WE SHOULD RECOMMISSION HER: Aboard the NS Savannah.
Archive for 2017
July 28, 2017
SURPRISE: Wasserman Schultz Avoiding Reporters Since Awan Arrest. “Awan, who was arrested as he attempted to travel to Pakistan on Tuesday at Dulles airport, previously worked as a shared IT employee for Democrats at the U.S. Capitol with other family members until last February when the group was investigated by Capitol Hill Police for breaching security protocols and stealing equipment. Although Awan and his relatives lost their jobs with Democratic lawmakers, Wasserman Schultz kept him on her payroll until the day of his arrest.”
THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T WORKING OUT THE WAY I HAD HOPED. Experience: my dog underwent gender reassignment surgery — Molly seemed like a perfectly normal female pup at first. It was only when she started taking walks outside that we noticed unusual behaviour.
Will transgendered dogs be allowed to serve in the military? In any case, Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoon wasn’t meant to be a how-to guide for life, to the best of my knowledge.
BUT SARAH PALIN WAS THE CRAZY ONE FOR BELIEVING THAT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE INVARIABLY LEADS TO DEATH PANELS: Parents of baby Charlie Gard say he has passed away.
“The silence from US Democrats on Charlie Gard will never stop being chilling,” Erielle Davidson of the Hoover Institute tweeted yesterday. “Reason Dems weren’t asked about Charlie Gard is because every single journalist out there knows how bad their answer is,” Stephen Miller adds.
THE PRIME LIVER TRANSPLANT IS EXCELLENT, AND 40% CHEAPER! Amazon May Be the Next Tech Giant Muscling Into Health Care. Plus, free Amazon TV streaming while you recuperate!
ANOTHER NORTH KOREAN BALLISTIC MISSILE LAUNCH: The missile splashed down in Japan’s maritime Exclusive Economic Zone. The missile may or may not be an ICBM –South Korea and the U.S. are assessing the test. The missile North Korea tested on July 4 had ICBM characteristics. Here’s the critical point: Pyongyang keeps on shooting and continues to promise nuclear war. Something has to be done before North Korea obtains an ICBM with a nuclear warhead. Here’s what Trump can do about North Korea. This column elaborates on the “missile interception option.”
SLOW DOWN, YOU MOVE TOO FAST: Stephen Carter on the dangers of trying to get ahead of the news cycle in an age of social media.
TED CRUZ AFTER REPEAL FAILURE: “No party can remain in power by lying to the American people.”
NEW MICHIGAN POLL: Kid Rock 49, Debbie Stabenow 46.
DEMOCRACY DIES WITH DORA THE EXPLORER! Relax, America: Wapo Tracked Down Pickle, the 9-Year-Old Trump Fan, Jim Treacher writes.
“They say God has a plan for all of us; for a lucky few, that plan is hunting down suspicious 9-year old Trump fans,” Iowahawk tweets, linking to Treacher’s post.
NO MATTER HOW MANY COPIES IT SELLS, a wrongthink book can’t be a “bestseller.”
IN THE MAIL: The Fast Metabolism Diet: Eat More Food and Lose More Weight.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? What a shock: National anthem protests top reason NFL viewers tuned out, survey finds.
ANSWER: BY NOT BEING TARRED AND FEATHERED WHEN THEY START TO OVERREACH. How Bureaucracies Creep Into Life-and-Death Medical Decisions.
Everyone who has been touched by the case of Charlie Gard is in a terrible position. This 11-month-old British boy, born with an extremely rare mitochondrial DNA disorder that has damaged his brain and left him unable to move his limbs, has been in a hospital for months. Now it appears he will never go home again, not even to die. His parents lost their fight in the British courts to bring him to the U.S. for an experimental treatment, and now they have been denied their request to let his family have his last hours at home.
It is all too common, and sad, to see desperate patients submitted to agonizing and useless treatments just to grasp some tiny, unlikely hope at life. And yet for adult patients, that is their right — to choose the benefit of tiny hope, even knowing the high cost. For children, it is the right of parents to make that choice, not because the parents will always make the best decision, but because no one else cares so passionately for the welfare of a child. Even if you think that Charlie’s parents would be making a terrible mistake by taking him for experimental treatment, you should be troubled by the implications of government abrogating their right to make that mistake.
From observing British culture today, I’ve noticed that even a modest threat of bombing or beheading seems to produce a much more cooperative mindset in the bureaucracy. I wonder how long it will be before others in British society pick up on this lesson and apply it.
THE TRUMP EFFECT: Deprogramming The American Mind.
SEGREGATION TODAY, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Minnesota Public Schools Advised to ‘Segregate’ Students Objecting to New Transgender Guidelines.
WHY THE AYATOLLAHS PLAY SPEEDBOAT BLUFF IN THE PERSIAN GULF: It’s an act of war in the regime’s long war on America. And on July 25 we witnessed the latest speedboat bluff battle in that war when a speedboat manned by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) personnel approached American vessels.
The USS Thunderbolt responded and went to General Quarters—immediate combat readiness on the warship, its crew members at battle stations with ammo on hand. The Thunderbolt was screening the AEGIS cruiser USS Vella Gulf, a USN capital warship carrying anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) capable of intercepting North Korean and Iranian intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs). With fanatics at the helm an IRGC boat could be a suicide boat bomb.
Note the Iranians continue to develop long-range ballistic missiles. Obama’s Iran deal didn’t stop that program. It really didn’t stop the ayatollahs’ quest for nukes. And it’s biggest failure is it doesn’t penalize bad behavior, like speedboat bluff to disrupt U.S. naval formations.
A BLUEPRINT FOR NEW SANCTIONS ON NORTH KOREA: From the Center for a New American Security.
Despite the perception that North Korea has long been the most sanctioned country on earth, the reality is that until recently, those sanctions were not very comprehensive. Though the U.N. Security Council had passed four sanctions resolutions between 2005 and 2015, none of them meaningfully tightened the economic screws on North Korea. Without this broad economic force, they lacked the leverage to compel policy change or effective nuclear diplomacy. Instead, they were narrowly targeted at specific individuals and companies involved in North Korea’s nuclear program and served as more of a messaging tool, with relatively limited financial consequences for North Korea and its regime elites.
There is room to increase the economic and political pressure on North Korea’s economy using sanctions and “military leverage”:
Aggressively doing so plus targeting the international companies, including many based in China, that still do business with North Korea could begin to curb its continued ability to generate hard currency from exports and its continued access to the international financial system. This additional pressure could limit the country’s ability to generate the funds it needs for its nuclear program. Just as important, it would restrict Kim’s ability to handle any ensuing economic instability. This would build critical leverage for the United States in future diplomatic negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear program.
The study says “North Korea’s international trading relationships constitute a target-rich environment.” For example, sanction “any bank or company involved in purchases of North Korean exports – including coal, minerals, textiles, and other products” and “craft sanctions targeting insurance companies that underwrite cargoes to and from North Korea.” The best model for this “tougher approach” with sanctions was the sanctions regiment “that the United States imposed on Iran before the JCPOA was concluded in 2015.” That’s the bad Iran deal Obama slapped together.
RELATED: Some examples of tough sanctions and military leverage.
ISRAEL EVALUATES ITS READINESS FOR WAR: Hamas and Hezbollah are the daily challenges, but Iran is the big threat. By the way, Iran still wants nukes.
The Iranian regime has not given up its strategic objective of obtaining nuclear weapons. The sunset clauses on the nuclear deal will lift key restrictions over the next eight to thirteen years. Assuming the hard-line Shiite ideological-religious camp and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) continue to control Iran’s foreign and military policies, the Islamic Republic will be able restart its nuclear program at the end of the sunset clauses (if it does not cheat and breach the agreement beforehand).
Iran could begin enriching uranium again (using improved techniques it is currently researching) to bring it to nuclear breakout, and could try to reach that point at a time of its choosing. Its missile program is already developing. This means Israel could find itself in a state-to-state conflict in the not too distant future.
Additionally, Arab Sunni states threatened by Iran have launched civil nuclear programs of their own. These could turn out to be the initial stages of military nuclear programs, designed to counter Iran’s nuclear shadow.
More evidence that Obama’s Iran deal was a very bad deal.
K.C. JOHNSON & STUART TAYLOR: Betsy DeVos is right: In college sexual assault cases, due process matters.
A system in which a wrongly accused student’s best chance of vindication comes after his college improperly brands him a rapist, and only if he can afford an expensive and protracted lawsuit, is a travesty of justice. Moreover, despite some suggestions by defenders of Obama policies that colleges have responded to these court decisions by creating fairer procedures for accused students, the reverse has been far more typical. Amidst legal challenges, schools including Brown and Swarthmore adjusted their policies to make it harder for innocent students to win vindication, by scaling back the rights promised to accused students. Reflecting this mindset, the National Association of College and University Attorneys published a May 2016 research note urging colleges and universities to “promptly destroy” documents such as “e-mails … staff notes, … notes of hearing participants during a disciplinary hearing, drafts of hearing outcome reports, and other such working papers,” all of which “might actually prove very useful to a plaintiff’s lawyer” in a subsequent lawsuit.
Why does Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) hate college men?
TIME TO PRIMARY SOME FOLKS: Republicans repeal and replace the Tea Party.
Even when Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress, liberalism remains the default ideology of the federal government.
A Republican Senate could not muster even 50 votes for the full repeal of Obamacare’s taxes and spending. Six Republican senators who had voted for repeal in 2015, when the party was merely pretending it was possible, flipped on Wednesday rather than deliver.
Five of the six represent states President Trump won in November. The sixth hails from a state Trump lost by less than 3 points.
An argument can be made that repealing these parts of Obamacare while leaving its regulatory structure largely in place is a bad idea. But we are discussing a law that Republicans spent seven years campaigning against. Every GOP senator except one either voted for repeal in the past or campaigned on it in a recent election cycle. Their leader was said to have a “secret plan” to repeal Obamacare “root and branch.”
There was ample time for a contingency plan or even a better approach to replacing the healthcare law.
No amount of time ever seems to be enough. Not 1 inch of ground gained by liberalism is ever ceded without a fight. Republicans can campaign against those gains. They can now tweet about them. But when it comes to action, Republicans can seldom do more than nibble around the edges. The slightest retrenchment of a healthcare law that did not even exist a decade ago is portrayed as a mass casualty event.
Repeal and replace some members.