PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● “There were disadvantages to the old culture, it was a bit stuffy and it was more sexist and more racist. But it was an educated and middle-class culture. Now it’s a yob culture. The values are so strange.”

— Monty Python’s John Cleese, quoted by the London Telegraph, April of 2011.

● “Classy! John Cleese calls Ann Coulter & Michelle Malkin ‘assholes’ on International Women’s Day.”

—Twitchy, today.

JOURNALISM: Andrea Mitchell Was ‘Doing Her Job’ But Remember Neil Munro? He Was ‘Heckling’ Obama.

HOW’S THAT $15 AN HOUR WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? Burger-flipping robot replaces humans on first day at work.

A burger-flipping robot has just completed its first day on the job at a restaurant in California, replacing humans at the grill.

Flippy has mastered the art of cooking the perfect burger and has just started work at CaliBurger, a fast-food chain.

The robotic kitchen assistant, which its makers say can be installed in just five minutes, is the brainchild of Miso Robotics.

“Much like self-driving vehicles, our system continuously learns from its experiences to improve over time,” said David Zito, chief executive officer of Miso Robotics.

And this labor-replacing device is being deployed first in California? You don’t say.

OUCH: Iran’s Stealth Fighter Is No F-35.. “The reality is that the Qaher F-313—which was widely derided as a hoax when it was first rolled-out in 2013—is likely nothing more than an ill-conceived propaganda ploy.”

You think we have procurement problems? Iran’s “jet” has no engines, appears to be made of wood, and the cockpit is too small for an adult to sit in. Nevertheless, Tehran claims the “plane” is ready for testing.

Good one, guys.

PACK MORE KETCHUP: Indicators show potatoes can grow on Mars.

DEEP STATE UPDATE: ‘Deep FEC’ Goes After White House Counsel Don McGahn. Honestly, I don’t mind a “one-man wrecking crew.”

GOOD LORD: Illegal Immigrant Arrested for Beheading His Own Mother in N.C.

BIG SCIENCE: Scientists Discover New State of Matter Called ‘Time Crystals’

Two different teams of scientists reported the discovery in the journal Nature on Wednesday. They are the first to directly create and observe time crystals, the long-theorized quantum systems that spin at their own pace independent of their environment, seemingly breaking the rules of normal timekeeping.

One team, led by the University of Maryland, used 10 levitating charged atoms, or ions, to create time crystals with the help of a complicated, colorful network of lasers and mirrors. Another team, led by Harvard University, used lasers, microwaves and black diamonds, which have special impurities the researchers were able to exploit to build the time crystals.

Both experiments arrived at very similar results despite using different approaches.

“That’s really encouraging,” said Frank Wilczek, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who wasn’t involved in either study and writes a column for The Wall Street Journal. It shows that engineering time crystals in the lab might not be as difficult as once thought, he added.

It’s yet unknown whether time crystals exist outside of the lab, scientists said.

In the long term, time-crystal enthusiasts say the underlying physics—and the technology used to probe such quantum systems—could have applications in quantum computing, plus in building more sensitive quantum sensors.

Patrick Bruno, a theoretical physicist at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility who wasn’t involved in the studies, is more skeptical, saying those claims are “highly speculative” and “vague.”

This layman would have to add “nearly incomprehensible.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Therapeutic University: How medicalized language and the therapeutic culture came to dominate Anglo-American institutions of higher education.

That social science research now comes with a health warning is testimony to the ascendancy of therapy culture in Western institutions of higher education.

Since the 1960s, universities have been in the forefront of promoting theories and practices that encourage people to interpret their anxieties, distress, and disappointment through the language of psychological deficits. Until recently, however, how students and faculty coped with their existential problems remained a personal matter. Today, the therapeutic outlook pervades campus culture so thoroughly that it influences how courses are taught, which topics are discussed, and how verbal exchanges are regulated. Teaching, some educators believe, can be trauma inducing, and so they have adopted an explicit “trauma-informed perspective.”

Outside of hospitals, the university has arguably become the most medicalized institution in Western culture. In 21st-century Anglo-American universities, public displays of emotionalism, vulnerability, and fragility serve as cultural resources through which members of the academic community express their identity or make statements about their plight. On both sides of the Atlantic, professional counselors working in universities report a steady rise in demand for mental-health services.

Among academics there is widespread agreement, too, that today’s students are more emotionally fragile and far more likely to present mental health symptoms than in the past. There is little consensus, however, about why this is so.

You get more of what you reward.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Is GOP Health Care Bill a Disaster? No.

Peter Nelson, my colleague at Center of the American Experiment, is one of the country’s leading experts on health care policy. On the Center’s web site, he urges conservatives to take a deep breath and understand the constraints that Congressional Republicans are working under.

In particular, a full repeal of Obamacare must get through the Senate, which means it must get 60 votes. There are only 52 Republican senators. Therefore, the first bill that has been unveiled is intended to be passed under the reconciliation process, which requires only a bare majority. Only Obamacare provisions that have a budgetary impact can be repealed in the reconciliation bill. Other measures will have to follow afterward.

Read the whole thing, although I’m still not convinced that a bad law with GOP fingerprints on it is an improvement over a worse law with Democrat fingerprints on it. Politically it could be much worse.

There’s an argument to be made that in order to keep up hope, the GOP has to be seen doing something about ObamaCare. But the Reid Option, followed swiftly by a full repeal, would actually accomplish what the Republicans have been promising for seven years and four election cycles now. In other words, doing what their constituents sent them to Washington to do.

The current mess looks more like a “You Had One Job!” meme.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Clapper’s Statements Were Revealing by Omission.

“LET’S FACE IT: Right now, when it comes to violent censorship, crime pays,” writes the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s Robert Shibley in The Washington Post.

LOW T: Male Feminists Grovel, Debase Themselves on International Women’s Day.

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KURT SCHLICHTER: Hi, GOP: You Are Terrible and Obamacare Jr. Stinks.

CHINA: U.S. and North Korea Racing Toward ‘Head-On Collision’

What’s most unusual about China’s warning is that they rarely intrude so forcefully in relations between the North and the U.S.. They are usually content to allow Pyongyang to threaten and bluster us while quietly telling them on the sidelines to cool it. And they are rarely so public in their criticism of the North’s nuclear program.

Li’l Kim seems to worry Beijing at least as much as he worries Washington.

ADVICE:

CHANGE: Harvard Is Second Law School To Admit 1Ls Based On GRE Rather Than LSAT.

SO MUCH WINNING YOU’LL BE BORED OF WINNING: Trump’s First Full Month In Office Sees Biggest Job Gain In Years.

DEEP STATE UPDATE: IRS has 7,000 unreleased documents related to conservative and Tea Party targeting.

The IRS has told a federal court that they’ve recently identified almost 7,000 more documents that could contain information on how the agency targeted the tax-exempt applications of Tea Party organizations or other conservative political groups starting back in 2010, according to a court document.

But IRS in the document would not commit to a timeline for releasing the documents.

The revelation of thousands of unreleased documents was made in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that specializes in filing, and in many instances litigating, FOIA requests.

Judicial Watch has done more for transparency than 90% of the press corps.

CHANGE: GOP healthcare plan clears first hurdle.

After an 18-hour session, the House Ways and Means Committee has become the first to approve the Republicans’ Obamacare repeal bill.

White House and Republican congressional leaders had sought to fast track the legislation through Congress. Democrats made clear it wouldn’t be easy — dragging out a grueling day of committee sessions well into the early morning hours. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is still debating.

Democrats won’t make this easy. Complicating things further is that the GOP is fractured on how to best repeal and/or replace ObamaCare.

But then there’s this:

But should the bill eventually fail, Trump outlined a backup plan: Allow Obamcare to fail and let Democrats take the blame, sources said.

Plan B might be the best bad choice.

BUT THAT GOES AGAINST THE NARRATIVE: Trump Offers Russia Ambassador Post To Putin-Critic Jon Huntsman.

I’m having a hard time reconciling stories like these with all the talk about Trump being a Kremlin stooge.

SO THIS IS BEGINNING TO LOOK LIKE A DEBACLE: Resistance grows in Senate to House health bill.

The House bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare is facing growing opposition from Senate Republicans.

The House plan, dubbed the American Health Care Act, is taking fire from both conservative and moderate factions of the Senate GOP caucus—underscoring the perilous path the legislation faces in the upper chamber.

Republicans have a narrow 52-seat majority in the Senate, meaning GOP leadership can only afford to lose two Republican votes. If that occurs, they’d need Vice President Mike Pence to break a dramatic 50-50 tie to pass the bill.

Three days after the reveal of the House bill, GOP senators are signaling that its current form would face a near impossible climb in the Senate, where no Democrat is expected to support it.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) expressed skepticism Wednesday that the current version of the House ObamaCare repeal bill would be able to win enough support among Senate Republicans.

“The House bill is a beginning, but the House bill as drafted, I do not believe, would pass the United States Senate,” the conservative firebrand told reporters.

He said the House bill doesn’t do enough to lower the cost of insurance, and pointed out “significant challenges” with the Medicaid expansion provision. . . .

Cruz’s comments came after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told reporters that the House bill—which he has termed “ObamaCare lite”—will be “dead on arrival” in the upper chamber.

“I think the White House, the administration and the president understand that there’s enough conservatives that they can’t pass ObamaCare Lite,” Paul told CNN’s “New Day” on Wednesday.

The Kentucky Republican is teaming up with members of the House Freedom Caucus to roll out an alternative “clean” repeal bill, mirroring 2015 legislation that conservatives were on board with.

Stay tuned. I would add that “debacle” is my first pass take. I hope it’s as wrong as Paul Krugman’s first pass take on market recovery. . . .

DEAR ACHMED: ISIS Warns of ‘Lack of Manliness’ in Marriage in Relationship Advice Column.