ACTUALLY, I HOPE IT HURTS A LOT:
Because even a flatworm is smart enough to turn away from pain. And that’s about how smart you “antifa” guys are. At most.
UPDATE: People in the comments are saying this is fake. But this isn’t: More than 200 Inauguration Day protesters indicted for rioting.
PAUL KRUGMAN ON ELECTION NIGHT: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”
Today: “There is no denying the fact that the markets have absolutely been blowing up since the election! In fact this is one of the biggest rallies since the Taft Administration. The DOW is up over 13% and the other markets are also up double digits!”
GEORGE NEUMAYR: Trump Is Beating The Media At Its Own Game: The left’s own politics by shorthand is now being turned against it.
Whenever editors say that they refuse to acknowledge “two sides” on such matters as “marriage equality” or Darwinism or climate change, they are paying homage to Lenin’s devious politics by shorthand. They pay homage to it whenever they substitute their opinions of the news for actual reporting of the news. Even the squabbling among journalists recently over whether or not to suspend “conventional reporting” in Trump’s case, or whether front-page stories should declare his misstatements “lies,” is a tacit acknowledgment of that politics. With Lenin, the Christiane Amanpours have no use for the peskiness of precise responses. Just call Trump a “liar,” their attitude goes, and “everyone will understand everything.”
But that demagogic shorthand only works as long as Republican politicians defer to it. For years journalists opined self-servingly under the guise of objectivity and got away it because Republicans were too afraid to shatter that illusion of objectivity. They permitted the media to serve as the arbiter of what qualifies as “mainstream,” “extremist,” “racist,” and so forth, and made sure to stay within the media-determined parameters of any discussion.
Donald Trump has blown up that absurd arrangement and is beating the media at its own game. He labels reporters in the same way that they label him. He upends their dishonest framing of debates by treating them as what they are, liberal partisans. His exchange last week with April Ryan, a correspondent for the American Urban Radio Network, captured that perfectly. She asked him a loaded question not as a neutral reporter but as a water-carrier for the Congressional Black Caucus. So he treated her that way. “I’ll tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting?” the president said to her, after she asked if he would meet with the CBC. “Do you want to set up the meeting? Are they friends of yours?” Of course, they are friends of hers and she was trying to score a partisan point for them. Had Trump not deconstructed that for the audience, her question might have done him damage. Instead, it fell flat and looked unserious.
Reporters are thrown by a president who questions them as aggressively as they question him. And they resent that he refuses to accept as “facts” what is nothing more than their biased interpretation of the facts.
Well, it makes life harder for bylined operatives.
I’M NOT SURPRISED: Pence makes surprise visit to vandalized Jewish cemetery.
EMERGENCY INFRASTRUCTURE: UK mobile carrier unveils mini-blimps for providing emergency cell coverage. The picture looks more like a tethered balloon than a blimp, but the idea is a good one.
EXCELLENT CHOICE: Dana Loesch To Serve As Major NRA National Spokesperson.
CHARLIE MARTIN: NASA’s Big Real Estate Deal: Potentially Habitable Planets.
HMM: Men, Is Exercise Putting a Damper on Your Sex Life? Note that the exercise here — “running, cycling, and triathlon” — all involves lengthy cardio.
WHY ARE WOMEN’S SPORTS SUCH CESSPITS OF MISOGYNY?
“I was proud to a be a woman, and it didn’t fit well in that culture,” said Candice Wiggins, speaking about the culture within the Women’s National Basketball Association. She’s abandoning her stellar career 2 years early, because of her “mental state.” She says she was bullied for her femininity and heterosexuality.
I’d boycott the WNBA except that, well, isn’t everybody doing that already, pretty much?
YOUR CONGRESS AT WORK: Legislation Will Help Kentucky’s Bourbon Producers.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senator Rand Paul, Congressmen James Comer and Bret Guthrie have put their names on two pieces of legislation which they say will help the state’s bourbon producers.
The Advancing Growth in the Economy through Distilled (AGED) Spirits Act was filed in the U.S. Senate and it would help bourbon producers on their tax returns. Under current law, interest expenses are not deducted until the Bourbon is bottled and sold, which could be anywhere from 2 to 23 years after aging. This situation has been likened to a homeowner not being able to deduct the interest on a home mortgage until the sale of the house.
Eric Gregory, President, Kentucky Distillers’ Association, said, the act will free important capital on aging barrels, allowing distilleries to increase investments and create more jobs.
Sadly, there’s no legislation that can speed up the aging process, so it’s going to be a long while yet before bourbon producers are able to catch up with booming demand.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: From de novo protein design to molecular machine systems.
OVERREACH: Iceland’s president wants to ban pineapple on pizza.
Perhaps President Gudni Johannesson should focus on more serious issues, like putting a stop to Chicago-style so-called “pizza.”
LIFE AMONG THE TRANSHUMANISTS. Well, I don’t exactly want to live forever. Just a lot longer and healthier.
Plus, more reason to like Trump: “Under President Donald Trump, the quest for immortality might pick up steam: Among the candidates he is reportedly considering to head the Food and Drug Administration is Jim O’Neill, who sits on the board of the anti-aging SENS Research Foundation.”
Related thoughts here. “Even much more modest progress–extending healthy middle age from 60 to, say, 80–would permit significant shifts in retirement ages and allow for a longevity dividend that could go a long way toward preventing the looming pension meltdown. Greater progress might make the problem go away entirely. So perhaps it would make sense to steer some of the federal money currently going to research on treating the diseases of old age–an approach that leads to older, but frailer, people who are a drain on public resources and whose quality of life is iffy–to research on slowing or reversing the damage that aging does, leading to healthier old people who can work (and pay taxes) longer, while feeling better and enjoying life more.”
STATES’ RIGHTS? End ‘Federal Bullying’ of Marijuana, Says Colorado Congressman.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Texas Pre-School Teacher Suspended After Call to ‘Kill Some Jews’ on Social Media.
Anti-Semitic remarks made online by Nancy Salem, a teacher for 2 year-olds at the the Children’s Courtyard in South Arlington, Texas, resurfaced after a secretive campus watchdog group, Canary Mission, exposed her together with other 23 anti-Israel activists at the University of Texas. She’s is now subject to a pending investigation by the pre-school and is suspended from teaching, according to The Algemeiner.
On her now-deleted Twitter account, Salem made numerous derogatory comments about the Jewish people, including replying to a question “How many Jews died in the Holocaust?” with “Not enough…HAHAHAHA.”
In another tweet, she openly suggested murdering Jewish people: “Have a safe trip Lulu. I love you baby girl! See you in 3 weeks! Kiss the Palestine ground for me and kill some jews!”
Charming.
THEY TOLD ME THE TRUMP ERA WOULD BE A FASCIST ONE, MARKED BY INFORMERS AND PUNISHMENT FOR FREE SPEECH. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Hundreds of campuses encourage students to turn in fellow students for offensive speech.
I suggest sending a copy of this to your campus bias-response team, and to the administrator in charge.
IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR: Why 1977 Might Be the Greatest Year in Music History.
THE 10 WORST COLLEGES FOR FREE SPEECH, brought to you by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). It wasn’t easy to narrow down the list. Which school do you think is the worst? Vote!
BE STILL MY BEATING HEART! OH, WAIT, MY PULSE HASN’T INCREASED AT ALL. Ford will reveal the new Fiesta ST in 3 days.
QUESTION ASKED: “If it’s a fireable offense when Milo says it and it’s ‘horrifying’ when George Takei says it, where’s the outrage over this old clip of Bill Maher condoning sex between an adult and a 14-year-old teenager?”
Over to you, Time-Warner-CNN-HBO.
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