We respond…
This may seem small — but most regular people know that if your sister (a former federal judge) specifies that you not be allowed a mic at her funeral… she views you as of low moral character.
And she had said as much — while still alive.
She said he “stood only for… himself.”
This ought to resonate with the plain folk he claims are his base.
His own sister was openly wary of his motives — and vain ambitions.
I’m out, but me? I love the newly muzzled version Tangerine.
Through a vent shaft, the 40 trapped borers / miners have been supplied with light, oxygen, food, water and medicines — and are able to communicate via walkie-talkie with surface rescue crews.
That’s all well and good, but ongoing fracturing / fissures in the bedrock have led to a pause in drilling efforts — to reach them.
Here is AlJazeera on it all:
…Indian rescue workers have paused efforts to reach 40 men trapped in a collapsed highway tunnel over fears of more cave-ins.
Rescuers temporarily suspended work on Friday after a “large-scale cracking sound” was heard while trying to restart a drilling machine, the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) said.
The sound created “a panic situation” for rescuers and there was a “strong possibility of further collapse”, the NHIDCL said….
Now you know. We will keep a close watch, as we earlier said. Do keep a good thought… these people need some positive ju ju, in their Himalayan rescue efforts. Onward.
नमस्ते
I’ll admit it: there are few things Musk related that I really care about, any longer.
As to Elon (certainly on social / political issues), he’s a chump.
For me — mostly, my complaint is that his X-itter tech is often… busted.
Yep, he is increasingly just a stupid autistic spectrum buffoon, as to all world affairs that… actually matter. [Same with Hinderaker.]
And Elon’s latest SpaceX launch (again!) exploded this morning — before reaching orbit. The second stage lit, but then blew apart. Back to the drawing board, Elon — space is… hard.
In any event, so much for that IPO in the next few weeks.
John does admit that what he said directly on X-itter, and the stuff he’s been amplifying are… problematic. But John just uses the word… “stupid“… and… Gives him a pass.
Well. I’m not surprised.
Hinderaker’s always believed… the people with the gold make the rules. That’s his golden rule. Just as Mirengoff said overnight — these guys want speech codes that only apply to what others are allowed to say and write. Idiotic.
Y A W N.
It is all rather… boring, John — both you and Elon.
Out.
Messrs. Mirengoff and Otis today pretend that police officers are not trained in what the Constitution, and our system of ordered liberty, under the law, contemplate — as to the balance of dangerousness, weighed against the entrusted power to use deadly force.
This is a more than pungent piece of garbage from those two.
Both of them well know, as now convicted murderer ex-officer Dixon knows… there is an express prohibition on using deadly force, against a fleeing suspect, for simple property crimes. And there was zero evidence that Dixon knew the man was dangerous, at the time, or that he had some priors.
In sum, the police MUST — if they cannot safely apprehend a property crime suspect not known to them to be armed and endangering the public or other officers, allow the suspect to flee, and call for backup.
That is, all law enforcement officers are trained not to fire at fleeing non lethal crime suspects.
This guy, Dixon instead… FIRED on the fleeing suspect, killing him and injuring others.
So this 25 year stint — like the one given Derek Chauvin (for murdering George Floyd, in Minneapolis), and those meted out to the Chicago officers in the LaQuan McDonald case… is for DETERRENCE, Paul.
It is to send a notice to bad (and good) cops, that they cannot be… executioners, where the threat of the suspect is small, compared to the probability that the cop will kill him/her, without any judicial process.
All of which is well settled criminal law — for over 50 years. Paul, and his nut job buddy Bill well know it. They just want a reason to howl into the dawn… about… nothing.
Out.
Today, he takes aim at what he calls “mushy thinking” by American / Jewish journalists — ones with whom he disagrees, apparently, about Gaza — and what may lawfully (and perhaps more importantly, morally…) be done, in response to the terror attack there, on 10.07.2023.
But in the end, his central argument is that he wants to be the one who calls “balls and strikes” — in sum, he wants his own brand of “speech codes”. [His “okay for discussion list” appears at right, in black. Note that he wants only to discuss “relations” — but would leave calling it ~2,300 years of on and off warfare… as NOT allowed. Damn.]
It is astonishing that he and his former fellows at Powerline spent a decade arguing that “the left” was censoring offensive speech in violation of our founding promises.
Then Israel gets attacked (and, in fairness — that’s after a decade of on and off smaller scale attacks, BY Israel, in Gaza — and ones that resulted in civilian casualties, more than sporadically).
And now — he decries as “not allowed” — any speech by any Jew, or Arab or Christian or atheist that expresses the approval of an “eye for an eye” sentiment used by Hamas — one that Israel (is this moment) is deploying, and lauding — in fact.
That is probably all I need say, to demonstrate the illogic and hypocrisy of his post today.
This is… just one gargantuan freight train… and it just will not… slow down much — before 2032, or so.
You may trust me that the people talking any form of “doom and gloom” as early as 2028 (on first patent expiry)… just don’t understand continuations and reformulations and… frankly… evergreening, of patents in pharma. Even if all that misses — it will be a slow entry, given how hard it is, from a biotech standpoint, to make an equivalent immuno oncology agent, and get generic FDA approvals.
So, even if pembrolizumab declines a bit in 2029 or ’30… it will still almost certainly still be an over $25 billion [yes, with a “B”!] a year juggernaut. Here’s the latest, from Fierce Pharma:
…[It’s good news] for Keytruda, [as] the blessing is its seventh indication in gastrointestinal cancers in the United States and the 38th overall for the checkpoint inhibitor which is poised this year to overtake AbbVie’s Humira as the world’s top selling drug. Merck reported sales of $20.9 billion last year for Keytruda, which was a 22% increase from 2021….
The approval was based on data from the phase 3 KEYNOTE-859 trial, which showed Keytruda plus chemotherapy reduced the risk of death by 22% compared to chemotherapy alone. Median overall survival was 12.9 months for patients on the combo versus 11.5 months for those on chemotherapy….
Onward, to another warmish, and sunny Fall Friday… grinning ear to ear.
नमस्ते
The posture of this case differs substantially from the Friends of George’s case (which we’ve been covering) — as does the actual text of the law — less substantially.
But just as in Memphis this past summer, a USDC Court in Florida earlier had enjoined Florida Senate Bill 1438 (as signed by Gov. DeSantis in May) — as likely violating the federal First Amendment. And the Supremes just refused to change that.
So, this one is on a normal Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals timeline once again — and the law may not be enforced anywhere in all of Florida, against… anyone. Here’s the bit, signed by six Justices, overnight:
…In sum, because this Court is not likely to grant certiorari on the only issue presented in Florida’s stay application, it is appropriate for the Court to deny the application….
Now you know. Sanity… bit by bit… is making a comeback. Grin.
नमस्ते
Hinderaker — as ever — pops off about things he doesn’t bother to research.
Tonight, it’s Magellan. John says (without evidence of any kind) he had little to no interactions with slavers.
That is laughably… wrong — two seconds on Google proves it.
No, Hinderaker — he is known to have owned slaves… aboard ship. [He freed one upon his death by will. The man’s name was Enrique of Mallaca. He was of mixed race.]
Moreover, Magellan forcefully kept indentured servants long after they paid their debt.
He did some notable things, true. But as to the charge of being… utterly dishonest… he is guilty.
There are plenty of honest people to name cosmological structures after.
Cheers, chucklehead.
Out.
This is no surprise. Once again, Steve comes to a snap judgment — without understanding the data in the chart he posts. He’s just a chucklehead.
This time, it is whether Roman Catholic priests (on the basis of their own subjective self-evaluations) are more — or less — “progressive” than their predecessors self-reported to be, in the early 1960s.
In the main, priests who would have answered in the early 1960s would have felt less free to indicate how they really felt, prior to the elevation of the progressive (for the times) John the XXIII.
Also, in the main — most of those early 1960s priests… are either retired or long dead.
But most importantly, what has changed in 62 years… is what the word “progressive” means, to the average US priest. In 1960… it would NEVER have included a favorable view on a woman’s right to an abortion. It would have referred to Christ’s “social gospel” (Matthew 25:31-46) — of all of us being our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers — and thus being supportive of the US Civil Rights movement, and MLK’s “War on Poverty”, LBJ’s Great Society programs… and later, opposing war in Vietnam.
So here in 2020s, when a US priest says he is “orthodox” — in the main, he means he doesn’t agree that women may abort a zygote, without sinning. That’s all. That is the litmus test for US priests.
They mean… can they in good conscience say that human beings are not formed at conception, or a day after — when just a dividing cell line. The orthodox answer of course is that humans begin at conception.
And that is the central dividing line in the US Catholic church at the moment. To be progressive is to say that a fetus may be aborted up to and through the second trimester (the old Roe dividing line). [I suspect, but cannot independently verify at present that most EU Catholics would see it the same way, as well.]
So what has happened in 62 years is that the definition of “progressive” has shifted.
That’s all, Steve. Please offer contra- evidence — if any there be. I would also note that, in his own chart, the tiny minority — 20% in 1960 who claimed to be “progressive” — are now the same 20% who use that word to mean something else, in 2020. Same, as to the 80% who claim orthodoxy, in their views. [We are seeing in the chart what appears as a minority viewpoint — not what the word itself means here, three generations later.]
To be clear, despite what might be inferred from the first graphic above, I speak as a recovering US Roman Catholic — here, raised in a mountain town, as a “conservative” Catholic family of nine children. That was how I was raised — but it is not the lens through which I view the world, this evening.
So, in sum — I know a little more about it than Steve does.
So… do sit down, Steve.
As a [very!] long-in-the-tooth pharma M&A lawyer, I can confidently say there is well-vetted, very clear language (we all know how it reads) to make sure — as you are selling someone a company, and/or its associated product lines — that you will NOT, as seller, be responsible for the past (and, in other cases — future) liabilities that arise — from alleged product defects.
That language was… in fact missing, from the Stock and Asset Purchase Agreement Merck and Bayer signed, back in 2014. And so, Merck’s stock is trading off just a bit, on the NYSE, with news that the Delaware courts have uniformly now ruled that Merck must indemnify Bayer for these products liability claims. Here’s a bit from Bloomberg, but I’ll quote only the decision itself, as the Law portion of Bloomberg resides behind a paywall. And, btw — I am 100 per cent sure of my answer, having read the deal myself (and knowing that no one would end up “net” paying over $10 billion for these consumer health assets) — and having handled similar claims with respect to the old boluses of mammary implant litigation, many years ago. . . on nearly identical Stock and Asset Purchase Agreement clauses. Enjoy:
…Had the parties intended to impose the time limits set forth in Section 10.1 [Indemnification] on the Section 2.7(d) Liabilities, then one would expect explicit language to that effect. Instead, the parties expressly stated that “nothing in this Section 2.7 shall affect [Bayer’s] rights pursuant to Article X [in Indemnification]….”
Looking at the purchase price provision of the SAPA, I am further convinced that Merck’s position is untenable. Section 2.8 of the SAPA governs the purchase price of $14.2 billion agreed upon between the parties; this consideration is given by Bayer in exchange for the “Company Common Stock and the Transferred Assets, and the assumption of the Assumed Liabilities.” The explicit acknowledgement of the Assumed Liabilities as consideration contrasts with the absence of any mention of Bayer’s assumption of the Section 2.7(d) Liabilities. If these sophisticated parties intended for Bayer to eventually assume the Section 2.7(d) Liabilities retained by Merck, one would expect to see that transfer addressed as part of the consideration as it was with the Assumed Liabilities.
This absence further highlights the flaws with Merck’s argument. Accordingly, considering the commercial context, the structure of the transaction, and other provisions of the SAPA, Merck’s asserted interpretation of the SAPA must be rejected….
And… Bayer paid (at least in part) $14.2 billion for the right to be indemnified from old talc claims on these consumer health businesses. So, while Merck may try a “Hail Mary” / long shot attempt at asking the US Supreme Court to take the question on cert., it is likely this ends here — and thus, with Merck on the hook. Now you know.
नमस्ते
Powerline Lies... 