Archive for 2019
December 5, 2019
NO, GETTING DEVIN NUNES’ PHONE LOGS IS NOT A SMOKING GUN FOR DEMS: Margot Cleveland at The Federalist lays out why it might be for the California congressman, though.
PAYBACK’S A… YOU KNOW: Mitch McConnell Is Fully Prepared to Shut Democrats Out of Impeachment.
YOU CAN’T DISSENT FROM THE PREVAILING ORTHODOXY HERE, THIS IS A UNIVERSITY! UC Davis professor under fire for opposing required ‘diversity statements.’
I can remember when loyalty oaths were bad. Of course, to be fair, these people are probably still against making communists swear loyalty to the United States.
JOB DISCRIMINATION: 1 in 5 won’t hire Trump supporters.
ROGER SIMON, A Farewell to PJ. I’ll miss Roger’s voice at PJ, but I’m sure we’ll be hearing just as much from him at his new home.
IT’S A SAFE BET HE WOULDN’T FEEL SO WEARY IF IMPEACHMENT WERE A WINNER: Democrat announces retirement, says Russia probe and impeachment inquiry ‘have rendered my soul weary.’
SUCKING UP TO DICTATORS, AS IS THEIR WONT: NYU-Shanghai quietly adds communist-sympathizing, pro-Chinese government course.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: What Did We Learn From the Impeachment Hearing? “Rounding up a few academics to complain about any Republican isn’t exactly a daunting task. That’s like wandering around Hyannis Port in the summertime and bumping into a drunk Kennedy.”
THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: ‘Wax her balls’ transgender activist plans to file complaint against gynecologist.
Somebody’s auditioning for a sweet gig as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs!
TRUMP’S EMERGING DIPLOMATIC RECORD:
Three years ago, Donald Trump began a rhetorical offensive targeting the governments of NATO nations that chronically failed to meet their allied defense financial commitments. With bombastic huff, Trump intimated that allies pay their share or America might walk.
It’s 2019. Few NATO members currently meet the 2% GDP defense commitment. However, several once-laggard NATO nations have increased military spending, and the alliance is stronger for it. The era of blithe freeloading has ended. Cheapskates like Germany pay a price in lost prestige. America not only hasn’t walked; it is modernizing its forces.
And there’s more. It’s my latest Creators Syndicate column (bumped).
SOUNDTRACK FOR A REVOLUTION: Introducing SkyQuaker with their debut single, “Queen Kong.”
I like the Vladimir Bukovsky cameo.
WHAT HAPPENED? IN A WORD, DEMOCRATS:
That kind of thing is only a threat to the Republic if a GOP president does it. Remember how nobody cared when Obama was wiretapping reporters, and even reporters’ parents? Also related:
They’ll rue normalizing this sort of thing when the Fusion GPS emails all come out. But they’ll just pretend that’s the first time anything like that ever happened.
BELOW AND BEHIND A BUFF: The B-52 is on a long-range strike exercise.
ISN’T THIS KIND OF HOW THE ‘PLANET OF THE APES’ REBOOT GOT GOING? China gene-edited baby experiment ‘may have created unintended mutations.’
Excerpts from the manuscript were released by the MIT Technology Review to show how Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui ignored ethical and scientific norms in creating the twins Lula and Nana, whose birth in late 2018 sent shockwaves through the scientific world.
He made expansive claims of a medical breakthrough that could “control the HIV epidemic”, but it was not clear whether it had even been successful in its intended purpose – immunising the babies against the virus – because the team did not in fact reproduce the gene mutation that confers this resistance.
A small percentage of people are born with immunity because of a mutation in a gene called CCR5 and it was this gene that He had claimed to have targeted using a powerful editing tool known as Crispr which has revolutionised the field since 2012.
Fyodor Urnov, a genome-editing scientist at the University of California, Berkeley told the MIT Technology Review: “The claim they have reproduced the prevalent CCR5 variant is a blatant misrepresentation of the actual data and can only be described by one term: a deliberate falsehood.
“The study shows that the research team instead failed to reproduce the prevalent CCR5 variant.”
While the team targeted the right gene, they did not replicate the “Delta 32” variation required, instead creating novel edits whose effects are not clear.
China has enough knowhow now that they really can’t afford to keep being as reckless as Communist countries usually are.
RIDICULOUS. ALL THE BEST PEOPLE HAVE ASSURED ME THAT VOTER FRAUD IS A MYTH. Battleground Ohio: Investigation Uncovers Hundreds of Illegally Registered Non-Citizen Voters.
THE REVIEWS KEEP COMIN IN: Law professor schools Democratic lawmakers on impeachment: Says they haven’t done their homework.
“This isn’t an impulse buy item,” professor Jonathan Turley testified on Wednesday. “You’re trying to remove a duly elected president of the United States. And that takes time. It takes work.”
Work? Surely Turley must be deluded, because this is clearly not about hard work.
Posturing, sure. Grandstanding, yes. Work, no.
Watergate took two years to finally get to the point of moving to impeach Richard Nixon.
This is like two months, and Democrats are getting set for an impeachment vote.
Well, they can’t wait on impeachment because they expect him to get re-elected.
YEAH, BUT THE PAY IS NICE: Sundar Pichai just got the worst job in Silicon Valley.
Now, after spending the last several years effectively AWOL from the public and much of Alphabet, Page and Brin, both 46, are out just in time for the company to muddle through its biggest challenges in its history.
And poor Pichai has been tasked with navigating Alphabet through all of it, while Page and Brin get to shield themselves from all of the scrutiny and challenges.
But even as the new leader of Alphabet, Pichai is stuck between a rock and a hard place. And Page and Brin will still loom over all of it.
When founders leave, they really ought to leave.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Flashback: Google needs a new CEO, but dumping Sundar Pichai is not enough.
I THINK WE SHOULD SHUT THE WHOLE THING DOWN, AS HOPELESSLY INFESTED WITH WHITE SUPREMACY: Dem Rep Laments Absence of Black Impeachment Witnesses: Witnesses were chosen by Democratic committee leadership.
Flashback: Kevin D. Williamson in early 2009: Losing Gordon Gekko — Wall Street has gone over to the Democrats. Should conservatives miss it?