VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Proposed Voting Changes Are About Power, Not Principles.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
March 28, 2019
RUN ALL THE CANDIDATES! I’m ‘very inclined’ to run for president, says Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO).
REPEAT AFTER ME: THERE IS NO CRISIS. U.S. Border Patrol records the most single-day arrests along the Mexican border in over 10 years.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Ex-Michelle Obama Aide On Smollett: Yep. I Did It.
Since we already had the text messages via an FOIA request, this part of the Jussie Smollett mystery probably shouldn’t be considered a bombshell. Tina Tchen, who used to be Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, admitted yesterday that she had intervened in the investigation by putting the state’s prosecutor in touch with some unnamed member of Smollett’s family. What remains unclear is whether or not Tchen did this of her own volition or whether someone in the Obama family prompted her to do it.
Some things don’t require any prompting; underlings simply understand what is desired.
“OBSESSED” IS AN STRONG ACCUSATION FROM THE PARTY PUSHING FOURTH-TERM ABORTION: Dems Slam Pompeo as ‘Abortion-Obsessed’ Over Popular Move to Stop Overseas Abortion Funding.
TODAY: ‘People are dying’: Ocasio-Cortez defends Green New Deal from ‘elitist’ knock.
YESTERDAY: Ocasio-Cortez Takes Credit For Not Getting Any Votes In Favor Of Her Green New Deal.
Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?
KAROL MARKOWICZ: An epidemic of teenage … loneliness.
Rates of major depressive episodes in the last year jumped 52 percent among adolescents aged 12 to 17, the study noted, and 63 percent among young adults aged 18 to 25.
It’s not just the blues, either. “Serious psychological distress” and “suicide-related outcomes (suicidal ideation, plans, attempts and deaths by suicide)” also spiked among the young last year.
What is going on here?
The lives of our modern youth should be pretty good. They have all the information in the world on devices they carry in their pockets. They have plenty of opportunities to make friends instantaneously — something the older generation finds increasingly difficult.
And notwithstanding what the insurgent Democratic Socialists keep telling us, this is a time of unparalleled prosperity. The unemployment rate is 4 percent. Most American families enjoy conveniences that would have been unthinkable to most human generations, across most of history. Life should be grand.
But perhaps those very conveniences are the source of youth anguish.
Karol blames social media, at least in part. So do I, and I bet Glenn does, too.
SARAH KLIFF, WRITER AT YOUNG ADULT INFOTAINMENT SITE, VOX: Donald Trump is very committed to taking away your health insurance.
FLASHBACK: Sarah Kliff Discovers Obamacare Stinks.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump Wants to Release Sketchy FISA Warrant and Much, Much More. “Citing a ‘high-level source,’ Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul charged in a bombshell Twitter post late Wednesday that anti-Trump ex-CIA Director John Brennan ‘insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier’ be included in a classified intelligence community report on Russian interference in the 2016 elections — a decision that ultimately lent credibility to the dossier and may have played a key role in fomenting unfounded fears of Russia collusion for two years.”
MAYBE THERE’S SOME LIFE LEFT IN MONROE AFTER ALL: Trump tells Russia to get its troops out of Venezuela.
The arrival of two Russian air force planes outside Caracas on Saturday believed to be carrying nearly 100 Russian special forces and cybersecurity personnel has escalated the political crisis in Venezuela.
Russia and China have backed President Nicolas Maduro, while the United States and most other Western countries support opposition leader Juan Guaido. In January, Guaido invoked the constitution to assume Venezuela’s interim presidency, arguing that Maduro’s 2018 re-election was illegitimate.
“Russia has to get out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, where he met with Guaido’s wife, Fabiana Rosales.
Asked how he would make Russian forces leave, Trump said: “We’ll see. All options are open.
Classical reference in the headline.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Smoking marijuana while pregnant may raise risks for baby.
The study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, finds that women who use pot while pregnant could be putting their child at a slightly increased risk of psychosis. Researchers say it’s yet one more reason to be concerned about the significant increase in women using marijuana during pregnancy in recent years.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 20 women in the U.S. use cannabis during pregnancy. A study published earlier this year found that’s a 75 percent increase from 2002.
Experts are concerned that as more states legalize marijuana, it may give the false impression that it is safe to use during pregnancy.
Just don’t smoke anything while pregnant or trying to get pregnant or having just been pregnant — and that goes for the lucky father, too.
SAFE OR MERELY SAFER? Boeing unveils 737 Max fixes, says planes are safer. “Aviation regulators around the world would still need to sign off on the safety of the 737 Max before they approve the planes to fly, and that could take three months.”
THAT’S A REAL SHAME WHEN FOLKS BE THROWIN’ AWAY A PERFECTLY GOOD CARRIER LIKE THAT: Refuel the Truman—It’s the Law!
The midlife refueling overhaul for the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) is scheduled for 2024, but once again, the Department of Defense (DoD) wants to eliminate an aircraft carrier because it believes the refueling overhaul funds can be better used elsewhere. President Barack Obama’s administration tried to cancel the refueling midlife overhauls of the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and George Washington (CVN-73), only to see Congress insist on both.
In this case, DoD wants to reprogram about $3.5 billion between now and the end of 2028. The Harry S. Truman is scheduled to enter the shipyard in 2024 for a three-year, midlife overhaul that would include new nuclear fuel (to keep her in service to at least 2048). Note that the refueling costs comprise only about 10 percent of the total because the nuclear fuel is already made and paid for with other funds.
Canceling the refueling without Congressional action would violate the law, however. U.S. Code Title 10, Section 8062 states:
The naval combat forces of the Navy shall include not less than 11 operational carriers. . . . An operational carrier includes an aircraft carrier that is temporarily unavailable for worldwide deployment due to routine or scheduled maintenance or repair.
It seems probable DoD told the Navy to say that the service decided to retire the ship—but why would the Navy choose to retire a carrier in violation of the law? The Navy knows the first thing to do should have been to ask Congress—constitutionally charged “to provide and maintain a Navy”—for a waiver before making such a decision.
We’re witnessing here the trickle-down effects of the sequester, which caused a backlog of ship maintenance and not enough repair facilities to take care of the growing backlog. I had hoped Congress to do the sane thing and carve out exemptions to provide for basic military maintenance, but was very quickly disabused of that notion.
BREAKING BREAD: Gay 2020 Dem Pete Buttigieg Wants a ‘Peace Deal’ with Chick-fil-A. “I do not approve of their politics, but I kind of approve of their chicken.”
March 27, 2019
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: 50+ Journalists, Politicians, Celebrities, and Grifters Who Peddled the Russia Collusion Hoax.
YOU CAN’T HUMILIATE THE SHAMELESS: The implosion of the collusion theory is a humiliation for everyone who promoted it.
DREAMS DIE HARD: Will the collusion myth destroy the Democrats in 2020?
REPUBLICANS POUNCE! Mueller report reprieve becomes Trump’s re-election weapon.
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: The best thing that could happen to the American economy just happened.
What’s really exciting is this: Economists have been waiting and wondering when all the tech advances of the past decade — smartphones, AI, big data, drones — would start showing up in the productivity stats. It’s been reminiscent of how economists wondered the same thing about the computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s — right before the 1990s tech boom. But sometimes it take a while for businesses to figure things out. It took more than a half century for steam power to overtake water as the largest power source in Great Britain. It also took about as long for even half of U.S. factories to become electrified after the introduction of the alternating-current electric motor.
One American economist familiar with this history is former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Although frequently cited as one of the key people responsible for the financial crisis, Greenspan in the 1990s was one of the first experts to notice something was up with productivity, much to the skepticism of many of his colleagues and staffers. “In the end, the chairman turned out to be right,” writes economist and former Fed Governor Laurence Meyer in his book A Term at the Fed. “His call on the productivity acceleration was a truly great one.”
So maybe Silicon Valley and the rest of Corporate America are finally resolving the current productivity paradox. (Fingers crossed, though, given the volatility of these stats, especially when you factor in the possible lingering effects of the Great Recession.) If so, it’s of much greater economic importance than anything happening in Washington these days. An innovation boom will make it a lot easier for the economy to grow closer to 3 percent rather than 2 percent.
Fingers crossed.
WORST. NAZI. EVER. Five Ways Trump Is the Most Pro-Israel President.