Sleepless in Midland

Guerrilla pothole repairs

A deep blue city like Portland, Oregon, must have a lot of ordinary needs that the big government spenders ignore in favor of expenditures that signals their virtue, like the high profile welcome wagon for the homeless.

Surely, there are many frustrated taxpayers living there. But they are outnumbered at the ballot box.

In any event, apparently the potholes don't get filled. It's sort of a tragedy of the commons problem. It's the city's job -- the city just didn't do it.

So along came some guerrilla pothole fillers. See The Anarchists Illegally Fixing The Streets Of Portland.

The Portland Anarchist Road Care (PARC) was founded by a small circle of friends in response to the deteriorating road conditions in the Oregon city, which they believed made driving or cycling more costly and dangerous for citizens. They grew tired of waiting for the city to fix this pesky problem, and decided to do it themselves, using a well-known technique called cold patching. The anonymous anarchist have fixed potholes on three Portland blocks so far, but are constantly on the lookout for new crevices to fill.

Certain jobs really should be done by the government. And needless to say, those in government responsible for road repairs are not pleased to be shown up like that.

One more thing: Citizens repairing roads doesn't exactly fit what I perceive anarchy to be. Guerrilla seems more appropriate. But what the hell, they can call themselves anything they like.

1:24 PM 3/30/2017

Conservatives in Texas need to stay strong

Texas is more purple than red when it comes to the vote count. The fly-over parts are generally conservative, but the big cities are definitely progressive. The most prominent example is Austin which is the closer to San Francisco in political leaning than to any other part of Texas.

Mark Pulliam notes this in Blue Texas?. There he reminds us how progressive Austin, the public schools, the universities, and the press corps are. He concludes:

Their weapons are identity politics, multiculturalism, and political correctness. Texas’s conservative leaders must forcefully resist these corrosive factions.

Democrats speak of the "Conservative Ideology." That's a strange label -- the unifying factor is that conservatives generally just want to be left alone. Granted, the abortion issue is an exception, but that aside, conservatives are opposed to the day-to-day government control over our lives that Democrats seem to desire. Democrats often appear as though they are marching in lock step (David Horowitz' description.) Maybe that's what conservatives need to do.

1:11 PM 3/29/2017

Decide which side you like in lawsuit then find law to support that side -- that's the Democrats' standard for Sup Ct Justice

The worker vs the boss, the little guy vs the big guy. Listen to Dems questioning of Neil Gorsuch and one comes away with the conclusion that that's the only issue they think about.

That's the wrong way to look at it. The job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the law in regard to the Constitution without respect for whether one of the litigants comes across as mean spirited and the other sympathetic. We should all want Justices who will look at the law, not the litigants. They call that blind justice.

Neil Gorsuch seems to meet that standard quite easily. But Democrats, emboldened by the recent removal of Obamacare from the Republicans' chopping block, want to score more victories. And they are mobilizing opposition to Gorsuch. Thank goodness for the Reid Rule.

1:44 PM 3/28/2017

Obamacare -- give people a new entitlement then dare to take it away

A remarkable phenomenon that came to light this last few weeks was how popular Obamacare had become once a repeal became a possibility. Many observers have become skeptical of polling data, one reason being that so many people decline to participate in them. So they were skeptical of the new polls about Obamacare's favorable ratings.

But the polls may have been right. Customers hated it until they thought they might lose it. Steve Chapman offers some explanations in Why Trump Can’t Fix Health Care:

Only lately has it occurred to many detractors that ACA also has elements that they would rather not surrender—such as allowing young adults to stay on their parents' policies until age 26, barring exclusions for pre-existing conditions, mandating free preventive care, giving subsidies to moderate- and low-income people and expanding eligibility for Medicaid.

But then this:

Trump has led voters to believe they can have all the stuff they want and none of the stuff they resent. But neither he nor anyone else has found a plausible way to accomplish that.

The mournful realities are inescapable. If you remove the individual mandate, you allow younger and healthier people to opt out, which would mean higher premiums for older and sicker ones. If you cut the cost of Medicaid, you leave a lot of poorer Americans without coverage, forced to rely on expensive emergency room care. If you eliminate the taxes, you raise the federal deficit.

This simple truism became obvious: There are no easy fixes.

3:30 PM 3/27/2017

Guaranteed basic income -- the concept grips the imagination and won't let go

WSJ.com has a review of a took titled "Basic Income." Hyperlink here: Cash Handouts for Everyone. That link is behind a paywall, but another discussion on the book topic can be found at WaPo here: How to ensure everyone a guaranteed basic income.

We talked about it at this blog almost a year ago in Charles Murray makes the case for a universal basic income.

The concept sounds simple: The government gives everyone a modest income -- just enough to pay for minimum existence. There will be some for whom that will be enough so long as they don't have to work. Others will work at jobs or their own businesses to better their lives. By eliminating all other forms of welfare and government payments the overall cost to taxpayers will be lower.

Would it work as predicted? It's an intriguing concept, especially the part that eliminates welfare and subsidies. While most Americans are probably curious, they/we are not likely to want to uproot the economic system in the U.S. for such a grand experiment. What we need is some country to do it first and offer some proof that a guaranteed basic income would accomplish all those lofty goals.

Addendum: It's interesting, although not surprising, that so many of the tech billionaires -- those geniuses whose inventions are probably responsible for the loss of more American jobs than were lost to the factories in China -- are in favor of it.

I've got this new app, and, uh, it says you stink

Actually, it's designed to tell the user whether or not he/she stinks, not whether others stink. Turns out we don't need much help telling whether someone else stinks. It's our own odors we don't always smell.

So along came this Japanese company with a device that will detect odors and send a message to your phone. See This Japanese Device Will Tell You When You Stink:

The device conveniently fits in a coat pocket and detects specific chemicals associated with body odors. The two chemicals associated with the kind of smell that comes from a sweaty locker room are ammonia and isovaleric acid. 2-nonenal is linked to the smell that comes with old age and diacetyl makes you smell like ‘rancid cooking oil’. KunKun can detect all four of these and lets you know immediately whenever you stink.

The device doesn’t just notify when you stink; it also tells you how much you stink using a color-coded meter. A stink-0-meter if we may call it. The idea was pitched by Hiroshi Akiyama, a 43-year-old man working in Konika Minolta when he became worried of his body odor. The company then partnered with Osaka Institute of Technology to develop the ‘sniff sniff’ stink-o-meter.

I won't be out til summer, so til then, don't spare the deodorant.

1:30 PM 3/25/2017

FBI says Russian op involved bots spreading news through Twitter and Facebook

This is the sort of thing that is best remedied by exposure, if it's true.

The claim is that bad news about Hillary may have been disseminated to a broader extent by this method than if news customers were totally reliant on the main stream media. See FBI’s Russian-influence probe includes a look at Breitbart, InfoWars news sites:

Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as “bots,” to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.

The bots’ end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News, the sources said.

Couple of observations: Anyone watching the msm blitz downplaying Rep. Devin Nunes' disclosures about surveillance on Trump team members has to wonder why the MSM hasn't tried to pommel trump over this one. Secondly, if the Russian objective was to cast doubt on our political system, the msm probably does more to achieve that particular goal than the Russians could.

1:06 PM 3/24/2017

The price of Democrat identity politics -- radicalized 2nd gen immigrants

The melting pot is no longer melting anything.

Long ago school kids were taught that the U.S. was a giant melting pot in which immigrants assimilated with those already in place. Unfortunately, the open borders movement discourages that in favor of a highly individualized identity with people of their own kind. It's no secret that those who favor a more restricted entry system are discouraged by that. And with 23 percent of students in public schools coming from immigrant households, it should be obvious that assimilation is more important than ever. But identity politics is a mainstay of the Democrat party.

So when we see news about killers who slaughtering random people, like the terrorist who used his vehicle to run down innocent individuals in London the other day, we tend to react with horror. He was a radicalized Brit known to police.

It's happening here, too. Is it in our schools? In any event, there's something going on that is teaching susceptible individuals to hate the U.S. and the west in general. In that regard, there's an enlightening piece at dailysignal.com titled Assimilation, Not ‘Integration,’ Prevents Young Immigrants From Turning to Terrorism in which the authors reported about a leaked DHS study.

Nearly half of the foreign-born terrorists were under 16 years of age when they came to the United States. Demographers usually refer to this cohort as the “1.5 generation,” to differentiate it from first-generation immigrants who came here as adults and have not had their views and outlooks molded by our schools, media, and other institutions.

That distinction is important. Something about the way they are instructed, or entertained, in this country makes them more likely to want to harm people, not less.

It doesn't help that Democrats are so keen on divisions rather than similarities. If only Democrats loved the country as much as they hate Republicans.

1:11 PM 3/23/2017

Vernal Equinox hit west Texas like a hot knife

The first day of Spring occurred earlier this week. And those of us in West Texas are feeling the heat -- the high today is expected to be 90°F. This is way too early for such hot weather. We typically get the first 100° day in May, but if this keeps up, that day may come sooner.

In any event, we want to scratch our heads when we see articles like this: Why the Spring Always Seems Colder Than It Should Be:

But why? Isn’t there more sunlight in the spring? Yes, but warming up the planet takes time. Enter “seasonal temperature lag.” More of the sun’s energy is hitting this part of the Earth come spring, sure, but most of it is being used up to heat the ground and large bodies of water first. Once that happens, everything else catches up and the overall temperature finally increases. So, it’s spring now, and you can be excited about the notion of it, but it won’t stop feeling like winter for a little while longer.

Forecasts tell us to expect some cooling here soon. However, there is a good lesson here: Generalizations about climate are notoriously unreliable.

1:38 PM 3/22/2017

What are lefties up to with their new fondness for the 2nd amendment?

Reports tell us that lefties are arming themselves. See, for example, Liberals Own Guns Too – The Rise of Liberal Gun Shops, which tells us that “liberal gun stores” are popping up around the U.S. The reason is that the lefties want to arm themselves but don't want to frequent stores that might display a political leaning with which they disagree.

Ostensibly, they want to arm themselves for the same reason conservatives do: for self protection. But then we see articles like this: Author: It’s Not College Kids Creating Chaos To Resist Trump, ‘They’re Professionals’. To wit:

Trevor Loudon, the author of “Enemies Within,” was featured in a recent documentary created by the Capital Research Center called “America Under Siege: Civil War 2017.” The film is about who was behind the inaugural protests against President Donald Trump. They found organizations and professionals like Teresa Gutierrez of the Workers World Party, who proclaims in the film, “this is the revolution that will take Donald Trump down and make America a socialist country.”

No doubt, he says, some of the radical left in the “resistance” aim to push their disruption to the point of social and economic breakdown, and a weakened police so as to get an all-out revolution. But, Loudon says the short-term objective is “to terrorize the squishy Republicans” with shadowy, paid protesters, a corrupt media and mass manipulation by the Bernie Sanders-Tom Perez-Keith Ellison-Barack Obama radical left who suddenly lost their power. They seek to bring about disunity in the Republican ranks using escalating fear and political correctness.

Well, at least not all of them are working for an all-out revolution. Nevertheless, it's troubling when political ideologues suddenly adopt a pro-gun stance they opposed so vociferously not long ago.

Meanwhile, on the bright side, firearm accidents appear to be on the decline. So at least the new gun owners may be developing good safety habits.

Morning paper reminds us that Republicans will fight budget cuts

In case we needed a reminder, MRT.com provided one. Our own Texas District 11 Congressman Mike Conaway is doing what politicians do. He's all for a balanced budget so long as his own sacred cows are spared.

See Conaway voices concerns over USDA budget.

Agribusiness has been on the dole for so long that to take them off it cold turkey would be portrayed as mean spirited and stingy. OK, but can't we wean them off it gradually and let them adapt to the free market? That makes sense, but it really depends on the strength of their lobby.

As a general rule, if government these days is an organ of income redistribution, and if we're looking at a permanent entitlement in the form of whatever Obamacare becomes, then at least attempt to benefit the maximum number of people rather than narrow industry groups.

It's high time the MSM started treating the SPLC like the partisan tool it is

Mark Krikorian is polite but forthright in his article: How labeling my organization a hate group shuts down public debate:

Since 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center has methodically added mainstream organizations critical of current immigration policy to its blacklist of “hate groups,” including the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Immigration Reform Law Institute and Californians for Population Stabilization, among others. In February, my own organization, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), got its turn.

wickedness of the SPLC’s blacklist lies in the fact that it conflates groups that really do preach hatred, such as the Ku Klux Klan and Nation of Islam, with ones that simply do not share the SPLC’s political preferences. The obvious goal is to marginalize the organizations in this second category by bullying reporters into avoiding them, scaring away writers and researchers from working for them, and limiting invitations for them to discuss their work.

Of course, when so many in the mainstream media are also totally partisan, as they are today, it's hard to say which is the bigger tool, they or the SPLC.

Yahoo email keeps you logged in by default -- is that safe?

It's common knowledge that Yahoo has experienced major hacks in recent years. And law enforcement has ferreted out some of the perpetrators. See US charges two Russian spies and two hackers in Yahoo data breach. They used phishing attacks and forged cookies in the commission of their criminal endeavors.

Those of us who still use Yahoo email, not knowing whether the barn door was eventually locked, are undoubtedly taking our own precautions. An easy one would seem to be to log out after each usage and delete Yahoo's cookies. But Yahoo wants users to stay logged in.

Look at the login page. The default is a check in the box that says "Stay logged in." That serves Yahoo, but it's hard to say whether the email user is protected with the connection open indefinitely. In any event, part of my login procedure is to uncheck that box. It might help, but it couldn't hurt.

Put them on Medicaid -- not

Just about everyone has an opinion about the Obamacare reforms put forth by Republicans. And it's difficult for most of us to decide what will be the best outcome, especially since Democrats will attempt to beat Republicans about the head with whatever they come up with.

But apparently, some people think Medicaid is a solution. Jim Geraghty eviscerates that suggestion in The Unmentioned Problems in ‘Medicaid for All’. It's good that someone is finally mentioning it. Here it is:

The “Medicaid for all” crowd also usually hand-waves away the fact that a lot of doctors don’t take Medicaid. As of 2015, only 67 percent of doctors take Medicaid, and only 45 percent of doctors take new patients on Medicaid.

Anyone who has ever tried to find a doctor for someone on Medicaid has seen this up close. Then there's this:

There’s also the inconvenient fact that the best study we have shows that Medicaid doesn’t actually improve people’s health. It makes them feel better by self-reported measures, and less financially stressed.  But it also had “no statistically significant effects on blood pressure, cholesterol, or cardiovascular risk” and “found no evidence that Medicaid caused new enrollees to substitute office visits for [emergency room] visits; if anything, Medicaid made them more likely to use both.”

Obamacare was constructed with the goal of making unraveling it too tedious and complicated to attempt. Republicans have been presented with an opportunity to demonstrate they are as smart as Jonathan Gruber.

As seen on Fox News Channel -- Dept of Veterans Affairs office removes photo of president

It seems to be a solitary event. As it was reported, a veteran in Florida noticed that the spots on the wall that the photos of the former president and VA Secretary occupied at that particular VA office were blank. To correct that oversight, he obtained photos of the incumbents and hung them there. But the VA removed them -- the photos were not official, you see.

This is the sort of passive aggression that really annoys the hell out of people. But is this common? Are government employees across the nation resisting any acknowledgment of the administration? Or more importantly, are they resisting the efforts of the president to improve government?

One has to wonder if the VA discriminates among their patients against a veteran who, for example, showed up wearing a red Make America Great Again hat.

Drain the swamp.

Messing with Macedonia -- probably the tip of the iceberg for George Soros' meddling

George Soros is a financial genius. There's not much question of that. But it's too bad he can't simply retire in luxury and keep his mitts out of other people's affairs.

This particular episode involved Macedonia, and as it happens, some Republicans have requested Rex Tillerson to investigate USAID funds going to Soros' Open Society Foundations which in turn was used to "push a progressive agenda and invigorate the political left." Read the letter in Mike Lee's news release. And see the Fox News write-up at GOP senators ask Tillerson to probe US funding of Soros groups abroad.

Don't stop there. If there is going to be any investigating, please take a hard look at what he's doing in the U.S. Black Lives Matters is just one of his pet projects. Dig deeper and who know what might turn up.

Government is reluctant to allow civilians freedom to give hackers a taste of their own medicine

When it came to crimes against the person, governments, for the longest time, told the citizens not to fight back but to cooperate with criminals to minimize the harm they might do. That changed, and the citizens began to take control of their own safety. Civilians all across the nation began arming themselves in the name of self defense.

Currently, a victim of cybercrime can't do much but report it and make repairs. But maybe that's changing, too, as we learn that Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) has proposed a billed called the Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act (ACDC). From his news release:

The bill makes changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to allow the use of limited defensive measures that exceed the boundaries of one’s network in an attempt to identify and stop attackers. Once a cybercriminal is identified, the victim can share that information with law enforcement or try to disrupt an ongoing attack.

The enhanced flexibility will allow individuals and the private sector to develop and use tools that are currently restricted under the CFAA to protect their own network. Additionally, by allowing defenders to develop and deploy new tools, it will also serve as a disincentive for criminal hacking.

“This bill is about empowering individuals to defend themselves online, just as they have the legal authority to do during a physical assault,” said Rep. Graves.  “While the bill doesn’t solve every problem, it’s an important first step. I hope my bill helps individuals defend themselves against cybercriminals while igniting a conversation that leads to more ideas and solutions that address this growing threat.”

Oh sure, there could be missteps, and innocent people might get caught in the crossfire. Robert Chesney discusses some of the issues at Legislative Hackback: Notes on the Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act discussion draft.  One of them is obvious. An attack might proceed through several computers before it reaches the intended victim. A hackback might have to take the reverse route even though the owners of those computers may have also been innocent victims.

We worried about innocent victims when we armed civilians, too. There's always that risk. All the more reason for adequate training of those to whom the cyber-defensive tools are entrusted. Meanwhile, it would be satisfying revenge to picture a hacker staring at his computer realizing all his data have just been sent to the FBI through a reverse hack.

Women on strike from smiling

I would like to report that this is fake news, but alas, it's the smiles that are fake. Some women are striking from smiling today. Here’s why.:

The “Day Without a Woman” strike on Wednesday may mean a day with fewer smiles.

While not every one plans to skip work, many who want to show solidarity with the growing feminist movement said they plan to strike from unpaid work that women disproportionately do, including cooking, cleaning and, some said, smiling.

More specifically, fake smiling.

They don't smile because they are happy or want to share a sense of pleasantness. They smile because they think they have to. The scene from Seinfeld comes to mind where Elaine exclaims, "Fake, fake, fake, fake." If you didn't see that show you'll probably still guess which emotional and physical response in the male/female relationship she was referring to.

Anyway, it's demoralizing to realize that any happy woman we happen to encounter may be a fraud. Although, to be fair, maybe it was naive to ever think otherwise.

Meanwhile, maybe that explains this other bit of news: Federal Employees Spend Hours Per Day Gaping at Pornography. The federal workforce must be one depressed bunch of bureaucrats with the women angry at smilers and men absorbed in internet porn. On the bright side, it's probably better for the rest of us that they internalize their unhappiness than obsessing over an election outcome they abhor and plotting to make their political opponents look bad.

refresher from Smithsonian about how Don't Mess with Texas came to dominate the anti-litter campaign

It's an old story that most Texans will remember, except possibly for the names. The state highways used to be pretty trashy, and the Department of Transportation sought suggestions for a solution. The story is retold at smithsonian.com. See The Trashy Beginnings of “Don’t Mess With Texas” --

Tim McClure and his colleagues at Austin-based advertising agency GSD&M were just a few weeks away from the deadline, without a clever concept to pitch.  On an early morning walk, McClure noted the trash in his own neighborhood and thought, “This is a mess,”—just  like his mother used to say about his childhood bedroom. That’s when it hit him that his team was going about this the wrong way. Texans don’t talk about “litter” in their daily lives but they do say “mess,” and just like that “Don’t mess with Texas” was born.

Along with the agency’s catchy slogan came hard data indicating whom the campaign should target. Research compiled by Daniel B. Syrek, a Californian who specialized in measuring trash, indicated that young men between the ages of 16 and 24 were the major perpetrators.

Within a month of convincing the department to invest in “Don’t mess with Texas,” McClure and his team were stashing bumper stickers spouting the slogan in truck stops and fast food restaurants, places frequented by their target demographic. But this paraphernalia wasn’t labeled as from the TxDOT and had no clear indication about its true meaning, an intentional ploy by McClure.

“We thought the way to get it into the public’s consciousness quickest was to let Texans own it,” says McClure. “I don’t think they would have put something that said ‘Don’t Litter Texas.’ ‘Don’t Trash our State.’ I don’t think they’d do it, but because it had that Texas bravado to it they adopted ‘Don’t mess with Texas’ as their own battle cry.”

The campaign officially launched on New Years Day, 1986, during the television broadcast of the 50th annual Cotton Bowl. That year’s game, held as always in Dallas, saw Texas A&M trounce Auburn and its Heisman Trophy-winning running back, Bo Jackson. Viewers saw a commercial starring Texas blues musician Stevie Ray Vaughan strumming a guitar in front of a large Texas flag at the Austin City Limits studio. A narrator’s voice drifts over the music reminding the audience of the expense and illegality of littering.  The spot ends with Vaughan’s unwavering command, “Don’t mess with Texas.” 

It was a hit!

These days those in that target demographic are the ones who remain stopped after the light turned green, staring at something in their hands. Whatever could it be that has them so engrossed?

Good luck Megyn Kelly -- the niche you carved out at Fox News Channel might not be portable

Megyn Kelly made her mark during the 2016 Republican primary debates when she went toe to toe with Donald Trump. I predicted that should Trump win she would be snapped up by one of the other cable network. She went with NBC, close enough.

But that network is overflowing with Trump haters, and it's hard to imagine Kelly rising to the top of that pack. So it's time for a new niche. But this? Megyn Kelley trying to change image and go Oprah? Thomas Lifson is skeptical:

I can understand why Kelly wants to change her image. She has done a great job of perfecting the hard-edged, slender, cool blonde, whose sharp questions trap her interview subjects. But do the lefties and squishes who watch NBC want her to use those talents? Getting interviews with Trump administration figures may prove difficult. Heaven forbid she exercises her talents on the likes of Maxine Waters or Nancy Pelosi! The NBC brass and their bosses at Comcast wouldn’t like that at all.

Then there's the daytime audience. Maybe Megyn can win them over. After all, she just wants “to help people the way Oprah did.” What's not to like?

The real reason for bullet train's appeal -- boys like to play with trains

Once again we're hearing about the Texas bullet train and all that its backers expect it to bring. See With Trump on board, Texas puts high-speed rail on the fast track:

Texas Central’s plan is to build a private 205-mph bullet train that covers the 240-mile trip between Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth using Japanese technology.

Trains would depart every 30 minutes, 18 hours a day. A one-way trip would take 90 minutes, compared with five hours to drive or about three and a half hours by air, if you include all the transit and security, Keith said.

The promoters hint they can do it without taxpayer funds. That's a grand promise. It would be convincing if they could point to any passenger rail project anywhere that didn't ultimately require both government funding and property confiscation.

In this day and age when the driverless car appears be emerging from dream to reality, it would seem that the money could be put to better use in prepping vehicles and highways for smooth, coordinated transit. In that case maybe some Texans could benefit from it besides those relatively few who travel between Dallas and Houston.

Your moral compass is where?

Movie stars say the darnedest things. The point, though, is to demonstrate their moral superiority. Otherwise why else would their fans have awarded them all that adulation?

So we see outlandish headlines like this one: Cate Blanchett Locates Her Moral Compass in Her Vagina. That creates an image one doesn't typically expect outside a porn-for-perverts website, so I'm told.

But on the other hand, maybe that's a good symbol of the communist International Women's Day feminists celebrated the other day. After all, didn't they once say men think with their private parts? Well, if the shoe fits -- to further confuse the metaphor.

Alternate title: "I got your moral compass right here, baby."

This latest Wiki-dump on the CIA has Karla's thumbprints all over it

Monica Showalter makes a convincing case that it was the Russians. Yeah, it's a conspiracy theory, but theories are all we can go on in the midst of all this business about moles, espionage, and spy craft. Her article is titled Wikileaks CIA Dump Has Some Peculiar Timing, and there she suggests the Russians are responsible.

A Wikileak of this sort is not only rare and specialized (when was the last time you saw a CIA secret splattered all over the Internet?) it was probably the work of Russian cyberspies, given that only the Russians are likely to have such capacity, as well as potential human penetrations on the inside. If so, it means a Russian power game is now in play, with just the right timing to support it.

She notes that Julian Assange's Wikileaks to date has only released information that supports Russian objectives and that if the Russians do take things personally, this could be blow back for all the accusations that Russians were conspiring with Trump's people to swing the election.

Binge on John Le Carre movies like I've been doing and you'll wish we had a George Smiley on our team.

Libs are stupid, conservatives are evil -- time to retire that cliche

I don't know who invented the phrase, was it Charles Krauthammer? He certainly had a head start on most of us with his 2002 piece Stupid vs. Evil? To wit:

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

Kathy Shaidle gave us a Christmas present last year with this inspired piece, Right-Wingers, Please Stop Saying This One Stupid Thing:

But there’s one expression that’s been in heavy rotation of late, for obvious reasons, and this one especially has got to go:

People on the right think that most people on the left are wrong; people on the left think that most people on the right are evil.

Yeah, no.

I, for one, think most people on the left are evil, not just the useful idiots, well-intentioned twats, and downright dupes the polite right always wants to provide cover for, for whatever weird reason.

If you prefer a less abrasive word than “evil,” then try “sinful” on for size. What else do you call those who want to steal your money and destroy your life? Who compulsively lie? Who are fine with Muslim slime raping other men’s women (or even their own) as long as nobody calls them “racist”? Who consider abortion a secular sacrament?

When you look at the way lefties have fallen all over themselves to cover for their wire tapping henchmen it's hard to argue with it.

Meanwhile, Kurt Schlichter doesn't beat around the bush: The Left Hates You. Act Accordingly.

Irony alert -- in trying to hurt Trump the MSM exposed Obama to the spying charge

Mark Levin might be the Bob Woodward of this particular scandal. There's no deep throat here, yet. But Levin is getting the credit, at least in his own circles.

Watch Levin lay it out in this Youtube video. The incriminating information (too early to call it evidence) comes from Obama friendly MSM sources themselves, in particular, the New York Times and Washington Post. The irony is that the tone of the MSM suggested they were trying to damage Trump, when in fact, they exposed Obama's vulnerability to charges his team took advantage of a FISA court order to spy on the Trump campaign.

Bob Woodward, it's time to play catch up.

Book review of James Mitchell's Enhanced Interrogation

We've talked about Dr. Mitchell's book in previous posts. It was a very enlightening book about his work as a CIA contractor implementing the approved enhanced interrogation techniques on captured terrorists with the objective of thwarting future attacks. The full title is Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying To Destroy America.

Janet Levy posted a review at How the Use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques Saved Thousands of American Lives where she provided numerous factoids in an easily readable piece. And she mentioned one thing I had forgotten, to wit:

Another little-discussed side benefit of EIT was that terrorist detainees were conditioned to cooperate in interrogations when they expected that harsh techniques might be used, even when they weren’t going to be used.  Mitchell explains that this type of Pavlovian anticipation meant that EIT could be tapered off after an average of 72 hours.

The book is well worth reading. Or if that's too much to ask, Ms. Levy's review serves as a good summation for anyone interested in the positive aspects of the program.

Expert explains why the 2 woman alleged to have killed Kim Jong-nam weren't harmed by the chemical

The nerve agent used to kill Kim Jong-nam is lethal to touch — but the suspects in his killing are alive. Here's the key part:

It's possible that the North Koreans who fled the country coated the women's hands with protective chemicals first. An antidote, atropine, can be administered after exposure, but there is also the question of how everyone else in the crowded airport avoided exposure.

The most logical answer so far comes from Vipin Narang at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He has suggested the attack required two people for one good reason — with the VX, he says, used in a "binary form."

Narang says one of the accused may have had a sulphur-containing liquid on her hands. The other then perhaps wielded a "complex but nontoxic compound called QL."

Combined, they create VX.

Makes sense to this non-chemist.

Kaepernick looking for job -- should try out for Cuba National Baseball Team

Colin Kaepernick declined a contract extension with the 49ers, and according to an item at dailywire.com -- Kaepernick Refused To Stand With The National Anthem. Now That He's Jobless, He's Changed His Mind. And this:

After his refusal to stand was noticed during a preseason game, Kaepernick told NFL.com why he was protesting the anthem. "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," he said. "To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

Yeah, paid leave is a real killer.

Americans are very forgiving, especially if they like the person seeking forgiveness. Unfortunately for Kaepernick, he has the bad luck of being unlikable. Furthermore, he isn't seeking forgiveness.

For a team in a regime more to his liking, he might consider switching to baseball and trying out for the Cuba National Baseball Team. Raul would probably welcome him with open arms.

Iced -- the Dreamer's nightmare

If we want a merit based immigration system then an important test would be whether the applicant can meet deadlines. Also, if they've overstayed and gone underground, whether or not to give interviews on TV would be another test.

So when we see this headline: ICE nabs young ‘dreamer’ applicant after she speaks out at a news conference, we have to wonder if this is the sort of immigrant who will be a productive resident and not just another community organizer.

Prediction: Daniela Vargas will get to stay. And she'll become a Democrat party symbol. She'll be the Sandra Fluke of illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, this brings up a recent revival of an old subject -- A new underground railroad. From Buzzfeed: Churches Are Readying Homes And Underground Railroads To Hide Immigrants From Deportation Under Trump. Interesting, if true. Excerpt:

Churches across the US are fighting back against the Trump administration’s mandate to ramp up deportations with new sanctuary practices of their own, using private homes in their congregations as shelter and potentially creating a modern-day underground railroad to ferry undocumented immigrants from house to house or into Canada.

Passage to Canada seems like a worthwhile objective. But we need to question the wisdom of opening one's home to someone who has already exhibited a certain disrespect for the law.

Imagine if the police went on strike -- it's happening in Brazil

The Black Lives Matter movement has been notably silent lately. Someone must have shushed them -- their financial backers? The DNC? In any event, they didn't bring out the Obama coalition vote in November and have probably been abandoned by high powered supporters.

That aside, one needs to remember some of their goals which included disarming police or establishing police no-go zones in inner cities. What would happen if they had been successful?

A comparison with Brazil might not be exactly on point as Brazil has so many other problems the U.S. doesn't have. (See what Heritage.org says about Brazil to get a flavor of what ordinary Brazilians are up against.) What brings Brazil to our attention now is this item from WaPo, Police went on strike in a Brazilian state. The result was near-anarchy:

Shots punctured the eerie silence as thieves held up pedestrians for their cars and purses, local media reported. In commercial centers throughout the area, packs of looters drove trucks into shop windows and carried whole racks of clothes and appliances on their backs.

This wave of near-anarchy has engulfed the state of Espirito Santo, a picturesque region along Brazil’s northeastern coast, since Feb. 4. That’s when the state police announced a general strike, leaving the streets open to gangs and petty criminals alike. The state government said that 143 people were slain in Espirito Santo between Feb. 4 and Feb. 13, compared to just four people in all of January.

Sounds horrible. One has to wonder how many Brazilians are seeking refuge status in the U.S.