Homosexuality may very well be adaptive should it exisit at regular rates within a population. Societies with specialized roles for individuals might benefit as a whole if individuals with certain traits (gender preference linked) are present.

Priests come to mind immediately. Imagine a group of individuals, selected by sexual preference, with extremely high social skills running an institution such as the church. This group is tasked with maintaining academic, cultural and artistic knowledge, as well as maintaining structure and theatrical rituals designed to keep the less cognitively gifted working and not having bastards willy nilly.

A proclivity for caddiness and gossip might very well provide for effective informal communication channels, information sharing and consensus building prior to the invention of things like the printing press, twitter and blogs. Once you have the printing press, perhaps the old ways fall to literate protestants, and homosexual traits become evolutionary artifacts, leaving us with Broadway musicals, fashion magazines et.c…

Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan.

Queen appears to be intergenerational. My 14 year old has been listing to Queen (and Supertramp) constantly for the past few months. Queen is not Led Zep, but it is cheeky and fun.

My observations on autism:

There are two components:
1) lack of empathy – two flavors
A completely cant detect others emotions
B can detect others emotions, but could care less (sociopath)

2) lack of social imagination – cant model social situations to predict outcomes (social IQ)

These traits are normally distributed. Not necessarily correlated

The most dangerous sociopaths are highly skilled at 1 and 2, are intelligent, and don’t care how others feel.

The most autistic of persons cant detect the emotional states of others, nor can they socially imagine how you might feel, or construct theories of cause and effect in social interactions. They have little awareness of others.

Blends of social perception, social imagination and intelligence vary. It is best to think of social perception as a spectrum of communication bandwidth that can vary widely.

Individuals with Limited social communications bandwidth excess channel noise (overstimulation) and complexity (too many nodes/individuals) degrades their ability to communicate. Working with the socially gifted can improve the apparent communication effectiveness of autistics in my observation.

Smart kids with low communication bandwidth and/or social imagination can use their high IQ to improve social effectiveness. Not sure which combo of traits or what thresholds and what therapies make for the best “recovered autistics”.

Highly recommend a book by Joseph Palombo. Believe it is called “nonverbal learning disabilities, a clinical perspective. ”

I prefer to use the judgement of locals when determining if area is safe. Having lived in Chicago for nearly 20 years, the litmus test for crime is the presence of steel security/screen doors on front entry ways.

Invariably, a heavy presence of these doors indicates you are in a black neighborhood. For an unknown reason the black residents have determined that these metal security doors are desireable.

What do blacks know that Mr. Krostof does not?

@ Harry Baldwin

Are you interested in the works of genius of 80 years old, or works that are result of having exceptional wisdom/knowledge amongst the elderly?

It seems that notable intellectual work of seniors would be the result of experience that can only be accumulated over time. You don’t have to be brilliant, you just have to age/decline much slower than average. Thus, like a competent scientist, the elderly have observed events over the long term, remembered them, hypothesized and drawn conclusions.

A true genius, like Steve Jobs exemplifies in his famous playboy interview seem to be able to develop abstract models of how the world works and predict what will happen far into the future without having ever witnessing the events before.

@shamu

No. Evidence is not welcome, or listened to by the Cathedral/orthodoxy at this time.

It it the first trickle through the dam in the sense that it now might now be OK for more researchers to do research on related topics, even in an attempt at disproval.

The fact that Steve Hsu was hired in his current position to me means that there are friends of the truth in large research institutions. They are hamstrung by enormous political problems due to the prevailing political culture at these institutions.

To remain relevant in the frontiers of scientific discovery (which is their reason for the existence of the modern research university) administrators have to find a way to make these inquiries not toxic to researchers careers and and grant proposals. The large number of participants (a large school of researchers) and the addition of a few whales like Pinker aid the cause.

If it does not work, the Chinese will be happy to take the bulk of the work from the West over the next 20 years.

@ anon

“Indeed. Although I don’t want to dump all HBDers into the militant atheist category. In my experience, most are, if not believers themselves, appreciative of the role and teachings of Christianity (and sometimes, more rarely, of Judaism.) But there is a loathsome subsection of HBDers (generally, not very bright people, or autistics) who decide that their discovery of HBD allows them to determine that all traditional guidelines of ethics and morality are naive and not applicable to ubermensch like themselves.”

That is interesting. As an atheist, I find that HBD and the science behind it has given me a new appreciation of religion’s role in the success of western civilization to the point that I have asked my wife that we resume attending church regularly. I have found no equivalent secular social algorithm/institution that encourages social norms and behaviors in support of family formation.

I do not believe that most Protestant churches are doing their job properly, and that is why they are sinking into decay irrelevance, but the Mormons get it, as well as the Amish and the Mennonites. You could argue the Jews get it too. The key it they provide guidance for their communities, and even short term support for families within reason, BUT individuals have to follow the rules or get shunned. Premarital sex, illegitimacy and what not unfairly burden the community and are unjust, dysgenic and cannot be tolerated.

As long as state sponsored social supports come without strings, these programs will be disasters.

If the price I have to pay is to pray to an imaginary God to force this morality and structure on the unwashed, the unthinking and the mystic, so be it.

The problem with throwing money at social problems is that it is dysgenic. I will agree that the current wages of the working class are too low in the US. They are depressed due to uncontrolled immigration of low skilled workers. The incomes of the corporate elite are overinflated as well due to elite cronyism in the governance of corporations due the incestuous social structure of interlocking boards of directors, elite college admissions and kleptocratic political dynasties such as the Daley clan in Chicago; one time windfalls by genius entrpreneurs such as Gates and Jobs, not so much.

This is a crisis in the morality system, and this imbalance cannot continue as we will eventually lack the resources to support the unproductive.

A system of morality in a culture provides rules to determine the obligations individuals have to each other, their family, clan and society as a whole. These moral socio/cultural systems evolved in tandem with the genome of each population. The best socio/genetic proposals that were best suited to their environments conferred the highest level of fitness to that group.

As an example, a moral/behavioral meme in the Inuit that encouraged the elderly to go wander out to an ice floe once they could no longer “chew the fat” improved the fitness of their descendants by reducing the demands for elder care. This allowed resources to be used to support a new generation.

An English village that suppressed outwardly sexual behavior, making it taboo, and encouraged marriage only after a male had become successful enough to support a wife and children (fitness in a market economy) would discourage the unfit from reproducing.

The unprecendented increase in productivity and mobility has created an incredible mismatch between those that reproduce and those that actually have the fitness to make the wheels of the modern technological world turn, and thus support and nurture their offspring. A traditional method to resolve this type of imbalance had been war, and the ebbing of civilization, which decreases the population so that resouces again exceed the requirements of the population, and new socio/genetic proposals may develop. Our degradation of the environment, and our ability to annihilate ourselves with modern weapons may yet provide an opportunity for the ultimate Malthusian reset.

Given what we now know about the human genome, our nature and the biological laws of evolution, the question is what to do? If the failure of communism can teach us anything, it is that we cannot predict what behaviors and genes will be the best for “fitness” in the future. I think in this way, the free market has much to offer, and is perhaps indispensable for a complex technically driven society. It sets a price on the value of one’s labor based on the opinions and desires of the whole society. It is in a sense an organic form of the “Good Judgement Project”.

Our moral system needs to evolve to develop rules by which market valuations of fitness have much more influence determining who reproduces, albeit in a humane fashion.

We cannot, however continue to support policies that don’t discourage out of wedlock births, and childrearing paid for by people other than the ones making the babies.

This will require a rethinking of the social contract on many levels of the society; familial, religious, educational and governmental.

I have no idea of how this social contract might look, but are a great many on this board who have tremendous intellectual gifts. Perhaps thinking about what this world might look like with an “evolution friendly” social contract would be time well spent.

Mike Sadler had several beautiful punts during MSU v. Nebraska last night. Pinned the Cornhuskers inside the 5 yard line twice. Probably made the difference in what ended up being a close game. He had a nice backspin and and unusual technique on one of the punts. Not as fancy as UCLAs punter, but you may be right that there are many defensive yards to be gained by innovating in Div 1 football in the punting game.

Jamaica announced no flights to west Africa recently.

The Koreans KAL cancelled their Kenyan service in August!

No fear of not being PC in Korea.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes the Cathedral to accept that Ebola is the first truly existential threat to the US this century, and begin appropriate travel restrictions and quarantine procedures.

The irony is that disease may turn public opinion solidly against open borders and thus make the political class enforce immigration laws.

I believe ASD is best thought of as a social impairment. Smart kids (kids of smart guys like you) that end up on the spectrum are often diagnosed with High Functioning Autism or what the DSM may still refer to PDDNOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified). These kids are quirky, socially awkward, but can often find a place in the world for themselves as adults. They grow up, get educated and get jobs. They just might be unusually interested in the behavior of ants, or the impact of alleles on human traits.

Early diagnosis, early intervention (money helps) and good parenting make all the difference in the world.

I have found having children, even though they are flawed, to be one of the more rewarding things I have done in my life.

That being said, all reproduction is a crap shoot.

In the end, they wont live, but then again who does?

You forgot that all the banks and hedge funds need to sell the housing that they took possession of during the first housing crash. They want to monetize those assets, get them off their balance sheet and sell the bad loans, transferring the risk back to the federal government (the public) while booking profits. Then of course they can buy the houses back again after the next crash.

Also they don’t like being landlords. It is hard to make money. The property managers they have to hire get a slice of the cash stream from the tenants. Tenants don’t pay etc. It’s too much like a real business (work and risk) versus the typical racket they like to run.

Of course we are. Based on this morning’s NYT, they are gearing up to start bombing Al-Assad AND ISIS. I guess the administration’s goal is to just kill everyone in Syria. It’s a new variation of the old international relations rule to avoid getting involved in another country’s civil war. If you kill everyone, you can never be accused of being on the losing side like Vietnam..

How about a similar analysis in higher education? But make it all data. Over time, compare percentage of students attending, real wages , cost per student, subject matter taught, degrees granted. Etc. It would be horrifying.

Heard John Cacioppo from U of C speak last night. His research appears to confirm measureable negative physiological, neurological and mortality impacts with perceived social isolation ie. loneliness in longitudinal studies. I would say in this instance the NYT writer’s assertions are not inconsistent with these findings, although we have Ph.d’s at U of C to tease out cause from correlation, something journalists seem unable to comprehend.

Funny though that the best solution for this appears to be a healthy marriage and good relationships with family and friends. Odd that traditional social structures might be best for human health and happiness. I can’t imagine how that came to be. No coincidence too that an emotive Italian would be able to pick up on this relationship versus a Finlander. Once again my prejudices get me in trouble. There is a reason those Italian boys stay close to mama. Everybody gets to live longer!

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cacioppo

I was at the Rose Bowl last year and nearly got crushed in the crowd. The portals are so long and narrow that they have people holding signs in the air to stop entry into the portals until the tunnels periodically clear. Lovely venue once you get in, but it could get dangerous quickly with a rowdy crowd that has been drinking.

10 years ago, when my eldest son was diagnosed with PPD-NOS (Autism Light with a 150-160 IQ), I posted info on the old GNXP site that I had observed seizures, social regression and other symptoms immediately after a he was given a large batch of shared vial, thimerisol containing vaccines. I was booed off the board at the time.

I had tests done that revealed anomalies in both mitochondrial metabolites as well as extremely high titers for Measles. The Dr. at the time said the levels were what one might expect for a full blown case of measles, not from a vaccination.

No doubt there are genetics involved, but because of what I observed, I delayed vaccinating my second child. I believe vaccines as a rule are good and I have had vaccines administered slowly after he reached 10 years old. The younger boy has his quirks, but no autism.

Proof – No. What do I care. I only have one chance to get this right. Something you (Razib) might understand now that you may be having children. I have started vaccinating once my child has grown some and has a more developed immune system out of concern for my child’s health and the community.

The CDC tells people that if they have experienced an adverse reaction such as seizures from a vaccine that subsequent boosters should be avoided. I believe that this supports using caution when vaccinating genetically similar siblings as well. I have had Doctors counsel me informally that this is the right choice, but they are legally required to recommend vaccinations, and have had me sign forms to acknowledge this was the advice that I was given.

Do vaccines cause autism? As a sole cause – I would say no. The world, however, is complex. Do lots of vaccines, administered in a short period of time to babies and toddlers that have a genetic predisposition to communication disorders diminish social abilities? I am inclined to find this is an interesting and perhaps correct hypothesis based on my experience. I doubt that we will ever find out because there may not be any individuals with these vulnerable genotypes left after a few more generations, given the mandatory vaccination regime as currently enforced by the CDC, the medical establishment and the schools.

That being said – I have been a regular GNXP/Razib reader for 10+ years. I have learned much over the years – Thanks.

I have to laugh while agreeing with you. The one point my old “social activist” friend made was that when he was in college during the late 60’s/early 70’s, attending any kind of protest for him almost invariably ended with the added benefit of him getting laid.

Yes. They are going to continue to encourage Ferguson protests to distract the people from the fact that Obama is violating the Constitution by not enforcing immigration laws while he simutaneously tries to start a war in Ukraine with his warmongering GOP friends as we send more “advisors” to Iraq and Afganistan.

In Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”, he was very deliberate and detailed regarding the striking differences in character and behavior he found in the peoples of the Middle East. There were people and tribes he felt that could be trusted, and that were great warriors, as well as those that were ineffective and duplicitous. Most were Muslim, and Lawrence used this information as a factor when determining what people England should have in lasting alliances when the borders of the ME were being drawn up. This has not been done well by our government in recent years, perhaps due to the PC ideology in the US, and we have paid dearly.

Sure he can be a jerk. I can live with his grumpiness and arrogance because he is thoughtful and has innovative ideas based on data and the scientific method.

I am so sick and tired of today’s journalists that can’t even differentiate between correlation and causation.

Razib, Sailer and their ilk are a breath of fresh air.

What do you suppose is the average intelligence of the readers on this blog?

Income is primarily earned by one’s labor. A few make significant income from dividends. The truly rich make most of their money from capital gains on investments, which I don’t believe is captured here. Of course, a prudent investor would live off the income, letting the capital gains accrue in a trust to be passed on to later generations, while minimizing taxes.

20MM USD worth of shares with a 2% annual dividend yields 400k a year. Now realize that the nominal value of that investment has likely doubled since the 2008 crash. The nominal dividend yield has dropped, but your nut has doubled due to QE frothing up share values. Plus you have the benefit of no/low inflation. The Federal Reserve has done you a great service. Too bad the little people are making less. Twas ever thus.

As a child in the rust belt, I grew up watching smoke and flames spew forth from the big three foundry next door. There were well paying jobs if you wanted to work. No glory, but you could raise a family

I remember arguing with upper middle class law students during the Clinton years that NAFTA would be a complete disaster for working people. Perhaps you can remember that by now, all the UAW members were going to become knowledge workers in our brave new world order.

Well, as you might guess, the plant is long gone. Many of the children of the UAW workers got college degrees and are now working as baristas if they are lucky.

It is déjà vu (all over again, of course) as I argue with nice ladies at the country club that amnesty, and the flood of H1-b immigrants will limit their children’s opportunities, but they can’t seem to make the connections.

I have had friends that were physicists and engineers that were able to switch to teaching or programming quant trading algorithms. These are clearly examples of high IQ.

But there are real mechanical and spatial abilities that are not easily taught even when the individual is quite intelligent. The example comes to mine of a relative that was a fine musician, a fantastic writer and a nationally known music critic. He was incapable of hooking up his stereo and speakers, and I had to do it for him.

Moreover, as in any profession, there are extreme outliers in terms of ability. For instance, some like to pretend that once trained, a skilled electrician is interchangeable with another. There are trades people that stand head and shoulders above their peers due to innate ability.

As for free traders, most support the position that they feel will benefit them individually. I was in Janesville Wisconsin a few years ago, and was lamenting the closing of the GM plant and how it had hurt the town to a local resident. He would have none of it because he was a farmer and had benefitted from increased exports to Mexico due to NAFTA. I don’t think most people are able, much less willing to imagine the complete implications of a policy change beyond their own narrow self-interest.

The elimination of the draft was the biggest blow to the anti-war movement.

Bring back the draft for both young men and women and these children and their parents would be in the street burning cars the next morning.

This is interesting. Gentrification is a normal part of the life cycle of neighborhoods. The question is in what cities is gentrification outpacing normal decay. Are we really seeing a flight back from suburbia, or are the elite and the childless the only ones moving back to the city?

Knowing this is a bit more complex because this lifecycle takes 50 to 100 years. Moreover, policy, such as freeway building, home loans to those lacking income and busing students altered the normal cycle of neighborhoods. Massive illegal immigration and NAFTA deindustrialization has also impacted the cycle.

Alsip median income per family is 47.9k per wiki. Not solid middle but not quite lower class. 81% white working class (what Ferguson Mo probably used to be like), which is why they are trying to colonize it.

You are thinking of towns like Robbins, Markham and Harvey.

Me thinks you need to come on down for an italian beef at Portillos on South Cicero and take a look around. If you drive into Robbins, you can tell the difference.

You were not hanging out with the right kids at Forest Hills, or wast it East Great Falls?

Your assumption is correct having worked in both refineries and steel mills. Pre-employment tests are far more rigorous for refineries. The majority of the non-maintenance process operating personnel in refineries work behind massive touch screen displays. Most valves, combustion and process flows are nearly all remotely actuated. Operators climb the towers on rounds to visually check for problems and to check if gauges and instrumentation are operating correctly; the valves, pumps and compressors are operated by touching screens.

Many steel mill processes are computer controlled too, but there are huge numbers of tasks that such as material handling (cranes, forklifts and rail ) and the regular repair of consumables like rolling mill rolls and refractory lined vessels that require less abstract reasoning.

Refining in texas is only part of the story. Petroleum exploration work requires complex 3D modeling technologies and computing; oil production itself requires lots of engineering talent. All those people are are on the far right of the curve.

Maybe Catholic education does a better job getting the best out of average students. These schools maintain a much more orderly and rigorous learning environment than public schools with higher rates of NAM’s.

Large presence of east coasters especially Ashkenazi Jews at the University of Michigan, a classic failsafe for those spurned by the Ivies. Texas public universities also automatically admit 10% of all high school students in response to affirmative action ban.

The problem with US foreign policy is that Mearsheimer and Walt were right: US policy has been hijacked by the AIPAC/Neocon/Zionist cabal. Thus Bibi will be addressing the US House of represntatives as Boehner tries to prove the establishment GOP are more loyal to their paymasters than the DEMS.

Viewed through the prism of these groups’ interests, US Policy makes complete sense. The media propaganda machine makes no sense because at this point, it has zero conmection with the traditional american polity or its interests.

Now I believe that foreign policy has been an extension of the fantasies we engage in regarding domestic policy.

I agree that this is a component of US policy. All foreign policy has to consider the political implications when viewed from within the country in question. Older themes such as “manifest destiny”, “remember the Maine”, “arsenal of democracy” , “the domino theory”, “american exceptionalism”, “shining city on a hill” and “weapons of mass destruction” were spins and justification put on external foreign policies for internal consumption. They don’t necessarily have anything to do with the true reason for the policy, just a method to confuse or guide the masses. Behind this smokescreen exists the true purposes of policy, and the interests of those that will benefit.

Notice though that the spin has increasingly become more disconnected from the purpose of the policy.

Harassing Putin about gay and transgendered rights is merely rhetoric to distract the polity, and get them angry at big bad Vlad. Someone (Nuland and others in the State Department) hoped to benefit somebody’s interests by fostering a coup in Ukraine. Who was to benefit, and how they would benefit as a result of the policy is open to speculation.

The neocons have been pushing US policy towards belligerent action in Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria, Ukraine and other countries for the past ten to fifteen years. Why and for whom? It clearly is not in the interest of the average US citizen.

Russia has a large number of thermonuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them anywhere on the planet. Thus, foreign policy blunders have the potential to become global scale black swan events.

Voters here are much more astute, preferring the friendly smiley sort, the type who are tall, have full heads of hair and look photogenic with makeup on.

Ahh.. thanks to womens’ suffrage. The male equivalent of this phenomenon being Sarah Palin. One of many strategies to take advantage of the left half of the bell curve.

Fortunately there is no danger of this happening with Hillary Clinton.

Avoiding nuclear holocaust is not a realistic argument for abandoning eastern Europe to the Russians.

What is the strategic interest of the United States in the Crimea and Ukraine? Particularly, how will a bellicose US foreign policy in Ukraine benefit the average taxpaying stiff?

I take no moral stance that my country owes Eastern Europe anything. I believe US policy should be in support and in the interests of my country’s citizens.

You don’t need to convince me that we are fortunate to have not yet had had an accidental launch during peacetime.

My point is that shooting wars take on an unpredictable life of their own, regardless of the intentions of the parties. This is a problem when each country has many large bombs on a hair-trigger. Maybe black swan is the wrong descriptor.

Punishing misbehavior such as invading foreign countries and unilaterally changing borders if probably good because such misbehavior should not occur. If borders can be changed on a whim why shouldn’t California once its Mexican population achieves dominant demographic status pull a Crimea?

The United States should not be the world’s policeman. The U.S. has often tried to justify policies as promoting democracy and human rights and enforcing international law but these are hollow arguments to obscure the true objectives. Should Russia invade California, much like the soft invasion Mexico is conducting now, it would be in the US interests to repel that invasion. That we are not using the military to repel the current Mexican invasion is a travesty.

Ukraine voluntarily gave up its huge nuke stockpile in exchange for assurances that its territory would not be violated. Now, its territory has been violated. This sends a message to everyone else about the value of Western promises regarding no nukes. It’s probably in US strategic interests for there to be fewer not more countries with nukes.

Seems like it was a mistake for Ukraine. You can add Ukraine to the list of trusting saps including Saddam Hussein, Polpot and innumerable native american tribes. It appears the Iranians and the North Koreans know better than to trust the US.

Also, expansion of Euro-civilization (of which America is a part) is good for all of Euro-civilization. Would we had been better off if the entire Continent had been abandoned to Communism? Expansion of western political and social structures by taking in other Western peoples (not by imperialism and taking in non-Europeans) is good for the West. Western and Central Ukrainians aren’t Turks or Algerians, they are Westerners too, trying to return home. Furthermore, they are socially and politically conservative Westerners, like Poles. Their inclusion will make the West larger and more traditional. A good thing for traditionalist westerners everywhere, wouldn’t you say?

Having good relations between the US, Russia and Ukraine would be in the interest of average citizens. That was not the goal of US policy in Ukraine. It was to make Ukraine a vassal of the US financial system and deny Russia the benefits and security it enjoyed from having Ukraine closely integrated with its economy.

As for traditional western culture, the US seems hellbent on destroying traditional western institutions such as marriage, religion , freedom of expression, birthright citizenship and the right to privacy.

So religion just popped up when humans shifted from a hunter gatherer based social organization to a stratified, larger more complex agriculturally based organization?

Is religion a social artifact from the old Neolithic structures, or a new adaptation?

If you accept that a society is bio-cultural algorithm of genes and learned behaviors, and it constitutes one of many possible solutions to group survival in a given environment; how does religion as a component of this new social organization promote the fitness of the group? Does it mitigate (as a work around) genetically determined social traits that were a better fit in the old bio-cultural algorithm?

We lived in small hunter gatherer bands for thousands of years. No doubt we were under selection for genetic traits and learned social behaviors (culture) that helped us survive in those groups.

I would suggest that religion improved the fitness of societies. It was a method for humans to purposely influence patterns of collective behavior of much larger groups, without wasting as much energy on coercion. It would have been wildly more efficient to replace the external force of the club with internal restraints of guilt in the occident and shame in the peoples of the orient. Moreover, it allowed scalability in human organization. When done right, smaller tribal structures without the direction and coordination of the new religious superstructure with its larger scale would not have had a chance.

Genetic technology appears to offer a similar opportunity for humans to engineer the genome like we have done with social organization using politics and religion. No wonder eugenics and it’s successor genetic engineering are taboo subjects for polite dinner conversation.

The old bio-social algorithm of the small hunter gatherer organization still exists in practice on a very limited basis, but I believe the genes are still there, although under selection pressure AND drift because our social and technological innovation have so radically changed the environment as experienced by the individual human organism.

Many of the old traits, and in fact the physical structures still remain. The brain structure retains and has integrated the old hardware (medulla, amygdala etc) with the new hardware (big prefrontal cortex).

Religion helps the individual live with these cultural and physical dualities, which are both artifacts and components of various bio-social algorithms..

So tonight, I am going to a church social function to be with my tribe. It is not too large, so I will have the comfort of knowing nearly everyone. I will share my food with them and they will share theirs with me. We will be a community in the most primal of ways, and as the fire dies, and the embers glow, my wife, my children and I will go to our home and our dog.

I will pray to a god my prefrontal cortex does not believe in, the child in my lower brain will be comforted, the raging fearful terror that lives with him will be calmed, and I will sleep peacefully.

I have gotten over my overt atheism, not because God has come to me in a dream, but because it serves no constructive purpose. The current industrialized secular culture in the West does not seem to be working out so well in combination with the collective occidental genome. Other peoples seem to be performing better, if population growth is the true measure of fitness, than the West without its God.

It appears that Islam an Orthodox Judaism understand this. Russia appears to have relearned the lesson to some degree. China and the West, who knows? May the best algorithm win.

Concise – agree.

It is extremely useful because out here amongst the commoners, the interplay of a culture and its genome with the environment, and thus fitness is not understood. If it can be understood, it is often rejected.

If we ever hope to have better policy, this relationship needs to be more accessible, implicit in the nomenclature, and widespread.

If there is a concise way of explaining it, I am all ears, because I am struggling.

This must be why I am getting rid of my Big Ten football season tickets on the 50 yard line after having them for 18 years.

Assuming that the multiple traits that are required for good executive function (working memory, attention, initiative etc. ) are somewhat independent of each other and IQ , AND that the incidence of these traits are normally distributed on the curve like IQ, hitting on all of them at 90th percentile or higher would be exceedingly rare.

This is why so few people are suitable to be law partners or investment bankers.

Peoria happens to be the district of Aaron Schock, the gay member of the U.S. House of Representatives, now embroiled in scandal for among other things, his lavish decorating of his office in Downton Abbey style.

Peoria ain’t what used to be.

I had the pleasure of needing emergency medical care on a weekend in Hazard County Kentucky Baptist Hospital. The ER was chock full of emphysema sufferers on Oxygen in every room and in the hallways. The ER doc said it happened every Friday night. He said the rates of smoking and black lung is extremely high and after eating a large meal, scores of sufferers end up in the ER unable to breath.

The population was inactive, liked their bacon, and Colonel Sanders (which started down the street). Smoking and coal mining did the rest.

As distasteful as all this has become, Isn’t it time for all of us to BOYCOTT THE CIRCUS.

Get rid of your tickets, quit attending college and professional sports, and cut your cable to prevent ESPN and other college networks from invading your home.

Get a hobby, play golf or tennis, go fly fishing or hunting and quit being a jock sniffer. Why pay money to support a culture that abhors you and is undermining your children’s future.

NFL franchises have staff and spend a great deal of time providing guidance to players regarding long term financial planning and off field behavior. I believe that the players union is all over this as well.

Some players learn and benefit from the advice, others not so much. Many players take advice from those they knew prior to the NFL. Player agents have been known to solicit their clients with questionable investment opportunities.

You can bet these pinhookers are crawling all over the place at the NFL draft today to take advantage of the inexperienced and cognitively challenged.

Sure the league could do it, but it has to be a priority of the players association and the owners, and then be negotiated as part of the contract. Free agency does not help because ultimately it lowers the comp of the high dollar players, so they are less likely to support deferred compensation.

Plus again, it requires impulse control, and forward thinking that is not so prevalent in 20 year olds.

Usually this means he is working on the blog entry. Lot’s of curious, but diffuse media activity regarding Garland that needs to be synthesized. Sailer needs an intern or two to chase leads.

I don’t read the UNZ review for news, but I do read it to help me decide what to think about it.

If you could get John Mearsheimer from U of C as a regular contributor, that would be great.

Same old schmear, different day. Pathetic.

Communities such as Rotherham are little more than one-party state-within-a-states where careers are made and broken based upon perceived loyalty to local leaders rather than the so-called rule of law.

Surely you are confused and are talking about state and local politics in Chicago.

Scots of faith, ability and motivation left Scotland to engineer and build the canals, ships and steel mills of the world. It’s just like the competent hardworking Greeks, they left Greece to run the worlds diners to insure you could get quick breakfast. Both have improved the world. They problem is what was left behind in Scotland and Greece. This insight was explained to me by a greek friend that is a businessman.

There are plenty of good public schools in Chicago, especially since the economic downturn has led affluent north side whites to pull their kids from private school and collectively enroll them in now majority white public magnet schools. The Waters school district in the Lincoln Square area is excellent. Lane Tech High School is rated 6th in the state of Illinois.

The selective enrollment elementary schools in Chicago Public Schools are OK, but I do not believe they are great. Having moved from the city to a north shore suburb, my kid went from a gifted magnet elementary that had test scores in the top five state wide with mostly A’s, yet required math tutoring for a year to catch up with the suburban kids in accelerated math.

Additionally, the extracurricular opportunities do not come close to what is available in high quality suburban schools such as orchestra, band, art, music education and drama, as well as athletics. This is of course about the money, maybe culture as well. Chicago Public Schools spend a huge sum providing free breakfast and lunch, and lord knows where the rest of the money goes, but given that the current superintendent is on leave during an investigation of no-bid contracts, one can guess.

Don’t get me wrong, if you live in the city, selective enrollment programs are head and shoulders above most neighborhood schools (with a few exceptions); compared to Latin, Lab and the British School – not so much. Some of the selective enrollment High schools are quite good, but this is primarily because of the extreme selectivity of admissions. The reality though is that the vast majority of kids can’t get in, so where does that leave parents. Well off whites can afford to try their luck in the city because ultimately, they can afford private or east coast prep if junior can’t get into Northside or Payton. (And yes, Lane is good and improving, but not quite Payton yet).

Hmm. Increasing the labor supply lowers wages. How novel.

Could somebody please notify the Illinois State Assembly and the Chicago City Council that this new and amazing relationship might mean they should revoke Chicago’s sanctuary city status prior to raising the minimum wage.

One wait! Didn’t Nobel Prize winning Economist Paul Samuelson say this in 1964?

Note to Sen. Dick Durbin et al that lowering immigration will help raise poor people’s income

Whenever this conversation on race starts, besides policy implications, it somehow needs to end with a Supreme Court decision that negates, or at least modifies the adverse impact ruling in Griggs v. Duke Power in order to allow IQ to be used in evaluating job candidates.

The current case law allows for bona fide occupational qualifications in defense of a finding of adverse impact. Employment tests can be validated. It would be nice to have an employer with some balls try to use minimum IQ required as a defense in a finding of adverse impact.

Alfalfa is an interesting crop. It is desireable because it grows year round in California, and can grow for many seasons before being reseeded. Most of it is used for dairy production, and it contains relatively high levels of protein compared to grasses that are used for hay.

It also hits a sweet spot because it’s production is not terribly labor intensive. One man, a tractor and a few implements is all you need to bring in a hay crop. Moreover, irrigated alfalfa in an arid climate does not suffer from the biggest problem confronting hay production (besides insects), and that is rain when you have cut a field to dry. Rain delays baling, can at a minimum reduce the quality of the hay or destroy the cutting.

A libertarian would say that alfalfa production is high because dairy production is subsidized by the government. This is similar to the relationship between ethanol and corn in the Midwest.

Most agricultural policies are concerned with crops that are relatively capital intensive, vs labor intensive. When you look at sugar and corn/ethanol, dairy and others, you get into a web of highly concentrated industrial concerns, that are very politically active in pursuit of industry protection and favorable trade deals.

My understanding of this crystallized while I was at a wedding reception at a country club in Janesville Wi. I was chatting with a prosperous farmer about the recent closing of the GM Janesville assembly and the negative impact it was having on the community. He and I both agreed that NAFTA had been part of the reason for the decline, yet he was all for NAFTA, as was his fellow club member congressman Paul Ryan because it had opened up export markets for agriculture.

This helped me to understand that the coalition that has enacted NAFTA and other trade deals was the monied finance class including cheap importers like Walmart, and the capital and land owners of agribusiness. The battle between the lords against the commoners continues on as it did in England 500 years ago. California’s water problem is rooted in this power imbalance and results in there being insufficient water for municipalities. Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink. This is a strange outcome of private rights choking off water even though it was the government that built the water projects.

The nation’s rising income inequality is also partially caused by the trade and immigration policies enacted due to the influence of these groups.

I saw a great piece on how that alfalfa is not used here in the US, but sent to China/Asia on ships that would otherwise be empty on the return trip. So don’t go digging into campaign

I did not realize they were shipping huge quantities of alfafa to Asia. So really, this is more like the landlords shipping out food from Ireland during the potato famine!

Just declare the owners of land over the aquifer the collective owners of the milkshake. Apportion shares in the new water-rights venture according to square footage above aquifer boundaries. Let the market bid for the right to pump x water and use the income to pay dividends.

This may be OK for the aquifer, but most of California water is from river diversions. The best solution is to tax irrigated agricultural production or water usage at a level until it becomes more profitable for the industry to sell water than grow crops. The trick is how to repeal or reduce the tax after the drought is over, although water authorities might not buy water at any once their current alloted supply becomes available.

NAFTA gets beat up a lot around here. Just curious, do you know what countries it involved and what it actually did (without looking it up)?

Yes..

Don’t believe Dick Uihlein is Jewish.

I saw a Nobel prize winner looking at the books on that table once.

If you go down to Powell’s Bookstore in Hyde Park, you can see them every day.

In the words of John L. Lewis, Unions want MORE. I believe Lewis wrote it in capital letters to emphasize this. Unions acquire members and collect dues in return for MORE. Wages are a mandatory subject of bargaining, and having them pegged at $15 an hour limits the usefulness of organized labor.

I too am worried about low wages, but believe that a minimum wage increase is the wrong way to go about raising income. Workers at all levels have had their earning power eroded by illegal immigration. Surely you understand that increasing the supply of labor lowers the price that workers can command? Offshoring work, loosening trade restrictions and technological change has also reduced demand for labor and further weakened workers market power.

Moreover, the economy suffers from lack of demand. Workers need more money, and they need to spend those dollars. Billions of dollars in wages earned in the US by immigrants are sent as remittances back home, and immigrants are willing to live crowded into substandard housing. This severely limits the impact that economic stimulus such as increased government spending or a minimum wage increase might have to promote domestic growth.

Immigration, trade and technology have taken a terrible toll on the unskilled, less able and less bright amongst us. Technological change will not stop, but immigration and trade are policy decisions that have been made in favor of the wealthy and non-citizens, with immigration enforcement ignored, contrary to the law of the land.

It would interesting to see the results of these studies to see the relationship between young children that live through a divorce and their life outcomes as adults.

There is no doubt though that the traits of parents, notwithstanding marital status impact life outcomes of children.

I jokingly tell my neighbor that I judge how well our neighbors’ households are functioning based on how quickly each household brings their trash can back from the curb after it is collected. Every house has an occaisional time when the trash can is left out for an extended time, but the married families I perceive as having problems leave the trash can at the curb for over 24 hours far more frequently than those households of married coulples that seem to have it together.

The single divorcee with kids invariably leave the can out for an extended period of time, while the young widow with children manages to get her trash can off the curb promptly. I need a bigger sample size if I wanted to do more than amuse myself here! The widow, luckily has means and does not need to work, yet the divorcee does and this gets me to my final point.

Perhaps outcomes for children are negatively impacts from divorce during childhood, but regardless most families with lesser means are impacted in a negative way economically when households break apart. No doubt this causes demands on supports provided by government, and thus as a taxpayer, it seems reducing divorce rates (or bad matches and their subsequent offspring) is in my interest. Religion may very well be the most effective institution for doing this.

You can’t export well paying, low skill jobs to China and Mexico while loosening immigration and maintain the incomes of people on the lower half of the bell curve..

1990
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1990

1994
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement

Gee, why might the income gap have widened in 1990?

No.

Many clubs make an appeal at the end of the year from all members to contribute to what used to be known as a Christmas, now end of year bonus for the house staff. Every board member knows if you are a cheapskate using this method.

How you tip indicates your view your relationship with your social inferiors. Tipwell and you believe your status obliges you to serve society as part and parcel of your social position. It is required service for the cultured well-to-do to spend some time giving away money on the local charity circuit and appearing in the society glossy mags each year.

Cultures that believe their inferiors exist purely to benefit them do not tip well. Let his be lesson on who you decide to work and vote for.

Oh my, how will I get my new iPhone and running shoes once the blockade is in place!

Nothing new about serial killers and crazies. Surely you have read about the serial killer from the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago that murdered young women during the Columbian Exhibition? It was detailed in the book “Devil in White City”. There was also a nut in Bath Michigan that blew up a school in 1927.

How do you propose to enlighten the left half of the bell curve so that they might live well and not have them and their children be a burden on the rest of society? You must admit nearly 50 years of the “Great Society” programs have been a disaster.

On the Southside of Chicago, Jesse Jackson’s small neighborhood of Jackson Park Highlands has employed private security for years. Additionally, near the UofC, in the neighborhood of Kenwood (where Obama owns a home) the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan owns a home and garage/bunkhouse across the street that was allegedly connected by a tunnel. Supposedly, his Nation of Islam body guards stayed in the bunkhouse/garage to provide protection. There were reports of the secret service and reporters having a slight misunderstanding with Farrakans forces when Obama first was elected.

Oak Park River Forest HS, while integrated, has a pronounced bi-modal distribution on standardized tests. This is much to the consternation of school administrators and the town’s liberal citizens.

http://iirc.niu.edu/Classic/School.aspx?source=PSAE&source2=PSAEResults&schoolID=060162000130001&level=S

Airport services are provided by government contractors. Preferences are given to minority and female owned businesses, and they are required to hire a minimum number of minority and female employees.

It is like the U.S. Post Office.

Homophobic = Not being afraid of homosexuals – afraid of being identified as a homosexual.

As a former Chicagoan, I am not a great fan of Frank Gearhy (Pritzker Pavillion)or Bertrand Goldberg (Marina City , River City and Prentiss Women’s. Hospital). They all are interesting from a theoretical perspective, and have lots of fine curves. They fail to inspire, and they are very uncomfortable structures to be in or around. Additionally, excepting the Pavillion, they are not as well suited to their purposes as they might be because Goldberg put his theoretical flight of fancy (form ) above the intended function of the structure. It is as if the designers mind was unable make a sensible transition when applying the theoretical to the physical world, and the human sense of asthetic. As a final point, all of the structures completely reject any connection with what we have learned are good first principals of design and asthetics in 1500 years of Western Civilization. Whether this has anything to do with the architects being Jewish, or just living in the 20th century is for minds greater than mine.

An example of a newer building that hits the sweet spot is the NBC tower by Adrian Smith. It pays homage to its Art Deco big brother Rockefeller Center and its media neighbor Tribune Tower.

In a Sanders candidacy, the Democratic nominee for VP will be a big deal..

Finding a mate and having children is a test of fitness. Not having completed that task by a certain point in life indicates that there might be problems with the individual. People with more problems are more unhappy. It is axiomatic if they are not crazy.

The most interesting question about Trump to me is the question “is he a Judas Goat” leading the the last of the true American conservatives to slaughter. To me this question means is he really an establishment guy being sent by the same old folks (list your hated group here – Wall Street, GOP, Chamber of Commerce, AIPAC, the Illuminati, Cathedral whatever). Once ensconced, we will get the same old Fed backed empire of aggression and slow liberal destruction of a once great nation.

It seems he Is allied with the wealthy Zionist side of the Jewish electorate. I say this because of his vocal support for US military action in the Middle East (seizing the oil fields to deprive ISIS of funds). This Middle East position is a clear stake in the ground. Certainly as a developer in Manhattan, he must have been getting along well with plenty of the monied New York Jews all along. What I find interesting is that his stance on immigration appears to have him throwing the more liberal social justice warriors of the Jewish electorate under the bus.

Perhaps the events in Ferguson and Baltimore, Obama’s Iran deal and the general tenor amongst the now angry white electorate have convinced the powers that be that the actions of the SJWs in support of radical African American causes and Amnesty Inc. are no longer winning propositions. Maybe somebody has realized the destruction of the country is not in anyone’s best interest. One can only hope.

Have you ever considered that without a certain rate of growth, capital might not be able to charge enough to generate true “economic rent” in the classical economic sense? Things like cheap money, war, immigration and technological change with intellectual property protection are some of the policies that come to mind that might “create wealth”, by accelerating growth above some minimum level that would then generate profit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent

Perhaps the wealthy can’t become relatively wealthier, nor can the more modestly situated accrue wealth on a grand scale without purposely overstimulating the economy. It might explain the push for what are ultimately unsustainable policies on a macro scale by the powerful in pursuit their individual interests (profit).

Should Trump actually win the Presidency, the real challenge will be forging coalitions with Congress. Most of them are owned by special interests. He would be wise to begin picking allies to ride on his coattails in congressional elections. Doing this work now will help him govern later.

In Wolfe’s “Man In Full”, Charlie Crocker was a real estate developer facing bankruptcy.

It’s not the price of the jeans. Your just getting older and don’t give a damn what anybody thinks.

Speaking of old, when I was a kid, all the old men would mow their lawns wearing shorts and black socks. The kids wouldn’t be caught dead in anything but tube socks. Now I’m mowing the lawn in tube socks, and my kid with black socks snickers at me. From now on, he can mow the lawn, and that will solve that problem. As an added plus, he can do some of the work Americans supposedly won’t do.

What are a few chicken parts
compared to Chicago’s west side.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-garfield-park-childs-foot-20150905-story.html

The Feds are fairly specific about what they require to complete an I9 form.

http://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/acceptable-documentshttp://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/acceptable-documents

Potential employees that are not legally authorized to work in the U.S. regularly falsify these documents. The harassment of employers by the U.S. Government seeks to prevent a patriotic employer from doing due diligence when they know the applicant is providing fake social security documents. If employers can ask questions, the house of cards collapses.

This procedure is the single most important component of immigration reform. A thousand times more important than any fence. You need it to cut the blood supply to the tumor, and e-verify is the knife.

That is why the Feds are giving this employer trouble. They are ramping up for the fight over this administrative procedure. This is where the war in the trenches will be won or lost. People without jobs self-deport and the whole narrative collapses.

Regarding the impact of crime on gentrification, HUD’s strategy is to affirmatively move the criminal element to the suburbs.

As for the crime wave being a blip, in Chicago’s gentrified Wrigleyville/boystown, police protection is down due to intractable budgetary problems and crime is up. See: http://www.cwbchicago.com. Not sure what the future holds for these areas.

So why can’t Germans make decent electrical systems in automobiles? My experience with electrical systems in German made tractors is dismal as well, yet you can’t find an easier Diesel engine to repair than a Deutz air cooled tractor engine.

Using German man/machine interfaces on their electronics often remind me of programming a 1980’s VHS player – think of the first generation BMW idrive.. I have no experience using SAP, but I have to wonder how they have been successful with software.

In this Saturday’s NYT, the Obama administration announced is is beginning talks with Moscow to coordinate together to fix the problem in Syria. This is a waving white flag of surrender by the West. Perhaps Putin had something to do with the hordes traveling north to Europe.

While the U.S. position is the replacement of Assad, he, Saddam Hussein and Khadafi are looking pretty good compared to the chaos 15 years of U.S. military and NGO cluster****s have given us.

My guess is the flow of refugees will be stopping a little closer to home.

If there was any doubt that the Left vs Right dichotomy is a charade, the Democrat’s recent announcement that they intend to support Boehner as speaker of the house given the effort of some in the GOP to oust him is proof in the pudding.

If through some miracle the Trump campaign survives the concerted attack on him by the plutocracy’s media and political whores, he will lack allies in Congress to do anything but to be an obstructionist. He can try to have influence through executive order, but the plutocrats will neuter him through court order, much like the crooks of the Chicago Machine are doing to Gov. Bruce Rauner in Illinois.

Boehner and his ilk will clearly be of no assistance.

He needs to broaden the campaign by calling out congressional candidates to take a stand with him while the primaries are in play. Once the primaries are over, he can no longer build coalitions within the GOP. He needs to build coalitions to take advantage of any coattail effect he can muster. This is just good “Chicago style” politics.

And when in their career do merely gifted hulking athletes become the freak of nature known as an NFL lineman? The transformation happens during their 1st year as a redshirt college freshman and their second year when they are not yet developed enough to play as a first string guard, tackle or nose guard. By their third year any decent lineman will have a receding hairline from the “roids”. Look at the pictures.

This is why you see true truly gifted freshman running backs and receivers, and even defensive backs playing, but rarely if ever will you see an offensive linemen play as a freshman in big time college programs.

So the lesson is: you can’t have it all.

If a couple wants to have and raise children, it is best that somebody , father or mother, needs to work less than full time, or not at all.

The unfortunate reality for employers is that this reduces the size of the labor pool, and thus raises employment costs. Particularly problematic for employers needing very bright employees is the limited supply, thus all the grinding of teeth having educated and trained capable women, only to find many of them opting out of full time work to make babies.

It is all about the money, not the liberation of women.

If you must know, some of the best ice cream made can be purchased at large Midwestern universities that have dairy programs, my favorite being simple chocolate at Michigan State’s dairy store. Alas, the Michigan/MSU game will be in Ann Arbor this weekend, so I will have to suffer through a delicious pastrami sandwich at Zingerman’s deli in AA.

Yes, Cornell University makes and sells dairy products too. They also sell fantastic wool blankets they make from Cornell Sheep, but it only comes in red and white (well cream really). They are great Christmas gifts.

http://living.sas.cornell.edu/dine/wheretoeat/cafescoffeehouses/cornelldairybar.cfm

2015 just seems like a random fluctuation much like 2012 was. There’s frankly not much a mayor can do about it.

Wrong!

Fewer Cops, liberal policies such as reduced sentencing guidelines, lenient parole boards and judges have caused nightmare problems on Chicago’s Northside. Looks just like DC.

Read about it here: http://www.cwbchicago.com/

During WW2, large numbers of southern scots-Irish moved to Michigan to work in the factories. Since then, generation after generation of college educated kids have left because there was no work due the decline of industry and things like NAFTA.

It seems to me that death rates relative to average income/unemployment and/or the cost of living are begging to be examined. Perhaps marginalized people are drinking more and doing meth because they see no light at the end of the tunnel. If you can’t afford to form a family, you are already dead.

Closing US borders would have been the proper response to 9/11 if you want to protect the average citizen of the United States.

Instead, the US invaded Iraq.

Remember the Maine!
Assassination of Ferdinand
Pearl Harbor
Gulf of Tonkin
9/11

Notice any patterns?

How did we get I this mess. Well who benefits? Hypothetically….

The US wanted to expand NATO, and shrink Moscow’s sphere of influence a la Mearsheimer’s great powers doctrine. Moscow has a strong lever over Europe because it is the primary supplier of natural gas to Europe. This resource also gives Russia money, and makes them a player in world financial markets. Combined with the Chinese and the Iranians, the three powers are trying to form a pan-Asian land based prosperity sphere and currency to challenge the dollar and American/Anglo/Jewish domination of the financial markets. So the US via Victoria Nuland start a small NGO fomented revolution Ukraine, but Vlad counters by grabbing the Crimea and stopping the revolution. Meanwhile, shills like Evo Daalder are running around on the Crown Family dime (think Jewish owners of General Dynamics) screaming how we need to fight the Russians.

Israel will do anything to expand its security zone in its immediate neighborhood. They hate Syria and Iran because they are viable challenges to this goal. Israel also has a new huge gas field it would like to connect to Europe, but it has to go through Syria and Turkey.

The Saudi’s like the Sunnis, and hate the Shia and the Alawites. They also would love to connect their gas line through Israel and Syria because the crude oil output will soon decline and they need that cash. Other small Arab states have lots of gas to sell.

So a deal is cut. John Kerry goes to The Saudi’s and ask them to kill the price of oil, believing this will put the hurt on Russia, and bring them to their knees. It also has the nice benefit of bankrupting all the fracking entrepreneurs who have created wealth by finding new oil reserves (something the Saudi’s don’t want just yet, and something the Rockefeller family abhors because they believe it is their right to own all the oil production in the US). Conveniently, the Rockefeller family trust sold all their interests in oil just before Saudi Arabia opened the spigot. Great market timing by the way, you should hire their securities analysts! No doubt they will be picking up fracked oilfields for a song as companies like Emerald EOX go bankrupt, or maybe they already own the bonds.

Meanwhile the Saudis funded ISIS/Al Quaeda radicals and mercenaries are cut loose to attack Syria and the Kurds. Israel even helps. EVERYBODY But Putin wins.

Except Putin makes a move to support Syria, and intimates, not too subtly that he has many thermonuclear devices should cool heads not prevail. Hard to know what has been said behind closed doors to the POTUS.

About this time, Obama realizes he can’t go into Syria and beat the Russians without destroying the world and perhaps he realizes he has been played a few too many times by Bibi N. Perhaps he is just getting back for Bibi snubbing him and speaking to the House at Boehner’s request. He says hell no, I am not sending in troops. FU Bibi, and the media that is controlled by your tribe.

Either way… the next move is?