May 19, 2018: Reader Tips
Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors
At the Times, Charlie’s beat had been covering what he called “the Hole,” overlooked people in forgotten places. He’d manned the lobster shift at a Burger King and got himself smuggled over the border with Mexican migrants. While readers scarfed down his copy, editors blanched. One told him it was problematic that all he seemed to cover were “losers.” Charlie figured he was in good company. Having long ago anticipated the problems that the 2008 crash, the dissipating middle class, and the Trumpian middle-finger-to-the-establishment would eventually make clear to the rest of us, Charlie knew he wasn’t some deranged Cassandra, but more attuned to the news than his editors. He told his boss: “The country’s 80 percent losers, and growing every day.” With that, he turned in his walking papers and went home.
Just a good read.
I, Napoleon
Trans ideologues uphold one entirely subjective criterion: a woman is anyone who claims to be a woman, whether she has a vagina or a penis.
TERFs, on the other hand, say a woman is ineluctably tied to her biology, with sex-based rights resting on women’s material reality.
That happens to be my position as well: A woman is a woman.
Like
[H]umans weren’t meant to be connected on a global scale. The entire history of humanity – recorded and unrecorded – reflects that. Tribes, clans, and countries have warred for years. The disparity between cultures, morals, ideals, priorities and more have consistently put differing people at odds with one another. Social media didn’t create that. In fact, it magnified it.
When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal
The question Mr. Nunes’s committee seems to be investigating is what other moments—if any—were engineered in the spring, summer or fall of 2016 to cast suspicion on Team Trump. The conservative press has produced some intriguing stories about a handful of odd invitations and meetings that were arranged for Messrs. Page and Papadopoulos starting in the spring—all emanating from the United Kingdom. On one hand, that country is home to the well-connected Mr. Steele, which could mean the political actors with whom he was working were involved. On the other hand, the Justice Department has admitted it was spying on both men, which could mean government was involved. Or maybe . . . both.
Which brings us to timing. It’s long been known that Mr. Steele went to the FBI in early July to talk about the dossier, and that’s the first known intersection of the strands. But given the oddity and timing of those U.K. interactions concerning Messrs. Page and Papadopoulos, and given the history of some of the people involved in arranging them, some wonder if the two strands were converging earlier than anyone has admitted. The Intelligence Committee subpoena is designed to sort all this out: Who was pulling the strings, and what was the goal? Information? Or entrapment?
It’s reasonable to assume that much of the new information in the New York Times report relates to leakers’ fears about information that will be coming out in the inspector general report.
Do. Not. Blink.
Alberta UCP leader Jason Kenney is standing by comments he made about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, including calling him an “empty trust-fund millionaire who has the political depth of a finger bowl.” Kenney went on to say Trudeau is “one of the worst prime ministers for Alberta in our history.”
Art Of The Deal
NATO chief just thanked President Trump and gave him credit for all the member states stepping up their contributions to NATO as President Trump demanded.
— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) May 17, 2018
May 18, 2018: Reader Tips
Thread is open.
How Many Deaths Is Walt Disney Responsible For Worldwide?
Amanda Dycke said she knew something bad had happened to her son when she heard the toddler scream on Tuesday.
She ran outside to find her three-year-old lying in the road, being attacked by a coyote.
“I saw the coyote on his head, chewing on his head,” she said.
Dycke’s son, Ayden Ramm, needed 148 stitches after the attack outside the family backyard in Burnaby, B.C.
It was the first of two coyote attacks in Metro Vancouver within 24 hours this week.
Just shoot the damned things. Both our species will be better off for it.
Y2Kyoto: Climate Dumbo
Shake, shake, shake that money tree…
Woolly mammoths have been extinct for more than 4,000 years, but with new gene-editing techniques, they could help mitigate the effects of a modern problem: climate change. […]
When mammoths roamed in a northern area known as the “mammoth steppe,” that ecosystem was rich in grasses. But after the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) went extinct and other grazers left the area, grasses gave way to shrubs and a tundra ecosystem, an environment that the Harvard Woolly Mammoth Revival team says is “contributing to human-driven climate change.” […]
The elephants on our planet right now can’t tolerate the cold climate of the steppe. So the idea is to use gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR to insert the ancient robust genes from mammoths into Asian elephant cells and create embryos that may grow up to be elephant-mammoth hybrids that can.
Just what I need coming through the windshield of my truck.
If Women Ran The World
A case of the vapours: Professor notes men are taller than women on average, SJWs storm out angrily
May 17, 2018: Reader Tips
Have at ‘er.
When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal
This NYT story says that FBI was worried that if it came out they were spying on Trump campaign it would "only reinforce his claims that the election was being rigged against him." Yes, I can imagine that would reinforce those claims. I mean, !!! !!! !!! !!!
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) May 16, 2018
More here.
Galt Pipelines, Inc
A month after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped in to resolve the impasse between British Columbia and Alberta over the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline his government has little to show for its efforts.
Trudeau’s offer to compensate Kinder Morgan — the parent company of the pipeline — for any financial losses resulting from the opposition of the B.C .government to the project has yet to be taken.
With our money.
What’s The Opposite Of Diversity?
Wynneing!
If Ontario’s carbon pricing scheme is such a great idea, why aren’t Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne, and the NDP’s Andrea Horwath, who supports it, praising it to the skies on the campaign trail?
Thanks to a new Ipsos-Global TV poll, now we know why.
We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
Using a recent forecast prepared by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Lesser’s analysis shows that, over the period 2018 – 2050, the electric generating plants that will charge new EVs will emit more air pollution than the same number of new internal combustion engines, even accounting for air pollution from oil refineries that manufacture gasoline.
I am so ahead of my time.
h/t TimR
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Questions no one is asking: Where are they getting the drugs?
Two prisons in Canada will be trialing a new prison needle-exchange program aimed at lowering the risk of spreading disease associated with drug use, according to Correctional Services Canada (CSC) and Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.
Quite the racket you’re running there, Ralphie.
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans
Between 2009 and 2017, the price of solar panels per watt declined by 75 percent while the price of wind turbines per watt declined by 50 percent.
And yet — during the same period — the price of electricity in places that deployed significant quantities of renewables increased dramatically. […]
What gives? If solar panels and wind turbines became so much cheaper, why did the price of electricity rise instead of decline?