History for September 26

History for September 26 - On-This-Day.com
John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) 1774, Ivan Pavlov 1849 - Physiologist, T.S. Eliot 1888



George Gershwin 1898, Olivia Newton-John 1948 - Singer, actress ("Grease"), Serena Williams 1981 - Tennis player


1962 - "The Beverly Hillbillies" premiered on CBS-TV.


2006 - Facebook was opened to everyone at least 13 years or older with a valid email address.

Ben Shapiro Dismantles Bernie Sanders' Disparaging View Of America | Daily Wire

Ben Shapiro Dismantles Bernie Sanders' Disparaging View Of America | Daily Wire:

Shapiro then played a clip of the perpetual grumpy Sanders complaining:
"We can’t even use dirty words. This is the United States Senate ... We just starve little children, we go bomb houses and buses of children, and give tax breaks to billionaires, but we don’t use dirty words."
Sanders' "ignorant and unfunny" take on the country, said Shapiro, was important to examine a little more closely because "it reveals a serious gap in the way Americans from the hard Left think versus the rest of America."
"In the view of the hard Left, universal ills are uniquely America’s fault;

The way we were-----Detroit Spinners - Rubberband Man

Boob-tube-----60th Anniversary of 1958's TV Fall Season of 39 Westerns! It's Cowboy He...

Imagine if Kavanaugh was a black man-----New Research Confirms We Got Cholesterol All Wrong - Reason.com

New Research Confirms We Got Cholesterol All Wrong - Reason.com
"A comprehensive new study on cholesterol, based on results from more than a million patients, could help upend decades of government advice about diet, nutrition, health, prevention, and medication. 
Just don't hold your breath.

The study, published in the Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, centers on statins, a class of drugs used to lower levels of LDL-C, the so-called "bad" cholesterol, in the human body. 
According to the study, statins are pointless for most people.
"No evidence exists to prove that having high levels of bad cholesterol causes heart disease, leading physicians have claimed" in the study, reports the Daily Mail. 
The Express likewise says the new study finds "no evidence that high levels of 'bad' cholesterol cause heart disease."...
Read all!

Worth another view-----To Kill a Mockingbird (4/10) Movie CLIP - Atticus Cross-Examines Mayella...

How Dianne Feinstein is conspiring to destroy Brett Kavanaugh

How Dianne Feinstein is conspiring to destroy Brett Kavanaugh:

For starters, they argue that Feinstein, who is the top Democrat on the Senate committee vetting Kavanaugh, orchestrated an “11th-hour ambush” of the conservative nod by withholding a letter from the committee’s Republican majority alleging sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh until the day the panel was preparing to take a vote to confirm him — almost two months after receiving the letter and well after the vetting and hearing process.
“You chose to sit on the allegations until a politically opportune moment,” a furious Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) scolded Feinstein in a letter dated Sept. 19.

The city could pay billions for a test that didn’t really discriminate

The city could pay billions for a test that didn’t really discriminate: 
"It’s just nuts that the city might have to cough up billions for supposedly racist teacher-certification exams it stopped using long ago. 
But don’t count on Mayor de Blasio to fight it.
To be clear: No one has ever had to show that the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test, aka LAST, was actually discriminatory. 

“Disparate impact” law makes it necessary to demonstrate only that members of minority groups perform worse on an exam than their peers. 
And if officials can’t then prove the tests are effective at screening out unqualified would-be employees — a highly subjective measure — well, case closed.
Thus, federal Judge Kimba Wood found that the fact that more than 90 percent of whites passed the LAST, but less than 62 percent of blacks and 55 percent of Hispanics did, was enough to brand it “biased” and hold the city liable.
Now, as The Post reported Thursday, a court-appointed special master has recommended the city pay $91.6 million to 219 plaintiffs theoretically harmed by the LAST “discrimination.”...
Read all!

Tech Giants Spend $80 Billion To Make Sure No One Else Can Compete - Slashdot

Tech Giants Spend $80 Billion To Make Sure No One Else Can Compete - Slashdot
"An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg:
Google parent Alphabet and the other four dominant U.S. technology companies -- Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook -- are fast becoming industrial giants. 

They spent a combined $80 billion in the last year on big-ticket physical assets, including manufacturing equipment and specialized tools for assembling iPhones and the powerful computers and undersea internet cables Facebook needs to fire up Instagram videos in a flash. 
Thanks to this surge in spending -- up from $40 billion in 2015 -- they've joined the ranks of automakers, telephone companies, and oil drillers as the country's biggest spenders on capital goods, items including factories, heavy equipment, and real estate that are considered long-term investments. Their combined outlay is about 10 times what GM spends annually on its plants, vehicle-assembly robots, and other materials. 
...The $80 billion tab also is a snapshot of why it's tough to unseat the tech giants. 
How can a company hope to compete with Google's driverless cars when it spends $20 billion a year to ensure it has the best laser-guided sensors and computer chips?..."
Read on!

You decide-----Kavanaugh denies assault allegations in exclusive interview

Noon-toon

Flashback: Clarence Thomas responds to Anita Hill

Kavanaugh fires back at latest allegation, says he won’t be ‘intimidated into withdrawing’ | Fox News

Kavanaugh fires back at latest allegation, says he won’t be ‘intimidated into withdrawing’ | Fox News:

“I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process,” Kavanaugh wrote in the letter. “The coordinated effort to destroy my good name will not drive me out. The vile threats of violence against my family will not drive me out. The last minute character assassination will not succeed.”
Kavanaugh, who intends to testify Thursday before the committee about the allegations along with the first accuser, has been hit with fresh but uncorroborated accusations.
“There is now a frenzy to come up with something—anything—that will block this process and a vote on my confirmation from occurring,” Kavanaugh wrote. “These are smears, pure and simple. And they debase our public discourse.”

Public sector unions must be reined in

Public sector unions must be reined in
"Public sector unions have long exploited taxpayers by pushing for higher taxes, higher spending, and generous benefits and extravagant pensions for government workers while opposing efforts to hold bureaucrats accountable.
...Although the public sector is much smaller than the private sector, public sector union members make up nearly half of all union members. 
... 34.4 percent of the public sector was unionized while only 6.5 percent of the private sector was unionized.

...This past May, President Donald Trump issued three executive orders to deal with some wasteful bureaucratic practices, 

• including public unions’ free use of taxpayer-funded office space,
• numerous federal employees conducting union business on government time, and lengthy firing processes for underperforming workers.

In the short term, Congress should at least allow for the firing of federal government workers on an expedited basis, while still providing due process rights, by immediately passing the MERIT Act.

Of course, Democrats can be expected to obstruct almost any effort to rein in public sector unions or to streamline the removal of incompetent bureaucrats..."

Read all.

Report: Congress Should Stop Funding International Junk Science Agency | Competitive Enterprise Institute

Report: Congress Should Stop Funding International Junk Science Agency | Competitive Enterprise Institute
"American taxpayers fund an international agency that puts out junk science, scaring consumers and leading to costly jury decisions and unnecessary product bans, a new Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) report documents.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is an influential but secretive research group, funded by world governments and housed within the World Health Organization. 
...The agency focuses on determining if a chemical or activity poses a “hazard,” but that should be just the first step in risk assessment. 
The next steps should consider dose and exposure and whether actual human exposures are significant enough to matter.
“IARC’s hazard-based approach results in nonsensical cancer classifications, placing plutonium and smoking in the same carcinogenic category as salty fish and processed meats,” said Angela Logomasini, CEI senior fellow and author of the report. 
“Worse, the organization has become tainted by political influences and conflicts of interest.”...
Read all.

#1 This day 1973-----Grand Funk Railroad - We're An American Band song [promo film]

What’s Coming Next? | Power Line

What’s Coming Next? | Power Line
A reader passed along to me a top ten list of the next accusations that will be thrown at Brett Kavanaugh, which appeared in a comment thread on Ann Alhouse’s site. 
I wasn’t able to spot the author quickly, but hat tip to you whoever you are, for this is genius:

Top Ten Other Things Brett Kavanaugh Has Done:

10. “Mr. Brett” at McMartin Pre-School

9. Helped Jack Johnson violate the Mann Act

8. Shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die

7. Mocked Chuck Schumer by singing “The Name Game” using Schumer’s moniker while at a Yale party

6. Allowed Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle to take the rap for him

5. Physically abused his Sierra Club activist girlfriend

4. Left a woman to drown in an Oldsmobile

3. Shot President Reagan to impress Yale classmate Jodie Foster

2. Gave Sheldon Whitehouse the finger at the Giant Food in the Westwood Shopping Center in Bethesda

1. Had sex with Stormy Daniels while wearing a Donald Trump mask

Read on.

Note the date of this editorial cartoon.

You ought to know!

James Woods banned from Twitter, defends free speech - Washington Times

James Woods banned from Twitter, defends free speech - Washington Times:

Woods said he wants open discourse, and called the situation a dangerous one for free speech.
“I wish this were about an unknown Twitter user so that I could be even more passionate about it,” Woods said. “This is not about a celebrity being muzzled. This is about an American being silenced – one tweet at a time.”