Archive for 2019
May 30, 2019
NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Ocasio-Cortez Blocks The Daily Caller On Twitter.
I’m so old, I can remember when politicians blocking people on Twitter was declared unconstitutional.
PORK: $19.1 Billion ‘Emergency’ Relief Bill Is a Disaster of Waste. “In other words, this bill isn’t about helping people in desperate need as much as it is about satiating lawmakers’ addiction to spending. Maybe that’s why the House is in such a rush to get this disaster to the president’s desk as quickly as possible.”
SATIRE… OR IS IT? Tim Cook apologizes for creating racist OK hand gesture emoji – will be removed in next iOS update.
I just now discovered NPC Daily, and some of their stuff is very well done.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Dog Days In Dorms As Emotional Support Animals Proliferate On Campus.
AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Mueller’s Farewell, Damage Control Concert. “Here’s the real story with Mueller’s press conference: Mueller doesn’t want to be called by Nadler to testify before the House Judiciary because he doesn’t want to answer tough questions under oath. Nadler doesn’t want to call Mueller because he doesn’t want Mueller answering questions that undermine the Democrat’s plan to keep a cloud of suspicion floating over Trump until 2020.”
Sounds about right.
30 YEARS LATER THE TIANANMEN TIGER STILL STALKS COMMUNIST CHINA’S DRAGON: Chinese Communist propagandists “utterly avoid mentioning the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre of Chinese citizens by the People’s Liberation Army, to the point of forbidding its discussion and attempting to erase the event from history.”
RELATED: Chapter 3, Cocktails from Hell.
FIRE ON THE BALTIC: A USMC Abrams tank participates in a live fire exercise on a Baltic beach.
SWIFT AND THE TIMES: Scott Johnson at Powerline revisits one of the New York Times’ greatest reporting travesties, the 2006 revelation of the Terrorist Financial Tracking Program.
RELATED: My first column on the SWIFT revelation from June 2006. Then a follow-up column on the subject from November 2006.
MY LIVER THANKS THEM: DNC makes it more difficult to qualify for 3rd debate.
The debate is set for Sept. 12 and could extend to a second night, Sept. 13, if enough candidates meet the threshold to participate. The location and moderators have not yet been announced.
Like the first two Democratic presidential debates — which are set for next month on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo and for July on CNN — the September debate and a fourth, to be held in October, will cap participants at 10 per night.
But it will be more difficult for the nearly two dozen 2020 Democratic hopefuls to make the stage.
Unlike the first and second rounds of debates, when candidates must cross either a donor or polling threshold to qualify, candidates will need to surpass both bars to make the stage for the third and fourth debates. For the September event, candidates will have to hit 2 percent in four qualifying polls, versus 1 percent in three polls for the first debates, and they will need 130,000 individual donors, up from 65,000.
Although the polling threshold increase is modest, it could represent a significant barrier for many candidates who have struggled to hit that mark in early polling.
Interesting that the fundraising qualifier is determined by the number of individual donors, rather than total donations received. If that incentivizes candidates into going after any fringe Democrat voter with a few dollars to spare, the results shouldn’t fail to amuse.
I DID NOT SEE THAT ONE COMING: Fake Beto Staffer Arrested for Popsicle Theft.
SO, SUCCESS IS NOT AN OPTION: NASA head rules out SpaceX rockets for 2024 moon mission: The space agency’s administrator says it absolutely plans to return on the back of its own launchers. One doubts the Senate Launch System will be there for them.
WHERE IS MY SHOCKED FACE? Sanders: Of Course We’re Going To Increase Your Taxes.
MAKE TEXAS GREAT AGAIN… ER, GREAT MORE? Texas Gov. Abbott signs law lifting ban on brass knuckles, kitty keychains and clubs.
Don’t mess with Texas.
Seriously, don’t.
IBD: The Stunning Statistical Fraud Behind The Global Warming Scare.
The actual measured temperature record shows something different: There have been hot years and hot decades since the turn of the last century, and colder years and colder decades. But the overall measured temperature shows no clear trend over the last century, at least not one that suggests runaway warming.
That is, until the NOAA’s statisticians “adjust” the data. Using complex statistical models, they change the data to reflect not reality, but their underlying theories of global warming. That’s clear from a simple fact of statistics: Data generate random errors, which cancel out over time. So by averaging data, the errors mostly disappear.
That’s not what NOAA does.
According to the NOAA, the errors aren’t random. They’re systematic. As we noted, all of their temperature adjustments lean cooler in the distant past, and warmer in the more recent past. But they’re very fuzzy about why this should be.
Far from legitimately “adjusting” anything, it appears they are cooking the data to show a politically correct trend toward global warming. Not by coincidence, that has been part and parcel of the government’s underlying policies for the better part of two decades.
What NOAA does aren’t niggling little changes, either.
Government cooking the books like this would be a major scandal if we had a nonpartisan press.
THIS ISN’T JUST CRAZY, IT’S EVIL: A 16-Year-Old Girl Is Facing Child Pornography Charges for Making a Sex Video of Herself.
WAIT, HAVE CONGRESS ACTUALLY VOTE ON SPENDING? THAT’S CRAZY TALK! Thomas Massie Catches Bipartisan Flak for Suggesting Congress Actually Vote on $19 Billion in Disaster Funding.
MICHAEL LEDEEN: It’s Time for a Thoroughgoing Revamping of the Intelligence Community.
For decades, Congress and various special committees and duos (such as Robb-Silverman) have invariably responded to intelligence failures by adding more bodies to the agencies and expanding their budgets. The predictable result? Today we’ve got too many spooks collecting too much money, with predictably bad results. Among other bad consequences, intelligence is typically churned out by committees, guaranteeing that we don’t identify our best analysts. We need to drastically reduce the numbers of both budgets and bureaucrats, in order to figure out who’s good. Then we need to promote them, within a much smaller system.
It’s hard to imagine this happening under normal circumstances, but today’s circumstances aren’t normal. As the investigations of the intel malefactors go forward, there will be numerous opportunities to remove lots of bad and incompetent actors, and put the whole community on the cutting-room floor.
That would be nice.
ON THE REASON PODCAST, Nick Gillespie interviews me about my new book, The Social Media Upheaval.
SHORT VERSION: WE NEED MORE WARMING: Roy Spencer: Why so many tornadoes this year? It’s not what AOC, Bernie Sanders (or maybe even you) think.
AND FOR CHILDREN, OTHER LIVING THINGS, AND REALLY EVERYTHING: Socialism Is Bad for the Environment.