OH, THAT LIBERAL FASCISM: Eek! A Man!

As soon as it became apparent that the first African-American woman to lead San Francisco was being replaced by a white male representing some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, the board chambers erupted.

Some members of the audience, infuriated by the turn of events, chanted, “Shame, shame, shame.”

“This is war!” some shouted as board members left the chambers.

Why are Democratic-monopoly cities such cesspits of racism, sexism, and tribalism?

IT’S TIME TO REBOOT THAT PHIL HARTMAN “TWO FACES OF RONALD REAGAN” SKETCH: CIA director: Trump grasps intelligence at same level as 25-year veteran. “CIA Director Mike Pompeo on Tuesday praised President Trump’s grasp of intelligence briefings, saying he has the same depth of understanding as agency veterans. ‘I have seen 25-year intelligence professional receive briefings. I would tell you that President Trump is the kind of recipient of our information at the same level that they are,’ Pompeo said during an interview with the American Enterprise Institute.”

BUT WHAT ABOUT NATURE’S FITNESS STANDARDS? I Became A Plus-Size Fitness Model To Say ‘F**k You’ To The World’s Body Standards.

TAMARA KEEL: Service Life Extension. “Sig Sauer’s classic P-series metal-framed guns face a dilemma. On the one hand, they’re some of the most proven, dependable service handguns on the planet. On the other, there’s simply no way to build them in a fashion that makes them cost-competitive with polymer-framed striker-fired guns.”

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Plus, deals in Storage and Organization.

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Legislation Tries to Block Census from Adding Citizenship Question as DOJ Requested.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Facebook censors The Rebel’s ad about Christian genocide documentary.

RETAIL BLUES: Toys R Us to close 180 stores across the US.

The one closest to us escaped the chopping block, which is nice because there’s something special about taking your kids to a big toy store rather than just setting them loose on Amazon.

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND INFURIATE PEOPLE: DACA recipients temporarily block Disneyland entrance as an act of civil disobedience.

Given the location, perhaps I should have intro’d with “BLUE ON BLUE.”

THE NEWSWEEK BRAND REALLY CONTINUES TO SHINE: Newsweek Pakistan Editor Fasih Ahmed: Child Abuse and Slavery Produce ‘Great Art.’

The tone of Ahmed’s tweets [collated here — Ed] was so extreme that many observers suspected his account had been hacked, but hours after the online tirade began neither Newsweek nor Newsweek Pakistan had put out a statement to that effect.

Breitbart London contacted several senior Newsweek Media Group executives, who could only say that they were “investigating” — and, some time later, the company put out a statement distancing itself from Ahmed, and saying that Newsweek would be “reviewing” its licensing agreement with Newsweek Pakistan.

* * * * * * * *

The Lahore Literary Festival with which Ahmed is associated also distanced itself from him, announcing that “he has recused himself from the LLF and the Board has unanimously accepted his resignation” on January 24th.

Shortly afterwards the journalist attempted to climb down from his position with a public apology, writing of his now-deleted messages: “My tweets of yesterday were coming from anger, were poorly phrased, and misread. I’m sorry to have upset the people who have survived child abuse. I have been angry at the conspiracy of silence around this evil. #MeToo #StopChildAbuse”

Astonishing.

Given the hole Ahmed has already dug for himself, Twitchy is pondering, “Did Newsweek Pakistan editor’s backpedaling just make things worse for him?”

Earlier: Newsweek probe looking at alleged money laundering.

BUT OF COURSE: Glenn Simpson, Conspiracy Theorist, Finds a Place for the Jews in his Trump-Russia Fantasia.

In some sense, none of this should be surprising. Before he left the practice of journalism in 2009, Glenn Simpson was an investigative reporter. As every journalist knows, the investigative reporter is a special breed, valued because of his or her ability to see connections that are likely lost on others—often because there is no connection. What newspaper editors will never admit when they are scooping up prizes won by their ace investigative reporters, but every professional who has been around the block in the news business knows, is that nine of every 10 stories pitched by an investigative reporter are indelibly riddled with speculative lunacy. The one good lead needs to be carefully managed for months by at least one sub-editor before it ever reaches the desk of the top editor, whose publication, and professional reputation, requires excising every trace of madness before the story sees print. If you doubt this, here’s a sample of what a legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning ace investigative reporter like Seymour Hersh sounds like unplugged, i.e. pretty much like every other investigative reporter I have ever met.

So, what happens when there is no more editor, and the investigative reporter, Glenn Simpson, is managing the business? Even worse, what happens when the chief investigative theorist aka conspiracy enthusiast is handing out his fevered story ideas to other journalists—in fact, to the entirety of the Washington and New York press corps, for more than a year? We now know what happens — you wind up with a media that has replicated the sensibility of a conspiracy theorist.

Read the whole thing.

NATURALLY, THIS IS A PROBLEM FOR MEN, INSTEAD OF SOMETHING WOMEN NEED TO BE SENSITIVE ABOUT: The Nonverbal Communication Gender Gap. If women don’t understand men, it’s because men are poor communicators. If men don’t understand women, it’s because men are poor listeners.

TYLER O’NEIL: Rush Limbaugh goes tinfoil hat.

BEN SHAPIRO: What Right Not to Be Offended?

Of late, however, the Left has simply gone too far. No longer do they ask whether objectively offensive statements ought to be made; they now take each statement and ask whether it is subjectively offensive to anyone. First person to claim offense wins. Which is precisely why Peterson’s logic trips up Newman: He plays her own card against her. By demonstrating that anyone can be offended by anything, he returns the conversation from the vague recesses of subjective reaction to the hard and fast ground of objective truth.

This is the ground on which conservatives should fight, of course: acknowledgement that while manners matter, truth matters more. Unfortunately, too many conservatives have responded to Leftist censorship not with truth-above-manners politeness, but with theatrical displays of unconcern with manners themselves. Rudeness is now seen as a substitute for facts. If the Left uses manners as a weapon, the logic goes, let’s just discard manners altogether.

But there’s no reason to do that. We all ought to behave with decency and truth. Those are the twin pillars of conservatism, after all: virtue and reason. Discarding reason undermines virtue by replacing virtue with emotion-based reactivity; discarding virtue undermines the social fabric necessary to undergird the effectiveness of reason. Yes, let’s behave with manners. But let’s recognize that only a society that values truth can afford manners.

Peterson’s book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, was published yesterday.

DON’T LOOK UNDER THE BED: A wildly popular conspiracy theory about why there are so many Mattress Firm stores is starting to sound less crazy.

“Mattress Firm is some sort of giant money laundering scheme,” a Reddit user wrote, adding: “I remember seeing 4 mattress firms all on each corner of an intersection once, and there is no way there is such a demand for mattresses.”

This caused an outcry on the Reddit thread.

Mattress Firm, which acquired Sleepy’s in 2015, now has over 3,500 stores, sometimes in high concentrations. But Reddit users argue that there are too many, especially given that it stocks a product that people typically buy every seven to 10 years.

“Multiple stores = more places to shuffle money between and more sources for fake money to appear to come from,” another user wrote.

The South African retailer Steinhoff bought Mattress Firm for $3.8 billion in 2016. At the time, analysts were skeptical about why Steinhoff had forked over so much for a business increasingly threatened by new startups such as Casper.

Toward the end of last year, Steinhoff’s stock price tanked by as much as 62% in one day, wiping out $15 billion of its market value, Reuters reported. The company postponed publishing its full-year accounts, citing “accounting irregularities,” and its two top executives and chairman have resigned.

Curious.

EXTREME WEIGHT LOSS: This is why cutting weight is so dangerous for professional fighters.

THE PASSWORD IS: LYSENKOISM. Feminist Event Encourages Scientists To Only Pursue ‘Socially Just’ Research: “Got that? They want scientists to only undertake studies and only publish conclusions that will support a radical feminist worldview. Testicular cancer is striking down many men in their prime, you say? Well, don’t you dare invest scarce research money into finding a cure — men already have too many advantages.”

Unexpectedly.

(Classical reference in headline.)

BLUE ON BLUE: Chuck Schumer’s People Are Camping Outside His Home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhYxi33F17s

Jazz Shaw adds, “It won’t come as much of a surprise to learn that one of the groups organizing the activity was the Working Families Party of New York. They’re basically the modern version of the socialists in New York and if Chuck Schumer has them up in arms, there’s a definite fracture on the left.”

Corn, popped.

BREAKING: ISIS Group Puts Crosshairs on Vegas Hotel in Threat to Shed ‘Dirty Blood.’

NORMALLY, IT’S THE ADVOCATES WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE ADVOCATES, NOT THE JUDGE: Victims in Larry Nassar Abuse Case Find a Fierce Advocate: The Judge.

NOT UNTIL LEVEL IV AUTONOMY: Tesla’s Autopilot Won’t Get You Out of a DUI: Self-driving or not, being drunk behind the wheel makes you a jerk.

BEFORE THIS IT WAS UNOFFICIALLY OFFICIAL: Pew Poll Makes It Official: Democrats Abandon Israel.

LONG TIME COMING: Soothing words aside, the Trump administration recognizes that the relationship with Turkey is dangerously near the breaking point.

America needs to bolster Sunni Arabs in Syria, lest the Islamic State returns. But American commanders know that it’s the Kurds (who the Turks now say they want to destroy) who have done the bulk of the fighting and dying. The civilian death toll in the Islamic State conflict hasn’t been well-calculated, but it was horrific.

Votel visited the ruined city of Raqqa on Monday. He told reporters that the campaign there was “ugly,” but necessary. When we talked last week, he said in the last phase of the Islamic State campaign, U.S. advisers and airpower would partner with the SDF in a war of “annihilation” against “hundreds” of Islamic State fighters who are trapped in the lower Euphrates valley. U.S. commanders worry that their SDF allies will be pulled away from this essential mopping-up operation to fight the invading Turks.

A sign of the new post- Islamic State crackup in Syria was this headline in the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak about Votel’s arrival in the war zone: “U.S. commander visits … terrorists in Syria’s Raqqa.” That bodes ill.

Yep.

LEGAL EDUCATION NEWS: July 2017 California Bar Exam Results For Out-Of-State Law Schools. Good news for the University of Chicago; bad news for American University.