VIDEO: Scott "Dilbert" Adams explains why Trump is winning

Hey, Republicans! Who ya gonna vote for? The bully or the zealot?! A look at the result of Super Saturday suggests that's what it's going to come down to.

Yes, Marco Rubio won the Commonpoverty of Puerto Rico, but so what. He'll be finished by the end of this month (lifetime pct .985) and the GOP Establishment will decide that it hates TrusTED Cruz marginally less than Donald Trump. But the betting now is that the Donald will will the convention, and quite possibly the nation.

Who sez? Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, that's who. Check out this clip from Fox & Friends yesterday morning.



This was the first time I saw Scott Adams on TV. I thought Dilbert was based on his own persona, but he really doesn't look anything like the eponymous engineer, does he.

Further reading: Click here to read Mr. Adams' explanation of Mr. Trump's clever and persuasive "strategic ambiguity".

Trump quality extends even to his sentences!

Thanks to Agent 34 for this little gem. But before we dismiss the Donald from our thoughts -- as if we could -- let us consider the wise words of Scott Adams on Mr. Trump's successful use of "strategic ambiguity", in Scott Adams' Blog, 1/3/16. Some may laugh at the Donald's way of "speaking", but it seems to be working!

Still talking Trump -- how could we not? -- I was thinking about writing about how dismayed I am to see the Republicans' so-called "debates" turning into pure trash talk [No oxymorons, please! Ed.], the kind of thing you would hear before an NFL game or a pro wrestling show. [Notice, Ed., that I didn't say "wrestling match".] Is this what American politics has come to? Is this "quality" of discourse what we expect from the putative leaders of the most powerful nation in the world?

As Michelle Malkin pointed out in "The 2016 GOP Debate Debacle", having "moderators" from the lamestream media doesn't help. But the real problem is American society itself. According to Andrew McCarthy, writing in the National Review, "A sick society breeds gutter politics". That, Mr. McCarthy says, makes Donald Trump the symptom, not the cause, of the culture rot with which the Excited States of America is rife.

When a once mighty oak is rotten to the core, or rotting from the core, what can you do to save it? I regret not having an answer for this very serious question. Do you? To leave a comment, from the landing page just click on the headline, and a new window will open, complete with comments box -- yours to use.

Shafia honour killers appeal conviction: link here to e-book

Readers with long memories may recall that way back in January of 2012, an Afghan immigrant to Canada, his second wife (in a polygamous marriage) and his son, all devout followers of the Prophet, were convicted of the murder by drowning of the man's first wife and three of his daughters by his second wife. See "GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY in Shafia honour killings" (WWW 29/1/12).

The murders were said to be a matter of "honour", or the Islamic concept thereof. The daughters, you see, were "bad girls" -- caught in the ultimate culture clash, living in Canada but not allowed to be Canadian. They were expected to behave like good Muslim daughters, to wear the hijab and marry a fellow Afghan. And when they rebelled against their father’s traditions and customs -- covertly at first, then for all the community to see -- the shame became too much to bear. Only a mass execution (staged to look like a foolish wrong turn into the Rideau Canal at Kingston) could wash away the stain of their secret boyfriends and revealing clothes. The infertile first wife was simply a convenient throw-in, an afterthought.

Under the Canadian justice system, Mohammad Shafia, his second wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and their eldest son, Hamed Shafia were entitled to an appeal as of right from their convictions of murder in the first degree, for which they had received sentences of life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years. Agent 3 is following the proceedings in the Ontario Court of Appeal in Toronto this week.

The parents are appealing on the grounds that expert evidence about honour killings, the teachings of Islam and the culture of Afghanistan should not have been admitted because -- this is the argument -- the jury might have been prejudiced and made to feel that there was something wrong with Muslims who were only acting in accordance with their faith. The Crown's response is that without such evidence, it would have been difficult to establish a motive for what would otherwise have been senseless killings, or perhaps "just an accident", as the Shafias said.

The appeal of Hamed Shafia is even more implausible. A defence lawyer interviewed on Canadian TV last night described it as an argument that made him roll his eyes. At the time of the killings, the son was apparently 18 years old, as his ID and other documents said. Now, nearly seven years after the young man helped push the car containing the four women into the canal, his lawyers are telling the court that he was only 17, thus shouldn't have been tried as an adult, but a juvenile!

"New evidence" to that effect, the defence says, has fortuitously just arrived from Afghanistan, a country not known for its ability to keep accurate records or indeed tell time. The defence is asking for a new trial for Shafia fils, or at least a reduction of his sentence to the 10-year max he would have received as a youthful miscreant, which would put him back on the street in another five years or so.

With the hearing in the Court of Appeal entering its second day, Maclean's has decided to republish The Shafia Honour Killing Trial, an e-book by Michael Friscolanti which first appeared in February 2012. Follow this link to the Maclean's longread.

As you read, ask yourself if Muslims like Mohammed Shafia are the kind of people you want to be welcomed into your country -- as refugees, asylum-seekers or immigrants -- from the sandpits of the Middle East. If the answer is no, and you're a Canadian, you could write to your MP, Minister of Refugees John McCallum or Prime Minister Just In Trudeau... but it won't do you any good. If you're American, Walt reminds you that there's an election coming up in just over eight months. Need I say more?

Refugees spreading ISIS like a cancer, sez NATO commander

Gen. Philip Breedlove, USAF, presently the top commander of NATO, told the US Congress on Tuesday that refugees from the Middle East and north Africa are masking the movement of terrorists and criminals. That's exactly what Walt and numerous other bloggers, commentators and pundits have been saying for months upon months. But the bleeding hearts making a nice buck from the human rights industry protest that refugees overwhelmingly have no ulterior motive but escape. Who ya gonna believe?

Further reading: "NATO commander: The Islamic State is 'spreading like cancer' among Muslim migrants to Europe", on JihadWatch today.

Credible report of another piece of MH370 found far from search area

About five weeks ago Walt passed on a report of the finding, on a beach in southern Thailand, of what looked like a piece of wreckage from some sort of aircraft. The accompanying pix were far from proof that the debris was from a B-777, the kind of plane operated by Malaysian Airlines as flight MH370, or indeed from an airplane, period. The flotsam could have been part of a surfboard, as some experts suggested at the time.

A further problem with that report was the location of the finding -- a beach in southern Thailand, far from the island of Réunion, in the western Indian Ocean, which was where the only authenticated part from the missing aircraft washed up months earlier. Nothing further was heard about this, so the initial suspicion must be assumed to have been well founded.

Today, however, AP reports that debris that washed up in Moçambique (or Mozambique, using the English spelling) has been tentatively identified as a part from a Boeing 777, according to a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. (Walt asks again why these reports about a Malaysian aircraft which supposedly disappeared in international airspace/waters always seem to come from unnamed American officials!)

According to AP, photos of the debris that washed up over the weekend appear to show the fixed leading edge of the right-hand tail section of a B-777. People who have handled the part, called a horizontal stabilizer, say it appears to be made of fibreglass composite on the outside, with aluminum honeycombing on the inside, the official said. The part is being transported to Malaysia.

Joao Abreu, Mozambique’s National Director of Civil Aviation, denied that authorities have found part of the missing plane, but Malaysian transport minister Liow Tiong Lai tweeted to confirm the discovery. "Based on early reports, high possibility debris found in Mozambique belongs to a B777," he wrote. "It is yet to be confirmed & verified. dca—malaysia working w Australian counterparts to retrieve the debris." He also urged "everyone to avoid undue speculation as we are not able to conclude that the debris belongs to #mh370 at this time."

A glance at the atlas tells us that Mozambique is on the southeast coast of Africa, to the west of Madagascar which in turn is west of Réunion. As the map in "Current thinking on MH370" (WWW 31/7/15) shows, the Aquinas and Moçambique currents could easily have carried debris to Réunion or Madagascar or Moçambique from the site of a "water landing" somewhere around... wait for it... Diego Garcia, the location of a massive US military base.

The map also shows that Diego Garcia and the possible site of the crash are in the north central part of the Indian Ocean, 1000s of miles from the search area suggested by, errr, the US military. Draw your own conclusions.

Lesbian premier Wynne teaches sex ed lesson

You have to hand it to Ontario's proudly lesbian Premier Kathleen Wynne. Not content with mandating a new pro-LGBTQ2S sex education curriculum for the provnince's publicly funded schools, she's making it her personal mission to ensure that the ins and outs of natural and unnatural sex are taught properly. Here she is introducing, errr, something to impressionable and impressed students -- apparently U18s -- at Toronto's Jarvis Collegiate.

Readers are invited to explain the difference between the shocking pink object and the green one. Answers on the back of a postcard to the usual address. No prizes.

Note from Ed.: We have not been able to verify the veracity of this photo, but are pretty sure it's a photo. For sure.

Lee Siegel explains why we like "Judge Judy"

I confess to being a regular watcher of Judge Judy. For those who live on another planet and have never seen the show, IMDb describes it thus: "Judge Judy Sheindlin, a former judge from New York, tackles actual, small claims cases with her no-nonsense attitude in which damages of no more than $5,000 can be awarded.... After a case is closed, the defendant and plaintiff briefly confront each other outside the court-room."

Judge Judy is an example of what is called "reality TV". At the top of each show, we are told that "The people are real. The cases are real. The judgments are final!" I often paraphrase the first two sentences to "The people are stupid. The cases are stupid." The first sentence can also be changed to "The people are fat!" and be equally true.

Judge Judy, you see, stars average Americans -- the kind of fat, stupid people you see on the news or in a Michael Moore documentary. These fat stupid people do stupid things, as Judge Judy reminds them with her acid put-downs. So why do I watch these over-the-back-fence arguments about dog fights, accidents caused by unlicensed drivers driving cars with no insurance, and gifts to ex-lovers which the giver later claims were loans? Is it like the prurient curiosity we have passing by a car accident or a drunk passed out in the gutter? Why do I not avert my eyes?

Last night the explanation for my fascination was given to me by Lee Siegel, a Jewish, liberal, New Yorker who writes criticism and essays on culture for Harper's, The New Republic and The Atlantic Monthly. How strange that someone totally unlike me, writing in publications I never read, should understand my motivation so well! Here's what Mr. Siegel says in an an essay called "UFOs".

There is [in Americans a] surging love for the absurd, and therefore contemptible, person. From politics to reality shows, we seem to like to be surrounded by people ruleed by greed, hampered by stupidity, blinkered by obsession. These sad, bored [people], their faces blank, their landlocked figures full-sail with heartland obesity...--these people are easy to laugh at, and therefore easy to accommodate.

In America, attention must be paid! Attention, that is, to everything freakish, inadequate, unthreatening, and thus usefully supportive perhaps of a shaky sense of worth, of identity. More and more, the spectacle of human inadequacy on television is like one long public stoning.

Exactly. Watching these obese, doltish and poor people makes us feel better about ourselves. We are better than they. OK... I confess... I am better than they. And I feel good about it. How about you?

Further reading: "UFOs" is the 39th chapter in a collection of Lee Siegel's essays published by Basic Books in 2007 as Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television. The book has not aged well. The first four sections ("Cops", "Sitcoms", "Comedy", and "Cartoons") critique shows which (as Garrison Keillor would say) are no longer with us. I would add, "and a good thing too." The sections on race, religion, war, news and documentaries are still relevant and worth reading.