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“…It’s good news for consumers that a superior court judge may put the brakes on a case alleging that the popular killer Roundup causes cancer. The science behind this claim — and nearly 9,000 other similar cases pending against Roundup’s manufacturer, Monsanto — is sorely lacking.
If this case and others succeed, Roundup will likely be removed from the marketplace based on junk science claims about its risks. As a result, it would be more difficult for farmers to produce an affordable food supply for the rest of us, and consumers will have a harder time controlling weeds in their own gardens.
The case involved a former groundskeeper, whose claimed that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, caused his non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The jury awarded $39 million for compensation and $250 million a punitive award because Monsanto did not provide warning that the chemical might cause cancer.
In response to a Monsanto appeal, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos indicated that she will likely throw out the entire $250 million in punitive award and call for a new trial. According to CNN, Judge Bolanosexplained that the plaintiff “presented no clear and convincing evidence of malice or oppression to support an award of punitive damages.”…”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/18/judges-ruling-on-roundup-is-good-news-for-far
Fred Barnes:
“…We now know why President Obama had to struggle so hard to spur the economy and allow it to grow more than 2 percent a year. And that was the high-water mark. In the last quarter of his presidency, growth had slipped to 1.5 percent. Today it’s obvious what Obama’s problem was. He had the wrong policies‚ lots of them.
How do we know this? Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, and the Republican Congress reversed Obama’s policies. The result, from the day Trump was elected, has been a more robust economy. Nearly 4 million jobs have been added, and unemployment has dipped to the lowest point in nearly a half-century. Let’s compare what Obama did with what Trump is doing.
Obama raised taxes. Trump cut them. Obama was a regulatory zealot. Trump is passionate about deregulation. Obama’s Clean Power Plan killed the coal industry. Trump is reviving it. Obama downgraded the role of entrepreneurs and free markets in boosting the economy and lauded the wonderful things government does.
Obama’s biggest breakthrough was the Affordable Care Act, a big step toward a single-payer, government-run health care system. Trump got rid of the individual mandate that forced everyone to buy expensive insurance or be fined—a big step toward a return to free markets in health care.
The entire Obama economic agenda was “systematically reversed,” says economics writer Stephen Moore, a Trump adviser in the 2016 campaign. He and Arthur Laffer are authors of the new book Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy.
Presidents love to tout their achievements. In Trump’s case, a White House report issued last week said his administration had produced 289 accomplishments in 20 months. We all know Trump exaggerates and brags. But many of the economic gains were impressive, especially the fact that job openings outnumber job seekers for the first time on record.
Being a liberal himself, Obama relied on liberal economists. They led him astray, as they did President Kennedy in the 1960s. They favored higher taxes and increased spending, policies that caused an economic downturn.
Kennedy was smarter than Obama. He finally turned to his Republican Treasury secretary C. Douglas Dillon, who recommended tax cuts. JFK grabbed onto them and the result was an economic boom, the Roaring ’60s…”
https://www.weeklystandard.com/fred-barnes/what-trump-knows-that-ob
“…The Army has successfully fired a 155mm artillery round 62 kilometers (38.5 miles) – marking a technical breakthrough in the realm of land-based weapons and progressing toward its stated goal of being able to outrange and outgun Russian and Chinese weapons.
“We just doubled the range of our artillery at Yuma Proving Ground,” Gen. John Murray, Commanding General of Army Futures Command, told reporters at the recent Association of the United States Army Annual Symposium.
Currently, most land-fired artillery shot from an M777 Towed Howitzer or Self-Propelled Howitzer are able to pinpoint targets out to 30km (18.6 miles) – so hitting 62km marks a substantial leap forward in offensive attack capability.
Murray was clear that the intent of the effort, described as Extended Range Cannon Artillery, is specifically aimed at regaining tactical overmatch against Russian and Chinese weapons…”
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/major-breakthrough-army-artillery-hits-target-at-38-miles-dou
Steven Hayward:
“…This is all a long preface for setting up notice of Thomas Edsall’s column in the New York Times today, “The Democrats’ Left Turn Is Not an Illusion.” Edsall, keep in mind, is a liberal, though he’s long been critical of his own side, and keenly attuned to the populist rejection of establishment liberalism. His warnings, however, went unheeded. Here are a few excerpts from today’s article:
Over the past 18 years, the Democratic electorate has moved steadily to the left, as liberals have displaced moderates. . . From 2001 to 2018, the share of Democratic voters who describe themselves as liberal has grown from 30 to 50 percent, according to data provided by Lydia Saad, a senior editor at the Gallup Poll. . .
Well-educated whites, especially white women, are pushing the party decisively leftward. According to Gallup, the share of white Democrats calling themselves liberal on social issues has grown since 2001 from 39 to 61 percent. Because of this growth, white liberals are now roughly 40 percent of all Democratic voters.
Edsall does not shrink from pointing out some truly astonishing findings in the survey data, like this:
White liberals are well to the left of the black electorate on some racial issues. Take the issue of discrimination as a factor holding back African-American advancement. White liberals are to the left of black Democrats, placing a much stronger emphasis than African-Americans on the role of discrimination and much less emphasis on the importance of individual effort.
Hmmm. . . Maybe this is related to the polls showing surprising levels of black approval of Trump, and the apparent apathy of Hispanic voters about Democrats.
Toward the end Edsall quotes Harvard’s Yascha Mounk (mentioned here recently), who warns his fellow liberals:
One of the dangers for the Democratic Party — and the left-leaning parts of the establishment more broadly — is that they confound their actual audience with a small but highly visible group of activists…”
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/10/the-democrats-leftward-mar
“…Recent “generic” congressional polls are all over the place. Some give Democrats a double-digit advantage while others show Republicans within striking distance.
Forget the “generic” polls — they are almost useless to gauge party strength. There are 435 seats up for grabs with about 90 percent of them already decided due to the way most district lines are drawn.
Polls from individual contests are a little more reliable, but if a race is within 8-10 points I wouldn’t bet on the outcome on Election Day.
A new CNBC poll on the “generic” ballot shows Republicans within 6 points of Democrats with about a month to go before the polls open. But the numbers on voter attitudes on several big issues actually matter.
The latest CNBC All-America Economic Survey offers mixed signals, but leans against a wave Democratic election like that those that swept Republicans to power in 2010 and 2014.
The poll of 800 Americans across the country, with a margin of error of 3.5 percent, found a six-point Democratic lead on the question of who voters will choose in the November congressional elections. The 42 percent to 36 percent margin is not far from what pollsters would expect given the greater percentage of Democratic registered voters.
“A six point differential is not something that’s going to cause a big electoral wave,” said Micah Roberts, the Republican pollster on the CNBC poll, a partner Public Opinion Strategies. “Economic confidence that people have among a lot of groups is providing a buffer” for Republicans.
That “buffer” is working at cross purposes with Democratic efforts to nationalize the midterms by making Donald Trump the issue. It’s just not working:
Indeed, the poll found that 48 percent of the public is optimistic about the current economy and optimistic it will get better, the highest level in the poll’s 11-year history and more than double the 20 percent registered in the December 2016 survey. The poll, conducted Oct. 4th through the 7th, shows 83 percent of Republicans are optimistic but also 22 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of Independent voters.
The Democrats can’t run on a bad economy. In fact, they can’t run on any single issue except Trump and on saying the GOP is evil and needs to be destroyed. Democratic partisans might see the threats, the intimidation, and the violence by Democratic-supporting mobs as justified, but most others do not…”
https://pjmedia.com/trending/blue-wave-ebbing-dem-advantages-offset-by-strong-economy
Carl Bildt:
“…in recent years, Northern Europe’s security landscape has changed. In response to Russian aggression and revisionism, NATO has deployed battalion battle groups in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as air force squadrons to police those countries’ skies. And in both Sweden and Finland, defense spending is increasing, and there is an ongoing debate about whether to upgrade the privileged partnership with NATO to full membership…”
“…A Harvard University dean testified that the school has different SAT score standards for prospective students based on factors such as race and sex — but insisted that the practice isn’t discriminatory, as a trial alleging racism against Asian-American applicantsbegan this week.
The Ivy League school was sued in 2014 by the group Students for Fair Admissions, which claims that Asian-American students, despite top-notch academic records, had the lowest admission rate among any race.
Harvard University will fight discrimination lawsuit in courtThe trial began Monday, and has so far only included testimony from dean of admissions William Fitzsimmons.
He said Harvard sends recruitment letters to African-American, Native American and Hispanic high schoolers with mid-range SAT scores, around 1100 on math and verbal combined out of a possible 1600, CNN reported.
Asian-Americans only receive a recruitment letter if they score at least 250 points higher — 1350 for women, and 1380 for men…”
“…If the Blue Wave collapses before it hits shore, Democrats may need to ask whether #MeToo and other forms of identity politics are really the wave of the Democratic future.
Democrats have been waiting for that wave to crest for a long time, at least since the 2002 publication of “The Emerging Democratic Majority” by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira. That book’s modest thesis suggested that demographic trends would increase traditional Democratic constituencies while slowly shrinking the GOP’s base, as long as Democrats could find a way to hold their then-current coalition together.
By 2016, many saw that as prophecy: All they needed to do was wait for the GOP’s atavistic denizens to die off, leaving the country to those on the right side of history.
Yet salvation keeps failing to arrive…”
https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2018/10/will-blue-wave-coll
“…Critics of the Trump tax cuts said they would blow a hole in the deficit. Yet individual income taxes climbed 6% in the just-ended fiscal year 2018, as the economy grew faster and created more jobs than expected.
The Treasury Department reported this week that individual income tax collections for FY 2018 totaled $1.7 trillion. That’s up $14 billion from fiscal 2017, and an all-time high. And that’s despite the fact that individual income tax rates got a significant cut this year as part of President Donald Trump’s tax reform plan…”
“…President Donald Trump said Wednesday he would cut the federal budget with the help of his Cabinet, a proposal that analysts said was aspirational at best and unlikely to affect the skyrocketing federal deficit.
“We’re going to ask every Cabinet secretary to cut 5 percent for next year,” Trump said before a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
The president’s request is likely for his fiscal 2020 budget proposal, which is due to Congress early next year…”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/10/17/donald-trump-budget-cuts-cabinet/16703
“…The most recent poll shows Baldwin leading Vukmir by 10 points, 53% to 43%. Asked about this, Vukmir responded by noting that the usually reliable poll has been all over the map since the beginning of the senatorial campaign, showing her at one point trailing by 30 points and at another two points behind, well within the margin of error. Vukmir also noted that the polling was done before the recent debate at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee campus, in which she clearly dominated an uncomfortable and often flustered Baldwin…”
https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/16/union-members-republican-democrat/
Victor Davis Hanson:
“…A boastful lame-duck Obama was lecturing the nation on the eve of the anticipated Clinton landslide that there was zero chance of any party, much less any nation, warping the U.S. election. Pre-election, a smug Hillary Clinton pontificated that Trump had to grow up and accept the impending verdict of the voters that would shortly demolish his candidacy and humiliate his person. She would add insult to Trump’s injury by sweeping Georgia and Arizona and by a landslide that would reinvigorate the Obama dream.
Indeed, dozens of the careerists and progressive appointees at the Washington FBI, DOJ, CIA, and National Security Council took all sorts of risks to insure a Clinton blowout. They variously sought to warp the FISA court, subvert the Trump campaign, collude with Fusion GPS and its Russian sources, and weaponize the FBI to ensure the Clinton victory — on the premise that their unethical and often illegal behavior would soon be rewarded by the Clintons, who for decades had proven far less ethical than 2016’s miscreant minions.
Hillary’s defeat caused unimaginable shock. It almost immediately prompted a collective psychological meltdown. The tragedy was not just that an inept Clinton had squandered the gifts of a $1 billion war chest, the deep-state collusion of the Obama administration, and a completely captive and obsequious media. But she had lost to Trump, the reality-TV-show host, the controversial raconteur, the first serious presidential candidate with neither military nor political experience.
Worse still, Clinton had blown a huge lead by foolishly seeking an electoral mandate while Trump, the supposed dunce, outsmarted her analytics and young techies by battering down the blue wall and stealing her Democratic Midwest with a populist nationalist message, part JFK, part Ronald Reagan.
Nothing is more humiliating than to be already doling out White House patronage jobs on Election Day at noon, and by evening suffering a shipwrecked candidacy and the certainty of eight more years of progressive rule incinerated. No wonder progressives were recently reduced to frenzied maenads gnashing their teeth and breaking their fingernails on the closed doors of the Supreme Court…”
and
“…Progressive astrologists predicted a series of Obamas for the next half-century. But in truth, the country was never really progressive. Until Obama, no Democrat without a Southern accent had won the popular vote since John Kennedy in 1960. And by 2010, the pushback became a near rout, within a few years, leaving the Left with its last vestige of power: a divided Supreme Court, which since the Roosevelt era had always salvaged the progressive dreams that had been wrecked in the executive and legislative branches.
Trump, however, not only got elected but in matters of court appointments he also proved to be an originalist and constructionist in a way that recent Republican presidents had never quite envisioned. He outsourced his Supreme Court nominations to the no-nonsense Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. Progressives went regressive in their furor and demonized Trump’s picks to such a degree that there was little chance that a Georgetown cocktail circuit would ever manage to turn a Gorsuch or Kavanaugh into a Souter or Stevens.
Fear grew over a future that would be even worse than the bad present. Should Trump be reelected, he might have one or two more deleterious picks yet — and perhaps even female Supreme Court justices more conservative than their male counterparts (and whom it might prove difficult to smear with supposed questionable teenage behavior four decades prior).
Trump’s criteria for selections seemed to be youth, strict constructionism, and intellectual brilliance — along the lines of a cohort of young Scalias. In short, the Court could no longer save for progressives what the presidency and Congress had lost them — an unfortunate downturn brought about once again by none other than the odious Donald J. Trump…”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/progressive-agony-democrats-brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court/