TWO WEEKS OLD BUT INCREASINGLY EVERGREEN: South Korea and Japan are all-in on the Trump Administration’s pressure strategy. This morning’s bombing exercise by the South Korean Air Force was a response to the latest North Korean missile test — and it’s an example of coordinated policy.
Archive for 2017
August 29, 2017
NANCY PELOSI HAS HER JUDY COLLINS MOMENT: Better late than never, and perhaps spurred on by articles proving the AntiFa/Progressive/Resistance thuggery, issues a release (just as late as Trump’s, mind you):
“Our democracy has no room for inciting violence or endangering the public, no matter the ideology of those who commit such acts. The violent actions of people calling themselves antifa in Berkeley this weekend deserve unequivocal condemnation, and the perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted.”
(Emphasis added). Better late than never, I suppose to come around to “Both Sides.” Perhaps the intellectually bereft wordbarf “false equivalency” will be uttered no more. Oh who am I kidding?
**Not sure I can claim “classical reference” in posting headline**
A STEP TOWARD TRUE EQUALITY AT LAST: ‘Marrying up’ is now easier for men, improves their economic well-being, study finds.
WELL BLESS HIS HEART: ‘I Detest America’: 148 Lost Documents by Alan Turing Accidentally Found in Old Storage.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Scandal Erupts over the Promotion of ‘Bourgeois’ Behavior — Two law professors face racism, sexism, and homophobia charges for urging Americans to act responsibly.
As Charles Murray likes to say, the elite left cannot preach what it practices.
I THOUGHT WOMEN NEVER LIED ABOUT RAPE: Woman Who Falsely Accused 15 Men of Rape Sentenced.
RIGHTSIZING STATE: Tillerson to abolish most special envoys, including climate.
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: All clear for the decisive trial of ecstasy in PTSD patients.
One of the main targets in the war on drugs could well become a drug to treat the scars of war. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), better known as the illegal drug ecstasy, a “breakthrough therapy” for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a status that may lead to faster approval.
The agency has also approved the design for two phase III studies of MDMA for PTSD that would be funded by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a nonprofit in Santa Cruz, California. MAPS announced the “breakthrough therapy” designation, made by FDA on 16 August, on its website today; if the group can find the money for the trials, which together could cost an estimated $25 million, they may start next spring and finish by 2021.
That an illegal dancefloor drug could become a promising pharmaceutical is another indication that the efforts of a dedicated group of researchers interested in the medicinal properties of mind-altering drugs is paying dividends. Stringent drug laws have stymied research on these compounds for decades. “This is not a big scientific step,” says David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London. “It’s been obvious for 40 years that these drugs are medicines. But it’s a huge step in acceptance.”
Indeed. Not a few PTSD sufferers risk breaking the law on street-quality MDMA (cut with who-knows-what), because the drug allows them to examine and process their experiences with a feeling of well-being — instead of with a panic attack.
Yes, MDMA abuse and harm are both possible, as with any other psychoactive drug. But medically controlled therapeutic use could help an awful lot of veterans.
THIS OFFERS A HUGE BENEFIT IN TERMS OF AUTONOMY: Safer Cars Help Keep Older Drivers on the Road. I hope that self-driving cars become common by the time I’m old enough to need one.
CLAUDIA ROSETT: North Korea, Unrestrained.
To be fair to Tillerson, he joins a long roster of American diplomats who over the years have tried to cope with the intractable problem of North Korea by seeing (or at least professing to see) what they want to see. Going back at least to the early days of the Clinton administration, Washington has developed rituals in which American officials proclaim that North Korea’s regime has a choice: to continue its rogue pursuit of nuclear weapons and suffer various penalties, or give them up and enjoy the many perquisites of life as a conventionally armed murderous totalitarian state.
It seems reasonable by now to say that North Korea’s regime made its choice decades ago, and has stuck with it — cheating its way out of a series of nuclear deals reached under Presidents Clinton and Bush, and availing itself of President Obama’s passive”strategic patience” to complete a transition of power from the late tyrant Kim Jong Il to his son, the current tyrant, Kim Jong Un, and accelerate its nuclear missile program.
Nor, despite the occasional week or so of apparent restraint, is there any sign that North Korea’s Kim regime intends to restrain itelf.
We’re out of easy outs.
SUSTAINABILITY: Home Prices In 80% Of US Cities Grow Twice Faster Than Wages… And Then There’s Seattle.
A quick look at US housing shows that while wages may be growing at roughly 2.5%, according to the latest Case Shiller data, every single metro area in the US saw home prices grow at a higher rate, while 16 of 20 major U.S. cities experienced home price growth of 5% or higher: double the average wage growth, and something which even the NAR has been complaining about with its chief economist Larry Yun warning that as the disconnect between prices and wages become wider, homes become increasingly unaffordable.
And while this should not come as a surprise, one look at the chart below suggests that something strange is taking place in Seattle, which has either become “Vancouver South” when it comes to Chinese hot money laundering, or there is an unprecedented mini housing bubble in the hipster capital of the world.
The thing about bubbles is, they always pop — which is why many of us warned back in 2007-08 that it would be a mistake to pursue policies that would re-inflate housing prices.
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE SCIENCE: Study: Drinking four cups of coffee daily lowers risk of death. “The findings back up a pair of studies published earlier this year touting the benefits of drinking coffee. One of the studies found coffee was linked to a lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease.”
SPACE: Watch as NASA’s Cassini Speeds Past Saturn’s Rings in This Awesome View.
Cassini took the 21 photos that make up the video in a 4-minute stretch on Aug. 20, during the probe’s latest plunge between Saturn’s cloud tops and the planet’s innermost rings. Cassini has been performing such dives every 6.5 days since late April, during the “Grand Finale” phase of its venerable mission.
“The entirety of the main rings can be seen here, but due to the low viewing angle, the rings appear extremely foreshortened,” NASA officials wrote in a description of the video.
Cassini was launched almost exactly 20 years ago, but everything comes to an end on September 15. The probe has been on-station for 13 years — reporting back thrilling images for far longer than its planned six-year primary mission.
It’s post-Apollo NASA at its best.
DENNIS PRAGER: THOSE WHO DON’T FIGHT EVIL FIGHT STATUES.
And, of course, it fights global warming. Leftists have convinced themselves that the real fight against evil in the world today is not against Islamism; it’s against carbon emissions.
And now, we can add statues to the list. The left was AWOL against communism, and it’s AWOL against Islamism. But it’s in the vanguard of fighting statues.
Found via Kathy Shaidle, who writes, “I’m so old, I remember when the Left said ‘Marriage was just a piece of paper’ and ‘Flags were just pieces of cloth.'”
Well, the left have always been able to cut their conscience to fit this year’s fashions.
NEWS OF THE OBVIOUS: Consistency is key for weight loss, study says.
AT AMAZON, Damaged Screw Extractor.
DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BASEBALL BATS: After melees, Berkeley mayor asks Cal to cancel right-wing Free Speech Week.
In the aftermath of a right-wing rally Sunday that ended with anarchists chasing attendees from a downtown park, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin urged UC Berkeley on Monday to cancel conservatives’ plans for a Free Speech Week next month to avoid making the city the center of more violent unrest.
“I don’t want Berkeley being used as a punching bag,” said Arreguin, whose city has been the site of several showdowns this year between, on the one hand, the left and its fringe anarchist wing, and on the other, supporters of President Trump who at times have included white nationalists.
“I am concerned about these groups using large protests to create mayhem,” Arreguin said. “It’s something we have seen in Oakland and in Berkeley.”
If the mayor wants to hand over protection of free speech to the right wing, I suppose we should thank him for recognizing that we’re better prepared for the task.
(Thoroughly modern reference in the headline.)
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Flashback: Berkeley Mayor Is Member of Antifa Facebook Group that Organized Riots.
MY FEELINGS WOULD BE LESS MIXED IF I HAD MORE CONFIDENCE IN THE FDA: F.D.A. Cracks Down on ‘Unscrupulous’ Stem Cell Clinics.
JOURNALISM: Melania Trump Heads to Texas to Visit Hurricane Victims. All DC Can Talk About Is Her Shoes. Seems kinda sexist.
INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW: What’s in Japan’s Record 2018 Defense Budget Request?
Details of the request are yet to be fully finalized, but officials indicated that Japan will request money for: the introduction of the Aegis Ashore land-based missile defense system (amount unspecified because needs to be negotiated with the United States); SM-3 Block 2A intercept missiles (47.2 billion yen); PAC-3 MSE missiles (20.5 billion yen); the enhancement of the automatic warning and control system’s detection capacity (10.7 billion yen); the development of a next-generation radar capable of tracing stealth aircraft (19.6 billion yen); two destroyers that can remove sea mines (96.4 billion yen); six F-35A stealth fighters (88.1 billion yen); four Osprey tilt-rotor transport aircraft (45.7 billion yen) the maintenance of facilities for Self-Defense Forces units stationed on the southwestern islands of Okinawa (55.2 billion yen); the development of a high-speed glide bomb for use in contingencies on such islands (10 billion yen); the development of a system to monitor space activity (4.4 billion yen).
China, predictably, is unhappy with such developments.
Well, good — that probably means Beijing has estimated Japan is serious again about defending itself.