Update: March 6: I learned this morning that the amusing image above was Photoshopped by artist Tim O’Brien.

Seven Springs Golf and Country Club, Trinity, Florida.

Fox News

T.A. Frank, at Vanity Fair, analyses, and sadly dismisses, the Jess Sessions-lied-about-Russian-contacts meme that the MSM has turned into this week’s feeding frenzy. He is actually worried that this kind of crying-Wolf by the establishment media is turning them into laughing-stocks and lowering their credibility to the point of zero.

As things clear up, we may be seeing a collapsing soufflé. And as with so many soufflés served up by the press in recent months, it emerged from the oven to oohs and ahs—this time, with me among the oohers and ahers—only to sink, first slowly, then quickly. Next, it will go into the trash, and we’ll bake another. It’s tiring. It’s boring. And above all it’s supremely damaging to the press. If you want people to believe you, then develop a reputation for believability. Might work better than just blaming your loss of credibility on Trump.

That leaves the question, once more, of whether Russia is a mastermind pulling Trumpian strings. It’s a crazy world, and anything’s possible. But the power of confirmation bias is immense. How many books and articles came out during the Obama years suggesting the president was secretly pushing for Sharia law, violating espionage law, trying to destroy Israel, or surrendering to Russia by whispering about post-election “flexibility” to Dmitri Medvedev (hats off to Breitbart for promoting that last claim)? Lots. If you wanted to believe Obama was a Muslim who was trying to subvert the nation from within, you could find what you needed to find.

So if you’ve determined that Trump is the Siberian candidate, you’ll find what you need to find. And this time high-ranking government officials are trying to help you. As the Post story was breaking, The New York Times reported that Obama White House officials “scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election” and that intelligence officials rushed “to process as much raw intelligence as possible into analyses, and to keep the reports at a relatively low classification level to ensure as wide a readership as possible across the government.” This ensures the leaks keep coming and that the list of suspects remains infinite.

Michael Hobbes, in HuffPo, wonders why, after our courts have decided that homosexuals can marry and the rest of us had better bake them a cake or else, members of that subculture are still so lonely and unhappy.

In our lifetime, the gay community has made more progress on legal and social acceptance than any other demographic group in history. As recently as my own adolescence, gay marriage was a distant aspiration, something newspapers still put in scare quotes. Now, it’s been enshrined in law by the Supreme Court. Public support for gay marriage has climbed from 27 percent in 1996 to 61 percent in 2016. In pop culture, we’ve gone from “Cruising” to “Queer Eye” to “Moonlight.” Gay characters these days are so commonplace they’re even allowed to have flaws.

Still, even as we celebrate the scale and speed of this change, the rates of depression, loneliness and substance abuse in the gay community remain stuck in the same place they’ve been for decades. Gay people are now, depending on the study, between 2 and 10 times more likely than straight people to take their own lives. We’re twice as likely to have a major depressive episode. And just like the last epidemic we lived through, the trauma appears to be concentrated among men. In a survey of gay men who recently arrived in New York City, three-quarters suffered from anxiety or depression, abused drugs or alcohol or were having risky sex—or some combination of the three. Despite all the talk of our “chosen families,” gay men have fewer close friends than straight people or gay women. In a survey of care-providers at HIV clinics, one respondent told researchers: “It’s not a question of them not knowing how to save their lives. It’s a question of them knowing if their lives are worth saving.” …

“Marriage equality and the changes in legal status were an improvement for some gay men,” says Christopher Stults, a researcher at New York University who studies the differences in mental health between gay and straight men. “But for a lot of other people, it was a letdown. Like, we have this legal status, and yet there’s still something unfulfilled.”

This feeling of emptiness, it turns out, is not just an American phenomenon. In the Netherlands, where gay marriage has been legal since 2001, gay men remain three times more likely to suffer from a mood disorder than straight men, and 10 times more likely to engage in “suicidal self-harm.” In Sweden, which has had civil unions since 1995 and full marriage since 2009, men married to men have triple the suicide rate of men married to women.

All of these unbearable statistics lead to the same conclusion: It is still dangerously alienating to go through life as a man attracted to other men.

From Peter Cohen, answering a question at Quora:

A tea ceremony master was walking through the town market one day when he accidentally jostled a samurai. The samurai took great offense, but because the samurai and the tea ceremony master were of the same social caste, the samurai could not simply lop off the tea ceremony master’s head. So the samurai challenged the tea ceremony master to a duel the following dawn.

Now the tea ceremony master knew nothing of sword fighting, but was bound by honor to show up for this duel. Not wanting to embarrass himself, he went to the town sword master and asked the sword master if he could be taught to use a sword. The sword master was rather flustered, not really being able to teach much in the space of one evening. He showed how to hold a sword, how to do a basic sword stroke, and then said;

“I can teach you nothing about how to fight this evening, but I will tell you this; Go to the bridge in the morning, hold the sword thusly over your head. Think of the tea ceremony. When your opponent approaches, strike with all your might.”

The next morning at dawn the tea ceremony master stood at one end of a bridge and the samurai arrived at the other. The tea ceremony master held up his sword as he had been shown and thought of the tea ceremony. The samurai watched the tea ceremony master for a good while. Finally he bowed, turned, and walked away.

8 years sober next August.

Just not the one that the dems are pointing fingers at this week. J. Christian Adams identifies the Senator who really did commit treason.

Yes, a United States senator really did collude with the Russians to influence the outcome of a presidential election. His name was Ted Kennedy.

While Sen. Al Franken (D-Ringling Bros.) and other Democrats have the vapors over a truthful, complete, and correct answer Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave in his confirmation hearing, it’s worth remembering the reprehensible behavior of Senator Ted Kennedy in 1984.

This reprehensible behavior didn’t involve launching an Oldsmobile Delmont 88 into a tidal channel while drunk. This reprehensible behavior was collusion with America’s most deadly enemy in an effort to defeat Ronald Reagan’s reelection.

You won’t hear much about that from CNN and the clown from Minnesota.

To recap, from Forbes:

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. “The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. “These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”

Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.

Among the promises Kennedy made the Soviets was he that would ensure that the television networks gave the Soviet leader primetime slots to speak directly to the American people, thus undermining Reagan’s framing of the sinister nature of the USSR. Event then, the Democrats had the power to collude with the legacy media. Kennedy also promised to help Andropov penetrate the American message with his Soviet agitprop.

That’s right, folks. Even 30 years ago, Democrat senators were colluding with America’s enemies to bring down Republicans.

And no, Jeff Sessions didn’t perjure himself. It’s not even a close call.

Full story.

Carel Fabritius, The Goldfinch, 1654, Mauritshuis

Explored in depth here.

The lady who lent him the horse, Tonto Silverheels, an imported Irish Sport Horse of five colors, is a friend of mine from Virginia hunting circles.

The Hill:

Newly minted Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke rode a horse to his first day of work at the department’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, Thursday morning.

Zinke wore a cowboy hat, boots and jeans for the Thursday morning ride, which preceded a welcoming event in the lobby of the building.

Photos tweeted by Zinke and by Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement show the former Navy SEAL riding with U.S. Park Police officers.

“Honored to stand with the brave officers of @USParkPolice – these professionals put their lives on the line for us,” Zinke tweeted.

The transportation choice aligns with Zinke’s choice to brand himself as a conservative and conservationist in the mold of President Theodore Roosevelt, a strong advocate for outdoor recreation who established numerous national parks.

Zinke was Montana’s sole House representative before the Senate confirmed him to the Interior post Wednesday. Vice President Pence swore him in Wednesday night.

Zinke’s an ardent hunter, fisherman and outdoorsman, and pledged in the Senate to oppose any attempt at large-scale transfers of federal land — long a goal of some conservatives in the West.

Full story.

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More details:

In major news this morning, ex- fieldhunter TONTO, formerly owned by Jessie Swan of Markham VA, carried new Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to his first day of work Thursday morning in downtown Washington, DC. Tonto, an Irish gelding was imported and hunted with the Blue Ridge Hunt by owner Clay Smith prior to his purchase by Jessie for hunting with the Casanova Hunt. Upon his retirement from the hunt field, she lent the roan gelding to the police unit of the Washington Park Service. Normally only ridden by Maria Sabate, Tonto made a bit of history today when he was selected for the hack to work, probably due to his unbeatable disposition. Tonto is certainly continuing his winning ways as a tried and true Virginia fieldhunter.”

French Opium Party, 1918