FASTER, PLEASE: This Machine Can Map and Zap Multiple Tumors at the Same Time.

This is exactly the sort of thing that Andy Kessler was predicting a decade ago.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR TRUMP, THERE WOULD BE A RELIGIOUS THEOCRACY RUNNING OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE, AND THEY WERE RIGHT!

ANDREW MCCARTHY: If the President Is Not the Subject of a Criminal Investigation, Then Say So.

MAYBE: Elon Musk’s Production Plan For New Tesla: Too Fast, Too Furious?

Model 3 production risks run high. Tesla plans to bypass the usual manufacturing-prototype stage and go straight to full car production. Most automakers also test their production-line process for a new model by building vehicles with relatively inexpensive prototype tools. Tesla is skipping that step as well.

By omitting steps, Tesla hopes to save time and money. The risk is that manufacturing problems could be costly to fix, slow production and damage its reputation.

As Tesla moves to ramp up production another huge project is playing out, in partnership with Panasonic. Together they are building the massive battery-production plant in Nevada that’s crucial to reaching Model 3 pricing goals.

At the corporate level, Tesla also is working to integrate SolarCity into its business operations.

In the earnings conference call that followed Tesla’s first-quarter results, Musk was asked if any critical outstanding items could slow the Model 3 launch or deliveries.

“There’s plenty of things with uncertainty, but I don’t know anything that would prevent us from starting production in July, and exceeding 5,000 units a week by the end of the year,” said Musk. “It’s been pretty close to the bull’s-eye.”

Prototyping exists to help discover the unknown-unknowns Musk seems so confident don’t exist.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: STDs are at an all-time high: Can at-home tests help? So far, it’s not turning out as I’d hoped.

ANDREW KLAVAN: A Win for the Deep State.

Nothing against the integrity or honesty of former FBI head Robert Mueller, but as we saw with the investigation into the absurdly trivial Valerie Plame affair during the W. administration, a virtually untouchable prosecutor and a staff of hungry, ambitious youngsters looking for a big score is a destructive combination. We can expect months or years of fevered headlines and speculation, all of it serving to paralyze tremulous Republicans and thus hamper the Trump agenda.

Congratulations to those who seek to undermine the results of a fair and square election. I’m old enough to remember when Democrats found that idea “horrifying” but I guess things have changed since then. Life comes at you fast.

The Media-Dem-State Complex used its patented Hysterical Wave™ technique to achieve its goal: a poorly substantiated media story from an anonymous Deep State source followed by echo-chamber histrionics from Democrats, then, just as the public catches on to one scam, a new poorly substantiated story followed by more histrionics and so on.

The Left keeps using this technique because it keeps working.

ECONOMICS: Play Parents’ Basement. “Easily the worst game I’ve ever played. I feel sorry for anybody who has to play it.”

IMAGINE THE COCKTAIL POSSIBILITIES: China claims breakthrough in mining ‘flammable ice’

READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Russ Meyer: Akeldama.

HIPSTER HORROR: Parents killed baby with quinoa ‘milk’ diet: authorities. “A 7-month-old baby died when his health-food nut parents fed him a diet of quinoa “milk” and other gluten-free, lactose-free dairy alternatives, according to reports. . . . The parents, identified as Peter S, 34, and Sandrina V, 30, first took their dying son to a homeopathic doctor, who urged them to go to a real hospital, the paper reports. The hippies run a natural food store, and claimed they never noticed anything wrong with their tiny tot.”

I think it was Ronald Reagan who wondered why, if the stuff they sell in those stores is so good for you, all the people who work there are so thin and pale.

QUESTION ASKED — AND ANSWERED: Convincing your gullible flock that we live in a republic easily annexed by a rickety former superpower is not putting your country above your party.

David Harsanyi:

To see the world from this prism, Time magazine visualizes the Kremlinizing of White House. The magazine’s newest cover merges St. Basil’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral with the White House (the substance of the feature doesn’t even really reflect the cover).

The true “constitutional crisis” is the concerted effort to “resist” or undermine the “norm” of a peaceful transfer of power after election.
— Randy Barnett (@RandyEBarnett) May 18, 2017

One wonders what the reaction would be if a major magazine had run a cover of the White House conflated into an Iranian mosque while Barack Obama was sending pallets of cash to the Islamic Republic? Of course, that cover would have been hysterical—and not in a funny way. Simply because the former president believed that appeasing the Iranians was in the strategic interests of the United States doesn’t make him treasonous, just a terrible president. Not the first, or last.

Does putting your country above party mean never being skeptical of the intentions of an intelligence community—one that has lied to the American people repeatedly over the years—that is trying to overturn an election?

The Party always comes first, comrade.

HMM: Evidence of a Decline in Electricity Use by U.S. Households.

This pattern stands in sharp contrast to previous decades. During the 1990s and 2000s, for example, residential electricity consumption per capita increased by 12% and 11%, respectively, with increases in almost all states. Previous decades experienced much larger increases.

So what is different? Energy-efficient lighting. Over 450 million LEDs have been installed to date in the United States, up from less than half a million in 2009, and nearly 70% of Americans have purchased at least one LED bulb. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) are even more common, with 70%+ of households owning some CFLs. All told, energy-efficient lighting now accounts for 80% of all U.S. lighting sales.

It is no surprise that LEDs have become so popular. LED prices have fallen 94% since 2008, and a 60-watt equivalent LED lightbulb can now be purchased for about $2. LEDs use 85% less electricity than incandescent bulbs, are much more durable, and work in a wide-range of indoor and outdoor settings.

What finally got me on board with LEDs wasn’t just the price decline, but color-shifting bulbs able to produce warmer light when dimmed.

Also, for the most pleasing results, try to avoid installing LEDs with a CRI (color rendering index) of less than 90.

HORMONES: Incontinence Tied to Low Testosterone in Women.

A possible link between low levels of testosterone in women and urinary incontinence raises the possibility that testosterone replacement therapy might help, results from a new study suggest.

“Testosterone may prevent pelvic floor atrophy, thereby reducing the risk of urinary incontinence,” said investigator Michelle Kim, MD, PhD, from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Levator ani muscles are known to have androgen receptors. In one rodent model, testosterone administered after surgically induced urinary incontinence resulted in levator hypertrophy (Int Urol Nephrol. 2011;43:1003-1008).

Because it is unclear whether the same association exists in humans, Dr Kim and her colleagues were prompted to assess the correlation between testosterone and incontinence.

The team looked at data on 2123 women who took part in the 2012 cycle of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and had serum total testosterone measured at the time.

I predict that we’ll find testosterone in women to be more important than has generally been thought.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: No clear winner, but one clear loser.

David Goldman (Spengler) notes that political circles are rife with rumor. “A ranking Republican statesman this week told an off-the-record gathering that a ‘coup’ attempt was in progress against President Donald Trump, with collusion between the largely Democratic media and Trump’s numerous enemies in the Republican Party. The object of the coup, the Republican leader added, was not impeachment, but the recruitment of a critical mass of Republican senators and congressmen to the claim that Trump was ‘unfit’ for office and to force his resignation.”

Washington is now in situation elections were specifically designed to prevent.

That isn’t by accident.

SLOW JOE: Biden knocks Clinton: Not a ‘great’ candidate.

“I never thought she was a great candidate. I thought I was a great candidate,” he said, adding:

“No man or woman should announce for the presidency unless they genuinely believe that for that moment in the nation’s history they are the most qualified person to deal with the issues facing the country.”

Run, Joe, run!

THE THIRD DATE IS TRADITIONAL, RIGHT? How Long Do Most Couples Wait To Have Sex?

RULING: Lerner’s tea party-targeting testimony can stay secret — for now.

Restoring Americans’ faith in our non-partisan federal agencies requires a full and public accounting.

IT’S ALWAYS JUST AROUND THE CORNER: Jim Geraghty: When Does All That Evidence of Collusion Arrive?

If you talk to Democrats lately, they speak not as if the voters merely made a mistake, but that somehow history itself has gone wrong. They speak we’re living in an alternate timeline, experiencing events that “weren’t supposed” to happen. In their eyes, Hillary Clinton was obviously so much more appealing that Trump. She led in the polls! She had so many more campaign offices! She spent so much more money! She ran so many more ads! Surely, a result like this must be the result of someone cheating. Because so many Democrats associate Trump with apocalyptic threats – global warming, the sudden establishment of a repressive theocracy like the Handmaid’s Tale, nuclear confrontation, race wars – they all see themselves as their own personal Kyle Reeses, on a mission to save the future. With this desperate, all-or-nothing mindset, they will always insist that the evidence to take down Trump is waiting to be found, just around the next corner.

Sad and delusional and full of self-importance.

CONGO: New Ebola Outbreak to Cost $10 Million to Fight, WHO Says.

THEY SAID WHAT? Real Planned Parenthood Quote: ‘It’s Our Responsibility to Use Our Superpowers to Slay.’

NO RAPE-RAPE? Swedish Prosecutors Have Dropped The Julian Assange Rape Investigation.

I suspect Russian trickery, and the seriousness of the charge alone is enough to require a full investigation.

LET’S MAKE AN ARMS DEAL: Saudis Said to Forge $6 Billion Lockheed Deal for Littoral Ships.

The final letter of agreement includes a better-armed version of the ships, support equipment, munitions and electronic-warfare systems, according to the people, who asked not to be identified in advance of an announcement that may come as early as Saturday morning Washington time. That’s when Trump is scheduled to arrive in Riyadh on the first leg of an eight-day trip that will take him across the Middle East and to Rome.

The Trump administration is promising to improve relations with the Saudis that were strained under former President Barack Obama. For its part, Saudi Arabia has pledged to buy billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment in the next decade and invest about $40 billion from its sovereign wealth fund in American companies.

The LCS is another one of those American weapons systems garnering foreign interest even after a troubled development process.

PROSECUTORIAL DISCRETION FOR SALE: George Soros Still Quietly Buying District Attorneys’ Seats.

The left-wing billionaire turned the Philadelphia district attorney’s race on its head by giving $1.45 million to fund a super PAC in support of his preferred candidate, Larry Krasner. Krasner, a progressive lawyer who has never worked as a prosecutor, sailed to an easy victory in the Democratic primary on Tuesday. Because Philadelphia is a Democratic stronghold, Krasner’s primary victory all but guarantees him to win the general election in November.

The influx of money from Soros gave Krasner a significant leg up over his opposition. Despite splitting votes with six other candidates, Krasner, who was not a favorite to win before Soros’ investment, finished 18 points ahead of the second-place finisher. As one Philadelphia Inquirer writer put it after the billionaire’s investment: “Soros changed the game.”

He means to change it further.

I WAS EXPECTING A BONE-SHATTERING KABOOM: New discovery shows T-rex’s bite could make bones ‘explode’