UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA FAKE RAPE UPDATE: Dean Eramo v. Rolling Stone settled, fraternity v. Rolling Stone going forward.
Why is nobody suing false accuser Jackie Coakley? I suppose it’s because she doesn’t have any assets worth suing for, and plaintiffs might want her to testify. Or maybe they want the spotlight to be on a big, bad media company, not a disturbed woman.
LIFE IN SATURNIAN MOONS’ OCEANS? NASA’s ocean worlds announcement: watch the live stream at 2PM ET. “This afternoon, NASA is going to make an announcement about big findings from the Cassini spacecraft, a probe that’s been exploring the Saturn system since 2004. This particular announcement will revolve around “new results about ocean worlds” in our Solar System, so that means we’ll be most likely be focusing on either Titan or Enceladus. The two moons of Saturn are thought to harbor liquid water.”
JEFF GREENFIELD: Why the First 100 Days Concept Is Bogus.
It “hangs over the West Wing like the sword of Damocles as the unofficial deadline to find their footing—or else,” according to a fascinating story this week by POLITICO’s Shane Goldmacher.
Why? Because it marks the 100th day of Donald Trump’s presidency. And, according to one White House official, “One hundred days is the marker, and we’ve got essentially 2½ weeks to turn everything around.”
Really? What happens if, in the next 18 days or so, Obamacare isn’t repealed, the new travel ban isn’t upheld and investigators don’t discover that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower? Do impeachment proceedings start? Do prominent Republicans launch primary challenges to Trump’s renomination?
Well, maybe you can’t blame the White House for panicking; what they really are responding to is the massive media exercise in premature evaluation that has become as inevitable as it is asinine.
“The first 100 days” concept was begun in 1933 by FDR, to spur Congress into passing a flurry of mostly harmful New Deal legislation.
But, it was FDR — and therefore good, and therefore every President who followed must be measured against it.
And, if Republican, found wanting.
OUT: WAR ON COAL. IN: China buys more U.S. coal, sends North Korea packing.
China is banning shipments of coal from North Korea because of last week’s missile test and has made up the shortfall by importing more coal from the United States.
The news comes just days after President Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where the administration said North Korea’s missile tests would be a top priority in the talks.
Reuters first reported Tuesday that China’s customs department ordered all companies that receive imports from North Korea to immediately return all coal cargoes, according to three trading sources who saw the order. The order was sent by the Chinese government on April 7, soon after Trump and Xi concluded their discussions.
The decision will be a boon for U.S. coal producers as China has ramped up orders of U.S. coking coal used in making steel, Reuters reported. The increase in U.S. coal imports fits nicely with Trump’s pro-fossil fuel agenda to put miners in coal country back to work.
He seems to be keeping this promise.
HEALTH: Apple has a secret team working on the holy grail for treating diabetes.
Apple has hired a small team of biomedical engineers to work at a nondescript office in Palo Alto, miles from corporate headquarters. They are part of a super secret initiative, initially envisioned by the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, to develop sensors that can non-invasively and continuously monitor blood sugar levels to better treat diabetes, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Such a breakthrough would be a “holy grail” for life sciences. Many life sciences companies have tried and failed, as it’s highly challenging to track glucose levels accurately without piercing the skin.
The initiative is far enough along that Apple has been conducting feasibility trials at clinical sites across the Bay Area and has hired consultants to help it figure out the regulatory pathways, the people said.
From a business aspect, the most interesting part of this venture might be how Apple combines its penchant for secrecy with maneuvering through those regulatory pathways. It’s one thing to introduce another new bit of consumer electronics kit. It’s an entirely other thing to get a medical device — which I’m pretty sure this would be — past the FDA.
FASTER, PLEASE: Trump Team Moves Closer to Gutting Some Federal Agencies.
President Donald Trump’s federal hiring freeze ends on Wednesday in order to move into the next phase of a proposed reorganization of agencies headquartered in Washington and their satellite operations throughout the country.
Starting now, some federal agencies are likely to go on a hiring spree, like the Pentagon, while others will be forced to slash their workforces, like the Environmental Protection Agency. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters Tuesday afternoon the freeze is being lifted in favor of a more strategic, surgical approach that will enable the White House to oversee a streamlining of the functions of government.
The process, though, is far from over.
Under a series of executive actions Trump has signed, agencies must develop plans by the end of June to maximize employee performance. By the end of the following quarter, agencies have to submit plans describing how they intend to reform their operations.
And at a higher level, Mulvaney’s office will map out how to restructure the executive branch so that it’s directed by its functions. As an example, he cited 43 workforce training programs across 13 agencies that could be centralized. He added that multiple offices across multiple agencies handle trade, and pressed that it should be more centralized, as well.
The broader suggestion to structure around functions and issues came from a meeting of CEOs at the White House on Tuesday morning; Mulvaney said the administration is seeking input from business leaders, academics, and civilians alike.
I hope they use a chainsaw, and not a scalpel.
MARK STEYN: The Churches Close, The Mosques Open & The West Fades Away.
~On Monday, 14 victims were killed in an Islamic terrorist attack on the St Petersburg Metro;
~On Friday, four victims were killed in an Islamic terrorist attack by a homicidal truck driver on Queen Street in Stockholm;
~On Palm Sunday, at least 45 victims were killed in an Islamic terrorist attack on two Coptic churches in Egypt.
Clumping all these news items together reminds me of a brief exchange I had with my television shortly after 9/11. The topic was how to strike back at al Qaeda, and some Democrat Senator was demanding that before we did anything, the President needed to formulate an exit strategy.
And I found myself asking out loud, “Exit from where — Manhattan?”
TO BE FAIR, AS SOON AS YOU GO TO A VA HOSPITAL YOU’RE TAKING AN UNNECESSARY RISK: Watchdog warns of ‘unnecessary risk’ to VA hospital patients in DC.
Government health care.
HMM: Chinese military posts warning to North Korea about nukes, then flushes it down the memory hole.
But not before Pyongyang got the message, I’m sure — screencaps of the disappeared story at the linked tweet.
U.S. AIR FORCE IS PLANNING SOMETHING BIG IN THE NEVADA DESERT: Unusually worded, multi-billion dollar drone services contract possibly points to a new, shadowy unmanned aircraft—and a lot of them.
This contract with URS Federal Services is worth $3.6 billion, but the program, whatever it is, isn’t expected to end until the spring of 2034. That’s 17 years for those keeping score. The math works out to more than $210 million per year, on average, over that period or $17.5 million every month.
That’s a big price tag for services. In 2013, the RAND Corporation estimated that it cost $435 million a year for the Air Force’s 20th Fighter Wing at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to operate three squadrons of F-16C/D Vipers. This calculation included everything associated with flying the fighter jets, such as pay checks for military personnel and supporting contractors, fuel, depot-level repairs, as well as indirect support from the Wing’s other elements, including security forces guarding the flight line, civil engineers maintaining facilities, and basic utilities and supplies, such as electricity in the barracks and food in the chow halls. A similar analysis of the 187th Fighter Wing, a unit in the Alabama Air National Guard with just one squadron of Vipers, produced a final price tag of just $63.6 million.
In short, the URS Federal Services’ contract could potentially cover the full costs of running multiple squadrons of pilotless planes for nearly two decades. And remember that this deal likely only pays for just a portion of the total cost of this project. So, while we don’t know what unmanned aircraft—singular or plural—the Maryland-based company will be helping test, the money involved here suggests there are quite a few of them.
The Air Force has since backtracked on exactly what kind of contract was awarded to URS, but not the total amount. Given the long history of secret USAF activities in and above the Nevada desert, there’s no telling what’s URS has been hired to do.
IS “TAKING INAPPROPRIATE PHOTOS” A CRIME? Man arrested for taking inappropriate photos at Sevierville cheerleading competition. “When officers asked to see Kazuhiro’s camera, they found several photos of the cheerleaders. Some of the photographs were focused in on inappropriate areas of the girls’ bodies.”
I’m unconvinced that this makes out a crime, and the weasel-term “inappropriate” isn’t convincing me any more.
AH! THE ANTONYM OF BORKING:Gorsuching.
YOU GO, GIRL: No, the word ‘girl’ is not anti-woman.
FEMINISTS MOST INJURED: Traditional gender roles increasingly popular with millennials, research finds.
