When does farce itself become a threat?

That's the question The American Interest asks about the Obama administration's continued bumbling in Syria, after word got out that our trained Syrian troops -- already an embarrassment because there were only 60 of them when we had promised to find and train 4,500 -- were attacked by an al Qaeda affiliate and nearly half of them were captured or killed.

The Middle East is a region where perceptions of strength matter—almost as much as actual strength. And the image of a bloated, remote superpower that can only field 60 fighters (at the cost of millions), loses nearly half of them, and seems not to know it, is one that projects weakness and invites further attacks.

Of course, one of the reasons Washington isn’t a-flutter about these developments is that we know they’re trivial—that we could change things in an instant on the ground if we really wanted to. But therein lies the rub: If the Administration never stirs itself to act, all our potential might adds up to nothing more than 60 (now 37) guys, and impotence.

The next president is going to have a hell of a time repairing our reputation abroad, and in the Middle East specifically.

Anti-Racism: America's new national religion

John McWhorter, in typically excellent fashion, lays out exactly how today's anti-racist consensus has all the trappings of a full-blown religion.

Read it. You'll be glad you did.

Is feminism turning men gay?

Hoo boy. I'm glad a gay man wrote this article, because a straight guy wouldn't have the identity-based freedom to give this story of a man proud of being a cuckold the full-on contempt it deserves.

The Revolution Eats Its Own

Drag queens are now persona non grata in the LGBTQ alliance. They aren't being allowed to march in a major British gay pride parade. It's only one parade, but given the reasoning behind it -- to avoid making transgendered or "questioning" people feel uncomfortable -- I don't see any logical stopping point on this train. Drag queens are now officially out of favor with the Alphabet Soup Alliance.

Black Lives Don't Matter in NYC

When you're okay with half of an entire population being killed before they're born, it's safe to say you don't think that group matters.

Making money by harvesting dead babies

So, Planned Parenthood is now on record as making real money by selling dead babies' body parts.

And the reaction is not universal horror and disgust.

In fact, on the Left the urge seems to be to mitigate the problem or parse the situation morally so it doesn't really look so bad.

That tells you all you need to know about how morally bankrupt Progressivism is.

Listen, there are major issues of morality regarding economic justice that deserve to be considered and acted on. And many on the Right are on the wrong side of those issues. I readily concede this fact. But the harvesting of the bodies of those you have murdered is primal, morally speaking, and any attempts to add nuance to an analysis of it shows just how dead the consciences of those who would add nuance to it are.

How cultural Christianity baptizes blind spots

Here's an excellent piece from Rod Dreher comparing the guilt-free acceptance of racism by Christians in the pre-Civil Rights South (in complete violation of scripture) to the guilt-free acceptance of gay marriage and gay sex by millennial Christians (in complete violation of scripture).

It is hard for people who weren’t raised in the South in a certain era to understand how white Christians could have believed the things they did about black people. ... Born in 1967, I’m just old enough to remember the vestiges of the ideology of white supremacy, and how a lot of older people I grew up knowing and respecting as Christians were genuinely blind as bats when it came to race. The important point to keep in mind is that there was no apparent tension within themselves about it. I can’t know their minds, obviously, and most of them I knew are dead. But it seems to me that they simply ignored all the Biblical texts that challenged white supremacy, and weren’t aware of how much of the Bible they had to dismiss in order to justify what they wanted to believe about race. It simply never came up. They were aware that plenty of Christians outside the South judged their position as un-Christian, but they dismissed those Northerners as liberals who had no idea what they were talking about, and didn’t have to be taken seriously. ...

I recall a complete ease about racism among the older Christians I knew. It was just the way the world was. To them, the Biblical righteousness of their position on race relations was so plain to them that they did not see how anybody could in good conscience disagree.

I have seen the same thing playing out among Millennial Christians in the South. For many of them, the moral acceptability of gay sex and gay marriage is not even a question — and certainly not something to worry about in context of Christian thought and life. It is not even a matter of contention. Those who object are conservative bigots, period, end of story. What’s interesting to me is that the same confidence I observed in older churchgoing whites about race, despite the Bible’s clear teaching, I now observe in younger churchgoing whites about homosexuality, despite the Bible’s clear teaching.

Read the whole thing.

If Black Lives Mattered to Lefties ...

... you'd hear more about Jamiel Shaw's murder.

But you won't, because black lives only matter when it benefits Democrats. And anything that makes illegal immigrants look bad doesn't benefit Democrats.

So you won't hear much about Jamiel Shaw from the usual suspects who cried bloody murder about Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin.

Forget Global Warming. Global Cooling is now a thing.

Apparently, the best numbers we have suggest that we're on the cusp of another Little Ice Age:

A mini ice age could hit the Earth in the 2030s, the first such event to occur since the early 1700s. New mathematical models of the Sun's solar cycle developed at Northumbria University suggest solar activity will fall by 60 percent, causing temperatures on Earth to plummet. ...

If correct -- further study is naturally required -- Zharkova's prediction would mean a return to freezing temperatures last seen 370 years ago. During that period the River Thames froze to such an extent that regular "frost fairs" were held during the winter, with market stalls and ice skating a common sight on the river.

During the winter of 1683-84 the river was frozen solid for two months at a thickness of 28cm, according to historical records. Solid ice was also reported extending for miles off the coasts around England, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

This is why so much of the Anthropogenic Global Warming movement is bullshit. The simple truth is that we don't know what we don't know about the climate, but AGW proponents don't want to hear that. They insist that we do know enough about it to say definitively what's going on and what's the best way to fix it. Their proposed fixes involve finding ways to artificially lower global temperatures.

As we can see from this new data, though, that might be the worst possible things we could do. Or it might not, to be honest. We just just don't know. Until we do have definitive (enough) knowledge, it's beyond reckless to do anything that intentionally affects global temperatures on a broad scale.

The OPM hacking: more competence from Obama's top men

Who does the president have guarding federal employees' sensitive personal information? Top men.

Top. Men.

Hackers stole Social Security numbers, health histories and other highly sensitive data from more than 21 million people, the Obama administration said Thursday, acknowledging that the breach of U.S. government computer systems was far more severe than previously disclosed.

The scope of the data breach — believed to be the biggest in U.S. history — has grown dramatically since the government first disclosed earlier this year that hackers had gotten into the Office of Personnel Management’s personnel database and stolen records for about 4.2 million people. Since then, the Obama administration has acknowledged a second, related breach of the systems housing private data that individuals submit during background investigations to obtain security clearances.

That second attack affected more than 19 million people who applied for clearances, as well as nearly 2 million of their spouses, housemates and others who never applied for security clearances, the administration said. Among the data the hackers stole: criminal, financial, health, employment and residency histories, as well as information about their families and acquaintances.

When was the last time America had people in charge who were THIS incompetent, but who almost no one in the press wants to admit is this incompetent?

I'd say these people are such a joke, but now 21 million federal employees and their spouses are at risk of identity theft if they're lucky; if they're not, they're at risk for blackmail. If only it was just about what a joke Obama and his cronies are. If only.

You know Hillary's lying, because her lips are moving.

The headline of the article says it all: Clinton Denies Being Subpoenaed; Investigators Release Subpoena

Reality catches up with Obamacare

20-40% premium rate hikes for Obamacare plans? Who could possibly have seen this coming?

What's that you say? Everyone without their heads in the sand could see it coming?

Well, I mean ... that's just racist.