PRIVATE SECTOR SPACE RACE: Chinese company OneSpace sends OS-X rocket to 40 km in maiden flight.
THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT WORKING OUT AS I HAD HOPED. Not the Onion: American Airlines bans insects, hedgehogs and goats as emotional support animals.
Ayn Rand didn’t intend for The Return of the Primitive to be a how-to guide for life.
IN SOVIET GOOGLE, YOUTUBE MUSIC LISTENS TO YOU: Google announces YouTube Music and YouTube Premium.
TREAT FEMALE RAPISTS LIKE MALE RAPISTS AND MAYBE WE’LL SEE FEWER OF THESE STORIES: Female Teacher Who Had Sex With a Student Won’t Have to Register as a Sex Offender. “She can also reapply to teach again.”
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION MAXIMUM PRESSURE TARGETS IRAN: My latest New York Observer column. (bumped)
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Could reviving Woolly-Mammoth genes fight the effects of global warming?
Most of the hype so far has focused on bringing these shaggy beasts back to life using their permafrost-preserved DNA. But this time, scientists aren’t aiming for a “Jurassic Park” scenario — they’re not trying to bring back entire mammoths exactly as they were in the last ice age. Rather, they’re hoping to mingle some of the mammoths’ ancient genes with those of today’s Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), to increase the elephants’ tolerance to the cold, said George Church, a Harvard and MIT geneticist who is heading the Harvard Woolly Mammoth Revival team.
Cold?
Fallen Angels was just a science fiction novel, right guys? Right?
CHANGE: Elite college stops offering ‘American Whiteness’ class. “After offering the course for the past three years, Grinnell College in Iowa appears to have scrapped a course called ‘American Whiteness’ that referred to whiteness as ‘a very bad idea.'”
It’s nice to see open racism receding from campuses.
DEMOGRAPHICS IS DESTINY: US births hit a 30-year low, despite good economy.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, GET-WOKE-GO-BROKE EDITION: Plummeting enrollment prompts $6M budget cut at Evergreen State.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The Morning Briefing: RUSSIA, DACA, Net Neutrality and Much, Much More. “The New York Times has an awful, biased, misleading story ‘Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation.’ The piece is really a propaganda/PR piece for the intelligence community, extolling their virtues and how they toiled and battled with ethical dilemmas over the Clinton and Trump investigation. Gimme a break. It’s so obvious an attempt to get out in front of whatever will be revealed in the IG report.”
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TARGETS IRAN’S NUKES: What we should have done all along.
To the extent that we can stipulate these assertions as facts, I hereby free the right from the obligation to praise John McCain. I further free the right from their vow of silence over McCain’s history of abusing anyone and everyone on the right who disagrees with him. John McCain has been amply compensated for his honorable military service during the Vietnam War. The right has paid its debt to him. We’re even.
Read the whole thing.
HIS QUESTIONS SUGGEST HE ALREADY KNOWS SOMETHING: Rand Paul: I Want To Know What Haspel Knows About The Surveillance Of The Trump Campaign, If CIA Was Involved. Says Paul:
This is a big deal. Now, some are saying, oh, it was just incidentally collected. It`s still a big deal. And there is a question. There are some accusations it was actually ordered by President Obama`s administration, either through John Brennan or others. Gina Haspel is the acting director of the CIA. She is high enough up in the CIA. I think we should know what she knows about whether the Trump campaign was surveilled upon. We do know that John Brennan, since he has left government, has become an outspoken partisan against the president in very defamatory terms. So, yes, I`m concerned about Gina Haspel being a close acolyte of John Brennan. I also would like to know from her before she is appointed, if she is indeed appointed, I would like to know, what does she know about the surveillance of the Trump campaign and why was the CIA involved? …
I think that she is a close acolyte of John Brennan. So, I think some have called her a protégé. And I worry that now we have seen John Brennan`s stripes. We have seen that he is a dyed-in-the-wool partisan, a hater of Donald Trump. And so I don`t want people running our intelligence agencies that have an axe to grind or have some sort of partisanship lurking beneath the service.
Me neither, but the only way to get there is probably by sacking a lot of people.
PARTISAN SPIN ASIDE, IF PERMANENT THIS WOULD BE A HEALTHY DEVELOPMENT: Putting ‘White House’ on the resume is less of a boost.
AN F-22 OPENS WIDE: During a flyover, an F-22 Raptor stealth fighter opens it weapons bay.
OLD TWEETS BECOME A NEW WEAPON: My weekly column at The Daily Caller is up. Bonus (interview with the inimitable Scott Adams!)
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Link fixed!
AS ALWAYS, IT’S WHATEVER THE NARRATIVE REQUIRES AT THE MOMENT: Which is it CNN? Pence is Trump’s top rival or the ‘Kandinsky of kissing up.’
To understand the frustration the White House has with news coverage, officials are pointing to CNN’s whipsawed description of Vice President Mike Pence’s relationship with President Trump over a 24-hour period this week.
CNN Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza, who on Tuesday took down a tweet showing Trump in the crosshairs of a rifle scope, in two successive columns wrote first that Pence was plotting for control of the GOP and angering Trump, then that Pence was Trump’s biggest fan, never missing a chance for “kissing up.”
In his “The Point,” the analyst highlighted a Monday New York Times report on Pence’s midterm election operation. “a) Vice President Mike Pence and his advisers are operating as a sort of de facto political unit within the White House and b) allies of President Donald Trump are none too happy about that fact,” said the column.
Pence is described as a power-grabbing rival. “The Point: Politics abhors a vacuum. Trump’s lack of ties to the GOP campaign establishment and his seeming disinterest in anyone’s politics other than his own create an opening for Pence. The question is whether he can take advantage without seeming like he is taking advantage,” wrote Cillizza.
Then, in the very next “The Point,” was this headline: “Mike Pence’s Mount Rushmore: Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.”
That column describes Pence as an embarrassing suck up.
This is CNN.
ALLIES: Turkey urges Islamic world to unite against Israel, calls summit.
Meanwhile: Young Saudis get behind Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reform drive, mostly.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia switched places so slowly, I hardly even noticed.
HOW #METOO UNDERMINES PROGRESSIVE MORAL AUTHORITY.
As Richard Fernandez says, the torpedoes the Democrats put in the water to sink Trump keep circling back on them.
JUST ANOTHER PEACEFUL PROTEST: Houses in Sderot Struck by Machine Gun Fire from Gaza.
WHAT DESPERATION LOOKS LIKE:
At least give CNN some credit for honesty, making clear that Trump was talking about MS-13 while so many others pretend that he was talking about all immigrants.
Weird how Trump’s “Fake New” mantra gets so much traction.
AMONG OTHER THINGS: Cynthia Nixon’s selective outrage could kill her career. As much as I’m enjoying her shots at Cuomo, I don’t think she really has a political career to kill.
I DON’T KNOW ART, BUT I KNOW WHAT I DON’T LIKE: Stormy Daniels will perform with naked Trump statue in Oregon.
LAW: Mark Levin breaks down the FBI’s secret ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ ‘cabal’ against Trump.
As an aside, a friend on Facebook suggested that — since “crossfire hurricane” comes from the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash” — Trump’s signature rally-ending song from the Stones, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” was his way of trolling them, and letting them know that he knew. Delightful, if true.
CLAIM: Kremlin Used NRA to Help Trump in 2016, Senate Report Says.
The NRA spent a record $30 million on Trump and the FBI is reportedly investigating whether any of the money came from Russia. U.S. law prohibits foreign money to be spent on elections.
Two Russian nationals figure prominently in the alleged scheme: Alexander Torshin, deputy governor of the Kremlin’s central bank, and his then-deputy Maria Butina.
Torshin met Donald Trump Jr. at the NRA’s 2016 convention in Kentucky and hosted an NRA delegation in Moscow in 2015. Torshin was previously accused by Spanish investigators of laundering money for Russian mobsters, an allegation he denied. (Last month he was sanctioned by the U.S.)
Well, that’s certainly no way to treat someone who supposedly helped get you into the Oval Office.
Plus:
In May 2016, the same month Torshin met Trump Jr. at the NRA convention, Erickson emailed a Trump advisor about setting up a meeting between the candidate and Putin.
“Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” he wrote, according to the New York Times. “He wants to extend an invitation to Mr. Trump to visit him in the Kremlin before the election.”
How’d that work out for him?
WHY ARE BLUE STATES SUCH CESSPITS OF POLITICAL CRIMINALITY? Sheldon Silver and the Albany Culture of Corruption.
BUT WHAT IF SOME OF THEIR SJW EMPLOYEES DECIDE YOU’RE GUILTY OF BADTHINK? Google offers free cyber protection to US political groups.
JAMES HOHMANN: The far left is winning the Democratic civil war.
THE BIG IDEA: Tuesday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Democratic moderates.
The success of very liberal candidates in primaries across four states is causing a new bout of heartburn among party strategists in Washington, who worry about unelectable activists thwarting their drive for the House majority. But it also reflects a broader leftward lurch among Democrats across the country since President Trump took office.
— In Nebraska, a liberal social worker and political neophyte who built her campaign around “Medicare for All” scored a shocking upset in a Democratic primary to take on Rep. Don Bacon (R). Kara Eastman, 45, beat former congressman Brad Ashford, 68, in an Omaha-area district that national Democrats believed they could pick up in November.
Eastman advocated for universal background checks to buy guns, raising taxes and decriminalizing marijuana. “I’m tired of hearing Democrats don’t have a backbone, that we don’t stand for anything,” she said in a commercial that touted her support for universal health care. “That changes now!”
Ashford had the full-throated support of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which must now reevaluate whether to invest in the race.
That’s just the initial bullet point in the wake of this week’s primary races. There’s a lot to unpack in this one — none of it good for Democrats seeking to haul their party back towards the center.
JOHN BRENNAN’S “EXTREMELY SENSITIVE ISSUE:” “Brennan dimly understood that there would be hell to pay if it came out that Hillary partisans in the U.S. government were spying on her opponent’s campaign, making use of opposition research that she had purchased. But Brennan, who was auditioning to be Hillary’s CIA director and choking on his anger at the thought of Trump as president, couldn’t help himself apparently.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Start Having More Sex.
NOT WHAT WAS EXPECTED: Homo naledi’s brain: Like ours, but smaller.
BITTER COOKIES: Girl Scouts To Meet With Ohio Senators To Push For Gun Control.
THE NEWEST DISPATCH OF THE CULTURE WARS. IT’S NOT JUST SF, THEY’RE COMING FOR EVERYONE: Cultural Bifurcation. (Long but good.)
GET READY FOR THE FUTURE, IT IS MURDER: Thought criminals.
YOU KNOW, THIS SHOCKED FACE IS GETTING WORN OUT: Judiciary Committee Transcripts on Trump Tower Meeting Confirm It Was a Big Nothingburger.
THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: Broward County’s Promise Program Was A Failure From The Start.
HINT: “IDENTITY STUDIES” AIN’T WHERE THE DOUGH IS: Picking the right college major could be worth $1.7M.
TRYING TO PICK UP WHERE “FAST AND FURIOUS” FAILED: Trial Of H&K Officials Over Illegal Gun Shipments To Mexico Begins.
THE ANSWER STARTS WITH “NY PARENTS” AND ENDS WITH “HIPSTER TREND” – BUT IF YOU’RE CONSIDERING “REGGIO EMILIA” READ THIS: Why NYC parents are obsessed with this hipster preschool trend.
TEACH WOMEN TO NOT DON CLOWN MAKE-UP AND STAB MEN: Teen swears off kinky sex after ex-girlfriend in clown makeup stabs him.
NEVER MIND. I’D BET THEY WANT US TO HOLD THEIR BEERS WHILE THEY GET EVEN MORE EMBARRASSING: Trump-Hating MSM Hacks Just Wrapped Up Their Most Embarrassing Week Yet.
LET’S FACE IT: NOBODY LIKES HAVING A DIRTY AURA BUT MOST OF US JUST USE THOSE AURA-CLEAN DRYER SHEETS: Where rich New Yorkers go to get their auras cleansed.
THE BOBBIES LIKE TO THINK OF IT AS CORRECT 2% OF THE TIME: UK’s facial-recognition tech is ‘wrong 98 percent of the time.’
May 16, 2018
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Ultimate Order At The World’s Oldest Deli (Video).
(Via Maggie’s Farm.)
THE SECRET OF MY ANNUAL “DIVE TRIPS” TO CAYMAN IS OUT! University of Tennessee invests in Cayman Islands funds, lobbied for secrecy law.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Global City. “1MDB illustrates just how vulnerable American politics has become to ‘globalization’ with its attendant tangle of foundations, celebrities, bankers, lobbyists and fixers. The Iranian nuclear deal cannot be understood except in connection with the huge business transactions with which it is associated. “
AT AMAZON, Flingshot Slingshot Flying Screaming Monkey.
BROKE YOUR RIGHT ARM? Exercise your left.
ACTUALLY, IT’S BEEN AROUND FOR A WHILE: The Rise of Black Anti-Semitism. “It’s hard to imagine that left-wing activists or Democratic politicians would keep their careers after associating with a figure who spouts hatred against any other minority group the way Farrakhan does with Jews. Having attained a certain level of political power or social capital, however, Mallory, Jarret, Obama, and the CBC have apparently insulated themselves from criticism on this point, at least among their fellow progressives and much of the elite media.”
SCOTT JOHNSON: And now, the Trump Tower transcripts.
MAYBE IT’S A BAD IDEA TO NAME A CAMPER AFTER A STATE ASSOCIATED WITH HUMAN FECES AND DISCARDED SYRINGES? Test Drive: 2018 Volkswagen California.
HE’D HAVE MY VOTE (IF I LIVED IN DOUGLAS COUNTY, OREGON): Paris train hero runs for Douglas County commissioner. Electing heroes to office doesn’t always work out well, but … well … I can’t help but have a good feeling here. Go Alek Skarlatos!
THIS IS A DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR SENATE IN MINNESOTA:
NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Probiotics might help your allergies, but we’re still not sure how.
FIRST IT WAS CONFEDERATE GENERALS, NOW THIS: Nurses rally to strip Facebook founder’s name from San Francisco hospital.
REVIEW: Cobra Kai Is Exactly the Kind of Toxic Masculinity We All Desperately Need. “The YouTube reboot of ‘The Karate Kid’ is right on point.”
I caught the trailer for this a week or two ago, and went quickly from “You’ve got to be kidding me” to “I’ll have to check this out.”
HEADLINES FROM THE MULTIVERSE: Scientists believe alien life may exist in other universes after discovering a mysterious ‘force.’
Life doesn’t get much more alien than coming from another universe.
PROGRESSIVE PARADISE: California STDs Raging At All Time Highs For Third Year In A Row.
A MARINE’S ode to the Ka-Bar.
AT AMAZON, save on Herbs Spices and Seasonings.
MICHAEL WALSH: Happy Ramadan!
IN SEATTLE, AMAZON SHRUGS: The city attempts to wring more money from its employers rather than fix its housing problems.
Well. Amazon already is doing a great deal to fend off homelessness. For starters, it is employing tens of thousands of people—thereby providing them with steady income with which to pay their mortgage or rent.
On top of that, Amazon has given millions to the city’s affordable-housing fund and millions more to two organizations that help the homeless. (To which Seattle officials say: Yeah, but what have you done for us lately?)
But more to the point: If Amazon declines to pay the tax, the city will take it to court. If Amazon continues not to pay, then it could be subject to liens on its property and, eventually, seizure of the property. Some people, such as actor Wesley Snipes, have even served time in prison for failing to pay their taxes, but it’s not clear if Amazon’s officers would face similar jeopardy over the head tax.
Extortion is simply obtaining money through force or the threat of force. So if anybody is practicing extortion in this case it is Seattle, not Amazon. Amazon isn’t threatening anyone with force, and it isn’t demanding money from anyone else. (At least not in Seattle; the company’s shameless gold-digging for its second headquarters, known as HQ2, is another story entirely.) Seattle is doing both.
In fact, by debating whether it will continue to grow in Seattle, Amazon is merely taking a page out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: It is, after a fashion, threatening to go on strike.
Reportedly, Rand said she wrote the book to show how badly “the world needs prime movers.” The linguistic overlap with Amazon Prime is coincidental, but apt.
As a wise businessman once said “Get the hell out of my way!”
AT AMAZON, save on books in Health Fitness and Dieting
ANALYSIS: TRUE. France Suffering ‘Intifada,’ Jewish Lawmaker Says Following Paris Attack. “Since 2012, hundreds of people have died in a series of terrorist attacks across France featuring explosives, firearms and vehicular ramming.”
I DON’T EVEN LIKE REAL FLYING INSECTS: The first wireless flying robotic insect takes off. We’re all going to have to have defenses against these things around our homes before this is over, aren’t we?
PEACE THROUGH SUPERIOR FIREPOWER: Pivot With a Nuclear Edge: Low Yield in the South China Sea.
Much has been said of the Trump administration, but an area where it has stepped up to the plate is nuclear modernization. The Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) released in February 2018 provides answers for not only dealing with the Russian tactical nuclear imbalance but also the South China Sea A2/AD problem. As outlined in the NPR, the Trump administration aims to “expand tailored response options” by developing a low yield sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM), reminiscent of the now retired nuclear tomahawk missile (TLAM-N). In the short term, however, the intention is to modify a small number of submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warheads to significantly lower their yield. These will launch from the Ohio class ballistic missile submarines currently in service.
These tactical nuclear weapons deployed in the Pacific could be used to counter Chinese fortifications by effectively neutralizing the A2/AD capability with the appropriate yield. The thought of having to use any nuclear weapons is nothing to be taken lightly but so is the thought of a U.S. aircraft carrier being destroyed by multiple cruise missiles resulting in the loss of 5000 lives.
Indeed.
SEE, THE NICE THING ABOUT SUPPORTING FREE SPEECH IS THAT YOU CAN TELL THESE PEOPLE TO BUZZ OFF WITHOUT HAVING TO ARGUE CASES: Feminist Group Demands Spotify’s New ‘Hate Content’ Policy Be Applied to Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eminem.
TRAPPED FRENCH HAWKEYE: A French Navy E-2C Hawkeye lands on the USS George H.W. Bush.
French naval aviators and aircraft maintenance crews are using the U.S. carrier to sharpen their skills before France’s big aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, returns to duty this summer. USNI has the full story.
DEMOCRATS KNOW THEIR CORE VOTERS: Felons Voting, as Florida Voters Will Decide in November, Could Flip Major Races. “State Attorney General Pam Bondi and Gov. Rick Scott, two term-limited Republicans, have blocked a federal lawsuit that would force Florida to change the way it restores voting rights.”
Why the hell hasn’t Jeff Sessions stopped the lawsuit?
TRUMP’s INITIAL RESPONSE TO NORTH KOREA’S SUMMIT THREAT AND LIBYA GIMMICK: It amounts to a non-committal shrug until he sees what Kim Jong Un actually does:
President Donald Trump on Wednesday offered a non-committal response to North Korean threats to cancel his planned summit with Kim Jong Un, saying he hadn’t received any information that would put the talks in jeopardy.
“We haven’t been notified at all, we’ll have to see,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, where he was meeting his Uzbek counterpart. “We haven’t seen anything, we haven’t heard anything. We will see what happens.”
But pressed whether he would still insist upon North Korea’s denuclearization as a condition for the talks, Trump nodded yes.
South Korean officials have reacted with similar cool.
Since early March, when North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un told South Korean officials he would discuss denuclearizing his regime without pre-conditions, everyone has known at some point Little Rocket Man and his Pyongyang gang would wiggle and yelp –and possibly stall the process– with the goal of politically dividing Seoul and Washington.
Yesterday Kim Kye Gwan, North Korean First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, wiggled and yelped as he “sharply criticized American officials – especially national security adviser John Bolton – for suggesting that Libya could be a template for denuclearizing North Korea.” Kim added that North Korea’s nuclear program is far more advanced than Libya’s nascent program.
That’s true. However, the vice minister’s complaint ignores several facts, which is a good indication it’s an agitation-propaganda ploy to try to get the Trump Administration to accept something less that complete denuclearization.
Vice Minister Kim attacked Bolton for telling the press that the technical process of denuclearizing North Korea will be very similar that used in Libya — access to sites, verification, removal and disposal of nuclear weapons material and manufacturing capabilities. Bolton also said the deal the Bush Administration struck with Libya is a “template” for the agreement Japan, South Korea and the U.S. seek with the North Korean dictatorship. Bolton expressed an informed opinion. North Korea went ballistic — so to speak.
The Vice Minister’s Complaint could be read as a freudian slip revealing paranoid Pyongyang’s deepest fear: an internal North Korean rebellion. We know Kim Jong Un fears rebellion and coup. He had his half-brother murdered after hearing rumors North Korean expats had asked Kim Jong Nam to help reform the Kim regime. Rebellion and coup connect to Libya. Remember, Libyan rebels killed Libya’s denuclearized dictator Muammar Gaddafi. If Gaddafi had possessed deliverable nukes he might have stopped foreign states from aiding the rebels, but maybe not. A dictator fighting off an internal rebellion is a distracted man. Threatening to nuke powerful states while battling a domestic coup gives the powerful states a great reason to launch an all out attack to eliminate those weapons.
North Korea is guilty of poor timing. The wiggle and yelp routine started too soon. Pyongyang should have waited a couple of more weeks before exhibiting totalitarian pique and threatening to scuttle the Trump-Kim talks.
Now the big question — who’ll be the first person to call the the talks The U.S. Dotard-Little Rocket Man Summit?
MIAMI CHEESECAKE FACTORY EMPLOYEES THREATEN AND HARASS BLACK TRUMP SUPPORTER.
And naturally, the restaurant chain “blames the media for blowing incident with black customer in a MAGA hat ‘out of proportion.’”
Imagine if Starbucks tried to say the incident in Philadelphia was just blown out of proportion?
By not pouring gasoline onto the fire, the incident in Philly would have been out of the news cycle almost as quickly as today’s story will be?
DIRTY MONEY: U.S. Sanctions Iran’s Central Bank Governor, Alleges Hezbollah Ties.
The Treasury Department said that Valiollah Seif, the governor of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, sent the funds to Hezbollah through an Iraqi bank, the al-Bilad Islamic Bank. The funds were sent on behalf of Iran’s Quds Force, an Iranian paramilitary organization fighting in Syria along with Hezbollah to support President Bashar al-Assad.
The sanctions are part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to preclude the Quds Force from using the international banking system.
Iran has long been involved in the Syria conflict and has supplied missiles and other weapons to Hezbollah, which is widely regarded as its proxy in the region. The Trump administration is trying to pressure Iran to curtail that support. But it has stopped short of taking military action against Iranian forces and Iranian-backed militias in Syria while defending Israel’s military strikes there.
In the sanctions announced Tuesday, Mr. Seif and Ali Tarzali, the assistant director of the international department at the bank, were named as “specially designated global terrorists.”
The Mullahs Regime is both a criminal and terrorist organization.
I GUESS SAD BUGS LOSE THEIR APPETITES. Lack of ‘happiness’ hormone makes rice plants less attractive to insects.
SCHOOL SHOOTINGS: Facts, Fallacies, Freedom and the Future.
Solid set of speakers at this one. It’s short notice, but if you’re going to be in the Los Angeles area this weekend, it might be worth your while.
21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: 10 Reasons My Cat Deserves To Win The Intersectional Victim Olympics.
WELL, THAT’S COMFORTING: The Next Deadly Pandemic Could Be Unlike Any Threats We Know, Say Experts.
YOU KNOW THAT THAT’S NOT ALLOWED: George Korda: Finding the way to open and honest conversations about race.
STEPHEN KRUISER: Twitter’s Silence When Enforcing Behavior Rules Make Them Hard to Follow. “Conservative purge time again?”
Again or still?
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Former teacher sentenced for indecent behavior. “A woman who pleaded guilty in February to three counts of indecent behavior with juveniles was sentenced Friday in state district court to five years on each charge with the Department of Corrections with all but 18 months suspended on each charge and to run concurrently. . . . The victims were two 13-year-old boys and a 14-yearold boy. Lake Charles police began their investigation after a student’s mother reported that Odom had inappropriate contact with her son on multiple occasions. Prosecutors said Odom sent one victim nude photos of herself via a text message, and they said she performed oral sex on him in a classroom.”
I feel like she’s getting off easier than a male teacher facing the same charges would have.
THE SHAMEFUL, UNETHICAL SMEARING OF JORDAN PETERSON: The psychologist and intellectual might be controversial, but he’s not ‘enabling Jew hatred.’
Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Astonishingly, Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life is still #1 most read on Amazon.
GOOD QUESTION: Trump’s Instincts on Afghanistan Are Right, So What Happened?
Last month marked the 40th anniversary of the 1978 coup that violently brought communist rulers into power in Kabul. Two years later the Soviet Union invaded. Ten years later, they withdrew, laying the foundation for the Mujahideen Civil War that led to the rise of the Taliban in 1996 and their war against the Northern Alliance. This war was still raging on 9/11 when the U.S. military entered the scene. The fundamental causes of these various civil wars still remain today. After 40 years of fighting, the Taliban’s fight against Kabul is not going to simply end due to U.S. intervention.
The sooner Trump translates his instincts on ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan into policy, the better for America. A withdrawal will improve American national security and strengthen economic prosperity. Extricating U.S. troops from Afghanistan will not be easy, however, because there are many in Washington — senior military leaders among them — who want to defend the status quo at any cost. There is no benefit to the United States in trying to fight yesterday’s failed battles but trying to do it “better.” The strategy has failed, not the tactics.
There’s no light at the end of this tunnel.
TRUMP BAD. CONSTITUTION WORSE. Elizabeth Warren Is Gravely Concerned about . . . the Electoral College.
BUTTERFIELD ALERT: L.A. Times asks, How Could California Be Poor While Doing So Much to Fight Poverty?
(Classical reference in headline.)
THE HAPPINESS CURVE: Past your prime? Not at all. Research shows that happiness follows a U-shaped trajectory. Happiness starts high with youthful optimism and declines throughout middle age before rising once more — a revelation to those of us who have been raised fearing the “second half” of life. Check out Jonathan Rauch’s fantastic new book about why life gets better after 50. Reading it felt less like a book and more like a start of a movement to take better advantage of the gifts, resources and wisdom of people who we once would say were “past their prime.”
GET WOKE, GO BROKE? ABC set to dial back political humor from pro-Trump ‘Roseanne’ next season.