Archive for 2016

SARAH HOYT: I AM ALIVE. “Apparently my life was getting boring so this morning, in the shower, it seemed a good idea to have a cardiac episode.”

Hit her PayPal button if you’re so inclined.

WE MAY NEVER KNOW THEIR MOTIVATION: One year after the San Bernardino attack, police offer a possible motive as questions still linger. “Before the couple got married and Malik came to the United States, the two exchanged messages online ‘showing signs in their communication of their joint commitment to jihad and to martyrdom,’ FBI Director James B. Comey said last year.”

It’s an enigma.

Plus: “One person working in the neighborhood told a local outlet he had seen numerous Middle Eastern men in the area but did not report anything to avoid racial profiling. Another man told a local broadcast station that an unspecified person saw purported suspicious activity — including the couple getting numerous deliveries and working in the garage at odd times — but, again, did not want to be seen as involved in racial profiling.”

ONLY IN 2016 DO YOU SURRENDER BY HAULING YOUR FLAG UP: Hampshire College returns US flag to full staff; president denies playing politics.

UPDATE: Thoughts from Mike Rowe. “Tuition at Hampshire College is about $60,000 a year. That’s not a problem because it’s expensive – it’s a problem because 85% of Hampshire students qualify for some form of federal financial aid. http://bit.ly/2gsZxnk. That means that We the People are enabling schools like Hampshire to sell a liberal arts degree for approximately $250,000.”

It’s like there’s some sort of Higher Education Bubble or something.

THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS GIFT: Chia Donald Trump.

I’LL HAVE WHAT THE GENTLEMAN ON THE FLOOR IS READING: Columbia Room Has a Cocktail Literally Made With Old Books.

Columbia Room has played around with plenty of unusual ingredients, like fig leaf milk and potato water, in its cocktails. But “In Search of Time Past” — the third drink on its current tasting menu—is the most Portlandia yet.

That’s because it includes a tincture made of old books. Literally. Really literally.

Owner Derek Brown got the idea after visiting El Celler de Can Roca in Spain, where he encountered candied page fragments on the avant-garde tasting menu.
“He was morbidly fascinated by it,” says head bartender JP Fetherston. So, the team began working on a cocktail that would replicate the sensation of opening an old book or walking into an old library.

That old book smell is so delightful, I once bought a 19th Century geography primer in terrible condition, just because it smelled more like old books than any of my other old books did.

Fascinating, indeed.

MARK STEYN: Make Kellogg’s Gr-rr-rr-rr-rreat Again. “America is a split nation politically. If the likes of Kellogg’s and Anheuser-Busch want to extend that split to beer and corn flakes, there won’t be a lot left. The damage is not just to their brand but to the kind of civil society that produces companies like theirs. If the left really cannot handle losing an election, why don’t they just cut to the chase and demand full-out civil war?” Give ’em until February.

JILL GLAM, HILLARY SCAM: They’re both ridiculous Tramtrumettes, but hey — it’s 2016!

CHANGE: Trump makes history with phone call to Taiwan leader. “Trump’s transition team confirmed late Friday that the president-elect had spoken by phone on Friday with Taiwan’s president, the first conversation between a U.S. president or president-elect with Taiwan’s leader since 1979, when the two countries severed diplomatic ties. . . . The phone call will almost certainly infuriate Beijing, which sees Taiwan as a breakaway province. Jimmy Carter formally declared Beijing the sole government of China in 1979, which ended formal U.S. diplomatic relations with Taiwan.”