SCOTT ADAMS: How To Know You’re In A Mass-Hysteria Bubble.
Archive for 2017
August 18, 2017
I’M JUST GLAD I DON’T HAVE TO FLY MY LEARJET TO NOVA SCOTIA THIS TIME. Though I look smashing in apricot.
NEWS YOU CAN USE. Remy on How to Safely Watch The Eclipse or CNN:
JIM TREACHER: Let’s Destroy All The Statues Of Dead White Guys, Including Abraham Lincoln.
Congratulations, America. You wanted mob rule because you’re angry about not getting President Grandma like you were promised? Now you’ve got it. Enjoy.
An Abraham Lincoln was damaged and burned in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood late Wednesday, Ald. Ray Lopez said… The statue, a bust of Lincoln, was erected by Phil Bloomquist on Aug. 31, 1926.
It seems very strange to destroy a statue of Abraham Lincoln because you’re angry about Confederate monuments. But then, I didn’t go to Chicago schools.
Dead white guys deserve whatever they get, because reasons.
PEAK IDIOCRACY: Having solved all of Manhattan’s infrastructure issues this summer, “Confederate flag ‘looking’ tiles to be removed from subway.”
“LAY IT ON THE LINE”: Judge in tea party case orders IRS to disclose employee names, reasons.
Judge Reggie B. Walton also said the IRS must explain the reasons for the delays for 38 groups that are part of a lawsuit in the District of Columbia, where they are still looking for a full accounting of their treatment.
Judge Walton approved another round of limited discovery in the case and laid out six questions that the IRS must answer, including the employees’ names, why the groups were targeted and how the IRS has tried to prevent a repeat.
At a hearing earlier this week, Judge Walton said it was time to get everything on the table.
“Lay it on the line. Put it out there,” he told attorneys for the IRS, who are continuing to fight some tea party groups’ demands for full disclosure.
Meanwhile, tainted IRS chief John Koskinen is still on the job.
JAMES LILEKS: What an Exhausting Week.
Beyond the endlessly craptacular news cycle, James’ week has been the very definition of emotionally exhausting — his dog Scout (who in 2014 was the successor to Jasper, the co-star of many a Bleat during its first decade and a half), went missing at the beginning of last week, and still hasn’t been found, as Lileks explains in his latest post.
FLASHBACK: Finland Growing Restive Over Muslim ‘Migrants.’
Plus, Hot Mic has updates as they come in. You can start here.
IN THE MAIL: From Frank Lee Ruggles, Chasing Light: An Exploration of the American Landscape.
ROGER SIMON: Charlottesville, Barcelona and the Left’s Nostalgia for Nazism.
Read the whole thing.
BRUCE BAWER: Let’s Not Talk about Islam.
But let’s do talk about people who refuse to talk about Islam.
FASTER, PLEASE: Navy Hybrid Path to 355-Ship Fleet Could Only Take 10 to 15 Years.
The Navy could reach a 355-ship fleet by 2030 if it both extended the service life of most of its current ships and built more than two dozen new ships beyond current shipbuilding plans, two admirals said this week.
Neither approach is sufficient on its own – service life extension programs (SLEPs) help get the Navy there faster, and accelerating shipbuilding is needed to then keep the fleet at that larger size. But, speaking at the American Society of Naval Engineers’ annual Fleet Maintenance and Modernization Symposium, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) commander Vice Adm. Tom Moore and NAVSEA Deputy Commander for Surface Warfare (SEA 21)/Commander of Navy Regional Maintenance Centers Rear Adm. Jim Downey said the Navy is embracing a hybrid approach that would get the service to a 355-ship fleet in 10 to 15 years, compared to a 30-year timeline with new construction alone.
Thirty years is too long.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Wasserman Schultz’ Former IT Staffer Imran Awan Indicted On Four Counts. “The indictment also includes his wife Hina Alvi.”
Yet another far left Website is exploring this topic; Salon is echoing the Nation’s article last week.
RICHARD HASEN: Speech in America is fast, cheap and out of control.
He says that like it’s a bad thing.
In the old days, just a handful of TV networks controlled the airwaves, and newspapers served as gatekeepers for news and opinion content. A big debate back in the 1980s and earlier was how to enable free expression for those who did not own or work for a media company and wanted to get a message out.
In 1995, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh wrote a remarkably prescient Yale Law Journal article looking ahead to the coming Internet era. In “Cheap Speech and What It Will Do,” Volokh foresaw the rise of streaming music and video services such as Spotify and Netflix, the emergence of handheld tablets for reading books, the demise of classified advertising in the newspaper business, and more generally how technology would usher in radical new opportunities for readers, viewers and listeners to custom design what they read, saw and heard, while at the same time undermining the power of intermediaries including publishers and bookstore owners.
To Volokh, these changes were exciting and democratizing. But 22 years later, the picture of what the cheap-speech boom has wrought seems considerably darker. No doubt the Internet has dramatically lowered the costs of obtaining information and spurred the creation and consumption of content from radically diverse sources. Anyone with an idea can now get it out on Facebook, Twitter or any number of other sites accessible to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. And cheap speech has been a boon to those fighting oppressive regimes around the world, as truthful messages and relevant information can spread despite government censorship efforts.
Less positively, cheap speech has undermined mediating and stabilizing institutions of American democracy, including newspapers and political parties, with negative social and political consequences.
Freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution; the power of information gatekeepers is not.
The Founders knew what they were doing.
AT AMAZON, Lightning Deal again on Purefly Soft Velvet Inflatable Travel Neck Pillow for Airplanes with Packsack.
THIS SEEMS PREMATURE: Art of the Deal Writer Says Trump Will Resign Before Year’s End.
SILICON VALLEY BILLIONAIRES ARE THE NEW ROBBER BARONS, Victor Davis Hanson writes:
In 2012, for example, Obama won Silicon Valley by more than 40 percentage points. Of the political donations to presidential candidates that year from employees at Google and Apple, over 90 percent went to Obama.
One of the legacies of the Obama era was the triumph of green advocacy and identity politics over class.
No one has grasped that reality better that the new billionaire barons of the West Coast. As long as they appeared cool, as they long as they gave lavishly to left-wing candidates, and as long as they mouthed liberal platitudes on global warming, gay marriage, abortion, and identity politics, they earned exemption from progressive scorn.
The result was that they outsourced, offshored, monopolized, censored, and made billions — without much fear of media muckraking, trust-busting politicians, unionizing activists, or diversity lawsuits.
Hip billionaire corporatism is one of the strangest progressive hypocrisies of our times.
All of which is why Kurt Schlichter proposes that “Conservatives Must Regulate Google And All of Silicon Valley Into Submission.”
GREEN BAY RAIDERS: U.S. Marines depart the well deck of the USS Green Bay — by rubber raft.
MORE EVIDENCE IRAN HAS VIOLATED THE NUKE DEAL IT MADE WITH OBAMA: This Forbes essay claims Tehran has:
…exceeded its heavy water production cap, necessary for a plutonium nuclear bomb,…(is) testing more advanced centrifuges…illicitly procuring highly sensitive nuclear and ballistic missile technology in Germany, according to Berlin’s intelligence services…surpassing its uranium enrichment cap, another key non-compliance factor…
SARAH HOYT: In Defense of Vile Speech.
The antidote to vile speech is more speech — not violence.
THE NARCISSISM OF MINOR DIFFERENCES: Fighting Nazis doesn’t make ‘antifa’ the good guys.
WHY ARE MILITARY BASES IN THE SOUTH NAMED FOR CONFEDERATE GENERALS?: An op-ed from the Charlotte Observer by Michael Newcity, a professor at Duke. When you read it remember who was president in 1918: Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was a Democrat, a southerner and a for real racist who segregated the federal work force. Note Newcity doesn’t mention Wilson, his party or his ugly record.