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HERE’S A COUPLE THAT WILL STAY TOGETHER AT LEAST UNTIL THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS HAS RUN: NELLIE OHR INVOKES MARITAL PRIVILEGE TO AVOID TESTIFYING ABOUT HER HUSBAND, A DOJ OFFICIAL.

GREAT MOMENTS IN SOVIET PSYCHIATRY: The View Hosts Write Off Kanye’s Trump Openness As Mental Illness.

This type of discussion is not just denigrating to people who suffer from bipolar disorder and their families, by implying they are incapable of thinking for themselves or floating ideas, but it is also writing off black Republicans or any minorities who dare to think differently, who don’t fit their Hollywood mold, as crazy and “off his meds.”

Kanye has been open about suffering from mental illness and taking medication in the past, but using someone’s mental illness as an explanation for why his political views are different from yours is vile. Furthermore, it’s shameless to insinuate that Kardashian is incapable of caring for her husband’s health, when in reality she simply refusing to be a part of the silencing mob. Kardashian has publicly and repeatedly shown support for her husband’s political thoughts.

Related: How the Soviets used their own twisted version of psychiatry to suppress political dissent.

BUT IT WAS REPORTED EVERYWHERE AT THE MOST IMPACTFUL MOMENT: It turns out the American Bar Association story on Brett Kavanaugh was FAKE NEWS. “The Senate Judiciary Committee released this letter on Friday from the ABA stating that Robert Carlson, the President of the American Bar Association who wrote the letter, didn’t get the it approved by the committee that actually votes on this sort of thing and that the ABA’s rating of Judge Kavanaugh “’is not affected’.”

For this abuse of power, Robert Carlson should resign from the ABA presidency immediately.

“WE CAN’T REALLY GET FIRED:” Sting video of left-wing DOJ staffer bragging about misuse of govt. resources sparks investigation. “Allison Hrabar, a Justice Department paralegal, said in the undercover video that she found the address of a DC lobbyist by running his license plate at work, which she then used to organize a DSA protest outside his home. She admitted that she was not permitted to do so ‘officially.’ Other DSA members said that she used the department’s Lexis Nexis account to ferret out the addresses of protest targets.”

CORNELL FOOD RESEARCHER RESIGNS AFTER A FINDING OF SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT. His work, now discredited, was the basis for Michelle Obama’s disastrous school lunch “reforms.”

SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: New Research Confirms We Got Cholesterol All Wrong: The U.S. government has pushed a lot of bad nutrition advice over the years. Maybe it should stop advising us on what to eat.

What I love is how the science changes, but the moralizing certainty never goes away.

MAZIE HIRONO ‘JUSTICE:’ “You have to watch that clip. Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono says point blank that facts don’t matter. Kavanaugh is guilty of attempted rape decades ago because he is a conservative judge.”

Exit quote: “Solzhenitsyn wrote that in the Soviet Union, trials were never to be treated as a matter of the guilt or innocence of the accused, but of furthering the class struggle.”

AEI
Happy 138th Birthday to the ‘Sage of Baltimore’ — H.L. Mencken

Tomorrow (September 12) is H.L. Mencken’s birthday. The “Sage of Baltimore” (pictured above) was born in 1880 and is regarded by many as one of the most influential American journalists, essayists, and writers of the early 20th century. To recognize the great political writer on his birthday, here are 12 of my favorite Mencken quotes:

1. Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

2. A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

3. A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

4. Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

5. Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

6. Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

7. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

8. Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

9. If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

10. For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Happy 138th Birthday to the ‘Sage of Baltimore’ — H.L. Mencken
Mark Perry

MARK PERRY: “Over the last 12 years, I’ve probably created and posted more than 3,000 graphics on CD, Twitter, and Facebook including charts/graphs, tables, figures, maps and Venn diagrams. Of all of those graphics, I don’t think any single one has ever gotten more attention, links, re-Tweets, re-posts, and mentions than the one above (and previous versions), which has been referred to as ‘the Chart of the Century.'”

Heck, I got a whole book out of it.

SORT OF LIKE AFTER HILLARY’S DEFEAT: It’s shameful what US Open did to Naomi Osaka.

Naomi Osaka, 20 years old, just became the first player from Japan to win a Grand Slam.

Yet rather than cheer Osaka, the crowd, the commentators and US Open officials all expressed shock and grief that Serena Williams lost.

Osaka spent what should have been her victory lap in tears. It had been her childhood dream to make it to the US Open and possibly play against Williams, her idol, in the final.

It’s hard to recall a more unsportsmanlike event.

Here was a young girl who pulled off one of the greatest upsets ever, who fought for every point she earned, ashamed.

At the awards ceremony, Osaka covered her face with her black visor and cried. The crowd booed her. Katrina Adams, chairman and president of the USTA, opened the awards ceremony by denigrating the winner and lionizing Williams — whose ego, if anything, needs piercing.

“Perhaps it’s not the finish we were looking for today,” Adams said, “but Serena, you are a champion of all champions.” Addressing the crowd, Adams added, “This mama is a role model and respected by all.”

That’s not likely the case now, not after the world watched as Serena Williams had a series of epic meltdowns on the court, all sparked when the umpire warned her: No coaching from the side. Her coach was making visible hand signals.

“I don’t cheat to win,” Williams told him. “I’d rather lose.”

She couldn’t let it go, going back multiple times to berate the umpire. At one point she called him a thief.

“You stole a point from me!” she yelled.

After her loss, Williams’s coach admitted to ESPN that he had, in fact, been coaching from the stands, a code violation. The warning was fair. . . .

Osaka, a young player at the beginning of her career, showed grit, determination and maturity on that court and off.

She earned that trophy. Let’s recall that this wasn’t Osaka’s first victory over Williams — she beat Williams back in March, causing a hiccup in that great comeback narrative.

Osaka earned her moment as victor at the US Open, one that should have been pure joy. If anything was stolen during this match, it was that.

Shameful, but not surprising.

THE NCAA IS A SHITTY CARTEL THAT SHOULD BE ABOLISHED: NCAA punishes several Kentucky athletes for pick-up soccer game with Foo Fighters.

SO MANY LIES PASS FOR NEWS: US accounts for just 1% of mass shootings, not media-hyped 31%.. “Lankford’s study reported that from 1966 to 2012, there were 90 public mass shooters in the United States and 202 in the rest of world. We find that Lankford’s data represent a gross undercount of foreign attacks. Our list contains 1,448 attacks and at least 3,081 shooters outside the United States over just the last 15 years of the period that Lankford examined. We find at least fifteen times more mass public shooters than Lankford in less than a third the number of years,.”

WHOA: St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has created an “exclusion list” of 28 police officers who she will not accept any cases from in the future. She is also reviewing their previous cases for “viability.” No explanation has been given so far.

THE MASK COMES OFF: UN Appointed Climate Science Team Demands The End of Capitalism.

BJORN LOMBORG: How the war on climate change slams the world’s poor.

Activist organizations like Worldwatch argue that higher temperatures will make more people hungry, so drastic carbon cuts are needed. But a comprehensive new study published in Nature Climate Change led by researchers from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis has found that strong global climate action would cause far more hunger and food insecurity than climate change itself.

The scientists used eight global-agricultural models to analyze various scenarios between now and 2050. These models suggest, on average, that climate change could put an extra 24 million people at risk of hunger. But a global carbon tax would increase food prices and push 78 million more people into risk of hunger. The areas expected to be most vulnerable are sub-Saharan Africa and India.

Trying to help 24 million people by imperiling 78 million people’s lives is a very poor policy.

It’s great statism though.

FASTER, PLEASE: Intervening on mtDNA in Mice Reverses Skin Wrinkling and Hair Loss. “In what appears to be a world first, scientists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have reversed two of the most common visual signs of aging—skin wrinkles and hair loss—in mice by turning off a gene responsible for mitochondrial dysfunction.”

GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD:

For all the love lavished on Venezuela’s Bolivarian socialism by Bernie Sanders, Michael Moore, Sean Penn, et al, I wonder if any of them actually put any money on the regime?

Not really. I’m sure the answer is no.

MY UNDERSTANDING IS THAT THE CONSTITUTION FORBIDS ANY RELIGIOUS TEST FOR PUBLIC OFFICE: If Trump and GOP don’t understand climate change, they don’t deserve public office.

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook has TRUST ratings for users – but it won’t tell you your score.

Earlier this year, Facebook admitted it was rolling out trust ratings for media outlets.

This involved ranking news websites based on the quality of the news they were reporting.

This rating would then be used to decide which posts should be promoted higher in users’ News Feeds.

User ratings are employed in a similar way – helping Facebook make a judgement about the quality of their post reports.

According to Lyons, a user’s rating “isn’t meant to be an absolute indicator of a person’s credibility”.

Instead, it’s intended as a measurement of working out how risky a user’s actions may be.

If Facebook were transparent about this stuff, users — the network’s actual content providers and creators — could work to improve trust.

But that kind of openness just isn’t in the company’s DNA, says Frederic Filloux on Monday Note:

Facebook’s DNA is based on the unchallenged power of an exceptional but morally flawed — or at least dangerously immature — leader who sees the world as a gigantic monetization playground. In Mark Zuckerberg’s world, the farther from home, the more leeway he feels to experiment with whatever comes to his prolific mind. Yielding on the Ford Pinto syndrome, he feels little incentive to correct the misuse of the tools he created. And he managed to have no one standing against him.

It’s a fascinating article, and I recommend reading the whole thing.

NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bans press from Queens town hall.

TRACKING EARTH’S MINI-MOONS: There could be many minis in orbit.

AEI
Cartoon of the day on self-esteem

Cartoon of the day on self-esteem
Mark Perry

AEI
The time is past due to end the outdated, protectionist relic known as the Jones Act

Tim Taylor has a good primer on the protectionist, regulatory relic known as the Jones Act on his Conversable Economist blog (“A Primer on the Jones Act and American Shipping“) based on the Cato Institute‘s policy analysis “The Jones Act: A Burden America Can No Longer Bear” by Colin Grabow, Inu Manak, and Daniel Ikenson. Here are a few of Tim’s “money quotes” (my emphasis):

When thinking about the costs of the Jones Act, it’s worth remembering that shipbuilding and shipping are examples of US industries that have been dramatically protected from foreign competition for nearly a century. If sustained protection from foreign competition was a useful path to the highest levels of efficiency and cost-effectiveness, then US ship-building and shipping should be elite industries. But in fact, US ship-building and shipping–safely protected from competition– have fallen far behind foreign competition, with negative costs and consequences that echo through the rest of the US economy–and probably diminish US national security, too.

……

The argument a century ago, and since, has been that a domestic ship-building industry is essential for national defense. Maybe so! But if that is the goal, the Jones Act is sorely failing to accomplish it. Instead, the Navy can’t afford the extra ships it wants, the number of available US civilian ships and the knowledgeable workers to run them is shrinking, and military operations have had to find ways to make use of foreign ships.

……

As a general rule, it is unlikely that the solution for a problem is identical to the cause of the problem. But after nearly a century of protection from international competition sheltered US ship-building and shipping to compete with foreign competition and thus led it into near-obsolescence, the reason for keeping the Jones Act in place seems to be that, without it, the US shipping and ship-building industry would have a hard time competing. It’s a little like arguing that the cure for a drug addiction is a continuing supply of the drug to which you are addicted.

I’m willing to have a discussion about what policy steps might be useful in creating a US ship-building and shipping industry that is internationally competitive. The necessary steps might be dramatic and costly. But the first step in that discussion is the acknowledgement that the long-run effects of the Jones Act have been terrible and counterproductive policy for the US shipbuilding and shipping industries. It has rendered those industries essentially unable to compete on the world stage, while creating costs throughout the rest of the US economy and reducing US military security. Any plan for US shipbuilding and shipping which doesn’t focus on how to bring the Jones Act to an end is not serious.

Here’s part of the conclusion from the Cato Institute paper:

By any measure, the Jones Act has been a failure. Under its watch the U.S. shipbuilding industry has atrophied, its shipping fleet has withered, and any contribution to the military’s sealift capability has been trivial at best. The failure of the Jones Act to meet its intended objectives, meanwhile, has inflicted considerable economic harm through a variety of direct and indirect channels. Rather than serving to bolster national security, the Jones Act has stultified domestic shipbuilding, diminished the size of America’s merchant marine reserve, and hamstrung our ability to respond expeditiously and effectively to natural and manmade disasters.

Among the world’s cabotage laws, the Jones Act stands out for its extreme protectionism. Only a handful of countries require ships participating in their domestic maritime services to be built domestically and none have more onerous restrictions. Moreover, there are no comparably stringent regulations of other means of transportation in the United States.

….

That such a burdensome law has evaded meaningful reform for nearly 100 years speaks to the determination of a small, well-organized, well-connected class of producers and unions that have succeeded over the years in portraying any effort to reform or repeal the Jones Act as an affront to national security. The time has come to finally turn the tables and for Congress to repeal this onerous law.

MP: The Jones Act, like all protectionist measures, have the same predictable and inevitable economic outcomes: a) higher prices for businesses and consumers, b) reduced competition and fewer choices for consumers, c) concentrated, visible benefits for the protected industry and widespread costs on consumers throughout the entire economy, d) economic stagnation in the long-run, and e) overall reduced economic prosperity, growth, and jobs.

The Jones Act is also another example, along with the 25% tariffs on imported trucks and trade restrictions on sugar that drive up the US price to 2X the world price, that contradicts the popular, but somewhat false narrative that America’s markets are wide open to the entire world while bad foreigners restrict their markets for US exports.

The time is past due to end the outdated, protectionist relic known as the Jones Act
Mark Perry

SHOCKER: 170 Registered Voters in Ohio’s 12th District Listed as Over 116 Years Old.

HUH: Cannabis Oil Helped 80 Percent of Autistic Children, Israeli Study Finds. “It improved both behavior and communications in the children enrolled in the study.”

KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: Devin Nunes, Washington’s Public Enemy No. 1: What did the FBI do in the 2016 campaign? The head of the House inquiry on what he has found—and questions still unanswered.

It’s 105 degrees as I stand with Rep. Devin Nunes on his family’s dairy farm. Mr. Nunes has been feeling even more heat in Washington, where as chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence he has labored to unearth the truth about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s activities during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. Thanks in large part to his work, we now know that the FBI used informants against Donald Trump’s campaign, that it obtained surveillance warrants based on opposition research conducted for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and that after the election Obama administration officials “unmasked” and monitored the incoming team.

Mr. Nunes’s efforts have provoked extraordinary partisan and institutional fury in Washington—across the aisle, in the FBI and other law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, in the media. “On any given day there are dozens of attacks, each one wilder in its claims,” he says. Why does he keep at it? “First of all, because it’s my job. This is a basic congressional investigation, and we follow the facts,” he says. The “bigger picture,” he adds, is that in “a lot of the bad and problematic countries” that Intelligence Committee members investigate, “this is what they do there. There is a political party that controls the intelligence agencies, controls the media, all to ensure that party stays in power. If we get to that here, we no longer have a functioning republic. We can’t let that happen.” . . .

It got worse. This spring Mr. Nunes obtained information showing the FBI had used informants to gather intelligence on the Trump camp. The Justice Department is still playing hide-and-seek with documents. “We still don’t know how many informants were run before July 31, 2016”—the official open of the counterintelligence investigation—“and how much they were paid. That’s the big outstanding question,” he says. Mr. Nunes adds that the department and the FBI haven’t done anything about the unmaskings or taken action against the Flynn leakers—because, in his view, “they are too busy working with Democrats to cover all this up.”

He and his committee colleagues in June sent a letter asking Mr. Trump to declassify at least 20 pages of the FISA application. Mr. Nunes says they are critical: “If people think using the Clinton dirt to get a FISA is bad, what else that’s in that application is even worse.”

Mr. Nunes has harsh words for his adversaries. How, he asks, can his committee’s Democrats, who spent years “worrying about privacy and civil liberties,” be so blasé about unmaskings, surveillance of U.S. citizens, and intelligence leaks? On the FBI: “I’m not the one that used an unverified dossier to get a FISA warrant,” Mr. Nunes says. “I’m not the one who obstructed a congressional investigation. I’m not the one who lied and said Republicans paid for the dossier. I’m just one of a few people in a position to get to the bottom of it.” And on the press: “Today’s media is corrupt. It’s chosen a side. But it’s also making itself irrelevant. The sooner Republicans understand that, the better.”

His big worry is that Republicans are running out of time before the midterm elections, yet there are dozens of witnesses still to interview. “But this was always the DOJ/FBI plan,” he says. “They are slow-rolling, because they are wishing and betting the Republicans lose the House.”

I wonder what else they’re doing besides “wishing and betting?”

DAMN LITTLE, AND MUCH OF IT WRONG:

Plus:

THIS ISN’T THE REGTECH I WAS PROMISED: Anti-smoking activists *hate* vaping, despite the demonstrable reduction in harm thanks to the technology (my wife gave up smoking cigarettes thanks to vaping). There has been an aggressive astroturf campaign aimed at the FDA in favor of anti-vaping regulations – and by astroturf I mean “submitting 255,000 fake comments from a single Internet bot.”

My colleague Michelle Minton has written a bunch on vaping and its role in harm reduction.

I THOUGHT WE WERE TO ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE: Europa Lander may not have to dig deep to find signs of life.

The 1,900-mile-wide Europa harbors a huge ocean beneath its icy shell. What’s more, astronomers think this water is in contact with the moon’s rocky core, making a variety of complex and intriguing chemical reactions possible.

Researchers therefore regard Europa as one of the solar system’s best bets to harbor alien life. Europa is also a geologically active world, so samples of the buried ocean may routinely make it to the surface — via localized upwelling of the ocean itself, for example, and/or through geyser-like outgassing, evidence of which has been spotted multiple times by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA aims to hunt for such samples in the not-too-distant future. The agency is developing a flyby mission called Europa Clipper, which is scheduled to launch in the early 2020s. Clipper will study Europa up close during dozens of flybys, some of which might be able to zoom through the moon’s suspected water-vapor plumes. And NASA is also working on a possible post-Clipper lander mission that would search for evidence of life at or near the Europan surface.

I’ve been waiting for this mission since reading 2010: Odyssey Two when it was first published in 1982. But since the post-Clipper lander mission isn’t even scheduled yet, I’ll have to wait a good while longer.

Faster, please.