BRENDAN O’NEILL: The Culture War Over Sweden. “In truth it is thanks to the cult of relativism and the surge in identity politics and the political and intellectual elites turning their backs on the fundamental founding values of the modern West – liberty, democracy and tolerance – that our societies have become confused and tetchy and even conflictual. . . . This Orwellian memory-holing of facts, this airbrushing of inconvenient reality, is possibly the most dangerous trend in the Culture Wars today. It reveals the extent to which Europe’s welcoming of millions of Middle Eastern migrants, done above the heads of the demos, was largely an act of elite virtue-signalling; an ill-considered, little-discussed initiative designed more to boost the moral standing of Angela Merkel and other EU and Western European leaders than to alleviate the suffering of Syrians and Afghanis or to address economic and political needs in Western nations themselves. . . . The most important thing for the Western political and media class is the rush of virtue that ‘saving’ Syrians and others provides them with, and reality cannot be allowed to dilute that rush.”

SHOCKER: SODA TAXES LEAD TO PAY CUTS AND JOB LOSSES.

The Gods of the Copy Book Headings still exist, even in Philadelphia.

ANDREW KLAVAN ON TRUMP, CPAC AND THE WALDO CONGRESS: “Day by day, it’s beginning to dawn on me: there is a fourth stage, too, a stage that is so far dark. Congress. The Waldo Congress, I call them, because — where the hell are they?”

Read the whole thing.

VIDEO: Saturday Sitdown Featuring Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Seriously, Don’t Watch the Oscars.

I’m sold — but then, I think the last time I watched the Oscars, it was a millenia or two ago back when Johnny Carson was still hosting.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Crime Increasing in California After ‘Prison Reform,’ Jack Dunphy writes.

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST:

Shot: President [Obama] ‘has four years to save Earth.’

— Headline, the London Guardian, January 17 2009

Chaser: Biologists say half of all species could be extinct by end of century.

— Headline, the London Guardian, yesterday.

Wow, either the far-left Guardian engages in some serious eco-hyperbole, or else it must be asked: How could Obama destroy the world like that?

(Classical reference in headline.)

BLOWBACK: A Trump voter’s message to retailers: ‘Keep your mouths shut about our president.’

Carson, who worked in marketing before she retired, pulls out her Neiman Marcus credit card and prepares to give it back. It was the obvious thing to do, she says, once the retailer stopped carrying Ivanka Trump’s jewelry line on its website a few weeks ago.

“If the company feels like they can hurt the daughter of a president by doing something like this, that’s mean,” said Carson, who voted for Trump. “I feel very strongly about that.”

A week earlier, Carson had driven to the nearby Nordstrom and returned her store credit card. She’d had that card since 1988, she told the manager, and had used it to buy at least one St. John suit a year — price tag, roughly $1,400 — for decades.

“I said to her, ‘You all really are the best store in the area,’ ” recalled Carson, who lives in Vienna, Va. “ ‘It’s a shame you couldn’t keep your mouths shut about our president.’ ”

Some companies have announced in recent weeks that they would be culling Ivanka Trump’s brand. Others have faced pressure from left-leaning groups to drop other Trump-family products. In response, conservative voters — who say they are tired of the negativity surrounding the new president — are staging their own boycotts against mainstream retailers.

The left has had all this stuff to itself for a long time. I don’t think they’re going to like it as much when other people start doing it too. Plus:

A few days later, Carson is back at the mall. It’s Sunday afternoon, just after church, and she sees something that startles her: a ­T-shirt that says “F*** America” prominently displayed in a store entrance.

She walks in and asks the manager to remove it. “It’s not appropriate,” she says. When he refuses — it’s his opinion against hers, he tells her — she enlists the mall’s management. The shirt is removed.

These bursts of negativity and displays of hatred, as she sees them, have been mounting since before the election.

Yep. People will stop when it is more unpleasant to continue than to change. So if you don’t like what they’re doing, pull some hair.

Also, you can get Ivanka’s stuff here if you like.

WAIT, SHOULDN’T HER WHITE PRIVILEGE HAVE SAVED HER? Rachel Dolezal Is Nearly Homeless, On Food Stamps And Still White. But I can’t imagine why no one wants to hire someone who says things like this: “I feel like the idea of being trans-black would be much more accurate than ‘I’m white.’ Because you know, I’m not white.”

Actually, Rachel, you are.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A California State University, Fullerton lecturer who was recently filmed while physically accosting a conservative student has been suspended, and may face misdemeanor charges.

California State University-Fullerton lecturer Eric Canin has been suspended by the school for his actions against the campus College Republicans at a February 8 protest: He struck one of them.

As reported by the Daily Titan, on that date the CRs were engaged in a “nonviolent counter protest” against a march objecting to President Trump’s immigration measures.

CR member Jared Lopez said “(Canin) came up, tried to grab (my) sign and pushed our way … Then he went after [CR member Bryce] (Ingalls) and started swinging at him.”

Canin contended he didn’t actually make contact with anyone, however, and that the catalyst for the incident was the CRs “making fun of him.”

But a campus internal investigation determined differently, noting that “a campus employee struck a student and that as a consequence, the speech of the student group was stopped.”

See, this is because college faculties have a diversity problem.

FRACK, BABY, FRACK: Shale Is Reshaping America’s Oil Trade Balance.

America’s crude trade balance is changing. On the import front, the decision by petrostates to cut production (with the intention of erasing a global oil glut to help induce a price rebound) is expected to reduce the amount of oil the U.S. buys from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Those OPEC members have been constraining output since the beginning of the year, but because it takes roughly six weeks to ship crude from the Middle East to the Americas, we haven’t yet started to see a reduction in supplies from the region.

Now, however, analysts are expecting Saudi and Iraqi imports to start declining as those cuts start to make American oil more attractive to U.S. refiners than their Middle East competitors. . . .

Of course, U.S. oil production has a pivotal role to play in all of this. The shale revolution was the chief reason behind the market oversupply that necessitated these petrostate cuts in the first place, and our rising oil output isn’t just changing how we’re buying crude, it’s also changing how we’re selling it. As Bloomberg reports, our exports are surging to a 24-year high.

I’m old enough to remember when President Obama mocked Sarah Palin by saying we couldn’t drill our way out of our energy shortage.

GOOD: “There has never been a better time for entrepreneurs to create a startup.”

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I’M SURE IT’S RACIST OR SOMETHING TO POINT THAT OUT: Meet the terrorist behind the next women’s march. “Instead of milling around Washington, organizers have in mind a ‘general strike’ called the Day without a Woman. In a manifesto published in The Guardian on Feb. 6, the brains behind the movement are calling for a ‘new wave of militant feminist struggle.’ That’s right: militant, not peaceful. The document was co-authored by, among others, Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a convicted terrorist.”

Well, the last one featured a convicted rapist/torturer/murderer as a speaker, so it’s not a stretch.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Brian Stelter: ‘We don’t see CNN or NY Times rooting for any president.’ Well, not since January 20th, anyway.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Jesse Jackson Jr.’s 6-figure government payout under scrutiny.