Archive for 2018

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS: Obama delivers speech in Soviet-style vacuum.

We all know that President Obama was never a transparent president, but who would have thought the former commander-in-chief would stoop to giving a secret speech about sports.

Yes, that’s right. The “most transparent president in history” — as Obama liked to call himself — spoke under a bizarre gag order during his appearance yesterday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.

What’s next? A gag order on Obama’s golf scores?

The media and audience members on hand for the conference were not only banned from recording or streaming the talk, but prohibited from even talking about what he said.

And if you violated the ban? The journalistic equivalent of the death penalty.

Is anyone surprised by this?

OPEN THREAD: Disport yourselves in the comments.

WHY ON EARTH WOULD THAT BE? Dems Fear California Crackup. “Heading into the annual state Democratic Party convention in San Diego this weekend, the Democratic-controlled Legislature is mired in a contentious sexual harassment scandal. Cutthroat primaries have party officials on edge. And grass-roots activists are still seething, nearly two years after Hillary Clinton defeated Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary. Escalating the tension in the nation’s most populous state, the national party and a handful of other outside groups are beginning to muscle into crowded congressional races, hoping to head off a nightmare scenario in which the state’s unusual, top-two primary system results in no Democratic candidate at all appearing on November ballots in several key races.”

THEY SEEM TO WORK: Once a weird, fringe treatment, fecal transplants have started becoming mainstream.

The unusual treatment has been rediscovered many times since, but it’s finally starting to enter the medical mainstream. Partly, that’s because of a surge of interest in the microbiome—the trillions of microbes that share our bodies. Partly, it’s because many well-conducted studies have shown that fecal transplants are incredibly effective at treating Clostridium difficile—a nasty, hardy bacterium that causes severe, recurring, and potentially fatal bouts of diarrhea.

Other uses are not so well-established yet.

A DEGAS IN A BUS: French police discover Degas’ Les Choristes in a suitcase in a bus. The painting was stolen in 2009.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Media Loves Mass Shootings (Video).

There’s a reason why “If it bleeds, it leads” has been the tacit slogan in TV newsrooms for decades.

WHY DOES GOV. ANDREW CUOMO HATE MINORITY YOUTH? VICE News profiles Knife Rights; documents NYC “Gravity Knife” travesty. “The cliche says that politics makes strange bedfellows. In few cases has this been proven more true than the multi-year effort to stop NYC’s unjust ‘Gravity Knife’ prosecutions. A coalition including the Village Voice, NYCLU, and NAACP on the left has joined forces with the Wall Street Journal, NRA, and Knife Rights among others on the right, to twice see legislation passed in Albany, only to fall victim to Governor Cuomo’s veto pen.”

COLLUSION: Democratic rebuttal to GOP House Intelligence memo released.

UPDATE: More here including this White House response: “As the majority’s memorandum stated, the FISA judge was never informed that Hillary Clinton and the DNC funded the dossier that was a basis for the Department of Justice’s FISA application. In addition, the Minority’s memo fails to even address the fact that the Deputy FBI Director told the Committee that had it not been for the dossier, no surveillance order would have been sought.”

I’M NOT SAYING IT’S RUSSIANS — BUT IT’S RUSSIANS: The Russia Probe Has Turned The News Into Ancient Aliens.

Any reference to the History Channel’s daft Ancient Aliens series is a chance to embed one of Sarah’s favorite memes.