SIX OPTIONS FOR DEALING WITH NORTH KOREA: My latest New York Observer essay. So far “Return Of Serve” has gotten the most buzz.
RELATED: Hawaii needs missile defense right now. For the record, THAAD has had 14 intercepts in 14 operational tests.
Archive for 2017
July 13, 2017
BRUCE BAWER: Burning Books in Sweden.
Pippi Longstocking had it coming.
MOVE SLOW AND SMOKE THINGS: Facebook takes down pages of some legal Alaska pot shops.
The social media giant said its standards describe what users can post, and content promoting marijuana sales isn’t allowed. The issue has popped up over the last few years in states that have legalized recreational and medical pot, often coming in waves, industry officials said.
Cary Carrigan, executive director of the Alaska Marijuana Industry Association, said the industry has been forced to fight the same battles repeatedly as marijuana gains broader acceptance nationally.
The drug is legal for recreational use in eight states, but it remains illegal on the federal level. It wasn’t clear why the crackdown in Alaska happened within the past couple weeks or what specifically prompted it.
Facebook isn’t known for transparency, particularly about what it will or won’t allow users to post.
If your business depends on a social media platform with such capricious content standards, you might want to rethink your customer outreach.
AMAZING HOW FAST THIS STORY DISAPPEARED: Scalise released from ICU after contracting infection. “Rep. Steve Scalise was moved out of intensive care Wednesday after surgery to fight an infection he contracted after being shot during a practice for the annual congressional baseball game.” Shot by a Democrat who wanted to massacre Republicans.
SO WHO IS THIS “SMOKING GUN” ACTUALLY AIMED AT? The Hill: Obama DOJ let Russian lawyer into US before she met with Trump team. “The Russian lawyer who penetrated Donald Trump’s inner circle was initially cleared into the United States by the Justice Department under ‘extraordinary circumstances’ before she embarked on a lobbying campaign last year that ensnared the president’s eldest son, members of Congress, journalists and State Department officials, according to court and Justice Department documents and interviews. This revelation means it was the Obama Justice Department that enabled the newest and most intriguing figure in the Russia-Trump investigation to enter the country without a visa. . . . The Moscow lawyer had been turned down for a visa to enter the U.S. lawfully but then was granted special immigration parole by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch for the limited purpose of helping a company owned by Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, her client, defend itself against a Justice Department asset forfeiture case in federal court in New York City.”
WELL, GOOD: Trump’s VA Secretary Is Off to a Fast Start.
In Shulkin’s five months on the job, the VA has been a whirlwind of activity:
The department announced last week that between President Trump’s inauguration and July 3, it had fired 526 employees, demoted another 27, and temporarily suspended another 194 for longer than two weeks.
•In April, the department launched a new website that lets veterans compare the wait times at its facilities and view Yelp-style reviews of each facility written by previous patients.
•Veterans Health Administration’s Veterans Crisis Line — designed for those struggling with PTSD, thoughts of suicide, and other forms of mental stress — is now answering “more than 90 percent of calls within 8 seconds, and only about one percent of calls are being rerouted to a backup call center.” A year ago, an inspector general report noted that “more than a third of calls were being shunted to backup call centers, some calls were taking more than a half hour to be answered and other callers were being given only an option to leave messages on voicemail.”
•At the end of June, Shulkin unveiled the world’s most advanced commercial prosthetic limb — the Life Under Kinetic Evolution (LUKE) arm — during a visit to a VA facility in New York. Veteran amputees demonstrated the technology, a collaboration among the VA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the private sector. (The name alludes to the lifelike robotic hand that Luke Skywalker is fitted with in The Empire Strikes Back.)
•In May, Shulkin said the department had identified more than 430 vacant buildings and 735 underutilized ones that cost the federal government $25 million a year. He said that most of the buildings are not treatment facilities and could profitably be closed or consolidated. Of course, if he actually attempted to close or consolidate some of the buildings, he might face a controversy along the lines of those touched off by military-base-closing announcements in recent decades.
Shulkin has also gotten some help from Congress during his short time on the job. At a time when Republican legislators have had enormous difficulty passing big pieces of legislation, they’ve made great progress on VA reform.
Drain that swamp — and read the whole thing.
BUT BUT BUT LEFTIES ARE FOR THE PEOPLE: Former leftist president and left-wing icon, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has been convicted on corruption charges. The conviction was announced on Wednesday. A judge sentenced Lula to nine and a half years in prison. Lula will appeal the sentence. Brazil’s current president also faces corruption charges.
THE FRIENDLY SKIES: Do I Even Need to Tell You What United Did to a $42,000 Specialty Wheelchair?
A. BARTON HINKLE: Is It Time to Start Dismissing ‘Economics Deniers’?
In late June, researchers published a careful and data-rich study on Seattle’s minimum-wage law. It found that the city’s graduated hike in the minimum wage is costing thousands of jobs and cutting the number of hours worked by people in low-pay jobs. In the aggregate, Seattle workers are losing millions of dollars in wages thanks to the law. The study has drawn praise for its analytical rigor; one economist at MIT called it “sufficiently compelling in its design and statistical power that it can change minds.”
Or not.
Since its publication, liberals have given the study hyper-skeptical treatment, claiming to find all sorts of shortcomings with its methodology, data set, and so on. They point to a different study, from the University of California at Berkeley, which examined the law’s effects on the restaurant industry and found no statistically measurable effect.
Even Seattle’s political leaders are piling on, although they commissioned the research in the first place.
The idea that the price of something has no effect on demand for it sounds pretty funny, coming from liberals. After all, progressives generally support raising taxes on cigarettes to discourage people from smoking. Last November several cities joined the growing list of liberal demesnes that have imposed soda taxes—Berkeley, Philadelphia, San Francisco, etc.—to discourage consumption of sugary drinks. Heck, some localities even have firearms and ammunition taxes. One of them, in fact, is Seattle—where gun sales have dropped as a result.
The cognitive dissonance can be head-spinning.
As usual.
A REAL KREMLIN AGENT, A FAKE HATE GROUP, AND SCHROEDINGER’S HEALTH COVERAGE BILL: All that and more in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.
SHOT: North Korea supplies high-voltage electricity to border fence.
North Korea has installed high-voltage electric fencing at its border with China, posing even more challenges for people seeking to leave the country or smuggle goods in from the outside world.
The fence had already been installed along the Tumen and Yalu rivers, but the barricade was not being supplied with electricity until recently, North Korean reporters collaborating with Japan-based Asia Press said.
One North Korean reporter in Yanggang Province told Asia Press on July 4 the electric fences have put an end to what was once regular activity at the border.
CHASER:
#1 ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST: Mark Levin’s new book, Rediscovering Americanism: And the Tyranny of Progressivism.
IT’S A DEFLECTION TOOL: David Harsanyi: Why The ‘Whataboutism’ Charge Is Dishonest.
Folks who complain to me about “whataboutism” have a weird propensity to lecture me about historical precedents. Can we talk about the past or not? Take Paul Begala — a guy who led the mocking of Mitt Romney when the candidate called out Barack Obama’s Russian appeasement — who recently asserted that in his “34 years of campaigns, [he] never, ever heard of getting help from a hostile foreign power.” Never? He’s never heard of Charlie Trie, the man who was funneling millions to the Clintons on behalf of Chinese interests? He’s never read the leaked emails that showed the Clinton campaign working with Ukrainians to find information damaging to Trump? Never?
Well, not that he’ll admit today.
PEAK OIL: Houston’s Talos Energy makes ‘significant’ find in Mexico’s waters.
It seems there’s hardly anywhere not awash in the stuff.
IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT ITALIAN HAM: Keeping The Proles Down.
Related: Teach the language of power, privilege. “Progressive educators are reluctant to do this, writes Pondiscio. They validate the home culture and language, refusing to teach students the ‘codes’ that allow success in the larger society.”
IT’S A PITY THEY CAN’T BOTH LOSE: Why Is Russia Aiming Missiles at China?
Though the Kremlin has been careful not to voice long-term concerns about China, perhaps the most telling examples of Moscow’s continued uneasiness regarding the growing military might of its neighbour have been large-scale Russian military exercises held in the Eastern MD. As Dr. Roger N. McDermott, senior fellow in Eurasian military studies at the Jamestown Foundation, concludes in his analysis on the large-scale Vostok (“East”) 2014 exercise involving some 100,000 personnel, “Vostok 2014, much like its earlier incarnation in 2010, contains strong evidence that the Russian General Staff continues to consider China a potential threat to Russia.” Given the persisting concern, basing Iskander-M OTRKs in regions bordering China’s Northern Theater Command is a logical move from Russia’s perspective. Indeed, the system’s ability to deliver a wide range of cluster munitions makes it particularly suitable for use against People’s Liberation Army (PLA) armor and infantry in the event of an armed confrontation.
The short version is that Russia doesn’t have enough civilians to keep Siberia ethnically Russian, so well-armed troops will have to do.
GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Malpractice in America’s Crime Labs Is Putting Innocents in Jail, Letting Convicts Off the Hook.
There is a crisis in America’s government-run crime labs—and it’s not just the result of a few rogue operators. The problem is long-festering and systemic.
In April, Massachusetts state crime lab chemist Annie Dookhan made national headlines after investigations and lawsuits over her misconduct prompted the state’s Supreme Judicial Court to order the largest dismissal of criminal convictions in U.S. history.
Prosecutors were forced to dismiss a stunning 21,000-plus drug cases after Dookhan admitted to forging signatures, misleading investigators, and purposely contaminating drug samples en masse over nearly a decade.
Dookhan pleaded guilty to dozens of charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, and tampering with evidence. Hundreds of defendants have had their convictions tossed on appeal.
Despite a district judge concluding that her actions were “nothing short of catastrophic,” Dookhan served a measly three years in prison before being released last spring.
Another Massachusetts state crime lab worker, Sonja Farak, abused her position to pilfer and ingest the drugs she was supposed to be testing over an eight-year period.
Instead of cleaning up, two former assistant attorney generals covered up for Farak and misled a judge who last month dismissed several of the cases tainted by the narcotics-addicted lab worker. Upward of 10,000 prosecutions may eventually be overturned.
The fraudster’s fate? Crackhead and meth junkie Farak received a mere 18-month jail sentence for snorting the evidence, plus five years’ probation. The two assistant attorneys general left their jobs for higher-paying positions in government.
Law journals and scientific publications are filled with similar horror stories that have spread from the New York City medical examiner’s office and Nassau County, New York’s police department forensic evidence bureau to the crime labs of West Virginia, Harris County, Texas, North Carolina, and jurisdictions in nearly 20 other states.
Government is just another word for the things we choose to do together.
WELL, NEITHER OF MY KIDS EVER BROUGHT ME A CAT MUCH LESS A FOX’S TAIL: Adorable newborn photoshoot will make you want kittens over kids.
I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THE T-REX WORE DENTURES, MUCH LESS THAT CROCODILE HAD STOLEN THEM: Gigantic crocodile with T. rex teeth was a top land predator of the Jurassic in Madagascar.
NO, NO PLANET NINE IS PLUTO. THE NEW ONE CAN BE SOMETHING ELSE! Planet Nine hypothesis supported by new evidence.
WAIT, WHAT? Feudalism and Guilds in the Tour de France?
YEP. STILL THE CRAZY YEARS: Cosmo Warns Parents-to-Be That Revealing Your Child’s Gender May Scar Your Trans-in-Training For Life.
BUT… BUT… THEY WERE PROMISED THERE WOULD BE NO MATH: Math: It’s not just for breakfast any more.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO SEXUALLY HARASS: Teacher pleads guilty to sending sex fantasy letters to student.