2017, GOING OUT IN STYLE: A Woman Allegedly Got Drunk And Destroyed Her First Date’s Fine Art, Including Two Andy Warhol Paintings.
2018: Feels like another “Hold My Beer” year, but we’ll see.
Archive for 2017
December 28, 2017
OUT: BUN IN THE OVEN. IN: BUD IN THE OVEN. More pregnant women are using pot to treat morning sickness, studies suggest.
The cultural 180 on marijuana has been amazing to behold.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
● Shot: S.E. Cupp: Slamming Media Is ‘Dangerous,’ Fox News Is Like a Dictator’s Tool.
—NewsBusters, Tuesday.
● Chaser:
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: The mainstream media’s hostility towards Christianity is no secret. But a new book explores why the liberal elite is only suspicious when conservatives invoke religion. Now, the book is called “Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity.”
The author, S.E. Cupp, joins me now.
Right there, my blurb, your book.
S.E. CUPP, AUTHOR, “LOSING OUR RELIGION”: I know! Right on the front.
—Transcript from Hannity, Fox News, April 28, 2010.
POWER, UNLIMITED POWER: Game changing nuclear molten salt reactor will be cheaper than natural gas.
Natural gas and coal remain the most cost-competitive sources of energy for industrial heat and electric power provision, with natural gas becoming increasingly important. Fossil-fuel dominance will continue as long as there is no alternative dispatchable, reliable, versatile energy source that is more cost-competitive. In North America, Natural Gas Combined Cycle (NGCC) power generation is now the preferred new-build power plant because of its low costs, and because of currently low North American natural gas prices, a product of fracking innovations.
IMSR® power plants are far simpler to build and operate than conventional nuclear power plants. They cost less than USD $1 billion, can be built within 4 years with much lower project risk, and can be financed by ordinary means.
ThorCon is designed to bring shipyard quality and productivity to fission power. But ThorCon’s structure is far simpler and much more repetitive than a ship’s. The silo hall employs concrete-filled, steel plate, sandwich walls. This results in a strong, air-tight, ductile building. A 1 GWe ThorCon requires about 18,000 tons of steel for the fission island, all simple flat plate. A properly implemented panel line will be able to produce these blocks using less than 2 man-hours per ton of steel.
Similarly, all the other components will be manufactured on an assembly line and delivered to the site as fully outfitted and pre-tested blocks. Each power module will require a total of 31 blocks. Upon arrival at the site, the blocks will be dropped into place and the wall and roof blocks welded together using the automatic hull welding machines the yards have developed for this purpose. The wall cells will then be filled with concrete. Almost no form work is required.
To make the system work we must have big blocks — blocks that are far larger than can be transported by truck or rail. ThorCon blocks are up to 23 meters wide and 40 meters long. Such blocks can be barged well up most major rivers, including the St. Lawrence and into the Great Lakes.
A 1 GWe ThorCon is so small that the fission island almost fits into two center tanks of the Hellespont Metropolis, and requires one fourth as much steel. This steel requirement is roughly equivalent to a medium size, Suezmax tanker.
The Suezmax can move herself at 15 knots, survive a hurricane, and discharge her cargo in about a day. A good shipyard can profitably build a Suezmax for 60 million dollars.
A big shipyard can turn out 100 of these ships a year. It could easily manufacture 100 one GWe ThorCons per year.
Faster, please.
AT AMAZON, warm, comfy mittens, for men, women, and kids. Plus, texting touchscreen gloves.
GOOD IDEA: Police must stop training officers to believe rape complainants automatically says ex-High Court judge. “Rape complainants must not automatically be believed by Police a former High Court judge said last night – following the collapse of three high profile cases. He slammed the crisis and said that police forces shouldn’t train their officers to presume that suspects are guilty.”
MICHAEL LEDEEN: The First Anti-American President.
Barack Obama will no doubt be chronicled, among other things, as the first anti-American president. No wonder; he’s the product of an educational system that has become increasingly radical and anti-American with each passing decade, and his mother was a stereotypical leftist anthropologist with a passion for the Third World.
The pattern is unmistakable. As Luis Fleischman notes, Obama wanted to make deals with our enemies, Iran being the most dramatic example.
That’s just the intro. Read the whole thing.
HEATHER WILHELM ON THE SEXES AFTER WEINSTEIN:
Twenty seventeen has exposed many monsters, and that is a positive thing. Breathless reports of a looming monster epidemic, however, seem greatly exaggerated. In a recent op-ed in the New York Daily News, Christina Hoff Sommers pointed out some seemingly incongruous data from the General Social Survey: In 2014, 3.6 percent of women reported being sexually harassed at work in the previous twelve months. That’s not fantastic, but it’s certainly not “burn it all down” bad, either.
Supposedly, we’re all in this together — or, at least, we should be. Perhaps a step towards sanity would involve some introspection on all fronts. Not all women are fragile, hapless victims. Not all men are predators or predators-in-waiting. Both men and women can contribute to a healthier sexual ethic. We can expect more from both.
Or not. “There are three ways you could approach the problem of sexual harassment,” Anita Hill told The New York Times Magazine. “You can fix the women. You can fix the guys. Or you can change the culture. And I think that really, at this point, what we should be talking about is fixing the guys and fixing the culture.”
“Do we have to choose?” asked Laura Kipnis. “Can’t it be all three?”
“Well,” Hill replied, “I think if we fix the guys and change the culture, we don’t need to fix women.”
“Good luck,” Kipnis replied. Good luck indeed.
It’s the new Soviet Man! Or as Leon Trotsky wrote nearly a century ago:
Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.
It is difficult to predict the extent of self-government which the man of the future may reach or the heights to which he may carry his technique. Social construction and psycho-physical self-education will become two aspects of one and the same process. All the arts – literature, drama, painting, music and architecture will lend this process beautiful form. More correctly, the shell in which the cultural construction and self-education of Communist man will be enclosed, will develop all the vital elements of contemporary art to the highest point. Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler; his body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.
Ahh, the search for the perfectibility of man. Stalin couldn’t will him into existence, but I’m sure Hollywood and Anita Hill can.
WINNING: Judge grants Project Veritas a victory over Michigan teachers union.
A Wayne County circuit judge in September blocked Project Veritas, a group run by provocateur James O’Keefe, from disclosing videos of other information it obtained in an undercover operation carried out against the American Federation of Teachers chapter in Detroit.
AFT Michigan alleged that Project Veritas operative Marisa Jorge used the name Marissa Perez and posed as a University of Michigan student to gain access to the chapter as an intern. The group claimed Jorge “unlawfully accessed and transmitted proprietary and confidential information and engaged in unlawful and unauthorized surveillance of” employees.
AFT Michigan had sought an injunction citing a strong likelihood of success with respect to violations of the Michigan Uniform Trade Secrets Act, the Michigan Eavesdropping Act and Jorge’s breach of fiduciary duty, all of which failed to hold up in court.
U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker ruled that the AFT failed to meet the proper criteria for issuance of a preliminary injunction.
Parker said not one of the 221 documents the chapter produced fell within the “trade secret” description as defined by MUTSA. She also said the chapter lacked evidence that Jorge did anything to violate the state’s eavesdropping act.
Let’s see the video.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: How a Machine That Can Make Anything Would Change Everything.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-DOMINATED BUSINESSES SUCH CESSPITS OF SEXUAL EXPLOITATION? Tech Bros Bought Sex Trafficking Victims by Using Amazon and Microsoft Work Emails.
PAULA BOLYARD: 50 Top Conservative Websites.
RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: 37 Things White People Need To Stop Ruining In 2018.
Earlier today, BuzzFeed fired White House correspondent Adrian Carrasquillo merely for appearing on a spreadsheet of “S—-y Media Men.” I wonder what they’ll do with the author of this piece, Patrice Peck.
Or is it verboten to make fun of media people, but perfectly OK by BuzzFeed to trash an entire race of people?
WHY ARE DEEP-BLUE CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF SEXUAL EXPLOITATION? Child sex trafficking – as easy in Seattle as ordering a pizza.
IRA STOLL IS SADDER BUT WISER, AND POSTS A CORRECTION: “Lesson: Never trust content from the New York Times, even when it appears to confirm your existing views about public-employee union workers being overpaid and New York government being inefficient.”
WINNING: ISIS has lost 98 percent of its territory — mostly since Trump took office, officials say.
The massive gains come after years of “onerous” rules, when critics say the Obama administration “micromanaged” the war and shunned a more intensive air strategy that could have ended the conflict much sooner.
“The rules of engagement under the Obama administration were onerous. I mean what are we doing having individual target determination being conducted in the White House, which in some cases adds weeks and weeks,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, the former head of U.S. Air Force intelligence. “The limitations that were put on actually resulted in greater civilian casualties.”
And this is an important reminder:
AND THIS FLASHBACK FROM VOX: The latest anti-ISIS strategy from the Pentagon looks a lot like the one under the Obama administration.
This timeline makes clear the two worrying trends underlying Trump’s approach to ISIS. As a candidate, he largely bragged about a secret, foolproof plan that didn’t exist and, as Vox’s Yochi Dreazen and Jennifer Williams explain, couldn’t have been executed anyway. Now as president, Trump has not only continued to be reticent on his plan but seems to have clocked out from devising his ISIS strategy entirely, ceding an alarming degree of power to the military.
Neither of these approaches bodes well moving forward.
That was in July. December looks much different, doesn’t it?
Rebecca Tan’s piece was meant to rebuke Trump, but instead is inadvertently devastating to Barack Obama. Obama apparently had the same plans Trump did, or near enough, but chose to impose “onerous” rules of engagement and let innocents die, rather than contradict his pet theory about terrorism. Trump’s “secret” plan may have been nothing more complicated than lifting the Obama-era ROEs which stood between the Coalition and victory over ISIS — and while that might not seem like much of a secret plan, it was enough.
Or as Gen. George Patton once said, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” Obama had a good plan years ago, and chose to execute it never. Trump took the same plan and executed it immediately.
The difference is what is known as “winning.”
IN THE MAIL: Divorce Made Simple: The Ultimate Guide by a Former Family Judge.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
And you can still shop shop the Twelve Days of Deals! We appreciate your patronage very much. Especially this time of year!
TONI AIRAKSINEN: Feminist Professor Praises ‘Happy Abortions’ in New Book.
I’M HAPPY TO SEE TENNESSEE ON THIS LIST! 20 Cheapest Law Schools In The US News Top 100.
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuelans scramble to survive as merchants demand dollars.
“There’s no point keeping bolivars.”
For a decade and a half, strict exchange controls have severely limited access to dollars. A black market in hard currency has spread in response, and as once-sky-high oil revenue runs dry, Venezuela’s economy is in free-fall.
The practice adopted by gourmet and design stores in Caracas over the last couple of years to charge in dollars to a select group of expatriates or Venezuelans with access to greenbacks is fast spreading.
Food sellers, dental and medical clinics, and others are starting to charge in dollars or their black market equivalent – putting many basic goods and services out of reach for a large number of Venezuelans.
According to the opposition-led National Assembly, November’s rise in prices topped academics’ traditional benchmark for hyperinflation of more than 50 percent a month – and could end the year at 2,000 percent. The government has not published inflation data for more than a year.
“I can’t think in bolivars anymore, because you have to give a different price every hour,” said Yoselin Aguirre, 27, who makes and sells jewelry in the Paraguana peninsula and has recently pegged prices to the dollar. “To survive, you have to dollarize.”
Eventually, every America-despising socialist state ends up pining for US dollars it can no longer steal enough to trade for.
Unexpectedly.
I’m thinking of investing in this currency called USD, but it’s not backed by anything tangible and they can create more of it at will so I’m not sure. . . .