12 NEWS Best columns: The U.S.
Omni Mount Washington ResortQA woman in Germany
walked into an Audi dealer-
ship and tried to buy a
car with 15,000 euros in
counterfeit cash so amateur-
ish it looked like Monopoly
money. Examining the wad
of bills, the flabbergasted
salesman asked the woman
if she wanted to play Mo-
nopoly. When the woman
insisted she was serious, the
salesman phoned the police,
who raided the 20-year-old’s
home and found another
13,000 euros in fake notes
produced by a very cheap
inkjet printer and regular
office paper. “We have
experienced plenty of scam
attempts before,” the sales-
man said, “but so far, no one
has been this brash.”
QA black bear saun-
tered into a hotel in
New Hampshire
and lingered on
the balcony, ap-
parently enjoy-
ing a view of
a spectacular
sunrise. Employee
Sam Geesaman
said he was working
the night shift at the Omni
Mount Washington Resort
when the bear entered,
sniffed around for food, and
“decided to hop up on the
rail and enjoy the sunrise, as
I had intended to do myself.”
Worried about hotel guests,
Geesaman stomped his
foot and clapped his hands
loudly, driving the bear into
the woods for what he called
a “quieter sunrise viewing.”
QAn Arizona woman revived
27 minutes after her heart
stopped asked for a pen
and a piece of paper, and
wrote, “It’s real.” Tina Hines
went into cardiac arrest
and appeared close to
death; her heart had to be
restarted with a defibrillator
five times. When she finally
regained consciousness,
she wrote her message and
began pointing upward with
tears in her eyes, explaining
she had seen heaven. “It
was so real, the colors were
so vibrant,” Hines later said.It must be true...
I read it in the tabloids“The defenders of Sen. Al Franken are perhaps the single most embar-
rassing group of allegedly progressive people in the Democratic coali-
tion,” said Amanda Marcotte. Nearly 20 months after Franken resigned
from the Senate following eight accusations of “sexual impropriety,”
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker has portrayed the Minnesota Democrat
as a “victim” of #MeToo hysteria. Seven senators are quoted saying they
regret demanding Franken’s resignation, because he deserved “due pro-
cess.” Mayer’s piece does present “a strong case” that Franken’s original
accuser, fellow USO performer Leeann Tweeden, was a right-wing oper-
ative who had a partisan motive for claiming Franken kissed her against
her will. But seven other women with “nothing to gain from lying,”
including Democrats and constituents, also said Franken had kissed
them on the lips or groped them. If Franken had stayed to fight the alle-
gations, he’d have sat on the Judiciary Committee for Brett Kavanaugh’s
confirmation hearings. Republicans would have had an “irrefutable
piece of evidence” that Democrats take sexual abuse seriously only “if
it benefits them politically.” Franken had to go, even if some Democrats
still find it “crushing to believe” that he was creepy with women.For more than 100 million years, the mosquito has been “our apex
predator, the deadliest hunter of human beings on the planet,” said
Timothy Winegard. About 100 trillion of these blood-sucking insects
patrol our world, transmitting diseases that kill 700,000 people every
year. By infecting human beings with yellow fever, malaria, and a host
of other parasites, viruses, and bacteria, mosquitoes “may have killed
nearly half of the 108 billion humans who have ever lived.” Now the
“life-and-death” battle between mosquitoes and people “may be coming
to a head.” Scientists armed with a gene-editing technology called Crispr
have designed mosquitoes that produce infertile offspring. If released
en masse into the wild, these biologically altered bugs could render
mosquitoes extinct. Limited field experiments have shown this strategy
actually works. There is fear, however, that eradicating mosquitoes could
have unforeseen consequences, allowing some other species to become a
threat, or otherwise disturbing “mother nature’s equilibrium.” Still, with
both old and new pathogens like Zika spreading, it would be a mistake
to underestimate the deadly threat mosquitoes pose to our species. At
some point, we may have to choose between us and them.Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is colliding with “socialist reality,”
said Marc Thiessen. Earlier this year, Sanders proudly announced that his
campaign “would be the first in history to have a unionized workforce.”
But he is now facing a “labor revolt.” Sanders field organizers working
60 hours per week are protesting that their annual salary of $36,
works out to $13 an hour, well below the $15 national minimum wage
championed by the campaign. The Sanders campaign pushed back, argu-
ing that its wages and benefits are “competitive with other campaigns.”
But McDonald’s and Walmart also offer wages and benefits similar to
their competitors’. That hasn’t stopped Sanders from demanding they
pay higher wages. After being publicly embarrassed, the campaign agreed
to raise salaries to $42,000, pay full premiums for health-care coverage,
and cap hours at 50 per week. But why should Sanders stop there? He
has promised Americans free college tuition, free prescription drugs, and
universal child care. If he gave his workers all that, of course, “his cam-
paign would quickly run out of cash.” As former British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher famously put it, “The trouble with socialism is that
eventually you run out of other people’s money.”Al Franken’s
delusional
defenders
Amanda Marcotte
Salon.com
Sanders’
socialist
hypocrisy
Marc Thiessen
The Washington Post
Should we
eliminate
mosquitoes?
Timothy Winegard
The New York Times
“From 2006 to 2012, roughly 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills
crisscrossed America. What the opioid crisis illustrates is not that there are a
few bad apples in the pharmaceutical industry, but that the country’s entire health-care system is
driven by profit at the expense of public health and safety. Drug manufacturers, pharmacy chains,
drug distributors, and insurance companies got rich while people, especially people lower down the
income ladder, suffered—and the Drug Enforcement Administration, through neglect or incompe-
tence or a mix of both, watched it all happen.” Zachary Siegel in NewRepublic.comViewpoint