Weird how Obama came into power with a commanding popular mandate and changed virtually nothing, while Trump was swept into power with a 3-million-vote loss and is actively restructuring state structures in ways that may prove irreversible.

— Adam Kotsko (@adamkotsko) July 16, 2019

The conventional wisdom (echoed by many, all morons) is that Obama was just a tiny little baby, who had no power at all as president, and that he could do nothing, that he was as a helpless little duckling lost on a vast sea of impossibility, constrained at every turn, hemmed in by a vast and implacable wall of political recalcitrance.

In reality, Obama just didn’t want to do the things that would’ve truly bettered the country. He didn’t want to oppose the banksters, or the Republicans. He didn’t want to help homeowners or the poor. Or at least he didn’t want it more than he cared about getting obscenely rich after leaving office.

And that’s the real truth of it right there.

Had my first exerience with paper straws in a DC bar today. Couldn’t believe it was real. Consequences were predictable and absurd. We suck the dregs of our civilization’s sanity through these mushy tubes

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) July 16, 2019

Going to research the decay rate of various plastics and perhaps buy a few thousand more plastic straws and other plastic utensils.

Can’t insulate against all liberal stupidity, but against some, sure.

More info Kevin Drum needs to read but won’t.

A perfect example of this is how the U.S. housing market has, once again, gotten way ahead of rents and wages.

That's why the U.S. housing boom since 2012 is another bubble. It's not identical to the mid-2000s, but it's another bubble variant.https://t.co/JvLMwMV6LK

— Jesse Colombo (@TheBubbleBubble) July 15, 2019

Kevin Drum puts in earplugs, slaps on some blinders, and declares confidently, “All is well!” Such is the purview of old white Boomers who fucked the planet.

In the identitarian future, there will be no need for actors. Directors will just cast people who have the same race, gender, religion, nationality, and physical ability as the character in the script. https://t.co/KitqafZjwA

— Will, Folk Devil of the Internet (@ClassFirster) July 14, 2019

I’m with Scarlett. The moronic beliefs that identity politics has produced actually harms representation and even more importantly, good sense. Actors are called “actors” for a reason, i.e., they act like other people. That is their entire job. Many of them are even great at it, far better than any substitute hire that checked all the identitarian boxes.

If You Stop Thinking Of Exercise As A Way To Lose Weight, You May Actually Enjoy It.

Exercise is a terrible way to lose weight. As the article notes, the human body is really quite efficient; exercising, even hard exercise, doesn’t really burn that many calories.

I’ve gained enough muscle in the past 9 months that I do think I burn a good bit more calories during the day, but I’ve also worked out far harder than most people would care to to get this far. For losing weight, calories in, calories out is where it’s at, and its far easier to deal with it at the “calories in” portion of that equation.

“Where the American Dream Goes to Die”: Changes in House Prices, Rents, and Incomes since 1960 by Region & Metro.

See the above for why Kevin Drum is a cockbag. It’s amazing people like him can make money writing pure hooey while good journalists get laid off every day.

My gender is grumpy.

hard to believe we catch close 1.5 million people at the southern border each year. imagine if we had no border control.

— James Marsh (@JamesMarsh79) June 24, 2019

The only thing worse than border control is no border control.

It’s surpassingly difficult to convince a good number of people that corporations do not give a fuck about them.

One in eight men (12%) say they could win a point in a game of tennis against 23 time grand slam winner Serena Williams https://t.co/q0eNBjn7Vu pic.twitter.com/3InBOWdYwh

— YouGov (@YouGov) July 12, 2019

Delusional. She’s better than something like 99.9999995% of men alive and 99.99999998% of women — meaning that a randomly selected male would have something like a 1 out of 2,000,000 chance of winning a point against her.

Many men are really dipshits.