Wretchard.com

As economy suffers multiple organ failure. It turned out that Venezuela wasn’t rich enough to afford socialism.

Revealed in detail by new techniques in the fossil record. One moment an entire era seemed unstoppable. The next it was gone.

It’s a sobering story.  What Nature’s left hand is doing may be undone by its right.  Yet the end of the dinosaurs meant the birth of the mammalian age — and us.

If they want a Brexit delay. Meanwhile Bolton says US will give post Brexit UK priority access

As US Russia tensions rise in Venezuela

Helicopters circled the London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent’s Park after the street attack about half a mile away in St John’s Wood.

London Times

The hands

The woman who forgave the boy who smashed her face

Benitez subjected the ban both to the constitutional analysis he argued was required by the U.S. Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller and a more complicated and flexible test the Ninth Circuit has applied in prior Second Amendment cases.

$50 to get in $500 to get out defines a joint you should avoid

Top Venezuelan brass getting messages from Bolton.

No longer master of the house.

“How could a 100% failure rate go on for so long without anyone taking action?”

So what can be done?

From Stripes:

In a “60 Minutes” interview last year, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that “Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”

What happens if one day there’s another 9/11?

Nature is both terrible and wonderful. The real threat when it comes will be a surprise not some preannounced UN catastrophe like global warming.

NYT

No twist was too minuscule or outlandish for Maddow; every night, seemingly, brought another nail in the coffin of the soon-to-be-dead Trump presidency.

Guardian

Spygate. How the Collusion narrative started. Fascinating for its description of process as well as substance.

No point giving birth because of Climate Change. “Though Laura Formisano says she never felt a huge desire to have children, she used to presume that would change. But climate change could make the planet so uninhabitable, she says, she’s not sure she can ever bring herself to become a parent.”

It all makes sense within that ideologlical system. If civilization as we know it is guilty; if judgment has been pronounced; if the engine of destruction is in train. Why hang around?

The great thing about eco-atheism is the certitude you can get off the train by jumping off a cliff or overdosing on pills. There’s an absolute belief you can turn off the TV, as if not watching it ends the TV station. It’s fine to save the Planet because you’re not part of it.

It used to be that we had a mission to live. Today a lot would sit that mission out. Hemingway wrote that “all true stories, if continued long enough, end in death.” He was wrong.

All true stories, if continued long enough, continue.

What’s patriotism?

Maybe it’s not cool to be patriotic but it’s acceptable to be an ‘antihero’.

“In June 2018, following an outcry from thousands of employees, Google ended its participation in the Pentagon’s so-called Project Maven. That initiative focuses on improving U.S. targeting capabilities by using AI to identify objects captured in countless hours of surveillance footage from drones. In October, Google then dropped out of the competition for the Pentagon’s cloud-computing contract, on grounds that the project was incompatible with the company’s values.

All the while, however, Google was secretly helping the Chinese government build a restricted search engine that would reinforce Beijing’s censorship policies; the company only admitted to its involvement in the project, known as Dragonfly, late last year. This came a year after Google announcedit was opening an AI research center in Beijing – despite the virtual certainty that any breakthroughs made there will find their way into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army.”

“The bill underlines how Canadians are not immune to the populism and concerns about immigration that have affected the United States, France, Britain and other Western countries.

France has banned Muslim head scarves and other conspicuous religious symbols at state schools. Denmark has barred judges from wearing head scarves, crucifixes, Jewish skull caps and turbans in courtrooms.”

NYT

Some have characterized the failed Russian collusion charges as an attempted coup. If so it was a very particular American type of coup involving only the law and vindicating the law because it failed for lack of evidence.

Any counterstroke must at least be similarly restricted . It must use only the law, advance only through investigation. It must be restricted to individuals, and like Mueller’s stand or fall on the evidence.

The damage of the last two years was real but it’s important to realize that it was limited by the fire curtains of the law and the constitution. It kept people sane where the flames of madness was all about. Far from being a hundred year old document nobody reads any more the constitution saved the ship.

The apology relates to an incorrect report claiming a payment was made to extend a meeting between Mr Poroshenko and US President Donald Trump.