Archive for 2016

SWEDEN FINALLY FINDS AN IMMIGRANT INVADER IT’S WILLING TO TRY TO KEEP OUT: American Lobsters.

THAT’S THE NICEST THING I’VE HEARD FROM A HEAVENLY BODY SINCE THE INSTA-WIFE COMPLIMENTED ME THIS MORNING.

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I guess I’m still doomed, though.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Military History. Somebody or other on Twitter was noting that military historians seem a lot gloomier about the present situation than non-military historians. I think that’s because military historians know more.

Plus, deals on Tires & Wheels.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: How David Brooks created Donald Trump: The political establishment denounced bourgeois Tea Partiers. Now, they must face raucous working-class Trumpsters.

UPDATE: On Facebook, Jerry Bowyer comments: “Weird how many people on the left who hate the authoritarian soft fascism of Trump somehow how manage to blame libertarian movements like the Tea Party. Weirder still, that the Tea Partiest candidate of all is basically the last man standing in Trump’s way.”

FLASHBACK: Kurt Schlichter: Liberals May Regret Their New Rules. “Conservatives have principles, but human nature is a powerful thing, and human nature favors payback.”

Prediction: Everything that lefties do to Trump and other Republicans will return on them, threefold. And they will try to pretend that there’s no connection.

I LIKE A STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING: Antioch woman shot home intruder, police say. “A man who broke into a woman’s apartment in Antioch late Friday morning was met with an unexpected surprise when he walked into her bedroom and she shot him, according to Metro police. . . . Hartman was treated and released and is now charged with aggravated burglary, police said. His bond is set at $100,000. Hartman was free on $4,000 bond on a felony theft charge stemming from his arrest earlier this month in connection to stolen lottery tickets from a local convenience market.”

IN VINO, VERITAS: Flashback: Hillary called Obama ‘incompetent and feckless’ in boozy rant.

Hillary Clinton called President Obama “incompetent and feckless” and charged that he had “no hand on the tiller half the time” during a boozy reunion with college pals, a new book claims.

The scathing attacks came as the wine was flowing at a May 2013 dinner at Le Jardin Du Roi, a cozy French bistro near the Clinton family home in Westchester, according to “Blood Feud,” by best-selling author Edward Klein.

The former first lady, months removed from being Obama’s secretary of state, unleashed the verbal assault between sips of vino, sources told the author.

“When her friends asked Hillary to tell them what she thought — really thought — about the president she had served for four draining years, she lit into Obama with a passion that surprised them all,” Klein wrote.

Clinton ranted, “The thing with Obama is that he can’t be bothered, and there is no hand on the tiller half the time. That’s the story of the Obama presidency. No hand on the f–king tiller,” according to the book, which was excerpted exclusively in Sunday’s Post.

“Obama has turned into a joke,” she went on, according to Klein.

“The IRS targeting the Tea Party, the Justice Department’s seizure of AP phone records and [Fox reporter] James Rosen’s e-mails — all these scandals. Obama’s allowed his hatred for his enemies to screw him the way Nixon did,” she raged, the book says, adding that she called the president “incompetent and feckless.”

Well, she and I are on the same page here.

FASTER, PLEASE: Osteoporosis in Mice Reversed with a Single Injection of Stem Cells.

Age-related osteoporosis, where the bone structure deteriorates and becomes more vulnerable to fracture, is said to affect more than 200 million people worldwide. Drugs are available to treat or delay the condition, but a cure has remained elusive. Much-needed help may now be on the way, however, with scientists discovering healthy bone structure can be restored in mice with a single injection of stem cells.

Researchers at the University of Toronto and The Ottawa Hospital had previously found a causal effect between mice developing age-related osteoporosis and a deficiency in mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). One of the promising attributes of MSCs is that, while they can grow into different cells in the body just like other stem cells, they can be transplanted without the need for a match.

“We reasoned that if defective MSCs are responsible for osteoporosis, transplantation of healthy MSCs should be able to prevent or treat osteoporosis,” says William Stanford, senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and Professor at the University of Ottawa.

To put this reasoning to the test, the scientists injected MSCs into mice with the condition. Six months later, which is one quarter of the life span of the animal, they observed a healthy functional bone in place of the damaged one.

“We had hoped for a general increase in bone health,” says John E. Davies, co-author of the study. “But the huge surprise was to find that the exquisite inner ‘coral-like’ architecture of the bone structure of the injected animals – which is severely compromised in osteoporosis – was restored to normal.”

I hope this turns out to work equally well in people. I also wonder if this treatment, or a derivative, might help reverse microgravity-induced bone loss in space.