DISPATCHES FROM THE PARTY OF FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: Dem strategist and Hillary aide Adam Parkhomenko doubles and triples down on vicious mockery of polio survivor Mitch McConnell.
“Hillary campaign bro mocking McConnell’s polio finally outdoes the Obama campaign mocking John McCain’s wounds from torture,” Seth Mandel tweets.
AT AMAZON, save in Sports and Fitness.
KURT SCHLICHTER: The Admission Scam Is Another Reason To Destroy Academia As We Know It.
American college is terrible and, as a society, we should stop doing it – at least how it is being currently done. The greatest benefit of a system where most citizens are pushed to get college educations, whether they truly need and want one or not, would be a society of really smart, informed, and engaged citizens. Do you see that happening?
No, you do not.
Instead, we have a bunch of people who are dragged down by crushing debt after wasting years of their youth chasing a piece of paper that often has no relationship to these graduates’ futures. Compounding the failure is how these grads march off campus infatuated with ridiculous commie notions abhorrent to a free people. The college system is a disaster – an expensive disaster that picks our pockets as well as those of the suckers who matriculate – and we should stop tolerating it.
Read the whole thing.
FIRST-WORLD PROBLEMS: “‘Jesus, I live in a food desert!’ I muttered, as I bought some manchego cheese and a bag of organic sprouted pizza flavor almonds as a consolation prize and trudged home.”
NOW — AS IN THE SOVIET UNION — MAKING A JOKE CAN BE A DANGEROUS, LIFE-CHANGING MISTAKE:
Scarcely a week passes without someone suffering a reversal of fortune when it’s discovered they made the wrong sort of joke, even if it was in the distant past. It’s symptomatic of a recent shift in Britain and America, whereby the left has acquired sweeping new powers in the cultural arena, in spite of losing at the ballot box.
What makes Kundera’s book so relevant is that he connects the intolerance of politically incorrect humor to the totalitarian mindset. He points out that we often laugh at inappropriate jokes. Indeed, it’s their tastelessness — the fact that the thoughts and feelings they express are at odds with the prevailing orthodoxy — that makes them so funny. Laughing at these ‘wrong’ jokes is a form of dissent. Little wonder, then, that the Maoist commissars of our era want to punish people for telling them. Milan Kundera’s book may be more than 50 years old, but it could not be more timely.
The Lives of Others: A warning for the rest of us, a nostalgic how-to guide for the left.
AT AMAZON, deals in Men’s Grooming.
THIS SEEMS EMBARRASSING FOR BMW: The 2019 Nissan Altima Just Outcornered the New BMW 3-Series. And .93g used to be the kind of number you’d see from supercars.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: A Red Hat Never Hurt Anybody.
Let’s say you’re sitting in Starbucks on a lovely spring day, just enjoying a cup of their burnt, overpriced coffee and minding your own business. Suddenly, a complete stranger walks up and starts screaming at you because you’re wearing a red baseball cap with a slogan popularized by the current president of the United States. This angry woman, who you’ve never met in your life, calls you a “Nazi” and a “racist” and claims you “hate brown people.” She exhorts the rest of the coffee shop to rise up against you, and follows you out to the parking lot to yell at you some more. Then, after you escape, this complete stranger posts your picture on Facebook, vowing to find out where you live and work so she can make you “feel as unsafe as [you] made every brown person [you] met today.”
All because you were wearing a hat she didn’t like.
This actually happened in real life, earlier this week in Palo Alto.
Read the whole thing.
FASTER, PLEASE: Forever young: study uncovers protein that keeps skin youthful.
BUT THE NARRATIVE! Polls: Trump’s approval rating among Hispanics approaches 50 percent.
DIVORCE SETTLEMENT: Bezos to keep 75% of Amazon stake, all of WaPo and Blue Origin.
RUN ALL THE CANDIDATES! Every Democrat and Their Mother Is Running for President.
MORE OF Y’ALL ARE GOING TO HAVE TO HIT THE PAYPAL BUTTON — A LOT MORE OF Y’ALL — BEFORE I DRIVE ONE OF THESE: Bentley Bentayga V8 Design Series embraces the darkness.
GIVEN AMERICANS’ DISMAL SAVINGS HABITS, THIS MIGHT NOT BE A BAD IDEA: Democrats Propose Emergency Savings and Retirement Plan for Workers. “The tax credits to jumpstart the savings program would cost about $200 to $250 billion, Sen. Klobuchar says.”
NAVY TACTICAL BOATS ON THE LOOKOUT: Three U.S. Navy tactical patrol boats, assigned to Command Task Group (CTG) 68.6 from Camp Lemonnier, provide security to Military Sealift Command fleet replenishment oiler USNS Tippecanoe as it departs the Port of Djibouti, March 30, 2019.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Electoral College Was Not a Pro-Slavery Ploy.
Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz:
Slaveholders didn’t embrace the idea of electors because it might enlarge slavery’s power; they feared it because of the danger, as the North Carolina slaveholder Hugh Williamson remarked, that the men chosen as electors would be corruptible “persons not occupied in the high offices of government.” Pro-elite concerns, not proslavery ones, were on their minds — just as, ironically, elite supporters of the Electoral College hoped the body would insulate presidential politics from popular passions.
When it first took shape at the convention, the Electoral College would not have significantly helped the slaveowning states. Under the initial apportionment of the House approved by the framers, the slaveholding states would have held 39 out of 92 electoral votes, or about 42 percent. Based on the 1790 census, about 41 percent of the nation’s total white population lived in those same states, a minuscule difference. Moreover, the convention did not arrive at the formula of combining each state’s House and Senate numbers until very late in its proceedings, and there is no evidence to suggest that slavery had anything to do with it.
Read the whole thing.
ACT OF GOD, PENDING: California should have had a major earthquake by now, geologists warn.
California’s three most historically active faults haven’t slipped in a century, a hiatus unprecedented over the last 1,000 years, according to a new study.
When researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey studied the paleoseismic records from the San Andreas, San Jacinto and Hayward faults, they failed to find a gap as long as California’s current earthquake hiatus.
That probably just means it’ll be bigger when they slip. Thoughts on earthquake preparation here.
SENATOR CORY GARDNER: Trump said he would sign pot bill.
Sen. Cory Gardner said Thursday that President Donald Trump told him he’d sign legislation to ensure states can decide for themselves whether to legalize marijuana, but that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell needs some more convincing.
The Colorado Republican, along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), reintroduced their bicameral bill Thursday. The legislation was introduced after the Trump Justice Department, under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, rescinded guidelines that limited the prosecutions of businesses or people who sold marijuana legally under state law.
“I think we still have more work to do with Sen. McConnell,” Gardner said. “He got partway there with hemp but [he’s] not exactly the bastion of libertarianism on this.”
He added: “I’m assuming Kentucky ain’t exactly Boulder.”
It isn’t. Which is precisely why the issue should be left up to the states.
FASTER, PLEASE: NIH launches early trial for universal influenza vaccine.
PRESIDENT MONROE COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Venezuelan deputy minister says more Russian troops could arrive.
The deputy minister also said Russian forces will stay in Venezuela as long as needed, and that there is no set period for their stay.
“The group of military specialists is (in Venezuela) in the context of our agreements and contracts for military-technical cooperation,” Interfax quoted Gil as saying.
Earlier the Kremlin said Russian military specialists are in Venezuela to service pre-existing contracts for the supply of Russian arms.
That’s quite the euphemism.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Norah O’Donnell and Her ‘Giant Ego’ Are Gunning for Jeff Glor’s Anchor Desk.
Today’s report brings back a memory from 2009 (IIRC) when I was doing a weekly roundup of the Sunday morning talking-heads shows for PJTV. O’Donnell was doing an interview with new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and there was one brief exchange which I found so revealing about the both of them, that it’s stuck in my head all these years.
In one of her questions, O’Donnell parroted a line — that line about “fundamentally transforming” America which the press had largely buried in the days before the 2008 election — straight from Barack Obama. She asked Clinton something like, “As Secretary of State, how are you going to pursue the fundamental transformation this country requires?” And she sounded quite earnest about it, too. Which, OK, nice to know you aren’t bringing any America-hating biases with you to the news desk, lady.
And then there was Clinton’s immediate response.
More at the link.
WELL, THAT AND THAT FACT THAT NOBODY TRUSTS THEM: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand: Google’s product support has become a joke, and the company should be very concerned. Yeah, there’s a nontrivial chance that any Google product you rely on will vanish in the future, so you probably shouldn’t incorporate it into your business.
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
