Bogus beer test is back, China set to weaponize biotech and other commentary

Covering Dan Osborn’s independent Senate run in Nebraska, The New York Times just revived the “massively overused campaign reporting clichéd” beer test — is this “a guy you’d like to have a beer with”?, smirks Racket News’ Matt Taibbi.“From Bush-Gore through the 2016 cycle it was nearly impossible to escape ‘beer test’ coverage,” as it was “a way for campaign reporters to flex” as “they were usually the chief arbiters of which candidate was beer-i-er than the next.” But the test “mainly vanished” once beer became “a stand-in for unredeeming deplorable values”: Donald Trump was the clear “beer” guy in 2016.

But now it’s back “thanks to an odd edge case in which Democrats can root for an Independent without endorsing heteronormative leisure tendencies.” Oy: “Man is this country weird sometimes.”Health beat: China Set To Weaponize BiotechMore than 40% “of the key building blocks for American medicines are sourced solely in China,” warns Bethany McLean at The Free Press.And the People’s Republic “now has almost as large a pipeline of experimental treatments as the U.S.,” per a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

The “scariest prospect”: “a Chinese takeover of the biotech industry so pervasive that it’s not inconceivable” Americans could become “dependent on China for their medicine,” with “catastrophic” consequences, as some in the industry insist it’s only a matter of time before China weaponizes biotech.Yes, “any action the U.S.

takes will require some pain,” whether for patients or Big Pharma profits.But “doing nothing” will only appear to cost nothing — “until it doesn’t.”Faith beat: The Left’s Forever War on NunsNew York state is “locked in a legal fight” with the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, whose Rosary Hill Home provides “free medical care to poor people with terminal cancer,” sighs John J.

Miller at The Wall Street Journal....