Wednesday's HOT MIC


Megan, that comes down to "might he have taken Valium for anxiety?" and the answer is "yeah sure". But arguing that the Valium caused the mass shooting is unsupported to the point of being silly. There are something like 15 million Valium prescriptions in the US every year, and there's been one of these shootings ever.

The Alex "Consummate Ass" Jones chemtrails crowd has been pushing the notion that SSRIs cause these things for years, as has Scientology, but it's always based on a fairly silly fallacy: they note that some high percentage of mass shooters have taken SSRIs and other psychiatric drugs (although this is the first time I've seen diazepam connected to one.) The fallacy is that most all mass shooters have had psychiatric problems, and in this country, the first line of treatment is almost always psychiatric drugs.  So the observation is equivalent to noting that out of a population in which 95 percent of the people take SSRIs, 95 percent of the mass shooters have taken SSRIs.

Everyone would like to know how this happens. My own guess is they'll find he had a brain tumor, like Charles Whitman, but it's just a guess.

Well looky here ...

The committee vote is a significant step toward implementing President Trump's goal of building a border wall, which otherwise has been stalled. Trump himself agreed to delay money for the wall last month in order to quickly resolve a fight over raising the debt ceiling and extending federal spending for the first few months of the new fiscal year.


Media setting up all around the L.A. Federal Building where the Vegas shooter's girlfriend is being questioned. All were just patiently waiting, some were eating lunch. She's obviously going to be there for a while.

And now for something completely different...

State Dept. Spokesperson Heather Nauert addressed the Tillerson imbroglio at the State Dept. press briefing a short while ago.

"The secretary is committed to staying here at the State Dept.," Nauert said.

She also said that after Tillerson met with the president following his press conference, this morning, he told her: "It was a good conversation and they are all good."

Okay, everyone who has never called their boss a moron in a private conversation, raise your hand.

This was the best shot I could get of the chopper hovering over the federal building near me where the FBI is questioning the Vegas shooter's girlfriend. Heading over now to see if I can get any other pics.

Megan, you can count one for me.

I'm one of the 1 in 1000 whose cataract surgery didn't go well, so I'm not as comfortable driving as I once was. I also work 100 percent at home, my car is broken down, and I haven't been able to get it fixed or replace it.

Autonomous cars, especially ones from ride services, would be a big help.

Is anyone you know just dying for self-driving cars to take over our highways? No one I know has this on the top of their wish list which begs the question...what is the Senate doing? Don't they have other things to do? ex. BUILD THE WALL! What is the obsession with these cars? I don't get it.

Megan: sorry to break the news, but Gateway Pundit (which for some reason Drudge links to constantly, just as he does to another crackpot site, Infowars), jumped the shark long ago.


The "source" turned out to be complete ochsenscheisse, as anyone with an ounce of media savvy could tell at a glance.

Blogs and social media has been abuzz with talk of a supposed “German news report” indicating that Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of Germanwings flight 9525, was a Muslim convert. In fact, there is no such report. The rumor that Lubitz converted to Islam got started on the German site Politically Incorrect. In the American blogosphere, Politically Incorrect is being cited as a “German news website.” It is not a news site, however, but rather is an overtly anti-Islamic blog/forum. The confusion apparently arose from the site’s url: www.pi-news.net.

Given the orientation of the site and reports that Germanwings 9525 was intentionally crashed by the co-pilot, it is hardly surprising that commentators on Politically Incorrect would speculate about whether Lubitz was a Muslim. Reference was made in particular to a blog post by a site regular named Michael Mannheimer. Mannheimer’s post contains no evidence that Lubitz was a Muslim convert, but just more speculation. Mannheimer’s conjecture is based on such apparently suspicious details as the fact that Lubitz did flight training in Bremen and Bremen is also home to a mosque known for its radicalism. In fairness to Politically Incorrect, it should be noted that several commentators on the site have themselves rejected the speculations in Mannheimer’s post as unfounded, including one who remarked that he “must have been very drunk” when he wrote it.