Next year will be the most opportune time for North Korea to bolster its nuclear program because of upcoming leadership changes in the United States and South Korea, according to a senior North Korean official who defected recently to the South.
“With South Korea holding presidential elections and the U.S. undergoing an administration transition, the North sees 2017 as the prime time for nuclear development,” said Thae Yong-ho, who was North Korea’s second highest ranking diplomat in London.
Archive for 2016
December 28, 2016
SPACE RACE: China Says We will be on Mars by 2020.
Wu Yanhua, deputy chief of the National Space Administration, said Beijing aims to launch its first Mars probe around 2020 to carry out orbiting and roving exploration, followed by a second mission that would include collection of surface samples from the red planet.
She said other plans include sending probes to Jupiter and its moons.
“Our overall goal is that, by around 2030, China will be among the major space powers of the world,” she said.
The Soviet Union achieved its first successful Mars landing in 1971, but the Soft Lander unit failed after relaying just 20 seconds of video. The U.S. followed suit by landing two Viking spacecraft in 1976, and both operated continuously for several years. China last tried to put a spacecraft in orbit around Mars in 2011, in conjunction with a Russian landing craft. However, an orbital failure caused both spacecraft to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere weeks after the launch.
China seems to have a bit of catching up to do.
MAD DUCK: Obama Administration Yanks Second Amendment Rights from SSI Recipients.
Hey, those Augean Stables don’t fill themselves, you know; more swamp for Trump to drain starting next month.
MARK RIPPETOE ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS, in Ask Rip #38.
DANNY GLOVER, HISTORIAN: History of America About ‘Annexation’ and ‘Violence’
THEY THOUGHT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: How Analytical Models Failed Clinton: Her campaign was so confident in its data that it opted not to do tracking polls in states that decided the election.
In 2004 the Howard Dean, George W. Bush-Dick Cheney, and John Kerry-John Edwards presidential campaigns advanced the uses of data to contact voters, but it was the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama that took analytics to a whole new level. The infatuation with analytics after Obama’s reelection in 2012 prompted some of his operatives to say they didn’t need traditional polling anymore.
When Hillary Clinton began putting together her 2016 campaign, she brought on board many Obama veterans, going all in for the new technology. Donald Trump’s general-election campaign also employed analytics, though how sophisticated and important it was in his victory is a matter of considerable debate. House and Senate campaign committees and super-PACs also used analytics to varying degrees.
The reliance, or perhaps overreliance on analytics, may be one of the factors contributing to Clinton’s surprise defeat. The Clinton team was so confident in its analytical models that it opted not to conduct tracking polls in a number of states during the last month of the campaign. As a consequence, deteriorating support in states such as Michigan and Wisconsin fell below the radar screen, slippage that that traditional tracking polls would have certainly caught.
According to Kantar Media/CMAG data, the Clinton campaign did not go on the air with television ads in Wisconsin until the weeks of Oct. 25 and Nov. 1, spending in the end just $2.6 million. Super PACs backing Clinton didn’t air ads in Wisconsin until the last week of the campaign. In Michigan, aside from a tiny $16,000 buy by the campaign and a party committee the week of Oct. 25, the Clinton campaign and its allied groups didn’t conduct a concerted advertising effort until a week before the election.
In fact, the Clinton campaign spent more money on television advertising in Arizona, Georgia, and the Omaha, Nebraska markets than in Michigan and Wisconsin combined.
Worse, due to bad targeting their vaunted “ground game” wound up driving Trump voters to the polls. Trump had his get-out-the-vote operation, and made Hillary pay for it!
ROUND TWO: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Indicted Again on Corruption Charges
Several members of her administration, including Julio De Vido, a former planning minister, and José López, a former public works secretary, were also charged in the case. Lázaro Báez, a businessman long associated with Mrs. Kirchner and her husband, Néstor Kirchner, was charged, too. One of his companies, Austral Construcciones, was accused of being the beneficiary of corruption.
The former officials are accused of being part of an illegal association “that operated between at least May 8, 2003, and Dec. 9, 2015, and was created to commit crimes to illegally and deliberately appropriate itself with funds that were assigned to road works,” according to the indictment. The charges focus on 52 projects in the southern province of Santa Cruz, where Néstor Kirchner was governor for more than a decade until he became president of Argentina in 2003.
Julián Ercolini, a federal judge, said that Mr. Báez’s company, which did not exist until shortly before Mr. Kirchner became president, was awarded contracts worth $2.97 billion. That included 15 percent surcharges above the original cost of the contracts, Judge Ercolini added.
It would be nice if our own Justice Department pursued high-level crimes up to Argentina’s standard.
THE HIGHEST-GROSSING FILM OF 2016 IS LIBERTARIAN: “We may not be perfect, but the safest hands are still our own.”
CARRIER: IT’S NOT SO MUCH ABOUT WAGES AS ABOUT OVERREGULATION:
In March, a debate broke out about why Carrier, the air conditioning manufacturer, was planning to move 2,100 jobs from two Indiana factories to Mexico. “This is about Carrier chasing Mexican wages at $3 an hour,” Democratic Sen. Joseph Donnelly (Ind.) charged at the time.
That prompted Jim Schellinger, president of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, to write a letter to correct the record. While Carrier would indeed pay Mexican workers $3 an hour, plus another $3 in benefits, “extensive federal regulations were the leading factor of the decision to relocate 2,100 manufacturing jobs,” he wrote to Donnelly, according to a copy of the letter released as part of a public record requests.
Carrier’s plans sparked national attention after President-elect Donald Trump, who had promised to prevent the offshoring, intervened, securing a deal to keep 800 jobs on American soil in exchange for roughly $7 million in state tax incentives.
That was a sliver of the $65 million the company projected it would annually save after shuttling jobs south of the border, triggering questions about why Carrier agreed to the deal.
The March letter, which was previously reported by Indianapolis television news, may offer a clue. How Trump and Carrier reached an agreement remains murky. Speculation has focused on the company’s desire to please the new president and maintain United Technologies’ government contracts. But in a company statement, Carrier asserted the Trump administration will “create an improved, more competitive U.S. business climate.”
Trump, meanwhile, has promised to scale back regulation.
“Fifty-three new regulations,” Trump said in a Dec. 1 speech at Carrier’s Indianapolis plant, repeating a figure that Robert McDonough, the chief executive of Carrier parent United Technologies, had used to explain the regulations his company faced. “Massively expensive and probably none of them amount to anything in terms of safety. … Your unnecessary regulations are going to be gone.”
Well, good.
INDEED: Climateers Can’t Handle the Truth.
Donald Trump, our new president-elect, has been tagged for indiscriminately referring to climate change as a hoax. Here’s what he actually said at a campaign rally in South Carolina one year ago about climate advocacy: “It’s a money-making industry, OK? It’s a hoax, a lot of it.”
This statement, with its clearly framed qualifications, is true and accurate in every detail. It’s a statement of basic truth that can be embraced, and increasingly should be, by exactly those people most concerned about man-made climate change.
Yet it won’t be, for reasons demonstrated by the New York Times’ adoption of the term climate denialist, whose deliberately non-discriminating function we now take care to state precisely: It enables a kind of journalism that is unable—incapacitates itself—to stumble on truths that would be inconvenient to climate religion.
Read the whole thing. And if you need a way past the WSJ paywall, you might find one here.
SLATE: 2016 Was The Year The Feminism Bubble Burst.
What’s amusing is that Facebook juxtaposed that overwrought hysteria from Michelle Goldberg with this: Hate To Break It To You, But You Are The Reason Your Life Sucks So Much. Maybe it’s random, maybe one of Zuckerberg’s tech-bros is having fun, maybe the algorithm is truth-seeking. . . .
PUSHING BACK AGAINST A CENTURY WORTH OF FAKE NEWS AND TAKING STOCK: TOP MYTHBUSTING POSTS OF 2016.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: American Studies: A Sad Tale of Academic Decline. “Once it was a vibrant and useful discipline. Today, I’m sad to report, it is a regular source for ‘What wacky stuff are they up to on campus?’ articles and blogs. . . . I might chuckle if I weren’t employed and mentally invested in the field, and if I did not have residual respect for the open-minded, pragmatic approaches which marked American Studies for the first decades of its existence. But sadly, for the last generation, American Studies—beset by a nagging awareness that making interdisciplinarity the norm when studying culture became mission accomplished at least 20 years ago—has scooted pell-mell towards politicization in a misbegotten effort to remain relevant. The result today is an academic sub-specialty wedded to a tightly-corseted belief that the United States represents the locus of sin (racism, sexism, colonialism, and the like) in the modern world, and that any study of America should restrict itself to call-outs and condemnations. American Studies now serves chiefly as validation system for academicians who know their findings in advance: racism, sexism, and imperialism.”
TERROR: Tunisian Man Detained In Connection To Berlin Market Attack.
The 40-year-old, who wasn’t identified, was detained during a search of his home and business, federal prosecutors said.
The man’s telephone number was saved in the cellphone of Anis Amri, a fellow Tunisian believed to have driven a truck into the market on Dec. 19. Amri, 24, was killed in a shootout with police in a suburb of Milan early Friday.
Of the new suspect, prosecutors said in a statement that “further investigations indicate that he may have been involved in the attack.”
Twelve people died in the truck attack. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility.
Prosecutors have until Thursday evening to determine whether the case against the 40-year-old is strong enough for them to seek a formal arrest warrant. That would allow them to keep him in custody pending possible charges.
Investigators are trying to determine whether Amri had a support network in planning and carrying out the attack, and in fleeing Berlin. They’re also trying to piece together the route he took from Berlin to Milan.
The Schengen Area made it possible to travel throughout most of Europe with less hassle, but it also has made it easier for terror suspects to flee between police jurisdiction and intelligence agencies which are still, unlike travelers and terrorists, largely confined to their home countries.
HARRY REID, 21st CENTURY JOE McCARTHY, AGING JEDI KNIGHT:
“As my staff will tell you,” Reid said to me when we spoke the next day, “I’ve done a number of things because no one else will do it. I’ve done stuff no one else will do.” I expected him to give an example of a successful parliamentary maneuver or perhaps a brave political endorsement, but instead he mentioned one of the most disreputable episodes of his long career, when, during the 2012 presidential campaign, he falsely accused Mitt Romney of not having paid his taxes. (Even though the facts were wrong, the accusation spurred Romney to release his tax returns, which showed he had only paid 14.1 percent.) “I tried to get everybody to do that. I didn’t want to do that,” Reid said. “I didn’t have anything against him personally. He’s a fellow Mormon, nice guy. I went to everybody. But no one would do it. So I did it.”
As Stephen Miller tweets, “There were no fact checkers on Reid’s claim. No CNN chyrons. No snarky tweets. He got away with it & media gave him a farewell tour for it.” Which brings us to the paragraph that follows in Reid’s profile in the far left New York magazine. Seemingly oblivious to the venality of what Reid just volunteered to the magazine, a New York editor signed off on this description of the Democrat standard-bearer:
Reid appears significantly older than his 77 years. A horrible exercise accident on New Year’s Day in 2015 — when an elastic band he was using in his suburban Las Vegas home snapped and he tumbled into some cabinets — broke bones in his face, as well as his ribs, and left him blind in one eye. It was his declining physical condition that ultimately led him to decide not to seek reelection in 2016. Today, Reid is extremely hunched and walks with the aid of a cane; his voice, always reedy for a politician, is now sometimes so soft that it’s barely audible. But Reid is as stern and blunt as ever, and the combined effect of his mental and physical condition has given him a Yoda-ish quality.
Sure, I get the Yoda and Harry Reid confused all the time, myself. As Jim Geraghty tweets, “Reid is everything the national political media claims to hate, but they can never quite fully denounce him.”
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: New Study Reveals Boys Prefer Blocks and Puzzles to Dolls.
What’s less shocking, alas, is that National Geographic is dispensing PC pabulum instead of actual, you know, geography.
STOP ME IF YOU THINK YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE: Hundreds of Unwelcome Immigrants Set Up New Illegal Camps Near Calais.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Save 20% on Adidas Fitness.
Plus, Lightning Deals galore. There are new ones every hour, so check back often!
SHOT: Israel pressing ahead with settlements despite UN vote.
An agenda published by Jerusalem City Hall listed applications for at least 390 new homes whose approval looks certain to intensify international and Palestinian opposition to the Israeli settlement-building.
The Municipal Planning and Construction panel usually meets Wednesdays and the permit requests were filed before the Security Council resolution.
Settler leaders and their supporters have been urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step up construction in East Jerusalem, accusing him of having slowed its pace last year because of international pressure.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported Tuesday that 1,506 housing units for Israelis have already been approved in East Jerusalem this year, compared with 395 in 2015.
The Jerusalem Municipality said in a statement Tuesday it would “continue to develop the capital according to zoning and building codes, without prejudice, for the benefit of all residents.”
CHASER: Jerusalem cancels vote on settlement construction “until after Kerry speech.”
AND ANOTHER SHOT: Israel approves four-storey east Jerusalem settler building.
Doesn’t anyone know what’s going on in Israel today?
Whatever the case, it’s absurd the notion that any group of nations could have any say in how Israel develops its own ancient capital. And it’s shameful that Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Samantha Power have aided and abetted antisemites at the United Nations.
TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME: Anti-Trump Sign Irks Even Liberal Massachusetts Neighbors.
Sharon Kurinsky proudly told the Herald she hung the sign — “Trump-Free Zone! No ignorant, bigoted, criminal, pathological liar, misogynistic narcissistic greedy pig scumbag is allowed here! Never my president!” — on her porch several weeks ago.
“I was just so outraged by Trump that I had to do something for my own satisfaction,” Kurinsky said. “There’s never been anybody I hated as much as Trump.”
So it’s not everyone who’s getting over it.