"Mueller is the single most powerful person living in America, and yet, nobody voted for him!

"He is a living rebuke to the principles of our democratic system."

Venezuela

Vigilant, infinite, omnipotent, and intimate

In A Holy Experience, Ann Voskamp writes,

Your God’s not absent, distant, impotent. Your God’s vigilant, infinite, omnipotent, and intimate.

He pitches His tent and camps right in the middle of us.

...Because all is not as it seems. It is more. There is always infinitely more happening than what we see.

...No one in any dung pile is too far gone from God.

His arms will go anywhere, to redeem anyone, from anything.

...Behold His glory — and your raging heart will be held through anything.

...There is a way to live that sees how He is drawn all around you — even now, especially now.

Glory.

And we are all held.

Read more here.

Winners

MOTUS A.D. tells us why we should not root against Tom Brady or Bill Belichick Sunday. Here is a photo of Tom Brady from 1991 as a high school student.


Here he is more recently with his wife Gisele. He has come a long way. Don't count him out!

Hell has frozen over - No, really!

Anthony Watts posts at WattsUpWithThat,

There’s a town called “Hell”, in Michigan. That’s the sign from the city limits.

Visit his blog here.

"Wait here, there's something I have to do!"

If we all did this once in a while, the world would be a better place... pic.twitter.com/J62azsoe4z

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 30, 2019

Bezos wants to know how the National Enquirer got the scoop on his adultery

This is one of those rare times when I link to an article in a leftist source. The Daily Beast is curious about how the National Enquirer found out that Jeff Bezos was cheating on his wife with this L.A. t.v. personality. Read the article here, and remember it is a leftist source.

You thought New York was bad? Here is the abortion bill being presented in Virginia!

Heartbreaking... This isn't in New York, this isn't in California, this happened just this week right here in Virginia. @VAHouseDems proposed legislation to provide abortions up to just seconds before that precious child takes their first breath. Watch for yourself. pic.twitter.com/AxgPVyI6kU

— VA House GOP (@vahousegop) January 29, 2019

Admitting bias

Ace of Spades writes,

...How strange it is that the leftwing press is willing to admit to a series of biases it does not have and yet be so damnably recalcitrant about the one bias it obviously does have.

One might even say, "Ah yes, it's a noted psychological phenomenon that people will admit to flaws they either don't have or barely have, or are pretty mild and unimportant, while getting angry and defensive if you bring up their real, serious flaws."

Or one might say: they are simply corrupt liars incapable of telling the truth.

Read more here.

Risky Journalism

Manhattan Infidel got an exclusive interview with Cardinal Dolan to ask about Cuomo's baby-killing and other possibly excommunicable sins. Sometimes it can be dangerous to do real journalism. Cuomo gets a reprieve but the fifteen-year-old wearing a MAGA hat is in deep dodo. So is Manhattan Infidel, but at least he gets to keep his stash of chocolate donuts that he forgot to mention in his confession. Read more here.

Portion control

Jane Brody reminds us in the New York Times

For Real Weight Control, Try Portion Control.
If you’re serious about losing or maintaining weight, learn the size of a healthful portion and treat restaurant servings as enough for two or more.

Read more here.

Brush and floss!

In the Daily Wire, Amanda Prestigiacomo reports, Porphyromonas gingivalis, a key bacteria in chronic gum disease, appears to be the cause of Alzheimer's disease, researchers believe.

"Bacteria involved in gum disease and other illnesses have been found after death in the brains of people who had Alzheimer’s, but until now, it hasn't been clear whether these bacteria caused the disease or simply got in via brain damage caused by the condition," reports New Scientist.

The finding, says the site, could lead to a vaccine for Alzheimer’s: "[A] drug that blocks the main toxins of P. gingivalis is entering major clinical trials this year, and research published today shows it might stop and even reverse Alzheimer's."

...According to Colgate.com, signs of gum disease include, "gums that bleed when eating, brushing, and flossing because they are swollen and tender. You may also notice that your gums are receding. When this happens, your teeth look longer. If you notice sores in your mouth or pus in between your gums and teeth, then chances are you may have gum disease."

Read more here.

Nostalgic?

What is nostalgia? Salena Zito writes in American Greatness,

Many professionals who live in larger cities and communities and have made the decision to embrace our current culture of dramatic and rapid change with gusto face a complication, their refusal to listen to the people who sometimes want the world to slow down. To them, nostalgia often simply means racism. To many others, though, nostalgia means seeking something that was lost.

...The more cosmopolitan class—caught up, living and enjoying societal and political upheaval—too often views those who aren’t on board—or who are more nostalgic for a more personally connected society—as less intelligent, backward, bigoted or too tied to the tenets of their faith. These views are not new to the Trump era. They have been building for years and went largely unnoticed—until their class lost a presidential election in 2016.

Why this rejection? The list of reasons is long. In his riveting and important new book, “Alienated America,” my Washington Examiner editor, Tim Carney, explores those deeper reasons and unearths the true losses that lie inside that nostalgia.

What cosmopolitan critics have gotten wrong about nostalgia since this populism began is the assumption that it is rooted in racism. They firmly believed then, as they do now, that “Make America Great Again” is code for something nefarious.

Yes, some who were rallied by the MAGA promise were motivated by prejudice and vice—every political movement has its bad travelers. But ask President Trump’s earliest supporters and most of them would share a vision of making America great again by rooting it in a wholesome, inclusive vision of the American dream, a dream that was dead or dying for voters in blue-collar communities.

What Carney gets right is that our betters ignored the root of America’s angst. Some focused on purely economic decline, but the people living it knew it was cultural collapse. Carney’s book digs deeply into that collapse and outlines the decline of America’s blue-collar communities, religious institutions and civic institutions that is fraying their bond to one another.

Nostalgia is a big part of America’s commerce. It plays a role in fashion and furniture. There is a reason we search for vintage clothing—many spend hours at flea markets or antique stores—and why top-line courtiers look backward for retro designs.

It seems that half of eBay’s products are for people looking for something that embodies a time that was.

And sometimes collective nostalgia has power. Here in this northwest Ohio town, 65 miles southwest of Toledo, the Spangler Candy Co., a fairly joyful candy company to visit and home to Dum Dum lollipops, has bought Necco Wafers and Sweethearts and will begin producing them sometime this year.

Read more here.

"the America we remember from before the Obama Wasted Decade"

In Spectator, Dov Fischer writes an open letter to Covington, Kentucky's Nick Sandmann. Here are some excerpts.

In America we protect the biased Left mediacracy — people like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. These people report mostly true on local interest stories like a county fair or a new restaurant, but they intentionally distort and lie deliberately on national public-interest stories. You know that first-hand because you now have experienced it directly. That is why the President calls them “the enemy of the people” — because they are. They deliberately distort the truth and reality of what is happening in order to mislead the public into believing an alternate reality. When Walter Duranty of the same New York Times did that during the Stalin Years, he and theNew York Times contributed to the murder of millions of people who otherwise might have been saved if the truth of the Holodomor had come out. Instead, the people died, murdered by the enemies of the people. The same New York Times in a small way helped Hitler gas, bury, and incinerate millions of Jews during the Holocaust by hiding his crimes from the public. Did you know that the Times ran 23,000 front-page stories from 1939-1945, of which 11,500 were about the World War — but only twenty-six about Hitler’s mistreatment of Jews? Of course these evil villains are the enemies of the people.

...There is no way on G-d’s earth that anyone could have prepared you for the Crazy America that exists outside Covington. I know Covington very well; I lived a year in Kentucky and spent time in Covington every few weeks. Covington is a beautiful small city. I would bring my kids to see the Carroll Chimes Bell Tower and Clock depicting the Pied Piper of Hamelin in Mainstrasse Village. Nick, the “big shots” in New York City (where I used to live) and in Los Angeles (near where I now live) look down on Kentucky. They think you guys are a bunch of small-town redneck hicks. That is how they myopically view the whole gorgeous state of Kentucky. But that is because they do not know what they do not know. Covington is a beautiful city with beautiful people in a beautiful state. In Manhattan, by contrast, the intellectuals need to have four door locks on their apartment entrances that they have to lock and unlock, one-two-three-four, just to get in and out, because they are afraid of break-ins and being mugged. They have special “police locks” that not only get bolted into their front doors but into the floor, because crooks still break through the other three door locks. It’s like living in “Fauda.” When they travel on their overcrowded, over-priced, always-late, often broken down subways, they keep their eyes shut or focused on the floor because they are taught never to look anyone in the eye since he might be crazy and kill them if he thinks they are looking at him. By contrast, in Covington everyone is friendly and trusting. In Kentucky, people greet strangers openly and welcome outsiders warmly. It is safe to look at people in the eye in Covington. So it turns out that people in Covington are a lot smarter, and New Yorkers are a lot stupider, than either group thinks. In Covington, a country boy can survive.

New Yorkers in the Left Media cannot understand why CovCath boys like you would smile in the faces of people like that lying phony Native American “Vietnam Vet.” That is because in New York they never would have smiled at him in the first place, figuring he might have a knife or a tomahawk, so they would have run away from him. The Left Media do not understand a culture where you actually look people in the eye, smile their way, and stand your ground.

By now, we all know what happened that Friday in D.C. Some crazy, insane Black people who think they are Jews — Black Hebrew Israelites (and, by the way, they are welcome to have George Soros) — came into the area, yelling insults and racial epithets at some Native Americans. You kids from Covington Catholic innocently got caught in the middle of two sets of circus acts. In time, the Black Hebrew Crazies started calling you guys names, too, and the Native American nut with the drum starting marching right up to you, beating his drum, walking closer and closer, until he was beating his drum practically in your face. Really, Nicholas — a dimension of sight and sound, a land of shadow and substance, the teens of CovCath inadvertently stepped into the Twilight Zone.

New Yorkers are trained for situations like that — to start running away: maybe he has a knife, maybe a gun, maybe a hatchet. But you are from Covington, so you proudly stood your ground. You did not back away. You demonstrated the best of the Covington Catholic education you have gotten by standing your ground and just smiling at him. That smile said: “I am here in peace. I am not going to be incited into escalating your menacing confrontation. So you can go on beating that stupid drum of yours all day, Ringo, but I am not going to back off, nor will I be drawn into a fight. Because I am here to support life and the rights of the unborn.”

...Nick, this country became a very nasty place during the Wasted Obama Decade. Obama destroyed something precious that we Americans had. We had become a post-racial society where people finally were not being judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Obama destroyed that, but as you know he never quite impacted northeastern Kentucky. That indeed is why so many of us hope that somehow we will yet be able to make America great again. You got a taste of how nasty it can get when you leave Covington and walk into the swamp of Washington, D.C. But we got a taste by watching your dignified stance of what the Other America is, the America we remember from before the Obama Wasted Decade.

...You and your classmates never should have been criticized by your local Diocese. The Diocese embarrassed itself nationally when they instantly criticized CovCath kids without having the facts. That was a national disgrace, doing unto you guys what they would not have wanted others to do unto them. Lev. 11. If they must publicly criticize a Catholic, let them pick on someone their own size and comment instead on New York Governor Cuomo’s new “Gosnell Law” that legalizes tearing the limbs of fetuses apart, limb by limb, as late as nine months into pregnancy. But tell them to bang the drum slowly.

Read more here.

Credibility problem

This morning Oregon Muse writes,

"You know, it's kind of sad to see journos getting all pissypants about being yelled at to "learn to code" on social media because they've been laid off. Their attitude is, like, what did we ever do to deserve such calumny. Well, let me tell you: I think the reason you see so many commenters on my side of the aisle sporting such gigantic schadenboners because of the loss of jobs in "journalism" is the fact that modern journalism is nothing but a litany of failure, and it's chief perpetrators refuse to see it, or even see there that there even *might be* a credibility problem: The UVA rapes that never happened, Duke Lacrosse rape case, Covington Catholic, the NAACP "bombing" that wasn’t, church fires and swastikas painted on synagogues that turn out to be set by liberal activists, attacks by Trump supporters, that weren't, the Jewish cemetery vandalism, racist remarks scribbled on credit card receipts at restaurants, etc. And all reported with hair-on-fire urgency and hyped 24/7. And all fake news. And the bad actors never seem to suffer any consequences for their spreading of fake news. They just drop the fake story and go on to the next fake story. And it's not like they get a few things wrong, they seem to get *everything* wrong. And the more they screw it up, the more outraged they become when we sneer at them. It's like they're not real journalists. They've killed real journalism and they're now walking around in journalism's skin and demanding respect."

SOTU

Democrats have selected Stacey Abrams, the losing candidate in the Georgia governor's race, to give their response to Donald Trump's State of the Union speech next Tuesday night. So far it has not been announced as to who will give the GOP response!

Never Trumper hero John Kasich shows his true self on airplane

This doesn't surprise me at all. Ace has the story of former Ohio Governor John Kasich stealing a seat in first class from a comedienne who has a podcast. Read it here.

Repeating stories (to ourselves and others) about good fortune and generosity makes those stories more powerful.

Seth Godin writes in his blog,

It’s not difficult to maintain a grey cloud and a sullen outlook. The event is long over, but the story remains.

A proven approach is to keep repeating the narrative that led us ever deeper into this memory hole. As with a missing tooth, we probe that spot, over and over, examining it from all angles, again and again, in order to keep the story fresh.

On the other hand, forgotten stories have little power.

And the same approach works for a feeling of optimism and possibility. Repeating stories (to ourselves and others) about good fortune and generosity makes those stories more powerful.

What happens to us matters a great deal, but even more powerful are the stories we repeat about what happened.

Doing their bidding

Stanton E. Samenow writes in his book, Inside the Criminal Mind,

Rarely does the criminal speak of love. In fact, ...he seems incapable of real love or real attachment. ...the criminal chooses to view people only in terms of their use to him.

Although criminals differ in the crimes they find acceptable, they are carbon copies of one another in their view of themselves and the world. All are liars and hide behind a mask of secrecy. They have an inflated self-image in which they regard themselves as special and superior and assume that people will do their bidding.

What is media learning from their recent layoffs?

Charlie Martin writes in PJ Media,

...The collapsing Big Media has lost that trust. First, it became clear that there were some unstated biases (remember, long before Trump there were events like Watergate and the Tet Offensive where the media legend turned out to be rather far from the facts).

But that loss of trust became a thousand times worse as the Internet made everyone a publisher. PJ Media got its name from Jonathan Klein, the CBS executive who pooh-poohed "bloggers in their pajamas" investigating the Texas Air National Guard forgeries — but not long after, both Dan Rather and Klein were gone. (Klein landed at CNN. It's unclear if that says more about Klein or CNN.)

The real business opportunity in news is going to be someone who establishes a reputation for laying out verifiable facts, in interesting prose, with opinion diligently separated from reporting.

In other words, pretty much the opposite of what the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and the rest of Big Media have become. Looking at the response to the layoffs, though, it's clear the answer to the question "what has Big Media learned?" is: absolutely nothing.

Read more here.

It is about trust

Recently, Hugh Hewitt was named by some bloggers as being one of the people who jumped on the Covington kids unfairly, before a second video appeared, showing the aggressiveness of the Black Hebrew Israelites and the obnoxious in-your-face drumming of Nathan Phillips. I went to Hugh's blog to see what he had said, but could find nothing. Did he delete his comments? If so, that would be very disappointing to me.

Later, I visited our local library and saw his book, BLOG, in the books-for-sale section. and bought it. He wrote it in 2005. He reminds us that blogging is all about earning trust. That is what the Swift Boaters did in destroying John Kerry's candidacy and other bloggers did in destroying Dan Rather's career.

From page XXI of his introduction: ..."The blogosphere is about trust. CNN lost the trust it once had and its fall has been sudden and shattering. FOX News is trusted by millions, so its numbers have shot up, much to the dismay of lefties..."

I know Hugh was on the CNN team during the presidential debates and he regularly appears on the far, far left MSNBC. I guess he has earned their trust.

Engineers translate brain signals directly into speech

Science Daily reports,

In a scientific first, Columbia neuroengineers have created a system that translates thought into intelligible, recognizable speech. By monitoring someone's brain activity, the technology can reconstruct the words a person hears with unprecedented clarity. This breakthrough, which harnesses the power of speech synthesizers and artificial intelligence, could lead to new ways for computers to communicate directly with the brain. It also lays the groundwork for helping people who cannot speak, such as those living with as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or recovering from stroke, regain their ability to communicate with the outside world.

Read more here.

Who is a bigger hypocrite than Pope Francis?

Pope Francis, who lives behind a huge wall surrounding the Vatican and travels around in an enclosed popemobile, is in Panama criticizing people who want to build walls. Read more here.

"It appears we are now a police state."

Patricia McCarthy writes in the American Thinker,

For nearly ten years now, Americans who have been paying attention have known that our government has become corrupt, that its premier institutions were weaponized by the Obama administration to the point that we have become something of a police state or banana republic. This is not to say there was no corruption previous to Obama. As Sidney Powell addresses in her book License to Lie, the current special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his amoral, ruthless right-hand man, Andrew Weismann, had already been practicing their prosecutions of personal destruction for decades. In the 1980s, Mueller sent four men to prison who he knew were innocent. He did it to protect a confidential informant. Two of them died in prison. The lawsuits filed cost taxpayers $100M. That trial was connected to the murderous mafia hit man Whitey Bulger, who was finally caught after sixteen years. He died in prison in 2018. Was he murdered to protect Mueller?

...It appears we are now a police state. Stalin would be proud. The left and the media all approved of this preposterous bit of nasty theater. Stephanopoulos said such tactics are "common," a blatant lie. As Tucker Carlson pointed out, Mueller sent more men to get Stone than Obama sent to get Osama bin Laden! But then Stephanopoulos is nothing but a tool of the left, a talking head with a script to read. Who writes the bilge he reads? Would be good to know, but one thing is certain: they have as their goal the destruction of America and its most cherished values.

...Is there no one aside from Trump who will work to help drain this swamp?

Read more here.

Revenge

Dov Fischer writes in Spectator,

...Attorney: “You said earlier today that you mailed that letter on Tuesday. Is that correct?”

Deponent-Client: “Did I say that? I am so sorry. Actually, meant to say that I e-mailed it — and I think it was on a Monday. I am not sure.”

That is common at every deposition I ever have taken or defended in the past fifteen years. I teach my law students to be ready for those innocent slips of tongue. But in the Mueller Investigation universe, each such slip becomes another count of perjury. Yes, in the end, perjury has to be a deceit that is intentional, so the charge can be beaten if accidental, but it can cost tens of thousands of dollars, even hundreds of thousands, to have a legal team to defend all the way through appeal.

...Now, as the new era of this most vicious abuse of our freedoms unfolds — with dignified and exemplary Supreme Court nominees falsely accused of sexual impropriety, with searching back thirty and forty years to high school yearbooks, and in an era with each and every close associate of a disapproved newly elected President hounded into bankruptcy and personal destruction, know that this is not the end of it. Mueller is not “Last Call.” They are just opening the bar, and the night is ahead.

...This Mueller Inquisition guarantees that, one day in five or ten or twenty years, Republicans will take them down and destroy them. And the Democrats then will make notes and keep their records and await their revenge. And so it will go until the fools eventually destroy what once had been the finest political system and way of government that people ever had created.

Read more here.

The death of journalism

In Frontpage Magazine David Greenfield asks,

If the media falls with no one to report it, does it make a sound? Last week, the $450 million temple constructed by the media to worship itself was sold off for $372 million to Johns Hopkins.

...The last desperate strategy of the media is blackmailing the big dot coms for operating income. Amazon’s boss is behind the Washington Post. And Google and Facebook are pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars into the media.

...The media declared a fake news crisis and demanded that Facebook and Google prioritize their traffic. As a piece at Columbia Journalism Review argued, "the one thing journalism actually needs: a guarantee that the conditions on the platform will benefit those producing high-quality reporting."

Google and Facebook have already privileged media content and censored conservative media, even though that’s not what their users have signed up for. But that makes the media dependent on the business model of a handful of internet monopolies already being targeted by the GOP and the Dems. And the same disruptive trends that wrecked the media’s old business models will wreck its new one.

...The media has never addressed the fundamental problem with its business model. It wants a monopoly on the marketplace of ideas even as its own positions drift further leftward. It has tried to outgrow that problem by becoming a bigger monopoly, but the internet limited the extent to which its old infrastructure investments could monopolize the public square, leaving its expensive investments in broadcasting and printing equipment as useless as the massive square footage of the Newseum.

...But its new masters rightly view it with contempt.

“They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo,” Ben Rhodes once sneered to the New York Times. “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

The Obama adviser wasn’t wrong.

...The dedication of the Newseum in 2008 also marked the death of journalism. That was the year when the media tossed aside any appearance of independence and officially joined a political campaign. A decade later, journalism may be occasionally practiced on the sly, but it doesn’t exist as a profession.

Read more here.

Why Schultz would have to run as an independent

Investors Business Daily exxplains here why candidates like Howard Schultz who are socially liberal but fiscally conservative have no chance of winning the nomination of the Democratic Party.

Could the Starbucks guy be our next president?

Former Starbucks CEO and Chairman Howard Schultz looks out at the audience during a book promotion tour, Monday, Jan. 28, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
Roger L. Simon writes at PJ Media,

American politics is crazy these days and the craziest thing of all is that Starbucks founder Howard Schultz -- a Democrat possibly running as an independent -- could actually win the presidency.

Read more here.

The end of the Trump era?

Angelo Codevilla writes in American Greatness,

...when Trump joked that his supporters would stand with him even if he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue, he had already fallen into the delusion that dooms so many politicians—believing that people support him for who he is rather than as a vehicle for their own concerns.

The 2016 election cycle was not about Donald J. Trump. It unfolded as it did because most Americans were seeking desperately to shake off the uniform, bipartisan, progressive class that rules the country unaccountably—a class including most of the bureaucracies of federal and state governments, the judiciary, the educational establishment, the media, as well as major corporate officials that had separated itself socially, morally, and politically from the rest of society. It’s a class that affirms its superior worth by endlessly humiliating other Americans, people who feel good about themselves by deploring, hating, and hurting those they deem their inferiors.

...What they truly fear is the Deplorables’ resistance to their rule. Their purpose was and remains to crush the Deplorables’ resistance.

...But Trump has proved he is no barrier, no defense. Today, Trump notwithstanding, political correctness weighs upon Americans more than ever, and speech is becoming more constrained by the day. Being on the wrong side of the right people is more dangerous than ever.

Trump’s fiery speeches had led some supporters to look past the fact he has found it easier to proclaim victories over middle America’s enemies than to achieve them, that he makes loud statements and then quietly walks them back, that often he protests the ruling class’s outrages while gratuitously acquiescing in them, as he did on March 23, 2018, when he signed the $1.3 trillion omnibus bill that financed every progressive cause and priority but contained not a dime for a wall. That is also what he did on September 14, 2017, by signing a joint congressional resolution that urged all U.S agencies to combat “hate speech”—and defined “hate speech” in such a way as to accuse his own supporters of it. Having finally declared that he would declassify some of the trumped-up documents by which the intelligence agencies had maligned him to the media, he let himself be convinced to continue letting these agencies play their illegal games. Bluster followed by surrender has political legs both short and shaky.

...His voters continued to believe that, in a crunch, Trump would be true to his vows.

Then the crunch came. What Trump did on January 25, 2019, was infidelity itself, of the in-your-face, unforgivable kind.

...Trump’s self-humiliating surrender to the ruling class, despite his possession of full power to trump that class by declaring the national emergency that he said he was ready, willing, and able to declare, showed he really had never prepared nor meant to declare it. Or if he had, he had been frightened into blowing with the prevailing wind. Thereby, the president proved either contempt for his supporters, cowardice with regard to his opponents, or both. By so doing, he cut one of his own main political arteries and started a hemorrhage of support that it may well be impossible to stop.

Subsequently, the Left crowed victory, not in one battle, rightly, but in the war itself, mistakenly. They ridiculed Trump, whose promise to fight another day is incredibly sad.

...For better and for worse, the Trump era is over. Time to deal with the stark choices that our would-be totalitarian ruling class poses. We cannot know who will lead 2016’s winning coalition in 2020. Positively and negatively, Trump’s virtues and vices helped define what the characteristics of that leadership must be. Neither ambiguity nor flirtations. Integrity, personal and political. Commitments explained relentlessly and redeemed with every ounce of available power. The ruling class’s “full court press,” answered in kind and in detail. Bloodyminded determination to undo the layers of unearned privileges that are making a mockery of the idea that “all men are created equal.”

Read more here.

Appalachia's approaching energy boom

Salena Zito reports in the Examiner,

...Traditionally, Appalachia is thought of as coal country. Coal created steady jobs, many of them dangerous, to the people who lived here and kept the heat and lights on for most of the country for generations.

But new production methods, such as hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling, have changed the regional energy picture and now allow extraction of vast amounts of natural gas from the region’s shale formations. Many sons and daughters of coal miners, and former miners themselves, are finding safer, well-paying energy jobs in the shale industry.

Central High School in Waynesburg, Pa., just south of here in Greene County, has developed a student certification curriculum in the shale industry that has high school seniors walking off stage in their graduation gowns and into jobs paying salaries that can start at $70,000 a year.

“This is real. It can transform the Appalachian region for generations to come and put America in a position dealing with our petrochemical industry that is very, very important to our national security,” Perry said.

Read more here.

Israeli scientists claim they will have a complete cure for cancer in one year.

In the Jerusalem Post, Y Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman reports, Israeli scientists believe they have found a cure for cancer.

“We believe we will offer in a year’s time a complete cure for cancer,” said Dan Aridor, of a new treatment being developed by his company, Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd. (AEBi), which was founded in 2000 in the ITEK incubator in the Weizmann Science Park. AEBi developed the SoAP platform, which provides functional leads to very difficult targets.

“Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market,” Aridor said. “Our solution will be both generic and personal.”

She explains the treatment in detail here.

The media's conclusion: Trump caved!

I am encouraged to see that Trump's Chief of Staff Mulvaney is far more articulate than Kelly, the previous Chief of Staff.

Andrew observes that we are in a gigantic argument about where political power lies. The Democrat press supported the abusive action by the federal law enforcement agencies against Roger Stone, a man Andrew has no respect for. He calls him a jerk, a Trump hanger-on, but opposes the heavy-handed arrest.

Jury nullification

In the American Thinker, Michael Nollet makes the case for jury nullification as a way outraged Americans can beat Robert Mueller. Read it here.

"...we are not even close yet to making Internet lynching an unprofitable venture."

Do you want an unfettered Victor Davis Hanson? Read him at American Greatness. When he writes at National Review, he seems compelled to write at least one sentence critical of Trump. Not so at American Greatness. Yesterday he wrote there about "The Attack of the Techno-Lynch Mob."

The Covington Lie offered the perfect occasion for the electronic mob to pounce—after temporarily licking its wounds following the BuzzFeed fake news hysteria. And it did so without shame or even much regret after the fact, as Jason Leopold, the BuzzFeed fabulist, ceded center stage to a kindred serial prevaricator, Nathan Phillips. The latter in his 15 minutes of fame did not make a major statement that was not contradicted by an earlier statement or by the facts.

...The key in these Internet lynchings is to get in first and worst—and keep at it. Yet, in French Revolutionary street style, the initial outraged tweeters and posters were almost automatically seen as passe in a nanosecond: Dox the boys. No, write their school to abort their careers. No, go to their schools and protest at their homes. No, punch them. No, burn them alive. No, stuff them into wood chippers.

I guess the rationale that drove Disney film producer Jack Morrissey to post a photo of a wood chipper, Fargo-style, spitting out blood and entrails with the caption, #MAGAkids go screaming, hats first, into the woodchipper, was to be able later among chums to claim the most authentic, creative, and drastic expression of outrage—predicated, of course, on his cowardly assumption that his Disney corporate bosses either would ignore or silently congratulate his edgy editorializing.

We have been here before, from the Tawana Brawley farce and the Duke Lacrosse myth to the Ferguson “hands up, don’t shoot” and the University of Virginia fraternity rape yarns—and dozens of staged truth-to-power race and gender mythologies in between. And we know that past purveyors of those lies, whether Al Sharpton, or the Duke faculty, or Rolling Stone, were hardly contrite, but rightly assumed that because such fantasies could be true in a racist society, then they should have been true–and damn the bothersome facts.

When the correct ingredients are present in these melodramas, the script is predictable. Add Donald Trump and electronic instant communications to the equation, and the result is a guillotining without even a perp walk before the mob. In our case, that translated into mostly suburban, safe, and affluent social justice warriors, eager to find some cheap expression of their singular virtue (as opposed to putting their kids in a barrio school, having universities use summertime empty dorms as sanctuaries for caravan crossers, or moving into East Los Angeles to feel first-hand the dynamics of an exciting new demographic.)

Many of the social media mob were prominent celebrities, directors, writers, intellectuals, and pundits. Apparently, thousands of affluent folks daily scan the internet for stories or rather rumors of social injustice, which they see as opportunities to emphasize their underappreciated righteousness—and thereby easily and on the cheap square the circle of their own privilege. And they weigh in often, given that there are no consequences for misidentification, error, or simple crudity and injustice.

We may have iPhones instead of rope, but human nature has not changed. The competition to appear tough, cruel, defiant—and morally superior—is fed by crowds of anonymous laptop and smartphone shock troops. But what has altered is that we now have no sheriff. Or rather, our town marshal—Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc.—are on the mob’s side, as if the bulwark between civilization and savagery has left the porch, joined the mob, and handed them the keys to the jail.

Our tech giants selectively censor views. They ban “extremism” only when defined as loud counterrevolutionary conservatism. And they warp searches to privilege correct results.

We live in a society, in which defamation and libel are abstractions that we occasionally threaten, but in fact never really reify with convictions and fines. After all, when celebrities rhetorically rival each other, publicly and with impunity, to burn, hang, stab, behead, shoot, and blow up President Trump, we certainly cannot expect a local prosecutor to pursue written threats to the safety and security of parochial school students. So there is no real deterrence to internet lynching, and certainly rewards when those to be strung up are the incorrect color, sex, religion, and ideology.

...Phillips was also posed as a mere passerby, not in truth a professional protester, liar, and racist, who had a long history of race-baiting at staged demonstrations to lasso celebrity and notoriety. The next night he and his band of professional agitators tried to storm a Saturday evening Mass held at Washington, D.C.’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception—and half-succeeded in destroying a solemn service.

We were to accept all the lies that Phillips was a peacemaker rather than a careerist disruptor and racist. His cadre alleged that the boys were yelling “build the wall,” when in fact he and his associates were defaming them as racists.

Again, almost everything Nathan Phillips alleged was untrue: he crossed the street to instigate the confrontation, not the boys. He got into the faces of the boys, not they into his. He banged his drum, not merely stared. His group yelled inflammatory taunts—and served as an intermission between the racist and homophobic slurs leveled at the kids from the unhinged Black Hebrew Israelites, who were not victims but racist provocateurs.

What, then, must we relearn from the latest progressive fantasy?

Media truth is relative. Low truth is bound to bothersome facts that are irrelevant. Higher truth is fact-free and deals with cosmic justice: people of color confronting whites. End of story. The reason so many lynchers did not apologize is because their targets were guilty of who they were, not what they did.

Rhetoric, not action matters. Professing outrage and virtue signaling count more than actual acts of generosity and charity or the life one lives. Guilt is assuaged not through real contrition or reparatory acts, but virtually through clever social media posting. A man in a Mercedes who makes $1 million a year in Beverly Hills can become just as hip and marginalized a victim, as a college kid shouting in the face of his instructor or a Black Lives Matter protester at Starbucks. And he can keep his money and his lawn man and maid, and enjoy them without guilt—as long as he tells the world that Catholic punk kids need to be mechanically ground up.

The progressive cause feels it is close to victory. Big money is now hard left, whether defined as Michael Bloomberg or Warren Buffett high finance or Silicon Valley’s Apple, Facebook, and Google. Universities, the media, Hollywood, professional sports—they are all now progressive. The 2016 election is seen as an aberration, a road bump on the path to utopia. From now on the Left feels it has the material resources and informational clout to construct any reality it wishes. We can see that clear enough, from Phillips’ apologists who never backed down, but instead insisted that the kids’ faces and “attitude” nonetheless exuded privilege and thus culpability.

Eventually these Reigns of Terror come to an end when a few finally scream that the emperor is naked and push back—but usually only after thousands of lives are ruined. And we are not even close yet to making Internet lynching an unprofitable venture.

Read more here.

"when the cops come to crush wrongthink, whose side should they use force and threat of imprisonment to champion?"

That is the question asked by Ace of Spades. Muslims are taking their children out of a school in England. Go here to read why.

The arteries of the world: Fascinating new map shows EVERY river watershed on the globe with a different color and width depending on water depth

James Wood reports in MailOnline,

A fascinating new colour map of the world's river systems has revealed the flowing arteries of the planet as never seen before.

The guide, created by analyst Robert Szucs, shows every river basin on the globe with a different colour and width depending on water depth

Read more here.

"Verify first. Then do it again. And again. And again. Ad nauseam. And only then, if you must, trust."

This post by Roger L. Simon is over a week old in PJ Media.

...What possible credential makes one a journalist? A degree from the Columbia School of Journalism? Well, that proves your parents can afford a hundred grand. Either that or you're heavily in debt. Anyone can be a journalist. All you have to do is start typing.

And as for journalists we know, whether they write it or speak it and wherever they do it, they're all basically pundits, whether they admit it or not. Beneath the verbiage and the proofs, the quoted experts and anonymous sources, deny it though they might, everyone's got a narrative.

...Even the Wall Street Journal appears to be part of the "get Trump" competition that makes up whatever one calls journalism today. "Fake news" is actually a misnomer. It's far more deliberate than that. It's straight-out good old-fashioned disinformation.

But let's go back to the issue of "journalism" as a trade. It wasn't always this way. Back before the New York Times, et al., got pretentious with the "All the News That's Fit to Print" nonsense and Woodward and Bernstein got turned into movie stars because they could answer the phone, people knew journalists — more properly reporters — were working stiffs trying to make a living, not culture heroes. And I think we liked them better too then, even though, like all human beings, they were biased.

An example of how far the bias has gone in our time is, as someone noted on Twitter, that not a single media outlet dared to question the BuzzFeed report until the Mueller investigation itself spoke up. All of them were too engaged in the Get-Trump Derby to do, well, a little investigating.

...We know — oh, how we know — not to trust any so-called information coming out these days. Trust but verify is no longer operative. Verify first. Then do it again. And again. And again. Ad nauseam. And only then, if you must, trust.

Read more here.

"We have only one sort of protagonist in our stories, the loner who has an authority problem."

Spengler writes in PJ Media,

...The four-fifths of Americans who think that PC has gone too far do not want to undo the great cultural transformation of the past half-century, which has placed self-esteem at the center of human concerns at the expense of traditional virtues. We no longer wish to do what is good and upright in the eyes of God; who does this God think He is, sitting in judgment over us? We want to be our own little gods and make ourselves into whatever we would like to be. We have, as Justice Kennedy wrote in the Obergefell decision, a right "to define and express [our] identity." That is the purpose of therapy, which asserts that healing comes from within, that man is the measure of all things, and our own sense of self-esteem and well-being is the gauge against which our behavior must be measured.

...The sina qua non of the American character, what one might call American normality, is a highly specific sense of the sacred: That the goal of journey lies beyond any earthly horizon, which sacralizes the journey itself. The core of our character is radically incompatible with the therapeutic. I am gratified that there has been a rebellion against the extremes of political correctness inside the therapeutic camp, and I suppose that we should be grateful for any relief that comes our way. But it isn't who we are, or what we need.

Read more here.

Hiring!

This week Colorado Senator Bennet made a fool of himself on the Senate floor as he fought against a bill which would fund the Coast Guard.

He said,

"When the senator from Texas shut this government down in 2013, my state was flooded. It was under water. People were killed. People's houses were destroyed. Their small businesses were destroyed, forever. And because of the senator from Texas, this government was shut down, for politics," Bennet shouted.

I was living in Colorado at that time, and I do not remember Colorado being under water. I think that is something I would not forget.

Bennet was vigorously responded to by Senator Ted Cruz, who was trying to get funding for the Coast Guard.

Mark Dice tells us how YouTube operates to combat popular conservative voices

Is China’s plan to use a nuclear bomb detonator to release shale gas in earthquake-prone Sichuan crazy or brilliant?

Stephen Chen reports in the South China Morning Post,

China is planning to apply the same technology used to detonate a nuclear bomb over Hiroshima during the second world war to access its massive shale gas reserves in Sichuan province. While success would mean a giant leap forward not only for the industry but also Beijing’s energy self-sufficiency ambitions, some observers are concerned about the potential risk of widespread drilling for the fuel in a region known for its devastating earthquakes.

Read more here.

Ridiculing conservatives

How the Left implements Saul Alinsky's rule of ridiculing those in power. I thought the Secretary Ross guy was funny, but the others fell short. When is the right going to ridicule the Left?

Arguing on Twitter

Arguing on Twitter 🔊 pic.twitter.com/4fnIZJw9Me

— Pale Brooks (@SlenderSherbet) January 23, 2019

“of all human passions, the passion of moral self-righteousness is the most delicious,”

Roger Kimball wrote about the Covington Catholic kids last Sunday before the longer second video became available. One week later, he writes in American Greatness,

When I wrote about the now-infamous Covington Boys incident last Sunday, I had no idea that it would become the most sensational story of the week. I wrote before seeing the longer video of the incident but, even so, thought that the cataract of abuse that the boys were subjected to was way over the top. I acknowledged, “of all human passions, the passion of moral self-righteousness is the most delicious,” but went on to observe that “the problem is, the people who are the objects of our indignation often present a more complicated reality than we first assume.”

So, of course, it turned out to be with the boys from Covington Catholic. The boys did not approach or taunt the drum-beating fake-Vietnam-vet creep of an Indian activist Nathan Phillips. On the contrary, he waded in among them, obnoxiously taunting them while my new favorite group of wackos, the Black Hebrew Israelites, hurled a variety of racist and sexual slurs at the high school students as they waited for a bus to whisk them back to Kentucky after their participation in the annual pro-life March for Life.

Neither fact was clear from the original brief clip of the incident. The pretend Tonto, beating his drum, and skirling incoherently, stands there in front of Nick Sandmann, the MAGA-behatted Covington Catholic student whose visage has burned up the internet this last week. Sandmann just stands there smiling uncertainly. (His expression was widely derided as a “smirk,” but I disagree with that diagnosis: I think it is a nervous smile). His schoolmates stand behind him clapping and cheering and generally comporting themselves as well-brought-up male teenagers should when suddenly confronted by unexpected rudeness.

The wild abuse these boys, and especially Sandmann (whose name was not known for a day or two) was Brett Kavanaughesque in its viciousness and utter lack of foundation. Also for its promiscuous nature. Catholic bishops and officials from the boys’ school joined CNN lefties and HuffPo brats in calling down anathema on his head. A school announcement mentioned expulsion as a possible response to his behavior, while an angry lefty contacted a college to which she thought he had applied to encourage administrators not to admit him. (Actually, the instigator of this vile intervention got the name wrong, something for which she later apologized, without, nota bene, apologizing to Sandmann.) Then came the death threats and public shaming and calls for violence, credible enough that Covington Catholic was shuttered for a few days. The boys’ parents meanwhile have lawyered up and I wish them well in their defamation suits.

...Stepping back from the episode, one gets the sense that most conservative commentators are inexpressibly grateful for the release of that longer video. It offered the perfect instrument of expiation. “If only we had known about the Black Hebrew Israelites,” they seem to have said, “if only we had known that Nathan Phillips was the instigator, and a mountebank to boot, then we would not have come down on these boys like a ton of bricks and tried to ruin their lives. Thank God for the video.”

...The public—though not, for the most part, the academic elite—has reacted with condign disgust at the treatment of the boys from Covington Catholic. It knows that Nathan Phillips is no more “native American” than Nick Sandmann: both were born here and have equal title to American natality. And it senses that the culprit is the political correctness that has distorted our common life and even our ability to speak the truth about sensitive issues. If there is a silver lining in this disturbing episode, it is that public revulsion at this episode may, just possibly, spark a reconsideration of our ill-advised and demeaning adherence to the tenets of political correctness.

Read more here.

"People often ask why law enforcement is so focused on people having their hands out of their pockets and visible to the officer."

Viewer Discretion Advised:

People often ask why law enforcement is so focused on people having their hands out of their pockets and visible to the officer.

Well, this is how fast things can go from being a casual encounter to a person trying to take the officer’s life. pic.twitter.com/qctzo4vbPC

— Minnesota Sheriffs’ Association (@MNSheriffs) January 26, 2019

How Mexican cartels fund American politicians

Do American politicians get money from Mexican cartels? Read this.

What could be achieved if there were more honest reporters like this one!

Get it?

From the Babylon Bee:

Quick-thinking children

Children Are Quick
______________________________ ______

TEACHER: Why are you late?
STUDENT: Class started before I got here.
______________________________ ______
TEACHER: John, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor?
JOHN: You told me to do it without using tables.
______________________________ ____________
TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell ‘crocodile?’
GLENN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L’
TEACHER: No, that’s wrong
GLENN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.
(I Love this child)
______________________________ ______________
TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?
DONALD: H I J K L M N O.

TEACHER: What are you talking about?

DONALD: Yesterday you said it’s H to O.

______________________________ ____
TEACHER: Winnie, name one important thing we have today that we didn’t have ten years ago
WINNIE: Me!
______________________________

TEACHER: Glen, why do you always get so dirty?

GLEN: Well, I’m a lot closer to the ground than you are.
______________________________

TEACHER: “George Washington not only chopped down his father’s cherry tree, but also admitted it.

Now, Louie, do you know why his father didn’t punish him?”

LOUIS: “Because George still had the axe in his hand?”
______________________________ ________
TEACHER: Now, Simon , tell me frankly, do you say prayers before eating?
SIMON: No sir, I don’t have to, my Mum is a good cook.
______________________________
TEACHER: Clyde , your composition on ‘My Dog’ is exactly the same as your brother’s.
Did you copy his?
CLYDE : No, sir. It’s the same dog.

(I want to adopt this kid!!!)

______________________________

TEACHER: Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking when people are no longer interested?

HAROLD: A teacher

From Funny Friday-'Nox & Friends

Made you laugh

Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats – Manipulative and Treacherous Liars Placing Politics Above American Lives

In GodfatherPolitics, Greg Holt writes,

...While the Democrats and their RINO helpers play political games meant to deny Trump succeeding at delivering on his promise to the American people to secure the Southern border:

Government workers continue to not get paid.

Illegals are still sneaking into the U.S.

Drugs are still flowing into the U.S.

Terrorists can walk right across the border.

MS-13 is still crossing the border to distribute drugs, kill people etc.

Disease ridden people are bringing their dangerous diseases into the U.S.

More illegals are getting welfare and food stamps and free healthcare.

The U.S. is spending huge amounts of money to help sick and dying people at the border.

Illegals crossing the border are committing crimes including murder.

Illegals caught for crimes are released back into the U.S. population after release from prison or jail rather than being deported as they are supposed to be.

Illegal “sanctuary cities” are protecting even violent criminals and murderers from being deported
All of the above is financed by the American taxpayer because the Politicrats feel that illegals, killers, drug pushers, and violent criminals deserve to be protected and Americans must pay for it
To top it all off, Nancy Pelosi, that paragon of virtue has disinvited President Trump from making the customary presidential State of the Union address before both houses of Congress in the U.S. House of Representatives. Nancy’s reason for this is a complete fabrication – Pelosi stated a fear of adequate security for the address. The real problem is that Pelosi and Schumer do not want the president making his case to the American people concerning the wall.

This writer has never before seen such flagrant disrespect for a sitting president –ever. Disagreements are fine, but the Politicrat’s outright and constant lying, manipulation of the public through their dedicated toadies, the national media, the witch hunt to destroy Trump completely (the Mueller investigation, the illegal FISA warrants, the made up Steele dossier) the extreme corruption in the Department of Justice and the FBI – are not fine and in fact are illegal. These things are again, all aimed at taking down Trump.

Read more here.

Police: Man drives stolen car to jail to bond out girlfriend who was arrested for driving stolen car!

Isabel Hughes reports at Gwinnett Daily Post that both are now in jail. They actually had four stolen cars in their possession. Read more here.

The impeachment team sets up shop

Sundance at The Conservative Treehouse analyzes and researches better than anyone. Today he takes a look at what Pelosi is doing to our President Donald J. Trump.

...Speaker Pelosi is creating her own mini DOJ inside the legislative branch. And, with additional investigative powers granted to House committees, we might even see a mini-FBI units, dispatched to conduct investigations, accountable only to speaker Pelosi.

Read much more here.

Imagination

Mostly Cajun reminds us that on this date in 1998, Bill Clinton told us on live t.v. that he did not have sex with that woman. Mostly Cajun clarifies that Bill was not referring to Monica; he was referring to Hillary!

Mostly Cajun also brings us this Branco cartoon.

Can you make this kind of music with your voice?

Mostly Cajun, All American and Opinionated posts,

Mozart – out of this world. Literally. Two golden records were sent into space with the Voyager missions, each with a selection of music from Earth.

Mozart made the cut with this – an aria from his opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). Aside from working an orchestra while at the top of his game, he takes the human voice into realms ethereal in Queen of the Night:

"Pull back here, counter-attack there."

In Town Hall, Kurt Schlichter writes,

...So we lost this round? So what? We’ve lost before, and we’ll lose again. This is for the long-haul folks. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. There’s no magic wand where one term of Vitamin D cures a century of progressive pathology.

Trump’s instincts have been right all along. We doubted he could win. He did. We doubted he would actually remake the courts. He has. We doubted he’d fight for the wall, but he did, and he paid a price. Who else would have withstood the heat this long? Who would have even picked the fight?

...Remember Alinsky Rule No. 7?

“A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”

Did any of you see any indication at all that the shutdown tactic was about to deliver us victory, that it was not becoming a drag? Me neither. Cut your losses. Pull back here, counter-attack there.

We’ve been attacking for two years, racking up conservative triumphs you’ve never experienced unless you were one of us who was of age during the Reagan years. Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh – what other GOP president would have held course and made them happen? Trump’s remaking the courts and rebuilding our military. He gutted Obamacare and Obama’s regulations. He’s pulling us out of useless wars, useless agreements with Iran, and useless climate change scams. He’s got clarity on Israel, on the garbage mainstream media, and America’s useless elite.

Remember that in the days before the shutdown truce, we had won a huge victory over the garbage mainstream media by exposing their lies about the Covington kids and the drum-banging Frigidaireborne ranger. Buzzfeed first had its lies about the president exposed and then had to make massive lay-offs. HuffPo Opinion died. Even the SWAT raid on Roger Stone turned out to have zilch to do with collusion, as usual.

Read more here.

What should you do when the people who beat the drums misrepresent you?

In the Ace of Spades blog, co-blogger KT writes an excellent article with lots of links about favorite media drumbeats. Read it here.

Killer Cuomo

Why isn't there a giant inflatable baby impaled on the spire? https://t.co/vj6aAK4ChB

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) January 24, 2019

Weird!

It's so weird how Trump is supposed to be mega-unpopular but the media orgs out to get him are the ones that keep downsizing, folding up, and rebranding https://t.co/zt0EzlZyDK

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) January 24, 2019

Yeah, that'll do it!

Suggestion: have Sanders answer all future questions by walking up to reporters and banging a drum in their faces. Apparently that's soothing and you are required to show polite respect to people who do it. https://t.co/GgsUN5HqQ8

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) January 22, 2019

Walls work!

Manhattan Infidel has found out the hard way that walls work! He bought a ladder and took it to Nancy Pelosi's house, and, well, read the rest here.

The next Kennedy?

You may have heard that Beto O'Rourke is on a cross country road trip. Guess who finagled his way along on the trip? Satirical blogger Manhattan Infidel! Read the interview here and you will see why Beto is being called the next Kennedy!

"Some people skate, others are destroyed."

Tucker Carlson has Roger Stone as a guest on his program tonight. Stone seems very confident that he will be vindicated. He says it is a war against the First Amendment, which is really a war against the press! He also talks about shadow banning on Facebook and being broke and asks the audience for money.

Andy McCarthy was Tucker's next guest. He called Stone's arrest "complete overkill." I wonder if the tipping off of CNN of the raid will backfire on Mueller, as the Swat team was so heavily armed, Stone was unarmed and his wife is deaf! "They treated him like he was a mafia don or Osama bin Laden!

New York expands gender identity options

Satirical blogger Manhattan Infidel reports that New York City has expanded gender identity options for residents.

New York City mayor Warren Wilhelm Jr. (stage name Bill de Blasio) has announced that henceforth all residents of Gotham will have more than two gender identities to choose from on their NYC identification cards.

...Using my journalistic skills I was able to exclusively obtain the new ID card and its gender identity options which I now present for my readers:

Read those options here.

Some Tweets tonight

James Woods wrote,

A thought: what if the United States built a wall protecting our vulnerable southern border with asylum processing stations every 100 miles? Give those seeking genuine political asylum an opportunity for immediate attention and comfort. Prevent all others from illegal entry.

James Woods wrote,

Why have an abortion in the ninth month of a pregnancy in New York State, when you could deliver the child and give a new life to a couple desperate to adopt? Why is this concept so difficult for the Andrew Cuomos of the world to grasp?

BMan answered James,

James, I agree. I was adopted by a wonderful set of parents after a 16 year old gave birth to me. It was during the 70's and luckily the girl didn't abort me or I wouldn't be typing this reply.

Senator Ted Cruz tweeted,

@SenJohnKennedy brought forward a clean bill that does one thing & one thing only--it pays the salaries of the @USCG. If @SenSchumer hadn't objected that would have passed. @POTUS could have signed it tonight. The paychecks could have gone out right now for every Coast Guardsman

Commentors at the Conservative Treehouse have their say on Stone arrest

Clarence Smith says,

It highlights how people on our side are big mouths and dumb. All idiot Stone had to do was take the 5th and keep his mouth shut. Its what the other side has done for years. But nope! Ole Roger loves the camera and can't keep his cakehole closed. So he opens himself up to 7 counts of gibberish.

Mark says,

It’s a hard choice but, let’s face it, this is bigger than Trump’s friends and associates being smeared by the media. I’m sure POTUS is furious and hurt that the Deep State is doing this to those he cares for but he’s focused on the MAGA agenda and not revenge.

I have to admit I wouldn’t want to be connected to Donald J. Trump these days.

Soaplady wrote,

On another thread on CTH, it is mentioned the CNN reporter at Stone’s house this morning is Josh Campbell…former FBI worked for Comey.

Read more here.

"The President's political advisor?"

Notice the CNN man at the beginning of the tape saying "arrested Roger Stone, the President's political advisor." I did not know Roger had that title. Could that be fake news?

Compare Iowa and New York!

Sasha Ingber reports in NPR,

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed one of the country's most restrictive abortion bills into law on Friday.


The so-called "heartbeat" legislation bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat has been detected, at about six weeks of pregnancy. Exceptions are made in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency.

Republican state lawmakers worked late into the night this week to push the measure forward. During Tuesday's debate in the Statehouse, Rep. Sandy Salmon said, "A baby has become something we can throw away. This bill says it's time to change the way we think about unborn life."

The bill passed the state House on Tuesday and the state Senate early Wednesday. Then it landed on Reynolds' desk.

Iowa Legislature Passes 'Fetal Heartbeat' Bill To Ban Abortions After 6 Weeks
"I understand that not everyone will agree with this decision," Reynolds said in a written statement. "But if death is determined when a heart stops beating, then doesn't a beating heart indicate life? For me, it is immoral to stop an innocent beating heart."

The legislation drew firm Republican support. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst tweeted, "Glad to see Iowa leading the way and standing up for the most vulnerable in our society, the unborn. Thank you @IAGovernor for taking this important step forward in protecting life."

No Democrats voted for the bill.

Read more here.

Laura and Brian

KGB chess in Venezuela?

Austin Bay discusses in Instapundit.

It is always worth listening to Alan Dershowitz's analysis

"I will not bear false witness against the President!"

Roger Stone sounds pretty confident of his innocence. Marcus Garvey? Wikipedia:

Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. ONH (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940) was a Jamaican-born political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator.

Rosenstein, Mueller coordinate predawn arrest of Roger Stone with CNN

It was just a "reporter's instinct" that brought CNN to this Florida neighborhood this morning. Do you believe that fake news?

Trump announces government will reopen for 3 weeks until February 15

1000 "journalists" lost their jobs yesterday!

In Breitbart, John Nolte reports that 1000 "journalists" lost their jobs yesterday.

The far-left conspiracy site Buzzfeed laid off 220 — which is 15 percent of its staff; Verizon wiped out 800 media jobs, including an entire division at the Huffington Post, and America’s largest newspaper chain, Gannett, let go dozens across the country.

Verizon owns Huffington Post? Who knew?

More from Nolte:

Trump treats the establishment media with the contempt it so richly deserves, so them responding with, “Nanny-nanny-boo-boo, you’re making us stronger” makes perfect sense.

But just like everything else the media report, this too is fake news.

Read more here.

All the shutdown deals Democrats have rejected

In The Daily Caller, Amber Athey lists all the end the shutdown deals Republicans have offered that Democrats have refused.

Just carry a ladder or dig a tunnel!

On Monday #CBP #YumaSector Border Patrol agents apprehended a group of 110+ Central Americans who illegally scaled the wall with the assistance of a smuggler with a ladder #NationalSecurity #SouthwestBorder pic.twitter.com/T19JzI3xeC

— CBP Arizona (@CBPArizona) January 23, 2019

James Barrett reports at the Daily Wire,

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Arizona released footage Wednesday showing over a hundred illegal immigrants scaling the southern border wall in the Yuma sector. The illegal actions of the "110+" migrants ended in their arrest Monday. Shortly after posting the surveillance footage, CBP Arizona announced that they had detained two MS-13 gang members a day later.

"Officials with the United States Customs and Border Protection in Arizona released a new video showing Central American migrants scaling a border wall in the Yuma sector," FOX 10 reports. "According to a tweet made by officials on the verified Twitter account of CBP Arizona, officials say the migrants were arrested on Monday by Border Patrol agents."

The brief video shows the migrants, aided by what CBP Arizona describes as a "smuggler," scaling a ladder to get over the wall. "On Monday #CBP #YumaSector Border Patrol agents apprehended a group of 110+ Central Americans who illegally scaled the wall with the assistance of a smuggler with a ladder," CBP Arizona tweeted.

The mass crossing comes just a few days after the detainment of the largest known group of migrants to ever cross illegally into the U.S. A total of 376 migrants crossed into the country near San Luis, Arizona last week using smugglers' tunnels.

CBP Arizona's next Twitter post contained an official press release announcing the arrest of two MS-13 gang members on Tuesday. "Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents arrest two MS-13 gang members from Honduras traveling together," the agency tweeted, along with the full statement.

Read more here.

One more down on their way to Trump

The Mueller team has issued seven criminal indictments against Roger Stone, as they continue their efforts to find something on President Trump. Read about it here, if you want to read anything from the Associated Press. This is a picture of Stone this morning when the FBI did a pre-dawn raid, arrested him and took him to the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale.

Unpacking a stupid lede

Oregon Muse responds:

Let's unpack this stupid lede:

"A viral story spread."
(Translation: we reported a bunch of lies and bullshit)

"The mainstream media rushed to keep up"
(Translation: When we started getting called out on our lies and bullshit, we doubled down on it)

"The Trump internet pounced."
(Translation: when it became obvious that our reporting was all lies and bullshit, we made ourselves out to be the victims)

And what, exactly, is "the Trump Internet", anyway? Is there some part of the internet that he owns, and where he can dictate what users can and cannot say?

The attacker

Fact-checking? What's that?

Oregon Muse writes his Morning Rant:

"So, this week, the media's Covington narrative collapsed faster than Bill Clinton's pants at a hookers' convention. It was discovered that Nathan Phillips, touted by the MSM as a 'respected tribal elder', was lying his ass off: He lied about who he was, he lied about being mocked, he lied 8 different ways about his military service, he lied about why he approached a group of kids at a pro-life march, in short, he lied about everything. Heck, Jane Fonda has spent more time in Vietnam than Phillips ever has. All Phillips does is annoy people. He can be accurately described as a professional protestor/agitator and far from being a 'respected' elder, Native Americans don't think much of him. He was at the pro-life march for one reason only: to provoke an incident, and then cry about it to a sympathetic media. Of course the media believed every word he said and didn't bother to do any actual fact-checking. Yeah, 2019 is looking like another kick-ass year for the MSM. And it's not even February."

Are you preparing a Palace of Memory?

In American Digest, Gerard Vanderleun gives us a wonderful essay about his uncle, the Centenarian. Read it here.

Trump's courage on display once again: this time it's about Venezuela

Andrew discusses the hottest news stories of the day

Slaughtering inconvenient children in New York: a major step forward in the quest for women's freedom and absolute evil. Will Gosnell be appointed Surgeon General of the state of New York?

Bad day for Lefties

Newspapers are still shedding on average 1,000 jobs per month - more than mining, steel, fishing and all the beleaguered industries politicians talk about.

The news industry - in all formats - is in crisis. We need sustainable business models for journalism https://t.co/OJccQf7L2f

— Indira Lakshmanan (@Indira_L) January 24, 2019

"You can treat your customers like they don’t have a choice, but in the long run, customers always have a choice."

Have you tried lately to have a phone conversation with someone in customer service? Seth Godin explores the subject and concludes,

You can treat your customers like they don’t have a choice, but in the long run, customers always have a choice.

Read more here.

DNA match

Amanda Prestigiacomo reports in the Daily Wire,

An Arizona man was arrested on Wednesday and charged with sexually assaulting a 29-year-old woman who's been in a vegetative state for 14 years.

Nathan Sutherland, 36, is a licensed nurse who worked at Hacienda Skilled Nursing Facility and was responsible for caring for the victim at the time of the incident. The woman went into labor on December 29, shocking medical staffers who claim they did not know she was pregnant, reports KABC-TV.

The victim suffered a drowning accident some 14 years ago and has been in a vegetative state ever since. According to her family, she suffers from "significant intellectual disabilities" due to seizures during her childhood, reports the BBC.

John Micheaels, an attorney representing the victim and her family, told reporters, "She has feelings, likes to be read to, enjoys soft music and is capable of responding to people she is familiar with, especially family."

"The important thing here is that contrary to what's been reported, she is a person, albeit with significant intellectual disabilities. She has feelings and is capable of responding to people she is familiar with, especially family," Micheaels noted, speaking to Arizona Republic last week. The attorney added that her caregivers can tell her mood.

The family have described the young woman as a "beloved daughter."

On Tuesday, Sutherland, who worked at the facility since 2011, surrendered a court-ordered DNA sample to authorities and was subsequently arrested after it was found that his DNA matches the victim's baby. As noted by KABC-TV, the 36-year-old "was responsible for caring for the victim and had access to her at the time of the incident."

Read more here.

"...when anyone assumes that they should be uniquely above all suspicion, they will eventually earn suspicion."

Victor Davis Hanson writes in American Greatness,

...The framers of the Constitution set in place a brilliant series of legislative, executive and judicial checks and balances to thwart the abuse of power by the powerful. Their pessimistic take on human nature was that all power corrupts. Inevitably, elites will insist that they should not be subject to the very rules they enforce on others.

The sexual-abuse crises within the contemporary Catholic Church arose from the de facto exemptions from the law given to priests. Too many assumed that men of faith were exempt from prosecution because as holy men they would be the last to violate the trust of minors.

One of the ironic things about the Me Too movement was that some of the worst offenders were powerful progressive men such as Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, NBC host Matt Lauer and PBS interviewer Charlie Rose. They all apparently believed that their loud liberal credentials gave them immunity from being held accountable for their harassment.

Some of the feminist organizers of the recent Women’s March, such as Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour, have been linked to racist and anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. They apparently assumed that as supposed victims, they could not be viewed as being sympathetic to victimizers.

Given President Trump’s unconventional background, his wheeler-dealer past and the hatred he incurs from the left, few ever give him the benefit of the doubt. The paradoxical result is that his tenure in just two years has become the most investigated, the most audited and the most closely examined presidency in history.

...In contrast, his most frequent accusers—the media—have set themselves up as the country’s moral paragon. Journalists now see themselves as social justice warriors who are immune from the scrutiny to which they subject others.

The result of such self-righteous moral exemption has led to journalism’s nadir, with an unprecedented lack of public confidence in the media. “Fake news” now abounds, from CNN to BuzzFeed.

...On 245 occasions in sworn testimony before Congress, Comey answered that he either did not know the answers to questions or could not remember the details of events. Had any private citizen tried such stonewalling in an investigation, he or she would likely end up in jail.

But Comey apparently surmised that even fired FBI directors are somehow still exempt from the sort of demands the agency makes of others.

With Mueller, the question is not whether he should investigate possible Russian collusion in the 2016 election, but whether we need a special, special counsel to oversee the conduct of Mueller’s team itself.

Peter Strzok, a former member of Mueller’s team, violated a number of ethical protocols. He was romantically involved with another FBI official, Lisa Page, and the two exchanged a number of text messages critical of Trump.

One of Mueller’s top prosecutors, Andrew Weissmann, was warned in August 2016 by Bruce Ohr, a former associate deputy attorney general, about the suspect, biased and unverified nature of the Steele dossier. But Weissmann apparently didn’t mind that the dossier was used by his colleagues to deceive the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court into a granting a warrant to spy on an American citizen.

Call it karma or attribute it to Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution, but when anyone assumes that they should be uniquely above all suspicion, they will eventually earn suspicion.

Read more here.