DO THEY HEAR THEMSELVES? DO THEY EVEN KNOW THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CULTURE INVOLVED? ARE THEY JUST LOBOTOMIZED AND UNABLE TO SAY ANYTHING THAT ISN’T “ORANGE MAN BAD”?  Max Boot: Trump Wrong For Speaking Bad About Dead Terrorist.

BUT THE PROBLEM OF PLASTIC WASTE IN THE SEA (WHICH IS NOT REALLY AS BIG AS IT’S BEEN PAINTED)  WILL TOTALLY BE SOLVED BY THE WEST BANNING STRAWS…  China’s ocean waste surges 27 percent in 2018.

WEIRDLY MY OBSERVATIONS IN HALF A CENTURY IN THIS WORLD HAVE BEEN OPPOSITE THIS, BUT FINE:  Narcissism may be the key to happiness, study finds.

OLDER SON’S VERY FIRST WORD WAS “MEOW”:  Cat conversation with 18-month-old caught by baby monitor.

WE EVOLVED TO EAT MEAT – ARE YOU AN EVOLUTION DENIER?  Vegetarian ate 1 burger, got hooked and became butcher.

I STILL SAY EVERYTHING SINCE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK IS A HAN SOLO IN CARBONITE NIGHTMARE:  ‘Game Of Thrones’ writers bail on ‘Star Wars’ trilogy.

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HE WAS ALWAYS RUTHLESS AGAINST THOSE HE SAW AS HIS ENEMIES: Obama Successfully Hunted Trump Campaign Aides Instead of Terrorists. “For more than a year, the leaders entrusted to protect the country and administer justice on behalf of Americans victimized by terrorists instead used their awesome reach against a domestic political rival.”

It’s just that most of those he saw as enemies were Americans who disagreed with him politically.

FLASHBACK: Sen. Mark Warner Traded Secret Texts with Russian Oligarch’s Lobbyist Linked to Hillary.

NONSENSE, ALL THE BEST PEOPLE HAVE INFORMED ME THAT TRUMP IS A DEMENTED TODDLER WITH NO SENSE OF STRATEGY: How Baghdadi’s Death Reveals Trump’s Clever Syria Strategy: U.S. president outsmarts Putin — leaves him with Syria headaches as U.S. withdraws.

INVERTING THE CLAUSEWITZ CLAUSE: Obama Successfully Hunted Trump Campaign Aides Instead of Terrorists.

As I wrote in June of 2009, “President Obama has demonstrated that he’s always eager to view American politics as the continuation of warfare by other means, to flip Von Clausewitz’s axiom on its head.”

OLD AND BUSTED IN CALIFORNIA: Sticking it to the man.

The new hotness? Sticking it to the gig economy: LAX Ban on Curbside Uber, Lyft and Taxi Pickups Goes Into Effect.

Earlier: California Bill Threatens to Destroy Uber, Lyft, and the Gig Economy.

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

JUST SENT OUT THANK-YOU NOTES TO A BUNCH OF YOU WHO DONATED VIA PAYPAL. I’m sure I missed some people — for some reason, the notifications don’t always go to the right folder, and this time a few of them wouldn’t let me reply for some reason. But regardless, know that I appreciate every donation, large and small. Thanks so much to all of you.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? The Democratic plan for a 42% national sales tax.

DAVE CHAPPELLE BLOWS RASPBERRY AT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS:

If Dave Chappelle seems disrespectful, that’s because he doesn’t owe you anything just because he hurt your feelings. His job is to make an audience laugh, not to make sure you’re feeling okay. If he makes you angry, you have the right to be angry. And he has the right to tell you to go do something else with your time. Go to a Hannah Gadsby show, or some other safe space where your precious ego won’t be bruised. It has nothing to do with him. He is not responsible for your emotions.

Chappelle’s commitment to freedom of speech makes a sharp contrast with the Washington Post calling for the cancellation of the First Amendment today:

MSNBC political analyst and former Obama administration official Richard Stengel argued that America needs to outlaw hateful speech, including Koran burning.

“Yes, the First Amendment protects the ‘thought that we hate,’ but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another. In an age when everyone has a megaphone, that seems like a design flaw,” Stengel argued in a Washington Post op-ed Tuesday.

I’m so old, I can remember 2017, when the Washington Post pretended to be temporarily concerned about democracy dying in darkness. Or as Kevin Williamson wrote in his new book, The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics, “The Bill of Rights ought to be titled ‘A List of Things You Idiots Don’t Get a Vote On, Because They Aren’t Up for Negotiation.’”

Otherwise, Iowahawk has it right, tweeting in response to Stengel, “I’ll agree to let you outlaw hate speech if you agree to let me define hate speech.”

DON’T CRY FOR ME, TEXARKANA: Hillary Clinton Has Become The Eva Perón of American Politics.

Eva Peron? Why is Hillary working AOC’s side of the street, all of a sudden?

THE CLOWN SHOW CONTINUES: Democratic leaders walk back Thursday impeachment vote.

Related: Schiff Directing Witnesses Not To Answer GOP Questions.

UPDATE: Broken link before. Fixed now. Sorry!

MEAT: IS THERE NOTHING IT CAN’T DO? Vegetarian ate one burger, got hooked and became a butcher.

HEH: Recording Industry Adds ‘Explicitly Christian’ Warning Label To Kanye’s New Album.

AT AMAZON, Fall Deals in Grills and Outdoor Cooking.

Plus, save on Bestselling Jewelry.

HEH: Trump Gets Dems To Interrupt Baseball, Condemn Dogs, Side With Terrorists All Within 24 Hours.

ANOTHER LOUSY DAY IN PARADISE: The rolling blackouts in California is not a climate change story. It’s a perfect storm of bad management decisions and rent-seeking green energy contractors.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Debate professor: Science is a projection of whiteness.

“Our argument will be that space is not real. It’s not real. Science, technology, it’s all fake. It’s a projection of white fantasies that has worked to control our interpretation of how the world works.” That’s the statement of a college debate professor talking with his class. He added, “None of us have had the privilege of going to f**king space to verify that there’s these stars and these galaxies and these planets.”

Read the whole thing, which is apparently based on up a recording a student made of Ryan Wash, an instructor at Utah’s Weber State University, who sounds like he’s unintentionally or otherwise, channeling a page from 1984, where O’Brien is interrogating Winston Smith:

‘Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness.’

‘But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals — mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of.’

‘Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.’

‘But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach for ever.’

‘What are the stars?’ said O’Brien indifferently. ‘They are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the centre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it.’

Winston made another convulsive movement. This time he did not say anything. O’Brien continued as though answering a spoken objection:

‘For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we often find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometres away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink?’

It’s apparently alive and well at Weber State.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Al Sharpton(!) Says Trump Needs To Fight Antisemitism.

Ironically, despite his long history of rabid anti-Semitism, Al Sharpton does not lack for chutzpah.