ORNERY OKIE, SCOTT PRUITT, ISN’T GOING DOWN QUIETLY: And he may not be going down at all, though it’s unclear this afternoon how the embattled EPA administrator’s appearance earlier today before the House Energy and Commerce Committee affects his standing with the President. LifeZette’s Kathryn Blackhurst looks at some interesting data comparing Pruitt and two of his Obama-appointed predecessors.

MORE GOOD NEWS THAT’LL IRRITATE DEAD WRONG PAUL EHRLICH AND HIS DOOM-MONGERS: The Green Revolution continues.

The Economist’s Daily Chart says the developing world can produce even more food:

Poor countries tend to fall short of their agricultural potential because they use geographic resources less efficiently. That is the conclusion of a new working paper by Tasso Adamopoulos of York University and Diego Restuccia of the University of Toronto. Messrs Adamopoulos and Restuccia analysed 30 years of geographic data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, covering some 9m individual plots of land in 162 countries. The authors found that rich countries (the top 10% by GDP per person) are about three times as productive as poor ones (the bottom 10%). However, they estimated that if all the world’s farmers extracted the maximum potential output from their fields, the gap in yields between rich and poor countries would vanish almost entirely.

MORE:

So what would it take for the developing world to catch up? Improving the mix of crops grown by farmers in poor countries, the authors reckon, would shrink the productivity gap by 20%. Improving efficiency—by adopting modern technologies and eliminating wasteful government policies, for example—would cover the remaining 80%. Such dramatic improvements have already been achieved in many places: according to the World Bank, today’s cereal-crop yields in lower-middle-income countries are three times higher than their historical level. The catch is that it has taken those economies 55 years to register those gains.

I’ve quoted at length because non-subscribers may not be able to crack The Economist paywall. Try this route if the other link doesn’t reach the article.

I know of a case in Uganda where an improved “mix of crops” and some advice on how to improve tilling had positive results in less than three years. The farmers involved had access to a European agronomist who was working for an NGO. I got to visit two farms with the agronomist and spend about an hour with one of the farmers. He assured me the results were remarkable — yields had improved and he and his wife had more money. He also said he wished he had received the advice 20 years ago. Then he gave me a very healthy pineapple to take to my wife in America. (I gave it to the cook at the guest house where I was staying.) The Ugandan government was not involved in the project but clearly it didn’t impede the NGO’s work. So why does it take 55 years to close the gap? New technology (mechanization being one example) can be expensive and developing nations lack the money. But I’ll bet wasteful government policies are major factors.”Wasteful” has to include government corruption, bureaucratic resistance and bureaucratic mismanagement.

I’D LIKE TO MOUNT ONE ON THE ROOF OF MY HOUSE: The U.S. Army Is Pushing for Battlefield Railguns.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Kanye West Doesn’t Care About Cuck People.

ALFIE EVANS’ FATHER: Hospital is holding my son hostage.

Imagine having to go to a hospital in a case where no abuse or neglect has been alleged, let alone imagined, and having to bargain for the release of your own child. Now imagine that added to the knowledge that the hospital’s plan for your child is to neglect him to death, even though he has been breathing on his own for three days straight, and when other medical facilities are volunteering to offer treatment or at least palliative care for as long as the child still lives.

Unimaginable, right?

Nahh – it’s the subtext of a commercial for a cable television network owned by Comcast.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Tiny Lab-Grown ‘Brains’ Raise Big Ethical Questions.

AT AMAZON, Shop Amazon – Top Gift Ideas.

Plus, Shop Amazon Warehouse Deals – Deep Discounts on Open-box and Used Tools & Home Improvement.

RETRIAL UPDATE: Bill Cosby Found Guilty On All Counts. “Comedian and TV icon Bill Cosby has been convicted on three counts of aggravated indecent assault at his sexual-assault retrial here Thursday, on the second day of deliberations. . . . Last June, another jury at Cosby’s first trial deadlocked on that question after days of deliberations, forcing Judge O’Neill to declare a mistrial. For the retrial, the jury of seven men and five women voted unanimously that the answer was yes. Cosby, charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault, could get 10 years in prison on each count. He denied the charges, asserting that his sexual encounter with Constand was consensual and that he only gave her an over-the-counter allergy medication. At 80 and in failing health, any prison term is likely a death sentence.”

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Doing Nothing on Iran Deal Is a Bad Decision.

I QUIT BENADRYL OVER EARLIER NEWS ALONG THESE LINES: Parkinson, Depression Meds Tied to Dementia Risk. Anticholinergics seem iffy for repeated use.

THE ART OF THE DEAL? US, S. Korea agree to suspend war games during summit with North.

Kim Jong-un hasn’t put anything on the table he can’t withdraw, but this is an actual, real-world, in-advance concession by the US/ROK.

BLUE ON BLUE:

Corn, popped.

(Free Beacon link here.)

GOOD: Number of pre-teen moms in the US at a record low, CDC says.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. America Needs a Lot More of This Kind of ‘White Hetero-Patriarchal Respectability.’

You don’t get bourgeoisie results without bourgeoisie values — which are separate from race and gender.

SOD OFF, SWAMPY: This Eco-Warrior Shower Curtain Forces You to Get Out of the Shower After 4 Minutes.

AT AMAZON, save on Men’s Belts and Men’s Wallets.

RONAN FARROW: Hillary Canceled An Interview When She Learned I Was Reporting On Harvey Weinstein.

I wasn’t sure whether to file this one under “CIRCLING THE WAGONS” or “THE MISANTHROPIC MRS. CLINTON.”

FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS IT SHOULD BE “DON’T:” The Do’s and Don’ts of Industrial IoT.

THEY’RE LIKE THE DIRTY DOZEN, BUT ARMED WITH GERITOL, VIAGRA, ROOFIES, AND SELF-LUBING CATHETERS: Charlie Rose Will Reportedly Host a Show About Men Brought Down by #MeToo.

BLUE WAVE? The problem with the Dem wave theory.

John Feehery:

Democrats want to make this race all about President Trump. They want to repeal his tax cuts, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) promised in a press conference, and replace it with more government spending.

But a battle over tax policy is not what is really animating the Democratic base. What really gets the progressive left is the chance to impeach the president and possibly remove him from office.

They don’t want to be a check on the president and his power. Instead, they want to nullify the election and install somebody more to their liking.

My own experience at using impeachment as a device to drive voters to the polls is that it doesn’t work.

In other words, the Democrats have to manage to not sound crazy…

BRET STEPHENS WRITES ON Bush 41, Trump, and American Decline. There’s a lot of talk about how decent and wonderful Bush was, and how crass and crude Trump is. But Bush was elected thanks to Lee Atwater, whose campaigning technique (and electoral target market) wasn’t that different from Trump’s. And Bush lost after the very same establishment that’s now waxing nostalgic about his presidency viciously went after him, mocking him, scorning him, calling him a wimp, making up the claim that he didn’t know what a grocery scanner was, calling him a warmonger and a tool of the theocratic Christian right, etc.

Now they miss him? Too bad. You chose the form of your destructor, guys.

Related:

With Trump, meanwhile, the press treated him as a novelty candidate until he had the nomination wrapped up, and then started calling him, basically, Hitler. This didn’t get much traction because they do that with every Republican nominee. As David Mastio wrote here, “No one is listening anymore. When mild-mannered technocrat Mitt Romney was running for president, Clinton’s obscure Obama-administration colleague Joe Biden told a black audience that Republicans ‘are going to put ya’ll back in chains.’ If you listen to Democrats, every Republican who has run for anything in my lifetime has Klan robes in their closet and secret Confederate memorabilia collection.”

Perhaps we should require reading “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” in journalism schools.

Destructor, chosen.

CHANGE: Einstein’s ‘Spooky Action’ Has Just Been Demonstrated on a Massive Scale For The First Time.

IT WOULD HELP IF OUR INSTITUTIONS HADN’T BECOME SO CONTEMPTIBLE: Comey Says Trump Administration Views ‘Institutions of Justice with Contempt.’

GOVERNMENT: Oops! Amtrak Trains Don’t Fit in Miami’s $2 Billion Train Station: The Miami Intermodal Center opened five years ago, but is still unable to service Amtrak trains.