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NARRATOR: IT WAS, BUT THEY DIDN’T FIND THAT OUT UNTIL MUCH LATER. NASA Finds Perfectly Rectangular Iceberg In Antarctica As If It Was Deliberately Cut.
NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Democratic Challenger Drops F-Bomb During Debate in Pennsylvania Synagogue.
(Via Political Wire.)
AMERICA’S CAMP OF THE SAINTS PROBLEM: A vast caravan of unarmed poor migrants are walking* north towards the frontier. A far-right dystopian novel from 1973 foresaw the challenge.
Plus a related question and answer: Did a Univision reporter prove Donald Trump right about the migrant caravan?
Twitchy.com observes that earlier today, Trump tweeted:
Naturally, as Twitchy goes on to note, the DNC-MSM lost it at Trump’s reference to “Middle Easterners” in the caravan. But as Benny Johnson of the Daily Caller writes, “Bangladeshis Joined Migrant Caravan In Guatemala, Univision Correspondent Reports.”
* Who is organizing their support infrastructure?
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): If you really believe in the Russia collusion theory, isn’t it obvious that Putin is behind this as a way to bolster Trump? The real kicker will be when Trump meets them at the border with buses that take them directly to the homes of major Democrat donors in California.
ISN’T EVERYTHING? Got Racism? PETA Says Milk Is a Symbol for White Supremacists.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 15 Unexpected Ways to Keep Your House Warm This Winter.
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BUT IT WAS ALL RIGHT, EVERYTHING WAS ALL RIGHT, THE STRUGGLE WAS FINISHED. HE HAD WON THE VICTORY OVER HIMSELF. HE LOVED BIG BROTHER. Arnold Schwarzenegger Apologizes for Using ‘Girlie Men’ Phrase 14 Years Ago.
BACK TO THE FUTURE: Seven Things You’ve Forgotten About the Old Days of the Internet.
REST IN PEACE: The Passing of a WWII Hero: Joachim Ronneberg, 1919-2018. “He led the raid that destroyed the Nazis’ nuclear ambitions.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Myers-Briggs Is Bunk.
Related: Jung at Heart — Reviewing Carl Jung’s persistent hold on our attention.
THIS IS FROM A FEW MONTHS AGO, BUT I HAD MISSED IT: The New York Subway System Is Beyond Repair.
The New York City subway is a miracle, especially at 3 a.m. on a Friday night. But the system is also falling apart, and it’s going to cost billions to keep the old trains running: $19 billion, at least according to one estimate from city planners. The time has come to give up on the 19th-century idea of public transportation, and leap for the autonomous future.
Right now, fully autonomous cars are rolling around Pittsburgh, the San Francisco Bay area, and parts of Michigan, shuttling people from here to there with minimal manual intervention. Instead of fixing the old trains, let’s rip out the tracks and fill the tunnels with fleets of autonomous vehicles running on pavement. The result would be radical improvements in throughput while saving money and increasing the ability of the system to survive a fire, flood, or terrorist attack.
These subterranean highways would be dramatically simpler than public roadways for an autonomous artificially intelligent system because the tunnels could be limited to authorized vehicles only. No jaywalkers on cellphones. No babies in runaway carriages. Just a collection of competing fleets, centrally orchestrated and offering different levels of service to different groups at different prices.
Yes, but would this offer sufficient opportunities for graft?
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Would Traveling Back In Time Destroy The Universe?
MICHAEL WALSH: Trump’s Merkel Moment — and Ours.
QUESTION ASKED: Why Would the Washington Post Hire Someone Like Jamal Khashoggi?
NOW READING JOHN CARR’S Falkenberg prequel. So far it’s good, but I really wanted a sequel from Jerry Pournelle. He had one mostly finished and I understand the kids were going to get it out, but no word on how that’s going.
UPDATE: My mistake, I misremembered a conversation I’d had with Alex Pournelle. There’s no Falkenberg sequel. It’s a Janissaries sequel, and it’ll be coming out from Baen. There are also a couple of other books in the pipeline, but no Falkenberg, alas. The Carr book’s good, though!
JUST NBC THE BLOODY OBVIOUS: TWITTER IS REVEALING THAT JOURNALISTS ARE MOSTLY LEFT-WING.
Dylan Byers has a piece for NBC News which argues that Twitter is a “minefield” for journalists. Why? Because it often unintentionally reveals that so many of them are left-wing. Byers kicks off the piece with a look at a recent tweet from Politico Editor-in-chief John Harris. I wrote about this story last week. In case you missed it, Harris tweeted this:
The link above is to John Sexton at Hot Air. In his article at NBC, Byers goes on to note:
It also served as a reminder of the perils journalists face on Twitter, where there is a temptation to stray from reporting and share jokes and opinions. One errant observation, or an improperly worded thought, and journalists can find that they’ve inadvertently exposed their own biases to the world — and caused a firestorm in the process.
Hard to believe that in 2018, a journalist is still arguing that his profession strives to be “objective.”
ZOOM: This Is the Quickest Street-Legal Toyota Supra on the Planet. “Drag Week is a competition where entrants must drive their cars from drag strip to drag strip, competing without the assistance of trailers or other cars. Often times, competitors will tow a small trailer full of tools and parts behind their race car, which is pretty bizarre to see. It’s fun to watch, though, and impressive to see how a purpose-built dragster handles being driven so far outside its normal habitat. Despite being street legal, Castillo’s Supra is still monstrously quick. It’s able to lay down seven-second quarter-mile times, struggling to grip the surface with those massive drag slicks.”
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YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT THAT: The new taboo: More people regret sex change and want to ‘detransition’, surgeon says.
YOU THOUGHT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: We’ve Been Misled About Exercise’s Role in Weight Loss, a Doctor Explains. “Exercise remains the most common practice among nationally tracked persons who are able to maintain weight loss over time. In fact, 90 percent of people who lose significant weight and keep it off exercise at least one hour a day, on average.”
MICE GET ALL THE BEST STUFF FIRST: First esophagus grown from stem cells transplanted into mice.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO, UM, WHATEVER THIS IS: “A ball-busting female boss at a Brooklyn precinct is under investigation for allegedly stuffing a pair of her panties into a male colleague’s mouth, police sources told The Post on Monday.”
Plus: “She has been on social media spouting man-hating rhetoric about fellow sergeants having ‘little d–ks.’”
SCRAPPLEFACE: Migrant Caravan Goes Home as Trump Buys Honduras.
THE “EPIDEMIC” ISN’T BEING SPREAD BY THE KNIVES: British Trauma Doctors Reveal Horror of Knife Crime ‘Epidemic.’
DEAR RESISTANCE: Listen to my lived totalitarian experience – you have no effing idea what you’re talking about.
If lived experience is indeed the be-all-end-all that the identarian left considers it to be, there is one area where my lived experience without a doubt shit all over the lived experience of the woke folk. Unlike all those among them who have been born and/or raised in the West and have zero or almost zero experience of living under anything other than a liberal democratic government (which is 99 per cent of them at least), I have lived the first 15 years of my life under the Soviet block-style communism, or “real socialism” as the Party used to call it. I’m not going to pretend that the 1970s and the 80s in Poland were as bloody and traumatic as the Stalinist Russia, Mao’s China or Pol Pot’s Cambodia (as P J O’Rourke who visited Warsaw at that time noted, the communism for most part doesn’t kill you any more, it just bores you to death) but I do know a difference or twenty-two between a totalitarian or authoritarian society and a Western democracy.
Needless to say, read the whole thing.
I DONATED: Help Mark Judge Rebuild His Life. He was collateral damage in the Democrats’ anti-Kavanaugh smear campaign, and he deserves help. “He lost his apartment, his job, and several writing contracts, leaving him with massive unpaid legal and other bills. Mark Judge does not wish to disparage anyone nor talk to the media about an episode that was traumatic and unfair for him and, indeed, everyone involved. Mark Judge simply wants to live a private life, take care of his weakened health, and pay his legal and personal bills.”
It’s a little too close to election day to still be polling registered voters, who trend more Democrat than likely voters.
IMPORTANT NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: “A new study from Wayne State University found that — far from harmful — having sex with an ex may even help people heal faster from breakups.”
“THE VIRTUE OF APPRENTICESHIP”: I agree, but apprenticeships are much tougher to implement on a large scale than most people understand. The employer needs to be able to recoup its training costs before the apprentice departs for greener pastures. Scaling up will require some real thought.
ROGER SIMON: Cut Off Aid to Central America to Save It.
RICK MORAN: Senator Cory Booker Accused of Sexual Assault by Gay Man. “Are only women to be believed unconditionally about sexual assault?”
STALLIONS RETURN TO THE STABLE: USMC CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters conduct flight operations simulating a long-range raid. The photo was taken in Yuma, Arizona.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS: ABC Reporter Gushes to Beto: ‘You’re a Rock Star!’
Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
CREEPY PORN LAWYER UPDATE: Michael Avenatti Lived the High Life While Owing Millions to IRS. “As Michael Avenatti floats a 2020 presidential run, court records reveal the lawyer and his companies owed millions in unpaid taxes and judgments.”
ON THIS DAY IN 1896: The College of New Jersey announced its name change to “Princeton University.” The “University” part I can understand. The institution was no longer just a college, and its faculty and students wanted the name to reflect that. But why would a school that had been a hotbed of revolutionary fervor in 1770s want to be called “Princeton”? It doesn’t have much of a republican ring to it. Why not “University of New Jersey”?
The story is that the school had always been located in Princeton, New Jersey, and thus it had occasionally been referred to as “Princeton College” (much as the University of Michigan is sometimes called “Ann Arbor”). On the other hand, it had a lot of other nicknames too—like Nassau College. I suspect that to the Gilded Age ear, “Princeton” and all things British aristocracy just sounded cool, while “New Jersey” didn’t (and still doesn’t). Alas.
THE NEW CIVILITY: Man who abused 9/11 widow identified and fired from job.
The incident occurred on Oct. 13 after a “flash march for Law and Order” was organized by a conservative group.
Video captured by Brandon Farley (@FarelyFilms) shows the woman and a man, who appears to have been protesting the march, at a crosswalk, waiting to cross the street.
The protester begins the verbal spat by saying to the woman, “Why are you trying to block me, I’m f***ing trying to walk here.”
After he called her a “f***ing snarky, little f***ing idiot,” he said. “I’m not like … your cop boyfriend who is going to f***ing knock you out.”
The woman pointed to her NYPD hat and told the man, “My husband died on 9/11,” to which he replied, “Good, good. NYPD was a bunch of sodomizers, f***ing sodomizing immigrants with their bully sticks.”
“Your husband … should rot in the grave.”
Charming.
TO BE FAIR, NEITHER CAN HE: VIDEO: Beto O’Rourke supporters can’t name any of his accomplishments.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Million Migrant March and Much, Much More. “We don’t know who these people are, are they criminals, gang members, human and sex traffickers? We have no idea and yet they are glorified by the media. We simply must embrace them.”
I DON’T REALLY SEE THE “CAMPING AND HIKING” APPLICATIONS for this “Multitool.”
OUT: TURF WARS. In: TERF Wars.
I CERTAINLY HOPE SO: Can America and China Avoid the Pull of the Thucydides Trap?
SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “The social contract exists so that everyone doesn’t have to squat in the dust holding a spear to protect his woman and his meat all day every day. It does not exist so that the government can take your spear, your meat, and your woman because it knows better what to do with them.”
Related thoughts here: Do We Really Consent To Be Governed?
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BLUE WAVE? Interest in Midterms Surges, Along With Trump Approval Rating.
Nearly two thirds of registered voters showed a high level of interest in the election—the highest ever recorded in a midterm election since the Journal/NBC poll began asking the question in 2006.
“It’s a barnburner,” Bill McInturff, a GOP pollster who conducted the survey with Democrat Fred Yang, said of the surge of voter interest. “There’s a switch that’s been flipped…They are engaging in the campaign and the process.”
The Kavanaugh hearings made a lot of people sit up and notice.
Plus:
Partisan “dirty tricks” are unremarkable. But when networks within government and those who occupy society’s commanding heights play them against persons trying to unseat them, they constitute cold civil war against the voters, even coups d’etat. What can possibly answer such acts? And then what?
These people, including longstanding officials of the FBI and CIA, are related to one another intellectually, morally, professionally, socially, financially, politically, maritally, and extramaritally. Their activities to stop the anti-establishment candidate, and president—in this case, Trump—have spanned the public and private realms, and involved contacts in Britain and Australia. They enjoy The Washington Post’s, The New York Times’, the Associated Press’s, CBS’, NBC’s, ABC’s, and CNN’s unquestioning megaphone effect to the rest of the media.
The Democratic Party’ opposition “research,” for which the wife of a senior FBI official was partly responsible, was cross-validated by the FBI and became the substance of a counterintelligence warrant for surveilling the Trump campaign. After Trump’s victory, the intelligence agencies’ agencies’ summits continued their political and socially partisan alliance as “resistance” against the elected President. Even before inauguration, the Times and the Post published what the highest intelligence officials said were the agencies’ conclusion (no evidence, just conclusions) based on highly classified information, that Trump had “colluded” with Russia to steal the election.
When the surveillance and the investigation turned up nothing, intelligence and Justice Department officials played peek-a-boo with snatches of classified information behind transparently bogus claims of national security, and tried to catch him in perjury traps and other “procedural violations.” With the Media’s help, they created headlines and hampered Trump from governing. Two years later, the agencies continue to fight Congress’s demand that the classified bases for the allegations be made public. . . . What matters a lot is that our ruling class does not deal and will never again deal with their opponents as fellow citizens. Theirs was a quintessentially revolutionary act, after which there is no stepping back.
Read the whole thing.
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s foreign creditors try to lay claim to Citgo.
If Citgo is seized and sold to pay Venezuela’s debts, it could disrupt one of the most reliable sources of cash for a country already reeling from hyperinflation, food and medicine shortages, and a population exodus. U.S. sanctions aimed at pressuring President Nicolás Maduro, who has overseen the worst of the country’s implosion, have exacerbated the government’s pain, largely blocking it from the U.S. financial system.
The fight over Citgo is unfolding in courtrooms and boardrooms across North America and Europe – with a key decision expected by the end of the year.
Two Canadian mining firms are trying to acquire parts of Citgo as compensation for Venezuela’s expropriation of their assets more than a decade ago. A Russian oil company and holders of bonds issued by Venezuela’s state oil producer have staked a claim to Citgo shares. ConocoPhillips suggested it may also pursue the company.
In August, a federal judge in Delaware gave a bankrupt Canadian gold-mining company, Crystallex International, permission to seize shares of Citgo’s holding company, a decision that Venezuela’s lawyers lamented would “trigger a cascade of adverse events.”
It took a while to get going, but the cascade was triggered with Hugo Chavez’s election in 1999.
BLUE TSUNAMI OR BLUE SPLASH?: John Fund’s report is somewhat more optimistic than I am about the GOP’s chances of retaining the House. But judge for yourself.
Meanwhile, I’ve been getting a deluge of emails from left-leaning political organizations. I got one yesterday that said Cruz and O’Rourke are “officially tied” and asked for more money. Note that if a corporation made a similar statement about its business prospects it would be sued for securities violations and fraud.
OFT EVIL WILL SHALL EVIL MAR: We doubt CNN reporter meant his photos of migrant caravan to be ‘a walking GOP ad.’
THE ONLY THING SUBSIDIES GET YOU LESS OF IS MONEY: Beto O’Rourke Says U.S. Needs to Send Financial Aid to Stabilize Central America.
A CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY TO VIOLATE IMMIGRATION LAWS? Who’s Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the group behind the migrant caravan that drew Trump’s ire?
IT’S LIKE ALL THE 1970S SOCIAL NOSTRUMS HAVE FAILED US: As U.S. fertility rates collapse, finger-pointing and blame follow.
DAVID GELERNTER IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Real Reason They Hate Trump: He’s the average American in exaggerated form—blunt, simple, willing to fight, mistrustful of intellectuals.
Every big U.S. election is interesting, but the coming midterms are fascinating for a reason most commentators forget to mention: The Democrats have no issues. The economy is booming and America’s international position is strong. In foreign affairs, the U.S. has remembered in the nick of time what Machiavelli advised princes five centuries ago: Don’t seek to be loved, seek to be feared.
The contrast with the Obama years must be painful for any honest leftist. For future generations, the Kavanaugh fight will stand as a marker of the Democratic Party’s intellectual bankruptcy, the flashing red light on the dashboard that says “Empty.” The left is beaten.
This has happened before, in the 1980s and ’90s and early 2000s, but then the financial crisis arrived to save liberalism from certain destruction. Today leftists pray that Robert Mueller will put on his Superman outfit and save them again.
For now, though, the left’s only issue is “We hate Trump.” This is an instructive hatred, because what the left hates about Donald Trump is precisely what it hates about America. The implications are important, and painful.
To be fair, the average American just wants to be left alone. Trump realizes that’s not really possible anymore.
NEWS OF SORTA KINDA CAN USE. SOMETIMES: Is It Meat? Sometimes…
OR DO YOU WANT TO GIVE THESE PEOPLE AND THEIR MANIPULATORS POWER? In the competition to see who can be most hateful towards Republicans…
VOTE. AND VOTE REPUBLICAN, OR WE MIGHT AS WELL HAVE ELECTED HILLARY: Election 2018: thinking about impeachment. Tell our Ladies and Lords were to stick it, and keep their greedy hands away from power.
LIGHT A CANDLE FOR IRAN: In Iran, retirees join truckers, shopkeepers, teachers on strike against the mullahs.
AND DON’T GET COCKY: Don’t Get Cocky: Republican Election Hurdles for November.
VOTE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. IT VERY WELL MIGHT: DNC: ‘Top Sekret Plan for Midterms’.
AND NO ONE IS ASKING THESE IN THE MSM: Migrant Caravan Mystery Questions Need Answers.
WORSE, THEY UNLEASHED MOBS OF THE MENTALLY ILL. AND THEY DON’T CARE SO LONG AS THEY GET POWER: The Democrats Threw Open Pandora’s box And Unleashed An Out Of Control Mob.
OF COURSE WHAT THEY WON IS A MASSIVE LOSS FOR THE STATE, AND MAYBE THE WHOLE NATION: Anti-Vaxxers Bully the State of Arizona and Win.
THIS IS WHY THE BABYLON BEE IS BECOMING AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD: PETA Claims Milk Drinkers Are White Supremacists
TIME TRAVELERS TAKE HEED: Saturday the 13th: Tale of another failed Hitler assassination.
October 21, 2018
ROSS DOUTHAT ON European Elites And African Babies: “So why are they creeping back into the discussion? For three reasons: Because African birthrates haven’t slowed as fast as Western experts once expected, because European demographics are following Macron’s Law toward the grave, and because European leaders are no longer nearly so optimistic about assimilating immigrants as even a few short years ago. . . . This trend would have revived a certain kind of population-bomb anxiety no matter what, but the anxiety in Europe is a little more specific than that — because over the same period, Europe’s population is likely to drop by about one hundred million. (Western Europe’s leaders are a vanguard here: Neither Macron nor Angela Merkel nor Theresa May have any biological children.) In the late 1990s Europe and Africa had about the same population; a hundred years later there could be seven Africans for every European. And the experience of recent refugee crises has demonstrated to European leaders both how easily populations can move northward, and how much harder assimilation may be than they once hoped.”
COLLECTION: Leftist Attacks On Prominent Republicans.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Should You Have Knee Replacement Surgery?
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Bidders cry foul after Cuomo donor lands $1B Coliseum contract.
THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HOPED: North Dakota women could buy marijuana-infused ‘inserts’ for menstrual pain if recreational measure passes.
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JONATHAN TURLEY: Bar Complaint Filed Against Counsel For Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Note the change: Democrat operatives used to get a way scot-free once the story dropped out of the news. Now, not so much.
LOOK UNDER THE SOFA CUSHIONS, THAT’S WHERE MINE USUALLY TURNS UP: A neuroscientist who lost her mind says it can happen to anyone.
KEVIN WILLIAMSON ON THE WITCHES OF BROOKLYN, putting hexes on Brett Kavanaugh to make him “suffer:” Emotionally healthy adults do not wish to inflict suffering on people over political disagreements.
Dakota Bracciale, owner of the shop, tells Newsweek: “We know the system is broken, and the people in charge need to be taken down by any means necessary, magical or otherwise. . . . This is basically Antifa witches — we’re coming for these people’s throats.”
Question: Does that sound like a disagreement about politics to you?
Occasionally, our friends on the left do us the favor of making plain that which conservative critics have inferred about their ranks: that they are intellectually unserious, that they are damaged, that they are high on rage, that they have made a religion of politics. Father Gary Thomas, an exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose who may be taking the Catland gang more seriously than they deserve, will be saying a special Mass to counter the proffered hex. One welcomes the efforts of a Catholic priest who takes his faith seriously enough to invite ridicule — a fool for Christ, as Paul put it. But in much the same way that it is difficult to imagine the Almighty choosing the likes of Jerry Falwell as His emissary, it is difficult to imagine the other guy choosing as his agents a couple of sad dopes in Brooklyn — not in a world in which Kim Jong-un and Taylor Swift exist.
Read the whole thing.
THE PEOPLE WHO CAST THE VOTES DECIDE NOTHING. THE PEOPLE WHO COUNT THE VOTES DECIDE EVERYTHING. The New Democrat Strategy: Win Secretary of State Elections First.
(Classical reference in headline.)
WHERE DID IT COME FROM? Measles outbreak raging in Europe could be brought to U.S., doctors warn.
THE SEARS BANKRUPTCY: A lot has been written in the last few days about how Sears’ mail order business (mostly inadvertently) helped subvert Jim Crow. But don’t forget the importance of Sears President Julius Rosenwald’s efforts to address Jim Crow head on. He used his immense wealth to fund thousands of “Rosenwald schools” to educate African Americans throughout the rural South. Just one more capitalist hero …
A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION MASQUERADING AS A POLITICAL PARTY: Two Democrats running for office from behind bars.
(Classical reference in headline.)
GREAT MOMENTS IN TOLERANCE FOR DIVERSITY. NPR: How Do We Talk to the Dangerous Idiots Who Disagree With Us?
