KWBaker

Europeans are among the world's most gracious travel hosts, rolling out a red carpet of good manners, fabulous food, and the ultimate in culture and history. But do you ever wonder what they think of YOU? Here's what we've heard…

"You sound like an idiot when you imitate our accents!"

Ouch. Turns out that posh James Bond imitation you think you've mastered sounds like the squeak of chalk on a blackboard to a Brit. And chances are, even as you read this, you believe you are the exception to this rule—that your Daniel Craig could fool a native? No. Stop. Please.

"Why are you smiling? You don't even know us!"

Boy, those French are unfriendly, huh? Guess again. They're just more physically reserved than you are, and that goes for facial expressions, too. A Parisian, especially when addressing a stranger, will rarely smile, and this is often misinterpreted by American as that legendary (and largely mythical) French rudeness. We, on the other hand, have been taught to approach new people, even total strangers, with our pearly whites bared. Down, Sparky. It just weirds them out.

"You eat too fast."

From way up in Scandinavia all the way down to Sicily, Europeans seem to be united in the opinion that Americans don't know how to enjoy a meal. Yep. Shocking as it may seem, the country that invented "fast food" and the "power lunch" puzzles its neighbors across the pond when it comes to table manners. Apparently, we start eating before it's considered polite, we don't stop to talk enough, and we perhaps miss the entire point of chowing down in the presence of other human beings. Wherever you may be visiting (but especially southern Europe), if you sit down to eat with locals, we suggest that you just quietly tell yourself, "Slow down."

"You drink too much."

Ok, in fairness to my American brethren, it's true that in some corners of Europe it is common to outdrink Americans at a truly magnificent pace. But overall, the European approach to beer, wine, and spirits is similar to their approach to a nice meal: What's the rush? It's perfectly acceptable to savor a two-hour lunch that includes a few goblets of wine. But binge-drinking is considered a weakness, especially in wine-producing regions, where the vino is regarded as much a food as a beverage.

"You work too hard."

Except in a few major economic centers, London in particular, the locals aren't going to be terribly interested in hearing your workplace war stories, how much money you're spending on your vacation, or how much your house back in the States cost. The country you are visiting may even have strict rules or customs about the length of a work week. But more importantly, Europeans just know how to pursue a work/life balance more healthfully than Americans: Take time to sit down for coffee and a croissant in the morning, consider an afternoon nap (if you're staying with your Italian cousins, they may insist on it!), and if you head out to dinner in, say, Barcelona, expect the tapas to go around the table well into the wee hours. Relax!

"You are a prude."

Whoa. Really? But isn't American culture awash in cutting-edge body parts and potty mouth? Yes, and that's actually a sign of our priggish problem. In many European cultures, the human body is considered simply, well, the human body. Our fascination with certain anatomical features is not shared by Europeans. That's why in some regions of Europe you'll see nude bathing and hear jokes that would make your mother blush. Next time you see a photo of the inscrutable Catalan Christmas pooper, just say to yourself, "Don't judge. Remember, you are a prude."

"Seriously? We speak three or four languages and you can't be bothered to learn to say 'Do you speak English?' in ours?"

Rosetta Stone, people. Rosetta Stone.

"You don't know the difference between 'Baltic' and 'Balkan' or, for that matter, what The Hague is."

Be honest. Did you even know that "Sochi" was a thing before the Russian city hosted the Winter Games? Is Trieste in Switzerland, Croatia, or France? We're not suggesting that you prepare for a geography bee before boarding your Paris-bound plane. But, gosh, get some arrondissements into your short-term memory, remember that Marseille is France's second-largest city, and understand that "Omaha Beach" is not what the French call that stretch of Normandy coast. (Answer key: The Baltic Sea is in northern Europe; "Balkan" refers to the peninsula shared by Serbia, Greece, and other nations; The Hague is the third-largest city in the Netherlands; and Trieste is in Italy.)

"You dress like a slob."

This applies to American men more than women, and it's difficult to argue. On any given street of any given European town on any given day, I will not be able to compete with the stylish dress of the gents who pass my way. While a few decades ago this may not have been the case (I can imagine Don Draper holding his own against an onslaught of silk-suited Florentines), my generation has admittedly opted to dress like overgrown boys, and our T-shirts, baggy jeans, and five o'clock shadows scream "Yank."

"We know your history better than you do."

I say kudos to Europe's schools for instilling in their citizenry the ability to understand the difference between Bill Clinton and George Clinton. Unfortunately, Americans' grasp of European history is often as sketchy as their grasp of geography. So just know that when you drop a name like Churchill or Garibaldi overseas, you are inviting a conversation in which you may eventually be called upon to remember who sold President Thomas Jefferson the 800,000+ square miles that now comprises all or parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and, of course, Louisiana.

(Psst! It was France.)

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Just a decade ago, small-batch Mexican liquor had what you might call a “limited global presence” — especially in restaurants. At most places outside Mexico, tequila was just the base booze for your syrupy margarita; high rollers could order Patrón. But mezcal? Never heard of it.

Now restaurants from Beijing to Copenhagen stock hundreds of small-batch tequilas and mezcals. “Mezcalerias” like La Urbana in San Francisco pair obscure mezcals with high-concept riffs on Mexican food — think seared snapper with corn foam and a purée of huitlacoche (corn fungus, a delicacy). Margaritas are still a thing, but even more so is “sipping tequila,” served neat to set off the flavors of your food.

“Mezcal and tequila are our wine,” says Alex Stupak, chef at the modernist Mexican restaurant Empellón Cocina in Manhattan.

Since Rick Bayless opened Chicago’s Frontera Grill in 1987, upmarket Mexican food has adopted some swagger. These days, diners of means can get lobster in their queso fundido, wagyu beef tartare in their tacos. Some Mexican menus name-check their farm sources; others list their chefs’ fine-dining credentials.

So, naturally, you’re going to want some impressive spirits with your meal.

Around the world, tequila sales have been on the upswing for years. In the last decade, annual global sales have grown to $2.2 billion; the U.S. alone imports 13 million cases per year. Frat favorite Jose Cuervo still dominates the market, but small-batch sipping tequilas are now finding a niche alongside artisan gins and bourbons. High-end entrants like Casa Dragones ($275 a bottle) and the Sean Combs–backed DeLeón ($120 to $1,000 per bottle) have a new cachet, at least among a certain subset of consumers.

“Ever since the recession ended, there’s been increased demand for handcrafted, small-batch everything,” says Kara Nielsen, culinary trend analyst, who notes that the prominent placement of high-end tequila on HBO’s “Entourage” certainly helped pique interest.

• Mezcals Worth Sipping
• 
  Mezcal Unión: Uno Crafted by families that have been making mezcal for more than three generations. $40, astorwines.com
• 
  El Buho Mezca:
  Roasted over mesquite for a week. $30, drinkupny.com
• 
  Del Maguey Pechuga:
  Flavored with wild mountain apples and plums. $200, binnys.com
• 
  Casa Dragones:
  Made in small batches and multiple-distilled for a clean taste. $270, binnys.comm

The clamor for tequila’s smoky cousin may be more recent, but it’s catching up fast. Global mezcal exports grew over 50 percent between 2009 and 2011. Unlike tequila, which is always made with blue agave, mezcal can be made from at least a dozen different agave varieties, each with its own terroir. Mezcal’s agave mash is further enhanced through distillation in clay or copper pots, using local techniques passed down for hundreds of years (see sidebar pg. 39). Some mezcal is sold right after distillation, while some is barrel-aged for up to a year (one company makes a rare, seven-year mezcal). Also, while tequila’s blue agave is frequently grown in large industrial operations, other agaves are often harvested from the wild. Camper English, a Bay Area cocktail writer, says that’s the core of mezcal’s charm.

“There’s almost a rebellion against tequila, like it’s part of some big industrial machine,” he says. “Mezcal is as smallbatch as you can get; when you tell people their agave was hand-harvested from like, this one obscure hillside, they go nuts.”

Of course, you can’t discuss mezcal without mentioning its singular feature: a deep, robust smokiness, paralleled only by Scotch whisky. It typically acquires this flavor from roasting agave a few days in a pit oven, essentially an earthen mound over pits of hot rocks. It’s a process that ramps up mezcal’s flavor — as well as its artisan appeal.

Those unfamiliar with Mexican spirits may discover layers of complexity in both tequila and mezcal. Stupak, who admits he favors mezcal over tequila, pairs these liquors with food that may seem unfamiliar — say, manila clams in a tripe stew, or sea urchin mousse served with thick corn masa. Stupak suggests you savor every drop.

“In the U.S., you pour someone a tequila, they tend to chug it like a shot,” he says. “In Mexico, you’re going to sip it slowly with your meal. People here are just getting used to this idea.”

How Mezcal Got Big, Yet Stayed Small

The new economics of mezcal and tequila, favoring small operations, mean that upscale bars and restaurants stock huge varieties of the stuff. On Empellón’s liquor shelf, you’ll find 50 different strains of mezcal, and over 90 tequilas. Cantina Agave, a Beijing restaurant offering lengua chimichangas and pasilla tortilla soup, offers over 100 different bottles of tequila. And when the nouveau-Mexican spot La Urbana opened this fall in San Francisco, it had over 50 mezcals; it has since added dozens more.

These restaurants are helping build interest in high-end Mexican spirits, but it’s a slow progression. According to Nielsen’s statistics, bottles of tequila valued at more than $60 still only make up 0.6 percent of the U.S. market. Mezcal had a record year of exports in 2011 (the last year with available data), shipping 72,000 cases around the world; for comparison, Scotch whisky exports topped 92 million cases that same year. Even if mezcal exports have grown tenfold in the last two years, they still only make up a wee slice of the small-batch spirits pie.

Still, every movement starts somewhere. Demand for artisanal tequila and mezcal increases every year, as does the proliferation of high-end Mexican restaurants. And trend forecaster Nielsen sees this as merely the beginning. “Once people have tasted something better, it’s not like they’ll go back to garbage tequila,” she says. “Lucky for us.”

Mezcal Unión employee Pedro Hernandez waters the new agave plants in the nursery. It is not unusual for them to grow over 8 feet tall.

The post Top Shelf: Mexican Booze Steps Up appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Coming over from Spain, brands and branding are the stuff of Old West legend and the topic of countless western films. In the time before barbed wire fences criss-crossed the plains, brands were used to distinguish different ranchers’ cattle. Though the West has long been closed, branding is still a popular way of marking livestock to easily identify lost or stolen animals. However, branding is not universally favored and does hold a place on the ASPCA’s Farm Animal Cruelty Glossary. Recently other forms of marking cattle have been used from RFID tagging to tattoos and even branding with liquid nitrogen.

We took a look through the Library of Congress for some interesting pictures of cattle branding past.

Cattle branding in Texas, circa 1980.

Branding cattle, circa 1891.

A classic three circle roundup, Custer National Forest, Montana, circa 1939.

Branding a young calf, Paradise Valley, Nevada, circa 1980.

Branding a heifer, Cerri (Wallace) Ranch, circa 1978.

Branding irons heating up in a smouldering fire, Cerri (Wallace) Ranch, circa 1979.

Two at a time, Grayson Ranch, Nevada, circa 1978.

A branding pen on a cattle ranch near Marfa, Texas, circa 1939.

Branded calf, Ninety-Six Ranch, Paradise Valley Nevada, circa 1979.

Pulling a calf from the herd at the Quarter Circle U Ranch roundup, Montana, circa 1939

Branding a calf, Quarter Circle U roundup, Montana, circa 1939.

The post 12 Vintage Pictures of Cattle Branding appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Private enterprise is all about providing a better product or service at a lower cost to the consumer. Sit on your butt and watch the competition overtake you on quality, innovation, and price. Just look at your cell phone. What did it look like 10 years ago? What does it look like, and more importantly what does it do versus the phone you had 10 years ago?

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These subsidies make little sense from the taxpayer’s perspective. They do however make sense for the studios (which have powerful lobbyists) and politicians who can laud their ability to lure Hollywood even to their unglamorous state.

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G2 Research now has Radically Invasive Projectile (RIP} .380 ammunition on the market, and like their 9mm ammo, the round lives up to the hype.

On February 7 Breitbart News reviewed G2 Research's RIP 9mm ammunition and quickly realized it was not an average 9mm round. Fired from an H&K USP Compact it proved devastating to one target after another, especially when compared to other hollow point ammunition commonly trusted for self-defense.

The bullet has "trocar" edges that cut as the bullet spins, then break off during penetration to produce multiple wounds through body. In self-defense applications, the fragmentation is designed to send a shock wave through the attacker's body. This is meant to provide home owners, CCW permit holders, and others with the benefit of "one shot stopping power."

Breitbart News fired several boxes of RIP .380 ammo through a Glock 42 over the past two weeks and the ammunition demonstrated the same characteristics we saw in the 9mm: it shot accurately and transferred increased kinetic energy to the target.  We had males and females shoot the gun while loaded with RIP ammo and the results were consistent and impressive.

The ammunition's potency, together with the Glock 42's compactness, make for a great concealed carry combination. 

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins  Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

Ever feel compelled to buy a product based on less than 140 characters worth of information about it from a friend or tastemaker? Amazon's betting that you will, and it's launching a new service today to let you add items to your shopping cart straight from Twitter. After connecting your Twitter account to Amazon, you'll then be able to reply to any tweet that includes an Amazon link using the hashtag "#AmazonCart" in the US or "#AmazonBasket" in the UK for it to be automatically added to your cart on Amazon's website.

As with any other item in your cart, you won't have to buy items added through the hashtag — they'll remain there until you either check out or remove them, so the integration with Twitter can serve as much as a way to...

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In the past few days, as new evidence emerged that the White House was directly involved in misleading the public with the lie that the Benghazi terror attack of Sep. 11, 2012 was motivated by outrage at a YouTube video, and as Speaker of the House John Boehner has finally acceded to demands for a select committee to probe the attack and cover-up, Democrats have resorted to a common defense: Republicans are "politicizing" Benghazi.

Would that it had been so. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney famously declined to use Benghazi as a political weapon in the third presidential debate of 2012, which was focused on foreign policy. Much to the dismay of his supporters, Romney left Libya off the table--partly because his attempts to raise the issue in the second presidential debate were quashed by the interventions of the biased moderator, CNN's Candy Crowley. 

As for Boehner, he had long resisted a select committee, allowing the Benghazi investigations to languish in several separate House processes and, most ineffectually of all, in the Democrat-held Senate, where outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton uttered her infamous verdict: "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Her outburst was cheered by the media as a brilliant rejoinder to the Senate's rather feeble interrogatories.

So Republicans must politicize Benghazi. When the government fails in its most basic duty and the media fails to hold it to account, only the political opposition can be trusted to defend the public interest. It is for that reason that other parliamentary systems reserve leadership of oversight committees for members of the opposition party: the prospect of political reward provides a guarantee that misconduct will be investigated.

But Republicans could not politicize Benghazi if Obama, Clinton, and the Democrats had not done it first. The essence of the Benghazi scandal is that national security was compromised for political reasons. The president and his appointees lied about what happened--and, indeed, may have chosen not to stage a rescue at the time--to avoid an uncomfortable examination of their national security policies during a tough re-election campaign.

There was a time in American politics when the Benghazi scandal would be seen as such by members of both parties. Certainly it is a scandal to Democrat Greg Hicks, who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary and voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Hicks was second-in-command to murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens, and testified to Congress last year about what happened that night--and how he had been pressured not to talk.

But most Democrats have chosen to pretend that Benghazi is a non-issue. In so doing, they have endorsed the idea that the President of the United States can fail to send military assistance to Americans under attack, that the Secretary of State can deny security to diplomats abroad, that they can both lie to the victims' families within sight of the coffins, and they can refuse to comply with congressional demands for information.

By failing to participate fully, and equally, in the investigation--and, yes, in the outrage at what happened--the Democratic Party is deliberately casting Benghazi as a partisan issue. Any--overdue!--Republican effort to politicize the Benghazi attack today is secondary to what Obama, Clinton, and Democrats have done to politicize Benghazi from the very earliest hours--with the active assistance of a shamefully corrupt, decrepit press corps.

For decades, Americans have organized their diet in a way to minimize their intake of saturated fats like butter and red meat. Vegetable oils and carbohydrates became a bigger part of our diet, because, we were repeatedly told, animal fats led to heart disease. 

Today, however, we are learning that this advice was bogus. A recent landmark health study has concluded that there has never been a link between saturated fats and heart disease. The "settled science" on nutrition wasn't quite so settled.

Ms. Teicholz observes:

The fact is, there has never been solid evidence for the idea that [saturated] fats cause disease. We only believe this to be the case because nutrition policy has been derailed over the past half-century by a mixture of personal ambition, bad science, politics and bias.

The new study catalogs a host of problems with Keyes' research into saturated fats. There is little reason to document the litany of methodological flaws here except to note that the research was conducted in a way to validate a preformed conclusion.

It is also noteworthy that America's obesity "epidemic" began at the same time as the government began endlessly recommending a "low-fat" diet. It turns out the fat was replaced with sugar and other carbohydrates that likely worsened our diets.

This article should not be construed as relaying nutritional advice. I believe that everything is better with a pad of butter and a side of bacon, but your mileage may vary. The point is, though, that something we all "know" that has been the recipient of billions of dollars of research and advocacy may not actually be true. 

Teicholz writes:

More than a billion dollars have been spent trying to prove Ancel Keys's hypothesis, but evidence of its benefits has never been produced.

In the early 1990s, the food police at the Center for Science in the Public Interest urged consumers and restaurants to switch from animal fats to trans fats. They succeeded and unleashed a product that has been linked to heart disease. Now, of course, CSPI raises money to ban the very product they previously endorsed and thrust on the public.

Science is never "settled." Something to keep in mind when it comes to political campaigns to ban people from raising questions about climate science.

SONOITA, Arizona—An American border rancher had no idea that his decision to save a pair of wounded horses roaming the desert would one day save his own life—actually on two separate occasions. The rancher, Bevan Olyphant, came across the horses ten year ago while visiting a neighboring ranch after they had been cut loose by Mexican narcotics smugglers.

“Jackson has saved my life several times. He can smell smugglers,” said Olyphant of one of the rescued animals. He said there have been two occasions where he would have unwittingly stumbled upon Mexican narcotics smugglers carrying AK-47’s on his ranch had it not been for the rescued horse. Olyphant said that spending several days in the desert makes one smell bad and that smell causes the horse to remember the people who so badly abused him. “He tenses up and starts snorting, he let’s me know when they are nearby,” he said.

“I didn’t need to throw a rope onto Jackson,” said Olyphant. “He weighed about 400 pounds less and he was lame.”

Jackson, and another horse named “Juggy,” had both been born in Mexico and raised to carry large dope loads for Mexican smugglers. Large scars on the animals backs and hips show the wear from wooden pallets having once been strapped directly onto the animals without any padding. Both animals have deep branding scars on their faces—just under their left eyes—from where their former owners had burned their marks.

"The State of Arizona said he’s a Mexican horse, but the state owns him [Jackson] because he came into the country illegally,” said Olyphant. He said the state had to put the animals up for auction. Olyphant told the auctioneers he would pay double the highest bid. “I did my homework and they wanted horse meat,” he said. “I knew what the price of horse meat was.”

Jackson is an estimated 20-years-old, with Juggy being older. Olyphant’s vast southern Arizona ranch sits 10 to 20 miles from Mexico. The notorious Sinaloa cartel controls the region in Mexico just south of the border and Olyphant often finds his ranch being used as a route for the cartel’s activities.

Though Juggy is now out to pasture, Jackson still helps the rancher round up cattle. Olyphant said he feels much safer when he is with Jackson. 

Breitbart News provides video from a portion of the interview with the rancher below. The other horse in the video is named “Smoke.”

Follow @brandondarby on Twitter and Facebook

The liquor store union in Pennsylvania is on the ropes. Right now if one wants to buy beer or liquor in the Keystone State one must buy it from the state owned liquor stores. Run by state employees. But soon Pennsylvania will likely join the civilized world in allowing its residents to buy beer the way God intended. From a gas station.

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What if we could raise healthier and bigger chickens on a large scale without using tons of antibiotics? That's what farmers in the Netherlands are trying to do, reports Slate, using a specially-designed indoor housing system. The system is part of a production technique developed by Dutch company Vencomatic. It allows farmers to hatch and raise chickens in the same facility, instead of having to transport them from hatchery to farm shortly after they emerge. This puts less stress on the chicks, the company says, and gives them a chance to eat and drink immediately after they hatch.

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May 1, 2014
Buenos Aires, Argentina

It was a scene just like out of the Wild West.

18-year-old David Moreyra had stolen a purse. And an angry mob gathered in broad daylight in Rosario, Argentina to lynch him.

It turns out that ‘mob justice’ is on the rise in Argentina, and Mr. Moreyra’s death was just one of more than a dozen recent instances.

Hundreds of years ago during the Age of Enlightenment, liberty-minded philosophers argued that governments could only derive their authority to govern by receiving consent of the governed.

And that the people would have to voluntarily surrender some of their freedoms to government in exchange for certain services (and protection of their other freedoms).

This idea has become twisted and mutated over time.

These days, the prevailing model is that [some] people pay taxes, and in exchange the government maintains a monopoly over a number of public services.

Security is one obvious example since, for most people, the local police force maintains a monopoly over citizen security.

Any high school economics student can tell you that most monopolies are terribly inefficient.

Yet this is what people have been indoctrinated to believe—that they need the government to protect them. And they’re willing to pay ever-increasing taxes to ensure the government can provide it.

In many cities and countries across the world, they’re even willing to give up their right to bear arms… to give up some personal freedom… in exchange for the government providing a generally inefficient service.

All of this is part of the modern social contract. And when nations go broke, this social contract breaks down.

Many of the public services that government has promised get curtailed, or cut entirely.

The people have held up their end of the bargain. They’ve traded in their freedoms and their income in exchange for services. But the government hasn’t held up theirs.

And because the government has a monopoly on many of these services, suddenly people find themselves without something they have come to depend on.

This is precisely what has happened in Argentina. As the economy continues to struggle from an absurd level of money printing, unemployment and inflation are both painfully high.

Many Argentines are desperate. Crime rates have soared. But the police are utterly worthless.

Once peaceful citizens have been driven to desperation as a result. They’re afraid… and they’re taking matters into their own hands, roaming the streets in lynch gangs.

This isn’t some neighborhood watch or citizen justice program.

They form these gangs out of desperation, signalling that Argentina’s social contract has completely disintegrated.

It’s a rather unfortunate regression for a society. Civilized people don’t form angry mobs to act as judge, jury, and executioner.

As I’ve long-written, there are consequences to destructive economic policy.

Central bankers cannot conjure infinite quantities of currency out of thin air, nor can politicians borrow more money just to pay interest on what they’ve already borrowed, all without consequence.

This is one of those consequences—a complete breakdown of the social contract, giving rise to something so Medieval as lynch gangs and mob justice.

Can it happen where you live? Maybe. No nation is immune to the social effects of economic decay (think Detroit, or even New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina…).

When every shred of data suggests that major western economies are decaying rapidly under the weight of excessive debt and paper currency, it’s foolish to presume that ‘it can’t happen here’.

Sardines are a near-perfect food. So what if they smell a little funky. Here are our five favorites right now.

There were many rich moments in former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor's interview Thursday on Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier about the Benghazi scandal. Certainly his exasperated protest--"Dude, this was like two years ago"--summarizes the callow nature of the Obama administration (one could almost hear the next Peggy Noonan column being written as the words left the youthful Vietor's mouth). 

Yet there were also interesting moments from a forensic perspective. Vietor disputed the testimony of retired Brig. Gen. Robert Lovell to the House Oversight Committee on Thursday that, in his capacity as chief officer of intelligence for AFRICOM, he knew very soon after the Benghazi assault began that it was a terror attack and not a "demonstration gone awry"--and that the information had been passed up the chain of command.

"Respectfully to the general," Vietor told Baier, "That's just not accurate. There's no way anyone knew definitively the motivations of the attackers that evening." He added: "I don't think we know definitively today." 

Though he admitted that the initial claim that there had been demonstrations in Benghazi had been wrong, Vietor stuck to the White House line that it had been legitimate to blame the video for the Benghazi attack.

His source? Not the military, not the Central Intelligence Agency, but the media--specifically, media reports about the motivations of demonstrators who had shown up in anti-U.S. demonstrations in Libya and elsewhere (in their "millions," Vietor claimed, overshooting just a bit). 

"What I've seen is, in a number of outlets, reporters talked to people on the scene that night...who said they were there because they were upset about this video."

When pressed by Baier, Vietor said that the source for the "video" story that the administration relied upon had been "Guys quoted in newspapers saying that's why they were there," and not the White House itself.

It is not clear whether that is historically even possible. Journalists did not have access to those present during the attack while it was ongoing, and the White House settled on a story about the video while events were still in progress, meaning that it based its reaction on media reports from Cairo and elsewhere, not Benghazi. Vietor may be referring to media reports that quoted witnesses to the Benghazi attack some time after it happened.

Regardless, what is fascinating is that the Obama administration, and loyal alumni like Vietor, are hanging their defense of the White House's actions and explanations on media reports--not on intelligence available that night. Vietor grew testy, in fact, when asked to describe events. He admitted Obama had not been in the White House Situation Room, for example, but added that he did not have a "tracking device" on the president.

"Did you also change 'attacks' to 'demonstrations' in the talking points?" Baier asked him. "Maybe. I don't remember," Vietor responded. It was two years ago, after all, he added, using the colloquial "dude," and perhaps reflecting President Obama's own tendency to regard everything that happened prior to his election or re-election to have been "litigated" by the electorate and absolved by the purifying force of political victory.

It seems never to have occurred to Vietor that Watergate, too, was about a two-year-old event. 

Yet while the Obama crew has never known much about history, they do know plenty about how the mainstream media operate. 

They knew relying on the media's own reports as evidence would make it more difficult for journalists to question the accuracy of the "video" story--assuming, of course, they cared. 

Which, at the time, they did not.

Image: Fox News Special Report

Turtle Rock Studios, a California video game company that has produced such titles as Evolve and Left 4 Dead, has fired one of its employees for tweeting that Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling possesses privacy and free speech rights.

Josh Olin, the community manager at Turtle Rock, tweeted from his private account: "Here's an unpopular opinion: Donald Sterling has the right as an American to be an old bigot in the security of his own home. He's a victim." The NBA banned Sterling for life after the media broadcast recordings of private phone conversations containing racist remarks by the billionaire.

Management quickly fired Olin without discussing the matter with him. "The comments made by our former community manager stand in stark contrast to our values as a game development studio," the company's official account tweeted. "We sincerely apologize for his remarks and in no way endorse or support those views."

"Anyone who follows me knows my tweets were not in support of Sterling's actions," Olin told the gaming site Kotaku. "Rather, they were promoting three core tenets I believe in: 1) The harm sensational media presents to society. 2) The importance and sanctity of your privacy within your own home. And 3) The right to be whatever you want to be as an American, as long as it isn't hurting anyone else. That last point not to be confused with condoning Sterling's actions, which I don't."

Turtle Rock lists as a core value "respect," for "everyone in and out of our community for one reason: because we treat you the way we want to be treated." Who wants to be treated like this?

Loquacious Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, perhaps having visions of Robespierre on the guillotine, started the week warning of a “very slippery slope” should the NBA take Donald Sterling’s Los Angeles Clippers away from him.

By midweek, following the NBA ban on the racist owner, emboldened politicians and pundits wondered aloud what other franchises they might expropriate and what other owners should publicly grovel before them. America does not sit precariously atop the slope. It’s already whizzing down the hill.

That’s the thing about slippery slopes. They’re slippery. The ride happens fast, and the passengers, excited at the top, eventually find themselves at the bottom. Ascending the pit for the high ground doesn’t come easy.

Sports writer Charles Pierce wondered on PBS “what does [NBA Commissioner] Adam Silver now do, for example, with the DeVos family in Orlando, which funds anti-gay candidates and anti-gay issue ads all over the country, as well as owning the Orlando Magic? Does he talk to them? This is an entirely new world, and if we’re going to step into it, let’s step all the way into it.”

It’s surely a new world—a Brave New World, and 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, too.

DeVos, the co-founder of Amway, has donated to Focus on the Family, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and other traditionalist groups. He also has generously supported measures aimed at maintaining marriage as a one-man, one-woman institution, calling “respecting marriage” a “sacred issue.” This outrages SportsGrid writer Jake O’Donnell, who wonders whether holding this opinion—codified into law by the majority of states—should be grounds for disqualification in the NBA’s club of owners. “Hey, this isn’t nearly the same thing as Donald Sterling’s recorded hate-rant,” he concedes. “It is, however, food for thought when discussing the NBA as a place for everyone, vis-a-vis the opinions held by the owners.”

“While a racist in their midst deservedly gets the boot,” Craig Crawford writes at the Huffington Post, “the NBA and its players paid no attention when one of its owners gave half a million dollars to an anti-gay group, defended it and, despite a tepid boycott effort, went along his merry way without any consequence.”

Why should there be “any consequence” to holding an opinion with which Crawford, Pierce, and O’Donnell disagree? Why would making the NBA “a place for everyone” require purging it of Rich DeVos? What dystopian novel do we live in when a respected writer suggests that a sports commissioner scold an 88-year-old rags-to-riches Christian billionaire for supporting a position affirmed by 62 percent of voters in his basketball team’s state and 59 percent of the voters in his blue-state birth state?

Fascism, like the devil, masquerades as an angel of light. In the name of combating bigotry, bigots—narrow-minded people who mistake their own opinion’s for God’s—have used the ugly intolerance of Clippers owner Donald Sterling to intolerantly enforce conformity of opinion. Rather than contentment that a man wishing to impose a racial litmus test on who sits courtside beside his courtesan has been kicked out of the league, the victory fuels a strange hunger for the imposition of a political litmus test on who sits in NBA owners’ boxes. Donald Sterling and his enemies share more in common than either care to admit.

Sterling represents ugly thinking. Freedom of expression, respect for privacy, and property rights represent beautiful ideals. It’s a shame that defending the latter gets confused for promoting the former. It’s a shame that justifiable outrage over intolerant speech morphs into outrageous calls for more intolerance.

“In this country, people are allowed to be morons,” Mark Cuban observed before Game 4 of the Mavericks-Spurs series. “They’re allowed to be stupid. They’re allowed to think idiotic thoughts.”

Might confusing “are” for “were” qualify under “idiotic thoughts”? Welcome to the new world.

The Donald has bought the Turnberry golf course, a Scottish course that has served as four-time host to the British Open.

On April 29, Trump announced the acquisition of Turnberry, adding the famed links to his growing golf empire.

"It is an honor and privilege to own one of golf's greatest and most exciting properties," Trump said.

Though the full terms of the deal were not released, London's Independent reported that Trump handed over $63 million to Dubai's Leisurecorp for the picturesque links.

Turnberry, located in Ayrshire along the Scottish coast, becomes Trump's 17th golf course, including 12 in the U.S.

Trump has renovated many of his golf properties, but the real estate mogul told Golf.com that he has no intentions of making changes at Turnberry.

"I'm not going to touch a thing unless the Royal & Ancient ask for it or approve it," Trump said. "I have the greatest respect for the R&A and for (chief executive) Peter Dawson. I won't do anything to the golf course at all without their full stamp of approval."

The billionaire was copy when asked if he would add his own name to the course, though. "'Trump Turnberry’ has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? We'll make that decision fairly soon--in a couple of days."

Trump has been seeking the right property to realize his ambition of owning a course that could host a major title.

But with the long tradition Turnberry has in the world of golf, Trump may find pressure to keep the name as is.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com

A new report from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office shows that of the "41 feature-length films made in 2012-13, only two were made in California and nine used California as a secondary location." Moreover, 10 years ago there were 123,000 film and television production jobs based in California. Now there are only  107,400.

So who exactly is benefitting from this $100 million annual windfall in taxpayer-funded corporate welfare?

The Hollywood worker bees, the hoi polloi, Joe and Jane Lunch-bucket sure aren't. Over 15,000 of them have lost jobs. And with only 2 feature films shooting in California per year, local businesses sure aren't benefitting from the food eaten and hotel rooms rented by productions.

My guess, and this is just me, is that the Hollywood rich and fat are getting a whole lot rich and fatter off this corporate welfare.

How's Harvey Weinstein doing? His house big enough? He eating okay?

Just keep voting for Democrats, naives.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC

A few weeks ago, the campaign consulting firm FourTier Strategies called and asked if I would make a commercial for a guy running against House Speaker John Boehner. I thought, “Wow. I've already been blacklisted in Hollywood; let’s get blacklisted by the Republicans … there’s a career move.”

But after a call with JD Winteregg, I was impressed.

Winteregg is a millennial, educated, Christian, high school teacher who had lived in a Socialist Country for a year. He had personally experienced socialized medicine. It took him a month to get a chest X-ray. Back home in the States, his mom developed cancer, was in treatment within days, and lived. JD was convinced that if she had been residing in France, she would be dead. He couldn’t wait to get back home.

When Winteregg didn’t see Boehner standing up to the fundamental change that was currently happening in America, he decided to run for Congress.

Although Winteregg and his volunteers had knocked on over 20,000 doors, he wasn’t getting traction in the press.

I have a soft spot in my heart for underdogs. I believe in the free market. I believe in engaged discussion. I believe that the primary system makes our leaders stronger. It felt important that the people in Ohio’s 8th from both Boehner and Winteregg.

Thus was born “When the Moment is Right.”

Breitbart broke the video. It went viral. People laughed. There was now an awareness that Boehner had an opponent named JD Winteregg.

Within hours of the video being featured by radio hosts Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, Winteregg was fired from his university position. He answered back by releasing the B.E.S.T. Border Security and Immigration Plan.

Humor had given him an opportunity and a platform to present a common sense solution and be heard. That is a model that works.

Herman Cain has a great sense of humor and a brilliant mind for marketing. He soared from relative obscurity to become the Presidential frontrunner without buying one second of national TV time during the 2012 campaign. Cain knew that becoming part of pop culture was tantamount to succeeding in politics. The elite may not have dug Cain’s messaging but the youth did.

The fact is we live in a reality TV, YouTube world where a majority of our youth get their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central. The same political elite that didn’t laugh at Obama during his interview on “Between Two Ferns” has no idea why they lost the last election.

As Michael Reagan said in a recent Newsmax interview: “The Republican Party is doing classes right now in the use of smartphones because they don’t even know how to push the button…..”

If they want to win, they better learn because Colbert is about to become the next David Letterman. You can’t win the argument if you can’t speak the language. Winteregg and Cain understand that. Come to think of it Ronald Reagan did, too.

After watching a soldier who had suffered traumatic injury from an IED being carried off a passenger plane, thoroughbred owner George "Chip" McEwen decided his horse--Uncle Sigh--would race for the Wounded Warrior Project going forward. This weekend, Uncle Sigh races out of the third gate at Churchill Downs. At 30-1, Uncle Sigh looks like an underdog. But the team behind the horse knows that many of the wounded warriors they run for overcame tougher odds.

According to the Courier Journal, McEwen said that the soldier he glimpsed on the plane gave "everyone a thumbs up" as his father carried him off the plane. 

"That's the moment that changed everything for me," McEwen told the paper. "When you think about somebody who's been wounded in war, you don't really think about their family members and about how that entire dynamic is changed forever--all because they put their lives on the line to protect our freedom."

"Within a matter of months, McEwen received the Jockey Club's approval to change the name of his stables to Wounded Warrior Stables and switch to yellow silks emblazoned with purple hearts."

McEwen also started giving "10 percent of his horses' earning to charities...such as Retrieving Freedom, the Wounded Warrior Project, and the Navy SEAL Foundation."  He has given than $160,000 to date.

When the 140th running of the Kentucky Derby takes place on May 3rd, McEwen will host "a solider who lost both legs in Afghanistan and a family whose son was killed in Iraq."

Uncle Sigh will be running to win in the Derby, and McEwen is thrilled to be sharing "the greatest two minutes" in sports with military personnel and their families.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins  Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

It was the headline that buzzed ‘round the world: “China poised to pass US as world’s leading economic power this year.” Okay, so China is now #1. We are now #2.    

Let’s ask ourselves: Does it really surprise us that this has happened? Did we really think that our current course was commensurate with superpower status? That we could fritter away resources in low-yield foreign wars, run huge fiscal deficits—all the while ignoring the fundamental rules of economic growth, in terms of appropriate taxation, regulation, litigation, and energy production? Of course not.   

So what does this US-China switch mean? The short answer is that we don’t really know, because the future doesn’t provide us with many data points. And there aren’t many data points in the past, either, because the world hasn’t seen this sort of power-shift since 1872, when the British economy was eclipsed by America’s. Not long after that, Germany, too, overtook Britain in economic power. 

So how did the British react? Most Englishmen resolved not to notice. After all, in the late 19th century, the British Empire ruled over nearly a quarter of the world, both in area and population. As they liked to hear themselves say, “The sun never sets on the Union Jack."

However, a few shrewd observers could see plainly that London’s reach was greater than its grasp.   Rudyard Kipling might be remembered as the bard of imperialism, but he was actually a clear-eyed observer of power. Commissioned to write a poem to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s reign, Kipling produced “Recessional"; the occasion might have been festive, but the tone was dire:

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:   
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!   

That is, Kipling warned, the British Empire could go the way of vanquished Middle Eastern empires.  

Two years later, in 1899, came the Boer War, in which the British fought against Dutch settlers in South Africa. The English army prevailed, but it was a demoralizing experience for the victors, a painful and morally queasy counter-insurgency campaign; the 1980 film “Breaker Morant” captured some of the English ambivalences. The Boer War drilled into Britain that it simply didn’t have the stomach to fight, everywhere, for their empire. And so the recession of British power became obvious to honest onlookers.

In our time, Americans might find themselves comparing the Boer War to the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.   

Indeed, for more insight into our predicament, we might also look back to the political and strategic thinking of H.G. Wells, the British science-fiction writer. For all his powers of imagination, Wells was an all-around brilliant thinker, deeply engaged in the real-world debates of his era.   

And so, for example, in his autobiography, published in 1934, he reflected on the turn of the century and its events. He and his circle of friends, who had organized themselves into a club calling themselves the “Coefficients,” were, he recalled, “all stung by the small but humiliating tale of disasters in the South Africa war, all sensitive to the threat of business recession, and all profoundly alarmed by the naval and military aggressiveness of Germany.”

Once again, Americans today can supply their own present-day analogies: In addition to Iraq and Afghanistan, the great recession and the threat from Russia, as well as the rise of China. Wells continued:

The undeniable contraction of the British outlook in the opening decade of the new century is one that has exercised my mind very greatly… Gradually, the belief in the possible world leadership of England had been deflated, by the economic development of America and the militant boldness of Germany. 

Wells added that the long epoch of British power had made Britons forget where their power came from: 

The long reign of Queen Victoria, so prosperous, progressive, and effortless, had produced habits of political indolence and cheap assurance. As a people we had got out of training, and when the challenge of these new rivals became open, it took our breath away at once. We did not know how to meet it. 

So as to the American perspective of today, do we really think, for example, that we can maintain our vast foreign policy commitments on an economic base that’s in relative decline? 

Wells added some further criticisms of what he saw around him: 

We had educated our general population reluctantly; our universities had not kept pace with the needs of the new time; our ruling class, protected in its advantages by a universal snobbery, was broad-minded, easy-going, and profoundly lazy.

Once again, the parallels, then and now, can be piquant: The Washington Post reported recently on the startling dearth of computer science courses in DC-area high schools.  If that dearth exists nationwide—and it does—that’s a problem: do we really think that Americans can flourish if most of us are only digital consumers, and not creators? Yes, we have Silicon Valley, but other counties have tech sectors, too; surely widespread prosperity is assured only if we have widespread education in technical competence.   

Writing in the 1930s, Wells recalled of his turn-of-the-century group: 

It had an air of asking “What are we doing with the world? What are we going to do?” Or perhaps I might put it better by saying: “What is being done to our world? And what are we going to do about it?”

As we know, history was hard on Britain in the first half of the 20th century. First came World War One, which took the lives of more than 900,000 British soldiers. Yes, Britain won, but only by going deeply into debt and only with the help of the United States. Then came two decades of slow economic growth in the 20s and 30s, followed, of course, by World War Two—which finished off the empire. Today, Britain is prosperous, but it is powerful only as an adjunct to the United States.   

Indeed, if Britain is not careful today, it will find itself tractor-beamed into the Franco-German dominated European Union. It would be ironic if Britain ended up as an appendage to the continental countries against which it fought so many wars.

So yes, Kipling was on to something when he wrote “Recessional,” and Wells was right to worry about “political indolence and cheap assurance.”  

Meanwhile, in the 21st century, we Americans need to learn more about the rest of the world—starting, of course, with China. We might begin by thinking about an ancient idea in Chinese culture: fuquo qiangbing, “strong country, strong army.”  

For thousands of years, the Chinese kept that strategic idea close to heart, and it powered them to world leadership for most of human history. Then they forgot their own wisdom beginning in the 15th century; for the next half-millennium, it was a long slide downward for the Middle Kingdom.   

Interestingly, in the late 19th century, the Japanese borrowed the Chinese idea: they called it fukuko kyohei, and it served as their rationale for growth and expansion in the 20th century, by fair means and foul.  

Today, Japan has slipped, but the Chinese are back on the world stage—with a vengeance. So now Britain, Japan, and the US must look at China in a new way: if Beijing says it wants to have a strong country and a strong military, we should believe them.  

The Chinese are already strong in cyber-technology; they have cruise missiles that fly at mach 10, thus putting all our aircraft carriers at risk. And some say that their space program is just a cover for anti-satellite warfare. And oh, by the way, they are projected to lead the world in drone production.   

To be sure, in the great game of the 21st century, the US is hardly without resources of all kinds. To cite just one example, the value of all the oil and natural gas under federal lands, for example, is estimated to be $128 trillion. And coal is on top of that. Of course, today, the official US government plan is to use precisely none of that energy wealth, in the name of fighting “climate change.”  

So does America face a British future? Is it confronting the fears and dreads that plagued Kipling and Wells? If present trends continue, it surely seems that way. But present trends don’t have to continue.   

So as we wait—and, hopefully, work—to see better leadership arise, we might take comfort in the writings of another British writer, also blessed with an imaginative turn of mind: Charles Dickens. In his 1843 classic, A Christmas Carol, Dickens showed us the dolorous path to death being walked by Ebenezer Scrooge. Yet finally, after plenty of prodding, Scrooge has his epiphany: “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.” In other words, by his own actions, Scrooge’s rendezvous with doomy destiny was forestalled.  

That’s where we are today: we can see a bad course, and we are on it. We can also see, albeit hazily, a better course—and we must take it. If we don’t, our future will be one with Nineveh and Tyre.  

If you’ve ever wondered about the inanimate creatures that stand guard outside bodegas, the company responsible is The Vending Company Inc., New York’s Official Sentry of Coin Operated Kiddie Rides.

"We’re very much dependent on nice weather, and so every time it’s a rainy day, you don’t see a smile on my face,” Mark Goldberg, the manager, said. “Obviously when it’s rainy and it’s extremely cold and snowy, we don’t do any business. We sit around and play cards."

Operating half the year isn’t the only struggle for the 30-year-old business. “People don’t even understand. It’s extremely difficult. Moving and picking up, and stores closing and opening, and problems with kids sticking stuff inside the coin slot trying to get a free ride. I can’t tell you the amount of problems you can have.”

“The industry has changed dramatically," said Goldberg. "Those manufacturers can no longer support the challenges of the economy. In order to make rides, you gotta be selling them." Goldberg declined to say how many rides he maintains around the city: “I can’t give you that information. I don’t really know who you are. We’re getting into some sticky areas. They’re around the boroughs.”

The modest Brooklyn shop, which provides rides to locations in every borough free of charge in return for a share of the profits, services and maintains the machines on site. “I haven’t bought a new ride in a long, long time. We can make the rides here practically look brand new. We know how to refurbish the stuff here better than the manufacturer.”

Javier Agredo has been the Vending Company’s resident artist for the past 12 years. Agredo said he used to paint more elaborate designs, but with the rides requiring touch-ups every year or two, these days he prefers to keep things simple.

Making sure the rides run tickety-boo is Alex Shneyyer, an employee of 17 years—no inconsequential role, considering Goldberg occasionally receives calls from distraught mothers whose kids want answers. “What happened to the Donald Duck? My daughter’s looking for it. She’s like flipping out. She doesn’t see it here anymore. She sees some other character there. She’s having a withdrawal.”

Goldberg’s phone also rang off the hook when the price increased from 25 to 50 cents. “We got a lot of screams. Frankly, 50 cents is not enough, but we’re dealing with it at this particular point. When somebody calls me up and says, ‘How come you raised the rides to 50 cents?’ I say, ‘Well it’s been a quarter for 25 years.’ Gas in 1974 was 53 cents a gallon. Now it’s $3.50 a gallon.”

While the rides may look like they’re from a bygone era—some might even call them good old-fashioned nightmare fuel—Goldberg says they’re classics. “The thing about rides is they never go out of style. There’s always children being born, thanks be to God. So when they see some ride in the street, they naturally want to get on it. So they tell their parent or guardian—sometimes they don’t even say it, they just cry it—and of course any mother or father or guardian will have it fit in their heart to just give the child a ride.”

Natalie McMullen is a street photographer, culture critic and food writer. She is an archivist of the resonant, a nerdy polisher of words, and a lifelong scholar on love and relationships. She is currently resident photographer at The Awl.

The post Who Looks Out For The Bodega Rides? appeared first on The Awl.

The 140th running of the Kentucky Derby takes place at Churchill Downs on Saturday afternoon. California Chrome, who races in the five spot, appears as a formidable 5-2 favorite. Hoppertunity, despite his optimistic name, has scratched. Here's the latest list of the odds, and the gate numbers on the left, with much--especially the odds--subject to change between now and Saturday.

2. Harry's Holiday 50-1

3. Uncle Sigh 30-1

4. Danza 10-1

5. California Chrome 5-2

6. Samraat 15-1

7. We Miss Artie 50-1

8. General A Rod 15-1

9. Vinceremos 30-1

10. Wildcat Red 15-1

11. Hoppertunity 6-1

12. Dances with Fate 20-1

13. Chitu 20-1

14. Medal Count 20-1

15. Tapiture 15-1

16. Intense Holiday 12-1

17. Commanding Curve 50-1

18. Candy Boy 20-1

19. Ride on Curlin 15-1

20. Wicked Strong 8-1