VENEZUELA: “In one of his strongholds, they were throwing eggs at Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela. Do you know how scarce eggs are now? And to use them to throw at the president? The slums are turning against the rulers. And the slums have long been their biggest backers.”
One of W’s bigger failures was not backing the coup that briefly ousted Hugo Chavez.
CARTER PAGE: ‘All the Lies … Are Finally Coming Out’
THE MESS OBAMA LEFT IN SYRIA: It wasn’t smart diplomacy.
DRIVE DIFFERENT: Apple has an official permit to test self-driving cars in California, DMV confirms.
Apple’s car program (“Project Titan”) was reportedly scaled back significantly a while ago, complete with numerous engineers being let go, but apparently their autonomous driving program still has plenty of gas.
SLATE: The Charging Bull Sculptor Is Right. Fearless Girl Should Go. What does the statue of a little girl standing in front of a charging bull, and the reaction to it, say about feminism?
READER BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Reader Gillian Nicholls recommends The Shield. It looks interesting.
VIDEO: The Moment The ‘Mother Of All Bombs’ Killed 36 ISIS Members.
Heartwarming.
UPDATE: Priceless, too.
BRUISING: Sen. Jeff Flake weathers brutal, 2 1/2-hour Mesa town hall.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake endured a brutal face-to-face confrontation with angry constituents Thursday as liberal voters dominated a standing-room-only audience at a town-hall meeting in downtown Mesa.
Even before he took the stage, the audience chanted “health care for all,” showing their support for former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the health-care-reform law that Flake, R-Ariz., has opposed.
A quick reminder to Sen. Flake and the other 289 or so GOP members of both houses: It isn’t just liberal voters who are disappointed in you.
CHANGE: Border crossings by illegals with children down 93% since December — thanks to smart PR by Trump and team. “One radio ad running in Honduras, quoted by Reuters, has a woman saying of her child, ‘It’s been a year and I don’t know if she is alive or dead. I’d do anything to have her here with me. Curse the day I sent her north.’ Tough stuff.”
ANDREW MCCARTHY: Republican Congress AWOL on Syria.
Where is the Republican-controlled Congress on Syria? By all accounts, it is busy cheerleading the president’s firing of 59 Tomahawk missiles at a foreign sovereign – an offensive attack that was unprovoked and unauthorized by Congress, rendering it unconstitutional. With a Republican in the White House, though, Republicans on Capitol Hill are all for executive overreach, despite having spent the last eight years chiding a Democratic president’s excesses and Middle Eastern misadventures.
Of course, the bottom line is the same: Congress does nothing. But at least during the Obama years, legislative spinelessness was swaddled in righteous constitutional rhetoric. Now, lawmakers outright encourage presidential imperiousness and their own consequent irrelevance.
A one-time strike is one thing, given that it could probably be justified on the grounds of a sarin threat to U.S. forces in the area — even if that justification were (ahem) somewhat specious.
But if President Trump wants to enforce some sort of no-chem-zone policy over Syria, which he does seem to want, then that ought to require an authorization from Congress.
KANGAROO COURT UPDATE: N.Y. state court decision setting aside SUNY student expulsion in ‘affirmative consent’ sexual misconduct case. “It is not clear to us that a reasonable person could find from these hearsay accounts an absence of ‘behavior that indicate[d], without doubt to either party, a mutual agreement to participate in sexual intercourse,’ as to do so would require overlooking the complainant’s admission that she removed her shirt when sex was suggested. . . . Petitioner then removed the rest of their clothing and asked the complainant if she had any condoms, to which she replied that she did not but that it was ‘fine’ and no reason to worry.”
OCCAM’S RAZOR SLICES THAT WAY, TOO: Analysts identify #SyriaHoax as Russian-fueled propaganda.
That hoax story was promoted by a network of Russian social media accounts and ultimately picked up by popular alt-right personalities in the United States, including Mike Cernovich, one of the leading voices in the debunked ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory. Cernovich popularized its new hashtag — #SyriaHoax — and sent it soaring through cyberspace. According to Trends24, within hours of the retaliatory missile strike President Donald Trump launched on Thursday night, #SyriaHoax was the No. 1 trending Twitter topic in the United States.
J.M. Berger of The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at The Hague, who studies propaganda and social media analytical techniques, said #SyriaHoax is “a clear example of a Russian influence campaign” designed to undermine the credibility of the U.S. government.
“The point of an influence campaign is to get people involved who wouldn’t otherwise be involved,” Berger said. “A lot of people in the alt-right would not necessarily characterize themselves as being pro-Russian, but they’re receiving influence from this campaign.”
Berger cannot say whether Al-Masdar News is backed by either the Syrian government or the Russian government, only that the outlet “is being promoted at an extraordinary level by this [Russian] network” and the Kremlin has a history of weaponizing disinformation.
Yes they do.
SLOWER, PLEASE: China Takes Wraps Off National Hypersonic Plan.
The conference, which gave many Chinese researchers their first opportunity to display many years’ worth of research to a wider Western audience, underlined the nation’s impressive overall advances in all areas of high-speed flight research for defense, transport and space access. While progress in some specific defense areas—most notably the recent flight tests of the DF-ZF/WU-14 hypersonic glide vehicles—was not discussed, the progress indicated by the underlying research makes it readily apparent that China is making strides in hypersonic capability much faster than previously thought.
The scope of high-speed technology activity, added to evidence shown at the conference of large-scale government investment in comprehensive test facilities, appears to support recent assertions made in the U.S. that China is on track to quickly overtake America’s hard-won leadership in the field. The claim, made in 2016 by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and by think tanks such as the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, comes as both China and Russia conduct demonstration flights of air-breathing and boost-glide hypersonic weapon systems. Both nations are believed to be targeting 2020 for deployment of the first operational units.
This is extremely difficult stuff to do, and if China isn’t just blowing smoke, then we’re going to have to reassess their entire military aviation effort.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Tax deadline pushed to Tuesday.
The 15th is a Saturday which usually pushes it to Monday but Monday is a holiday in DC.
‘Til Tuesday then.
TIM WU ON ATTENTION THEFT.
I had a couple of related pieces here and here, back in 2003.
IN THE MAIL: The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Save 72% on “Fast & Furious: The Ultimate Ride Collection 1-7.”
And, also today only: Lumina 15000 mAh Ultra Compact Portable Charger 2-Port External Power Pack, $27.19 (22% off).
Also, Diamond Pendant Necklaces Starting at $199.99.
And, don’t forget, brand new Lightning Deals, updated every hour.
ROGER SIMON LAYS DOWN A MARKER: Trump Will Win Bigly in 2020.
QUESTION ASKED: If Trump Fired Bannon, Would He Seek Revenge?
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