SPENGLER: Uber’s Death Car and the Cracks in Liberal Culture.

Industry experts know that driverless cars are more hype than reality. As I noted earlier this week in Asia Times: “The Information, a consulting organization that showcases industry specialists, recently held a conference call on self-driving where one expert warned: ‘You have to remember that self-driving does not work, at least in… a highly functional, driverless robotaxi sense. It does not work. And there are many folks clamoring for architectures to get there. Again, think back to flight. Do you ever watch those YouTube videos where the guy pumping the umbrella and the dude with a big corkscrew and the person with the bird wings? I would think of it more that way. It is left to be seen which one of those architectures gets you to a useful outcome.'”

That is cold comfort to the family of Ms. Herzberg, whose death we can watch in a real-life horror movie. It is probable that improved sensors and communications might be able to prevent this sort of accident in the future; the sort of situations which AI never will master are things like lane changes in traffic in which one driver has to communicate intention to other drivers in order to avoid collisions.

But that is now beside the point. The cultural damage done by the Utopian vision of brain-as-a-machine is enormous, and the skepticism with which the public now must view Artificial Intelligence is a healthy corrective.

Read the whole thing.

FINALLY: ‘Smoking while walking’ could become illegal in NYC if proposed bill passes.

The legislation, proposed by New York City Councilman Peter Koo (D) from Queens would make it a misdemeanor to walk and smoke at the same time, WNYW-TV reported. Violators could face a $50 fine if caught.

“My bill is very simple, no smoking and walking on New York City sidewalks,” Koo told WNYW.

In other words, going someplace while smoking will become a taxable activity.

At least they haven’t figured out how to tax, well, you know…

HMM: Best Buy won’t sell Huawei phones, laptops, or smartwatches anymore. “Major carriers including AT&T and Verizon have refused to sell the company’s phones due to pressure from the US government, leaving retailers like Best Buy and Amazon as the only remaining places for US customers to get devices like the recently released Mate 10 Pro or upcoming P20 line of devices. Losing Best Buy, the largest consumer electronics retailer in the country, is another major setback for the Chinese phone company.”

BREAKING: Trump threatens to veto $1.3 trillion spending bill, raising risk of a government shutdown.

If he signs it as-is, it could be the end of the GOP Congress — if that phrase still means anything anymore.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Budget Passes Senate, McMaster Down, Citibank and Much, Much More. “Citigroup, a financial institution, has decided to place restrictions on how its business partners can sell firearms.”

MATT WELCH: The Two Parties Are Awful on Almost Everything Important.

It’s long since past time to recognize a glaring truth about two-party politics in 2018: In both effective practice and, increasingly, aspirational rhetoric, there are no significant Republican or Democratic voting blocs on Capitol Hill in favor of reducing deficits, restraining government growth, tackling entitlements, protecting privacy, defending free speech, practicing transparency, challenging prohibition, conducting legislative-branch oversight, passing damn budgets, reducing war, or extending the post-World War II America-led system of reducing global tariffs in the name of both prosperity and peace.

These are among the most important issues facing the country, and the two major parties are currently awful on all of them.

This is not a nihilistic, equal-pox-on-both-houses observation. In an era of increasing polarization, it’s ignorant to pretend that the parties (and as importantly, their customers) are the same. On abortion, immigration, guns, and plenty besides, there has been a great divergence, particularly in recent years.

But when we return to trillion-dollar deficits and pivot toward trillion-dollar debt-service bills without causing much more than a ripple of public fuss, it’s worth stepping back and wondering where the fiscal-sanity bloc will land after our current political re-sorting.

I don’t know about Matt, but you’ll find me at the bar.

HMM: Charges Have Been Dropped Against Most Turkish Officers in D.C. Clash.

Prosecutors first asked a judge in November to dismiss charges against four members of Mr. Erdogan’s security detail. Then they dropped charges against seven others on Feb. 14, the day before Secretary of State Rex Tillerson flew to Ankara for a meeting with Mr. Erdogan meant to ease tensions. Among those freed of legal jeopardy immediately before the high-level meeting was the head of Mr. Erdogan’s security team.

U.S. officials said that no one pressured prosecutors to drop any of the charges for political reasons. Instead, the decisions were the result of investigators misidentifying some of the suspects and failing to develop enough evidence against others, according to the U.S. officials and an attorney who provided some free legal advice to defendants in the case.

Mr. Tillerson, in his private talks with Turkish leaders, pointed to the decisions to drop charges—which hadn’t been publicized or announced—as an example of how the U.S. had addressed Mr. Erdogan’s grievances, according to administration officials familiar with the talks.

He’s not the only one with grievances, you know.

OMNIBUS BILL: It hasn’t even passed and already Nancy Pelosi knows what’s in it.

While Pelosi supported the overall spending package — she and other Democrats have bragged that they defeated many “poison pill” rides sought by Republicans — the California Democrat is unhappy that there was no action on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Trump has sought to end the program, although the issue is now likely heading for the Supreme Court.

Pelosi also laid into Trump during a speech on the House floor, slamming him for claiming victory on border wall funding.

“That’s not completely true, Mr. President,” Pelosi said. “There’s some resources for fencing and the rest there. But some of that money is for technology and other ways to protect our borders… But if you want to think you’re getting a wall, you just think it and sign the bill.”

The crowing on the Left makes me think they really do want Trump to sign it as-is, but we aren’t yet to the final deal.

DAVID HARSANYI: John Brennan Shouldn’t Be Lecturing America, He Should Be The Focus Of A Congressional Inquiry.

“I think he is afraid of the president of Russia,” Brennan said of the president who began selling lethal weapons to Ukraine and missile defense technology to Eastern European nations, and oversaw the U.S led bombing and killing of Russian in Syria. “The Russians,” he went on, “could have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.” They “may have things that they could expose and reveal,” he added.

Surely a former intelligence chief wouldn’t float rumors about a foreign power blackmailing the president of the United States if he didn’t have some information to back up this kind of contention. Surely, he wouldn’t further corrupt the trust Americans have in their institutions by using the respect people have for his former position for political purposes.

This is the former CIA director we’re talking about. It’s one thing for someone like Joe Scarborough, Trump’s jilted ex-bestie, to make such contentions. It’s quite another for a person who had access to potentially incriminating evidence to make such an assertion. Perhaps he needs to be put under oath so we can all see what he knows.

Yeah, well this hasn’t exactly been Congress’s week for doing the right thing.

ART IMITATES LIFE: Bill and Hillary Clinton have ‘AT LEAST a one-way open marriage’ claims their veteran pollster – who compares them to Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright in House of Cards.

‘It’s not hard to conclude that Bill and Hillary Clinton didn’t have at least a one-way open marriage,’ [Mark Penn] writes. ‘Perhaps it was not by choice, but the stories accumulated over the years until the fact of it became apparent.

‘There was also no question that at the same time their relationship was so deep and enduring. If this was the model of the first couple, what did it mean for the rest of the country?’

Penn claims that open marriages are ‘perfect’ for Hollywood stars and other A-listers, pointing out that it could be ‘more stable’ than having serial marriages.

‘Hollywood usually does as Hollywood writes. For example, Frank and Claire Underwood in House of Cards have numerous partners, including one who sleeps at the White House, as they pretend to ignore it. There seems to be a rage of jealousy under the surface.’

I never got past the first season of House of Cards, but assumed from the start that the Underwoods were based in no small way on the Clintons.

THERE THEY GO AGAIN: Maryland NAACP Cites Hoax as Evidence of Racism.

FEELY JOE Biden Responds to Trump’s ‘Crying’ Tweet: ‘Women Should be Treated with Respect.’

ONE OF THOSE RUMORS ABOUT MCMASTER’S IMMINENT DEPARTURE WAS BOUND TO COME TRUE EVENTUALLY:

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Facebook Falls Out of Favor with the Left.

IT’S THEIR MONEY: PETA Erects Billboard Memorializing Cows Killed in Auto Accident.

TABLES TURNED: Alarmists Now ‘Deny’ Climate Science While Big Oil Defends It.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN WAY: The Hemperor From New Belgium Is Colorado’s Latest Hemp Beer.

Hemp Beers are nothing new in Colorado. Several have been brewed over the past fifteen years — if not further back — but when New Belgium Brewing releases its new hemp beer, the Hemperor HPA, next month, it will represent a serious effort by the state’s largest craft brewer (and the nation’s fourth-largest) to bring the often controversial and quasi-legal plant into the mainstream market.

The 7 percent ABV beer, which will be sold in six-packs, is brewed with hemp seeds, adding a component that the brewery believes will re-create the flavor of cannabis terpenes, the aromatic oils in plants. Hemp itself is the non-psychoactive cousin of marijuana, often used in textiles, soaps and food.

I can’t recall anyone who smoked pot for the flavor, but this beer has to be better than an over-hopped IPA.

LOUISIANA SENATOR JOHN KENNEDY ON THE OMNIBUS BILL: “This is a Great Dane-size whizz down the leg of every taxpayer in this country.”

Best video I’ve seen all day.

LONGEVITY: Japanese woman becomes 4th oldest person in history.

Research and verification by the Gerontology Research Group (GRG) shows that Tajima is the world’s oldest living person. She reached 117 years and 231 days on Friday, making her the fourth oldest person in recorded human history, surpassing Marie-Louise Meilleur of Canada.

It marks the first time since December 1999 that someone has been alive who has reached or surpassed Tajima’s age. Other people have claimed to be older, but those claims have never been verified with official documentation and other supporting evidence.

Tajima, who still lives on Kikaijima island, has 9 children and, as of 2017, has more than 160 descendants, including great-great-great-grandchildren, according to the Gerontology Research Group. She has claimed that her secret to longevity is eating delicious things and sleeping well, but she also enjoys hand-dancing to music when the shamisen is played.

Sleep well and eat well — sounds good to me, no matter how long you might last.

LEAVING FACEBOOK — IT’S GONE VIRAL! Next Worry for Facebook: Disenchanted Users. “Rising number of users claim to be abandoning social media giant, prompting a warning from some analysts that its growth could slow.”

Throughout previous controversies in recent years, Facebook’s user population has climbed steadily, providing the critical base that draws an ever growing gusher of advertising revenue.

Now Facebook is contending with a groundswell of users—some of whom are tweeting under the hashtag #DeleteFacebook—who claim to be abandoning the social media giant, prompting some analysts to warn that its growth juggernaut could sputter.

“The biggest issue we see for Facebook is if the DeleteFacebook leads to user attrition and eventually ad dollars allocated elsewhere,” Barclays analysts said in a research note Tuesday. The public backlash also could impinge on Facebook’s ability to recruit talented engineers, they said.

Late Wednesday, financial services firm Stifel slashed its target price for Facebook shares to $168 from $195, saying, “Facebook’s current plight reminds us of eBay in 2004—an unstructured content business built on trust that lost that trust prior to implementing policies to add structure and process.”

I’m not leaving Facebook, or at least not yet, because it remains a great way to deliver traffic to the content I produce for non-Facebook platforms. That’s for the simple reason that there are lots and lots of eyeballs on Facebook.

The mistake others have made was moving their platform from independent sites and blogs, over to Facebook. Once there, they’re hostage to either Facebook’s capricious whims, or to that platform suffering a huge loss of trust and/or users.

ROGER L. SIMON: The Deep State Is in Deep Trouble.

REVOLT OF THE RULING CLASS:

I get the feeling that Washington believes the current unrest is just another Tea Party they can ignore, ridicule, co-opt, or shut down.

That may prove to be a grave mistake.

BREAKING: Schumer Gives ‘Big Pat on the Back’ for Trump on China Tariffs After Bush, Obama ‘Inaction.’

YUGE: Trump attorney John Dowd resigns amid shake-up in president’s legal team.

Tyler O’Neil adds:

Lawyer John Dowd will resign after Trump refused to take his advice and insisted he should testify to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Sorry, President Trump, but Dowd is right. Mueller could catch the president and push for perjury, should the president say anything amiss under oath.

Dowd also told my old Hillsdale College classmate Betsy Woodruff that Trump should fire Mueller.

Developing…

IT’S ONLY A WEAPON WHEN REPUBLICANS USE IT: How Facebook Went From ‘Ideal Way’ to Reach Voters to Being ‘Weaponized.’