Are there people out there who are as tenacious as I am in watching these debates?

Join me in this addiction to the American political process!

8:04 – Christie has overtaken Bush in the polls? I totally missed that.

8:05 – Cruz is such a freakazoid. Everything about him is just off. Why don’t people see that? And also, “Obama Clinton economy”? WTF is that? Stupid dick.

8:10 – everybody is criticizing Obama for not being an apocalyptic drama queen in his State of the Union speech on Monday. Losers.

8:22 – I didn’t know Cruz was a crook. It’s good to find out. Not only is he not qualified to run because of his citizenship, he’s also in some financial mess.

8:26 – am I imagining it, or is there a lot more commercials than usual? And are they a lot creepier than normal?

8:28 – Cruz is making a limp-wristed attack on Trump. What a weakling.

8:31 – the audience is booing Trump. He deserves booing but not over stupid Cruz. Trump held his own admirably in the face of the booing.

8:35 – Trump and Cruz are doing some weird catty thing about who’ll be whose Veep. In the midst of all the bickering, Rubio squeaks, pointing at Christie, “He supports the Common Core!”

8:46 – seriously? Bill Clinton’s sex life of 20-30 years ago? What a bunch of sore losers.

8:57 – Rubio is attacking what Obama said in his campaign 8 years ago? Because that’s very relevant to this election? Where Obama is not running? Is Rubio high?

9:04 – Cruz really stepped into it when he handed Trump a chance to bring up the World Trade Center.

9:15 – Carson is done. It’s time for the poor fellow to quit. He started shrieking about how much he wants to bomb people and looked very unstable.

9:20 – Trump’s television career is putting him far ahead of the pack. He knows how to squeeze his camera time for every ounce of potential.

9:21 – Bush is channeling Bernie Sanders’s foreign policy position verbatim.

9:25 – just a few phrases, and the erstwhile hecklers are eating out of Trump’s hand. He’s good.

9:33 – now China is Trump’s sworn enemy. It’s like he detests everybody but Putin.

9:42 – all this talk about China is soporific.

9:55 – Rubio’s right: Cruz’s tax plan is nuts. The last thing we need is a sales tax.

9:56 – Christie is attacking the Republican congress and defending social security? What is happening?

This weather is so messed up. I went outside and thought I was sick or something because it’s abnormal to feel so hot in January. I seriously considered contacting my doctor until I looked at the outside temperature and discovered it was +19°C in the shade.

Yesterday evening, by the way, it was so cold that I almost had frostbite.

This must all be very hard on elderly people.

A church in Taiwan has been built in the shape of a high-heeled shoe to attract female worshipers. The church will feature 100 “female-oriented” gimmicks in the church, like maple leaves, biscuits, cakes, and “chairs for lovers”.

One thing that the many journalists writing about the church aren’t managing (and even trying) to establish is what religion the church is affiliated with. That’s what the consumerist version of religious practice is like. 

Arizona is actually not all bad, believe it or not. Here is a great new campaign that the state’s governor began: “Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey this week launched a campaign to crack down on “the worst of the worst” parents who are ignoring child support payments, posting their names and photos to Twitter and Facebook. The governor said the shaming campaign is targeting 421 deadbeats in the state (34 of whom are women) who collectively owe $20 million.”

“Fat but fit” is a myth: “Scientists say they have bust the myth that you can be “fat but fit” with research showing obese regular exercisers are likely to die before slim unfit people. The study of 1.3 million men found that obese people with high levels of aerobic fitness were 30 per cent more likely to die prematurely, compared with those were slim, despite taking little exercise.” Overweight people fall into two categories re: health: fat and aware of the risks and fat but delusional. The delusional ones are very scary.

Mike talks to a woman in Germany about her experience of daily life.

Obama grew federal spending more slowly than any predecessor of the past few decades.

Americans want everybody to be in the top quintile income-wise. Which is obviously not possible.

A very interesting analysis of the inner conflict of Islam from a scholar of Islam: “All of this needs to be said to expose the illusion that is being propounded in unison by the Islamists and the critics of Islam alike, namely that Islam is waging a war against the West. More accurately, Islam is waging a war against itself; that is to say, the Islamic world is being shaken by an inner conflict whose effects on the political and ethnic map may well come close to matching the dislocations that resulted from the First World War.” He also has some really important things to say about the Koran that I wish more people understood. 

A good, intelligent piece on why attributing Trump’s popularity solely to racism is dumb.

“And I ALWAYS write a hand-written thank you note right when I get home from the interview. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who have said that this made a difference in the hiring process!” Question: has anybody ever received any of these handwritten thank you notes (as opposed to emails) from male candidates? I never have. The whole thing reeks of “a good patriarchal woman has to have a stack of cards at hand to do the work of family socializing.”

Sanders promises to raise taxes on everybody while Clinton will only raise them on the rich.

Everybody has been fixating on Cruz’s spanking comments and how they are sexist but nobody notices that the vile piece of trash publicly confessed to brutalizing a small, helpless child. [Hint: I’m not interested in hearing any justifications of the beatings of children in any form or for any reason. Anybody who tries to justify violence against will be banned immediately. Go die, you nasty creep.]

A good article on radical feminism.

American Historical Association rejects anti-Israel measures.

Gosh, Hillary’s daughter is the worst public speaker ever. They should keep her off stage or, at least, not give her any lines.

A brilliant comment on the differences between Bernie and Hillary:

Sanders, right now, is riding a wave of unrealistic expectations. People want him to come in and “fix everything”—though without a clear explanation of what precisely is broken, and how it can be fixed. When I look at America, I see a country that’s done pretty dang well, except for the glaring problems of median wage stagnation and income inequality.

This is so true. People have a fantasy that a kindly white-haired Santa will bring them a huge sack of gifts and make the complex and scary world look simple and manageable. They know it’s a silly fantasy that will be disappointed:

If Sanders is nominated, I’m not sure whether or not he can withstand the harshness of the general election. But I expect his presidency would be a disappointment, because the expectations are so unrealistic. He won’t fix everything. He’ll have to compromise. He’ll have to ignore promises, or break them. And it will be a betrayal to his supporters. It’s a recipe for gridlock, or a GOP win in 2020, or both.

I suspect that the goal of Bernie’s supporters is precisely to get disappointed. They want to feel apocalyptic, dramatic and betrayed and are setting themselves for a fresh supply of this entertainment. And that’s a sign that, basically, they are OK with everything and opt for fun and enjoyment over any actual change.

There was a country fair in Plymouth back in 1906 where one of the contests consisted of people trying to guess the weight of a huge ox. They wrote their guesses on pieces of paper together with their names and addresses, hoping to get the prize for the best guess. 800 people participated in the contest.

After the contest ended, statistician Francis Galton took the tickets and analyzed them. He discovered that the average of all these guesses was almost exactly the correct weight of the ox. These 800 strangers guessed correctly!

This phenomenon has been verified many times since then and has been given the name “the wisdom of crowds.” Groups of people arrive at correct decisions collectively that they don’t make individually. In other words, groups know things together that individual members don’t.

HOWEVER!

The number one condition for this law to work is for each member of the group to have his or her own independent source of knowledge. Everybody needs to see that ox with their own eyes and not, for instance, hear about it on Putin’s lying TV or whatever.

Cucumbers, radishes, baby potatoes, parsley, boiled eggs, scallions, and shrimp. Looks and tastes very happy.

Turns out there is a plan to build in Moscow in front of the US Embassy a memorial to Native Americans who died during the expansion of the European settlers in North America.

Today’s segment of Dr Phil features 4 adopted kids from Russia who were subjected to horrific abuse at the hands of adoptive American parents. Of course, there are also the 19 Russian adoptees killed by American adopters and the kids adopted specifically to be exploited sexually.

For all his faults, Putin was absolutely right to ban international adoptions. It was a vicious practice that kept resulting in death and abuse.