Weird (But Good) Pharmacological Science

The Times (U.K.) reports the development of a new antibiotic that kills so-called superbugs, including gram-negative bacteria normally resistant to antibiotics.

Researchers from Princeton University in the US said that the new compounds, which are being called irresistins, act like a “poison arrow”. They pierce the outer wall of the bacteria and destroy a substance that lies inside called folate, an essential building block of the microbe’s genetic material.

In the laboratory they killed off a strain of gonorrhoea resistant to all other antibiotics. They were also effective against gram-negative bacteria, which have an outer layer that shrugs off most antibiotics. No new classes of gram-negative-killing drugs have come to the market in nearly three decades.

The website msn.com has more on irresistins, including that the original research was published in the technical journal Cell. Hat tip to John Hinderaker at Power Line for the link. As John notes and I concur, this may well be the most important news you will have read this year.

Son of Weird Pharmacological Science

Earlier today we wrote in Weird Pharmacological Science about alleged problems with research concerning the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine. The news these days moves at warp speed, I now write to report The Lancet, Britain's lead medical journal, has withdrawn the article at the request of three of its four authors. Just The News has the story.

The three report they attempted to have an independent audit done of the data set. Surgisphere which had 'collected' or perhaps faked the data would not cooperate. The result: they bailed. The Lancet really had no choice but to withdraw the article which, one suspects, did much damage to science and may have indirectly led to hundreds of deaths.

The Enthusiasm Gap

Scott Rasmussen does polling for Just The News and he finds a real difference in how Democrats and Republicans view their likely presidential nominee.

Likely Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden faces a daunting enthusiasm gap compared to President Trump, according to the latest Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen.

"Wow! 76% of Trump voters are enthusiastic about their candidate compared to just 49% of Biden voters," Rasmussen exclaimed.

"For the Democrat, nearly as many — 41% — see him as the lesser of two evils," the pollster reports.

Rasmussen also found that registered voters preferred Biden (46%) to Trump (39%) with the other 15% unsure or favoring a third party candidate. The bad news is Trump will need the enthusiasm his folks bring to voting to win in November. The good news is that they are very enthused. Even more good news, Democrats have supermajorities in a few states (e.g., NY, CA, MA), which dilutes their impact on the electoral college.

Biden is as bland as dry toast w/o butter, jam or PB. He's the ideal candidate for those who want to spend the next four years unaware of their president.

I suspect some of those reporting "other" or "unsure" are actually "shy Trump voters." A hat tip to the U.K.'s Tory party which discovered the "shy" voter who plans to go Tory but doesn't want to admit it. Trump appeared to have those in 2016, as noted below.

Is There Still a Silent Majority?

A writer for Politico talks to Democrat operatives who, if you read carefully, make the point they're worried about urban unrest activating Trump voters to turn out and reelect him. They are of course very careful not to criticize the urban unrest as those creating the chaos are Democrats.

These pols do seem to understand that former and potential Trump voters are unsympathetic to rioters and looters, and to Democrats who snuggle up to rioters and looters. The unrest, coming just 5 months before the election, and after the corona virus is sorta over, is well positioned to motivate Trump voters to use his reelection to send a message to those causing the trouble.

Urban unrest has the added advantage of taking voter minds off the economic slow-down caused by the virus and the shut-down that it occasioned. How long that distraction will last is unclear, as is the duration of "the troubles."

As to the question in the title, if not a silent majority, a silent electoral college majority existed in 2016. Why not in 2020? We all remember how surprised and pleased we were when Trump won after the polls said he'd lose.

The Mattis Mess

Many outlets are reporting former Defense Secretary Mattis has criticized the President for failing “to try to unite the American people - does not even pretend to try.” I get that Mattis didn’t like being fired, but this is a cheap shot even for a disgruntled former employee.

President Trump was doing a great job of uniting the American people prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. Unemployment was at all-time lows, especially minority employment.

The economy was booming, troops were coming home from overseas, illegal immigration was down, and nobody much was shooting at us. Much of that is still true.

Trump is no more responsible for the George Floyd death in Minneapolis than Obama was responsible for the Freddy Gray death in Baltimore, or for the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, MO. Ditto for Lyndon Johnson and the Detroit riots.

And Trump’s been no more successful than was Obama or Johnson in “uniting the American people” and ending the riots. African-American dissatisfaction with white society has been brewing for over 200 years and isn’t going away any time soon.

Gen. Mattis needs to get over being fired. Cabinet Secretaries serve at the pleasure of the president, and this president is easily displeased as demonstrated on his ‘reality’ TV show and by the list of his former executive branch appointees.

Mattis and Rex Tillerson thought incorrectly it wouldn’t happen to them. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was another ex-Defense Secretary soon. The incumbent - Esper - just disagreed with his boss.

Weird Pharmacological Science

Science magazine is a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  It writes about the controversies concerning the papers which stopped many of the studies of the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating Covid-19.

The papers, in The Lancet and elsewhere, were based on the data of a “mysterious company” Surgisphere with somewhere between 5-11 employees. About their data set many scientific questions have been asked, and many suspicions aired.

Complicating the entire issue is the President’s boosterism for hydroxychloroquine and the knee-jerk opposition to the drug by those who find his flamboyant style distasteful. I expect that if Trump expressed a liking for beautiful sunsets, that crowd would resolutely stay indoors with the drapes pulled, bewailing sunsets’ obviousness and lack of subtlety.

We live in very strange times, do we not? Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.

More on Policing

Yesterday we wrote about “defunding police” and what might happen if we were ever dumb enough to do so. Today Thomas Lifson at American Thinker reminds us that we have a real-life example of this which happened in Boston in 1919 when the police went on strike in attempt to form a union.

Looting broke out almost immediately and continued for 9 days until then-Governor Calvin Coolidge could form a militia and take control of the city. This he did, and built a national reputation as a tough guy which eventually helped him become President.

Lifson reminds us of a lesser, but more recent, example when the Baltimore police basically left black districts alone following the riots over the Freddy Grey death in police custody. He quotes the following from The New York Times Magazine:

In the years that followed, Baltimore, by most standards, became a worse place. In 2017, it recorded 342 murders — its highest per-capita rate ever, more than double Chicago’s, far higher than any other city of 500,000 or more residents and, astonishingly, a larger absolute number of killings than in New York, a city 14 times as populous.

Do police need to be held to higher standards than were exhibited recently by the four in Minneapolis? Certainly. Do police need to be abolished? Certainly not.

—————

The truly very hard issue is that the line between quelling obstreperous citizens causing unlawful trouble on the one hand and bullying on the other is a fine one. It is made more difficult by hostile attitudes toward policing of any sort in certain poor districts where some types of law breaking - especially theft, selling drugs, and prostitution - are among the few ways people are willing (or able, if they have priors) to make a living.

Imagine how difficult it is to require police not to reciprocate hostile attitudes directed at them by, for example, African-Americans. Answering hate with love, or at least forbearance, is saintly, and saints are uncommon, certainly too rare to staff a police force. Thus, we are likely to struggle with this issue for the indefinite future.

The “defund police” advocates are correct about one thing, tensions between poor minorities and the police cannot be “solved” or made to disappear by “improving” the police. The problems exist because of ‘issues’ on both sides and nobody is proposing the hostile citizens change in any way.

Defund Police? Not Even

People who support the rioters are talking about a policy of "defunding the police." Translation, having no police. This won't happen, but it is worth thinking about what would result if it did pass.

We've been there before, 150 years ago. What happened was irritated citizens formed vigilante groups, rounded up people who were abusing their neighbors, and hung them from lampposts.

Nothing much in terms of due process was provided and undoubtedly a few sods were hung because they were a cranky pain in the butt, because a vigilante leader coveted their pretty young wife or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Vigilantes didn't run jails or prisons, they did sometimes run out of town people who weren't worth hanging, and they were often racist.

In the absence of police, eventually everyone goes armed, and petty spats turn into murders, especially in bars. For those who don't have quick draw skills, bushwhacking and back shooting become the preferred modus operandi. Trust me, we don't want to go there. In spite of their occasional downside, the police are way better than the no-police alternative.

Photo Op

The other DrC has three pretty photos from our neighborhood in the WY Rockies. The deer is in our front yard, our aspens are in the background. The other two pix she took maybe 1-2 miles from home, all three within the past week.

McEnany Unloads

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany speaking at a press briefing today about the Rod Rosenstein testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, quote posted by John Hinderaker of Power Line.

It’s a pretty grave thing to spy on an American citizen, to violate his Fourth Amendment rights, to not have a basis to do so, and to rely on a Russian dossier full of lies as the justification. So, it’s really astonishing to hear from [Rosenstein] that he’s not sure he read every page of that warrant. But, I suppose it’s encouraging to hear – with his 20/20 hindsight – that he wouldn’t have signed on it, though I’m sure that’s of no comfort to Carter Page.

The President is dismayed. This happened to the President’s campaign. A Republican campaign was spied on by a Democratic presidency – a Democratic administration – based on a dossier paid for by his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and the DNC. This is absolutely extraordinary. It is the biggest political scandal that we’ve seen and the lack of journalistic curiosity on this front is appalling.

I draw three conclusions: The Obama administration was, in part, a criminal conspiracy. Trump should have fired all Obama appointees, including Rosenstein, upon taking office. Most media persons are flacks for the Democrats.

Weird Criminological Science

Just The News shares the results of a report by The Wall Street Journal's Jason Riley of a study by Harvard economists. Just The News is cited because the Riley article is behind a paywall.

Police become skittish following viral, racially-charged police misconduct investigations, leading to reluctance to protect black neighborhoods, according to the to-be-released academic paper by Harvard economist Roland Fryer and co-author Tanaya Devi, reported on by The Wall Street Journal's Jason Riley. The study found that homicides and felonies spike immediately after the reported events in question, crime that hits black communities the hardest.

"When I look at cities in which the investigation was preceded by a viral event,” Fryer told Riley, “homicide goes up considerably. Total crime goes up considerably. ... My estimates show that we lost a thousand more lives, most of them black as well, because of an increase in homicides. ... I never would have guessed that if police stopped putting in the effort, that homicides would change like this."

Riley concludes:

"Scapegoating law enforcement can backfire in ways that do the most harm to our most vulnerable communities."

Ironic, the very people who need the police most, want them the least.

Quote of the Day

Roger Kimball, writing for Spectator USA, about the contemporary unrest and the milieu that produced it.

We are now witnessing something like the retribalization of the world: a violent turn against Western liberalism and its tradition of rationality, respect for individual rights, and recognition of a common good that transcends the accidents of ethnic and racial identity.

If Kimball is correct, don't be surprised if the majority - observing minorities becoming tribal - does so as well. Imagine how badly that can turn out for minorities. To sow the wind is to reap the whirlwind.

The Urban Model in Disgrace

Instapundit editorializes concerning the urban unrest ongoing.

A message is being received — even by those loudly posturing as woke at the moment — to the effect that you and your properties aren’t safe in big blue cities, and maybe even in medium-sized ones. All the talk about the reurbanization of America just went up, literally, in smoke. Thanks to the pandemic, cities were already looking like centers of disease. Now they’re looking like centers of violence, too. As I said earier, three decades of image rehabilitation for big urban centers has been undone in just a few weeks.

The reasons for medium-to-large cities’ very existence diminish with each passing year, and each technological development. Increasingly they become inexpensive places to corral the unfortunate individuals for whom no meaningful role can be found in modern society, a trend already well-established.

Covid-19, Riots Linked

Former demographer-turned-pundit Joel Kotkin writes for Quillette about the interaction between the Covid-19 pandemic and the riots currently wrecking inner cities. In ways few have pointed out, the first is somewhat a parent to the second.

The disease hit the urban poor harder, African-Americans harder, the lockdown hit those in jobs only doable face-to-face harder. It is among these citizens that the unemployment is highest, the destruction of small businesses most prevalent, the sense of hopelessness most increased.

As Kotkin describes it, a situation developed ripe for some particularly egregious act to set off explosive reactions. The Minneapolis police obliged with an on-video death in custody. The reactions cascaded across the country.

If the experience of Detroit with the aftermath of their riots in the 1960s is any indicator, the cities so affected, especially the poorer sections, will be worse off for decades as a consequence. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.

The Third of June

It's that time again, the day each year we honor singer/song writer Bobbie Gentry and her epic "Ode to Billie Joe." The Southern gothic ballad begins:

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.

When a novelist turned the song into a book and then a movie, it was titled "Ode to Billy Joe." I've seen a photo of the 45 rpm single and it is definitely spelled Billie on the label, where it was the B side.

Ode spent 4 weeks at #1 on the Billboard list. Like everybody else, I don't know what was thrown and why Billie Joe jumped.

Foot-Shooting Underway

Steven Hayward, a Power Line's regular, links to a PsycNet summary of new research appearing in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a good academic journal. PsychNet writes:

New research indicates that extreme protest tactics tend to undermine a movement’s popular support in the United States by alienating both neutral observers and supporters . . .

The researchers conducted six experiments with 3,399 participants in total, in which they assessed how different types of protest behaviors influenced support for a variety of progressive and conservative social causes, including the Black Lives Matter movement and the anti-abortion movement. They found that more extreme behaviors — such as the use of inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, and vandalism — consistently resulted in reduced support for social movements.

It isn't too much of a stretch to conclude that violent protests by people who oppose Trump will help him get reelected. This is, of course, an outcome devoutly to be desired.

The nation needs Trump's corrective actions so our rusty old ship of state can stay afloat for another decade or two. After 2024, it's someone else's problem, maybe young Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR, no relation).

Getting Hitler

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds reminding us roughly 2 years ago of what is for most people "ancient" history. That is, events occurring before they were born.

The thing is, you don’t get Hitler because of Hitler — there are always potential Hitlers out there. You get Hitler because of Weimar, and you get Weimar because the liberals are too corrupt and incompetent to maintain a liberal polity.

Both Antifa and its rightwing equivalents reek of Weimar - violent bullyboys (and some girls) engaged in street theater. Plus, the corruption and incompetence of liberals like Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Comey, Clapper, and Brennan is monumental.

A quick check shows I've posted this twice before. No matter, I'll probably post it again someday unless things change for the better.

What the Numbers Show

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff quotes Heather Mac Donald writing at City Journal.

Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations (excluding interracial homicide, which is also disproportionately black-on-white). That works out to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimization, or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks.

Then Mirengoff adds this from an FBI website:

Blacks commit around 70 percent of black-white interracial homicides.

And he concludes:

In all events, these numbers render absurd the claim that racist America is waging war against “black bodies.” When whites encounter blacks, it’s “white bodies” that are in greater jeopardy.

Is there any realistic scenario in which this "greater jeopardy" would not engender racism? I confess I cannot think of one.

Another Wilson?

Former VP Joe Biden is the presumptive Democrat nominee to run against incumbent President Donald Trump. Biden’s misstatements and verbal stumbles are raising real questions about the state of his mind at age 78.

Sean Hannity has video from The Hill of a recent Biden speech, delivered at a church, wearing a face mask, talking about, among other things, the vice president candidate selection process. Go listen to it, his speech is rambling and semi-incoherent. Here is a quote:

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been making what I hope to be very serious national speeches about what I think we have to do… When I decided to decide, when I made the decision, Jill and I, it was Jill and I made the decision… I made the decision that it was important that there would be a woman Vice President — and by the way I promise you there are multiple African American candidates being considered.

It sure sounds like Jill Biden is running Joe Biden for president so she can be his consigliere, his éminence grise. There is precedent for a president’s wife to be the real executive, President Woodrow Wilson’s second wife Edith basically was president from his stroke in 1919 until his successor was inaugurated in 1921.

In the Biden case however, 69 year old Jill Biden, Ed.D, would probably hold the reins from day one. You may or may not be okay with Jill Biden as de facto President; it feels to me like bait and switch.

Admirable Restraint

I wasn’t sure I intended to comment on the rioting going on now in cities across the country. However, Paul Mirengoff of Power Line writes something sensible about police violence you might agree with.

According to the Washington Post, 19 unarmed African-American males were killed by police in 2017, and 17 in 2016 — an average of 18 per year. It’s unlikely that all 18 were unjustified, but let’s assume they were.

That’s 18 too many. But measured against the number of police interactions during the year with the kind of people who are rioting, and recognizing that there will always be some bad cops and some inexperienced ones, it’s a small number.

If American police forces were populated with an appreciable number of genocidal racists, or even just trigger-happy cops, the number of unarmed black males killed by police in a year would be much larger than 18. Indeed, if American police forces were populated with an appreciable number of out-of-control cops, we would be seeing a more violent response by the police to the rioting that’s plaguing our cities night after night.

And something Mirengoff doesn’t note, urban cops know the mayor and most members of the city council side with the rioters, and share their cop hatred. Imagine how that feels, it’s a wonder urban police departments can recruit or retain officers.