IN THE MAIL: Joel Engel’s Scorched Worth: A True Story of Destruction, Deceit, and Government Corruption.
Archive for 2018
May 29, 2018
DOES KIM SEE TRUMP AS HIS SAVIOR? No previous North Korean dictator has viewed any American president as anything but a lethal threat to his survival. Now Kim Jong-un is openly telling the world Trump must provide security guarantees for the North Korean regime as a condition of any denuclearization agreement.
Does that qualify as Kim turning massive U.S. military force from threat to assurance of his power? Maybe Rocket Man is more clever than he’s heretofore been given credit. Former Army Vice Chief of Staff Jack Keane provides the perspective required to put the opening query in proper context.
ROGER KIMBALL: Disney is considerably more repulsive than Roseanne: Of course her tweet was in bad taste. So what? I love how people who’ve spent half a century tearing down the culture suddenly complain that others are nekulturny. But it was never about getting rid of all sacred objects or limits to freedom — just the ones they didn’t like.
SYRIA? ARE YOU SERIOUS? SYRIA?: The United Nations is beyond parody, says Paul Mirengoff.
GOT BUMPED? Here’s What Airlines Owe You.
AT AMAZON, summer savings in Sports and Outdoors.
YOU DON’T ALWAYS GET THE TYCOONS YOU WANT, BUT SOMETIMES YOU GET THE TYCOONS YOU NEED: My USA Today column: Be thankful tycoons like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are focused on space and moon bases.
BIG GOVERNMENT RUINS ALL THE FUN: Please Don’t Roast Marshmallows Over the Erupting Hawaii Volcano, USGS Warns.
EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES: Five Blood Transfusions, One Bone Marrow Transplant — All Before Birth.
THAT WAS FAST: ‘Roseanne’ Canceled at ABC Following Racist Tweet.
ABC, in a stunning move, has decided to cancel its Roseanne revival following star Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet Tuesday.
“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said Tuesday.
Early Tuesday, star, head writer and exec producer Barr attacked former President Obama White House adviser Valerie Jarrett in a since-deleted tweet in which she said “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” Barr subsequently apologized: “I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans. I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me — my joke was in bad taste.”
As Allahpundit writes, “She’s always been a crank — our own Ed Morrissey has firsthand experience with it — but some forms of crankery are more radioactive than others.”
Update: Well, yes:
Background on the above image from 2009 here.
Related: Interesting days at Disney — Roseanne is out, but Keith Olbermann, that longtime master of civility and nuanced understatement, is back in.
Earlier I reported that Venezuela’s inflation rate was a mere 14,000%. Normally I would regret the error, but that figure was probably still accurate as of six hours ago.
AN AMAZING LONG-DISTANCE REPAIR: Curiosity drills Mars rock sample for first time in two years. “After a two-year stint on the disabled list, Curiosity’s drill is working again. This week, the Mars rover successfully collected a rock sample for the first time in almost two years. Over the last year, engineers at NASA have developed a workaround drilling technique called Feed Extended Drilling, or FED, which uses the rover’s robotic arm to direct and push the drill into the ground as the drill bit spins. And last week, Curiosity engineers added percussion, or a hammering rhythm, to the FED technique.”
I CAN’T WAIT TO READ DONALD TRUMP’S TWEETS ABOUT THIS: BREAKING: ABC cancels Roseanne after ‘abhorrent, repugnant’ tweet.
Question for investors: Should you risk your money on a network that will trash its most valuable property over a tweet?
OVER AT PJM LIFESTYLE: How to Save Star Wars from “Solo II: Another Damn Star Wars Story.”
AT AMAZON, Dockers Pants & Shorts for Men.
INTERESTING: North Korea sees US economic handouts as threat.
The North’s perceived thirst for U.S. economic aid has consistently been the message coming from Trump and his senior officials. All Kim needs to do, they suggest, is commit to denuclearization and American entrepreneurs will be ready to unleash their miracles on the country’s sad-sack economy.
“I truly believe North Korea has brilliant potential and will be a great economic and financial nation one day,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “Kim Jong Un agrees with me on this.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has laid Washington’s roadmap out in more detail.
“We can create conditions for real economic prosperity for the North Korean people that will rival that of the South,” he said earlier this month in a televised interview. “It won’t be U.S. taxpayers. It will be American knowhow, knowledge, entrepreneurs and risk-takers working alongside the North Korean people to create a robust economy for their people.”
Pompeo suggested Americans help to build out the North’s energy grid, develop its infrastructure and deliver the finest agricultural equipment and technology “so they can eat meat and have healthy lives.”
Kim has emphatically not agreed to any of that.
Under Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy, international sanctions on North Korea are stronger than ever before. Sanctions relief would open the door for more trade with China, South Korea and possibly Russia — partners North Korea trusts more than it trusts Washington — and potentially unlock access to global financial institutions.
The last thing Kim wants is to give up his nuclear weapons only to have his country overrun with American businessmen and entrepreneurs.
Even if he kept his nukes, Kim can’t afford to allow the political, economic, and (most importantly) cultural contamination hordes of Western businessmen would bring.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: USC Alum Is One Of 101 Grads With $1 Million+ In Student Loans. No degree can justify that debt.
HEALTH: Doctor slammed by med board for selling $5 homeopathic sound waves for Ebola. “Patients were downloading audio files of the ‘eRemedies’ on doctor’s website.”
JOE PAPPALARDO: The Forgotten True Story of Alan Bean’s Unlikely Journey to the Moon. “After all that, Alan Bean’s first space launch has gone terribly wrong after less than a minute. He’s staring at the warning lights, but he can see the batteries are still putting out the requisite power. He keeps saying this to his crew and mission control as the team scrambles to determine what happened and what to do. . . . After some deliberation, and as it becomes more clear that lightning was the culprit, Bean begins to reset the electrical systems. He is credited with remembering the existence of a backup power switch to the signal conditioning electronics that, when used, helps cut the time of the recovery from the incident and keeps the mission from being aborted. . . . After 25 minutes of flight, the electrical distribution system and fuel cells are back in operation. But there is another challenge looming: The astronauts must reignite the engine to depart Earth’s orbit for their lunar destination—without automated navigation.”
PRO-GUN-CONTROL ARMY VET TRIES TO PULL RANK, GETS SHOT DOWN BY TAM KEEL:
So, one Michael Diamond recently wrote a chiding little piece about the dysfunction of American civilian gun culture, by comparing it to the hard-nosed serious firearms professionalism he’d acquired in the Army.
I mean, thank you for your service and everything, Mike, but from what you’ve written, you were an intel officer in the reserves for seven years. I’m hard pressed to think of a gig in the United States Army that would give you less exposure to firearms that doesn’t require a degree in medicine or divinity, and frankly I’m coming up empty.
“Although I had fired countless live rounds over the years on various military weapons ranges…”
As a matter of fact, Mike, I’m pretty comfortable making the statement that I probably expend more ammunition in any given month than you did in your entire seven year career, since you likely never busted a cap outside of required qualifications.
As has been brought up by fellow blogger McThag, the U.S. Army pistol qualification is barely a sobriety test, let alone any sort of marksmanship challenge.
There are people in the Army who know more about guns than Tam. And I hear they’re both very nice guys.
NICHOLAS BALLASY: Congressman Predicts More ‘Displaced’ Children If ACLU Wins Faith-Based Adoption Lawsuit. “Kelly slammed the American Civil Liberties Union for suing the state of Michigan with the hope of making it illegal for the state to partner with religious adoption agencies like Catholic Charities.”