21ST CENTURY MEDICINE: Is Alzheimer’s treatment of injecting stem cells into the brain a breakthrough or quackery? “Sage’s most recent cognition scores have risen from 45 on the 100-point Memory Performance Index in March 2015 to 54 in September 2015. The volume of his hippocampus – the memory center of the brain – has grown from the fifth percentile before his first treatment to the 28th percentile after his fourth treatment to the 48th percentile after his eighth treatment.” Well, let’s hope it works.
Archive for 2017
March 7, 2017
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 13 Lesser Known Tom Petty Classics You Should Add to Your Playlist.
A couple of these were new to me, and I’ve been a fan for a long time.
THE DANGER OF Drinking Hand Sanitizers. What to watch for: “children carrying large bottles of sanitizer in their backpacks or purses.”
SAMUEL L. JACKSON* HARDEST HIT: 11 Times Barack Obama Compared Slaves To Immigrants.
*No, really. But of course, he’ll very likely receive no penalty from Capital One or Hollywood for his disgusting 12-letter profanity directed yesterday towards Dr. Carson.
As Gabriel Malor of the Federalist tweeted last month, “You know how I invoke the 24-hour rule for shootings and other mass casualty events? We need a 24-hour rule for Trump-related news.”
WHY WOULDN’T YOU? When a Partner Dies, Grieving the Loss of Sex. “Yes, dear readers of all ages and the children of aging parents, many people in their golden years still have sexual urges and desires for intimacy that go unfulfilled when a partner becomes seriously ill or dies.”
KURT SCHLICHTER: You Can Tell What Leftists Are Doing By What They Accuse Conservatives Of Doing.
It’s Kurt, so read the whole thing.
TEXAS PUBLIC POLICY FOUNDATION: Summary of House Republicans’ Latest Obamacare Legislation.
• This plan fails to repeal most of the costly mandates and insurance regulations driving up premiums and deductibles
• This plan replaces Obamacare’s subsidy scheme with a new costly federal entitlement in the form of a refundable tax credit
• This plan leaves significant portions of the flawed and costly Medicaid expansion intact by delaying the freeze on Medicaid enrollment, maintaining the expansion of the program to the able-bodied, and providing a pathway for non-expansion states to accept enhanced federal dollars.
Other than that, what did you think of the bill, Mrs. Lincoln?
DRIVING THE 2018 Bentley Continental Supersports.
IF YOU LIKE YOUR PRESIDENT, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR PRESIDENT: Josh Earnest Won’t Deny Obama Admin. Spied on Trump Campaign. “His response was full of weasel words.”
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Precisely removing individual atoms with microscope creates novel molecule.
ISRAEL PULSE: Is Putin Bibi’s new ‘bestie’?
GOOD QUESTION: Why Is Cory Gardner Trying To Save Obamacare?. “The senator owes his political career to the unpopularity of the law. He’s voted for repeal more than 40 times. So what’s changed?”
More:
“We are concerned that any poorly implemented or poorly timed change in the current funding structure in Medicaid could result in a reduction in access to life-saving health care services,” states the letter signed by Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Cory Gardner of Colorado.
Well, that sounds serious.
Now, if these four lawmakers decide to oppose the GOP’s Obamacare replacement, it will likely be doomed. Right now, the GOP plan allots states a set amount of federal funding for each person eligible for Medicaid, with any additional costs falling on the states. Leadership is going to have a hard enough time selling this weak bill to the conservative faction of the party.
Which bring me to Gardner. I’ve followed Gardner’s political career from the beginning. As one of the first congressional candidates who fused Tea Party idealism with competent messaging, he was palatable for many unaffiliated voters in Colorado. It would be a strange twist of fate for a politician who owes much of his political career to the unpopularity of Obamacare to play such a big part in obstructing repeal.
Indeed.
On the other hand, maybe the current bill needs to crash and burn before the GOP will get serious about genuine reform.
UPDATE: Another question from David Harsanyi. “The GOP Repeal Plan Sucks. But Is It Better Than Nothing?”
AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Kitchen & Housewares.
YOU WON’T MISTAKE THIS HYBRID FOR A PRIUS: Super sexy, super sedan: AMG GT Concept debuts with 800 horsepower.
The Mercedes-AMG performance brand pulled the wraps off of an obscenely beautiful concept grand tourer at the 2017 Geneva Auto Show. The Mercedes-AMG GT Concept is a low-slung, fastback sedan with a design that echoes AMG’s GT supercar and an electrifying hypercar powertrain.
The long sedan features a low-slung, coupe-like profile with a fastback rear end that hides a lifting tailgate, a configuration that’s sure to put it squarely in the Audi RS7 and Porsche Panamera’s crosshairs — or, considering the specs, put them in the AMG’s sights.
The exterior aesthetic marries a bold Panamericana grille at the GT Concept’s front end with a rear end inspired by the Mercedes-AMG GT coupe production model. Between the two ends is a slim midsection with a very S-Class-esque pillarless window graphic.
Comparisons to Porsche’s unfortunate Panamera don’t do justice to the GT’s looks.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: THE RISE OF MEDICAL NANOBOTS. The Tiny Robots Will See You Now. “It’s science-fiction-turned-reality: Researchers are developing micro- and nanoscale robots that move freely in the body, communicate with each other, perform jobs, and degrade when their mission is complete. These tiny robots will someday ‘have a major impact’ on disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention, according to a new review in Science Robotics from a top nanoengineering team at the University of California, San Diego.”
THE EARLY REVIEWS AREN’T LOOKING GOOD: Investor’s Business Daily: Republicans Cave On ObamaCare.
GEORGE FRIEDMAN: China’s Economy Continues to Decline.
China’s economic miracle, like that of Japan before it, is over. Its resurrection simply isn’t working, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Sustained double-digit economic growth is possible when you begin with a wrecked economy. In Japan’s case, the country was recovering from World War II. China was recovering from Mao Zedong’s policies. Simply by getting back to work an economy will surge. If the damage from which the economy is recovering is great enough, that surge can last a generation.
But extrapolating growth rates by a society that is merely fixing the obvious results of national catastrophes is irrational. The more mature an economy, the more the damage has been repaired and the harder it is to sustain extraordinary growth rates. The idea that China was going to economically dominate the world was as dubious as the idea in the 1980s that Japan would. Japan, however, could have dominated if its growth rate would have continued. But since that was impossible, the fantasy evaporates – and with it, the overheated expectations of the world.
China’s dilemma, like Japan’s, is that it built much of its growth on exports. Both China and Japan were poor countries, and demand for goods was low. They jump-started their economies by taking advantage of low wages to sell products they could produce themselves to advanced economies.
There’s also an upper-limit to double-digit growth when that growth is based on selling to countries with low single-digit growth. Eventually something like balance is achieved, and we seem to have reached that point with China over the last few years.
Beijing’s goal has been to transition from export-driven growth to domestic consumer-driven growth, but the corruption inherent to China’s crony-capitalist/officially-communist system is a serious impediment. Grave doubts about China’s political/economic future drive Chinese to sock their money away (under the mattress or, whenever possible, overseas) rather than spend freely it like Westerners do.
To escape this trap, China must either move into high-margin industries by through technological innovation (for which autocracies have little aptitude), or transition to a more transparent, multiparty democracy (which the Chinese Communist Party won’t allow).
It’s a nasty trap, but it’s one of Beijing’s own making.
PETER SUDERMAN: The GOP’s Obamacare Repeal Bill Is Here. Is This Just Obamacare Lite?
Unlike Obamacare, which bases its credits on income, the GOP bills we’ve seen so far are based on age. That creates another set of political headaches, because it means that wealthier folks get tax credits, and because it means that older people would get less help than under Obamacare, in hopes of creating a scheme that lures more young and health people into the system.
The bill released tonight attempts to mitigate these problems by capping the refundable credit so that households earning more than $150,000 would be reduced, and individuals making more than $215,000 would get nothing at all. But that still leaves a credit that is refundable for most people, and adds a bit of additional administrative work: Under Obamacare, judging an individual’s employment and income has proven more than a little difficult, and the same would continue to be true here.
So Republicans would be replacing one set of insurance subsidies with another set of insurance subsidies, while killing the individual mandate but leaving many of the law’s insurance regulations intact (with a penalty for insurance gaps). There’s a reason that legislators like Michigan Rep. Justin Amash are already referring to it as “Obamacare 2.0.”
The brewing conservative/libertarian consensus seems to be that the GOP bill would modestly improve on some of ObamaCare’s faults, but does nothing to address the underlying (and government-created) maladies which add so much to health care’s expense.
SILICON VALLEY WON’T LIKE THIS: US will suspend fast processing for H-1B visas. “The most recent data shows that nine out of the top 10 companies receiving the most H-1B visas are now foreign outsourcing firms rather than US tech companies. (The 10th is Microsoft.)”
IT NEVER IS: Middlebury Student Says Riot Was Not Rioters’ Fault.
The student’s professors should be happy to know that they’ve been learning as they were taught.