a “couple of hundred” Marines who are living in tents on the front-line. There they have set up howitzer artillery guns which will defend Iraqi and Kurdish troops during the upcoming liberation of Mosul. Currently it serves as protection for the nearby base where Americans are training 5,000 Iraqi soldiers who are readying for the long anticipated operation.”
Archive for 2016
March 20, 2016
THIS IS BECAUSE THEY HATE YOU AND THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO ENJOY LIFE: EPA Putting Red Light on Amateur Car Racing: Emission regulations that may not even make a dent on climate change.
THIS IS A KNOWN-UNKNOWN, LIKE A PUTIN INVASION OF UKRAINE OR THE BALTICS: Zika Virus Could Roil American Politics This Summer. There are quite a few of those out there.
There are also unknown-unknowns. There are quite a few of those out there, too, but by definition we don’t know what they are.
Here’s exclusive video footage of the storm in its earliest stages of formation:
TRIUMPH OF TECHNOLOGY: Is That Fried Chicken Gluten-Free? This Gadget Can Tell You.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: An Experimental Autism Treatment Cost Me My Marriage. “Emotions came at me from all directions, so fast that I didn’t have a moment to process them. Before the T.M.S., I had fantasized that the emotional cues I was missing in my autism would bring me closer to people. The reality was very different. The signals I now picked up about what my fellow humans were feeling overwhelmed me. They seemed scared, alarmed, worried and even greedy. The beauty I envisioned was nowhere to be found.” This sounds like a science-fiction story, of the bleak variety.
Plus: “Later, people at work told me they’d liked me better the way I was before.” But, actually, there’s a happy ending.
THE “DARK WEB:” Refuge for criminals? Or for individuals avoiding persecution?
IAN WELSH: Why Poor White Males Are the Core of Trump’s Support. “Do not tell me, or them, that they are ‘privileged.’ Yes, it is better to be poor and white than poor and black, and better to be a poor white man than a poor white woman, but people who are in pain do not react well to some smug, upper-middle-class jerk telling them they are privileged when their lives are clearly terrible. . . . Trump does not talk to these people like he despises them. (Neither does Bernie.) Clinton does. She’s pandering, she knows it, and it comes through. The disdain drips.”
Entirely unrelated observation:
Yes, that’s right. We’ve reached the point where Glenn Greenwald is pointing this stuff out.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1046.
REFERENCE: The XX Committee Hillary EmailGate Reader:
As the big story has developed over the last year regarding Hillary’s problems with her email and her “private” server of bathroom infamy when she was Secretary of State, I’ve been out front on this case, breaking a lot of exclusive stories and providing my unique insights based on my own time in the intelligence business.
For the sake of convenience, particularly for readers who are seeking one-stop-shopping on EmailGate, just as I’ve done with my extensive work on the Edward Snowden debacle, below you’ll find my work on this case — op-eds, extended analysis, blog posts, even a couple extended media interviews on all things EmailGate. Enjoy!
Since Hillary’s strange travails with IT and mishandling official secrets appear to be far from over, this is a living document: I’ll add new links as they appear.
Plus: Lt. General (Ret) Mike Flynn: Why Hillary Clinton Should Suspend Her Presidential Bid.
QUESTION ASKED: Are There Conservative TV Shows?
Feel free to hash it out in the comments, but I would say that CBS is arguably the most-conservative primetime TV channel, at least in terms of its military-friendly NCIS franchises, Blue Bloods and the usually politics-free Big Bang Theory.
Which is remarkable considering that its CEO Les Moonves recently said of Trump’s campaign, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Its nightly news anchor Scott Pelley once likened global warming skeptics to holocaust deniers. John Dickerson, the host of Face the Nation and the “political director” for CBS, wrote an article for Slate in 2013 charmingly titled “Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security advisor is the brother of CBS News president David Rhodes, and CBS pushed out Sharyl Attkisson after her investigative coverage of Obama and Hillary’s Benghazi debacle.
Perhaps Moonves learned his lesson from former NBC head Jeff Zucker (now president of CNN), who learned the hard way that going full SJW in primetime is a recipe for ratings disaster.
HE’S JUST TROLLING US NOW: Obama irony alert: The Supreme Court should be above politics.
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MEH. “SEXUAL HARASSMENT” IS SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED. Finding sexual harassment everywhere, even among birds.
Modern society has become so obsessed with finding gender discrimination that we are now finding it in animal behavior.
First let me point out that this is being done by just a handful of researchers, in a single scientific journal. Science isn’t (I hope) suddenly going to lurch toward explaining almost every behavior as having to do with sexism.
The researchers have suggested that one of the reasons that females in the animal world are not as colorful or pretty as males of the same species is so that they can avoid sexual harassment. Big eyeroll. . . .
Here are some of the other theories for why female animals just aren’t as pretty to look at as males (all of which I find more believable):
Males are the ones competing for females, so they need to look good to do so and display the best genes for mating.
Females are less colorful so that they can blend in with their surroundings — camouflage — and better protect their eggs.
Lots of color and ornamentation would reduce female fertility, as they would have to exert more energy to produce those ornaments.
Science.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. What David Brooks Wrote About Trump Could Be Just As Easily Said of Obama.
Obama was a creation of the media, who set about in 2008 to convince America that a good-looking, youngish Chicago machine hack and failed community organizer who, like Johnny Bravo “fit the suit” (insert obligatory Brooks pants reference here) was the second coming of Lincoln, FDR and JFK all rolled into one and wound up, as Obama himself would say, believing their own bulls***. Trump has spent his life wallowing in that media and using it to advance his goals and extend his publicity. Like radioactivity spawning Godzilla, the DNC-MSM shouldn’t be surprised that their foul industrial output led to this point.
THE DESIRE NAMED STREETCAR: in “Why You Should Think Twice Before Building a Rail Transit System,” Aaron Renn of the Manhattan Institute notes:
Metro has a large unfunded maintenance liability. This doesn’t surprise us because we expect American transit systems to have a backlog.
The difference is that unlike NYC, Chicago, Boston, etc., which have systems a century old, the Washington Metro system is actually new.
The oldest part of the Metro opened in 1976. That means Metro is 40 years old – max. Much of it is actually newer than that.
Forty years after opening, Metro already faces a maintenance crisis.
This should give other regions pause when it comes to building a rail transit system. My colleague Alex Armlovich points out that NYC has more or less been on a 40 year refresh cycle, with two rounds of major system investment since the subways opened. This doesn’t seem out of line as a capital life heuristic to me.
So cities need to keep in mind that if they build a rail system, they not only have to pay to build it, they pretty much have to pay to rebuild it every 40 years. This is a challenge because as we see it’s easier to muster the will to build something new than to maintain something you already have.
Given the huge permanent capital outlays implied by rail transit, you only want to build it where there’s sufficient value to justify it. Washington unquestionably achieves this. It simply hasn’t been able to capture the value into a maintenance revenue stream, plus Metro (like many systems) has been badly mismanaged.
Sadly, given the enormous potential for graft, union construction handouts, and featherbedding, most city planners view the prospect of huge capital outlays on a regular basis being spent on a rail transit system’s infrastructure and rolling stock as a hugely desirable feature, not a bug. Which is the very same reason they prefer light rail over simply buying more busses as needed, despite the fact that the busses can run anywhere, and their routes can be easily changed as circumstances demand.
MICHAEL WALSH: Nest of Vipers: Brussels and the Rot at the Heart of the EU.
DAVID SOLWAY: MISUNDERSTANDING ISLAM:
We need to remember that Islam may be recessive at times, active at others, but its essence cannot be changed. It is like a volcano that never goes extinct and we are wrong to regard its dormant phases as final. It is always ready to erupt. You cannot reform or re-interpret a volcano, and unless you keep a distance you always risk being buried in the lava of its natal ferocity.
Read the whole thing.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Left-wing Protesters Brought Mob Violence to UC-Berkeley Event Featuring Metallica Drummer.
DEAR CAMPUS SNOWFLAKES, HERE’S WHAT OPPRESSION REALLY LOOKS LIKE.