Archive for 2019
April 23, 2019
TECHNICALLY THEY’RE NOT IDENTIFYING THEM, THEY’RE DEFINING THEM: New guidelines likely to identify more children with high blood pressure. It’s good news for pharma companies.
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TAMARA KEEL: CCW Pistol Testing: Developing a Course of Fire.
YOU WOULD THINK: Electric Car Fires in China Should Set Off Alarms.
The numbers are damning. In 2018, Chinese manufacturers recalled 135,700 NEVs for a crushing 10.8 percent industrywide recall rate. Already this year, another 23,458 electric vehicles have been recalled.
Batteries are the most common source of problems. Some don’t perform as advertised. Others drain unusually fast. Still others run dangerously hot. More than 40 NEVs spontaneously combusted in China in 2018.
Other issues include faulty motors, faulty transmissions, faulty odometers and bad odors (a problem to which Chinese consumers are particularly sensitive). Most notably, according to market research firm J.D. Power, problems are far more common in Chinese NEVs than in traditional Chinese-made cars.
True, as with any new technology, teething problems are to be expected. But China’s government-sponsored largesse and highly protected market have clearly exacerbated the problem.
Paging Tom Friedman…
BEER IS THE GLUE THAT HOLDS CIVILIZATION TOGETHER: Ancent Peruvian microbrewery, sour ale helps explain longevity of the Wari empire. “We think these institutions of brewing and then serving the beer really formed a unity among these populations, it kept people together.”
SULTANS GOTTA SULTANATE: Erdogan Cracks Down on Dissent in Turkey Despite Pledge for Unity.
Mr. Erdogan said last week that the time had come to turn the page on a prolonged sequence of electoral contests and focus on repairing an economy mired in recession. While he and his ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, prevailed in the June presidential and legislative votes, the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, claimed the two biggest prizes in the March 31 municipal elections, Istanbul and Ankara, the capital.
The political climate in Turkey remains volatile. In the past few days, a schoolteacher was returned to prison for having urged the government to spare children’s lives during the fight against militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party; the AKP filed a second package of fraud claims with Turkey’s national election board, seeking a revote in Istanbul; and the leader of the CHP was attacked during a soldier’s funeral.
Kati Piri, a lawmaker with the European Parliament and the Turkey rapporteur, blamed hostile rhetoric by ruling-party officials for the tense climate. Referring to Sunday’s attack on CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, she said in a tweet: “Likely inspired by hate speeches of ruling politicians. This radical polarization must end.”
Not so long as they think it furthers their power, it won’t.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Paris Firefighters Used This Remote-Controlled Robot to Extinguish the Notre Dame Blaze.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Dennis Miller: Sam Kinison Couldn’t Survive Our PC Age.
WHAT?: Apparently, it’s not just a racial slur, but it’s also a criminal offense in Texas to accuse someone of making monkey faces?
MARK STEYN: “The lights are going out on the most basic of journalistic instincts:”
Who, what, when, where, why. All are subordinate to the Narrative — or Official Lie. All day yesterday and into today, if you had glanced at the telly, switched on the radio or surfed the big news sites of the Internet, you would have thought the Tamil Tigers were back “with a vengeance”, as The Economist put it — even though with one exception (the 1990 police massacre) the death toll was higher than any individual attack the Tigers had ever pulled off. Meanwhile, back in that fast shrinking space known as the real world, from the very first hours the headline of this story was completely straightforward:
Islamic Suicide Bombers Slaughter Three Hundred on Easter Morning
But apparently that can no longer be said.
Read the whole thing.
LIZ SHELD: Kamala’s Gonna Grab Your Gun.
THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Scientists Discover Gigantic Prehistoric Cat in a Neglected Museum Drawer.
POUNCE! “GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel pounced on Sanders’ call to restore the voting rights of felons, including people like the Boston Marathon bomber, who killed three people and injured hundreds in 2013 with a pair of pressure-cooker bombers and was sentenced to death. ‘I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy,’ Sanders said. ‘Yes, even for terrible people.’”
As long as they vote for Democrats.
DON’T GET COCKY: Four Reasons Why the Dems Will Lose in 2020.
The nation is actually doing quite well under President Trump, although you could never tell if your news comes from MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, collectively the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party. Those manufacturing jobs we were told were gone? They are back. That 3% GDP that eluded Trump’s predecessor has returned and been exceeded. Those young black men who could not find work previously? They have found it now. That wealth disparity that Brother Bernie goes on and on about? It has diminished in recent years. Those flat wages? They have increased. Those who gave up looking for jobs? Many have now found the work that eluded them. Such positive news is always downplayed by the media and the Democrats.
The Democrats do best when the nation does poorly.
Remember in ‘92, Bill Clinton said; “It’s the economy, stupid”. When he said that, he did not have the facts regarding the economy on his side, but the message was clear: The economic condition will play a key role in determining the outcome of the election. Today that plays into President Trump’s hands.
Yeah, but I remember the press falling all over themselves to go along with Clinton’s claim that the short and relatively mild recession of late-1990/early-1991 was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression — even though it was over before the campaign began.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Mueller report: Donald Trump collusion conspiracy theories are now exposed. Will they end? “After two years of what can fairly be described as mass hysteria afflicting a huge portion of our political class, the cognitive dissonance is painful. . . . It’s like a doomsday cult whose predicted apocalypse fails to appear on schedule: They just announce that they made a mathematical mistake, and doomsday will actually come next year. Then they ask for more donations. The trouble is, this time it’s a cult that’s running a significant part of our nation.”
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MEDICARE FOR ALL! Medicare hospital fund reserves likely to be exhausted in 2026.
NON-PARTISAN: “AP U.S. History Textbook Calls Trump ‘Racist,’ Questions His Mental Stability.”
SIXTH CIRCUIT: “Chalking” tires is an illegal trespass by law enforcement.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Adam Schiff Not Terribly Interested In Finding Out If Steele Dossier Was Russian Misinformation.