COLLUSION! Russia’s ruble plunges on US sanctions news.

LAUGHING AT ACCOUNTABILITY: The IRS Has Rehired Hundreds of Fired Employees. Congress Should Step In.

HMM: In Alarming New Study, Nuclear Lab Scientists Question U.S. Weapons’ Performance.

Here are some excerpts from the scientific paper:

“Nuclear tests gave decisive, direct evidence about the behavior of new weapons destined for the stockpile….Virtually no comparable data exist on the nuclear performance of stockpiled weapons in their current state.”

“The nuclear weapons laboratories have a continuing responsibility for maintaining the safety, performance and reliability of these weapons as long as they remain in service….This responsibility cannot adequately be met within the SSP.” (Stockpile Stewardship Program)

“But this approach does not take into account the facts that in the past some serious problems were revealed only as a result of a nuclear test, or that nuclear test data are required to develop and validate the scientific judgement and computer codes that must be used to assess the nuclear performance of weapons .”

“We note further that in the absence of testing the current stockpile maintenance program inevitably promotes a shift in the standard of assurance for the performance of stockpiled weapons from ‘decisive, direct evidence of proper performance’ to ‘absence of evidence of unacceptable performance.’ In so doing, the nuclear weapons program is clearly flying in the face of extensive experience concerning the standards that must be met to confirm the safety, performance and reliability of complex, high-consequence systems.”

Sure would be nice if we could test the damn things once in a while.

REQUIRED READING: Thomas Sowell’s ‘Discrimination and Disparities’ Is The Book About Racism That America Needs. “Sowell’s calm and calculated look at racial disparity in America is a stunning work of brevity and reason.”

Sowell certainly does not suggest that discrimination doesn’t exist, but he does break it down into two essential categories. The first is discrimination that is based on evidence and can be positive, such as “a person of discriminating taste.” The second is discrimination based on animosity towards a group. Importantly, Sowell divides the first form into two groups. The first takes no notice of race; the second takes race into account, but only based on accurate information.

Sowell is essentially rejecting the progressive premise that there is no difference between racism based in hatred and racism based in accepting racist systems and disparate outcomes. As it turns out, attempts to address evidence-based discrimination that seek to eliminate the discrimination itself can have bad outcomes, especially for those who are members of groups with more negative outcomes.

One example of this he gives is that progressives widely see criminal background checks for employment as racist. But in reality, employers that use background checks employ black workers at a higher rate. This is because without the checks blacks with clean records suffer from the fact that they belong to a group with a higher crime rate. Ideally, one could argue that employers shouldn’t take group tendencies into account, but until that happens, background checks are a solution that actually works.

Yes, but that doesn’t keep Democrat voter groups riled up.

Anyway — Sowell’s latest has gone to the top of my reading list.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Colleges May Reject You Based On Whom You Follow On Social Media.

Remember, when taxpayers tire of subsidizing this industry, we’ll be told it’s because of close-minded anti-intellectualism.

DAN MITCHELL: Paul Krugman, Supply-Side Economist.

ALL DEMOCRATS HAVE TO DO IS NOT ACT CRAZY… Unfunny Abortion ‘Comedy’ Tour Coming to a Baby Butchery Near You. “Teen Vogue praises the Vagical Mystery Tour, telling our daughters, ‘Abortion can be funny’.”

OKAY, I LINKED THIS CAITLIN FLANAGAN PIECE ON JORDAN PETERSON YESTERDAY, but this bit’s worth breaking out on its own:

There are many legitimate reasons to disagree with him on a number of subjects, and many people of good will do. But there is no coherent reason for the left’s obliterating and irrational hatred of Jordan Peterson. What, then, accounts for it?

It is because the left, while it currently seems ascendant in our houses of culture and art, has in fact entered its decadent late phase, and it is deeply vulnerable. The left is afraid not of Peterson, but of the ideas he promotes, which are completely inconsistent with identity politics of any kind. When the poetry editors of The Nation virtuously publish an amateurish but super-woke poem, only to discover that the poem stumbled across several trip wires of political correctness; when these editors (one of them a full professor in the Harvard English department) then jointly write a letter oozing bathos and career anxiety and begging forgiveness from their critics; when the poet himself publishes a statement of his own—a missive falling somewhere between an apology, a Hail Mary pass, and a suicide note; and when all of this is accepted in the houses of the holy as one of the regrettable but minor incidents that take place along the path toward greater justice, something is dying.

When the top man at The New York Times publishes a sober statement about a meeting he had with the president in which he describes instructing Trump about the problem of his “deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric,” and then three days later the paper announces that it has hired a writer who has tweeted about her hatred of white people, of Republicans, of cops, of the president, of the need to stop certain female writers and journalists from “existing,” and when this new hire will not be a beat reporter, but will sit on the paper’s editorial board—having a hand in shaping the opinions the paper presents to the world—then it is no mystery that a parallel culture of ideas has emerged to replace a corrupted system. When even Barack Obama, the poet laureate of identity politics, is moved to issue a message to the faithful, hinting that that they could be tipping their hand on all of this—saying during a speech he delivered in South Africa that a culture is at a dead end when it decides someone has no “standing to speak” if he is a white man—and when even this mayday is ignored, the doomsday clock ticks ever closer to the end.

For the last 50 years, race-talk has primarily been the tool of gentry-left whites against their political and class enemies. That’s breaking down, along with a lot of other things that they took for granted. But having relied on this crutch for so long, together with the stranglehold they’ve had on the media and academia, they’re poorly prepared to respond.

Related:

INTERESTING. I THOUGHT THESE THINGS ONLY HAPPENED TO ME:  Boykin’s Laws of Museology.

FROM THE DERP FILES:  How to not get a date.

TWO QUIBBLES.  FIRST, UNPROVEN ASSERTION. SECOND, SHOULDN’T THAT BE THE FABRIC OF AMERICAN DEATH? UNDER TRUTH IN ADVERTISING AND ALL:   Schumer: Roe v. Wade Is Part of ‘Fabric of American Life,’ Endangered by Kavanaugh.

IF THEIR VALUES ARE MORE IN TUNE WITH THE CHINESE OLIGARCHS THAN ICE, IT’S A GOOD THING THEY’RE NO LONGER WORKING WITH ICE.  BYE FELICIA:  Consulting Giant Walks Away From ICE Contracts, Works With Chinese Government.

OH, THERE’S MY SHOCKED FACE AGAIN:  Democrat Shoots Opponent After Political Disagreement On Facebook.

SHOCKED, SHOCKED:  Facebook Reportedly Censors Links To Gun File Sites.

OH, FOR THE LOVE OF:  The Constitution Is Great, Check Your Premise, Dan.

AND THEY SAY WE’RE THE INBRED  ONES:  Ilhan Omar’s Credentials Include Committing Perjury While Divorcing Her Brother.

NOT A FIRST AMENDMENT VIOLATION BUT A SKIVVY MOVE OF COLLUSION:   What Is, and Is Not Free Speech.

PLEASE NOTE NO ONE EVER HAD TO PROTECT SPEECH EVERYONE AGREED WITH:  Hate Speech.

ROGER SIMON: Tennessee Senate Race May Be Most Crucial of 2018.

I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER THE LEFT’S NEW CIVILITY PLEDGE: Cops Post Mugshots Of Antifa Rioters, Liberals Freak Out.

THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Media glosses over Dianne Feinstein’s Chinese spy.

AT AMAZON, Education Supplies for Teachers & Homeschoolers.

WHY ARE BLUE STATES SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM? Police chief’s son arrested in brutal attack on elderly Sikh man.

The 18-year-old son of a police chief in California’s Bay Area was arrested Wednesday in connection with an attack on a 71-year-old Sikh man who was out taking his daily stroll.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Tyrone Keith McAllister, son of Union City Police Chief Darryl McAllister, was booked on one count of attempted robbery, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon, the report said. Police said one of the two suspects seen in surveillance video may have waved a gun.

Sahbit Singh Natt told police that he was walking in Manteca, near Stockton in the Central Valley, at about 6 a.m. Monday and was asked by his assailants for money, the report said.

Authorities said Tyrone McAllister and a 16-year-old confronted the man and kicked him to the ground. Police said the video shows the suspect kick him at least three times.

Too bad the old man didn’t have a gun.

AS ALWAYS LIFE IMITATES THE FAR SIDE: Watch This Herd Of Cows Help Police Take Down A Car Thief Suspect [Video].

(Classical reference in headline.)