Monday Overnight Open Thread (2/20/17) President's Day Edition
—Misanthropic Humanitarian
The Father of our country.
The Rough Rider
The Great Communicator
The Jug Ear F*cker
The Quotes of The Day
Quote I
When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn't for you. It's for the Presidency. Harry S Truman
Quote II
It's one of the few regrets of my presidency - that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There's no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I'll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office. Barack Obama
No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it. Thomas Jefferson
Quote IV
There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. Ronald Reagan
Published on Feb 18, 2017
See the World Famous Glory Hole Spillway at Lake Berryessa overflowing for the first time ever from the perspective of a drone. The Lake Berryessa News, with authorization from dam operators, shows you what you want to see! This video is all about the spillway!
Recent rains not only brought the lake up, but they also brought lots of rocks and mud down onto Hwy 128. The Hwy will remain closed until the end of the day today so crews can clean up. www.VisitLakeBerryessa.com
Lundy, who is now 92, recalls his inability to listen during lectures. “I was busy sketching,” he admits. During his time in the infantry, he continued to sketch in his pocket-sized notebooks. The drawings, which were created between May and November 1944—when Lundy was wounded—take us from his initial training in Fort Jackson to the front lines in France. The vivid images show everything from air raids to craps games for cigarettes. A sense of longing for home is a recurring theme in his sketches, which include detailed drawings of his bunk as well as particularly dream-like drawing, titled Home Sweet Home, that shows a soldier lounging on a hammock.
The preceding was submitted by a Moron. Sorry we lost that Moron's name. Thank you for the submission. Pretty cool story.
Scientists around the world are even organizing a series of marches on Earth Day in April, which they’re billing as “a call to support and safeguard the scientific community.”
In Seattle, the professors hope to do their part by dissecting case studies — or, as they call it, “bullshit in the wild” — to demonstrate how scientific data can be manipulated to mislead the public. Examples include a Fox News report on food stamp fraud; the professors promise to explain “how Fermi estimation can cut through bullshit like a hot knife through butter
10,000 supporters of Turkey’s president Erdogan gathered in the König-Pilsener-Arena in Oberhausen, Germany, on Saturday to attend a speech by Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. Yildirim was campaigning for a “Yes” vote to Erdogan’s constitutional reform which is set to abolish the office of prime minister and strengthen Erdogan’s one-man rule. “Those who love their country say yes” was the slogan of Saturday’s event.
Three million Turkish citizens live in Germany. 60 percent of those who cast a vote in Turkish elections support Erdogan and his Islamist party. Campaign stops by Erdogan and other senior figures of the ruling AK Party in Germany have become a political tradition in recent years. In 2010, Erdogan held a rally in Cologne in which he called assimilation a “crime against humanity“
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The ONT Musical Interlude
2003, 100 people died after pyrotechnics ignited a club during a gig by Great White in West Warwick, Rhode Island. Great White singer Ty Longley was also killed in the accident. Two brothers who owned the club were charged, along with the former tour manager with involuntary manslaughter. Foam soundproofing material at the edge of the stage set alight and the blaze spread quickly in the one-storey wooden building as fans all tried to escape through the same exit. Great White began a tour in July 2003 to raise money for the survivors and families of victim viathisdayinmusichistory.com
1950, Born on this day, Walter Becker, bass, guitar, vocals, songwriter with American group Steely Dan who had the 1973 US No.11 single 'Reeling In The Years' and nine other US Top 30 hits. Steely Dan's 'Two Against Nature' won a Grammy in 2001 for Album of the year. Becker has produced records for Rickie Lee Jones, China Crisis and Michael Franks.via thisdayinmusichistory.com
"This past Wednesday night, certain employees of BCI informed their leadership that they would not be at work the following day," the company said in a statement. "Because of the time-sensitive nature of the jobs these employees were assigned to, all employees were told that they would need to show up for work or they would be terminated. On Thursday, the majority of BCI's employees fulfilled their obligations to our clients, but eighteen employees did not. Regretfully, and consistent with its prior communication to all its employees, BCI had no choice but to terminate these individuals."
If you were fired, don't bitch about it. If you believe in something so deeply you should happily sacrifice your job for something you believe in. Just remember your employer is there to produce a product not to give you a job.
"Here's the bottom line, we've got to keep our country safe," Trump said at his rally Saturday. "You look at what's happening in Germany, you look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden. They took in large numbers. They're having problems like they never thought possible."
So, what did the MSM do with this?
What they did was focus like a laser on the phrase "what's happening last night in Sweden" and ran with it. In their blind zeal to come up with a "gotcha" moment, they looked for one specific incident that happened the night before in Sweden, couldn't find anything, and then started crowing about how Trump doesn't know what he's talking about, is making stuff up, and is a idiot.
Normal people with normal language comprehension skills don't do this. Normal people would figure that if nothing specific happened in Sweden, then Trump probably meant something different, something a bit more general, and in any event, I shouldn't let my expectations dictate how Trump's words should be understood.
This is how normal people behave. But we're not talking about normal people, we're talking about the MSM, which consists of "27-year olds who know nothing" (according to Obama advisor Ben Rhodes).
As it turned out, Trump did have something specific in mind:
The public -- also known as "customers" of for-profit news outlets -- sees Trump's words differently than journalists do. They, or at least the members of his winning electoral coalition, see Trump not as a politician but as a businessman. They know, and even value, the fact that his words have not passed through a gauntlet of spinners, prose smoothers, and fact-checkers.
They may have met other real estate professionals in their own lives and they know better than to take the words of ad hoc marketing seriously. These supporters are not giving Trump a benefit of the doubt. They recognize his professional DNA,and journalists are overdue to recognize this discernment by their own audiences.
Which is why they continue stepping on the rake.
So, the result of the latest brouhaha is more winning:
1. The massive problems caused by immigrants in Sweden is now being talked about openly, whereas in the past, the MSM were sympatico with the preferences of the Swedish government, i.e. ignore it.
2. In their rush to find something to hit Trump with, the MSM have kind of boxed themselves in having to defend the proposition that everything in Sweden is just peachy-keen, ducky, and smells like roses. Because if they don't take that line, then they're in effect agreeing with what he said at the Florida rally, which destroys the whole "gotcha" moment they were trying to trap him with.
3. Once again, everyone can see what a pathetic bunch of clowns the MSM are.
And again I wonder if this somehow PDT is doing this on purpose.
CPAC is now in the strange position of having invited someone precisely because he was not permitted to speak on college campuses due to his controversial statements, and yet now having banned him from speaking there due to his controversial statements.
As you probably know, Establishment conservatives hoping to tank him began circulating a tape of an appearance on the Joe Rogan show early last year, in which he talked about having given oral sex to an older priest when he was 14, and making jokes (as he does) about that having improved his skills in that area. Then an appearance on another show was dug up, where he talked about younger "boys" (he says he meant "young men") have sex with older men a fair amount in gay circles.
It should be noted that as far as his "pro-pedophilia" remarks, he was actually the young person being preyed upon (though he denies he was preyed upon, calling himself, perhaps just sardonically, the "sexual predator" in the encounter), and not the person (the older man) who is actually charged with the moral and legal duty to not have sex with a 14 year old.
Nonetheless, some say that he's spouting "NAMBLA talking points" and people whose opinions I respect, like Niedermeyer's Dead Horse, takes a look at this in a fairly objective way and seems to try to give Milo every break she can, but seems to find there's just too many strikes here, and the batter is fairly called out.
I think that's a reasonable take -- though, in saying so, I don't think it's complete.
I would say an important additional dimension here is that if they can do it to him, they can do it to you too.
I saw an unconfirmed claim -- and I stress, unconfirmed -- that even Breitbart is considering severing times.
I doubt that, but who knows. The way this works is that the Outrage Mob gins up its hatred quickly, giving no one a chance to actually think slowly and carefully about these things -- and they should be thought slowly and carefully about, because what's being engineered here is possibly an irrevocable negative hit on someone -- and then people feel pressure to react instantly precisely the way the mob wants because God Forbid we stand up to the mob and say, "Stop your baying, and give adult men and women of rational mind and good spirit a chance to actually think," then maybe they'll turn on us next.
Proud anger travels twice around the world before cool reflection has even slipped on its first sock.
I'm not a fan of Milo's and have rarely cited him. I won't get into the "why" of that here, for similar reasons that I didn't get into why I wasn't a fan of Pam Gellar's after the shooting at her Draw Mohammad event, when the Social Justice Warriors of the left and the right saw fit to mob up on her hours after she'd been shot upon by a jihadi.
Yeah I've got a few problems with him -- but let's leave that for another day. I haven't seen it necessary to have one opinion or another about Milo so far, so I don't know if I have to suddenly burst forth with a lot of Strongly Held Opinions I Just Formed Six Minutes Ago today.
Another day when, you know, he's not in the eye of the Social Media Scalp-Hunting Hurricane.
I just think that when the whole world sets its sights on one lonely target, it's not really terribly useful or moral of me to join in the collective attack.
I don't think the world will end if a couple of voices here or there caution, "Maybe we shouldn't rush to extirpate him from the face of the earth with just these three seconds of contemplation."
I have no bias in favor of Milo, and that indeed my bias tends to run the other way. (To the extent I have any bias -- I'm not really a follower or fan. I can't render much of an opinion on Milo because, in all honesty, I am not familiar with his writing, except through the occasional quotation provided by his enemies.)
But I do think Milo has done some good work in exposing the increasing intolerance and hateful mob mentality of our twitterfied, outrage-addicted society.
Whether that outweighs the sins he is said to have committed, I don't know.
I suspect most people don't. I suspect his fans know a fair amount about him, and his detractors and scalp-hunters know a bit less, and I think pretty much everyone else is like "Is Milo that lemonheaded gay guy who's on YouTube a lot?"
But I just have the same sick feeling:
And here we go again.
For what it's worth, several people whose opinions I respect include those at, get this, this very blog, are taking Milo to task for his statements, and I can't disagree with them in any kind of authoritative way.
I could dispute them, that is, I could put up a "Well what about this?" sort of semi-defense, but I wouldn't have terribly much emotional or intellectual chips invested in the defense itself. It would not be a "I'm definitely right, you're definitely wrong" kind of thing.
And to be honest, I have myself mixed opinions about the precious few of Milo's statements I've heard. There's some stuff I've seen (out of context) about the Jews I had quite a negative reaction to, but then, I don't know the context.
All that said, I do have an interest, and that interest is less about Milo than this same sick game of Pick the Day's Hate Object and Destroy It.
Is it my scalp they'll be coming for next week?
Who knows -- maybe this very post you're reading right now will be cited as the reason Ace Must Now Be Purged to Maintain the Purity of the Body of the Church of Twitter.
As I think The Joker said, there's an element of fairness in pure random cruelty. If it's kind of random thing, the way we all take our place at the Wheel of Punishment and hope our name doesn't come up, maybe it is fair.
So long as we all understand and agree in advance that our names are up there too.
One can dispute his claims and criticize the callowness and the occasional meanness and casual offensiveness of his statements without taking the next step of deciding that we're going to mob up together to destroy his life just because we're kinda bored and not doin' much else on a slow news day.
Or can we?
I don't know that we can any longer.
This is where we are; this is what we are. Perhaps this is what we've always been -- perhaps we just needed a technological innovation of social media to enable us to focus and purify our hatred into a polarized speck of white-hot dissolving heat.
Maybe we just needed this one stupid little tool so that we could take this week's pleasure in inflicting cruelty on strangers, like a sadistic kid just needs a magnifying glass to focus the sun's rays on a random ant.
#HasJustineLandedYet?
Note: As I said above, I am calling for time to consider this. I'm not a Milologist and I don't know the context of all his statements or the full Oppo Dump on the statements claimed to be racist, anti-semitic, or now, pro-pedophilia.
Maybe the people calling for his scalp know these things with much higher accuracy than I do, and do have enough of a case against him to make this call.
Maybe -- but all I've seen are these disjointed twitter links and thin, took-me-five-minutes-to-write-this news briefs which are themselves just compilations of the disjointed twitter links.
I do not see the sort of written out, thought out indictment in essay form, with all counter-arguments considered and answered and all evidence amassed, that would make me feel comfortable about saying "Let's smear this queer."
If someone writes that, and it makes the case, sure, I'll say the case is made and the punishment should be executed. (Maybe -- gotta tell you, I'm a Consistent Advocate of Free Expression and I'm not tribal on the point as many are. By which I mean: I'm not a fan of the rightwing Social Justice Mafia's scalp-hunting any more than I am the leftwing. In fact, I think I like the former less, as I find the former disappointing and illusions-shattering.)
But I haven't seen it yet. If someone wants to write it, I'd personally like to read it. I don't really read the guy and don't know much about him except he's controversial and has offered spurious (to my mind) defenses of the alt-right.
But even though I found those defenses spurious and calculatedly naive, I can't say I'm outraged by someone attempting to make the case that we should be more free to speak, not less.
My strongly-held opinion on that point is that we are too limited in what we are free to say without be scalped, boycotted, or fired, not too damn "free" and in need of further abridgments to make sure other people's Spaces are Safe.
Even if the defense of freedom of expression in question is frequently disingenuous, I still gotta say... I'm not terribly bothered by a disingenuous effort to push back against the Speech Police.
Other than that one article -- which I didn't finish; had enough of it after a few paragraphs -- I really do not know what all the fuss is about this guy, on either the pro- or con- side.
I'm ignorant. I guess that makes me a good candidate for a jury.
So what is the case? I need to actually hear the case before rendering any kind of verdict.
If I head must roll, fine, but let's kind of have all the facts out in the open and debated first, huh? I don't want to see yet another scalping based on little more than "We don't like this guy on Twitter so now he gets his."
Explain it to me like I'm a child, who knows nothing, and not someone who is on Twitter and the listservs all day who knows all the crimes this turbulent internet celebrity is guilty of.
Of course the headline is inflammatory. The real criticism was of a subset of Moroccans who have immigrated to The Netherlands. But that is to be expected from the soon-to-be-obsolete mainstream press.
Before posing for selfies and accepting bouquets from a small band of hardcore supporters, Mr Wilders spoke out against the "Islamisation" of Holland and urged his countrymen to "regain your country".
"Not all are scum, but there is a lot of Moroccan scum in Holland who make the streets unsafe, mostly young people," he told camera crews from across the continent.
The sentiment is being expressed in public as part of the election process, and is no longer being whispered.
Mr Wilders's plans to close all mosques, shut down the asylum system and ban headscarves at public functions have proved popular with white working-class voters whom the party dubs "Henk and Ingrid". He has also appealed to voters who feel they have not shared in the benefits of the economic recovery by pledging more generous welfare payments and to stage a "Nexit" from the European Union.
Two more anarchists exposed by Project Veritas in a series of sting videos have been arrested, James O'Keefe announced on Twitter Wednesday. That brings the total number of arrests thus far to three. Paul "Luke" Kuhn and Colin Dunn were recently arrested in addition to Scott Ryan Charney, who was arrested on January 19.
...
Luke Kuhn, of the D.C. Anti-Fascist Coalition, was heard on the video actually threatening the city government of Washington, D.C., and the police if they tried to stop them:
"The message has to be, we do not recognize the city government either," Kuhn says. "If you try to close us down we will look for your house, we will burn it. We will physically fight the police if they try to steal one of our places. We will go to war and you will lose."
Sounds like someone had his Internet Muscles on, and then found out they weren't real muscles at all.
Presidents Day Off. I don't take any vacations (I hope to, eventually) so I gotta take my federal holidays off.
Yeah I know, some of you are working today. Sad! I am with you in spirit -- but only in spirit.
Those shelves aren't finishing themselves off, you know.
I'll post here and there but it'll be skimpy and thin. Mostly open threads.
If any cobs want to post, I'll definitely check the site before stompenating you!
Donald Trump gave a robust speech in August 2016 on how he, as president, would "Make America Safe Again." In it, he pledged that "one of my first acts as president will be to establish a commission on radical Islam." Note: he said radical Islam, not some euphemism like violent extremism.
Orwell understood very well that language has great power. Obama's language was carefully calculated to blame the world for Islamic terrorism, and exonerate Islam.
Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
President Trump is operating under no such constraints or illusions, and is quite correctly naming the source of Islamic terrorism as Islam.
It is not racist or anti-religion or whatever the SJW buzzword is to describe the reality of Islam. Hopefully the Trump administration will be able to purge the apologists for Islamic expansionism and push back against the tide.
Good morning, kids. Gorgeous day yesterday in Hymietown where it hit 60 degrees. I saw that Vic is back and posting, so that's a feel good story. I'll let the links do the talking. Have a better one and remain blessed.
Mr. Abdel Rahman, who was known as the blind sheikh, spent years in the most severe solitary confinement, barred from communicating with his followers, praying with other Muslim prisoners or even listening to Arabic radio. Failing blood circulation due to diabetes had killed the sensation in his fingertips, making it impossible for him to read his Braille Islamic texts.
"If we are serious about the fight against Islamism and terrorism, then it must also be a cultural struggle." — German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel.
Quote II
“But the Church will not deny that God created us male and female. We will not confuse respect and compassion with capitulation to a tragic delusion>Most Rev. James D. Conley Bishop of Lincoln, NE
Quote III
There’s only one faith, for example, that kills you or wants to kill you if you draw a bad cartoon of the prophet. There’s only one faith that kills you or wants to kill you if you renounce the faith... obviously, most Muslim people are not terrorists. But ask most Muslim people in the world, if you insult the prophet, do you have what’s coming to you? It’s more than just a fringe element.Bill Maher
Months before the attacker, Addul Razak Ali Artan, plowed his car into a crowd of students before launching a knife attack, he’d complained in an interview with his student paper about the media’s portrayal of Muslims as terrorists.
Lucky him – he didn’t have to worry about being considered a terrorist at OSU, of all places. The Rebel’s Faith Goldy interviewed a number of students after the attack, none of whom would call the attack an act of terrorism. One student referred to the incident as “a misunderstanding.”
But self-driving race cars are another matter, as was laid bare by the first ever driverless car race in Buenos Aires. Roborace, a nascent self-driving racing series, hosted the first test of the vehicles in a race format on a professional course this week, and things didn't go quite as planned.
While one of the two vehicles completed the race—albeit at far lower speeds than human-controlled Formula E racers typically reach—the runner-up didn’t even finish.
News of the stranded Donner Party traveled fast to Sutter’s Fort, and a rescue party set out on January 31. Arriving at Donner Lake 20 days later, they found the camp completely snowbound and the surviving emigrants delirious with relief at their arrival. Rescuers fed the starving group as well as they could and then began evacuating them. Three more rescue parties arrived to help, but the return to Sutter’s Fort proved equally harrowing, and the last survivors didn’t reach safety until late April. Of the 89 original members of the Donner Party, only 45 reached California.
Ignoring the idea of willpower will sound absurd to most patients and therapists, but, as a practicing addiction psychiatrist and an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry, I’ve become increasingly skeptical about the very concept of willpower, and concerned by the self-help obsession that surrounds it. Countless books and blogs offer ways to “boost self-control,” or even to “meditate your way to more willpower,” but what’s not widely recognized is that new research has shown some of the ideas underlying these messages to be inaccurate.
On this day in 1966, Nancy Sinatra held the UK No.1 single position with 'These Boots Are Made For Walkin' in the UK.
On this day,1980, AC/DC singer Bon Scott was pronounced dead on arrival at a London hospital after a heavy night's drinking. Scott was found in the passenger seat of a friend's parked car. The official coroner's report stated that he had "drunk himself to death", after suffocating on his own vomit. viathisdayinmusic.com
Food Thread: The Time I Got Spagheti Sauce On The Ceiling, And Other Bedtime Stories
—CBD
I screw up about once a week. Maybe more. But I have been cooking long enough that I can usually repair the damage without much trouble. My worst was probably early in my cooking days; I had just bought a copy of Marcella Hazan's wonderful The Classic Italian Cook Book: The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of Eating, and I desperately wanted to make Osso Buco Milanese. It's a bit of a pain, but I figured I could do it with some luck, and a lot of time. The only complication was that I had to go to work, so the plan was to cook it most of the way, then turn off the oven, go to work, return and reheat, and all would be right in the world.
So I skipped over to The Berkeley Bowl, where I bought the ingredients, including some very pricey (at least for me) veal shanks. The preparation went well, and as I put the pot into the oven I thought that I was quite the chef! And I was, until I got back into my car after work and realized that I had not turned off the oven before I had left. I think there was about one ounce of salvageable meat on the eight shanks I had cooked.
Oh....before I started using an immersion blender to make salad dressing, I used to shake it in a jar. Easy and quick, although I strongly suggest that if you use the shaking method to make sure that the top is on securely. And on an unrelated note, it takes several coats of primer to mask oil stains on the ceiling.
Caipirinhas are great! And the won't break the bank, because cachaça is cheap. Daniel Boulud's Caipirinha is a fine recipe. But let's face it, it's a simple drink. Try this....4:1 cachaça:lime juice, and simple syrup to taste. Then garnish with more lime and use lots of ice. You could muddle the lime in the bottom of the glass for some more of the lime essence from the skin. Or not.
It's one of the many conceits of the current crop of mixologists that they know better. Well...they don't. The best Caipirinha in the world is the one YOU like! If you want it sweeter or more tart or stronger or weaker? Sure. Make it. Life's too short to drink somebody else's drink.
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For solid, simple recipes, it's hard to go wrong with Dad Cooks Dinner, the website of Mike Vrobel, an enthusiastic amateur cook who happens to write better recipes than most professional chefs. Pressure Cooker Buffalo Chicken Wings seems a bit odd, but the dude knows his stuff, so if anyone out there wants to try this recipe and report back to the horde.....
Vrobel didn't go to culinary school or apprentice in a three-star restaurant kitchen, so his technique is self-taught, and based on the needs of a home cook, not modified from professional technique by a professional chef for the mythical typical amateur. He also writes comfortably and has a sense of humor. Good stuff.
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So...which of you pepper planters will identify this plant for a Moronette in need? Platinum Membership with ampersand utility (back ordered) and Troll-B-Gon for the first to name it correctly.
Why does New Mexico grow such marvelous chiles? I have read that there is a direct relationship between total temperature and spiciness, but is there something about New Mexico in addition to perfect weather? because there are other parts of the country that have similar weather, but not those marvelous chiles!
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I love going to bars. I love drinking in bars. I even enjoy shooting the breeze with bartenders. But not this guy.Rethinking the Modern Bartender Dude...get over yourself. It's a bar. You make drinks and serve food. Can it be a career? Absolutely. And there are bartenders who are fantastic at what they do. Just like there are coders and nurses and carpenters and gas station attendants and cab drivers and bloggers and.....
Here's my message: as bartenders, we are lights. We've been given an incredible platform -- both behind the bar and beyond it. Now the question is: What kind of light will you shine? Will you speak up against the problems in our industry? Will you use your education to educate your peers and your customers? The answer to these questions will determine the future of our industry. Being a modern bartender isn't about being the light that burns the brightest -- it's about being the light that burns the longest. How long will you burn?
Right. I'll have a beer and a bourbon chaser. And hold the message.
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Yup...you were right. I made Ina Garten's Cranberry-Orange scones, and they were great! Still too fine a crumb, but they were excellent, and pretty easy to make.
Véronique Jacquet, the café owner who works behind the bar, said: “Suddenly, we were rushed off our feet. Reporters were coming in and then my son phoned me from Paris, where he lives. He almost died laughing. I had regulars and friends phoning up and asking why I hadn’t told them we’d won a Michelin star.”
Mrs Jacquet’s cook, Penelope Salmon, said she had never dreamed of winning a Michelin star, but added: “I put my heart into my cooking.”
“This place is worth not just one but two stars,” a satisfied customer told French TV.
The listing was changed on the Michelin website, but not until two days later. Aymeric Dreux, the chef of the pricier restaurant, also took the mistake with good humour. “I phoned Madame Jacquet in Bourges,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “We had a good laugh about it and I invited her to come to the restaurant to sample what we do. If I’m in her neck of the woods, I’ll pop in for lunch and a beer at her place.”
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Cheese cake is made with cream cheese. Oh, there are variations that are made with ricotta, but the best cheese cake is made with cream cheese...it says so in the Bible.
The origins of this recipe are lost in the mists of time...I think it was a Tyler Florence recipe that I modified.
If you don't have a jigglemeter, at 65 minutes shake the pan gently and observe the jiggle. it should move slightly, but not slosh around.
Lemon Cheese Cake
Crust:
2 1/2 cups finely ground (use a food processor) graham crackers (about 40 squares)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (Add to graham crackers while processing)
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted (or more if you like the taste of butter)
Filling:
3 (8-ounce) blocks cream cheese, room temperature
1 1/2 cup sugar
4-5 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Zest of 2 lemons, finely grated
1 1/2 pints sour cream
To prepare crumb crust: In a mixing bowl or the food processor, combine the crust ingredients together until evenly moistened. Lightly coat the bottom and sides of a 11-inch springform pan with non-stick cooking spray. Firmly press the mixture over the bottom and 1-inch up the sides on the pan, use your fingers or the smooth bottom of a glass. Refrigerate the crust while preparing the filling.
To prepare filling: In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese on medium speed for 1 to 2 minutes until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and beat until creamy, 2 to 3 minutes. Periodically scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beaters. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and continue to beat until combined. Stir in the vanilla and lemon zest. Blend in the sour cream. Scrape down the sides again. The batter should be well mixed, without any lumps. The traditional technique is to beat as little as possible so that the batter doesn't have too much air in it and then crack while baking. That has never happened to me, and I think that the texture is better if the batter is well beaten. Just don't use the fastest speed on your mixer. Pour filling into the crust-lined pan.
Place springform pan on a baking sheet and bake in a preheated 325 degree oven for 65 minutes. The cheesecake should still jiggle, it will firm up after chilling. Be careful not to overcook! Do not do a toothpick test in the cake's center, just trust your clock and your jigglemeter. Let cool in the pan for 30 minutes. Chill in the refrigerator, loosely covered, for at least 4 hours to set up. Un-mold and transfer to a cake plate. Slice the cheesecake with a thin, non-serrated knife that has been dipped in hot water and wiped dry after each cut. Do not garnish with fruit, because the bible says that cream cheese with fruit is an abomination.
After all, she's Not President, and we only celebrate current and former Presidents on the third Monday in February.
By my count, that's 364 to 1... but also a very, very tremendously good thing. So tremendous its possibly big league. We have the best Not Presidents, don't we folks?
Main Reading Room, George Peabody Library, Baltimore
(h/t Mike Hammer for the Peabody pics)
Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes. Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread, where men are men, all the 'ettes are hotties, safe spaces are underneath your house and are used as protection against actual dangers, like natural disasters, or rioting in the streets, and special snowflakes do not get respect, but instead, a big load of guffaws. And unlike other AoSHQ comment threads, the Sunday Morning Book Thread is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Even if it's these pants, both of which should be taken out and shot.
When Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer launched last week, it was No. 3 on Amazon’s bestseller list, and took the top slot on the retailer’s “Hot New Release” list. Currently, Gosnell is No. 15 on Amazon’s “Hot New Release” list, and No. 13 on NYT’s “Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction” list, yet NYT won’t include it on its bestseller nonfiction list.
Amazon sales are not the same thing as NY Times sales, which are measured differently. That's why the the best-seller lists are different. On the other hand, the NY Times explanation actually explains nothing:
The Times's best-seller lists are based on a detailed analysis of book sales from a wide range of retailers who provide us with specific and confidential context of their sales each week. These standards are applied consistently, across the board in order to provide Times readers our best assessment of what books are the most broadly popular at that time.
Sounds kind of weasely. And what is "specific and confidential context" supposed to mean?
When the Grand Jury indicted abortion doctor Dr. Kermit Gosnell in 2011, it wrote: "This case is about a doctor who killed babies... What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy—and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors... Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it."
So Gosnell couldn't have done it without help:
The complicit role activist media, social radicals, medical colleagues, and incompetent (politicized) government played in perpetuating his crimes is an indictment of the moral wasteland we’re becoming. This is not about equating Gosnell’s crime to the horrific actions of Mengele, except to illustrate contemporary society’s refusal to learn from the past. If we did care, these blood-curdling crimes against babies would have ended earlier. If we did care, a caring nation would collectively march in the streets demanding answers. Instead, there’s muted silence and politicized obfuscation.
In a sense, you can understand why Gosnell would feel unfairly picked on. Under the system created by Roe and Doe, the worst that can be said of his efforts is that he cut too many corners, was sloppy and fudged some paperwork... As Claremont McKenna College professor Jon A. Shields notes, under Roe and Doe, Gosnell's only "clear legal violation[s]" are "relatively minor ones." Under Pennsylvania law, for instance, an abortionist needs a second opinion from another doctor to perform a third trimester abortion. "Is that failure really a capital crime?" Shields archly asks. "Had Gosnell performed the same late term abortion across the river in Cherry Hill, New Jersey - or in 40 other states - he would not have committed even a procedural offense."
You can listen to a short (4 min.), but very worthwhile interview with the authors McAleer and McElhinney here. They're also filming a movie that has been financed entirely by crowd-funding.
The Peabody Library - Also Good For Weddings
Recommended Reading for Shemp Smith, F. Chuck Todd, Jerry Rivers, Other MSM Snowflakes
I always had doubts that Trump would win. And to be honest, he wasn't my first choice, I wanted Ted Cruz. But we didn't get Cruz. Instead, we got Trump. OK, fine. I'll vote for him. I won't like it, but I will. Anything has to be better than the corrupt, shrieking she-gorgon of Chicago.
As a group, the MSM are astoundingly un-self-aware and un-self-critical. They spend so much time time patting each other on the back and handing out awards to themselves that they have no idea how they appear to those of us to whom they're trying to sell their product. The difference between who they think they are, and who they actually are, is comically large. Any other profession, when it becomes apparent that something is broken, the members of that profession get together and try to: 1. fix it and 2. take steps to keep it from getting broken again. I know the military does this a lot, especially when they lose a battle. They do extensive analyses of what failed, what went wrong, how it could be improved, and how to avoid getting beat next time.
Now, you'd think that in the face of their massive failures to get the 2016 election right, the MSM would've done something like that. You'd think they would have entered a period of self-reflection, held conferences, consulted with independent experts, etc., in order to understand and correct their mistakes and improve their product. And actually, I did see what I thought was going to be the beginning of this process. In the first week or two after the election, there did appear a sprinkling of "well, we sure screwed the pooch there, didn't we?" articles wherein some in the media tried to confront the endemic problems in their profession (for example, here's one).
But there it stopped. And they doubled down, and then tripled down, on stupid, and they've been cranking out the stupid ever since. It was as if the MSM all looked at each other and said "no, it really isn't our fault after all." They're like a bunch of drunks who sobered up just long enough to realize they've got a serious drinking problem, but realized how hard it would be to actually give up drinking, so they said to hell with it, and started drinking again, only even more heavily than before.
From Clinton’s questionable activities to the media’s inability to grasp the difference between Trump the celebrity and Trump the CEO, Surber shows how Trump challenged and beat the establishment on his own terms. Voters in thirty states chose to dump the status quo in Washington, and Make America Great Again.
Trump won despite Clinton’s massive campaign war chest. He won despite overwhelmingly negative news coverage. He won despite losing every debate. He won despite a tumultuous personal and financial past, and still, the elitists don’t understand why.
Surber explains why. Just don’t expect him to have any sympathy for the elitists and media personalities left adrift and defeated in Trump’s passing.
And after all, why should he?
No, they're probably not going to read that one, either. The MSM reminds me of the main character in this new Kindle book, My Safe Space:
Unable to cope with the reality of President Grump, Special Snowflake wishes on a star to enter an alternate reality where everything is the way she wants it to be, with President Zanders in the White House and gluten-free pastries in every Starbucks. But when she wakes up on January 21 and reads on Facebook that the inauguration never happened, that Grump decided to cancel at the last minute, she can't believe her wish came true. That just doesn't happen...right? Special Snowflake begins to question everything and can't decide which is worse: a reality she can't accept or a dream that isn't real.
Truly the dilemma for most of the post-election MSM. The $3.33 Kindle book will be available on March 21st, but can be pre-ordered now.
The MSM needs a sober reassessment of how it reports the news. Without it, what happened at Trump's press conference on Thursday will become the norm.
Amazon Notes
JTB asks:
I noticed a number of posts on various recent threads about people cancelling their Amazon accounts in protest over Bezos' anti-Trump declarations. We wondered if they do that, will they lose the e-books on their Kindles and other devices? I can't find a direct answer. I suspect (only suspect) that books stored on a dedicated e-reader like the Paperwhite can't be reclaimed by Amazon if the internet connection is turned off. But for devices like the Kindle Fire where it is used for more than books, can Amazon reach through the internet connection to take back e-books stored on that device? Will whatever software needed to read Kindle books still function? I have no idea.
I couldn't find a definitive answer, either, so, in the best AoSHQ tradition, I'll make one up. If you want to disassociate from Amazon, then why are you keeping your Kindle? Since (most of) your Kindle books are wrapped in a layer of DRM, I would think that after a while, the Kindle device will want to check in with some Amazon DRM server to verify your Kindle library, only it won't be able to since you've cancelled your account. And then you'll be shut down. Is it possible in this day and age to own a Kindle that *never* talks to the internet and you can only download books to it via a USB cable? If so, perhaps then you'll be able to keep the books indefinitely. But I don't know for sure.
If you want to push Amazon out of your life, my advice would be to finish reading all your Kindle books, then sell your device (after resetting it to factory specs as per the manual), and then never buy another e-book from them. I don't know if "cancelling" your account is really necessary, simply not using it should be good enough. That's what I would do if I no longer wanted to patronize Amazon.
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Anna Puma sent me an Amazon link re: publishing your book as a paperback:
We're excited to offer the opportunity to publish paperbacks in addition to Kindle eBooks. We'll be adding even more print-related features in the future, like proof copies, author (wholesale) copies, and expanded distribution to bookstores and non-Amazon websites. CreateSpace still offers these features, and KDP will offer them as well.
Publishing a paperback can help you reach new readers. KDP prints your book on demand and subtracts your printing costs from your royalties, so you don't have to pay any costs upfront or carry any inventory.
All the information to get you started with Kindle Direct Publishing's dead tree option is here.
Books By Morons
Moron jwpaine has put together a collection of his short stories under his pen named Tom Elliot, some previously published in various venues, and has published it on Kindle. Papa Jack & Other Stories can be purchased and downloaded for 99 cents.
This collection of short stories from horror author Tom Elliott includes the title story, told by a young southern woman dealing with an inner demon. Other stories explore: an ailing old woman's relationship with her devoted pet; a hardened mercenary who finds he must now ask people if they "want fries with that"; and a man who travels in bowling balls. Some poetry included.
Sounds like just what you'd want to be reading just before going to bed.
The adventures of a Texas boy that rides off to the Civil War. Coming home he becomes a Ranger...until he steals a Comanche princess! From the plains to the brothels of New Orleans, Wallace Stevens tries to avoid the label of outlaw while he shoots and seduces his way though Texas and Mexico!
Somebody (JTB?) last week expressed a desire to read more "ripping good yarns." Well, this sounds like it might be one.
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Don't forget the AoSHQ reading group on Goodreads. It's meant to support horde writers and to talk about the great books that come up on the book thread. It's called AoSHQ Moron Horde and the link to it is here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/175335-aoshq-moron-horde.
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So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, bribes, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at the book thread e-mail address: aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.
What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as you all know, life is too short to be reading lousy books.
Raise your hand if you think Democrats will actually do this. Poll: Americans want Democrats to work with Trump. 73% in fact. I guess that Hollyweird "Resist" movement isn't quite catching on with the serfs.
I've hit my fair share of birds in flight and just missed a pack of wild dogs crossing the runway in Aden, Yemen but thankfully have never actually hit a deer or other large animal on the runway. How often do airplanes hit deer?
Summer Ride
You know, this should be required at the next moron meetup.
People like Todd have become so convinced of their importance; they forget what is they're supposed to do. Reporters and news anchors have the duty to report the news. They need to gather the info, check facts, ask questions and then provide the information to the public who digest and make decisions based upon what they have seen or read.
Chuck Todd's tweet is indicative of the condition he and other journalists suffer. They are no longer content to report. They believe it is their mission to tell people what to think.
I think they were trying to make him look bad. I think they were trying to say, look at this Scary Guy the Republicans have on their team. Isn't he Scary?
Meanwhile, here are deep thoughts of deep thinker Sally Kohn:
(This week's chess pic is way too small. Click on it to see a much better version)
Good afternoon morons and moronettes, and welcome to the Saturday Afternoon Chess/Open Thread, the only AoSHQ thread with content specifically for all of us chess nerds who pay homage in the temple of Caïssa, goddess of the chessboard. And, for those of you who aren't nerdly enough for chess, you can use this thread to talk about checkers, or other games, or politics, or whatever you wish, only please try to keep it civil. Nobody wants to get in the middle of a giant food fight. Unless you've just gone off your diet.
“In a gambit you give up a Pawn for the sake of getting a lost game” (Samuel Standige Boden)
This is the story of my life in chess. At one time I thought I would like to be a gambit player, but every time I tried this or that gambit, I would somehow never be able to recover the pawn. Or I would fritter away whatever small positional advantage the theory said I supposedly had. So I would go into the endgame down a pawn, and then lose because, well, I was down a pawn. So enough of gambits. They do not suit my temperament.
It's Black's move. Can he win in this position, or must he settle for a draw? Show your work.
4k3/1p2p2p/1P1p3B/1p6/3P4/4PP2/6P1/1b4K1 b - - 0 1
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Solutions Update
Problem 1 - White To Play
6Q1/8/5k2/6p1/1KB1pq1P/8/6p1/8 w - - 0 1
1.Qf7+ Ke5
2.Qe7+
And that was the tricky move. You have to see that if 2.Qe6+ then 2...Kd4 3.Qd5+ Ke3 and the enemy king slips away on the dark squares.
3...Kd4
3.Qc5# 1-0
Problem 2 - White To Play
8/1K5Q/3B4/8/8/8/4p1k1/5q2 w - - 0 1
Every Black move is forced, no alternative.
1.Qh2+ Kf3
2.Qf4+ Kg2
3.Qg3+ Kh1
4.Qh2#
Problem 3 - Black To Play
8/4rk2/5n2/1Q2pp1p/7P/2R1bb2/r5PK/7R b - - 0 1
There are 3 different ways to mate in 3, but they all start with:
1...Ng4+!
Couple of possibilities for White's response here. If 2.Kh3 then 2...Bxg2+ 3.Kg3 Bf4#. This is the first solution. The other possible response is
2.Kg3 f4+
3.Kxf3 (or 3.Kh3 Bxg2#, the third solution)
3...e4# (the second solution)
Problem 4 - White To Play
2kr3r/pb3pp1/4pn1p/2p5/8/1R1B4/P1Q2PPq/2B1RK2 w - - 0 1
1. Qxc5+ Qc7
Best. If 1...Kb8 then it's mate in 7: 2.Rxb7+ Kxb7 3.Qb5+ Ka8 4.Qc6+ Kb8 5.Bf4+ Qxf4 6.Rb1+ Qb4 7. Rxb4#.
Or, even worse, 1...Kd7 2.Rxb7+ Ke8 3.Qe7#.
2.Qxc7+ Kxc7
3.Bf4+ Kd7
4.Rxb7+ and White picks off the bishop.
Endgame of the Week
4k3/1p2p2p/1P1p3B/1p6/3P4/4PP2/6P1/1b4K1 b - - 0 1
So... what can Black do?
In this position, his passed 'b' pawn is his chief asset. So the question is, what happens if he just starts advancing it? What countermeasures are available to White?
1...b4
2.Kf2 b3
3.Ke2 b2
4.Kd2 Bg6
So, White's king doesn't have time to get over there and stop the pawn.
Is there anything else White can do to speed up the defense? Yes. He can advance the 'e' pawn to open up the diagonal for his bishop.
1...b4
2.e4! b3
3. Bc1
And the Black pawn is stymied. So, knowing all this. Is there a Black countermeasure for the White countermeasure, that will prevent him from advancing the 'e' pawn? Yes:
1...Be4!
Given that 2.fxe4 will gum up things in the center pretty good, White should look at alternatives. 2.Bg7 followed by 3.d5 looks promising, but now the bishop is within the Black king's striking distance:
2.Bg7 Kf7
3.Bh8 Kg8
And White will lose the trapped bishop. So 2.Bg7 is no good.
White's king is still out of range, so this still won't work, either:
2.Kf2 b4
3.Ke2 b3
4.Kd2 b2
So all that's left is taking the bishop:
2.fxe4 b4
3.d5 Kf7
As in the earlier line, this Move prevents Bg7 by White. Black's passed pawn is now unstoppable. Play might continue:
4.e5 b3
5.exd6 exd6
And White is in a resignable position.
Hope to see you all next week!
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Note: that cryptic line of letters and numbers you see underneath each board diagram is a representation of the position in what is known as "Forsyth-Edwards Notation", or F.E.N. It's actually readable by humans. Most computer applications nowadays can read FEN, so those of you who may want to study the position, you can copy the line of FEN and paste into your chess app and it should automatically recreate the position on its display board. Or, Windows users can just "triple click" on it and the entire line will be highlighted so you can copy and past it into your chess app.
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So that about wraps it up for this week. Chess thread tips, suggestions, bribes, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to my yahoo address: OregonMuse little-a-in-a-circle yahoo dott com.
L, Elle was kind enough to watch the entire Westminster Kennel Show and send in the following report.
The 141st Westminster Kennel Dog Show took place on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Dog shows are familiar to some of you like MisHum and Kodos the Executioner, both of whom have spent time In this fascinating world competing. My takeaway from watching Westminster is that the judges know nothing. I know this because Best in Show has never been awarded to Labs, Golden Retrievers, Shelties, or Great Danes. Also cankles and bad shoes are pervasive among the female handlers.
This years winners:
Working group - Boxer
Hound group - Norwegian Elkhound
Toy group - Pekingese
Non-Sporting - Miniature poodle
Herding group - German Shepherd
Sporting group - Irish setter
Terrier - Norwich terrier
Best in Show: Rumor, the German Shepherd
Reserve Best in Show: Adrian, the Irish Setter
The Herding group has only won BIS once in 1987. The winner, like this year, was a German Shepherd.
Honorable mention goes to Ace's doggie who won the Master's Agility Championship in the 24" Division, a Border Collie named Kaboom.
What else has been going on in the world of animals. Let's take a look.
Speaking of our 'Ette L, Elle here is another submission from her.
Long time lurker Larry dutifully answering your call for more cat photos.
Meet Ms. Mister. She adopted us ten years old and has made the fundamental transformation to lap cat from outdoor huntress par excellence.
Just to be clear, no, she is not transgendered. Our then three year-old granddaughter named her Mr. Mister, but when a raccoon nearly tore her tail off in her misguided defense of the food bowl that we stupidly used to keep outdoors, the vet corrected our misconception as to her sex. The minor name change ensued.
Thanks to all for making AoS a daily "must read" for me. You have made quitting the increasingly execrable Hot Air easy for me. LOVE the pet thread!
Regards,
-Larry
PS: Obviously a moron, I sent this to the wrong email address last week...
Quite the winter photo submission. Here's the story about this abused dog cutie.
Hi,
I post sporadically as “Skree” - daily reader, voracious lurker. This is Jasper in his first snow storm.
He loved it. He’s in California and I’m on the East coast now so I miss him very much.
You can tell he’s an unhappy abused dog from this photo.
Don't judge me.
Cheers,
Lurker Bill submitted this photo. Quite an interesting cat. Check this out.
This is my "Neph-Cat", Max. Max is a Savanah cat, I cat sit for practically every day. My nephew learned the hard way, "Don't let a Jungle Kitteh get bored"! They WILL expose the insides of your couch in an afternoon...
Yes, he is on an leash. Yes, he LOVES to climb things: Trees, cars, vans, people, you name it he will climb it. He also will chase anything (even the neighbors Chesapeake Bay Retriever). In short, he's a handful, but gentle, too. Knows he can hurt you, but won't.
Chronic Lurker Nathan submitted this photo of Diesel.
Spoiled cats, living the dream according to Antisocial Justice Beatnik.
Howdy,
Here's a picture Talia comforting Brutus in a hotel room in Augusta during the Hurricane Mathew evacuation some months back.
They were both on their best behavior.
Our last pet for the day is Das Hell Hound.
Here’s the BOD pic I promised of my mastiff Das Hell Hound, GoofenHund Extraordinaire. He would like to sincerely thank everyone for the extra opportunity to nom his favored, ahem, treat.
House Occam would like to say- ew. -OL
A big thank you for stopping by today. And a big thank you folks for submitting pet photos and animal stories. If you would like to share something with us, you can at petmorons at gmail dot com. Here's hoping you and your pets have a great weekend.
Snowmelt bulbs are normally found in the mountains of Europe. Their characteristic is that they start bloom when there still snow nearby. In fact, they sometimes bloom right through the snow. As I speak, the snow banks in my yard are melting back towards the shadier spots, and as they retreat, flowers spring up. Not a few weeks later, or a few days later, but the same day, literally an hour or so after the snow melts. It's as if the flowers were pushing the snow back, forcing it to retreat.
How is that even possible? How can you go from ice to bloom in just minutes? . . .
Crocus tommassinianus
For mild-winter and indoor gardeners
I like the Canadian blog linked just above. Here's a nice beginner's guide to starting seeds indoors. The most recent post is on the Burro's Tail Sedum, which, surprisingly, has been recently seen in the wild for the very first time. Can you identify its companion plants?
I recently received a link to photos of the Obamas chilling in the Caribbean, but I didn't have the heart to post any of them. Now that the Obamas have taken their chillin' effect elsewhere, it should be a little warmer. Some of us might want to visit the Caribbean. All of the plants below should do well there. And with frost protection, in warmer-winter parts of the USA. Or indoors.
Sedum 'Burro's Tail' has two impostors, Sedum burrito and X sedeveria. I kinda like the name "Sedum burrito".
On the subject of the Caribbean, some people might be surprised to find plants suited to arid, salty conditions there. I have heard of some you might not want to touch, but I don't recall the details right now. Here are some dryland plants in the Caribbean.
Anybody still facing drought?
Insty has linked a piece on the mild exaggerations which are "part and parcel of English language humor." Here's an example. Heard any other good ones lately?
I was in an airport in southeastern Iowa waiting for a passenger to arrive and a storm line to depart. Several older gents, farmers active and retired, had gathered to drain the coffee pot and pass the time of day. "Well, I knew it's been dry but I didn't know how dry," a voice stated.
I pricked my ears, sensing a great story in the offing.
"Couple of nights back, I was locking up and heard the dogs barking down by the sweet corn patch. I went that way and heard rustling. Do you know what I saw?" Dramatic pause.
"What?"
"It's been so dry, the raccoons had formed a bucket brigade and were watering the sweet corn!"
Still icy where you are?
Caught out in the cold? You could make a Swedish Torch, or Canadian Candle.
If there are broken branches around town like there are here, you could make a Dakota Fire Hole for a "semi-stealthy" cooking fire. Right in your own back yard. It is also recommended for cooking away from a campground, in order to avoid attracting bears to the camp.
Gardens of The Horde
The 50th Annual Ag Expo is over, and I am hearing stories about what it is like to drive a massive "crawler" tractor. Maybe I can find some photos of interesting farming equipment for next week.
The latest "atmospheric river" to hit California seems to have brought more wind than rain to our area. Tree branches everywhere. A few overturned vehicles. One man electrocuted. Power out in half of our town. At our house, it blew over a pot of baby broccoli. Ravaged the new little blossoms on our Flavor Delight Aprium and Arctic Star Nectarine. And the rain makes conditions ideal for brown rot blossom blight. Time to get out the copper spray.
Could have been worse here. What's happening in your garden?
Here at AoSHQ, a few heartening signs of swamp-draining have been noted lately.
The "swamp" in question of course is Washington DC, but also includes much of the bureaucracy, judiciary, and cultural command posts of the country, such as the media and entertainment industries. The tributaries comprise America's educational system, long dominated by the radical left and protected by tenure and union power. It is this ideological effluent center that has done so much to poison the discourse of American politics, smearing every institution that contributed to the country's greatness, and radiating hatred of all things most citizens hold dear . . .
Most of us can't do much right now about the swamp in D.C. But maybe some of us can do something to help drain the real swamp: Academia.
Via Insty, a Knoxville News Sentinel piece with advice for a new university chancellor. Including:
- Embrace the Tennessee Student Free Expression Act. State Rep. Martin Daniel, R-Knoxville, has introduced HB739, which quotes the Tennessee constitution: "The free communication of thoughts and opinions, is one of the invaluable rights of man, and every citizen may freely speak, write, and print on any subject."
Daniel's bill states the obvious: "In recent years, state institutions of higher education have abdicated their responsibility to uphold free speech principles."
- Commit to hiring conservatives. . .
How do you think the Chancellor feels about the advice in the piece above? That is more important that what she thinks, of course.
Got any ideas that might cause an educational official to look for a space which is safe from the ideas of other people? Have you gotten involved yourself in a bit of academic swamp-draining? Here's one area where it is possible to act locally. This may not always be easy. We might also think about some ways to support those who engage the monster.
Anybody remember Blue Sky Sessions? Ours is now open. Throw out an idea, if you've got one. We can work out the practicalities later.
Good morning Morons. I hope your week went well and that your weekend goes weller, gooder, better for you. Your humble Cob will attempt to amuse you with some weird stuff.
Chew on these stories. Or whatever is on your mind this morning. It is an open thread after all. Just remember the golden rules, no running with sharp objects and play nice with others.
This tool reveals how Facebook's AI tracks and studies your activity. I'll take the article's word for it. I ain't adding this extension and opening up another crack in my digital security. I really need to kill my FB account as I don't do much with it and has mostly fake stuff in it.
Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to player to be named later or CDR M. Otherwise send tips to Ace.
Okay, the intro doesn't beat the Six Million Dollar Man.
I don't think people acknowledge how brilliant that intro is -- it tells you the backstory of the show but with such authority, urgency, and mystery that the intro is... well, better than the actual show.
That intro gets you PUMPED for some BIONINC GAINZZZ, brah!
Okay so it's not as good as that one, but it's good.
Imma admit something weird -- as a kid, when I was watching Six Million Dollar Man (in repeats, on Nick at Night -- bear in mind, I'm on the cusp of 29), I actually used to daydream about getting in a severe car accident just so Oscar Goldman would discover me as a perfect test-case for bionic implants.
Really.
I gotta think other people did too.
I also used to daydream about Speed Racer being murdered and someone contacting me to secretly take his place as the new Speed. I'd get the car, and Trixie.
I think my first fantasy was to be Speed Racer's friend but then I realized I didn't want to just sit in the car in the Trixie Seat, I wanted to own the car, and Speed would just have to -- sadly, you understand -- die.
I'd go to the funeral and stuff. And say some words.
See correction and acknowledgement at post's end. By the way, the end is probably a good place to start -- this guy doing the What I've Learned videos puts this pretty succinctly.
Today's GAINZZZ thread is about re-GAINZZZing your insulin sensitivity.
I get a lot of people who seem to be sort of normal-weight pushing back against this whole low-carb/fasting thing.
Let me explain it more than I have previously.
Many of these people think that they're not prone to weight gain because they don't "eat too much" and "get some exercise."
In fact, it's the opposite. They don't eat too much and they get some exercise because they're not prone to weight gain.
It sounds strange, but fatness itself causes fatness. And giving advice to those prone to weight gain based upon what "works" for a person without that problem is like a non-diabetic instructing a diabetic that "a few donuts here and there won't kill you."
Well, for a diabetic, they just might. Different metabolisms respond differently to different stimuli.
Okay, so here's what insulin resistance is.
By the way -- that term might sound strange. Insulin resistance is the bad thing, and insulin sensitivity is actually the good thing -- though it would be easy to assume the "resistance" is the good thing and the sensitivity the bad one.
Let's look at how insulin is supposed to work -- and how it does work, in a normal, not-disturbed metabolism.
1. You eat protein or especially carbs.
2. These get broken down and enter the blood as glucose. (Protein would take longer to enter as glucose, but it can and does happen, to a lesser extent).
3. Your body cannot take too much glucose in the bloodstream at once -- I think it can only tolerate 10 grams of dissolved glucose in the blood at any one time, or something. But a big carb heavy meal might dump 70 or more grams of glucose into the blood in the hour or two after a meal. Having too much glucose in your blood is called hyperglycemia, a potentially very serious condition frequently experienced by diabetics.
4. Your body senses that there's too much glucose and your pancreas begins pumping out insulin.
5. The cells of your muscle and liver and your fat cell storage sites -- having a normal level of sensitivity to insulin, and let me repeat, assuming a normal level of sensitivity to insulin -- bond at the cells' receptor sites. The insulin molecules, bonded at the receptors, now tell the various cells to start taking in glucose, to get it out of the blood stream. A certain amount of glucose can be stored (in the form of glycogen) in the muscle, and some in the liver. Some can be used immediately by muscle if you're exercising at the time. The rest goes to fat cells, to be packaged away for long-term storage as fatty triglycerides.
6. Once your blood glucose levels are in an acceptable range, the body detects this too, and tells the pancreas to stop pumping out insulin. Again: assuming a normal sensitivity to insulin.
7. Over a period of minutes to hours, the insulin begins unbonding from cell receptors and gets recycled or excreted. This is important, because it means 1, no further glucose will be swept out of the blood (which can cause lethargy, or even low blood sugar (hypoglycemia)), and 2, it means you can begin burning fat again.
See, the thing I don't talk about much is that most normal weight or athletic people are routinely in the state of "ketosis" -- fat burning. Ketosis is not some weird body function that weird dieters trick their body into. It's the state that most healthy people are supposed to be in, at least periodically, between meals.
If you don't have any glucose coming into your body, and you need some, the body is supposed to send out hormone-sensitive lipase (and other fat-burning hormones) to your fat cells and tells them: We need energy, start breaking that fat down into smaller molecules which can be metabolized for energy.
Here's the thing:
The various fat burning hormones are opposed by, and blocked by, insulin. Hormones tend to work in pairs, one "on" and the other "off," and "insulin" is the "on" switch for gaining fat (sending glucose to fat cells) and the "off" switch for hormones which tell fat cells to release their stored energy to be made into ketones.
So when you have a lot of insulin in your body, you can't burn fat. (Or, at least, you can burn very little.)
So let me finish up this long step: In a person with normal sensitivity to insulin, their insulin levels aren't all that high, and insulin starts getting swept away to be disposed of when it's no longer needed, and now cell receptor sites are free to accept the fat burning hormones which tells fat cells "start burning fat."
Upshot: In a person with a non-dysfunctional metabolism, all this hormonal signalling works pretty well. If they have too much glucose in their blood, the pancreas sends out some insulin -- not a ton, just enough to do the job! -- and some glucose gets swept out. Then the insulin goes away, and fat-burning hormones are now free to tell fat-storage sites to burn fat when it's needed.
Result: You don't feel tired or lethargic after meals. You don't feel hungry soon after meals, because your blood has enough glucose in it to keep going. And you don't gain much fat, because your insulin-sensitive hormone is frequently able to tell your fat storage sites to give up fat as needed, and they're not cockblocked from doing so by insulin.
Okay. Now let's look at a person with a disturbed or dysfunctional or "dysregulated" metatolism:
2. These are broken down and enter your blood as glucose.
3. Just as with a person without a dysregulated metabolism, your body senses there's too much glucose in your blood, and
4, signals your pancreas to start pumping out insulin.
5. Here's the problem. The cells of the body can learn to tolerate insulin, if they've seen too much of it. Just as an alcoholic develops a tolerance to alcohol, or a smoker finds he needs three cigarettes to give him the lift that one used to do, so too can cell receptors grow to tolerate insulin, and develop a resistance to insulin -- a resistance which can only be overcome with an even bigger dose of insulin.
In other words, the normal dose of insulin which is supposed to bond to cells and tell them "start taking glucose out of the blood" fails to do so. The insulin level is just too low to get the cells to do what they're supposed to.
So the pancreas pumps out more insulin. It still doesn't trigger the cells to take in glucose.
6. In a normally-insulin-sensitive person, at this point the pancreas would detect that glucose levels are now in an acceptable range, and will stop pumping out insulin.
But in an insulin-resistant person, the normal dose of insulin hasn't worked.
So the pancreas pumps out more. It still doesn't activate the cells to take in insulin.
After pumping out a level of insulin which can be 300-400% higher (or even higher) than that which a normal-weight person produces, the cells finally get the message and start letting glucose into the liver and muscles.
The amount of insulin that gets flooded into the blood in an insulin-resistant person -- also known as a "fat person" -- can be pretty dramatic, compared to that in the blood of a normal-weight person throughout the day; you can see where the meals are eaten. It's pretty obvious.
This chart has colors. You may not believe in Science, but you believe in colors, don't you?
Few things to note from that chart:
* A fat person's fasted insulin -- that is, his default blood insulin even in the fasted (pre-meal) state -- is already higher, permanently, 24-hours-round-the-clock, than the normal weight person.
* His insulin rises far, far higher than the normal weight person's, even above his normal fasted insulin, which is, again, already elevated.
* His insulin remains at high levels longer than the normal weight person's.
Now, finally, yes, the insulin works here, and glucose gets swept out of the blood into the cells, and the pancreas turns off the insulin pumps.
7. But since there's now such a high level of insulin in the blood, too much glucose gets swept out, and the fat person now experiences the very weird condition of being tired and being hungry, though having just eaten. (See Provisional Retraction below -- a physician weighs in to say this bit about the obese having lower blood glucose due to higher insulin levels isn't true.)
Why? Because his damn blood has no sugar in it and that's a universal signal to the hunger centers to tell him to eat again.
And he's not going to be doing any damn exercise in his low-blood sugar state.
And notice the really bad consequence here of high insulin levels combined with high duration of high insulin levels: His fat burning hormones, which would normally tell the fat cells to give up their stored energy between meals, are blocked from telling fat cells to do so due to the swamp of insulin in his blood.
His insulin starts high in a fasted state, gets very high after a meal, stays pretty damn high even between meals -- all the time blocking the fat-burning magic of insulin's opposite-function fat-burning hormones from doing what the body is supposed to do between meals, that is, go into a slightly ketogenic state where fat is being burned to produce the other sort of molecule that can be burned for energy, ketones.
If a fat person's insulin is always making his blood low in sugar, thus making him both tired and hungry, and his always-high insulin levels are always blocking his body from burning fat for non-glucose energy, how in the hell is a fat person ever supposed to lose weight?
A normal weight person does store fat away from time to time -- but his insulin is at fairly low levels, and falls to a low fasted state quickly, thus permitting him to frequently dip into his fat stores as needed. He may gain a pound or two here or there -- but he also has no particular problem losing that pound or two.
But for a fat person, the process of tapping into those fat stores is completely taken off-line by the ever-present ocean of insulin that is always in his blood. (And note that a fat person's fasted insulin levels can be even higher than a normal-weight person's post-meal levels!)
In a normal weight person, fat is put away into a closet. It is stored, but it can be accessed when needed.
In a fat person, fat is put into the closet, but that closet is then locked shut by chains and padlocks called "excess resting-state, always-present insulin," which forbids the body from opening that door and getting to that fat.
In a normal weight person, whose insulin is not dysregulated, his insulin fades and allows insulin-sensitive hormone to burn fat whenever he needs it. It's a two way street -- fat goes in, sure, but it comes out, too.
But in a fat person, that fat is now on a one-way journey only -- it can only be put into the closet, and never (or almost never) taken out again.
The high insulin levels he has now make it such that while fat is always being put into his fat cells, it is nearly impossible to ever access them to burn off for energy. Note this bitter vicious cycle aspect: the fatter you are, automatically, the higher insulin levels you'll produce; your fatness is the mechanism by which you will produce more fatness, and block you from burning fat.
Fat people have insulin resistance. Period. This is the Syndrome X, a complex of high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, etc., scientists noted a long time ago, which is now called "metabolic syndrome."
To reduce weight, they have to eat foods that produce less of an insulin response, and maybe seriously deplete their blood of insulin -- by not eating at all for long periods of time -- to prod their cells into becoming sensitive to insulin again, so that they react to lower doses of the hormone.
This chart compares post-meal insulin levels in an overweight person versus a normal weight person, when either of those two have a High Carb (HC) or High Fat (HF) meal.
The top line is overweight eating carbs; the second is normal weight eating carbs; the third is overweight eating fat; the last is normal weight eating fat.
Note a couple of points: Insulin spikes in the obese and normal weight fairly high after high carb meals, though (of course) higher in the obese; and after high fat meals, while overweight people still react with higher insulin, notice the difference there is barely visible. The obese and normal-weight react kinda the same to high-fat meals.
The point of Dr. Fung's program is actually to cure diabetes 2 sufferers, but the plan can help increase insulin sensitivity for normally overweight or obese people or people who are sadly, let's say it plainly, pre- diabetic, or maybe pre-pre-diabetic.
Warning: Dr. Fung carefully monitors his diabetes 2 patients. Do not try to cure yourself of diabetes 2 with this plan except under strict medical supervision. Playing around with sugar and insulin while suffering from diabetes can kill you.
The idea is to kill the tolerance to insulin by greatly reducing the insulin present in the blood. The idea -- which I hope works, though I'm only on month seven of trying it, and it might take 1-2 years -- is to re-sensitize cells to insulin by always keeping to foods that cause a lower insulin response, and then having longer periods (fasted states) where there's no food at all coming in that could jack up insulin levels.
And just as someone who has grown tolerant to alcohol might, if he quits booze for a year, suddenly find that two drinks is enough to make him tipsy, the idea is that starving the cells of insulin might help them regain a normal-weight person's sensitivity to insulin, too.
I don't know if this works, obviously. I'm not a doctor. But Dr. Fung says his program is a success.
Anyway, I was going to talk about other issues but I seem to have used up all my allotted time on this one thing.
My own gains: two pounds down -- 168 -- bodyfat down quite a bit over a few weeks, two inches lost on my waist (which hadn't shed any inches for a while).
The one meal a day thing seems to be what I needed. Maybe my body had adapted to the 16/8 thing to the point where it just didn't consider it a metabolic stress enough to burn fat. So maybe it needed a shake-up.
It's not easy, but I'd also say it isn't particularly hard. Not after seven months on a 16-20 hour fast regime. Doesn't take much more to get it to 23/24 hours.
Right now though I'm hungry enough to eat a rotten pig's ass so I'm going to do that.
In the meantime: Tell me about your GAINZZZ.
Oh, and sure, let the people without dysregulated metabolisms tell me how they solved all the weight problems that they've never actually had, and why people who have this metabolic disorder should just do what people without metabolic disorders do to keep weight off (that is, nothing at all, letting your properly-functioning insulin metabolism keep you at ideal weight, all working smoothly in the background, while you do nothing in particular except say "eat less, move more, rinse, lather, repeat").
Note/Correction: I got most of this, at least this week (I've read the basics a lot before), from these very good videos I've previously recommended by What I've Learned, especially this one, and this one I recommended last week.
The hormone that tells fat cells to release triglycerides for processing into ketones (energy bodies) is "hormone-sensitive lipase," not "insulin-sensitive hormone," as I called it.
Actually, there are several hormones that tell fat cells to burn fat for fuel, such as epinephrine, cortisol,* testosterone, human growth hormone, grehlin, and glucagon, but almost all of them are antagonistic to insulin, or opposed by insulin. Broadly, one could describe them as "insulin sensitive hormones," but none are named that.
Sorry for the garbling. I've changed my botched language to specify "hormone-sensitive lipase" or "lipase and other fat-burning hormones" or "fat burning hormones" generally to get rid of the just-plain-wrong "insulin-sensitive hormone" term I mistakenly used.
* Cortisol is a hormone with a few effects. It's the "stress hormone," but it's also the alertness hormone. If you wake up pretty quickly in the morning, that's your body giving you a jolt of cortisol to stress it up (out of its hibernating state) and get you moving.
Apparently it has some fat-burning function. However, it also gets branded as a fat-hoarding hormone, in people with too much stress, or who don't get enough sleep and therefore have a lot of cortisol in their bodies all day long.
I don't know much about anything, and I certainly don't know at what point cortisol goes from being a useful wake-up hormone into a stress-monster fat-hoarding-because-winter-is-coming hormone.
Cortisol, like most of the other fat-burning hormones, is opposed by insulin. Cortisol promotes alertness, awakeness, stress, and fat-burning (in some situations, at least); insulin promotes lethargy, sleepiness (you get sleepy after a big Thanksgiving meal, right?) and fat-storage.
Provisional Retraction.Another GAINZZZ Correction. I don't know on this one either way, but a physician pops in to say that, while he agrees with most of the GAINZZZ post, he disagrees with my assertion that the high insulin response of an obese person sweeps too much glucose out of the blood and leads to feeling both tired and hungry. He says the obese have simultaneously a high fasted insulin level and a high fasted blood glucose level.
I don't know if he's right. I thought the feeling of being tired -- the famous "spike your blood sugar, then crash with lower blood sugar" -- was related to insulin level, and I thought I read people connecting that to higher insulin levels in the blood. Or maybe I just speculated myself that the two things were directly connected.
Maybe both points are true: High quickly-bioavailable carbs do cause the spike-and-crash effect, but they cause this in all people, and it's not true that people with high insulin levels have it worse. Maybe they just have it like anyone else.
He says he's a doctor, and I gotta admit my understanding here is based on a few pop-science books I only remember in broad outline, so let me provisionally retract this.
If the poster making this point, or any other doctor, would be so kind as to illuminate me on this point, I'd appreciate it.
Today's #FakeNews Freakout: OMG, Trump is Calling Out the National Guard to Round-Up Illegals!!!
—Ace
Or not. Maybe just a provisional early draft memo -- not even from the White House -- included a provision that states could call upon the National Guards for specific duty on the border, you know, like Obama himself did a few years ago when the Unattended Child Illegal Immigrant thing was getting some (minor) attention from the media and he needed to pretend to be doing something about it.
Fucking embarrassing.
They have a new strategy, by the way. Sometimes, as with the NYT Flynn transcripts story, they write a scarifying headline, but then, in the body of the piece, they admit there's no there there.
But they rely on the headline to convey the opposite impression -- and they rely on the Blue Checkmark Mafia to retweet the shit out of headline only, with the implication our explicit claim that the article says what it simply does not say.
The other thing they do, obviously, as the AP did here, is straight-up lie. But that's not a new tactic for this crew.
Always read the article or the original documents. Getting freaked out? Is their viral hysteria infecting you?
Put aside the false claims and primal yelps they're making on social media and go to the original article -- or, when they deign to supply it, the original document they're blatantly misrepresenting.
You can insulate yourself from hysteria in that way -- don't buy into their second-hand telephone-game-of-hysterics method of reporting. Go the source, and walk way with an eased temper.
I said a briefer version of this on Twitter to these people:
Dear Media,
We all watched you in tears on election night, on our TVs.
We saw your crying. There's no denying it.
And there's no coming back from that.
Anyone who cries like a baby while on television over the election results cannot claim to be able to put aside his deep emotional reaction and behave professionally and detachedly in the months to follow.
So:
We know what you are. We've always known what you were, but seeing the hysterical tears flow was proof to the rest of the world who suspected but did not know.
Besides the Press, There's Another Gigantic Fraud That Needs Exposure
—J.J. Sefton
Yesterday's de-pantsing of the media by President Trump was a thing to behold. He calmly, yet mercilessly called them out for the lies, falsehoods and distortions perpetrated on him in the wake of the Mike Flynn departure and really since he announced his candidacy and all the way through the election. Public trust in the media has been eroding for quite some time and if anything, after yesterday has accelerated to a point where even the low-information set have sat up and taken notice.
. . . The final, eyebrow-raising exchange was his mocking of American Urban Radio Networks correspondent April Ryan. As soon as Trump called on her, he admitted to the chagrin of Ryan that "this is going to be a bad question, but that's okay." Ryan later pushed Trump to hold meetings with the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus, so Trump responded by informing the liberal reporter that she should "set up the meeting" since they’re probably "friends of yours."
TRUMP: Do you want to set up the meeting?
RYAN: No, no, no. I'm not . . .
TRUMP: Are they friends of yours?
RYAN: I'm just a reporter.
TRUMP: No, no, set up the meeting.
RYAN: I know some of them, but I'm sure they're watching right now.
TRUMP: Let’s go. Set up a meeting. I would love to meet with the Black Caucus.
This presents a golden opportunity for President Trump. And what he should do is not only NOT meet with the CBC or the NAACP, he should call them out as fake organizations that have perpetrated a massive fraud on blacks and indeed all Americans for the past 50 years. Call a news conference (if they come [and they will]) and have by your side Ben Carson, Thomas Sowell, Janice Rogers Brown, inner city AME clergy and a cross section of REAL Americans of African descent who can help lay out the charges against the aforementioned frauds as well as their overlords in the Democrat Party and the entire panoply of Leftist individuals and institutions that exploit blacks for political gain.
You have our attention, Mr. President. Now is the time for a second Emancipation Proclamation that, along with real policy changes that can finally break the chains of the welfare state, can effectively bury the Democrat Party and racial politics, hopefully forever. More importantly, it would go a long way in seeing that we finally realize the promise of Lincoln, Dr. King and the Founders.
Texas Governor to NFL: Worry About Your Own Spousal Abuse Scandals Before You Go Dictating to Us That We Need to Allow Penises in the Ladies' Rooms
—Ace
The NFL warned a Texas that a bill proposed in its senate -- which would reserve bathroom use to the "biological sex" indicated on the door -- might jeopardize Texas from getting to host any future Super Bowls.
However, if Texas, or any other state, wishes to bar professional sports teams from ever attempting to blackmail them into what laws they can and cannot pass or enforce, I have a much more powerful corrective.
States should begin proposing this law:
No municipality shall have the authority to issue any bonds, or direct any public monies, towards the construction of any arena, stadium, or venue of any type intended partially for use by a private company, unless permission to do so is first granted by an act of the state legislature itself or a statewide referendum affirmatively permitting such a corporate-enrichment boondoggle.
Municipalities are delegated whatever powers of the state the state wishes to confer upon them. Municipalities, you may or may not know, act with the power of the state when they pass ordinances and tax bills and such -- but that power derives from the reservoir of powers the state possesses, and which the state has conferred upon them via charters of incorporation.
Those powers can be circumscribed, expanded, limited, or cancelled.
You don't have to include that last part, the part about the legislative or popular referendum override of the general forbiddance, but that could be thrown in there for RINOs who really do want to do favors for corporate bullies and who therefore won't vote for such a bill without an escape clause.
When the states get serious about simply cutting off cities' rights to issue bonds or directly subsidize, with taxpayer money, the new stadiums these free-riding vulture socialists are always demanding, then you'll see the NFL and NBA adopt a much less high-handed tone.
You want a #War?
Well we're your Huckleberry. You're a right Daisy for giving us the #War we've been itching to give you back.
You need your wagons fixed and your britches properly sized? Well you came to the right place.
Nothing's gonna change, folks, until we all collectively decide that:
1. These people need our goodwill far more than we need theirs, and
2. It is beyond time we started acting aggressively to defend ourselves in the war that these transnational socialist barbarians have brought to our shores, and
3. When we collectively decide to spend time in more ancient and eternal pursuits than sitting in front of their idiot boxes -- their church and their state; their sun, their moon; their alpha and omega; their propaganda mouth and their all-seeing high-def eye -- only then will they whither and pass from this earth.
The TV is their one power source, and the one (or two, or three, or five) beachhead(s) of transnational socialist progressivism we've not only permitted but have paid loads of money to sit in our homes, acting as parasites on our lives, spirits, and energy.
Kill their gods -- kill their television power. Slaughter their gods, raze their temples, scatter their cults to the four winds.
If they had gotten their way -- the election of Hillary Clinton -- Obama's push to make genderless bathrooms the state-imposed norm would be continuing apace.
Last May, the Justice and Education departments released what has been termed a "dear colleague" letter, providing "significant guidance" to school districts across the country about the best policies for respecting the rights of transgender individuals in schools. Under the auspices of Title IX, the letter advised that schools ought to permit students to use the bathrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities that align with their gender identity rather than their biological sex.
Then, in August, a judge placed a temporary hold on this guidance letter, leaving school bathroom policies in limbo. In a new one-page filing, the Justice Department has advised that it will not continue to push its appeal against the judge's decision, meaning, in part, that the oral arguments scheduled to take place this week will be put off for the foreseeable future.
In addition, 13 states sued the Obama administration over the "dear colleague" letter; the Justice Department’s latest move leaves uncertain the future of that lawsuit. This decision will leave schools across the country free to craft their own bathroom, shower, dorm-room, and locker-room policies in the absence of federal guidance. In practice, this means that every locality will control its own policies, allowing parents, teachers, and local school boards to determine the best path forward.
If the NeverTrump hold-outs want to avoid the complete loss of reputation and credibility with the only part of the country they've ever had any sway with -- as their close cousins in the liberal media have already lost -- it would behoove them to mix in a couple "and here's where our preferred outcome would have been worse" among their never-ending finger-pointing fake-news victory laps.
But, like their close leftist media cousins, they are unaccountably proud of their lack of accomplishments, and can never admit error.
The problem with the incompetent admitting errors is that once they've started, when would they ever end?
False Flag: Malaysian Woman Who Assassinated Kim Jong-Un's Half-Brother Was Tricked Into Doing So By Agents Who Convinced Her That She Was Just Participating in a Reality TV Prank Show
An Indonesian woman arrested for suspected involvement in the killing of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un's half-brother in Malaysia was duped into thinking she was part of a comedy show prank, Indonesia's national police chief has said, citing information received from Malaysian authorities.
Tito Karnavian told reporters in Indonesia’s Aceh province that Siti Aisyah, 25, was paid to be involved in pranks.
He said she and another woman performed stunts which involved convincing men to close their eyes and then spraying them with water.
"Such an action was done three or four times and they were given a few dollars for it, and with the last target, Kim Jong-nam, allegedly there were dangerous materials in the sprayer," Karnavian said. "She was not aware that it was an assassination attempt by alleged foreign agents."
...
Authorities are investigating whether Siti and another female suspect killed the 46-year-old North Korean exile in a shopping concourse at Kuala Lumpur’s international airport on Monday.
...
The second female suspect, who was captured on CCTV at the airport in a top emblazoned with "LOL" and arrested on Wednesday in possession of a Vietnamese passport, stayed at a hotel near the airport in the days before the attack, booking the cheapest room and carrying a wad of cash, according to a receptionist who spoke to Reuters.
Question: Was she also a victim of the duping, or is she a shill in on the game to help convince the woman that this is all a legitimate, innocent prank production?
If you read the rest of the article, you kinda get the impression that this was a North Korean operation, given that the half-brother was an expat and I guess a threat to Kim Jong-un (as he could, I guess, be swapped on to the throne in a coup). The North Koreans are making all sorts of demands that no autopsy be performed, that an autopsy is a human rights violation, and that they dispute whatever conclusions the autopsy points to.
I can't think of a more blatant way to say "We killed him."
Now, I think tabloids pay sad people to tell these absurd tales to just get clicks and revenue. But, that said, though I don't believe this for an instant, I can respect it as a Quality Lie, like a tawdry guilty pleasure TV show. Or like CNN.
WAKING up on a Saturday morning, Beatrice Gibbs takes one look at the naked stranger lying next to her before quickly putting on her clothes and leaving.
As the 22-year-old make-up artist walks home, she texts her boyfriend Adam Gillet to tell him she’s on her way back.
Beatrice feels no guilt as she walks through their front door – because Adam knows exactly where she has been and what she’s been doing.
The pair, who have been together for two years, have a one-sided open relationship.
Beatrice can sleep with who she wants, when she wants, despite Adam, 27, not having the same privileges.
They came to the controversial arrangement after Beatrice threatened to leave because she was unable to resist other men.
Beatrice, from Milton Keynes, Bucks, explains: "I love Adam, but I wasn't ready to settle down and commit to just one man.
"I said I had to break up with him so that I wasn't unfaithful. I didn’t want to hurt him by going behind his back with someone else.
"He was devastated and suggested we stay together but I could sleep with other people, as long as I told him who and when."
Rather than lose Beatrice, devastated Adam suggested she slept with other men
"It's the perfect situation. I have a boyfriend I love but I also get to have fun with other men when I want to."
...
"The morning I see him after a night out I do sometimes feel a bit bad, but after a cuddle and a chat it’s just us being normal in our usual relationship."
...
Adam claims he has got used to their arrangement.
The warehouse worker says: "I really like Beatrice and I didn’t want to lose her. I'm happy for her to enjoy herself.
“We decided this is the best way to take the relationship forward so I have become used to it. I'm not really interested in chasing other women and I know if I did then Beatrice wouldn’t be happy about it."
Where does one draw the line between modern art and the masters, who had great technique and skills far beyond what most artists of the last 125 years could ever dream of? That is not to say that the imagination and the vision of more modern artists couldn't be fantastic, but it's the combination of all of those things that made them masters!
What? No...I have no idea. That was a rhetorical question. But I'll bet it's somewhere around when this guy painted.
Good morning, kids. Yesterday's press conference was a tour de force and one that has been a long time coming. "Professional journalism" might very well have been so thoroughly de-pantsed that perhaps now even LIV Americans might start looking at them with a lot less trust. And that is a good thing, indeed. It also gives a boost to PDT in a week that started off kind of rough, mostly because of the propaganda being pumped out by the very same people taken to the woodshed yesterday. So all in all, week 4 ends on a high note, with one of his signature public rallies still in the offing in Melbourne, FL tomorrow. That said, there are a few down notes in the links and a few positive ones as well. Have a better one and remain blessed.
I won't say that the papers misquote me, but I sometimes wonder where Christianity would be today if some of those reporters had been Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. -Barry Goldwater
Fake news. It has been around a long time.
Quote II
To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race. - Calvin Coolidge
Wouldn't it be special the saboteurs of the Trump presidency paid attention to this quote?
Quote III
In any event, the proper question isn't what a journalist thinks is relevant but what his or her audience thinks is relevant. Denying people information they would find useful because you think they shouldn't find it useful is censorship, not journalism. -Michael Kinsley
“In our case, we contended that CNN essentially made up its own standard in order to conduct an ‘apples to oranges’ comparison to support its false assertion that St. Mary’s mortality rate was 3 times higher than the national average. Accordingly, the case against CNN certainly fits the description of media-created ‘Fake News.'” said Carbone’s attorney L. Lin Wood, in a statement to LawNewz.com.
If you had the opportunity to show your political foe as an ignorant, hateful individual would you take it? Well, if you are on the left of course you won't. Adversarial journalist whimps out because of Milo. Quite the tough guy, NOT.
A journalist who was booked as a panelist on this week’s Real Time with Bill Maher has canceled his appearance after learning that Breitbart News’ Milo Yiannopoulos also will be on the show. Jeremy Scahill, who founded the self-proclaimed “adversarial journalism” site The Intercept, announced his exit on social media this afternoon.
I propose that Meryl Steep, Chelsea Handler, Richard Gere, Robert DeNiro, Christoph Waltz and others lead an Oscar first: let’s do away with the rules, barriers, and tickets to the Oscars and after-parties, such as the swanky Vanity Fair party or the Weinsteins’ star-studded affair. I ask all migrants, all illegal immigrant criminals and all un-vetted refugees to converge on Hollywood to come to the Oscars and all the after-parties, even those held at the mansions or the Chateau Marmont or anywhere else. After all, we in the Hollywood community want to show all Islamic extremists that we have love in our hearts — and what better way to do that than by inviting them along on our most important night?
Aetna Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Bertolini escalated his criticism of the Affordable Care Act, saying Obamacare’s markets are nearing failure as premiums climb and healthier individuals drop out.
“It is in a death spiral,” Bertolini said in a video interview with the Wall Street Journal that aired Wednesday on the newspaper’s website. He predicted that more insurers will drop out of the market for 2018, following Humana Inc.’s decision to quit Obamacare entirely for next year.
Border Patrol agents got lucky a few days ago when they spotted several people running away from a section of border fence near Douglas, Arizona. After going to investigate, the DHS employees discovered a catapult and two giant blocks of weed. You can guess what the catapult was for.
While information is still be gathered, early reports have stated that three environmental groups warned federal officials way back in 2005 that something like this could happen, and what's perhaps even more concerning is the fact that Oroville is just one of nearly 100,000 dams across the US that are in serious need of repairs.
I hate to get too libertarian, but spending $33.1 million to hire 134 permanent positions to implement new medical marijuana laws seems unnecessary, given the longstanding robust free market in the commodity. Just walk a block on Haight Street in San Francisco to find out how robust. I will grant that the $700,000 for research on better pesticides for marijuana cultivation is a constructive expenditure, useful worldwide. Thanks, California Dude
Brian Wilson rolled tape on take one of “Good Vibrations” on February 17, 1966. Six months, four studios and $50,000 later, he finally completed his three-minute-and-thirty-nine-second symphony, pieced together from more than 90 hours of tape recorded during literally hundreds of sessions.
February 16, 1969 George Jones and Tammy Wynette married in Ringgold, Georgia, after telling others that their marriage was in August 1968. They quickly earnt the titles such as "The First Couple of Country Music," "Country's Sweethearts," and "The President and First Lady."
...I suppose most of us are lonely in this big world, but we must fall tremendously in love to find it out. The cure is the discovery of our need for company -- I mean company in the very special sense we've come to understand since we happened to each other -- you and I. The pleasures of human experience are emptied away without that companionship -- now that I've known it; without it joy is just an unendurable as sorrow. You are my life -- my very life. Never imagine your hope approximates what you are to me. Beautiful, precious little baby -- hurry up the sun! -- make the days shorter till we meet. I love you, that's all there is to it.
His program, JUMP (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies) Math, is being used by 15,000 kids in eight US states (it is aligned with the Common Core), more than 150,000 in Canada, and about 12,000 in Spain. The US Department of Education found it promising enough to give a $2.75 million grant in 2012 to Tracy Solomon and Rosemary Tannock, cognitive scientists at the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto, to conduct a randomized control trial with 1,100 kids and 40 classrooms. The results, out later this year, hope to confirm previous work the two did in 2010, which showed that students from 18 classrooms using JUMP progressed twice as fast on a number of standardized math tests as those receiving standard instruction in 11 other classrooms.
It wasn’t until 1910 that Polly realized something important was missing from her life. She was busy one day preparing for a debutante ball when she looked in the mirror and realized she loathed the way a corset made her look. It bunched up her bodice and squished her breasts into a single, uncomfortable monobosom. In her memoir, The Passionate Years, she referred to it as “a box-like armour of whalebone and pink cordage.”
Like all great innovators before her, necessity was the mother of Polly’s invention. She grabbed a handkerchief, ribbon, and a needle, and before the party was off the ground, had fashioned herself a new undergarment: the modern bra.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told the National Football League to “get out of politics” and “not tell states what their public policy is” Wednesday after the NFL warned the state about moving forward with a transgender bathroom bill.
Just one week after the NFL held the Super Bowl in Houston, league spokesman Brian McCarthy issued a statement advising the state of Texas to carefully consider whether or not to pass Senate Bill 6, also known as the Texas Privacy Act. The bill, which was proposed in January, allows businesses to choose their own bathroom policies while prohibiting schools from allowing students to use bathrooms or locker rooms whose specified gender does not match their biological sex.
A good friend of mine, who also happens to be an outstanding author, once quipped, “If I am forced to choose a side, I choose the side which is not forcing me to choose sides.”
Seldom have I ever encountered phrasing more apt. Because that’s precisely how I feel. I’ve been feeling that way, for years now. It was not a sudden thing. It was a gradual realization. The slow clarity of an underlying sentiment, incrementally surfacing.
The student who recorded his professor's public anti-Trump, anti-Republican rant has been suspended for one semester (plus one summer semester, though few students take classes in the summer).
...that he submit a written apology to the professor, Olga Perez Stable Cox, and a three-page essay asking him to examine why he filmed Cox’s class, how he feels about his footage going viral online and his reaction to its causing "damage to Orange Coast College students, faculty and staff."
A lawyer from a pro bono outfit called Freedom X is now representing him and, I hope, suing this Soviet propaganda front out of existence.
Forget it. This is exhausting. On any given day there's enough to fill the sidebar completely. Until further notice, the counter is stuck at '0'. Also: John Nolte is doing a weekly tally.
Headlines: 02/20/2017
I never post on Fakebook but I do lurk there every so often to see what non-political things are happening in peoples' lives. Unfortunately, one of my old classmates posted this:
"Just did this - takes 25 seconds - join me?
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security is inviting comment and COUNTING CALLS before it decides whether to approve Steve Bannon's appointment to the National Security Council.
Call! 202-224-4751. (You don't have to talk to anyone.)
Just say:
"Hi my name is ______. I am from ____[give your state] and am an American citizen. I oppose Steve Bannon being confirmed to sit on our National Security Council."
Please COPY and PASTE to spread the word.
Maybe we should call and SUPPRORT STEVE BANNON for the NSC.
Another GAINZZZ Correction. I don't know on this one either way, but a physician pops in to say that, while he agrees with most of the GAINZZZ post, he disagrees with my assertion that the high insulin response of an obese person sweeps too much glucose out of the blood and leads to feeling both tired and hungry. He says the obese have simultaneously a high fasted insulin level and a high fasted blood glucose level.
I don't know if he's right. I thought the feeling of being tired -- the famous "spike your blood sugar, then crash with lower blood sugar" -- was related to insulin level, and I thought I read people connecting that to higher insulin levels in the blood. Or maybe I just speculated myself that the two things were directly connected.
Maybe both points are true: High quickly-bioavailable carbs do cause the spike-and-crash effect, but they cause this in all people, and it's not true that people with high insulin levels have it worse. Maybe they just have it like anyone else.
He says he's a doctor, and I gotta admit my understanding here is based on a few pop-science books I only remember in broad outline, so let me provisionally retract this.
If the poster making this point, or any other doctor, would be so kind as to illuminate me on this point, I'd appreciate it.
Headlines: 02/19/2017
Omar Abdel-Rahman, "The Blind Sheikh" who was the mastermind behind the 1993 WTC bombing, has died in a federal prison. This Blog wishes him well in his meeting with 72 Virginians. [Weirddave]
Corrections made to the GAINZZ Post. I explain the error I made at the end, and the changes I made. Thanks to a biochemist for contacting me and saying, "What the hell is 'insulin-sensitive hormone'?" The right terminology is now, I hope, in the article.
