The Curious Case of Andy Ngo
How the mainstream media downplay left-wing violence.

Many journalists resent Ngo’s politics, ethics, and sudden success. Yet the establishment media’s approach is the same when Ngo is out of the picture. Antifa is a subject that major media outlets tend to cover once, as a box to be checked. Far-left attacks are treated as isolated incidents rather than episodes in an ongoing story. They are not to be covered like violence from the far right or white nationalists. Andy Ngo covers the story that way—and the media do not like it or the mirror he holds up to them.

The establishment media’s lopsided approach to political violence ultimately damages both our politics and journalism. Politics are supposed to function as nonviolent dispute resolution. Weimar-style street brawling is a signpost on the path to the collapse of normal politics, one we ignore at our peril. Pretending that groups such as Antifa are not a problem is a tactic that will be noticed by at least half the country, accelerate the vicious cycle of our political discourse, and desensitize partisans to political violence of all stripes.

Turning a blind eye to left-wing violence may have the corollary effect of burning up whatever moral and institutional capital the establishment media have left. The media will be seen as knuckling under to—or even embracing—Antifa’s core beliefs. After all, many progressives already believe hate speech is no different from physical assault, which is the root of Antifa’s belief in preemptive violence.

To blame Andy Ngo for injuries he suffered while reporting on Antifa, even if one finds him biased, is to tacitly accept Antifa’s general demand that its members are not to be photographed or identified on threat of violence. No respectable journalist would accept that demand from the Ku Klux Klan. Those who accept it here will similarly lose public respect. The establishment media need to do the right thing covering left-wing violence, if only out of self-interest. Whether they will is another story.

Latest Mac Pro to be made in Texas after securing tariff exemptions.

Apple is boosting its commitment to the American workforce, part of a push to invest hundreds of billions into the U.S. economy.

In a major announcement on Monday, Apple said it will build its redesigned Mac Pro in Austin, Texas.

The move comes three days after U.S. trade officials approved exemptions that allow Apple to import key Mac Pro parts from China without them being subject to tariffs.

“The Mac Pro is Apple’s most powerful computer ever and we’re proud to be building it in Austin,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. “We thank the administration for their support enabling this opportunity.”

DNA Is Held Together By Hydrophobic Forces

“….for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.“

Keep trying to convince me that this complexity is merely the result of random insensate chance.

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, disprove the prevailing theory of how DNA binds itself. It is not, as is generally believed, hydrogen bonds which bind together the two sides of the DNA structure. Instead, water is the key. The discovery opens doors for new understanding in research in medicine and life sciences. The researchers’ findings are presented in the journal PNAS.

DNA is constructed of two strands, consisting of sugar molecules and phosphate groups. Between these two strands are nitrogen bases, the compounds which make up organisms’ genes, with hydrogen bonds between them. Until now, it was commonly thought that those hydrogen bonds were what held the two strands together.

But now, researchers from Chalmers University of Technology show that the secret to DNA’s helical structure may be that the molecules have a hydrophobic interior, in an environment consisting mainly of water. The environment is therefore hydrophilic, while the DNA molecules’ nitrogen bases are hydrophobic, pushing away the surrounding water. When hydrophobic units are in a hydrophilic environment, they group together, to minimise their exposure to the water.

The role of the hydrogen bonds, which were previously seen as crucial to holding DNA helixes together, appear to be more to do with sorting the base pairs, so that they link together in the correct sequence.

The discovery is crucial for understanding DNA’s relationship with its environment.

“Cells want to protect their DNA, and not expose it to hydrophobic environments, which can sometimes contain harmful molecules,” says Bobo Feng, one of the researchers behind the study. “But at the same time, the cells’ DNA needs to open up in order to be used.”

“We believe that the cell keeps its DNA in a water solution most of the time, but as soon as a cell wants to do something with its DNA, like read, copy or repair it, it exposes the DNA to a hydrophobic environment.”

Reproduction, for example, involves the base pairs dissolving from one another and opening up. Enzymes then copy both sides of the helix to create new DNA. When it comes to repairing damaged DNA, the damaged areas are subjected to a hydrophobic environment, to be replaced. A catalytic protein creates the hydrophobic environment. This type of protein is central to all DNA repairs, meaning it could be the key to fighting many serious sicknesses……………

The researchers studied how DNA behaves in an environment which is more hydrophobic than normal, a method they were the first to experiment with.

They used the hydrophobic solution polyethylene glycol, and step-by-step changed the DNA’s surroundings from the naturally hydrophilic environment to a hydrophobic one. They aimed to discover if there is a limit where DNA starts to lose its structure, when the DNA does not have a reason to bind, because the environment is no longer hydrophilic. The researchers observed that when the solution reached the borderline between hydrophilic and hydrophobic, the DNA molecules’ characteristic spiral form started to unravel.

Upon closer inspection, they observed that when the base pairs split from one another (due to external influence, or simply from random movements), holes are formed in the structure, allowing water to leak in. Because DNA wants to keep its interior dry, it presses together, with the base pairs coming together again to squeeze out the water. In a hydrophobic environment, this water is missing, so the holes stay in place.

When Greta goes to Guangzhou

thunberg1
That’s Greta with her aged hippy Mum & Dad all wearing antifa T-shirts.
You have to wonder if Greta’s mental defects are due to all the hash & other drugs her parents did.

The climate change activism, and in particular, its more hysterical Extinction Rebellion/School Strike “we’re all going to die” variety, are very much a Western phenomenon, despite the issue of climate change (formerly known as “global warming”) itself being of course global in nature. This is arguably because the governments and the peoples of the developing world are far more concerned about lifting themselves out of poverty and getting ahead in life than what the weather might be like in half a century from today.

Conversely, in the developed, world where the populations enjoy the highest standards of living ever achieved in history, the middle classes are comfortable enough materially and barren enough spiritually to fully enjoy that extra luxury of self-flagellation and moral angst.

At the heart of the New Catstrophism lies an inconvenient truth: the United States – or Australia – could cut their emissions to zero today (or by 2030) and it would make a negligible difference to the global temperatures.There are two reasons for that: firstly, the CO2 emissions in the United States, the European Union, Canada and Australia have actually been declining in the past 10-15 years. Secondly, the CO2 emissions throughout the developing world have been skyrocketing. And this is not just in relative terms, which disregard the massively different starting points, but in absolute terms. Consider these two graphs, prepared by Robert Rapier at Forbes:

emissions1emissions2

While China now produces more CO2 than the United States and the European Union put together, the Asia-Pacific region (which does include a few industrialised countries, like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, but is mainly in the “developing” category, with China, India and Indonesia the most prominent examples) emits nearly twice as much CO2 as the United States and the European Union combined. And rising.

This is what you always have to keep in mind whenever you hear about the great progress being made in China (and to a lesser extent in India) in embracing the renewables. It’s a case of “yes, but…” It might be true, as far as it goes, yet still India’s coal-powered electricity generation capacity is expected to increase by over 22 per cent to 2022; China itself, for whatever else it’s doing with wind and hydro, is also building hundreds of new “old” power stations as it’s creating the largest middle class in history. And while it’s true that in emissions per capita the developing world still leads the rest of the world where all the billions live, the climate only cares about the absolute numbers.

St Joan of Arc of the Children’s Crusade against Carbon, Greta Thunberg, should be going to Beijing or Bangalore and staging her protests there instead of, or at least in addition to, Sweden or New York. She should be hounding President Xi and Prime Minister Modi about their shameful emissions. She should be leading throngs of Asian kids out of schools for her Friday student strikes. She should be castigating the industries and the consumers of the developing world for destroying the planet and killing humanity in the process. She should be doing all this if she were serious about the global nature of the problem. But I won’t be holding my breath.

Lee’s other declarations that prove she’s got nothing but crap-for-brains

Of course, her district has been so gerrymandered so as to assure her continued election as long as she desires.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas proclaimed that the Constitution is 400 years old. In other words, its writing would predate the Pilgrims. But while she may be spending her time avidly re-watching the Pocahontas in hopes of getting a glimpse of John Smith jotting down the phrase “We The People,” you can read some more of Jackson Lee’s greatest hits below:

If You Believe They Put a Man on Mars

In 1997, while on a trip to the Mars Pathfinder operations center in California, Jackson Lee asked if the Pathfinder had succeeded in taking a picture of the flag planted on Mars by Neil Armstrong in 1969. Needless to say, Jackson Lee, then a member of the House Science Committee, had confused Mars with the Moon. (Despite the alliterative names, they are very different astral bodies. Mars is a planet that orbits the Sun and has never been visited by man. In contrast, the Moon, which is a satellite of Earth and orbits our planet, has been visited six different times by astronauts).

Two Vietnams, One Gaffe

While Jackson Lee is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, she seems to be badly in need of a new atlas. In 2010, she compared the war in Afghanistan to Vietnam, an analogy that has often been invoked by Democrats. But the lesson she took from that was unique, to say the least. “Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working.” Jackson Lee went on to caution: “We may not agree with all that North Vietnam is doing, but they are living in peace. I would look for a better human rights record for North Vietnam, but they are living side by side.” South Vietnam has not existed for almost 40 years since North Vietnamese forces took Saigon and reunified the former French colony in 1975.

The Tea Party Took My Baby Away

In a workshop around the 2010 convention of the NAACP in Kansas City, Jackson Lee said that the Klansmen of the past are now Tea Party members. In her somewhat incoherent statement, the Texas congresswoman said “All those who wore sheets a long time ago have now lifted them off and started wearing uh, clothing, uh, with a name, say, I am part of the tea party.” She then went criticize these Tea Partiers for being among “those who said Congresswoman Jackson-Lee’s braids were too tight in her hair.”

Michael Jackson, Global Humanitarian

After the 2009 death of Michael Jackson, Sheila Jackson Lee went to Los Angeles to speak at the memorial service of the pop star where she mourned him as “someone who will be honored forever and forever and forever and forever.” The congresswoman ended her valedictory to a man she described as “our icon” by saying “Michael Jackson, I salute you.” While speaking, she held up a copy of House Resolution 600, which she introduced to honor the best-selling musical artist. Her resolution though didn’t go anywhere in the House. After all, very few members of Congress were eager to mourn a man with a well-documented history of allegations of sexual predation on young boys.

Where Is My Seafood Meal?

Early in her tenure in Congress, back in the days when airlines still served food, Jackson Lee would demand the ability to make multiple first class reservations on Continental Airlines and then cancel them freely according to her schedule. The airline did not appreciate this. The culminating point was when Jackson Lee boarded a flight back to her Houston district and discovered the first class menu didn’t include the seafood option that she wanted. The congresswoman started screaming “Don’t you know who I am? I’m Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. Where is my seafood meal? I know it was ordered!”

Sheila Jackson Lee Confuses AR-15 for 10 Moving Boxes and a Heavy Machine Gun

Introducing her new gun-control legislation on Monday, Congresscritter Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) proved conclusively that she’s just too uninformed to go anywhere near the subject. She claims to have “held an AR-15 in my hand,” which weighed as much as “10 boxes that you might be moving.” She also claimed the rifle fired a .50 caliber round, and that “these kinds of bullets need to be licensed and do not need to be on the street.”

https://twitter.com/jason_howerton/status/1176145894061879302

THE FICTION OF NON-PARTISAN JUDGES AND JUSTICES

From a 9th Circuit dissent by Judge Alex Kozinski:
Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted……… When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases —or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text………But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.

A certain man was quoted about the lawyers of the time that would “strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” if either would advance their agenda.
It was not seen as being to their credit.
Even today, we are still afflicted with such hypocritical jurisprudence.

In a talk at Brigham Young University, Justice Neil Gorsuch denied that the Supreme Court is split along partisan lines. Chief Justice Roberts has made a similar denial. He disputes the idea that there are Obama judges and Trump judges.

Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative jurist who would like to join Gorsuch on Roberts on the Supreme Court, has echoed the Chief Justice’s view. At a conference at the College of William & Mary, she said: “The chief justice, I think, articulated what members of the judiciary feel.”

Gorsuch, Roberts, and Barrett are all presenting a myth. The Supreme Court is sharply divided along partisan lines. It’s true that some of the Republican appointees can be quirky in their votes at times. However, the four Democratic appointees vote as a block in the vast majority of controversial cases. And in these cases, at least four of the five Republican appointees typically line up on the other side.

The same pattern applies at lower levels of the federal judiciary. Do Gorusch, Roberts, and Comey think it’s a coincidence that leftist lawyers invariably want to bring their cases before Democratic appointees on the West Coast?

When I practiced law, I could almost always accurately predict how the tough the sledding would be in a non-frivolous civil rights case, for example, the minute I ascertained whether the district court judge had been appointed by a Republican or a Democrat. And this was in a less partisan environment than the one that exists today.

Why, then, do brilliant judges like the three mentioned above insist on the fiction of non-partisanship? One reason is that judges, and Justices in particular, want to believe they and their institution are special. Naturally, they chafe at the notion that they are just politicians in robes. There’s nothing special about that status.

Judges and Justices also want their decisions to be respected. If they are little more than politicians, there’s no reason to respect what they say.

 

The best pushback to the misinformation of @GretaThunberg you’ll find

High School dropout Greta has no idea what she’s talking about because her mental deficiency will keep her from being able to be more than be a pretty puppet parroting a pack of prevaricating propaganda.

This is one of those “share the hell out of this on Facebook and Twitter” type posts, because it carries a clear and simple message: Greta has no idea what she is talking about.

The data in the graph is well known, from the International Disasters Database and was graphed by Bjorn Lomberg.

Thunberg made the pronouncement during her speech to the U.S. Congress this past week.

Even at 1 degree of warming we are seeing an unacceptable loss of life and livelihoods.

I’m sorry Greta, that’s just wildly wrong and not rooted in reality. It’s the worst sort of alarmism there is.

Food truck driver makes meal on I-10 for stranded drivers

WINNIE, Texas (KTRK) — One area that was seriously impacted by Imelda was Winnie in Chambers County and I-10 is still shut down in that area and could stay that way for days.

As Tropical Storm Imelda hit, 200 vehicles became trapped on I-10. One of them belonged to Reggie McCoy.

He was driving an 18-wheeler with a food delivery going to Beaumont. A day and a half later, there was still high water.

“The area right here, we got a lot more water,” said McCoy as he showed ABC13 the flooding via Skype. “You can see it right here.”

McCoy was stranded on I-10 for more than 36 hours, he says. With a truck full of food and nowhere to go, he asked his boss if he could share.

“He was like, ‘Hey, whatever anybody needs. Let’s get it off the truck.’ We’ve got water. We’ve got milk, toilet paper,” explained McCoy.

Then he met another stranded driver, Kenny the cook. McCoy had some chicken, so they got a grill and Kenny was able to prepare it right there on I-10.

“We had chicken wings last night and a few grape tomatoes and chips and milk,” said McCoy.

Kenny the cook was happy to help.

“In 2005, Houston took me in from Katrina, so, I’m just giving back, that’s all,” said Kenny.

McCoy said they were able to feed between 30 and 40 people……

Another Week, Another Pseudo-Scandal.

Can anyone keep them all straight? They rise like noxious bubbles from the cauldron of deep-state anti-Trump sentiment, only to pass away almost immediately, carried off by their own insubstantiality and the contrasting bright-light series of real achievements on the part of the Trump Administration.

Just this last week, we saw the New York chapter of the left-over Left make a last-ditch effort to smear Justice Brett Kavanaugh by fabricating yet another spurious complaint that an 18-year-old Kavanaugh had been over-served and acted rudely to a fellow female student at Yale. Only the student in question had no memory of the incident.

Like every other complaint against the teenaged Kavanaugh, it was a matter of “my cousin Ernie’s brother’s girlfriend heard from her college roommate that three people whose names she cannot remember told her best friend that someone who might have been Brett Kavanaugh was rumored to have exposed himself at a drunken white-privilege party at Yale 35 or maybe 36 years ago.” …………

But back to the Ukraine. On Friday, the oyez, oyez, oyez boys in the press whipped up the big display type to announce that someone in the “intelligence community” (we don’t know whom) issued an official complaint that President Trump made a “promise” (we don’t know what) to an unnamed foreign leader that the complainant, whoever it is, found “troubling.” …..

Stepping back for a moment from that snarling imbroglio, I do wonder whether the latest “Trump abused his powers, let’s impeach him!” gambit is not rather an impressive deployment of a rhetorical-political gambit known as the “preemptive tu quoque I-tagged-you-first” strategy. The media and anti-Trump commentariat is jumping up and down in unison saying, “Trump is leaning on a foreign power in order to gain a political advantage.”

But what is that charge cover for? A chap called Robert Barnes, writing on Twitter, reminds us of a pertinent fact. “The same Democrats who used all the powers of the Presidency to spy on an opposing campaign, and continue to use every power of the House to invade the privacy of the President, are deeply offended that Trump would want corruption investigated involving a former Vice President?” That’s what Latinists called a nonne question, one that expects the answer “Yes.”

So much for clearing up the planet! Climate change protesters who marched through Manhattan are branded hypocrites for leaving litter strewn across the city.

 

  • 300,000 people marched through New York City on Sunday as part of the People’s Climate March, as other events took place across the world
  • But some of the protesters have been branded hypocrites for leaving piles of trash behind, including signs made from paper or cardboard
  • Others have been slammed for flying to the event or taking long bus rides

Missouri governor sending state troopers to St. Louis to combat youth gun violence

Good intentions and all to be sure, but if they’re not going to go the root of the problem, the street gangs and their turfwars over the drug trade, they’re going to get nowhere. The gangs will calm down just long enough for everyone to get bored &  leave, then they’ll go right back to their ‘normal business practices’.

To help combat a wave of violence and the recent rise in shooting incidents involving children, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson announced he’s sending additional law enforcement officers to St. Louis.

On Oct. 1, Parson will send 25 state employees, mostly state troopers, to the city. So far this year, at least 22 children have been shot in gun-related incidents across the St. Louis metropolitan area.

Last week a 3-year-old boy in the city accidentally shot himself in the head and a 13-year-old boy was shot while walking through an apartment complex on the same day.

“We know we have a serious problem with violent crime that must be addressed, and we have spent the past months meeting with leaders and organizations at all levels to discuss possible solutions,” Parson said in a statement Thursday. “This is about targeting violent criminals and getting them off our streets. If we are to change violent criminal acts across our state, we must work together, we must do our jobs, we must support our law enforcement officers to accomplish these goals, and we must start prioritizing the prevention of crime.”

Parson said troopers will work with the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Strike Force, the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force, Mission SAVE (Strike Against Violence Early) Task Force, Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP) and other local agencies.

Whistleblower ‘didn’t have direct knowledge of the communications’ between Trump and Ukraine

Sounds to me like just another example of the crap-for-brains MSM cheerfully glomming onto a story without doing their due diligence first.

The whistleblower who filed a complaint with the intelligence community inspector general did not have direct knowledge of the communications between President Trump and the foreign leader in question.

The conversation was reportedly a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It is alleged that Trump urged Zelensky multiple times to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and his ties to an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch. Giuliani has previously urged a top official in Ukraine to look into the ties.

An official who has been briefed on the matter, however, told CNN that the whistleblower “didn’t have direct knowledge of the communications.” The official said that the concerns and subsequent complaint came in part from the whistleblower “learning information that was not obtained during the course of their work.”

Those details have reportedly played a role in the administration’s determining that the complaint, lodged in August, didn’t fall under the reporting standards for intelligence whistleblower law.

Although many details are still unclear, the communications in question reportedly involved a “promise,” and House Democrats, as well as the elder Biden, are pushing to have the complaint and a transcript of the call between Trump and Zelensky released.

Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Michael Atkinson received the initial complaint and forwarded it to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who has so far refused to pass it along to Congress.

The root of the proposed investigation into Hunter Biden stems from his being a 2014 board member for the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings. While he was still vice president, Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine did not fire its top prosecutor, who was accused of corruption and was investigating the oligarch who owned Burisma Holdings. That raised concerns of a potential conflict of interest, which could be damaging to Biden’s presidential campaign.

At the time of the prosecutor’s departure, Hunter Biden was being paid $50,000 per month for his work with the energy company. Hunter Biden left Burisma’s board earlier this year.

Both Trump and Biden have denied any wrongdoing, with Trump describing his phone call to Zelensky as “perfectly fine” and Biden saying he has never spoken to his son about his overseas business dealings.

Dems Cook 10,500 Steaks While Lecturing Americans About Eating Less Meat

Several Democratic presidential candidates will be attending an annual steak fry event, despite lecturing Americans about the need to eat less meat because of climate change.

The organizers of the Iowa Polk County Democratic Party’s annual steak fry will be grilling 10,500 steaks and 1,000 vegan burgers on 10 grills, during Saturday’s event. Some of the candidates will grill steaks themselves.

Democratic candidates recently participated in a CNN climate town hall, where multiple candidates discussed the importance of reducing meat intake. Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) called for the U.S. government to create incentives to eat less meat.

“As a nation, we actually have to have a real priority at the highest level of government around what we eat and in terms of healthy eating because we have a problem in America,” Harris said. “But there has to be also what we do in terms of creating incentives that we will eat in a healthy way, that we will encourage moderation and that we will be educated about the effect of our eating habits on our environment.”

Andrew Yang said he would “modify Americans’ diets over time” by increasing the price of beef to the point where Americans would buy less meat. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Mayor Pete Buttigieg are also in favor of adding a meat tax in order to decrease consumption.

AP interview: Colombia says Maduro’s “brutality” must end

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — Colombia’s president compared Nicolás Maduro to Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic as he goes on a diplomatic offensive to corral the Venezuelan socialist, warning that he would be making a “stupid” mistake if he were to attack his U.S.-backed neighbor.

Ivan Duque made the comments in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press before traveling to New York where he is expected to condemn Maduro before the United Nations General Assembly as an abusive autocrat. Duque believes Maduro is not only responsible for the country’s humanitarian catastrophe but is also now a threat to regional stability for his alleged harboring of Colombian rebels.

“The brutality of Nicolás Maduro is comparable to Slobodan Milosevic,” said Duque, who has called on the International Criminal Court to investigate Maduro for human rights abuses. “It must come to an end.”

While Duque refused to rule out a military strike against the Marxist rebels he claims are hiding out across the border, he said any aggression by Venezuela’s armed forces would immediately trigger a regional response that could include additional sanctions and diplomatic actions.

“If they consider doing something so stupid, they know what the consequences will be,” said Duque.