Archive for 2018
February 8, 2018
and LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: RUSSIANS at National Prayer Breakfast and Much, Much More.
A MARINE FLAME THROWER TANK IN HUE: The Tet Offensive, February 1968. The M67 flame tank was nicknamed the “Zippo.”
BUT TRUMP IS LOWERING THE TONE OF OUR POLITICS: Democratic candidate Randy Bryce once used Bristol Palin’s pregnancy announcement to suggest she sell condoms.
Randy Bryce, the viral Democrat running to “repeal and replace” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., in 2018, once used Bristol Palin’s pregnancy announcement as an opportunity to suggest she sell condoms.
After Palin announced her second unwed pregnancy in 2015, Bryce sent her a tweet that read, “I’d suggest a career selling condoms instead of abstinence. Looking for help @TrojanCondoms?”
Palin had previously advocated on behalf of abstinence.
Bryce has secured endorsements from a number of progressive politicians and organizations, including NARAL and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. He frequently lends support to women’s causes on Twitter, from the Women’s March to birth control mandates.
While Bryce’s tweet to Palin, flagged on Tuesday by Peter Hasson of the Daily Caller, does not amount to a major scandal, those sentiments would not be tolerated by his feminist supporters if there were an R next to his name rather than a D.
If it weren’t for double standards, they’d have no standards at all.
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Are Democrats destroying their own credibility?
Michael Barone:
On what issues are Democrats taking such risks?
(1) Their undisguised faith that Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to steal the 2016 election. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think this happened or that it has or will come anywhere close to being proven.
(2) The Republican tax bill was a “scam” that was going to take money away from those with modest incomes. A look at the tax rate schedules in the Republicans’ bill should have told Democrats that this argument wasn’t sustainable, and perhaps they made it in the hope—which didn’t seem too far-fetched at the time—that enough Republicans would waver, the bill would never pass and their characterization, with predictable help from the mainstream media, would stick. But the bill passed, modest and low-income people are getting raises and bonuses, and just about everyone will get a bigger paycheck later this month.
(3) Their claims that the Republicans were responsible for shutting the government down last month over DACA. Democrats knew that DACA was widely popular, but overestimated its importance to voters. It turns out they didn’t want the government shut down to help even deserving illegal immigrants. It’s hard for the party of more government to lose an argument over who caused a government shutdown, but they managed to do it.
More at the link.
I understand that the party is currently in almost total thrall to its far-left progressive wing, but the last time they took such big risks with their trust and credibility it wasn’t until after they’d won back Congress.
In 2013, the US shipped just over 100,000 barrels a day.
This past November, American firms exported 1.53 million barrels a day.
The US now exports up to 1.7 million barrels per day of crude, and this year will have the capacity to export 3.8 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas.
Terminals conceived for importing liquefied natural gas have now been overhauled to allow exports.
Surging shale production is poised to push US oil output to more than 10 million barrels per day – toppling a record set in 1970 and crossing a threshold few could have imagined even a decade ago.And this new record, expected within days, likely won’t last long.
I’m so old, I can remember when Barack Obama told us we couldn’t “drill our way out of” our energy problems.
TRYING TO BRAZEN IT OUT: Q & A: Mayor Megan Barry discusses affair with officer, says she won’t resign. She’s relying on a double standard here.
NORMALLY HER SPEECHES JUST SEEM THE LONGEST: Nancy Pelosi Claims Record for Longest House Floor Speech.
GOP: Please feel free to talk as much as you want, Nancy.
HEALTH: Apple Watch heart-rate sensor can detect diabetes with 85 percent accuracy.
There is a caveat to that figure, however — it only stands for patients who have previously been diagnosed with diabetes already.
All the same, the study suggests that the Apple Watch could be a viable healthcare accessory moving forward. The research examined data from 14,000 Apple Watch owners, and determined that 462 had diabetes by using the heart-rate sensor in the watch. How was it able to do so? According to the 2015 Framingham Heart Study, diabetes patients have heart rates that vary from healthy individuals. As such, the Watch’s heart-rate sensor could theoretically detect these irregular heart rates, and consequently, identify a diabetes patient.
As TechCrunch points out, this is the same sort of sensor other fitness wearables use, which means that this capability likely isn’t restricted to the Apple Watch.
The Holy Grail of wearables for diabetes sufferers is an insulin measurer/injector which doesn’t need to prick the skin, and while this is a far cry from that, it is another step in the right direction.
TOM BEVAN: Dems Want to Win in 2018. They Shouldn’t.
By winning back the House, however, Democrats would take control of committees. This sounds good until you realize that the new Judiciary Committee chair would be under immediate pressure from the party’s liberal base to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump. Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi would have great difficulty stemming this tide, because this is exactly what the vast majority of the base of their party wants: 76 percent of Democrats want their lawmakers to “begin the impeachment process against President Trump” if they win back control of the House of Representatives, according to a Quinnipiac University poll taken last month.
Here, history would be repeating itself, and not in a way that suggests a good outcome for Democrats. The problem, just as it was in 1998 when Bill Clinton was president, is that the country as a whole is against the idea. Pelosi has done a delicate dance for the past 13 months trying to tamp down impeachment talk among her most progressive members. Despite her efforts, in December 58 Democrats voted to lay out articles of impeachment against the president.
If Democrats win the House majority, it’ll be much harder for Pelosi to stem this tide among her members.
If Bevan is right, it might be worth losing the House for a couple of years just to watch the Democrats commit seppuku.
FALLEN ANGELS WAS JUST A NOVEL, RIGHT? Longer winters are coming in reality and will partially blunt global warming for 50 years.
JULIE KELLY ON THE GRASSLEY MEMO: Black Lines Matter.
FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL MICHAEL MUKASEY: The Memo and the Mueller Probe: If the investigation arose from partisan opposition research, what specific crime is he looking into?
The regulation that governs the jurisdiction of the special counsel requires that he be “provided with a specific statement of the matter to be investigated.” The letter from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointing Mr. Mueller says he is to “conduct the investigation confirmed by then-Director James Comey before the House Intelligence Committee on March 20, 2017,” which covers “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” and any matters that may arise “directly” from that investigation.
But the investigation then disclosed by Mr. Comey was not a criminal investigation; it was a national-security investigation. Possible Russian meddling in the 2016 election is certainly a worthy subject for a national-security investigation, but “links” or “coordination”—or “collusion,” a word that does not appear in the letter of appointment but has been used as a synonym for coordination—does not define or constitute a crime. The information, and misinformation, in the Steele dossier relates to that subject.
If partisan opposition research was used to fuel a national-security investigation that has morphed into a series of criminal investigations, and the special counsel has no tether that identifies a specific crime, or “a specific statement of the matter” he is to investigate, that is at least unsettling. By contrast, the Watergate, Iran-Contra and Whitewater investigations, whatever you think of how they were conducted, identified specific crimes. The public knew what was being investigated.
Here, none of the charges Mr. Mueller has brought thus far involved “coordination” or “collusion” with the Russians. Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos both pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, the latter over the timing of conversations with Russians in which he was allegedly offered but never received “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton, including her emails. He also attempted to set up a meeting between the Russians and Mr. Trump, but the campaign blew off that effort. Notably, Mr. Papadopoulos did not plead guilty to participating in any plot that involved “coordination.” The Paul Manafort and Rick Gates indictments charge fraud on the government through receipt of and failure to disclose payments from a pro-Russian Ukraine politician.
What to do? I believe that at a minimum, the public should get access to a carefully redacted copy of the FISA application and renewals, so we can see whether officials behaved unlawfully by misleading a court; and Mr. Mueller’s mandate should be defined in a way that conforms with the legal standard of his office. Both would go a long way toward assuring that we do more than talk about a “government of laws.”
Flashback: “Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.”
SPENGLER: Political Correctness on the Populist Right.
Poland’s Law and Justice Party government is right wing, Catholic and nationalist. It strongly opposes the European Community’s attempt to impose immigration quotas on its members, in alliance with anothother right-wing populists, Hungary’s Viktor Orban as well as the Czech Republic’s Miloš Zeman. But there is no difference whatever between the American Left’s witch hunt against “micro-aggressions” and the imposition of speech codes at American universities, and the new Polish law. They both criminalize speech that injures self-esteem, and they do so for exactly the same reason.
Read the whole thing.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: NEW: Criminal Referral Confirms Nunes Memo’s Explosive Claims Of FISA Abuse.
More on that here.
Plus: Buck Sexton Weighs In On FBI Antics, James Comey, And House Memos.
YOU WANT A REAL-LIFE GAME OF THRONES? WATCH TRUMP’S DRAINING THE SWAMP: When the final verdict is delivered on the Clintons, their foundation, Hillary’s email scandal and the Russia Collusion fantasy, one name is certain to be near the top of those who forced the truth out into the open – Charles Ortel.
YOU MEAN TELLING PEOPLE THAT EVERYTHING THAT GOES WRONG IN THEIR LIVES IS SOMEONE ELSE’S FAULT DOESN’T IMPROVE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE. I AM SO SHOCKED: An Inside Look at a Social Justice Factory.
THERE ARE NONE SO BLIND AS THOSE WHO WILL NOT SEE: BLM Co-Founder: Six Years Since ‘White Vigilante’ Murdered Trayvon Martin ‘In Cold Blood’.
WHY BE AFRAID OF THE TRUTH? Dartmouth Students Enraged Over Op-Ed Criticizing Student Life Board Being 80% Female.