MY USA TODAY COLUMN OFFERS HELPFUL TIPS FOR THIS SUMMER’S COLLEGE DIVERSITY TRAINING WORKSHOPS: Bros are people, too: Title IX enforcers need to fix the toxic environment they have created for men. I take a bold stand against “hormone shaming” and the gendering of rape. Weirdly, some of the commenters at USA Today deny that there’s anti-male sentiment at colleges.
Archive for 2017
May 23, 2017
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Best Portable Air Conditioners.
WHAT IT’S REALLY LIKE to own a new Ford GT.
YOU CAN’T BUY THAT KIND OF P.R.: Al-Qaeda Slams Trump as ‘Hateful Crusader Master.’
YOU MAY NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOU: Here’s How Trump Supporters Lose Acting Gigs.
THIS WILL KILL THE BIG MONEYMAKER FOR GI DOCS: Robots May Soon Perform Better Colonoscopies.
AT AMAZON, save on bestselling Appliances.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN OFFERS HELPFUL TIPS FOR THIS SUMMER’S COLLEGE DIVERSITY TRAINING WORKSHOPS: Bros are people, too: Title IX enforcers need to fix the toxic environment they have created for men. I take a bold stand against “hormone shaming” and the gendering of rape.
LOOK FOR THE PEOPLE WHO ARE HELPING OTHERS: What was trending after the Manchester Ariana Grande attack? Mr. Rogers. Here’s why.
DAN MITCHELL: The Five Most Important Takeaways from Trump’s Budget.
It’s both amusing and frustrating to observe the reaction to President Trump’s budget.
I’m amused that it is generating wild-eyed hysterics from interest groups who want us to believe the world is about to end.
But I’m frustrated because I’m reminded of the terribly dishonest way that budgets are debated and discussed in Washington. Simply stated, almost everyone starts with a “baseline” of big, pre-determined annual spending increases and they whine and wail about “cuts” if spending doesn’t climb as fast as previously assumed.
Here are the three most important things to understand about what the President has proposed.
First, the budget isn’t being cut. Indeed, Trump is proposing that federal spending increase from $4.06 trillion this year to $5.71 trillion in 2027.
As usual the “draconian cuts” mean “reductions from the rate of increase various constituencies had hoped for.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE? Why Some People Can’t Handle Their Weed.
When humans consume weed, it stimulates their endocannabinoid system (ECS), which plays a key role in regulating our response to reward, stress and emotions. “What the ECS does is it optimizes our brain between excitation and inhibition,” says Dr. Baler. But when chemicals found in weed, such as THC, enter the ECS, they perturb the system’s ability to act in synchrony, which can disrupt our ability to regulate our response to stress, potentially causing anxiety.
“Fear stimuli that we can normally cope with can become unmanageable under the effects of marijuana because our fight-or-flight response gets disrupted,” says Dr. Baler. “You may not be able to keep those stimuli under control because your ECS is so out of whack because of all the THC in your system,” he says.
Chelsea Wind, a 46-year-old caregiver from Anderson, California, has been using medicinal marijuana every day for the past six years for pain management. One night she had a panic attack when she was at her friend’s house. “He was encouraging me to smoke more and more and get as high as humanly possible,” says Wind. “It felt like I had stopped being able to breath. I was panicking so much and I made him call 9-1-1.”
Too much is too much.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Older adults may not benefit from taking statins to prevent heart disease. “While there is evidence to support older adults taking statins for secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease – such as to prevent a second heart attack or stroke – there is limited evidence on the risks and benefits of this age group taking the cholesterol-lowering medication to prevent a first cardiovascular event. Now, an analysis of data from a clinical trial that compares it with usual care finds no benefit in use of a statin for primary prevention in older adults with high blood pressure and moderately high cholesterol.”
MARK I: ‘Iron Man’ Suit On Track, But Hurdles Remain.
The highly anticipated tactical assault light operator suit (TALOS), which has been in development since 2013, is intended to protect the first special operator coming through a door during a raid. It should have enough armor to thwart small arms fire or bomb blasts. It would also provide support for physically exhausting activities such as climbing multiple flights of stairs or carrying heavy loads.
Army Col. Jim Miller, director of the suit’s joint acquisition task force, said the program is continuing to develop a prototype of the often-dubbed “Iron Man” suit. The current suit is called the Mark 5 because it has gone through at least five iterations since the effort first began.
“There have been some design changes to it every month since I arrived last July,” he said at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Special Operations Forces Industry Conference. Nevertheless, the task force has made progress narrowing down requirements and capabilities, he added.
The TALOS effort is “relatively on schedule,” Miller said. “I say relatively because this is [research and development],” he added, noting that it is critical to develop a product that works as advertised. Once a prototype is developed, the effort will become a program of record, most likely run by program executive office SOF warrior, he said.
The suit comprises a base layer that hosts a variety of physiological and biological sensors, actuators that serve as the muscles to power the suit, processors and computers, and a durable exoskeleton that offers support to the operator.
Currently the exoskeleton is made out of titanium, but the task force may consider alternative materials such as composites in the future, Miller said.
How much longer before we have a suit for special operators which operates without the operator?
MY SISTER, WHO’S ON A FIRST-NAME BASIS WITH THE FOLKS AT TRACTOR SUPPLY, IS INTO THIS IDEA: Stock Tank Pools Are Going to Be All the Rage This Summer.
AT AMAZON, Save on high-speed HDMI Cables.
ON THE INTERNET, INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE. SO DO CONVICTS. South Dakota Becomes First State with Online Pardon Application.
UNPOSSIBLE! Progressives Can Be Sexual Predators, Too.
GOLDEN STATE BLUES: How some Southern California drug rehab centers exploit addiction.
His hair is dirty and matted. His voice is raspy. And on this sunny Tuesday, Solomon is dragging around a bag full of cans and bottles that he hopes to sell to the RePlanet Recycling station behind the Ralph’s in San Clemente.
He wants to raise $20 so he can get high one last time before he goes into rehab.
As a kid, Solomon was taught not to steal or use drugs. But today, at 28, he’s grown up to become a shoplifter and a junkie, addicted to heroin and meth and benzodiazepines, one of the hardest drugs to kick.
Those aren’t the only contradictions in Solomon’s life.
As broke as he is, Solomon is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Chronic drug users like Solomon are commodities, exploited by a growing world of drug and alcohol rehab operators who put profit ahead of patient care. Everything from the opioid epidemic and Obamacare to prison realignment and legal loopholes has created conditions in which unethical operators can flourish, using addicts to bilk insurance companies and the public out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Though many legitimate centers remain, critics and long-time insiders say a darker version of the industry is emerging, built around an illicit world of patient recruiters, fraud-driven clinics and drug-testing mills.
Southern California, where the implementation of Obamacare makes it easy for recent arrivals to sign on for insurance, is on the front line of the conflict.
Read the whole thing, if you can.
FAKE NEWS: Move over InfoWars, here comes CNN! Analyst blames Manchester Bombing on ‘right wing false flag.’
Related: Ex-CNN Chief: By Creating FNC, Ailes Tarred All Journalists as Biased.
That’s our old friend Jonathan Klein, who in 2004 while famously defending Dan Rather, inadvertently named the site for us. In reply to a question from Bill O’Reilly in September of 2004 on how Rather had eviscerated his credibility, Klein barked out, “It’s an important moment, because you couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances, and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing what he thinks.”
All journalists are biased, of course, since their job is issuing opinions and interpreting facts. The honest ones are those who will admit what their biases are, and how they shape their worldview. Klein’s statement harkens back to the earliest days of mass media, and it’s long overdue for him to update his talking points.
MINUTES MATTER: Aggressive treatment for sepsis can save lives, research shows. “Every additional hour it takes to give antibiotics and perform other key steps increases the odds of death by 4 percent, according to the study reported at an American Thoracic Society meeting and in the New England Journal of Medicine.” Since I have no spleen, I’m at higher risk for sepsis. As a result, I keep a Levaquin capsule on me, with instructions to take it and rush to the ER if I have the symptoms.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Regime Change by Any Other Name?
Truth or consequences? Obama skated for far worse misdeeds. Election machines in three states were not hacked to give Donald Trump the election. There was never a serious post-election movement of electors to defy their constitutional duties and vote for Hillary Clinton. Nor, once Trump was elected, did transgendered people begin killing themselves in alarming numbers. Nor were there mass resignations at the State Department upon his inauguration. Nor did Donald Trump seek an order to “ban all Muslims” from entering the U.S. Instead, he temporarily sought a suspension in visas for everyone, regardless of religion, from seven Middle Eastern states that the Obama administration had earlier identified as incapable of properly vetting travelers to the U.S. The first lady did not work for an elite escort or prostitute service. She never said that she and young Barron Trump would not be moving to the White House. Barron does not have autism. Trump’s father never ran racist ads as a supposed candidate in a purported political campaign. Kellyanne Conway denies that in a private conversation between segments on MSNBC, she privately remarked to hosts that she had to take a shower after working for Trump. Donald Trump never suggested to the Mexican president that the U.S. was going to invade Mexico. Nor did Trump plan to mobilize the National Guard to send back illegal aliens. He did not remove a Martin Luther King bust from the White House. There was no evidence that he ever promised to ease Russian sanctions (much less that he promised the Russians he would be “flexible” after he was elected). He did not short the FBI of resources to conduct an investigation into supposed Russian collusion. He did not go to Moscow and watch prostitutes in his bed urinate where Barack Obama had previously slept. His deputy attorney general did not threaten to resign over the Comey firing. . . .
Fake news crowds out real news. Here is what we do not read much about: North Korea, long appeased, could well send missiles against our allies, perhaps even with nuclear payloads. Afghanistan is at a crux and will either implode or need more American troops. China’s role is in the balance, and it may or may not help defang North Korea. The greatest tax- and health-reform packages in years are now in the hands of Congress. Executive orders have revolutionized the domestic energy industry and achieved a stunning and historic reduction in illegal immigration. The stock market is soaring, employment is up, and confidence in the economy has returned. Wall Street seems to dip only on talk of impeaching Donald Trump. Commensurate Worry? And here is what no longer troubles us at all. In 2008, candidate Barack Obama used back channels to communicate flexibility to the Iranians (as in the later assurance he gave, on a hot mic, to the Russians), which may have helped undermine the ongoing Bush-administration negotiations with Iran. Hillary Clinton set up an illegal server, distributed classified information in an illegal and unsecured fashion, lied about it, and destroyed thousands of e-mails central to an investigation — and got off without an indictment. In the 2016 election, the head of the DNC conspired to massage the debates and help swing the nomination to the Clinton campaign. The prior attorney general of the United State met with the spouse of a presidential candidate under investigation, in a stealthy conversation on an airport tarmac, did not inform officials of that meeting until the get-together was discovered by a reporter, semi-recused herself under pressure only to turn over her prosecutorial discretion to the head of the FBI, in a fashion that was both improper and perhaps unconstitutional. We do not hear how exactly Russian interests at Uranium One obtained market control over 20 percent of U.S. uranium holdings, or the connections between Uranium One and their prior multimillion-dollar donations to the Clinton Foundation, or that the Podesta Group had numerous financial dealings with Russian interests, or that Bill Clinton received $500,000 in 2010 from Russian oligarchic interests while his wife was secretary of state — ten times more than what Michael Flynn was alleged to have received. . . .
The effort to remove the president is conducted by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the wire services, and the major networks. And we have seen nothing like it in our time.
It’s like we’ve been living in a banana republic for a decade.
JEFF REYNOLDS: Tom Coburn Says Millennials Must Embrace a Convention of States.. “We’re now up to $124 trillion in unfunded liabilities, which, over the next 50 years, the major portion of that is going to have to be paid back. Guess who’s going to have to pay that back? Millennials. That’s $30,000 per year per millennial.”
The bright side, which you can see if you squint just right, is Millennials’ lowered income expectations — they won’t pay those taxes on income they’ll never earn.
ROGER SIMON ON MANCHESTER: This Time They Came for Our Children.