Archive for 2016

ZOROASTRIAN REVIVAL: The Religion That The Iranian Mullahs Fear Most. “Over the past few decades, Iran has seen a revival in the native religion that predates Islam—something that the ayatollahs desperately want to suppress.”

ALL THE POLITICAL EXPERTS MISSED IT, BUT NOT THIS GUY: As Trump Coasts to the Nomination, Remember That the Cartoonist Behind Dilbert Saw It All Coming. Scott Adams also predicts Trump will beat Hillary Clinton in “a landslide.” “Why did Adams believe, against all conventional wisdom, that Trump would win? His prediction had little to do with the mood of the electorate, the weak and fractured Republican field, or the issue of immigration. Instead, argues Adams, Trump’s success in the election is due almost entirely to his skill as a ‘master persuader.’ On the other hand, Adams believes that Hillary Clinton and her team are remarkably unskilled in the art of persuasion and points out that their first anti-Trump ad simply highlights Trump’s anti-establishment qualities. . . . It’s a wild hypothesis that runs contrary to the conventional wisdom about how elections, and human beings, work. But then again, with Trump positioned as the Republican’s presumptive nominee while Hillary Clinton still struggles to lock up the Democratic nomination against a candidate almost nobody expected to compete, note how far conventional wisdom has gotten us this election season.”

YEAH, THIS IS PRETTY MUCH THE LESSON OF MY DAD’S ALZHEIMER’S: When Memory Fails, Delight In The Moment. “Alzheimer’s is not a mere matter of Swiss cheese memory and odd behaviors. It is a serious medical condition. It is terminal. It should be known for what it is: Brain Failure.”

“ALL I WANT FOR MOTHER’S DAY IS TO PEE ALONE (AND MAYBE A STIFF DRINK WHILE I’M IN THERE):” “Dads, take my word for it. This Mother’s Day, just take the kids somewhere for a special day with Dad and leave Mom to her own devices for a few hours to recharge. She might just sleep in or read a book, but whatever she does with a real day off will be the best gift you could give her.”

WE USED TO GET ELECTRICITY AND AIRPLANES. NOW WE GET FACEBOOK. Tech’s Slowdown Threatens The American Dream. “In a three-month period at the end of 1879, Thomas Edison tested the first practical electric lightbulb, Karl Benz invented a workable internal-combustion engine, and a British-American inventor named David Edward Hughes transmitted a wireless signal over a few hundred meters. These were just a few of the remarkable breakthroughs that Northwestern University economist Robert J. Gordon tells us led to a ‘special century’ between 1870 and 1970, a period of unprecedented economic growth and improvements in health and standard of living for many Americans.”

We seem to be in something more like the not-so-special century now. Bad luck, I guess.

HAVING PREVIOUSLY TAKEN ALL THE FUN OUT OF LIFE, COMMIES NOW TAKE ALL THE FUN OUT OF DEATH: China’s Latest Target: Funeral Strippers.

How many American men will read that headline and immediately update their wills?

HEAT STREET: THE MOST SOCIAL-JUSTICY SJWS PART TWO – MEET THE ALL-WAHS.

Including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: “Oh Jack Jack Jack. Shadowbanning #NeverTrump. Taking Milo’s blue tick away. Censoring Adam Baldwin because he so correctly said pro-GG were more attractive and joyous than anti-GG. Sending Twitter profits tanking as half of us who have fun on Twitter have less fun.”

Related: “Jack Dorsey got a double dose of investor anger this earnings season…And the rough reception on Wall Street took a hefty, $180 million chunk out of Dorsey’s net worth.”

These things tend to happen when you exit the job of CEO to be full-time SJW.

KERRY FLUNKS THE GLOBAL TEST:

Shot: Kerry slams Trump’s wall, tells grads to prepare for ‘borderless world.’

Chaser:

When I was in the first period when I was secretary of state, there was in my office a big globe. And when ambassadors, who were newly going to their posts or in their posts and coming back to visit me, would get ready to leave, I would say to them, “Ambassador, you have one more test before you can go to your post. You have to go over to the globe and prove to me that you can identify your country.” So unerringly, they would go over and they’d spin the globe around and they’d put their finger on the country they were going to, pass the test.

So Mike Mansfield, great elder statesman in America, former Senate majority leader and who had been ambassador to Japan for a while before I was there, and he was a close friend of mine from back when I was in the Nixon administration — so he was visiting and he got ready to leave. I said, “Mike, I got to give you the same test I give everybody else. Before you can go back to Japan, you got to show me that you can go over to the globe and put your finger on your country.” So he went over and he spun this globe around and he put his hand on the United States, said, “That’s my country.” So I’ve told that, subsequently, to all the ambassadors going out, “Never forget, you’re over there in that country, but your country is the United States. You’re there to represent us. Take care of our interests and never forget it, and you’re representing the best country in the world.”

—Former Secretary of State George Shultz on C-Span, April 29, 1993.

QUESTION ASKED: Did we waste the ’90s?

I am with Clinton in this debate, but it isn’t hard to see the appeal of the counterargument that this was a decade — as Seinfeld, the iconic TV sitcom of the ’90s referred to itself — “about nothing.” The notion is that American society, liberated from the decades-long nuclear standoff with the Soviets, was allowed to exhale, and focus on frivolity. Even in the political realm, the Inquisition of Clinton for his sexual peccadillos (or the peccadillos themselves, if you insist) can be interpreted as an admission that this was a new era of lowered stakes, when politics wasn’t constrained by the exigencies of confronting existential threats.

Because those in charge buried their heads in the sand and ignored them, causing the bill to come due in the next decade for Bill Clinton’s excesses. 9/11 happened because Bill Clinton was too timid to capture bin Laden. (Just ask ABC.) The Iraq War happened because Bill Clinton and Al Gore demanded regime change in Iraq, but were too timid to make it happen themselves. The financial crisis of 2008 was the delayed hangover from Bill Clinton fundamentally transforming the banking system to force it to give home loans to those whose credit was far too risky to have mortgages.

And it seems rather odd to use 90s nostalgia as a cudgel to whip up votes for Hillary when she’s running against virtually all of her husband’s post-1994 centrist domestic policies.

Related: Watch: 13 Minutes of Every Lie Hillary Clinton Has Ever Told.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, THE SEX POLICE WOULD BE OUT IN FORCE. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Connecticut senate passes affirmative consent bill.

Connecticut is one step closer to ensuring college students are easily accused of sexual assault for not following a government-mandated list of rules for the bedroom.

The state senate, late Wednesday evening, passed an affirmative consent bill — or “yes means yes” legislation — designed to force students engaging in sexual activity to follow a question-and-answer formula. From the moment the students are about to touch, they would have to ask: “May I kiss you?” “May I touch you here?” etc.

Proponents of the policy insist this isn’t true, that the bill merely defines consent as an “active, clear and voluntary agreement by a person.” But that is not the only language in the bill. Similar bills have passed in California, Hawaii and New York, and while they allow nonverbal communication to count as consent, but there can be too much ambiguity in a nod or a moan.

The policy decouples context from the totality of the sexual experience. If a student fails to ask for permission before one escalation, but asks for it for a different escalation, the entire encounter can be considered sexual assault. If a student has been drinking (the bill doesn’t require an accuser to prove they were incapacitated), then all consent is negated. Further, once someone is accused, their level of intoxication doesn’t matter, even if under the same policy they could be considered too incapacitated to consent.

As I keep saying, these laws violate Lawrence v. Texas. Especially when applied to Dionysexuals.