“I’M NOT AGAINST ANYTHING…BUT BAN FRACKING NOW.”

(Via SDA.)

LATIN LEFTY MELTDOWN: Bolivians Reject Evo Morales’s Bid to Lift Term Limits.

Across Latin America, the winds that propelled Leftist regimes have died down. In Argentina, we saw the end of the Kirchner reign and the election of the centrist Mauricio Macri. Brazil’s leftist President Dilma Rousseff is fighting to stave off her own impeachment. And Venezuelans have been struggling to escape the grip of Marxism. Now, even Bolivia’s Evo Morales, long a favorite of leftists around the world, is finding that his popularity has limits. . . .

If there’s one place where President Obama’s restrained foreign policy might be said to have borne fruit, it’s Latin America. In the Obama era, it’s become more difficult for Latin American populists to blame Washington for their countries’ problems. But even if staying uninvolved in Latin America might have worked thus far, that’s already starting to change. President Obama himself plans to visit Argentina next month. And with political turmoil in Brazil and looming civil conflict in Venezuela, Obama’s successor will likely have to spend even more time looking south.

Given Obama’s track record with places that he has focused his attention on — *cough* Syria *cough* — let’s hope he doesn’t pay attention to Latin America before he leaves.

THE CASE AGAINST MAN CAVES: “What differentiates the man cave from these more traditional male spaces is that workshops and studies are designed to accommodate a particular, elevating interest. These rooms are only isolated inasmuch as the activities proper to them are best pursued without distraction. With the man cave, however, the isolation from the family—the escape—is the primary purpose of the space. The man cave, therefore, is the image of the traditional male space without its substance.”

Read the whole thing.

JUST ANOTHER DAY IN “THE MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION IN HISTORY:” A computer network at the Merit Systems Protection Board failed, causing the loss of data concerning civil service workers’ appeals in disciplinary cases. Think what you will of government employees but lost data means every one of those cases will either be dropped or restarted from the beginning, meaning thousands more lost hours of productivity.

But forget about finding out what caused the failure, who if anybody at MSPB was responsible or whether the fix being implemented will work. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton reports that MSPB absolutely refuses to make public a report that would answer such questions for curious taxpayers. The agency’s justification is the Freedom of Information Act’s Exemption Five. That’s the “pre-decisional” exemption that is the most frequently abused of the law’s nine exemptions.

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE: Each American Today Has More Servants Than Did J.D. Rockefeller. And thanks to globalization, most of them don’t intrude on our privacy.

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FIVE MUST-READ EMAILS from the latest Clinton Friday night document dump.

And Phil Kerpen has found some interesting stuff: Sid Blumenthal had satellite data.

And Barbara Mikulski sounds almost like Donald Trump in describing the plight of American workers.

Plus: “I didn’t even know this agency existed.”

THIS IS THE MOST CONSERVATIVE WE’LL EVER SEE TRUMP, posits Ace of Spades:

My problem with Trump is that he is a dealmaker trying to make a sale. Right now he’s trying to make a deal with conservatives — so this is the very most conservative we’ll ever see him.

If he gets the nomination, he now starts working on making the second part of the deal with the other party in the negotiations, the general public.

So this is the most conservative we’ll ever see Trump — this is the absolute most conservative he’ll ever be — and he’s not conservative at all, except, possibly, on immigration. He combines liberal policy impulses with frankly authoritarian or even fascist ones, which he thinks are “what conservatives want,” because, frankly, he conceives of us as ugly-minded, stupid dummies who get off on this shit.

That’s why he didn’t put the “Ban Muslims” line in a more palatable, persuasive form, like “Reduce immigration from Muslim-majority countries or countries with a terrorism problem to a level where we can vet each individual applicant.”

No, he put it in the most bigoted, ugly way he could think of, because that’s about his level, and because, also, that’s what he thinks “conservatives” are.

Even on issues like that, where I would like him to move the Overton Window so we can begin discussing a rational reduction of such immigration until this Jihadist Madness passes from history, I find he doesn’t move it at all, because he makes the issue much more toxic and alienating than it needs to be.

What does Trump actually know about conservatives? He seems to only know five things, which he repeats in such crude ways it’s preposterously insulting.

Plus a vivid contrast of Trump’s flailing tone and debating style with the rigor of Ronald Reagan besting Robert Kennedy in a mid-1960s television debate, during the immediate post-Goldwater-era when conservatism was really in the cultural wilderness, before Ace concludes, “Down With Trump, But Vive Le Trumpism.” Read the whole thing.

VIDEO: A 16-YEAR-OLD SOLVES BRITAIN’S IMMIGRATION PROBLEM. “While there are various differences between Britain’s situation and ours, the girl’s common sense is luminous compared with the obfuscation that so often surrounds discussion of immigration. Plus, Lexie is fun to listen to — it must be the accent.”

RACISM ENDED: Harvard masters reach name change decision — now called ‘faculty deans.’

As Neville Chamberlain and Barack Obama are wont to say, with this, I give you peace in our time.

DISSOLVE THE PEOPLE AND ELECT A NEW ONE: Tony Blair’s cynical conspiracy to deceive the British people and let in 2million migrants against the rules: Explosive new biography lays ex-PM’s betrayal bare. This Labour immigration scandal isn’t exactly news, but has increased resonance now.

TEACH STUDENTS NOT TO LIE ABOUT RACISM: Students who falsely reported a racist attack will be charged.

Several students who falsely claimed they were the victims of a race-based attack at the hands of a dozen white people will be charged, most likely with filing a false report.

The three students at the State University of New York at Albany claimed they were attacked by a dozen white people while riding on a bus in January. The alleged attack quickly caught the attention of Black Lives Matter activists, the school’s president and even presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, all of whom condemned the attack before any evidence was provided.

The evidence showed the attack was a hoax, and in fact that one of the alleged victims threw the first punch. Bus cameras also showed that no passengers yelled racial slurs at the students, as they had claimed, but one of the accusers did use a racial slur against a white passenger.

Nonetheless, SUNY Albany President Robert Jones said he was “deeply concerned, saddened and angry about this incident.” He added that “there is no place in the SUNY Albany community for violence, no place for racial intolerance and no place for gender violence.”

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even tweeted about the incident shortly after protesters took to the campus to decry the alleged assault. Clinton wrote: “There’s no excuse for racism and violence on a college campus.”

One SUNY Albany student actually did become a victim after this story was reported. The brother of one of the accusers — who is a lineman for the San Diego Chargers — threatened a student over Twitter whom he claimed was one of the attackers before quickly deleting the tweet. The threatened student allegedly left school fearing for his safety.

In an odd decision, the Albany County District Attorney actually allowed activists to view evidence of the alleged assault. One activist who viewed the footage of course argued against jailing the accusers, but suggested they apologize.

We cannot keep allowing false accusations to go unpunished.

Nope. And note that the story never quite says that the accusers were black, though it does say that the accused were white. Perhaps if the press abandoned racial double standards in these matters it would help.

THE COMING ANTI-TRUMP ONSLAUGHT: “This will all be in the tradition of the early Democratic ad campaigns that successfully kneecapped Republican nominees in 1996 and 2012 (Bob Dole and Mitt Romney, respectively). Trump’s negatives are already sky-high with the general public (60 percent), and a Democratic campaign to disqualify him would seek to make his unfavorable rating not merely alarming, but completely radioactive. How will Trump fare against such ads? Maybe he will prove impervious to all such criticism, and counterpunch effectively. Or maybe he will wilt under the assault. Who knows? But Democrats will sure as hell find out.”

On the one hand, it will be lots of fun to watch Trump push back, as he switches into full Bane “Crashing the plane – WITH NO SURVIVORS!!” mode in response. But this will also allow Hillary to position herself as the cool, collected and sane moderate and easily contrast herself with a flailing Trump.

Related: Here we go: Outside group hits Trump hard with new ads over Trump University, as Hillary waits to eviscerate Trump with a parade of his victims.

More: Marco Rubio Launches TrumpSlams.com, Slams ‘Biased’ Media for Covering Up Trump’s Liberal Past.

FIRED PROFESSOR MELISSA CLICK CLAIMED SHE THOUGHT STUDENT JOURNALIST HAD A GUN: “Let’s step back for a moment. Click allegedly thought the student had a gun, so her response was to bring other students into the situation, possibly putting them in harm’s way.”

ROLL CALL: New Kirk Ad Hits Duckworth on Syrian Refugees.

Republican Sen. Mark Kirk is spending big against his likely general election opponent, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., with a statewide ad buy hitting Duckworth for her stance on Syrian refugees.

The ad’s narrator says the terrorists who committed the attacks in Paris used fake passports and criticizes Duckworth for allowing 200,000 refugees into the U.S. and contrasts that with Kirk’s stance.

“Mark Kirk is leading the fight to stop refugees until it can be done safely,” the narrator says, before asking, “Who do you trust to protect your family? Mark Kirk.”

In the past, Duckworth’s campaign has said she supports the U.S. resettling 200,000 refugees altogether, including 100,000 from Syria, by the end of 2016.

Eleni Demertzis, communications director for the Kirk campaign, said the ad buy is statewide, will air on broadcast and cable TV, and will cost just slightly more than $800,000.

Kirk and Duckworth have gone back and forth on Syrian refugees in the past, with Duckworth hinting that rhetoric from politicians such as Kirk contributes to Muslim youth in America becoming radicalized. In response, Kirk has called Duckworth “a fool” and also called her “blindly idiotic,” on an Illinois radio show.

I think Kirk has the better of this argument. I suspect that Illinois voters will think the same thing.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE. Naomi Schaefer Riley explores “How US academia steers black students out of science:”  “The real problem is that too many black students are getting a hopelessly inadequate K-12 education and by the time they get to college, their best bet is to major in a subject whose exams have no wrong answers and whose professors engage in rampant grade inflation.”

Read the whole thing.

MORAL ROT AND THE AGE OF TRUMP, as explored by Eliot A. Cohen in the American Interest:

Trump’s rise is only one among many signs that something has gone profoundly amiss in our popular culture. It is related to the hysteria that has swept through many campuses, as students call for the suppression of various forms of free speech and the provision of “safe spaces” where they will not be challenged by ideas with which they disagree. The rise of Trump and the fall of free speech in academia are equal signs that we are losing the intellectual sturdiness and honesty without which a republic cannot thrive.

But the moral rot seeped into the modern-day American overculture long ago. I’ll eschew the usual conservative jeremiads on the radical changes in culture during the 1960s and ‘70s. But at some point in the mid-1980s, left-leaning programming executives decided that Howard Stern, Jerry Springer, and Morton Downey Jr. would bring in big ratings on radio and TV via shock. In many ways, the Trump campaign feels like a 24/7 version of the Morton Downey Jr. Show, right down to the fact that Downey was a former Democrat who saw an opening with conservative voters to exploit via an aggressive in-your-face Noooo Yewk attitude. (Particularly this past week, when Al Sharpton, whose public career began on the Downey show, made his inevitable guest appearance in the presidential campaign.)

As with Obama in 2008, whatever his many transgressions, it’s tough to complain about Trump intuitively understanding that today’s pop culture was built for him to exploit to the fullest. “Years from now they’ll say: the center didn’t hold. The tree was hollow. All it took was one hard push from a virtuoso demagogue,” Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal writes on Twitter. Ah, but which one?

AND THEN SHE BOILED THE PET NBC PEACOCK: ‘I Will Not Be Used As a Tool for Their Purposes’: MSNBC Host Melissa Harris-Perry Unleashes on Network in Brutal Letter.

Which in turn is brutally fisked, old-school style, by Ace:  “Hey, remember when you reminded yourself of what real ‘working hard’ was, with that picture of the family of slaves? Maybe you should show yourself that picture.”

THE HILL: The Anti-Trump Onslaught Begins:

Senior-level people in conservative organizations across Washington are firing with both barrels in an attempt to stop Trump’s march to the GOP presidential nomination, multiple sources tell The Hill.

One conservative nonprofit is launching a multimillion-dollar campaign of raw attack ads against the front-running candidate ahead of next week’s Super Tuesday contests.

The group, American Future Fund, is buying ads that feature people who claim to be victims of “fraud” it says is perpetrated by one of the real estate mogul’s business ventures, Trump University.

The ad campaign is among several anti-Trump attacks announced over the past 24 hours, as mainstream Republicans make a desperate attempt to stop his rise.

Just a reminder; If “mainstream Republicans” had fought as hard against Obama in 2008 and 2012, they wouldn’t have to worry about Trump now.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Trump Wants to ‘Open Up’ Libel Laws to Easily Sue Media.

DONALD TRUMP, CHRISTIAN MARTYR.

CATHY YOUNG: Vexing Backlash Over Gender Issue: “Political correctness is sometimes dismissed as an overused cliché. But the real thing does exist — and its chilling effects are not limited to college campuses. The latest tale of ideology-driven bullying comes from the world of clinical psychotherapy and science journalism.”

EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Meerkat expert cleared of assaulting monkey trainer in love spat over llama-keeper.

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(And via Justice Don Willett, the legendary Tweeter Laureate of Texas.)

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GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, AND TWITTER: The New Mind Control? And manipulating elections.