ANDREW KLAVAN: How the Leftist Media Beat The Right.
Archive for 2016
October 6, 2016
THE COUP AND PURGE DAMAGE TURKEY’S AIR FORCE: Jim Dunnigan analyzes the post-coup deterioration of Turkey’s F-16 fleet. The ratio of pilots-to-aircraft has dropped.
THE WAGES OF SOCIALISM: Starving Oil Workers Sell Clothes for Food in Venezuela.
The latest horrifying example of the depths of Venezuela’s economic crisis comes courtesy of the country’s struggling oil industry, where hungry roughnecks are being forced to literally sell the clothes off their back to feed themselves and their families. . . .
There’s a nasty cyclical effect to all of this, too: runaway inflation is making oil workers’ salaries insufficient for necessary purchases, which is leading to “worker disillusionment, absenteeism, and a brain drain” in the oil industry, which is leading to a drop in the country’s oil production, which is dragging down the entire Venezuelan economy, which in turn is hurting oil workers…etc., etc.
Oil exports make up 95 percent of Venezuela’s export revenues, and a fall in output isn’t the only thing rocking the petrostate—there’s also the collapse in crude prices over the past two years from more than $110 per barrel down to around $50 today. Current prices are a very far cry from the reported $120 per barrel Caracas needs to balance its budget.
Nothing is going right in Venezuela right now. It’s producing less oil and earning less cash for what it is capable of drilling, its workforce is going hungry, and its economy is locked in a death spiral, exacerbating all of these problems. And, for Caracas, things are going to get even worse before they get better.
Bad luck.
PUTIN’S UNILATERAL COLD WAR: Remember, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “re-set” relations with Russia. They are the American leaders who permitted the Kremlin’s imperial revival.
…JUST THE SAME AS THE OLD BOSS: For Next UN Secretary-General, A Managerially Incompetent Socialist, as analyzed by Claudia Rosett.
Clinton and her team said the country’s gradual shift to democracy — Burma had just held an election, won by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s party — meant it had earned the U.S. investment. Other economic powerhouses, including Australia and the EU, were also moving to loosen their own rules for investment in Burma. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as the Washington Post reported at the time, said the United States needed to keep up.
But, as the Post also noted, human rights leaders predicted Clinton’s decision would set back their cause. At the time, as Foreign Policy reported, Suu Kyi supported a partial easing of the U.S. investment ban, but didn’t want American companies to be able to invest in the country’s energy sector. They argued opening investment to the energy market would fuel economic inequality and only strengthen the country’s repressive military. And they thought it gave the country’s government too much too soon, giving up leverage to push for more reform in the future.
But the Obama administration broke with Suu Kyi and human rights leaders, letting American companies invest in all sectors—including oil and gas.
I’m so old I can remember when Democrats loved Suu Kyi and hated Big Oil.
“AIRBRUSH” IS THE NEW “LIE:” WaPo: Clinton, Kaine airbrush out inconvenient details about U.S. troop departure from Iraq.
“Good Beer, No Censorship”: New episode of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast explores the brew ha-ha behind Flying Dog Brewery’s First Amendment dog fight with the state of Michigan over the censorship of its “Raging Bitch” beer label.
NEW EMAILS REVEAL CROOKED STATE DEPT–CLINTON FOUNDATION INTERACTIONS: Yes, Hillary’s State Dept. and the Clinton Foundation “intersected.” Note the Keystone pipeline connection.
SERFS ON THE UNIVERSITY’S FEUDAL MANOR: Why the ‘Safe-Space’ Debate Is a Problem for Adjuncts. “Very often, in cases involving speech regulations as related to employment, it can come down to a case of individual targeting, and that is an area where context matters.”
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FRAUD AND WASTE: EpiPen maker overcharged taxpayers for years, officials say.
Democratic lawmakers released a letter on Wednesday from Andy Slavitt, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), confirming that EpiPen maker Mylan had misclassified the device — in effect, overcharging taxpayers for its product.
The revelation is the latest turn involving Mylan, which has recently faced outrage from both parties over its 400 percent-plus increase in the price of EpiPens in the past few years.
The letter from Slavitt, released by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), confirms that Mylan has misclassified the EpiPen as a generic drug, as opposed to a brand drug, since 1997. That means Mylan was only giving Medicaid a 13 percent discount on its product, instead of a 23.1 percent discount.
The CMS even noted it had specifically told Mylan that its product was misclassified.
“The Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services in CMS has, on multiple occasions, provided guidance to the industry and Mylan on the proper classification of drugs and has expressly told Mylan that the product is incorrectly classified,” Slavitt wrote.
Wouldn’t it be something if the FDA didn’t keep competitors off the market and Medicaid (and consumers) had multiple vendors to choose from?
2016, MAN: Performers organize ‘Clown Lives Matter’ march in hopes to quench fears. “This is a peaceful way to show clowns are not psycho killers.”
WAIT, I THOUGHT THIS WAS A MYTH: State Police Raid Indy Office In Growing Voter Fraud Case.
FLASHBACK TO DECEMBER, 2001: The Clinton Team’s Betrayal:
Newspaper readers have been treated in recent days to an orgy of gut-spilling by Clinton administration officials rather painfully eager to show that when they were in office they, too, exerted themselves mightily to get rid of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network.
The fact that they didn’t succeed is just the beginning of the problem. The Washington Post articles on the Clinton officials also reveal the officials’ unsavory willingness – for the sake of self-promotion – to compromise the intelligence community by betraying secret ways the community tracked bin Laden. Most of all, though, the Clinton articles are a roadmap of failure, a textbook on how not to conduct an anti-terrorist campaign.
From a reporter’s perspective, new details on how the U.S. went after bin Laden are a goldmine, and more power to the newspaper that can dig them up. The trouble is that the details are potentially harmful. Consider the Clinton-era leak that U.S. intelligence was tracking bin Laden’s telephone calls. Former CIA director James Woolsey has said the leak tipped off bin Laden and led him to stop communicating by phone. Given such consequences, ex-administration officials are duty-bound to resist the temptation to brag about U.S. capabilities.
The new leaks involve, among other things, planned Pakistani and Uzbek commando raids, sensors for caves inside Afghanistan, a person close to the Taliban leadership spying for the U.S., and possible U.S. landing sites in Afghanistan. These leaks risk tipping off future foes about U.S. methods, harming some foreigners who have cooperated with the U.S. or shaking the resolve of others who fear being exposed in the U.S. media, and ratcheting up the vigilance of U.S. foes. We may never learn whether any of these negative consequences are triggered by the Clinton officials’ efforts to cast themselves in a good light.
What’s more, the officials don’t come out looking good at all. Instead their efforts add up to a long list on what not to do in a campaign against terrorism.
Read the whole thing.
SHOT: Gary Johnson says he will focus on attacking Hillary Clinton.
CHASER: Gary Johnson’s own VP pick pretty much just endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Say what you will about Gary Johnson or the Libertarian ticket, but if you compare the two-way race poll numbers with the four-way numbers, you’ll see that Johnson-Weld has put serious hurt on Clinton-Kaine.
WAIT, WHAT? Obama: Thank God I’m a country boy.
President Obama invoked his Kansas roots Tuesday in a statement praising America’s rural areas and suggesting that coal and farm towns are fast shifting to the digital economy under his leadership.
“I’ve spent most of my life living in big cities. But the truth is, a lot of what’s shaped me came from my grandparents who grew up on the prairie in Kansas,” he said in a statement issued by the Agriculture Department.
“They taught me the kind of values that don’t always make headlines, let alone the daily back-and-forth in Washington. Honesty and responsibility. Hard work and toughness against adversity. Keeping your word, and giving back to your community. And treating folks with respect, even if you disagree with them,” he added.
The statement appears to be part of the administration’s legacy project to promote the president’s successes that aren’t obvious.
Successes that aren’t obvious.
WHEN IN ROME… Trump to Nevadans: You say Nevada wrong.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Russia launches massive nuclear war training exercise that ‘involves 40 million people.’ The 1980s called, yada yada.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Clinton Campaign Helped Script Steve Harvey Interview.
Flashback: Email Reveals Hillary Clinton Was Fed Questions Before Meet The Press Appearance. And a few additional examples of DNC-MSM collusion also in that post.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: At New Smithsonian Museum, Justice Thomas Is an Invisible Man.
But then, the Smithsonian dropped the A-bomb on history quite a long time ago.