CHUTZPAH: California: Pulling federal high-speed rail funds would be ‘disastrous.’

They cancelled the project but want to keep the money.

NOW SHE’S DONE IT: AOC comes out against retaliating against al-Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11.

I can’t imagine that playing well with New Yorkers, but you never know.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Germany’s Policy Choices Are Hastening The Decline Of NATO.

Not bearing the burden. At $4 trillion, Germany’s economy is a fifth the size of America’s. But Germany’s military budget isn’t a fifth of America’s military spending. It isn’t even a tenth. In recent years Berlin has spent 1.1% of its GDP on defense compared with over 3% for the U.S. Under prodding from Trump, the Germans have agreed to raise their defense budget by several billion dollars this year, to 1.3% of GDP. But NATO members have supposedly committed to reaching 2% by 2024, and the German government says it isn’t likely to get above 1.5% in that year—even though chancellor Angela Merkel agrees this raises doubts about “Germany’s credibility.”

Not ready for a war. Berlin says it can’t sensibly spend much more than it already plans for military forces. But German media have repeatedly documented the depressed state of readiness in those forces. For instance, Der Spiegel reported last year that only four of Germany’s 128 Eurofighter Typhoons were ready for combat. The country is supposed to maintain 82 fighters in a high state of readiness to meet alliance commitments Other reports have noted that only one of the country’s submarines can deploy on short notice; that most of Germany’s tanks are in a low state of readiness; and that barely a quarter of its nuclear-capable Tornado tactical aircraft are operational. Obviously, Berlin isn’t expecting a war anytime soon.

Turning to Russia for energy. Germany obtains about 40% of the natural gas it consumes from Russia. A Baltic pipeline called Nord Stream 2 will double the potential for Russian imports. NATO and European Union countries alike have objected to building the new pipeline, but Berlin has been adamant about proceeding even though there are other sources for Germany’s energy needs. Washington’s complaints that greater dependence on Russian gas will strengthen Moscow’s hand in a future east-west confrontation have gone unheeded. As the respected British publication The Economist observed in a February 16 editorial, “The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is a Russian trap and Germany has fallen into it.”

Much more at the link.

Backing out of NATO in the face on Russian aggression would be a mistake, but the bigger mistake was letting the alliance live on past victory in the Cold War, and then expanding it. We could and should have maintained military ties with Europe in the post-Cold War world, as part of an ongoing entente cordiale. But expanding the alliance right up to (and in the case of the Baltic States, inside of) the Soviet Union’s old borders stoked Russian paranoia, while incentivizing member states like Germany and France to stop taking seriously their own security.

WOW: Second man seems to be free of AIDS virus after transplant.

The patient has not been identified. He was diagnosed with HIV in 2003 and started taking drugs to control the infection in 2012. It’s unclear why he waited that long. He developed Hodgkin lymphoma that year and agreed to a stem cell transplant to treat the cancer in 2016.

With the right kind of donor, his doctors figured, the London patient might get a bonus beyond treating his cancer: a possible HIV cure.

Doctors found a donor with a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to HIV. About 1 percent of people descended from northern Europeans have inherited the mutation from both parents and are immune to most HIV. The donor had this double copy of the mutation.

That was “an improbable event,” said lead researcher Ravindra Gupta of University College London. “That’s why this has not been observed more frequently.”

The transplant changed the London patient’s immune system, giving him the donor’s mutation and HIV resistance.

The patient voluntarily stopped taking HIV drugs to see if the virus would come back.

Usually, HIV patients expect to stay on daily pills for life to suppress the virus. When drugs are stopped, the virus roars back, usually in two to three weeks.

That didn’t happen with the London patient. There is still no trace of the virus after 18 months off the drugs.

Next up: Developing a technique to grow stem cells with that mutation in a lab?

HUH: Newsrooms that rushed to report tax refunds were smaller this year go silent on IRS data showing refunds have increased.

To be more specific, the average tax refund has increased to $3,143 from $3,103 last February, according to cumulative statistics comparing the 2018 and 2019 filing seasons.

Oddly enough, certain newsrooms have responded to this development with total silence. I say “odd,” because it was just a few weeks ago that these same newsrooms rushed to report that tax refunds were smaller this year, suggesting either implicitly or explicitly that the decrease was tied to the Republican Party’s tax reform bill.

“Millions of Americans could be stunned as their tax refunds shrink,” read a headline published on Feb. 10 by the Washington Post. The story reported, “Many Americans may confuse their meager refunds as a sign that they paid more in taxes as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Generally, that is not true.” On Feb. 14, the Post ran a story titled, “IRS says average tax refund is down nearly 9 percent so far this year.”

That story included a line that reads, “Many early filers are still upset about getting a smaller refund or unexpectedly owing money, even if they did pay lower taxes overall as a result of the Republican tax bill that passed in December 2017.”

As of March 2, the Post has published nothing showing the average refund is now greater than it was at this point in 2018.

To be fair, the Washington Post is a terrible newspaper.

JEFF DUNETZ: Rep. Jim Jordan is NOT Antisemitic And Jerrold Nadler Is Not Friend Of The Jews.

A second problem with Nadler’s charge is that Tom Steyer is not Jewish either by Jewish Law or practice. In Jewish law to be considered Jewish one has to either have a Jewish mother or have converted. Steyer’s dad was a non-practicing Jew, and his mom was Episcopalian. There is no record of what faith he practiced when young, but as got older he began to observe his mother’s faith

In other words, Jerrold Nadler accused Rep. Jim Jordan of being Antisemitic by using a dollar sign as the first letter of the last name of an Episcopalian billionaire.

The question isn’t whether the charge is true, the question is whether the Democrat-Media Complex can make it stick.

THE OBAMA PRECEDENT: Joe diGenova Urges Trump DOJ to Refuse to Cooperate with Rep. Nadler’s Document Requests. “I wouldn’t turn over anything to this committee.”

DEB HEINE: Covington Catholic Student’s Lawyers Respond to WaPo’s Friday Night Walk-Back.

SHE FIGHTS: S.D. Gov. Kristi Noem offers bills aimed at possible Keystone XL protests.

The legislation would let the state follow such money and “cut it off at the source,” the Republican governor said in a statement. Noem would also set up a fund to cover extraordinary law enforcement costs that could come with intense pipeline opposition.

“I’m a supporter of property rights, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. We should celebrate differences of opinion. But here in South Dakota, we will have the rule of law, because rioters do not control economic development in our state,” Noem said.

Noem’s bills come after opponents of the Dakota Access oil pipeline staged large protests that resulted in 761 arrests in southern North Dakota over a six-month span beginning in late 2016. The state spent tens of millions of dollars policing the protests.

Even for a state much larger than South Dakota, that’s a lot of money.

BLUE CITY BLUES: Los Angeles Students Are Surrounded by Violence — and Trauma.

“You don’t know when it’s going to be a person’s last day,” said Jaleyah, a senior at the Community Health Advocates School, one of three small schools on the Hawkins campus. “[Kevin] woke up not knowing.”

The impact of that violence can be devastating and costly. Campuses have begun incorporating the inevitability of trauma into their curricula, addressing stress reduction and how to settle differences without resorting to violence. Students suffer symptoms resembling post-traumatic stress disorder and psychiatric social workers are now a staple at many campuses. Because there is too little mental health funding to meet the need, teachers and staff are often on the front lines in identifying the warning signs of emotionally needy students.

One concern is practical: getting safely to and from school, avoiding not just bullets but gang flashpoints, street harassment, hit-and-runs and muggings. With limited district busing, some students opt for public transportation or other ride-sharing options. On their journeys, they sometimes pass candle- and flower-filled memorials to fallen friends.

That’s a helluva education.

CHANGE? The Trump Administration’s Bold New School-Choice Plan.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has unveiled a proposal for Education Freedom Scholarships, with corresponding legislation introduced by Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Bradley Byrne. The plan would invest $5 billion annually in America’s students by allowing individuals and businesses to make contributions to in-state, non-profit Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs) that provide scholarships to students. Contributors would receive a non‐refundable, dollar‐for‐dollar federal tax credit in return for their donations. No contributor would be allowed a total tax benefit greater than the amount of their contribution, and not a single dollar would be taken away from public schools and the students who attend them.

The plan mandates that scholarships must be used for an individual student’s elementary or secondary education, or for their career and technical education. Importantly, the plan’s implementation — including governance of SGOs, education providers, and education expenses as well as student-eligibility decisions — would be left to each state that chooses to participate. The plan would require states to distribute at least 90 percent of the funds as scholarships. Other than that, everything else about the program would be left up to each state.

My only concern is what strings might come later, under a new administration. Because as I’ve been saying for years now, in the modern political economy, once you take the Danegeld, you’ll never be rid of the Dane.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Fusion GPS, dossier, holy Comey and much, much more. “Winer was a source for Michael Isikoff’s pre-election, blockbuster article about Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page and his disputed contacts with two RUSSIANS. Winer was used by Isikoff to support the allegations in the dossier but it looks like Winer’s information came from the dossier he was supposed to be verifying. Basically we have an M.C. Escher drawing paradigm for verifying information in the salacious and unverified Fusion muck.”

ENDGAME: Guaido returns to Venezuela amid threats of arrest after week-long travel.

I don’t know if this actually is the endgame for Chavismo in the Bolivarian Republic, but it sure feels like it could be.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Democrats Need To Bounce Rep. Ilhan Omar Off The Foreign Affairs Committee, Stat. “Do Democrats have a particular standard in mind, some comment or action that would trigger a response more severe than a strongly worded statement? If so, I’d like to understand what it is, because as things stand, it looks like Omar will face no real repercussions.”

TURNABOUT: Defiant U.S. sheriffs push gun sanctuaries, imitating liberals on immigration.

OUT BUT NOT DOWN? ‘I’m not running’: Hillary Clinton rules out 2020 bid for first time on camera in exclusive interview with News 12. “I want to be sure that people understand I’m going to keep speaking out. I’m not going anywhere. What’s at stake in our country, the kind of things that are happening right now are deeply troubling to me. And I’m also thinking hard about how do we start talking and listening to each other again? We’ve just gotten so polarized. We’ve gotten into really opposing camps unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my adult life.”

If anyone has done more than Bill and Hillary Clinton to coarsen and polarize modern American politics, I can’t imagine who it might be.

CAVEAT EMPTOR: Apparently, A Fake PAC Is Soaking Up Trump Donations.

There’s been a particularly bad robocalling scheme going on lately, asking people to donate money to President Trump’s 2020 reelection or to help fund the building of the border wall. But wait… you might actually want to help with those things so it’s not so bad, right?

Not in this case. According to CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, these calls are coming from a shady operation that’s claiming to be affiliated with the President, but in reality, have nothing to do with Trump 2020. And the guy in charge of it appears to be pocketing most of the money.

Much more at the link.

We saw similarly shady outfits taking advantage of good-natured Tea Party donors, which might have done nearly as much damage as Obama’s IRS did.

TYLER O’NEIL: Judeo-Christian Group Sues Michigan for ‘Orwellian’ Witch Hunt Based on SPLC Labels. “Dana Nessel ‘is weaponizing the attorney general’s office’ against conservatives.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE? The poshest SUV of them all: Rolls-Royce Cullinan first drive.

I don’t think it’s quite as ugly as most people seem to. This might not be saying much, but Rolls probably did as good a job of adapting Rolls lines to an SUV as is possible. The lack of cargo space, however, means I’ll probably never take one camping.

BREAKING: AOC’s chief of staff ran $1M slush fund by diverting campaign cash to his own companies.

The cash transfers from the PACs — overseen by Saikat Chakrabarti, the freshman socialist Democrat’s chief of staff — run counter to her pledges to increase transparency and reduce the influence of “dark money” in politics.

Chakrabarti’s companies appear to have been set up for the sole purpose of obscuring how the political donations were used.

The arrangement skirted reporting requirements and may have violated the $5,000 limit on contributions from federal PACs to candidates, according to the complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group.

Campaign finance attorneys described the arrangement as “really weird” and an indication “there’s something amiss.” They said there was no way of telling where the political donations went — meaning they could have been pocketed or used by the company to pay for off-the-books campaign operations.

PACs are required to disclose how and when funds are spent, including for expenditures like advertisements, fundraising emails, donations to candidates, and payments for events and to vendors.

The private companies to which Chakrabarti transferred the money from the PACs are not subject to these requirements.

The complaint names Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti as respondents. It asks the FEC to investigate and audit the two PACs, saying they were engaged in an “an elaborate scheme to avoid proper disclosure of campaign expenditures.”

Developing…

UPDATE: “We know this would still be under wraps if she hadn’t stepped on senior Democrat toes. They’re ready to throw her to the wolves.”

Speculation, but it sure seems like informed speculation.

Flashback (From Ed): “Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, admitted that the [Green New Deal] FAQ shared with NPR and posted on Ocasio-Cortez’s website was genuine. Metadata from the document posted by NPR confirmed that Chakrabarti was listed as one of the authors of the FAQ.”

TARGET-RICH CANDIDATE: Liberals and Conservatives Mock the Very Idea of ‘President Hickenlooper.’

FLASHBACK: Trump Takes a Page From Reagan Playbook.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Party Presidential Clown Car Update for March 4, 2019.

IT’S JUST THIS CLIMATE CHANGE AND THAT LYING SON OF A BITCH TRUMP: Ocasio-Cortez responds to carbon footprint exposé: I’m just ‘living in the world.’

I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO RUN ALL THE CANDIDATES: Eric Holder Says he will not make 2020 White House bid.

This is heartbreaking news for right-leaning commentators everywhere.