"Pretty good stuff … for the Trump defense team."

John Soloman writes in The Hill,

...I cannot recall in my lifetime a Congress re-summoning a witness who admitted lying to lawmakers for a hearing that afforded the fanfare provided to Cohen on Wednesday.

...Okay, so no Russian collusion. No trip to Prague. No direct instruction to lie. And no secret effort asking WikiLeaks to hack the Democratic National Committee.

Pretty good stuff … for the Trump defense team.

Read more here.

"If a guy is threatening to cut your throat, don't buy him a knife!"

How to get Kim to give up his only ace in the hole

Bookworm's take on the Kim-Trump summit:

Kim tried to offer Trump this deal: North Korea promises to de-nuclearize in return for the U.S. actually getting money into the broken North Korean economy. This is, of course, the same deal every past president has made with North Korea, and the outcome has always been the same: North Korea broke its promises even as the Americans fulfilled theirs to enrich North Korea’s coffers. Incidentally, it is also the same deal that Obama made with Iran, with exactly the same result. It’s a fool’s deal, intended to keep the media happy. It’s also the classic definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results.

...Having laid the groundwork, Trump, the most experienced practical negotiator ever to sit in the Oval Office, is going to be patient and do it right: Kind words for his negotiating partner, strong positions on core issues with flexibility on ancillary issues and, always, the manifest willingness to walk away from a bad deal.

...I would not be at all surprised to learn that, just as Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking (the substance of which Trump heard every Sunday while sitting in the pews at Peale’s church) strongly influenced Trump’s thinking, so too did Dale Carnegie’s seminal book. You can use verbal abuse to try to force people to bend to your will but, if you want people voluntarily to give you something, you have to be nice. And that’s what Trump is doing with Kim — he’s being nice, not just to pander to Kim’s tyrannical ego, but to allow Kim to save face, and be the big man, even as he gives up his only ace in the hole.

Read more here.

Prosecute actions, not thoughts!

Chateau Heartiste writes,

There’s no such thing as “hate speech”. There is only free speech. And there is no such thing as “hate crime”. There is crime. We shouldn’t prosecute thoughts. We should prosecute actions. End the “hate crime” farce now.

Read more here.

His brain remade itself!

Andrew Zaleski reports in One Zero about "The Brain that Remade Itself."

Doctors removed one-sixth of this child’s brain — and what was left did something incredible.

...Today, Collins is a critical puzzle piece in an ongoing study of how the human brain can change. That’s because his brain has done something remarkable: The left side has assumed all the responsibilities and tasks of his now largely missing right side.

“We’re looking at the entire remapping of the function of one hemisphere onto the other,” says Marlene Behrmann, a cognitive neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University who has been examining Collins’ brain for more than five years.

...The fact that the brain has a malleable capacity to change itself isn’t new. What’s less understood is how exactly the brain does it. That’s where Behrmann’s study of Collins comes in. Her research question is twofold: To what extent can the remaining structures of Collins’ brain take over the functions of the part of his brain that was removed? And can science describe how the brain carries out these changes, all the way down to the cellular level?

...Before Collins’ surgery to remove the tumor, doctors opened up his head and placed electrodes on the surface of his brain and inside his visual cortex. For seven days, Collins lay in a hospital bed as the electrodes mapped his brain’s electrical activity, creating what was essentially a schematic diagram showing doctors where the seizures were originating and which brain areas needed to be cut out.

Read more here.

'Sometimes you have to walk away,'

Geoffe Earle and Chris Pleasance report in Daily Mail,

Donald Trump's talks with Kim Jong-un ended abruptly on Thursday as the president said he was forced to walk away after the North Korean dictator demanded that all sanctions be lifted in return for giving up only some of his nukes.

Trump said the final snag that caused the sudden breakdown was over sanctions – and Kim's push to have all of them lifted in exchange for a concession Trump and his secretary of state could not live with.

'Sometimes you have to walk away,' Trump told reporters at a press conference in Hanoi that was abruptly moved up after a breakdown in talks.

...A planned lunch meeting never happened, although a table was set with a floral centerpiece and menus folded inside napkins.

Reporters on hand to cover it were told to move to another location.

...There are sites that people don’t know about that we know about. We would be able to do inspections we think very, very successfully,' Trump said.

Read more here.

This reminds me of Reagan at Reykjavik!

What will Pelosi do?

Writing in The Hill, Bob Cusack and Ian Swanson believe Nancy Pelosi is unlikely to try to impeach President Trump, barring something explosive coming from the Mueller report.

...Starting impeachment proceedings seems unlikely to end in a Senate conviction given the two-thirds majority needed in a body Republicans control with a 53-47 majority.

That makes it a tricky political proposition, especially as Democrats eye a 2020 election they think could end the Trump era and leave Democrats in control of Congress and the White House. That scenario would leave Pelosi with the chance at scoring some sweeping policy achievements on health care and climate change in her last years in Washington.

Read more here.

"A political stunt written by Clinton hacks"

I started listening at about the 8-minute mark. Greg Gutfeld stands up to Juan Williams, after Williams charges Greg and Jesse with being "so far into the bunker (as Trump supporters)." Greg objects to the bunker analogy, saying he believes it was a reference to Hitler.

Does Fox News not know its audience? I quit watching The Five because I cannot stand Juan Williams' rude interruptions and allegations. I do watch clips like this one when it is obviously making news (Drudge linked to it). Greg responds immediately to Juan's bunker charge, saying, "If you say that again, I'm gonna throw you off the set." Juan then held his heart, mocking Greg as though he was terrified Greg would actually get physical. Fox News should fire Juan. Enough!

Then I went back to the beginning of the show and realized that Juan had used the bunker analogy right at the beginning. Greg loudly told him to shut up! Greg's analogy for Creepy Cohen's testimony was to say that Cohen realizes he has been a dirtbag and that the way to get himself out of the dirtbag is to turn himself into a gratification machine for the media. His "rehab" is to match the media's assumptions.

A panelist named Morgan (I do not know her last name) compared Cohen unfavorably to both John Dean and Chuck Colson. No personal remorse, just feeding into the media's assumptions. She thought today's hearing was "a political stunt written by Clinton hacks."

More from the brilliant Greg Gutfeld. "The hearings were scheduled for today to undermine the summit in Vietnam. The media is rooting for Trump to fail. It might backfire by placing these two stories side by side (split screen). What is meant to undermine "that damn Trump" actually undermines them. The media is comparing a dramatic diplomatic effort that might end a 70-year war with a partisan tantrum. Slimeball theater, which is protein powder for the consensus media. It's like comparing a cure for a disease with an old Jackass re-run. Something historical with something hysterical. Never has something so big been compared with something so small."

A real hate crime

What will his consequence be?

This is an assault.

This is a real hate crime.

Will the mainstream media report on this?

Black high schooler attacks white peer over MAGA hat, 'Trump' banner - ⁦@CollegeFix https://t.co/wuqjijEjLh

— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) February 27, 2019

Cohen testimony carried live on CSPAN

In case you want to listen to and watch a guy testify to Congress who has already pleaded guilty to lying under oath to Congress, you may watch him here. If you get tired of looking at Cohen and the various Democrat questioners, you can always choose to focus on Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis who is now Cohen's lawyer.

When Cohen told the truth about President Trump

So, let me get this straight. A guy who will soon begin a three-year prison term for lying to Congress and committing eight other federal crimes is being brought back to Congress to testify against his former client, President Trump. Hasn't he already established his lack of credibility?

Trump, North Korea, and China

Do you know where President Trump will be tomorrow? Hanoi, Vietnam! Sundance reports in the Conservative Treehouse,

The majority of the political engagements between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un will take place in the overnight hours. Vietnam is 12 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern time.

President Trump is in Vietnam for his second summit with Chairman Kim. The two men first met last June in Singapore, a summit that was the first person-to-person contact between leaders of the U.S. and North Korea. The structure of the visible public engagement is to reach an agreement where North Korea will give up its nuclear arsenal and enter the economic world of peaceful nations.



Those who follow China and North Korea closely see a much bigger, non-discussed geopolitical effort and engagement. Within this dynamic a more complex objective is to rescue Chairman Kim from the clutches of oppressive generational control by Beijing, China.

Chairman Xi does not want to give up control and President Trump is leveraging full U.S. economic pressure upon China to break the grip. Technically, President Trump is on the most complex, challenging and historic hostage rescue mission; and the entirety of world’s media cannot see it.

The four-day working week

In the Guardian, Robert Booth reports,

The founder of one of the first big companies to switch to a four-day working week has called on others to follow, claiming it has resulted in a 20% rise in productivity, appeared to have helped increase profits and improved staff wellbeing.

Analysis of one of the biggest trials yet of the four-day working week has revealed no fall in output, reduced stress and increased staff engagement, fuelling hopes that a better work-life balance for millions could be in sight.

Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand financial services company, switched its 240 staff from a five-day to a four-day week last November and maintained their pay. Productivity increased in the four days they worked so there was no drop in the total amount of work done, a study of the trial released on Tuesday has revealed.

Read more here.

Democrats increasingly support state-driven coercive solutions

In the Federalist, David Harsanyi writes,

...You might also be a socialist if you propose a government takeover of the energy sector, which is what every politician who supports the Green New Deal is doing. Even if we stretch the imagination and concede, for the sake of argument, that these Democrats didn’t endorse the car-banning, cow fart-eliminating proposal offered by socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, ridding America of 90 percent of its most affordable, most efficient, and predominant energy sources in 10— or 20, or 40—years would necessitate a giant, coercive government project that would bring unprecedented intrusions into American life.

Nearly every Democratic Party presidential hopeful supports the aims of this plan. Nearly every Democratic politician wants the state to lord over the entire education sector. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single problem in American life, in fact, for which Democrats don’t have a gigantic, state-driven coercive solution.

...Isn’t it odd that not a single Democratic Party leader has been critical of Sanders’ collectivist ideology? This is a politician who went to the Soviet Union as a 47-year-old man, not as a radicalized 20-something, and praised one of the worst tyrannies in history. Will any 2020 Democrat presidential candidate condemn him for his adulation of Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan socialism? Will anyone condemn him for having nicer things to say about nations with gulags, political executions, and mass starvation than he does for the United States?

...“America was founded on liberty and independence–not government coercion, domination, and control,” Trump said during the State of the Union. “We are born free, and we will stay free.” He’s inarguably correct about the first. The second is yet to be determined.

Read more here.

Defecting Venezuelan troops

In APNews, Christine Amario reports on defections in the Venezuela military.

Over 320 mostly low-ranking soldiers fled in a span of four days, Colombian immigration officials said Tuesday.

...While Guaido has proposed amnesty to military officers who back him, the low-ranking soldiers who have defected say breaking ranks with Maduro is all but impossible. Even as the number fleeing swells, they represent a small percentage of the at least 200,000 troops in Venezuela’s army.

Read more here.

"It's up to you, Mr. Barr. Save us. As you know, America is owed the whole truth and nothing but."

Writing in PJ Media, Roger Simon makes the case for issuing the Mueller report and the Horowitz report simultaneously. Read more here.

Fake News BBC style

In PJ Media, Bruce Bawer reports on how Tommy Robinson showed a fake news BBC reporter to be just that: fake!
Read it here.

Is it a robot conspiracy?

J.D. Tuccille writes in Reason,

In recent weeks, Illinois mandated a huge increase in the state minimum wage, Pennsylvania's governor proposed to double his state's minimum wage, and New Mexico lawmakers moved forward with a plan to raise the minimum wage there, too. Hiking the cost of labor is a popular cause once again—even among people who've demonstrated in the past that they know perfectly well this is a recipe for limiting opportunity and trapping people in poverty.

It's tempting to say that people are actually getting stupider about economics. But maybe, instead, it's all part of a conspiracy by robots who are poised to be the big beneficiaries of an artificially crippled job market.

Read more here.

Trump brings home another American

Another American held captive overseas has been brought back to his family. In the Free Beacon, Adam Kredo quotes president Trump,

"We work every day to bring Americans home," Trump said. "We maintain constant and intensive diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement cooperation within the United States Government and with our foreign partners. Recovering American hostages is a priority of my administration, and with Danny's release, we have now secured freedom for 20 American captives since my election victory. We will not rest as we continue our work to bring the remaining American hostages back home."

Read more here.

Mass grave containing 3,500 victims found in Raqqa

Charlie Bayliss reports in Mailonline,

A mass grave filled with the bodies of 3,500 people has been found in the former ISIS stronghold of Raqqa.

First responders found two foot deep graves just outside the Syrian city in the al-Fukheikha agricultural suburb last month, more than a year after US-backed forces captured the city from ISIS.

Experts believe the site, the largest mass grave found in the region, could help identify several thousand people who are believed to have been murdered by ISIS, but whose fate remains unknown.


Shallow graves measuring just two foot were used to dump the bodies in, as a dispatch team now work to identify the victims

Read more here.

"Are these questions designed to help men in therapy, or to present men as oppressors?"

Terry Brennan writes in PJ Media,

While there is gender parity among psychologists 55 and older, practitioners 35 and younger are 84% female.

...In addition to the significant gender gap, since the early ‘90s psychology has become further skewed to the Left. Dr. Haidt studied this phenomenon, finding the zeitgeist of the ‘60s and ‘70s generated an influx of individuals who came to pursue social justice. This created a climate which was both hostile to conservatives and allowed selection bias. Indeed, a 2012 study found only 6% of social psychologists identified as conservatives -- and 37.5% of respondents declared their willingness to discriminate against hiring conservatives.

Division 51 of the American Psychological Association, is the Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinities.

In addition to the significant gender gap, since the early ‘90s psychology has become further skewed to the Left. Dr. Haidt studied this phenomenon, finding the zeitgeist of the ‘60s and ‘70s generated an influx of individuals who came to pursue social justice. This created a climate which was both hostile to conservatives and allowed selection bias. Indeed, a 2012 study found only 6% of social psychologists identified as conservatives -- and 37.5% of respondents declared their willingness to discriminate against hiring conservatives.

...Are these questions designed to help men in therapy, or to present men as oppressors?

Dr. Ryon McDermott, who helped draft the guidelines, explained their motivation by stating: “If we can change men, we can change the world.” Why should the APA be allowed to pursue Male Conversion Therapy? Indeed, Dr. Leonard Sax stated:

Stetson University psychologist Chris Ferguson notes that the guidelines’ emphasis on trying to get traditionally masculine men to become something other than what they are is reminiscent of the "conversion" therapies of decades past, which sought to convert homosexual men into heterosexual men.
For psychologists to use their position of power to pursue a progressive agenda with their patients is ethically repugnant. Therapists doing so should face a complaint against their license.

Read more here.

Change the wording on the label and give Big Pharma billions more in profits!

Opioids are not for everyone. CBS's 60 Minutes took a look at the opioid crisis. What they found will not give you a favorable view of the medical, pharmacological and government bureaucracy professions. Read more here.

FBI: Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity?

Mark Levin interviewed Independent Counsel Ken Starr last night. Starr led the investigation of Bill Clinton. Starr believes Donald Trump has been unwise in not using surrogates to attack the press like Bill Clinton did. Instead, Trump takes the press on all by himself!

The law requires that Mueller's report goes to Attorney General Bob Barr, who then will decide what to report to Congress.

Did you know that FBI stands for Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity?

Mark Levin is much more effective in this setting where he is calm, unlike his screaming anger on his radio show. He believes the DOJ and FBI have acted as a cabal. Starr agrees and asks who do they think they are? He calls them "runaway cops" who have an abysmal understanding of our Constitution! These rogue characters in the FBI and DOJ took unprecedented, very strange steps toward a coup de'etat.

Starr believes FBI Director Comey usurped the authority of the Attorney General when he decided not to investigate Hillary Clinton. Levin says that under Comey and McCabe we had a "rogue FBI!"

Congressional oversight. Starr believes we should continually be asking whether any of the three branches of government are exceeding their powers under the Constitution.

Starr wishes Christopher Wray would be more clear in showing that it's a new day at the FBI.

Manafort's mistake was in working for the enemy of the swamp

Don Surber writes in his blog,

Manafort's mistake was not in getting caught. His mistake was in working for the Enemy of the Swamp.

Read more here.

Did Brett Kavanaugh flunk his first test as an Originalist?

Damon Root writes in Reason,

If Brett Kavanaugh is a committed originalist, you would never know it based on his complacent behavior in Timbs v. Indiana.

Read more here.

As ISIS fled, they beheaded their sex slaves

The Clarion Project reports today,

In a final act of depravity, fleeing ISIS beheaded 50 Yazidi sex slaves, dumping their heads into trash bins for coalition soldiers to find.

ISIS fighters were besieged in their last stronghold – a small area in Baghuz located in eastern Syria. One hundred ISIS jihadis were killed in the final battle in which British Special Forces (SAS) fired 600 mortar bombs and tens of thousands of machine-gun rounds against the terror group.

Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, a source said:

“In their hour of defeat, the jihadis’ cruelty knew no bounds. They conducted a cowardly slaughter of these desperately unfortunate women as a final act of depravity and left their severed heads behind for us to find. The motivation for such a sickening act is beyond comprehension for any remotely normal human being.

“None of the SAS troops who entered Baghuz will forget what they saw, which some soldiers likened to a scene from the film Apocalypse Now. Their only solace is that they have contributed to bringing Islamic State’s reign of terror to an end.”

Surviving ISIS fighters tried to escape by going underground to a system of tunnels they constructed under the town. However, SAS mortar teams and U.S.-French artillery units pounded the openings of the tunnels which were located by drones.

About 200 jihadis still hold an area of about one-fifth of a square mile outside Baghuz where intelligence sources say an equal number of civilian hostages are held. The terror group once controlled 34,000 square miles of territory between western Syria and eastern Iraq, which they called their “caliphate” and ruled over close to 8 million people according to brutal sharia law.

In 2014, when ISIS roared into Iraq, close to 3,000 women, teenage girls and young boys were abducted by the group. The hostages were Yazidis, Christians, Turkomen and Shabak – all minority groups in Iraq. The women and girls were turned into sex slaves and the boys were recruited as the next generation of jihadis. During the takeover operations, ISIS simply slaughtered the men and teenage boys.

Hazardous!

Racial and ethnic changes in our most recent generations

Pew Research posts this graph showing changes in the racial and ethnic makeup in the most recent generations.
Read more here.