October 8, 2024

COLD WAR II: U.S. Nuclear Deterrence: What Went Wrong and What Can Be Done? “Contemporary U.S. plans for the modernization of nuclear forces are an approximately 15-year-old legacy of the Obama Administration. They were established at a time when many U.S. officials believed that U.S. relations with Russia and China were relatively benign and would remain so, or improve further. Correspondingly, these plans reflected no sense of urgency and, with the exception of a modified B61 bomb, nothing is soon-to-be operational. How a new presidential administration and Congress decide to (or not) adapt the U.S. nuclear posture given the unmistakable reality of a much more dangerous than expected contemporary threat environment will affect the U.S. nuclear force posture for decades, and, consequently, U.S. deterrence strategies and options.”

Previously: Obama: The ’80s called, they want their foreign policy back.

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Saturday Night – When Liberals Loved Free Speech.

There’s plenty to chew on during the film. The cast members do good-enough impressions of Lorne Michaels, Chevy Chase and John Belushi. It’s fun to see comedy institutions like “Weekend Update” in their earliest forms.

Another takeaway? How much “SNL” has evolved over the years.

It’s gotten worse. Much worse. And the show’s political leanings are now to the Left of Stephen Colbert. And it shows.

They always were; Chevy Chase thought that hapless liberal Republican Gerald Ford was the antichrist. But in the beginning, Lorne Michaels was essentially making the weekly television version of National Lampoon magazine. (Chase, Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner and original head writer Michael O’Donoghue were all originally with the Lampoon.) As a result, the show was hip and irreverent; decades on though, it now exists only to provide Sunday column fodder for Beltway journalists. As John Hinderaker wrote in 2017 at Power Line, political reporters and wire services love to recap SNL episodes, because it allows them to get their biases in print while still maintaining a thin veneer of objectivity. “‘Respectable’ news outlets like the AP can’t publish absurd comedy skits ripping President Trump, much as they might like to,” Hinderaker wrote. “But by covering Saturday Night Live, they turn such meaningless attacks into fake ‘news.’”

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

COLUMBIA BROADCASTING STRUGGLE SESSION UPDATE:

Jerry Dunleavy gets results!

Presumably this is one of the “leaks” that CBS was trying to prevent:

By way of contrast, instead of Maoist struggle sessions, this is what CBS News journalists were doing 80 years ago:

What happened in recent years to cause once grizzled newsmen and women to become so brittle that the sight of a book author being asked tough questions suddenly gives them the vapors? (Answer, among other things, safetyism.) Once again, we’ve entered some sort of bizarre hell-world in which Piers Morgan is a voice of sanity: Walter Cronkite would be turning in his grave at this cowardly CBS attack on good journalism.

Earlier: The Columbia Broadcasting Struggle Session: How Is CBS Marking October 7? By Admonishing Tony Dokoupil.

Posted at 2:25 pm by Ed Driscoll

AIRBRUSH ALERT:

Related: Kamala Implodes During CBS News Interview.

UPDATE: 60 Minutes Edits Harris’ Train Wreck Answer on Israel to Make It Sound Coherent.

Kyle Morris, formerly of Fox News and Breitbart.com asks, “Why is 60 Minutes speaking for Kamala Harris? This interview should have been aired in its entirety, unedited.”

Beyond the obvious answer (res ipsa loquitur), jump cuts are what newsrooms do during presidential election, though more often, it’s to harm candidates, not save them. Recall ABC cutting up Sarah Palin’s September 2008 interview with Charlie Gibson so badly, then Glenn wrote in the New York Post shortly thereafter, “Bring Your Own Camera.”

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

10 STATE ABORTION BALLOT INITIATIVES: the Washington Stand’s Ben Johnson lays out the stakes in the 10 states where pro-abortion activists have succeeded in getting ballot proposals extending abortion-on-demand through the ninth month.

Posted at 1:50 pm by Mark Tapscott

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Can Kamala Harris escape the ‘Hubert Humphrey problem?’

That marginal role applied to all vice presidents before the modern era. It was captured in the most famous quote about the office, uttered by one of FDR’s previous vice presidents. The job, John Nance Garner said, wasn’t “worth a bucket of warm piss.” (That quote used to be bowdlerized for public consumption as “warm spit.”)

Since Garner’s day, the bucket has been removed and the VP’s job increased markedly. This new, more prominent role influenced the VP’s run for the top office in 1960, 1968, 1976, 1984, 1992, 2000, and now 2024. In each of those, the party holding the White House nominated the vice president (or, in 1984, the party’s last sitting last vice president) for the top spot. The exception was 2016, when Barack Obama passed over his vice president, Joe Biden, and gave the nod to Hillary Clinton. Biden has been furious at both Obama and Clinton ever since, all the more so since Clinton lost (and, of course, he figured he would have won).

What changed in the modern era, making the vice president so likely to become the next presidential nominee? Beyond the detailed reasons (listed below), there is one overarching change: the vice president’s job has become much more important and visible as the national government has grown so vast. The Executive Branch, with its myriad of regulatory agencies, is too big and complex for the president and a small staff to control. He needs a much larger staff and a second-in-command who can handle whatever major tasks he assigns.

With the vice president’s larger role come four major advantages in becoming the party’s next nominee. Today’s vice presidents have:

  • much higher name recognition than their predecessors
  • political backing from the outgoing president (except in 2016 and perhaps now)
  • strong ties to the party’s elected officials, campaign consultants and donors across the country, and
  • a sure way to tap into the party’s fundraising apparatus, essential for today’s campaigns

Those advantages make it likely, though not certain, the vice president can not only win the nomination but win it without a damaging primary battle.

Incumbent vice presidents have one more advantage, or rather they have it if their administration is popular near the end of the term, as Bill Clinton’s was. The VP can credibly claim a share of that success. The recurrent theme is, “I not only supported all these great policies, I help devise and implement them, right alongside the (popular) president.”

If the administration is unpopular, the vice president never utters those words.

Until now:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

STUNNING BUT DEADLY:

Posted at 1:33 pm by Stephen Green

SOME PARTS OF AMERICA STILL WORK — WHEN BIG GOVERNMENT LETS THEM:

Posted at 12:43 pm by Stephen Green

HERE’S THE BOTTOM LINE ON BIDEN BORDER: New video on X has man in Arizona explaining to an illegal immigrant how he and his car full of friends can be registered to vote. Both of the guys in the video must have heard Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) “saying the quiet part out loud.”

Posted at 12:40 pm by Mark Tapscott

THIS IS CNN:

Shot: Vance blames liberal rhetoric for apparent assassination attempt against Trump.

—Headline, CNN, September 17th.

Chaser: CNN Panelist Aisha Mills: “As A Black Lesbian” Is Donald Trump Going To “Attempt To Exterminate” My Bad Genes?

AISHA MILLS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Listen, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard this kind of talk from Donald Trump and it reeks of authoritarianism and it also harkens back to a time of Hitler, who used the same exact language that Donald Trump is now quoting to talk about the people who he thinks are poisoning the blood of the nation.

* * * * * * * *

As a Black lesbian who Donald Trump doesn’t believe has genes as good as his, is he going to attempt to exterminate me when he gets elected?

—Real Clear Politics, today.

That’s quite an odd thing to say on a cable news program, given Trump’s long history of supporting gay marriage, and according to Newsweek in July: Trump’s New GOP Platform Is a Massive Win for LGBT Americans.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

NOW HE’S CONNECTING PEOPLE’S CELLPHONES TO SATELLITES:

Best part: “I’m really smart, I work for the Wall Street Journal.” “I’m smart, not like everybody says, like dumb! I’m smart!”

That was in 2018. Now: SpaceX Starlink Has 227 Direct to Cellphone Capable Satellites. “The Direct to Cell network leverages the infrastructure they have built for Starlink over the past several years. Direct to Cell satellites plug into the existing Starlink satellite constellation via laser backhaul; meaning even our early satellites can provide services anywhere with regulatory approvals without requiring dedicated ground infrastructure. They also leverage all the existing networking, ground stations, and Points of Presence (PoPs) Starlink has developed. The Direct to Cell data travels over Starlink’s core directly to the operator’s core, providing a seamless integration.”

They’re going to activate direct to cell service in Florida after Hurricane Milton strikes, too.

Think how much more they could be doing if Elon were as smart as a WSJ reporter. . . .

Posted at 12:19 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TO BE HONEST, DENTISTS WERE FOOLS TO ENDORSE FLUORIDE, IT WRECKED THEIR CAVITY-FILLING BUSINESS MODEL: Court tells EPA to consider fluoride risk, to dentists’ dismay. “A federal judge last month handed a major victory to opponents of water fluoridation, capping a seven-year legal battle over whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has failed to protect the public from potential toxic effects of fluoride, which is added to the tap water of around 200 million Americans.”

Posted at 12:18 pm by Glenn Reynolds