MY RETIREMENT PLAN: BUY OCEANFRONT CONDOS WHEN PANIC DRIVES PRICES DOWN, THEN REAP PROFIT WHEN A VACCINE IS ROLLED OUT. Zika Cases Rise in Miami, and Officials Try to Soothe Fears.
Meanwhile, if Hillary’s urging Congress to act on a Zika bill, she could start by telling Democrats in the Senate to stop their filibuster.
OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Charlie Cook and Hillary’s Down-Ballot Problem.
AT AMAZON, all-new Dash Buttons.
CRACKING DOWN ON CHILD ABUSE: In Italy, Parents Who Force Vegan Diet Could Go To Jail. I’m not saying that it’s actual child abuse to deny a kid bacon, but . . . well, yeah, I pretty much am saying that.
BUT OF COURSE: Central Command reports skewed intel on ISIS fight.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Fix A Broken Air Conditioner.
MICHAEL TOTTEN: Iran Payment Wasn’t Ransom, but it Was Ransom.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
In one interview after another, Miller maintained that Trump was referring to “voting power,” though it was clear that Trump had been talking about what “Second Amendment people” could do after losing the vote.
For anyone who cares about the future of American politics, the comment represents a dwindling commitment to politics itself, to the notion that, through rhetoric and competition, we might find a common way as a people. Instead, the Republican candidate made a casual nod to the final force of arms. At this stage, so little that Trump says shocks us, but, now and then, it is worth stepping back and regarding the full damage of it all: the wounds to our fading global image of openness and generosity; the stomping on our admiration for intelligence, eloquence, or honesty; and now the blithe contempt for safe and civil government.
—“Why Gun Owners Should Reject Trump’s Call to ‘Second Amendment People,’” the New Yorker, August 9th.
In 2008, in defense of a presidential candidate who began his political career in the living room of a man who bombed the Pentagon and spent years soaking in the racist sermons of his spiritual “mentor,” (not to mention being supported by the New Black Panthers), the New Yorker decided to satirize the legitimate fears of those on the right who pointed out his flaws:
As Glenn has written, “When the ‘have you no decency?’ crowd demonstrates an utter lack of decency every single day, its complaints lose their sting.”
BACK IN THE USSR: Crimean Tatar Activist To Be Forced To Psychiatric Clinic For Test.
A court in Russia-annexed Crimea has ruled that a noted Crimean Tatar activist, Ilmi Umerov, must be placed in a psychiatric clinic for examination.
The Kyiv District Court in Simferopol on August 11 approved the motion by investigators. Umerov’s lawyer, Nikolai Polozov, said that the court’s ruling will be appealed.
Umerov, 59, former deputy chairman of Crimean Tatars’ self-governing body — the Mejlis — was charged with separatism in May after he made public statements against the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea by Russia.
The Soviet Union was notorious, among many reasons, for committing dissidents to “psychiatric” prisons after diagnosing them with the mental illness of opposing Moscow.
THAT MEANS IT’S WORKING: ObamaCare problems deepen as insurers scramble to stem losses.
One by one, the nation’s top insurers – Humana, UnitedHealth Group, Blue Cross and Anthem – have shifted their tone on the law.
Once optimistic, each has reported struggles with plans sold on the exchanges. Many say they weren’t ready for the influx of customers that have generated more claims than predicted.
As a result, companies are scrambling to find ways to cut their losses and stop the fiscal bleeding. A few say they’ll be forced to pass on costs to customers.
Already, rates on the exchanges are skyrocketing. From 2013 to 2016, almost every state has seen an increase in monthly premiums. In Michigan they are expected to jump 17.3 percent this year. In Virginia, the average premium increase could hit 37.1 percent, Bryan Rotella, attorney and founder of the Rotella Legal Group, warns.
“In fact, two of three federal programs to manage this exact risk are due to expire in 2017,” Rotella wrote in an opinion piece for The Hill. “Without these programs to fall back on, many insurance companies likely will need to jack up their premiums even higher or bail out of the exchanges all together.”
Blue Cross reported losing hundreds of millions of dollars on its exchange plans across the country. In Tennessee, it took a $300 million hit; in North Carolina, $280 million and in Arizona, $135 million.
In California, the company is expected to raise rates 19.9 percent – more than triple the average annual increase.
Others like Humana are threatening to quit altogether.
Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.
BRUCE THORNTON: The Left’s Reticence On Islam. “The bloody attack on gay night-club in Orlando by a Muslim, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, should be a wake-up call for progressives still unwilling to confront the illiberal core of radical Islam. The choice of target was not random, or just an expression of neurotic homophobia. Hatred of homosexuality is part of traditional Islamic sharia law, as is the punishment of death for transgressors. Today homosexuals are still being executed in Muslim majority nations like Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. But just as Islamic misogyny has been ignored or rationalized by the left, so too has this violent intolerance for diversity.”
Diversity isn’t really a goal in itself. It’s just a tool for attacking traditionally white male institutions.
MONSTER CHILLER PHARMACY THEATER! How CVS Invaded Joe Bob Briggs’ Brain.
NURSE HAS LONG NAILS AND NO GLOVES? NO PROBLEM, SAYS UNION: So imagine you are the patient and your nurse comes in to change the dressing on your incision. You notice she’s not wearing latex gloves. And worse, she has long artificial fingernails, which are known to harbor potentially lethal germs. What do you do?
What you do is shut up and take it, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents Federal Bureau of Prisons employees. When managers at the Rochester, Minn., facilities announced a rule banning employees with such fingernails from working with certain patients, the union balked.
After negotiations failed, the issue had to be resolved by federal arbiters. Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group reports the unexpected details of the arbiters’ decisions.
IN THE MAIL: From Anne R. Pierce, A Perilous Path: The Misguided Foreign Policy of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Up to 50% off select Nerf toys.
And, also today only: Dyson V6 Slim Cordless Vacuum (Certified Refurbished), $209.99 (30% off).
Plus: BLACK+DECKER BDC120VA100 20-Volt MAX Lithium-Ion Drill Kit with 100 Accessories, $59.99 (40% off).
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Five Clinton friends who got special State Department access.
As the Democratic nominee labors to repair a public trust that was damaged badly by the FBI’s investigation into her private email use, the signs of quid pro quo contained in the latest records will likely force Clinton to confront the long-simmering controversy surrounding her family’s foundation. . . .
In June 2009, Kris Balderston, the aide charged with soliciting much of the funding for the pavilion, told Hillary Clinton that Mantz was “engaged” in the project, along with Pepsi, Microsoft and General Electric (all foundation donors).
In March 2010, Balderston informed his boss that Delos Living, a real estate company he described as “a Mantz client,” had kicked in $250,000 for the pavilion.
Within a year, Delos Living, whose board included Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, was tapped for a $5 million effort to build a soccer stadium in Haiti with the Clinton Global Initiative.
Mantz personally earned $280,000 for the “strategic counsel” services he provided Delos Living, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Bribery.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1190.
DAVID SOLWAY: IS ISLAM A RELIGION?
Read the whole thing.
THEODORE DALRYMPLE ON ANTONIO GRAMSCI AND THE SYMPTOMS OF POTT’S DISEASE.
Read the whole thing.
PULLING THE LADDER UP: The Extinction Of Palo Alto?
A member of the Palo Alto Planning and Transportation Commission has penned a powerful open letter of resignation condemning the wealthy community’s ongoing refusal to address skyrocketing housing costs (the median home price is now $2.5 million, up from $640,000 at the turn of the century), effectively pulling up the ladder for upwardly mobile families trying to move into the city. . . .
The situation in Palo Alto—middle-class neighborhood-turned gentrified tech executive stomping ground—highlights the entrenched structural obstacles to any loosening of housing regulations. Even if the majority of Bay Area or even California residents would favor measures to make housing more affordable, long-time residents of individual communities have always tended to oppose to any expansion of the housing supply that might slow the appreciation of their own properties. It may be that amount of exhortation from economists and policy wonks can change this balance of interests, and as long as land-use decisions are tightly controlled by City Councils and local planning commissions (which have no responsibility to non-residents), pro-development forces will continue to come up short.
One way to address this structural problem would be to check local power over zoning regulations. Reihan Salam has noted that the Canadian province of Ontario, which has managed housing inflation more successfully than many American states, created an “administrative body that can overrule local land use decisions if it determines that development projects under threat have merit.” Such an institution might or might not be possible in the United States, which has tended to defer more to local sources of authority. But California Governor Jerry Brown, to his great credit, is pushing legislation that would “sidestep the endless layers of local approvals that bog down badly needed housing construction,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
At root, the failure of wealthy coastal areas like Palo Alto to address their housing shortages may be a symptom of broader cultural illness—in particular, the tendency of elites to prioritize their own enrichment at the expense of the public interest, and the decline in appreciation for the importance of community, and the young and middle-class families that are required to sustain it. Public policy can’t directly treat this disease. But it can treat the symptoms. And a modest shift in the state-local balance of power for setting land use regulations may be the best medicine for the short term.
Despite their constant virtue-signalling (or maybe because of it) our new oligarchs aren’t any nicer people than oligarchs usually are.
BREAKING NEWS FROM JUNE:
Shot: “What Will Liberals Say If Their Harsh Invective Puts Trump in Danger?”
—Seth Lipsky, the New York Sun, yesterday.
Chaser: “I BLAME THE CLIMATE OF HATE CREATED BY HILLARY, BERNIE, AND THEIR MEDIA MYRMIDONS: Breaking: 19-year-old man tried to kill Trump at Las Vegas rally, officials say. ‘A federal officer confirmed Monday that the man arrested at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas on Saturday had tried to steal an officer’s gun to kill the presumptive GOP nominee.’ I mean, when you keep comparing a candidate to Hitler, you have to expect this sort of thing. They’re practically accomplices.”
—Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com, June 20th.
IEA: Crude Production to Fall Behind Demand.
From July through September, global production of crude oil will fall behind demand by almost one million barrels a day, said the IEA, a Paris-based agency that monitors energy trends for oil-consuming nations. And the oversupply of crude is clearing out even as OPEC producers pump at record or near record levels.
“Our balances show essentially no oversupply during the second half of the year,” the IEA’s monthly report said Thursday.
That’s exactly what every idled fracker wants to hear.
The Saudis put an effective floor under the price of crude, by being able to produce plentiful supplies at a price few can match. But North American frackers have put an effective ceiling on the price of crude, by being able to tap even more plentiful supplies whenever the price rises too far above that floor.
It’s going to be a long time before our friends in the Middle East can count on $100 oil again.
WELL, WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU EXPECT THEM TO SAY? Democrats’ Plan to Win House: ‘Tie’ Trump to GOP Incumbents ‘Like an Anchor.’
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