October 4, 2024

THE DINOSAURS MUST REALLY HAVE BEEN ASKING FOR IT: Asteroid that eradicated dinosaurs not a one-off, say scientists. “Detailed scans of an underwater crater off the coast of Guinea in West Africa suggest that it was created when another large asteroid smashed into the planet around the same time at the end of the Cretaceous period.”

Posted at 10:42 am by Stephen Green

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Those Non-Endorsements Are Piling Up For Kamala. “We’ve been seeing this from one union after another, including large segments of the auto workers. Democrats have been taking these endorsements for granted for years, but now the actions of Biden and Harris seem to be coming back to bite them. Donald Trump has been out on the campaign trail portraying himself as the candidate for the working class. He has made significant inroads in that sector of the electorate. The union leadership ranks haven’t been able to bring themselves to endorse a Republican… at least, not yet. But the rank-and-file workers are clearly in the mood for a change to the status quo.”

As I’ve said before, the GOP is now the multiracial party of the working class. The Democrats are the party of the billionaires and corporations, and their hangers-on.

Posted at 9:46 am by Glenn Reynolds

WILL THE REAL KAMALA HARRIS PLEASE SHUT UP?

Posted at 9:40 am by Stephen Green

TWO MEN SAY THEY’RE JESUS. ONE OF THEM MUST BE WRONG. Shot: Mayorkas Warns of Funding Shortfall for Rest of Hurricane Season.

Chaser: FEMA: We have plenty of money.

Hangover:

UPDATE: A friend comments: “The big, unspoken problem here is one word. Competence. Our Federal government is no longer competent. It’s been massively politicized. The Obama era accelerated an already left leaning government bureaucracy into one that is incompetent at anything except punishing its perceived enemies in ways that make Nixon look positively saintly.”

Plus, from the comments: “One might ask how they are running out of money in day 4 of FY2024/2025.”

Posted at 9:23 am by Glenn Reynolds

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Trump Needs to Be Outside the Margin of Magic Mail-In Ballots. “True, I’m happy that Trump is ahead right now, but I’m not going to get carried away by optimism. I can think of no worse way to wrap up this election than by finally passing out from exhaustion in the wee hours of November 6 with Trump leading in all of the swing states, only to wake up and see votes for Harris ‘Poof!’ into existence in all of them.”

Posted at 9:09 am by Stephen Green

THE NEW SPACE RACE: The SLS’s launch tower now costs far more than the world’s tallest building.

In 2019, NASA awarded Bechtel a contract to deliver a launch tower – a glorified steel truss far simpler than the booster catching towers SpaceX assembles in weeks – by March 2023 for a total cost of $383m.

As of today, the OIG reports that the tower will cost $2.7b and is to be finished by September 2027, but more likely 2029. For reference, the Burj Khalifa is seven times taller, contains paying tenants, hotels, and shops, and was built in five years for just $1.5b.

If you had $2.7b in 27 million $100 notes, and you piled them up, they would be so much taller than Bechtel’s non-existent launch tower that you’d need not one, not two, but 23 separate piles to exhaust the supply. Whoever wrote Bechtel’s side of the contract certainly earned their bonus. Whoever wrote NASA’s side should be made to paint the entire structure with a toothbrush – but I expect they’ve long since been on Bechtel’s payroll in some kind of advisory no-show job.

I’m out of words — and the launch tower failure is just one of several billion-dollar failures-by-design described in detail at the link.

Posted at 8:38 am by Stephen Green

ABORTION PILL SAFE FOR MOM? In a word, no. Data compiled by the FDA shows women using the abortion pill experience far more side effects requiring emergency room visits than Tylenol users, according to the latest  “What Would You Say” video on HillFaith. And thus does another Lie of the Left go down in flames.

Posted at 8:28 am by Mark Tapscott

FREE SPEECH WIN IN VIRGINIA: French teacher Peter Vlaming was fired by West Point (Va.) public schools officials when he refused to use the pronouns insisted upon by a student undergoing sex transitioning procedures, according to the Christian Post.

But Vlaming, refusing to submit quietly, sought out legal representation by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and sued the school board. He won this week, including a settlement of $575,000 in damages and attorneys fees, plus agreement by the board to remove the firing from Vlaming’s official records.

Posted at 8:13 am by Mark Tapscott

NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN POLICY PROFESSIONALS FOR TRUMP:

Posted at 8:09 am by Glenn Reynolds

THEY VETTED WALZ LIKE THEY VET ILLEGALS: Walz says he ‘speaks like everybody else.’ And it’s not working for the campaign.

Buried lede:

It’s unclear whether Walz’s verbal errors will undercut his credibility with voters. But the need to continually clean up those claims could politically hurt Walz and Harris, who are locked in a tight race with Donald Trump and JD Vance. And in some cases, key members of Harris’ circle weren’t aware of some of the inaccurate statements until they became public despite the vetting process, according to four people familiar with the conversations who were granted anonymity to discuss the matter.

Emphasis added.

Walz had repeated lies like his Tiananmen Square and military service stories for decades.

Posted at 7:36 am by Stephen Green

TYPICAL: NYT opinion columnist M. Gessen displays shockingly little concern for free-speech values.

Flashback: “There are no working-class censors.” “The dirty secret of content moderation all over the world is that it’s a tiny sliver of educated rich correcting everybody else. It’s telling people what fork to use, but you can get a degree in it, basically. The problem is America has the most useless aristocrats in history. . . . These people have no honor, no belief, no poetry, no art, no humor, no patriotism, which is unique to them, no loyalty, no dreams, and no accomplishments. They are simultaneously illiterate and pretentious, which is very hard to pull off. They may have one idea, and it’s not even an idea, but a sensation. Fear. Rightly so, because they snitch each other out at the drop of a hat. They’re afraid of each other. But they’re also terrified of everyone outside their social set, and they live in near constant dread of being caught with even one original opinion.”

Posted at 7:24 am by Glenn Reynolds

KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: Jack Smith’s October Surprise: It’s impossible not to suspect the special counsel’s filing is politically motivated. “Politics hath no fury like a prosecutor scorned, and it appears the American electorate won’t be allowed to forget it. That’s the best read of special counsel Jack Smith’s newly unsealed filing in his criminal case against Donald Trump. Congratulations, Attorney General Merrick Garland: You’ve got your own 2024 ‘election interference’ story line. Mr. Smith filed the 165-page brief last week, his latest response to an embarrassing defeat at the Supreme Court in July.”

Everything Jack Smith does is politically motivated.

Posted at 7:15 am by Glenn Reynolds

HEH:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds