Archive for 2019
April 16, 2019
GOOD NEWS: Altar, Cross survive Notre Dame fire.
AND ANOTHER ONE: A Totally Different USC Scandal. “UCLA epidemiologist calls out USC med school professors on big money research used to establish EPA regulations.”
California Globe can report that a number of USC professors in the Department of Preventive Medicine have received at least $268 million in air pollution research funding from the Environmental Protection Agency and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, according to Dr. James Enstrom, who believes that this massive amount of research funding has influenced their research findings and their continuing support for the South Coast Air Quality Management District regulations.
Enstrom says his belief is reinforced by USC Preventive Medicine Professors Duncan C. Thomas and Kiros T. Berhane who have failed to respond to Enstrom’s January 2019 and June 2018 emails, which summarize the latest epidemiologic evidence that PM2.5 does not cause premature deaths and that there is no justification for new SCAQMD regulations.
PM2.5 refers to atmospheric particulate matter (PM) that have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers, which is about 3 percent the diameter of a human hair and can only be detected with an electron microscope.
Dr. Enstrom says this matters because all Southern California taxpayers may be forced to comply with new unjustified South Coast AQMD regulations that will be paid for with a one-half-cent sales tax being promoted by SCAQMD, under Senate Bill 732 by Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica).
Why, it’s almost as though higher education and the regulatory state are just arms of the Democratic Party.
ANDREW MCCARTHY: Behind the Obama administration’s shady plan to spy on the Trump campaign.
There is no doubt that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign. As Barr made clear, the real question is: What predicated the spying? Was there a valid reason for it, strong enough to overcome our norm against political spying? Or was it done rashly? Was a politically motivated decision made to use highly intrusive investigative tactics when a more measured response would have sufficed, such as a “defensive briefing” that would have warned the Trump campaign of possible Russian infiltration?
Last year, when the “spy” games got underway, James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence, conceded that, yes, the FBI did run an informant — “spy” is such an icky word — at Trump campaign officials; but, we were told, this was merely to investigate Russia. Cross Clapper’s heart, it had nothing to do with the Trump campaign. No, no, no. Indeed, the Obama administration only used an informant because — bet you didn’t know this — doing so is the most benign, least intrusive mode of conducting an investigation. . . .
The fact that spying had occurred was too clear for credible denial. The retort, then, was misdirection: There had been no spying on Donald Trump or his campaign; just on a few potential bad actors in the campaign’s orbit.
It was nonsense then, and it is nonsense now.
The pols making these claims about what the FBI was doing might have been well served by listening to what the FBI said it was doing.
Flashback, March 2017: “Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.”
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Why Are Dove And Gillette Pushing Us To Lie About What’s Beautiful?
But what I don’t understand is, if fat-shaming is totally bulkphobic and sveltecentric, why is hair-shaming okay? If Gillette loves Anna “because she lives out loud and loves her skin no matter how the ‘rules’ say she should display it”, why should the “rules” dictate that she should display her luxuriant body shaved? In the end, no matter how wokier-than-thou the company gets, Gillette’s bottom line depends on a product designed to make female appearance conform with the “rules” — “rules” being a polite term for conventional male notions of femininity. If you’re going to tear up the rule book, why not throw away the razor?
I’m not sure these woke corporations are thinking things through — but maybe by next year’s Super Bowl Gillette will be taking a stand against hirsutophobia. (Stock tip: Buy Wilkinson Sword.)
UPDATE! Via Mike in the comments: “Gillette Venus Facing Backlash Over Advert Showing Woman Shaving Her Arms.“
Get woke, go broke.
PAUL MIRENGOFF: PETE BUTTIGIEG, BLACK VOTERS, AND MIKE PENCE. “And even if Buttigieg gets a pass for his actions as mayor of South Bend, where is the appeal to black voters of this gay, preppy-looking young mayor? To the extent that black voters are going to support a white candidate, why wouldn’t that be Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s sidekick?”
Also, black voters’ views on homosexuality are closer to Mike Pence’s than to Pete Buttigieg’s.
MATT MARGOLIS: Valerie Jarrett Accused of Manipulating Book Sales to Get On NYT Bestseller List. “My books have had better organic sales but I never got on the NYT bestsellers list.”
You might think a bestseller list was a ranked list of which books sold best in the last week, but you literally cannot trust anything the New York Times deems fit to print.
ROGER SIMON: Bernie on Fox: Memories of the Soviet Union.
AGE OF AQUARIUS (REDUX): Presidential Hopeful Marianne Williamson Proposes Two New Federal Departments. “Williamson’s two new cabinet-level agencies would be dedicated to peace and children.”
My only remaining hope, should she be elected, is that listening to The 5th Dimension won’t become mandatory.
THAT IS, AND OUGHT TO BE, UP TO THE PEOPLE OF VENEZUELA: U.S. has no timeline for change in Venezuela government, official says.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, RULE OF LAW IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE EDITION: Michigan State apparently ignored 2018 federal court ruling on due process until student sued.
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE: Man with Down’s Syndrome’s ‘cruel and horrific’ death after 19 days without food.
Giuseppe ‘Joe’ Ulleri, 61, had been neglected and wasted away in hospital.
His inquest earlier this month heard he lost 26lbs in weight and wasted away at Manchester Royal Infirmary .
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust since apologised and promised it would not happen again.
But Joe’s grief-stricken sister Ria Ulleri, who helped care for her brother, called his death “cruel and horrific”.
Speaking for the first time since her loss, the 48-year-old actress told Manchester Evening News : “Joe was a sweet and funny man, but he needed support. It is tragic that the people he relied on to care for him were the ones who let him down.
He’d become a burden to the State.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Qanta Ahmed Says Ilhan Omar is a disgrace to Islam and doesn’t represent my Muslim religion.
I don’t know if Islam can be reformed, but I do know its attempted reformers deserve encouragement.
WHITE HIPSTERS CONSPIRE TO DEPRIVE A BLACK WOMAN OF HER CIVIL RIGHTS: Philly Antifa promotes ‘shutting down’ Candace Owens event. Her response is perfect.
I hope the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division will take action against these fascist racists.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Notre Dame, Mueller report and much, much more. “It doesn’t matter what Barr wrote or what Mueller’s bottom line is, the Democrats and the media are so invested in getting Trump, the response to the Mueller report will be as if he were found guilty.”
COMEBACK KID: Trump says Tiger Woods to get Presidential Medal of Freedom. “Woods won his fifth Masters title Sunday, overcoming personal and professional adversity to once more claim the green jacket.”
YOU ALREADY KNOW IT’S TEXAS, RIGHT? This 1 State Is Turning America Into an Oil-Exporting Juggernaut.
That anticipated gusher of oil production growth in Texas has the industry planning to spend billions of dollars on building out the necessary infrastructure to move more barrels to global markets. Enterprise Products Partners is one of several companies working on oil pipelines in the region. The company is currently in the middle of converting an existing natural gas liquids line to oil service, which will help move additional Permian barrels toward the coast. Meanwhile, Canadian oil pipeline giant Enbridge (NYSE:ENB) is working with MLP Phillips 66 Partners (NYSE:PSXP) and refiner Marathon Petroleum (NYSE:MPC) to build the Gray Oak pipeline. That roughly $2 billion-system will move 900,000 BPD of crude from both the Permian as well as the Eagle Ford to refineries and export facilities along the coast of Texas.
As these and other export projects come online, they’ll enable the country to ship more oil overseas. According to Enterprise Products’ forecast, the U.S. is on track to exceed Saudi Arabia’s export capacity by 2024.
Say, whatever happened to Peak Oil?
NOTRE DAME: A SIGN FOR OUR TIMES. “What we lost today is one of the great embodiments of Western civilization. It is impossible to overstate what this means. It will take some time to absorb. Notre Dame de Paris is at the heart of France’s identity. All distances in France are measured from kilometre zéro, in front of the cathedral. Though most (but not all!) of the French have turned away from their baptism, Notre Dame is the symbolic heart of the nation. And now, it’s gone, though firefighters may have saved its bones. It took 200 years to build, and now it was made a holocaust in one terrible afternoon. . . . This catastrophe in Paris today is a sign to all of us Christians, and a sign to all people in the West, especially those who despise the civilization that built this great temple to its God on an island in the Seine where religious rites have been celebrated since the days of pagan Rome. It is a sign of what we are losing, and what we will not recover, if we don’t change course now.”
Related: The World Sinks To Ruin.
I don’t believe in signs and portents. But human beings think and feel according to symbols as much as — or more than — ideas. And this was a potent symbol. The question is, what new symbol will we create to take its place?
Related: French billionaire pledges more than $100M to help rebuild Notre Dame cathedral.
Plus: “But because it survived largely intact into the digital era, Notre Dame lives on in the virtual world, too—and that may make its restoration all the more complete. For the last half-decade or so, an architectural historian named Andrew Tallon worked with laser scanners to capture the entirety of the cathedral’s interior and exterior in meticulous 3D point clouds.”
Also: Japan ready to support France in rebuilding Notre Dame Cathedral.
UPDATE: Thoughts from Dennis Prager. “The symbolism of the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral, the most renowned building in Western civilization, the iconic symbol of Western Christendom, is hard to miss. It is as if God Himself wanted to warn us in the most unmistakable way that Western Christianity is burning — and with it, Western civilization.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: From the comments: “If we want to see it as a symbol for Western civilization, then we should take the symbolism a step further and recognize that more survived than was feared yesterday. The rock, the relics, the interior, arguably the heart of Notre Dame, the heart of Western civilization, is still there. It will be the basis of the rebuilding.”
Related: Cross, crown of thorns among artifacts saved from Notre Dame fire. All three Rose Windows survived.