Headlines

Trump fiercely defends killing Soleimani as he plunges U.S. deeper into foreign conflict

“Dangerous escalation”: World reacts to the US killing of Qasem Soleimani

Ex-CIA director: ‘There will be dead Americans’ ...

Nancy Pelosi complains: No notification before attack on Soleimani

Bill Gates calls for higher taxes on the rich

US to deploy 3,500 additional troops to the Middle East after Iranian general killed

Factory gauge unexpectedly falls to lowest since 2009 ...

USMC firearm policy updated to allow concealed carry for self-defense

Israel’s Netanyahu seeks immunity from corruption charges

Sales of priciest Manhattan apartments plunge almost 40% in fourth quarter

Terrorist wearing explosive vest shot dead in Paris after stabbing four people ...

Biden slams Soleimani assassination: Trump ‘tossed a dynamite stick into a tinderbox’

reddit Pic

Manhattan, 1910 (no Broadway above 59th St.?)

Headlines

Pelosi aide sought to undercut Medicare for All

Bitcoin rallies 15% to highest level since Noverber

Whistleblower: Trump team overruled 25 security clearance denials ...

Hofstra students demand removal of Thomas Jefferson statue

Harris raised $12 million in 1st quarter of campaign

Manhattan real estate sales fall for sixth straight quarter — longest losing streak for 30 years

NASA says debris from India’s antisatellite test puts Space Station at risk ...

Kirk: Joe Biden is being eaten by his own monster ...

Senate fails to advance disaster aid package amid Puerto Rico clash

Venezuela’s top court seeks to strip Guaido’s immunity — raising fears of arrest

Polls: Black voters like Bernie just fine ...

Trump may appoint an Immigration Czar

Hamiltony

Early-on in his run for the presidency, Donald Trump was pretty much of an asshole. Fortunately, he has mellowed somewhat as his campaign has progressed. I have suggested before that Trump's crude behavior might have been a legacy from his dealings with the thick-headed thugs and mugs that he constantly had to confront and subdue in his real estate operations in Manhattan, New York.

I think that I may have been onto something ... particularly when remembering how awfully arrogant are the liberals that Gotham seems to breed in large numbers. And now we can see the sad evidence of such folk firsthand in the following videos. Vice President Elect Mike Pence and his family recently attended the play "Hamilton" on Broadway and his reception was typical of what one might expect from the kind of boorish boobs that Trump frequently dealt with in his rough and tumble real estate dealings.

If you can imagine a coarser and slimier reception than Pence got during this chi-chi play , you still will probably be shocked by the reality of this moment ... see: Powerline Blog Videos. But, having spent a number of years in Manhattan myself, I can testify that not all Big Apple-ites are quite so infantile ... just the tony uber-liberals.

Conspicuous Constipation

Skyscrapers were invented on Manhattan Island in New York City because of limited ground space and the pressure of population growth forcing the need for more office space. As buildings grew taller and taller, they also became status symbols ... witness the "whose tallest" competition between the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building in the 1930s.

So was born skyscraper envy to the point where people and countries with more money than brains build skyscrapers where they are not necessary. Witness Dubai, which has well over a thousand square miles of open desert on which buildings could be erected, but instead chooses to spend its copious oil money on ostentatious skyscrapers crowded into a small section of its emirate ... see the above picture.

How very silly and wasteful of them. When their oil money runs out these skyscrapers may well form a very impressive ghost town.

Afterward: See: World's Tallest Tower.

reddit Gallery CCCXLIV

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

1948 Norman Timbs Special.

Manhattan

Swan Lake

Human vs. Gorilla Skeleton

Norwegian Forrest Cat Chasing a Fox

Rags to Rags

Here’s another Walter Mitty story -- boy investment genius, not yet out of high school, makes $72 million trading stocks on Wall Street. His name is Mohammed Islam and he goes to Stuyvesant High School on the lower East Side of Manhattan and has seemingly acquired all the trappings of a multi-millionaire. Perhaps these trumped-up trappings are what influenced Jessica Pressler to write a quite typical New Yorker magazine flivver story about this wunderkind … see: New Yorker Story.

Alas, it was all a great big teenager prank and the New Yorker magazine is embarrassed … see: The Observer Exposee ... and Jessica Pressler has moved on to browner pastures … see: Capital Story.

I actually think she should have taken a shot at Rolling Stone.

Unfiltered