The Mind Of The President: Two recent devastating profiles–one of President Barack Obama by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic and the other of Obama’s communications chief Ben Rhodes by David Samuels in The New York Times Magazine–have revealed a kaleidoscope of mendacity so sophisticated, creative, consuming, and substantively boundless as to give rise to a sense that something essential has changed in the relationship between truth and falsehood, between the actual policies of an administration and its efforts to sell them.
Grab a coffee. (h/t Peter)
Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors
The State Doesn’t Love You
The classic concern that marriage was a patriarchal institution that held women back needs to be revised, maybe even dramatically revised in 2016… What we see, basically, is that daughters are more likely to flourish educationally and even later on in life professionally, across class lines, when they’ve had an involved dad who’s engaged with them in their lives. And so there’s a way in which both fatherhood and marriage, done right, are, I think, acting in service of women’s progress.
Christina Hoff Sommers talks with Brad Wilcox of the American Enterprise Institute on the advantages of marriage and the consequences of its abandonment.
Reader Tips
And I’m floating in a tin can… First Beer In Space.
Tips thread is open.
Red Rose Country
Calgary Herald: Leaked forecast suggests climate plan could cost Alberta billions, but NDP say analysis is invalid
Operation Empty Chair
On their heels: The Taliban now hold more ground in Afghanistan than at any point since 2001
Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 20 Incompetent Politicians To Drive Your Car
Scarborough subway extension will cost $900M more than initially thought…
Go Already
Montreal decision to rename Vimy park in honour of Parizeau sparks criticism
Global Test
Secretary of State John Kerry this week acknowledged twice that the Islamic State and the threat of terrorism around the world is bigger threat than climate change, even though he has insisted in past years that climate is the bigger threat.
The world is in the very best of hands.
But I won’t do that.
Here’s hoping he isn’t praying for the end of time. 2016.
This year sucks.
More Pavilions At Folkfest
I Felt A Great Disturbance In The Narrative
Robert Abell, a co-owner of Lotus Gunworks in Jensen Beach, Florida, told ABC News today that a man entered the store five or six weeks ago and asked specific questions about high-end body armor. When employees said the store didn’t carry the body armor he wanted, Abell said, the man made a phone call in a foreign language, hung up and then asked about ammunition in bulk.
He was probably calling NRA head office.
Reader Tips
10.3 million views in thee days, so there’s a chance you’ve already seen it – Red Hot Chili Peppers Carpool Karaoke
Tips open.
About that DNC crack
The water is muddied.
Crowdstrike stands by it’s assessment and attributes ‘Guccifer 2.0’ to a disinformation campaign.
If you’re interested, Guccifer 2.0’s post. Don’t download any of the documents on that site, just look at the sample images. They are MS Office files and may contain macro viruses.
Cold, Gay Hands
Related: Gun shop selling more than 15 AR-15’s per hour
Passwords
Do you have an account on one of VerticalScope’s domains? You may want to change your passwords.
Another 45M username/passwords leaked from 1000 web forums.
This happened before LinkedIn was breached and before the TeamViewer hack/breach.
From the story, this link to Leaked Source. It asks you to enter your email, usernames or other identifying data into the search field and checks if it is in their database of cracks. If it is, that account has probably been compromised depending on the type of encryption used in the sites database.
Don’t use the same password on different sites, try not to use the same username. Personally, I use Firefox’s browser password manager with the master password feature turned on and I have set Firefox to delete cookies when it shuts down. That way I only have to remember the master password and the rest are encrypted. Chrome and Explorer do not encrypt their remembered passwords, so anyone with access to the filesystem can see them.
Oh, Shiny Emporer!
In total, the documents tabled in the House of Commons show the government made 51 requests to Google between November 4, 2015 and March 3, 2016 to remove the government record of Harper’s time in office from its search results.
h/t Ken (Kulak)
Fidelity, Bravery, Clusterf*ckery
Yesterday, I noted that the FBI had questioned the mass murderer (MM) in 2013, based on his claims that he knew terrorists. The FBI concluded that his claims could not be substantiated. But then in 2014 they discovered that MM actually had contact with a terrorist who engaged in a suicide bombing. The 2014 event confirmed that MM knew terrorists.
What did the FBI do? They closed the investigation.
What Would We Do Without Peer Review?
Social Justice Warriors Declare Battle On Colleague For Exposing Their ‘Research’
Reader Tips
Amazing Extreme Low Flying F/A-18 Hornet. Your amazing extreme high flying tips are hereby welcome.