YOU DON’T SAY: John Kerry Admits John Edwards Was a Bad Pick.
Archive for 2018
September 11, 2018
LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Startups Flock to Turn Young Blood Into an Elixir of Youth. “Beneath all the hype is some striking science. Blood, particularly the yellow liquid part of it known as plasma, is chock full of proteins and other compounds that act like a readout of how all the cells in the body are functioning. Research has shown that the ratios of those components change as animals, including humans, age. Older blood carries more signs of tissue damage than young blood, which often contains compounds that can stimulate cell growth and repair. Elevian has singled out one of these proteins, a growth differentiation factor known as GDF11, as the chief source of young blood’s rejuvenating effects. At the outset, the company is developing drugs based on GDF11 to treat Alzheimer’s, coronary heart disease, and age-related muscle dysfunction. But its founders say any disease of the elderly is on the table.”
ROGER KIMBALL: The Intoxicating Effects of Socialist Benevolence. “The result is a campaign to legislate virtue, to curtail eccentricity, to smother individuality, to barter truth for the current moral or political enthusiasm.”
IT’S SO GODDAM OFFENSIVE I ALMOST DIDN’T WANT TO PUBLISH THIS: I suppose it’s inevitable, but the sanctity and pain of this day really shouldn’t be turned into political fodder. This is just plain disgusting.
THE CENTURY BOMBER: Engine Upgrades, Digitization to Keep B-52s Flying Into 2050s.
Air Force budget documents state that the current engine, Pratt & Whitney’s TF33-PW-103, “is increasingly difficult to sustain due to diminished manufacturing sources and obsolescent technologies.” The Air Force Propulsion Directorate projects the engine will become unsustainable by 2030, it added.
Global Strike Command is currently working with acquisition leaders as well as the service’s system program office to develop a strategy to buy the new engines, Davis noted. “It affects more than just the engines,” he said, adding that the aircraft’s wiring and electrical systems will be impacted. “It’s not as simple as pulling one engine and putting a new one in.”
The current engines are original to the H models, the last of which came off the manufacturing line in 1962, Davis said. Discussions have been ongoing over several decades about buying new engines, but have until now been tamped down based on budget constraints and the Air Force’s indecision about retiring the aircraft, he added.
We’re supposed to build enough B-21 Raiders to replace every B-52, B-1, and B-2 — the youngest of which was developed and went into production while I was in high school.
A 9/11 REMINISCENCE I WROTE BACK IN 2002: American Dunkirk.
DAVID MARCUS: I’m A New Yorker. Here’s How I Teach My Son About 9/11.
As my son grew a little older, the questions became more complicated. Why did the terrorists hate us so much? Did you know anyone who died? Was everyone really sad? I find myself wondering whether I should share the emotional impact 9/11 had on the only city he’s ever lived in, and on America as a whole. Is it wise or even possible to express that level of trauma to a child?
Images are burned into the minds of those in New York City on 9/11 and the weeks and months after. Entire walls in subway stations filled with hundreds of photocopied photographs placed by loved ones desperately seeking information. I remember one face in particular. It was a young Asian man wearing a Phillies cap. That’s my favorite team. I never met him, but I can still see his face.
Over time, it became clear hope was lost of finding them, but the photographs remained. They stayed up in many cases for weeks. They took on a new purpose. The city had collectively decided they were works of art, monuments to our grief. As the city slowly went back to something like normal, it did so under the victims’ gaze.
These are the kinds of stories that I tell my son, but I also tell happier stories.
Read the whole thing.
WE WERE SOMEWHERE AROUND ST. PETERSBURG, ON THE EDGE OF BARTLETT PARK, WHEN THE DRUGS BEGAN TO TAKE HOLD: Florida Woman Makes Headlines in Pretty Much the Way You’d Expect.
IN THE MAIL: Brother John: A Monk, a Pilgrim and the Purpose of Life.
Plus, Today’s Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
CAUSING ALL THE RIGHT HEADS TO EXPLODE: Bolton Vows to Not Cooperate with International Criminal Court, Threatens Sanctions.
BOOM: A supersonic flight revival.
I wrote a column about this a while back.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Barbara Bush-bashing prof cheered and applauded on first day back at school.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Serena Williams Isn’t Fighting A Sexism Problem, She’s Fighting A Serena Williams Problem.
From what I’ve read so far, Ramos is one of the best umpires the federation. His calls were not personal, and he followed the rules to the letter as he first gave Williams a warning for her first violation, a point penalty for the second violation, and a game point for the third. I realize that in the heat of the moment people can lose their tempers, and there was a lot of heat surrounding Williams. However, Williams cost herself the game by taking it personally and resorting to berating Ramos as a person in return.
One bad turn went into another, and Williams was driving the car with her foot firmly on the gas.
If Williams is to blame anyone for her loss to Osaka, it’s Williams, not Ramos, and definitely not sexism. Her coach actually should shoulder a lot of the blame, but I see absolutely no one blaming him, and he actually confessed to breaking the rules.
Yet Williams wants this to be about sexism, not her entitled attitude.
The social-media excuse-mongering in defense of Williams will lead to even more unsportsmanlike behavior, but that’s OK just so long as the “right” people win. “Get woke, go broke” might already have come to women’s tennis.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Viewership for Miss America 2019 plunges 23% after swimsuit portion is cut.
Unexpectedly.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE: What to do about 10,000 al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in Idlib?
The UN estimates that there are nearly 3 million civilians in Idlib, about half of them displaced from other parts of Syria, and that 900,000 civilians will be affected by a government assault. UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said Friday, “The Security Council cannot accept that the civilians of Idlib must face this type of fate. Efforts to combat terrorism do not supersede obligations under international law in the moral conscience of humanity. We must put the sanctity of human civilian life above everything else.”
“If it’s a slaughter, the world is going to get very, very angry,” US President Donald Trump said Wednesday. “And the United States is going to get very angry, too.”
Turkey, which already hosts some 3.5 million Syrian refugees, seeks to avoid another massive inflow of Syrians displaced by conflict, but has been unable to convince non-terrorist armed groups to withdraw and distance themselves from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
The story also notes that “Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan failed last week to get his Russian and Iranian counterparts to support his desperate bid for a cease-fire in Idlib.” He chose his new allies… poorly.
GOVERNMENT FOR RENT: My organization (the Competitive Enterprise Institute) released a new report this morning by our brilliant Senior Fellow Chris Horner, detailing a scheme in which governors’ offices are coordinating with environmental activists and donors, who in turn are underwriting a massive, off-the-books campaign to provide staff and other resources to elected officials. The report, titled “Government for Rent: How Special Interests Finance Governors to Pursue Their Climate Policy Agenda,” uses public documents to demonstrate how donors are funneling tens of millions of dollars to privately fund staff—public relations professionals, consultants, and what aides call “necessary support functions”—for climate advocacy work at the governors’ disposal. This report follows Horner’s recent analysis detailing how activist donors are paying to place prosecutors in state attorney general offices to pursue an expressly partisan climate change agenda.
Lifezette has more coverage here.
IT’S 2018, AND HISTORIANS AREN’T EMBARRASSED TO WRITE ARTICLES LIKE THIS: An Exceptional Case? Problematizing Soviet Anti-Racism.
Apparently, all too many folks on the Left still believe that the USSR’s purported anti-racism was totally sincere. So this “revisionist” piece basically amounts to, “Maybe the Soviet propaganda that naive American Communists and fellow travelers ingenuously accepted wasn’t fully reflective of actual Soviet practice.”
As a Facebook friend, herself a refugee from the USSR, writes in response:
The Soviets were anti-racists only in the sense that they shouted about American racism whenever anyone mentioned mass murders conducted by the Lenin-Stalin regimes. Short of that hypocrisy, the Soviet government had no interest in anti-racism, mostly because it wanted to keep open the option of ethnically-based mass deportations and murders on its own soil. Stalin, after all, presided over the genocide of millions of Ukrainians, followed by genocide, forced deportations, and mass incarcerations of numerous ethnic and religious groups, from the Crimean Tatars to the Volga Germans to the Chechens to the Latvians, to the famed plot to deport all Jews to Siberia which was only thwarted by Stalin’s death.
One problem seems to be understanding racism from an American perspective. Having virtually no African-descended population, the Soviets could feign tolerance toward minorities while systematically oppressing domestic ethnic minorities. It’s the same sort of constricted perspective that leads woke millennials to dismiss the Holocaust as “white on white violence.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: 20-Year-Olds Are Making Six Figures In West Texas And There Still Aren’t Enough Workers.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Never Forget, Florence Update, Trump Economy, and Much, Much More. “Seventeen years ago this morning, four coordinated terrorist attacks claimed the lives of 2,996 people, injured over 6,000 more, and changed the New York skyline forever.”
Tyler O’Neil is filling in for Liz today.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Bob Woodward Has A Trail Of Accuracy Issues That Nobody Is Talking About.
GOVERNOR MOONBEAM: California commits to 100% clean electricity by 2045.
“This bill and the executive order put California on a path to meet the goals of Paris and beyond,” Brown said at a signing ceremony in state capital Sacramento.
“It will not be easy. It will not be immediate. But it must be done.”
At least 20 countries and twice as many large cities have made similar pledges, but California — the fifth largest economy in the world — is by far the biggest jurisdiction to do so to date.
The electric sector represents 16 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. More broadly, California has set ambitious goals to slash greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.
Does this apply to electricity generated in California, or to electricity sold in California? If it’s the latter, then California’s electrical rates, already some of the highest in the country, will “necessarily skyrocket,” to coin a phrase. If it’s the former, California won’t achieve anything but make Hollywood and Silicon Valley types feel good, while making out-of-state utilities even richer.