October 15, 2024

I THOUGHT THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A SATIRE SITE:

Posted at 8:02 am by Glenn Reynolds

ARE YOU IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA?:  On Tuesday, November 12 at 5:30 p.m., JUDGE PATRICK J. BUMATAY will be delivering our annual Bowes Lecture at the University of San Diego School of Law.  This is our annual conservative speaker series—made possible by a generous donation by my dear friend Mrs. Joan E. Bowes.

Judge Bumatay will be speaking on “The Value of Dissent.”  If you’re in SoCal, I urge you to be there.  It’s free (including the reception), but you need to register.

Posted at 8:01 am by Gail Heriot

WOEING: Boeing’s defense unit logs massive $2 billion in losses for third quarter.

Boeing’s defense unit will take $2 billion in losses on fixed-price contracts when it reports its third quarter results later this month, the company disclosed today, bringing total defense-related charges for the company up to $3.2 billion this year. The wider company also announced plans to slash 10 percent of its total workforce.

The charges to its defense arm come as the US planemaker hemorrhages money amid an ongoing strike by its Seattle-area machinists union and as it announced the conclusion of its 767 freighter production — both factors the company states contributed to losses on the T-7A trainer, MQ-25 tanker drone, KC-46 tanker and NASA’s Starliner in the most recent financial quarter.

The T-7 trainer logged the largest charge, worth $900 million, due to what the company said were higher estimated costs for production in 2026 and beyond.

Behind it, the KC-46 logged a $700 million loss due to Boeing’s decision to end production of the 767 freighter, the commercial aircraft on which the militarized tanker is based. The company also pointed the finger at the ongoing machinists union strike, which has paused production of commercial airplanes, such as the 767 made in the company’s Seattle facilities.

The company did not lay out a breakdown for the losses incurred by the MQ-25 and Starliner programs.

There are still three available Commercial Crew missions to ISS on Starliner that Boeing was expected to win and three that the company is already contracted to fly. But there’s no word yet from either Boeing or NASA on Starliner’s fate.

Posted at 7:33 am by Stephen Green

SPEAKING OF AMERICAN HISTORY: Check out HillFaith’s newest feature, “Faith of the Founders,” which once a week digs into the treasure trove of historical fact to recover gems illustrative of the faith that helped shape the founding generation’s understanding of individual liberty, the relationship of citizens to each other and their government, and the nation’s destiny.

Today’s entry gives an idea of how George Washington encouraged us all to treat one another. Probably sounds corny or naive to modern ears, but things would be so different in this country today if Washington’s advice was still heeded.

Posted at 7:30 am by Mark Tapscott

PUNCTURING THE ‘SOUTHERN STRATEGY’ MYTH: Don Surber addresses that perennial illusion trotted out every four years by Democrats and their media allies — the idea that 1964 GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater carried only his home state of Arizona and five Deep South states, thereby launching a fundamental realignment in American politics.

Those five Southern states were the anchor of the  “Solid South” that had been uniformly Democratic since the Civil War aka “the Late Unpleasantness.” Goldwater carrying them against LBJ supposedly signified the GOP becoming the favored party of bigots, KKKers, ignorant rednecks and fans of Jim Crow.

Not true — not even close to true — and the historical facts on the ground cited by Surber today prove it.

Posted at 7:19 am by Mark Tapscott

UN-READINESS: Running out of SM-3 at Sea? “One of the things that came up in yesterday’s Midrats was the intersection of a couple of bits of OSINT that, if correct on my part, is just another blinking red light warning that we are not equipping ourselves for a serious conflict west of the International Date Line. . . . The use of ballistic missiles by Iran twice this year to attack Israel and their ongoing use by proxies against, well, everyone, is not a ‘surprise.’ This has been known for a long time. Same as China’s ballistic missiles—both land attack and anti-ship—these too are not new, and their numbers are huge. Any military move by the US Navy west of the international date line will face thousands of conventionally armed ballistic missiles in addition to anti-ship cruised missiles, aircraft and submarines. Of all the challenges, the ballistic missiles are the hardest.”

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

October 14, 2024

LEFTIES: ELON HAS RUINED TESLA.

DATA:

Posted at 11:31 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CRISES BY DESIGN: Inside America’s Fastest-Growing Criminal Enterprise: Sex Trafficking.

At the barbecue joint off Route 75 in Dallas, Lisa pulls out her phone to show me the dozen or so online platforms that traffickers and pimps use to sell girls for sex. The platforms—which include apps like TikTok, OnlyFans, and Facebook—are chockablock with ads of women, usually wearing lingerie, their faces covered to prevent anyone guessing their age. The sheer number of ads is astonishing. “Each week, we track over 12,000 ads for women in Houston, 2,600 in San Antonio, 3,500 in Austin, and 14,000 in Dallas,” says Lisa.

I ask her if the sex trafficking of migrant girls had increased since the Biden administration threw open the border, leading to 8 million migrants crossing the southern border since 2021. “Yes,” she says. “Nearly all of my sex-trafficking rings now are migrant girls. The ads exploded within the first three months of the border being open. We started noticing new sites and ads in Spanish. That was very few before. Then sites dedicated to Latino girls popped up everywhere.” Since the border opened, Lisa added, over 90 percent of the ads are for migrant girls.

“If I wanted to, I could order a girl within 15 minutes,” Lisa says. “It’s that easy.”

Martha Raddatz would say, wait until you get those numbers under five minutes before we declare it a crisis.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll