HEY, AT LEAST FOLKS LEND A HAND IN A HELLHOLE: Senator Lindsey Graham, who attacked Trump for “s***hole” comment, in 2013: “The people coming across the southern border live in hellholes. They don’t like that. They want to come here. Our problem is we can’t have everybody in the world who lives in the world who lives in a hellhole come to America.”
Classical reference in headline:
KIDS THESE DAYS: Teens Are Eating Laundry Detergent in ‘Tide Pod Challenge.’
Even if it weren’t stupid and dangerous, have you seen the price of those things?
FASTER, PLEASE: New antifungal drug combats deadly microscopic yeast. “Microscopic yeast are a menace in hospitals. The fungi can grow in the nooks and crannies of medical equipment and hospital surfaces and can cause infections in patients with weakened immune systems. For some, an infection can prove fatal. Candida auris is one of the most problematic species, as it has developed resistance to multiple antifungal drugs. Current antifungals attack yeast by puncturing the cell membranes or by blocking sterol production. The new drug works by blocking vital proteins from attaching to the yeast cell wall. In doing so, the antifungal compound disrupts the yeast’s growth process and prevents the formation of drug-resistant fungal communities.”
PROCUREMENT: Navy Says It Can Buy Frigate For Under $800M.
“The follow-on objective cost for FFG(X) is $800 million. We think we can get below that,” Rear Adm. John Neagley told the conference. Once conceptual design contracts are awarded — no later than March — “we’re going to use the next 16 months to work with our industry partners to really understand those details.”
The $800 million figure is the Navy’s target (“objective”) for the average cost of frigates No. 2 through 20 (the “follow-on” ships). The $950 million figure widely reported this week is the maximum average cost the Navy will accept for those same ships. Neither number includes the very first frigate, since the lead ship of a class has lots of extra costs: the initial development and design, setting up manufacturing facilities, and working out all sorts of teething troubles.
That seems more reasonable that yesterday’s report.
AS GOD AND ROBERT HEINLEIN INTENDED: Scientists Think They’ve Discovered Lava Tubes Leading to The Moon’s Polar Ice.
WELL, YES: Liam Neeson: Sex allegations in Hollywood sparked a ‘witch hunt.’
Or, more accurately, a Warlock Hunt.
ANDREW SULLIVAN: It’s Time to Resist the Excesses of #MeToo.
The Deneuve letter rightly insisted: “Rape is a crime. But insistent or clumsy flirting is not a crime, nor is gallantry a chauvinist aggression.” The manifesto observed the censorious Victorianism about some of the rhetoric, and the public invasion of private matters. But the French signatories also worried about due process: “This expedited justice already has its victims, men prevented from practicing their profession as punishment, forced to resign, etc., while the only thing they did wrong was touching a knee, trying to steal a kiss, or speaking about ‘intimate’ things at a work dinner, or sending messages with sexual connotations to a woman whose feelings were not mutual.” South Park, as usual, was ahead of the curve. Its season finale last month portrayed an office romance between PC Principal and a new character, Strong Woman. And at the mere suggestion of an affair between them, everyone instantly projectile vomits in disgust. What other response could there be to the idea of a relationship between co-workers?
And this week, rumors spread of the impending publication of an essay by Katie Roiphe in Harper’s magazine that might take a similarly skeptical tack. Some believed that Roiphe might even hold the instigator of the legendary Shitty Media Men list accountable, and that this person might thereby be subjected to online abuse. And so a Twitter campaign was launched, in a backlash-backlash, to preemptively stop the publication of an essay no one had actually read. One Twitter activist, Nicole Cliffe, went further: “If you have a piece in the hopper over at @Harpers, ask your editor if the Roiphe piece is happening. If it is, I will pay you cash for what you’d lose by yanking it.” This strikes me as a new development for the social-justice left: They now believe in suppressing free speech — even before they know its content! It also strikes me as ominous for journalism as a whole. When journalists themselves wage campaigns to suppress the writing of other journalists, and intend to destroy a magazine for not toeing their ideological line, you can see how free speech truly is on the line. Why not simplify this and publish a blacklist of writers whose work, based on previous ideological transgressions, cannot and should not be published?
Oh, they’re working on that.
S***HOLE: Censure Resolution Planned Against Trump ‘for His Racist Statements.’
This writeup is from Bridget Johnson, whose unexplained and unacknowledged Twitter banishment remains unexplained and unacknowledged by Twitter management.
The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan made an intriguing argument that even the heavily anti-Trump tenor of late-night comedy shows actually helped Trump: “Though aimed at blue-state sophisticates, these shows are an unintended but powerful form of propaganda for conservatives. When Republicans see these harsh jokes—which echo down through the morning news shows and the chattering day’s worth of viral clips, along with those of Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Meyers—they don’t just see a handful of comics mocking them. They see HBO, Comedy Central, TBS, ABC, CBS, and NBC. In other words, they see exactly what Donald Trump has taught them: that the entire media landscape loathes them, their values, their family, and their religion. It is hardly a reach for them to further imagine that the legitimate news shows on these channels are run by similarly partisan players—nor is it at all illogical. No wonder so many of Trump’s followers are inclined to believe only the things that he or his spokespeople tell them directly—everyone else on the tube thinks they’re a bunch of trailer-park, Oxy-snorting half-wits who divide their time between retweeting Alex Jones fantasies and ironing their Klan hoods.”
Read the whole thing.
Incidentally, why would Trump’s base think that “the entire media landscape loathes them, their values, their family, and their religion?” Because that’s exactly what the media tells them on a regular basis.
QED: CNN’s Don Lemon Lectures Trump Base for Supporting a ‘Racist:’ Makes You ‘Worse Than Him.’
Related: Michael Wolff, Golden Globes, and the Failure of the Artistic Class.
FRESH BLOOD: Trump names David Schenker new Middle East head at State Department.
David Schenker, a director at the prestigious Washington Institute for Near East policy, is to be assigned the top Middle East post at the State Department, as part of the ongoing shakeup ordered by President Donald Trump. DEBKAfile’s Washington sources report that Schenker, a friend of Israel and expert on Syria, Lebanon, Hizballah, Jordan and Islamist terror, is a former senior adviser to Donald Rumsfeld, when he served as defense secretary in the George W. Bush administration. He is the second non-diplomat to receive a high State Department appointment since Trump entered the White House. As assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, he will follow Andrew Peek, a former military intelligence officer, who was named deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran.
More turnover at State, please.
THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: ‘You’re stealing what we need’: Vegan launches bizarre rant at a meat-eating woman for enjoying TOFU – and claims it’s a form of ‘cultural appropriation.’
But this story has to be fake news. Nobody enjoys tofu.
IN THE MAIL: Recipes Every Man Should Know.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
PEGGY NOONAN: Trump, Oprah and the Art of Deflection: Will American politics return to normalcy in 2021 or 2025? I’m not betting on it.
The best deflection has some truth in it. The Windsors were a chilly lot, and the internet does amplify a personal humiliation.
I thought of all this last weekend as I watched the Golden Globes. Hollywood has known forever about abuse, harassment and rape within its ranks. All the true powers in the industry—the agencies, the studios—have one way or another been complicit. And so, in the first awards show after the watershed revelations of 2017, they understood they would not be able to dodge the subject. They seized it and redirected it. They boldly declared themselves the heroes of the saga. They were the real leaders in the fight against sexual abuse. They dressed in black to show solidarity, they spoke truth to power.
They went so far, a viewer would be forgiven for thinking that they were not upset because they found out about Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, et al. They were upset, as Glenn Reynolds noted on Twitter, that you found out, and thought less of them. Anyway, they painted themselves as heroes of the struggle.
Deflection is brilliant, wicked, and tends to work.
Especially when the media cooperate. Plus:
The political class can bemoan this—the veteran journalists, the senators and governors, the administrators of the federal government. But this is a good time to remind ourselves that it was the failures of the political class that brought our circumstances about.
When at least half the country no longer trusts its political leaders, when people see the detached, cynical and uncaring refusal to handle such problems as illegal immigration, when those leaders commit a great nation to wars they blithely assume will be quickly won because we’re good and they’re bad and we’re the Jetsons and they’re the Flintstones, and while they were doing that they neglected to notice there was something hinky going on with the financial sector, something to do with mortgages, and then the courts decide to direct the culture, and the IRS abuses its power, and a bunch of nuns have to file a lawsuit because the government orders them to violate their conscience . . .
Why wouldn’t people look elsewhere for leadership? Maybe the TV star’s policies won’t always please you, but at least he’ll distract and entertain you every day. The other ones didn’t manage that!
Yeah, they weren’t even entertaining.
CHANGE: Tech’s New Hotbeds: Cities With Fastest Growth In STEM Jobs Are Far From Silicon Valley.
The conventional wisdom sees tech concentrating in a handful of places, many dense urban cores that offer the best jobs and draw talented young people. These places are seen as so powerful that, as The New York Times recently put it, they have little need to relate to other, less fashionable cities.
To a considerable extent, that was true – until it wasn’t. The most recent data on STEM jobs – in science, technology, engineering or mathematics – suggests that tech jobs, with some exceptions, are shifting to smaller, generally more affordable places.
What we may be witnessing, in fact, is a third turning in the tech world. The initial phase, in the 1950s, was mostly suburban – dominated by the still-powerful Bay Area, Boston and Southern California – and was heavily tied to aerospace and defense. The second phase, now coming to a close, refocused tech growth in two hot spots, the Bay Area and Washington’s Puget Sound, and largely involved social media, search and digital applications for business services.
The third tech turning, now in its infancy, promises greater dispersion to other markets, some with strong tech backgrounds, some with far less. In the last two years, according to numbers for the country’s 53 largest metros compiled by Praxis Strategy Group’s Mark Schill based on federal data and EMSI’s fourth-quarter 2017 data set, the STEM growth leader has been Orlando, at 8%, three times the national average. Next are San Francisco and Charlotte (each at 7%); Grand Rapids, Michigan (6%); and then Salt Lake City, Tampa, Seattle, Raleigh, Miami and Las Vegas (5%). . . .
From 2006 to 2016, the Valley saw a remarkable 33% growth rate in STEM jobs – roughly 3% per year. But in the last two years, that rate has fallen to 2% annually. In some recent months in parts of the Bay Area, The San Jose Mercury reports, the tech job count has actually declined.
One limiting factor could be high housing costs.
You think?
THE NEW NORMAL: Feds Collect Record Income Taxes Through December; Still Run $225 Billion Deficit.
It’s the entitlements, stupid.
MIZZOU REMAINS A DUMPSTER FIRE: Former dean says Mizzou fired her for questioning racial quotas. Plus: “The lawsuit goes on to allege that Lockette derisively referred to students who reside in Missouri as ‘bumpkins, hicks, and illiterates who lived in Hootersville,’ adding that he had made similar comments about medical school students in the past.”
AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, Updated Hourly.
Plus, new Kindle Daily Deals.
ANN ALTHOUSE:. “‘Shithole’ is a perfectly good rude, slangy word. It has a great history, and it’s vivid and effective. It is not a racial term, and shame on the people who are making it racist. I wonder if these people ever think of the pain and damage they are causing by proclaiming and insisting upon a connection between dark skin and excrement. They’re revealing what’s in their head, and they don’t mind burdening dark-skinned people with the knowledge that they are being thought about like that.”
A BRIEF HISTORY OF POTTY MOUTH PRESIDENTS: Bet you can’t guess who gets the top spot.
IN THE MAIL: Joanne Lipman’s “That’s What She Said“, about how we might be able to discuss gender issues in the workplace without being lectured at or reliance on divisive language. Lipman was Gannett’s Chief Content Officer and a veteran journalist at The Wall Street Journal among other places. Here’s the promising part from the jacket notes:
“First things first: there will be no man-shaming in “That’s What She Said.” A recent Harvard study found that corporate “diversity training” has actually made the gender gap worse — in part because it makes men feel demonized. Women, meanwhile, have been told that closing the gender gap is up to them: they need to speak, to be more confident, to demand to be paid what they’re worth. They discuss these issues amongst themselves all the time. What they don’t do is talk to men about it.”
It will be interesting to see the reaction to her work, given that the squeaky wheel of confrontation and currency of victimhood has paid off for a few, (*ahem*, Lisa Bloom) without making a real dent in the overall problem. Here’s hoping calm, intelligent and rational dialogue without demonization wins the day.
HMM: Devin Nunes accuses FBI, DOJ of demonstrating ‘abuse’ of government surveillance programs.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told fellow Republicans he has witnessed evidence demonstrating a clear “abuse” of government surveillance programs by FBI and Justice Department officials, according to a new report.
Nunes’ comments were made as he was attempting to garner votes for a bill to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Section 702 permits the intelligence community to oversee foreign communications, but does not authorize the government to oversee Americans. The bill was passed by the House on Thursday.
Ahead of the vote, Nunes said he has not seen evidence to suggest Section 702 was abused to look at foreigners, but that other sections of the law had been misused by the government to oversee Americans, Fox News reported.
Nunes informed other lawmakers he would “read all 435 members of Congress into major abuses with other areas of FISA and will read members in ASAP” on those issues.
No further details were given given concerning the abuses Nunes brought up during the closed-door meetings this week. A report from the Washington Examiner this week said that representatives from congressional panels, including the House Intelligence Committee, viewed Obama-era FISA documents at the Justice Department earlier this month.
That meeting occurred after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray released the documents to lawmakers. Nunes had issued a letter to Rosenstein in December slamming the agencies for their “failure to fully produce” documents concerning the so-called “Trump dossier,” noting “at this point it seems the DOJ and FBI need to be investigating themselves.”
Someone needs to investigate them.
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is the Washington Post Part of the Far Left?
Just think of the Post as Democrat activists with bylines, and it all makes sense.™
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