Instapundit » 2016

Archive for 2016

February 15, 2016

SO I GOT SOME OF THESE SOLAR POWERED YARD LIGHTS and they’re actually pretty decent. Even a few hours of good sunlight and they go all night; when it’s cloudy all day, they poop out after a couple of hours. But the color (“warm white”) is good, not the icy blue that I associate with outdoor LED lighting. Since this is mostly a summer thing, when days are longer, sun is stronger, and nights shorter, I think they’ll work out well.

DC MEDICAL DIRECTOR DROPS BRUTAL RESIGNATION LETTER, CALLS OUT OFFICIALS:

The medical director of D.C.’s fire department resigned in a scathing letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser, charging that “people are dying needlessly” in “a highly toxic” culture where reform is impossible.

Poor response times plague the District fire department. Bowser hired Dr. Jullette Saussy seven months ago for the specific purpose of reforming the department. Confirmed in November and named EMS Medical Director and Assistant Fire Chief, Saussy is already fed up with the D.C. system. In her resignation letter to the Mayor dated January 29 she rips the culture of a department that she argues values bureaucratic structure over meaningful medical reforms, reports WTOP.

“The culture of the DC Fire and EMS Department is highly toxic to the delivery of any semblance of quality pre-hospital patient care,” Saussy writes in her letter. “EMS reform, even attempts to make basic changes, are met with resistance from the top down.”

Saussy accuses the fire department of fostering a “feel good” environment which relies on manipulated or incomplete data that serves as their measure of performance. She says it creates a false reality within the department, where people are not properly overseen and issues fail to ever be addressed.

Hasn’t a false reality in the District of Columbia been a given since about 1913 or so? (And isn’t that true in most if not all Democrat-run cities?)

Read the whole letter here.

(Via Walter Olson.)

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Not Just Hookups: Dating Is Thriving On College Campuses, Survey Says.

WELL, THIS SEEMS LIKE IT WOULD BE A LUCRATIVE LINE OF WORK: I Train Fat Rich Guys And Then Get Them Laid.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Owner of restaurant targeted by machete-wielding terrorist: ‘I am going to get a bigger [Israeli] flag.’ “Last week, Somali immigrant Mohamed Barry attacked with a machete patrons at the Nazareth restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. While authorities initially said they believed that Barry chose the restaurant randomly for a ‘lone wolf’ attack, it now seems likely that the restaurant was targeted because the owner, Hany Baransi, is from Israel, and proudly displayed an Israeli flag in his window. According to Baransi, Barry asked a server a half-hour before the attack where the owner was from, and she confirmed that Baransi was from Israel.”

Plus: “Honest to God, I am not kidding. They don’t scare me. We are Israelis. We are Israelis. We are resilient, we fight back.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Beware the Smartphone Menace.

ACTUALLY, LAWYERS INVENTED HYPERTEXT WITH THE SYSTEM OF CITATIONS INVENTED IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY: How the Humble Index Card Foresaw the Internet. And no, I’m not kidding about that.

BUT THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT WERE AWESOME: Ten Reasons China Failed: From Basic Gangsterism to Parasitic Engagements: What happens when liquidity is allocated by political muscle, massive bribery and kickbacks, rather than economics.

JOE PAPPALARDO: 3 Ways Scalia Could Have Been Killed.

Meh. If I were going to gas someone, I’d use argon. This conspiracy-theory stuff is all in good fun, but I had lunch with Scalia about 3 years ago, and I remember thinking that he looked old, overweight, and not so great. His mind was lively, but I worried that he might not make it to the end of Obama’s term and said a small (unheeded, apparently) prayer that I was wrong.

RED LINE: “23 dead as missiles hit three hospitals, school in Syrian towns”

The report is more gruesome than the headline makes it sound:

Fourteen people were killed in the town of Azaz near the Turkish border when missiles slammed into a school sheltering families fleeing the offensive and the children’s hospital, two residents and a medic said.

Bombs also hit another refugee shelter south of the town and a convoy of trucks, another resident said.

“We have been moving scores of screaming children from the hospital,” said medic Juma Rahal. At least two children were killed and scores of people injured, he said.

Activists posted video online purporting to show the damaged hospital. Three crying babies lay in incubators in a ward littered with broken medical equipment. Reuters could not independently verify the video.

In a separate incident, missiles hit another hospital in the town of Marat Numan in Idlib province, in north western Syria, said the French president of the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) charity, which was supporting the hospital.

“There were at least seven deaths among the personnel and the patients, and at least eight MSF personnel have disappeared, and we don’t know if they are alive,” Mego Terzian told Reuters.

“The author of the strike is clearly … either the government or Russia,” he said, adding that it was not the first time MSF facilities in Syria had been attacked.

Meanwhile, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev claims that the West is rekindling the Cold War — a propaganda push left unanswered by our White House or State Department.

NO JOKE: TRUMP CAN WIN PLENTY OF LATINOS: So says the Daily Beast’s Ruben Navarrette:

Latinos for Trump? Oh yeah, that’s a thing.

Keep in mind three points. First, you have to understand that we’re talking here primarily about Latino Republicans, many of whom might live in red states such as Arizona or Texas. Those Latinos who are Democrats (as about 80 percent of them are, according to surveys) are busy dividing up their support between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, with most of it going to Clinton. . . .

Finally, if it’s true that Trump is inspiring voters who feel alienated and abandoned by the political process, then the fact that there might be Latinos who support Trump makes sense. America’s largest minority knows about alienation and abandonment. . . .

A new poll confirms it. In the national survey, which was conducted by Beck Research on behalf of the American Federation for Children, 38 percent of Latinos favor Trump. Ted Cruz got 15 percent. Jeb Bush pulled in 14 percent. And Marco Rubio, the guy who’s supposed to be the one who could unite the party and win? Just 8 percent. . . .

And interestingly enough, with most Puerto Ricans and Dominican-Americans solidly in the Democratic camp, and Cuban-Americans splitting their allegiance between Rubio and Cruz, it is in the Mexican-American community in the Southwest where you are most likely to find Latinos lining up with Trump.

They’re in red states like Texas and Arizona, and the battleground state of Colorado. There’s a lot they like about Trump, including his independence, plainspokenness, success in business, and disdain for political correctness. They see him as strong and resolute, and not having to cater to moneyed interests since he is self-funding his campaign. And either they don’t buy the idea that he is anti-Mexican, or they don’t care.

Let’s not forget that the relationship between U.S.-born Latinos and Latino immigrants, and even between foreign-born Latinos who have been naturalized and Latino immigrants, is complicated to say the least. There is an ambivalence there.

As a Mexican-American, I can tell you that many Mexican-Americans think that Mexican immigrants who come to the United States illegally are taking advantage—of a porous border, of the social-services safety net, of loopholes in immigration law, and of an insatiable appetite among U.S. employers for cheap and dependable labor. And they’re not wrong about that.

That’s a problem. Trump isn’t the solution. But there are some Latinos who give him credit for even starting the conversation.

It’s an interesting perspective. Hispanics are not a homogenous group, so I assume that some will support Trump, as well as every other candidate. We should stop trying so hard to stereotype individuals.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UC-Berkeley Law, Business Schools Jack Up Tuition For California Residents.

IN THE MAIL: Scalia Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court’s Wittiest, Most Outspoken Justice.

Plus, today only at Amazon: Up to 70% off select PNY memory products.

And, also today only: 45% Off Jawbone UP3 Activity Trackers.

And: Save 50% on the Teeter EP-560 Ltd. Inversion Table.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1012.

SOCIALISM: PROTECTED BY THE CONNECTED AT THE EXPENSE OF THE POOR AND THE MIDDLE CLASS. AS USUAL. Venezuela Burns as Court Entrenches Gridlock.

The Venezuelan Supreme Court late this week ruled in favor of the country’s President, Nicolas Maduro, in his dispute with Venezuela’s National Assembly over a move Maduro made last month to increase his control of the country’s finances and economy. . . .

On Friday, the opposition’s leader Henry Ramos announced that he would announce concrete steps for setting up a referendum to remove the “national disgrace that is the government” in the coming days. The opposition had previously said that it planned to call a referendum within six months, but on Friday Ramos said that six months would clearly be too long. Maduro told his supporters “not to underestimate the threats Henry Ramos made today against peace and stability of the Republic.” No one should underestimate the chances for political violence erupting in the coming weeks and months.

To be fair, Venezuela’s “leaders” should have been hanging from lampposts years ago.