SENATOR KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND: Trump Needs To Resign Or We’ll ‘Take Action.’

Jazz Shaw:

So what sort of “action” does she plan to take when the President inevitably ignores her demand and fails to slink away and hand the keys over to Mike Pence? She’s still not saying The I Word and isn’t even suggesting some sort of 25th Amendment workaround. What she wants now are hearings. Of course she does. If there’s one thing better than driving a president of the opposing party out of office, it’s clogging up the news cycle all through a midterm election year with hearings about his alleged bad behavior.

If we’re being fair to the Democrats here, though, it probably does strike some observers as curious that there aren’t any hearings going on regarding Trump’s female accusers from the past. Nearly everyone else in politics who has been accused has either resigned or faced some sort of inquiry. But Trump has maintained his desired status as Teflon Don and has avoided that particular spectacle.

It’s unclear at this point if Gillibrand could actually force any sort of action in terms of hearings.

It’s not about impeachment action. It’s not even about hearings. It’s about branding with the far-left progressives who might just determine the winner of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.

RISE OF THE MACHINES: Virginia Postrel: Lessons From a Slow-Motion Robot Takeover: Cotton harvesting is now dominated by machines. But it took decades to happen.

The story of how cotton harvesting has changed over the decades doubles as a reminder that even robots take their time. At least until a certain point.

1) Full automation was impossible without years of tinkering. Although mechanized cotton harvesters were available in the 1920s, they didn’t catch on until after World War II. As long as farms needed workers to hoe weeds and thin cotton plants, replacing them at harvest time made little economic sense. Chemicals, not machines, solved that part of the problem; the ground between rows in Terry’s field is perfectly bare.

Even that wasn’t the end of it. “The ancillary requirements seemed to go on and on,” wrote the late historian Donald Holley in The Second Great Emancipation: The Mechanical Cotton Picker, Black Migration, and How They Shaped the South. Gins had to install dryers, for instance, because machine-harvested cotton retained more moisture. Farmers needed chemical defoliants to apply before harvesting so that their bales wouldn’t be contaminated with leaf trash. Breeders had to develop shorter plants with bolls that emerged at the same time, allowing a single pass through the fields. Until all these things had happened, harvesters had limited appeal.

Replacing human adaptability and skill, in short, required much more than a single new machine. Production systems are far more complicated than outside commenters realize. Robots may eventually replace people in an industry, but it can take a long time.

Read the whole, very interesting, thing. And somebody tell George W. Bush that we don’t need immigrants to pick cotton any more.

THEY ALL KNEW: Harvey Weinstein drivers ‘required to keep condoms and erectile dysfunction injections in the car at all times.’

The lawsuit describes employees hired specifically to facilitate sex for Weinstein, with many other employees, such as drivers, enlisted to help.

“[Weinstein]’s drivers in both New York City and Los Angeles were required to keep condoms and erectile dysfunction injections in the car, in order to provide them to [Weinstein] as needed,” the lawsuit states.

“Two [company] employee witnesses described having to procure [Weinstein]’s erectile dysfunction shots, one of whom received a [company] bonus for obtaining them and was at times directed by [Weinstein] to administer the injections,” it goes on to state.

“Another [company] witness described how she had to ensure [Weinstein had an adequate supply of them in his travel bag — referred to within the company as his ‘go bag’ — at all times.”

Weinstein’s use of erectile dysfunction drugs, and his use of staff to procure the drugs, was previously reported by multiple news outlets.

Flashback: Harvey Weinstein in 2009: ‘Hollywood has the best moral compass.’

Well, Hollywood seems to have done everything it could to keep Weinstein’s pointed north.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UW-Stout students must appreciate ‘social differences’ to graduate.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: MSM Normalizes the NorKs, Schiff Spins Like a Whirling Dervish and Much, Much More.

I DON’T KNOW, BUT I KNOW THE WAY TO BET: Michael Goodwin: Did Hillary Clinton pull off the dirtiest dirty trick in US presidential history?

NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL FILES SUIT AGAINST WEINSTEIN COMPANY.

UNEXPECTEDLY! Ontario sheds 59,300 part-time jobs in January as new $14 minimum wage begins: Ontario Economic Development Minister Steven Del Duca denies wage hike behind job losses. Well, of course he does.

THE NEWS ISN’T THAT IT’S TRUE, BUT THAT IT’S BEING ADMITTED: Human rights activist admits: Muslim refugees have no intention of adopting our values.

REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: Exclusive: CIA Ex-Director Brennan’s Perjury Peril.

BEWARE: Coming Senate Shenanigans on DACA.

SHOT: Once-tolerant Indonesia moves to outlaw gay — and extramarital — sex.

CHASER: Saudi Cleric Says Women Need Not Wear Abaya Robe In Public.

It wasn’t many years ago that those headlines would have been unimaginable — unless the countries were reversed.

THEY RUIN EVERYTHING, BECAUSE THEY’RE HORRIBLE HUMAN BEINGS: The “Woke Police” Have Ruined Entertainment. They should be mocked, not listened to.

CHANGE: Joe Manchin’s Growing Peril: He’s acting a lot more vulnerable than the polls suggest. The West Virginia Democrat knows how challenging it will be to win over Trump voters in the president’s strongest state.

Despite being a critical cog in the Democrats’ hopes for a Senate majority, he telegraphed a retirement threat to The New York Times to prove he’s not a patsy for his party’s liberal wing. Under fire from Vice President Mike Pence for opposing the administration’s tax cut, he’s been complaining how much “Washington sucks” in an effort to portray himself as a congressional outsider. He’s now urging his colleagues not to campaign against any sitting senators, a move that is transparently in his (and the Democratic Party’s) own interest.

Caught between the demands of Democratic leadership to stick with the party on big votes and the culturally conservative nature of his constituents, he’s in an increasingly awkward position. Republicans gleefully circulated footage of him unsure of when to stand and applaud President Trump’s State of the Union address. Another popular anti-Manchin meme shows a split photo of the senator showcasing his support for Planned Parenthood at one event, while posing with antiabortion activists at another—both from 2017.

It’s hard to get the Deplorable-American community to vote for you when you’re part of the party that deplores them.

BLUE LIGHT DISTRICT: This UV Lamp Could Prevent the Flu Virus From Spreading in Public Places.

“We’ve known for a century that UV light is extremely efficient at killing microbes, bacteria, and viruses,” says study leader David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. For that reason, UV devices are often used for sterilization — for medical equipment in hospitals, for example, or drinking water for backcountry campers.

But conventional germicidal lamps aren’t safe for humans to be around. With prolonged exposure, they can cause skin cancer and cataracts in the eyes. “So up until now, they’re only really practical when people aren’t around,” say Brenner. “You can sterilize a hospital room, but not when anyone’s inside.”

About five years ago, Brenner says, the Columbia team came up with a potential solution. Light on the far end of the UV-C spectrum, known as far-UVC, has very short wavelengths. The researchers suspected that it can penetrate and destroy microscopic bacteria and viruses, but can’t travel through the protective outer layers of human skin or eyes.

Now, Brenner and his colleagues have show that UVC light can effectively kill airborne influenza.

And the best part:

“We think that this type of overhead light could be efficacious for basically any public setting,” says Brenner. “Think about doctor’s waiting rooms, schools, airports and airplanes—any place where there’s a likelihood for airborne viruses.” And unlike the flu vaccine, he says, far-UVC light is likely to be effective against all airborne microbes, including newly emerging virus strains.

If this pans out, it could be the easiest-to-implement and most effective public health measure since the polio vaccine.

FINE. BUT LET THEM PAY FOR IT. Trump Wants Offshore Drilling, but States Are Choosing Wind Energy.

BADLY, BY ALL APPEARANCES: Explained: How the secret spy court really works.

SO SINCE THE PRESIDENT’S A FEDERAL OFFICIAL, if Mueller or Comey or Wray lied to him, that’s a False Statements Act violation, right?

DAILY BEAST: What Happens If A North Korean Athlete Defects? Disaster. “A defection, good for Pence and Trump, would be a diplomatic disaster for South Korea’s president. He could not give one back, but to accept one would thwart peace talks.”

Interesting to frame a possible defection as “good for Pence and Trump” with no mention of any benefit to the defector.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: 4 Keys to Understanding the Investigation of a Loan Helping Bernie Sanders’ Wife.

THE ART OF THE DEAL? White House Proposing Immigration Compromise that Includes No Cut to Legal Immigration.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Ruling Class Hates You.

I thought love trumps hate. That’s what I’ve been led to believe by an effusion of t-shirts, bumper stickers, and social media postings from the self-styled anti-Trump Resistance™. As my friend Roger Kimball likes to say, there really is nothing like the intoxication of moral superiority.

The syrupy slogans promulgated by the ruling class, ruling class wannabes, and fellow travelers on the Left aren’t fooling anyone, not even, I would guess, the people who say, wear, and post them. Truth is, they really don’t like the rest of us. No problem, we have our own lives and families. But it’s only not a problem until such disdain is combined with a sense of political entitlement and the coercive power of government.

Which brings us to the political and cultural union of the Democratic Party and the permanent political class called the deep state, that forms the unelected, unaccountable fourth branch of government that wields so much power up to and including the police power of the FBI.

In private texts recently made public, FBI “super-agent” Peter Strozk and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, were quite candid. Their open disdain for a wide variety for groups including Italians, Russians, Romanians, gypsies, Virginians, Texans, and pro-lifers should surprise no one. The leaders of their party have been saying the same thing in public for years.

Deplorable-Americans are too ornery. They’d like to replace them with populations they expect to be more tractable.