Archive for 2017
June 23, 2017
SOCIALIST UTOPIANISM EXPLAINED: Trudy Schuett’s “Iron Ladies” blog takes an interesting look at the history of Socialist Utopianism:
“As the first of the socialists, Robert Owen made some obvious mistakes that would continue to be made until the present day. The first of those was his failure to recognize people as individuals. He saw people as a homogeneous mass, with identical needs, without taking into account the differences that abound in character, ability, intelligence and other aspects that make us all uniquely human. He never recognized that his fellow socialists had free will, and most of them wouldn’t hesitate to use it. Neither did he recognize that his solution for economic slavery and oppression was equally oppressive and enslaving, only in a different form.”
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
WHY ARE WE READING ABOUT THIS? Obama ordered cyber ‘implants’ for Russian network in response to hacking.
BRINKSMANSHIP: North Korea tests rocket engine, possibly for ICBM.
The United States assessed that the test, the latest in a series of engine and missile trials this year, could be for the smallest stage of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) rocket engine, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
A second U.S. official also confirmed the test but did not provide additional details on the type of rocket component that was being tested or whether it fit into the ICBM program.
One official said he believed the test had taken place within the past 24 hours.
North Korea’s state media, which is normally quick to publicize successful missile-related developments, did not carry any reports on the engine test.
I’m not sure whether to breathe a sigh of relief, or wonder if the Norks have progressed far enough that they no longer need to exploit successes for propaganda purposes.
CLAUDIA ROSETT: Of Course Otto Warmbier’s “Confession” Was Coerced.
CORD-CUTTING: YouTube TV expands to ten more US metropolitan markets.
REGULATORY COSTS, PART DEUX: Axios’ Kim Hart reporting that payphones (remember them?) are so few and far between that the cost of regulation outweighs revenue:
“Cincinnati Bell asked the FCC last month for a waiver to exempt it from filing the annual audits tracking pay phone transactions. According to FCC filings, the cost of Cincinnati Bell’s audit is now about five times the amount of revenue it makes from its pay phones. Sprint also asked for a waiver.”
Most bureaucracies (particularly the FCC) are loathe to waive jurisdiction or oversight, but let’s see what happens.
F-35 UNLEASHED: The Paris display may not silence the critics, but it certainly changed the conversation.
Lockheed test pilot Billie Flynn, who flew the much-anticipated F-35 aerial demonstration at the Paris Air Show, showcased the capabilities of the controversial new fighter in a way that has never before been seen. The F-35’s slow-speed maneuverability and the power of Pratt & Whitney’s 40,000-lb.-thrust engine were on full display, with the aircraft climbing vertically into the sky and gently falling into a controlled, 360-deg. pedal turn.
The F-35 is not as agile as the twin-engine, thrust-vectoring F-22 Raptor, which is designed for air-to-air combat. But pilots say when the F-35 is flown in the way it is designed to be flown, it is a formidable dogfighter—far more so than its predecessor, the F-16, or any other fourth-generation fighter.
“This aircraft, down low in this environment, is an absolute monster,” says Flynn. “It is more powerful, it is more aggressive than any of us, including those of us [who] fly the F-35, would have imagined.”
There’s video here if you’re interested.
DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO: The Daily Signal breaks down revealing numbers on legislators advocating for a $15/hr minimum wage:
Almost all of the lawmakers who co-sponsored a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour also hired unpaid interns to supplement their staffs, a survey shows. A report from the Employment Policies Institute reveals that 174 of the bill’s 184 co-sponsors, or 95 percent, hire interns who are paid nothing.
Well, color me shocked!
FLORIDA MAN: If you like bizarre “Florida Man” stories (and who doesn’t) you need to read Will Greenlee in the TCPalm: “Flap involving deflated bounce house in Port St. Lucie sends man to jail.” He owns this beat.
PRIVACY: Before You Hit ‘Submit,’ This Company Has Already Logged Your Personal Data.
If you’re daydreaming about buying a home or need to lower the payment on the one you already have, you might pay a visit to the Quicken Loans mortgage calculator. You’ll be asked a quick succession of questions that reveal how much cash you have on hand or how much your home is worth and how close you are to paying it off. Then Quicken will tell you how much you’d owe per month if you got a loan from them and asks for your name, email address, and phone number.
You might fill in the contact form, but then have second thoughts. Do you really want to tell this company how much you’re worth or how in debt you are? You change your mind and close the page before clicking the Submit button and agreeing to Quicken’s privacy policy.
But it’s too late. Your email address and phone number have already been sent to a server at “murdoog.com,” which is owned by NaviStone, a company that advertises its ability to unmask anonymous website visitors and figure out their home addresses. NaviStone’s code on Quicken’s site invisibly grabbed each piece of your information as you filled it out, before you could hit the “Submit” button.
During a recent investigation into how a drug-trial recruitment company called Acurian Health tracks down people who look online for information about their medical conditions, we discovered NaviStone’s code on sites run by Acurian, Quicken Loans, a continuing education center, a clothing store for plus-sized women, and a host of other retailers. Using Javascript, those sites were transmitting information from people as soon as they typed or auto-filled it into an online form. That way, the company would have it even if those people immediately changed their minds and closed the page.
I never browse the web without a Javascript blocker extension.
BONUS MONEY: The U.S. military wants more money to pay bonuses to keep trained personnel and attract new recruits.
In 2010 the U.S. military adopted a new bonus system for scarce medical and other technical specialists. The new program enabled the military to pay market rates for specialties like brain surgery and Internet security. In the past, the bonus program was not directly linked to the market salaries for needed specialists, who would not join and work for existing pay levels linked to rank and time in the service. In many cases, where specialists were needed for a short time, qualified civilians were hired. This specialist shortage has been a growing problem, including for purely military specialists. Currently, the military spends about half a billion dollars a year for bonuses, although during the height of the Iraq war, it was over a billion dollars a year.
Yes, it takes money to train and retain.
THEY ALSO INCREASED THE CHOCOLATE RATION FROM 30 GRAMS TO 25: San Francisco Nanny-Staters Ban Sale of Flavored Vapor Products.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Do giraffes get struck by lightning more often than other animals?
NORTH KOREAN CHEMICAL WEAPONS: North Korea has them.
Assessing the chemical artillery. North Korea is believed to have placed a high priority on chemical weapons ever since Kim Il-sung’s “Declaration of Chemicalization” in 1961. But the quantity, quality, and durability of the North Korean chemical arsenal are unknown. In the 1970s, intelligence estimates by the United States and South Korea rated North Korea’s chemical warfare potential as mostly defensive. By the late 1980s, views had changed; Pyongyang was believed to have 250 tons of mustard gas and some nerve agents. By 2010, North Korea was estimated to possess 2,500 to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons, mostly sarin and the nerve agent VX. Furthermore, it is assumed that North Korean military doctrine treats chemical weapons as a natural aspect of the nation’s scheme of maneuver, and that chemical weapons would be used from the outset of hostilities. Chemical weapons are reportedly pre-deployed—with one out of three North Korean projectiles believed to be chemical. The February assassination of Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia with VX was undoubtedly a reminder to North Korea’s enemies of the chemical threat that Pyongyang poses.
Bruce Bennett of the RAND Corporation reports that eight manufacturing facilities have been identified in North Korea, capable of producing 5,000 tons of chemical weapons a year during peacetime and 12,000 tons during wartime. The Nuclear Threat Initiative, meanwhile, reports that North Korea has 11 production and storage facilities—in addition to 13 research and development facilities, two test ranges, and four military bases equipped with chemical weapons, as well as facilities near the cities of Kanggye and Sakchu prepared to fill chemical artillery.
MORE:
Reason to hesitate. Details about North Korea’s chemical arsenal are not known with confidence. We do not know for sure what chemical weapons North Korea would use or how it would use them. The North’s repeated threats to turn Seoul into a sea of fire may be only rhetoric. The North’s strategic views concerning deterrence and escalation are also unknown. History shows a willingness in Pyongyang to engage in military provocations short of the level that would justify a renewal of the Korean War. Nonetheless, it is possible to make a rough estimate of the impact of a massive chemical artillery attack on a large urban center such as Seoul. Ultimately, such an estimate is illustrative, representing one of many possible scenarios, yet it can still provide a reasonable understanding of the potential magnitude of a sarin artillery attack against civilian population centers.
Long article but well worth the read.
MONEY: Why Democrats can’t quit Nancy Pelosi.
Democrats would have massive gaps to fill if they were to oust Pelosi.
Chief among those is fundraising. Since 2002, Pelosi has hauled in $568 million for House Democratic campaigns — including $141 million during the 2016 campaign cycle.
Pelosi also has a long history of holding her party together through difficult votes — enabling former President Barack Obama to shepherd into law a series of Democratic-backed measures in 2009 and 2010 and later forcing Republicans to grapple with the politically damaging divisions within their own ranks.
No other Democrat possesses the stature to match those accomplishments.
That reality was the subtext for Pelosi’s taunting remarks Thursday in which she cast her Democratic critics as hungry for attention rather than serious about ousting her.
“When it comes to personal ambition and having fun on TV, have your fun,” Pelosi said. “I love the arena. I thrive on competition.”
Of the political impact of the Republican attacks: “I think I’m worth the trouble,” she said.
Half a billion dollars worth of fundraising is nothing to sneeze at, but even that has gotten Democrats the majority in just two elections — one won on the back of George W. Bush’s implosion, and the other on Barack Obama’s coattails.
BY THE NUMBERS: Four Senate Republicans Say They Can’t Support Health Care Bill Yet.
The four conservative GOP senators — Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Ted Cruz of Texas — released a joint statement Thursday afternoon outlining their concerns:
“Currently, for a variety of reasons, we are not ready to vote for this bill, but we are open to negotiation and obtaining more information before it is brought to the floor. There are provisions in this draft that represent an improvement to our current healthcare system but it does not appear this draft as written will accomplish the most important promise that we made to Americans: to repeal Obamacare and lower their healthcare costs.”
“It looks like a reiteration or a keeping of Obamacare,” Sen. Paul told reporters Thursday afternoon. “I’m a ‘no’ on the bill currently.”
Paul said the group came out together because they’d have more negotiating power to move the bill in a more conservative direction.
Their displeasure includes the amount of subsidies given to people to purchase insurance, the Medicaid expansion continues for another three years and the $15 billion per year to prop up the insurance companies providing insurance in the individual Obamacare market for the next three years.
There may be some kabuki going on here, much like Nancy Pelosi’s mock drama the day her House passed ObamaCare — she’s too sharp an operator to have held the vote if she didn’t already have the votes.
McConnell’s bill still has a few missing items, such as cross-state purchasing, any one of which might be enough to bring Johnson and Lee on board. My gut feeling is that Paul and Cruz will remain holdouts, but McConnell only needs two more votes plus Mike Pence to pass the thing.
But then there’s this from the NYT: McConnell’s Calculation May Be That He Still Wins by Losing.
In his 2016 memoir, “The Long Game,” he noted that, as minority leader, he went out of his way to make sure that one party owned the health care issue. “I wanted a clear line of demarcation — they were for this, and we were against it,” he said. Perhaps he is not excited to let that one party now be his own.
We should have an answer in the next week.
NEW FORMULA: Want instant clicks or buzz around your article or stage production? Play to the groundlings and cast Trump as the villain: “George Orwell Saw Donald Trump Coming: Review of ‘1984’. I don’t know how old this Daily Beast writer is, but I suspect he was still in high school when this was happening:
In 2011, Obama signed a four-year renewal of the Patriot Act, specifically, provisions allowing roaming wiretaps and government searches of business records. Obama argued that the renewal was needed to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. However, the renewal was criticized by several members of Congress who argued that the provisions did not do enough to curtail excessive searches.
I know, research is hard, and it would have been too much work to find out that mass-spying was commonplace under the previous administration. At least, not when there’s a click-bait narrative to promulgate. Democratic operatives with bylines, indeed.
**UPDATE: I should have linked to this Obama ad using 1984 as a metaphor for Hillary.
FRAUD: 1.4 Million Illegal Aliens who Pay Taxes Are Using Fraudulent Social Security Numbers. “The IRS is doing virtually nothing to protect taxpayer’s identity.”
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: One killed as Venezuelan troops fire on protesters. “Shooting outside La Carlota airbase in Caracas brings death toll from near-daily unrest to at least 76 since April.”
More:
At least two soldiers shot long firearms through the fence at protesters from a distance of just a few metres. One man collapsed to the ground and was carried off by other demonstrators, television footage showed. Paramedics took at least two other wounded people to a hospital, a witness told Reuters news agency.
The protesters began attacking the fence outside La Carlota airbase in the wealthy east of Caracas when security forces broke up a march destined for the attorney general’s office.
Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have taken to the streets over the past months to protest against a clampdown on the opposition, shortages of food and medicine, and President Nicolas Maduro’s plan to overhaul the constitution.
Illinois, call your office.