Archive for 2019
February 1, 2019
CHANGE: Trump plan would channel prescription discounts to patients. “The Trump administration Thursday unveiled a plan to channel now-hidden prescription drug rebates directly to patients, saying it would bypass middlemen and lower prices for consumers. The proposed regulation from Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar would eliminate behind-the-scenes discounts among drugmakers, insurers and go-betweens and instead require that they be paid directly to consumers when they buy their medications.”
ACE MAKES A DISCOVERY: Ralph Northam’s Nickname at VMI? “Coonman.” “But don’t worry — Democrats are defending him because of course Democrats are defending their own.”
Plus: Flashback: Northam Campaign Insinuates Gillespie, GOP Are Racist.
UPDATE: From the comments: “Northam’s favorite movie was Partial Birth of a Nation.”
ANOTHER UPDATE:
MORE: Eugene Volokh emails: “Do we know what ‘Coonman’ means? I wonder whether it might have more to do with raccoons (see, e.g., https://snowboarding.transworld.net/videos/monday-mallet-coonman-sends-100-ft-cliff-mt-baker/ and https://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2010/04/raccoon_hunter_rising_star_gle.html and https://www.chapelchimes.com/obituaries/David-White-44/#!/Obituary), as in coonskin caps, than with racial slurs, though I realize that “coon” without the “man” can indeed be a racial slur. See also https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dayton/obituary.aspx?n=frederick-gibson&pid=158397658.”
Unclear, but I’m sure the media will get right on it.
ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: McClatchy, following Buzzfeed, Vice, and Others, to Lay off 450.
McClatchy’s move follows cuts at the online news outlet BuzzFeed, which last week gave pink slips to 200 employees including the national security staff, and 800 people in the media division of Verizon — the phone company that owns Yahoo, HuffPost, and TechCrunch. Gannett is letting go of 400, and Vice Media this morning announced the layoff of 10 percent of its staff.
“We are changing the size of the workforce to align with the revenue,” says Jeanne Segal, McClatchy’s director of public relations and communications.
McClatchy, to differentiate, is/was a real news outfit, and less biased than many.
CHANGE: US Navy signs mammoth contract with Huntington Ingalls for two aircraft carriers.
It’s good that we’re rebuilding the Navy, but I’d like to see more small ships in the mix.
RICHMOND CBS AFFILIATE WTVR: GOV. RALPH NORTHAM ‘DEEPLY SORRY’ FOR BLACKFACE, KKK ROBE YEARBOOK PHOTO.
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Governor Ralph Northam issued a statement Friday evening following the publication of his senior medical school yearbook page that featured a photograph of a man wearing blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan robe.
“Earlier today, a website published a photograph of me from my 1984 medical school yearbook in a costume that is clearly racist and offensive,”
“I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now.
Costume? Does that mean that Northam is the one in the KKK hood? Will any journalist ask him to clarify?
Also, Northam appears to be a man of indeterminate party, based on the missing D-word in WTVR article.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): This is the opening bid of a man who hopes for some big breaking news in the next 12 hours. But it’s win-win for the GOP. If he resigns, it’s a scalp. (Sorry, Senator Liz). If he stays, the GOP can point to him every time the Dems try to gin up this kind of scandal against a Republican.
Also, from the comments: “Congratulations to the Ed Gillespie campaign for failing to find this picture that would have assured his victory.”
It’s not that you expect to find something this bad in the yearbooks. It’s that you do your due diligence, which GOP campaigns don’t seem very good at. But how hypocritical does Northam’s racial posturing in the campaign look now?
NATIONAL REVIEW SAYS IT’S VERIFIED that the Ralph Northam blackface/KKK photos are real. “The photo, the existence of which was first reported by the conservative news website Big League Politics and has since been verified by National Review, appears on Northam’s page in the Eastern Virginia Medical School class of 1984 yearbook.”
UPDATE: Harsh, but fair:
SMOD GEARING UP FOR 2020: Meteorite hits Cuba causing loud explosion.
LARRY CORREIA HAS THOUGHTS FOR THE SJWS OF THE BOOK WORLD: To The Book Community: Go Fuck Yourself. An Anti-Apology.
Not everyone was convinced of the viability of [Austen] Heinz’s ambitions. Some found his speculations about the possibilities offered by synthetic genomics hopelessly quixotic. But others continue to believe that history will one day crown Heinz one of the heirs of information age visionary Doug Engelbart—a restless, optimistic, socially-maladjusted prophet of the oncoming Synthetic Age in which the project isn’t to augment human intelligence, but humans themselves. His supporters argue that the future foretold by Cambrian Genomics will not necessarily be the dystopia critics fear. By curing all disease, living forever, and solving some of the planet’s most enduring technical problems without destroying it in the process, Heinz speculated that we could considerably reduce the sum of human suffering and unhappiness. It’s true, of course, that only the lunatic talks earnestly of paradise. But how crazy do you have to be to think that with this technology, we could move ourselves an inch, even a mile, towards it?
Not only was Austen Heinz convinced that all this was going to happen, he was sure he knew how to do it. This was at the end of 2014. In less than six months, he would be dead.
Why yes, a toxic clickbait-obsessed MSM is involved. Read the whole thing.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Elizabeth Warren Finally Packs Up Her Wigwam.
Now, speaking as a cuck RINO NeverTrumper, I know I’m not supposed to admit when Trump gets something right. But he sure did get this one right. He saw Warren’s biggest weakness and exploited it. He used what Saul Alinsky called “man’s most potent weapon”: ridicule. Warren could have ignored all his taunting and teasing and trolling. Instead, she ended up doing more damage to her own campaign than Trump or anybody else ever could.
Nevertheless, she persisted. Whoops!
Read the whole thing.
STAKE YOUR LIFE ON A 1-IN-10-TO-THE-140TH POWER CHANCE OF BEING RIGHT? Calculating probabilities is usually only of interest to certain sorts of mathematicians and insurance industry actuaries.
But what if your life depended on odds so long there isn’t enough room here to display them? That’s the question at the heart of “Origin of Life.” WARNING: This video graphically illustrates the awesome odds against that first protein forming in the soup billions of years ago.
And by the way, I won’t be posting here for the next week. Check out the reason why here. ANOTHER WARNING: There’s a Blues Brothers element to the post, for those of you old enough to remember real comedy. If you’re too young, just ask your parents, or a Baby Boomer friend who, like me, can still (mostly) hear.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: The Best Hydration Plan Is to Drink When You’re Thirsty.
BRUCE BAWER: The Privileged Elitist Who Saw Blackface, Not Black Lung. “Drop down the memory hole what may well be the only remaining image of some of those coal miners, the sole record of their lives of labor, in order to satisfy the sensitivities, reasonable or not, of one man who happened to be in that restaurant one evening for a party.”
DC DATING: My Boyfriend of a Year Had a Separate Life and Two Other Girlfriends. “Besides his name, I don’t know if anything he told me was true.”
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’S BOX OFFICE PREVIEW: Super Bowl to Sack Moviegoing After a Dismal January.
Following a record year at the North American box office, revenue slipped sharply in January to an estimated $810 million, the worst showing in six years and down by as much as 15 percent over January 2018.
The answer for this sharp drop-off seems obvious. Last month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has told us that mankind only has 12 years of life left. Shouldn’t we spending those precious remaining years with family and friends, and in quiet contemplation, rather than wasting them frivolously at the movies?
Related: Actress Ellen Page Raves to Colbert, ‘Environmental Racism’ Will Cause World to End by 2030: ‘“It’s really serious. We’ve been told, that as we know it, by 2030, the world as we know it, that’s it. That’s it. That’s it!’ she gushed.”
I blame the Frisbee Ion.
“WHERE ARE THE BLACK [LAW FIRM] PARTNERS?” ASKS THE AMERICAN LAWYER: But the real question should be “Where are the black lawyers?” The answer, alas, is that race-preferential admissions policies in law school are likely reducing rather than increasing their numbers. Ditto for physicians, scientists, engineers and college professors generally.
UPDATE: Kenji López-Alt Backtracks After Saying His Restaurant Won’t Serve MAGA Hat Wearers.
(Hat tip, Eugene Volokh.)
CBS PUSHING 2020 DEMS LEFT: Have a ‘Big Idea’ Like Ending Private Insurance?
Now that presidential candidate Kamala Harris has called for the elimination of private health insurance, a move that would impact 177 million Americans, CBS has joined the fight to push the rest of 2020 Democratic field farther left. This Morning co-host John Dickerson on Thursday warned candidate Pete Buttigieg against “nibbling around the edges” and urged him to go bold (meaning liberal).
In an interview with the Mayor of South Bend, Dickerson demanded, “When you talk about nibbling around the edges, if you look at the other Democrats who are running, they’re not nibbling around the edges. They’re talking about Medicare for all. Some are talking about getting rid of private insurance.”
So, “go for the throat,” in other words.
VIDEO: Gowdy Roasts Rep. Adam Schiff After His Trump Jr. Conspiracy Theory Goes Down in Flames.
[The links wasn’t working for me so I updated it. Sorry! — Charlie]
HMM: YEARBOOK: Ralph Northam In Blackface & KKK Photo: Northam and a friend were photographed together — one in blackface, one in Klan robes. Weird that this didn’t come out during the election.