Archive for 2018
August 1, 2018
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: 3D Gun Madness and Much, Much More. “The anti-Second Amendment zealots were screaming that the Trump administration was officially allowing people to make untraceable “ghost” guns. Not so, the plans to print 3D guns have always been out there on the internet, go look for yourself.”
HE IS WRONG: Trump Calls For Crackdown On 3D Printed Guns. Here’s Why He’s Wrong.
Someone send him my Popular Mechanics piece.
AND YET JIM ACOSTA WONDERS (OR PRETENDS TO) WHY PEOPLE SEE THE PRESS AS ENEMIES: John Hinderaker: The AP’s War On Donald Trump, Voter ID Edition. “The problem with the Associated Press isn’t just that its reporters are stupid or ill-informed, although that often is the case. The real problem is that the AP’s reporting is so often in bad faith, deliberately pretending not to understand, as in this instance.”
PROCUREMENT: Boeing’s new F-15X may replace an aging fleet of F-15C/D Eagles.
The F-15X reportedly came out of an Air Force inquiry to Boeing and Lockheed Martin about fielding an aircraft that could easily transition into the service’s existing air combat infrastructure, specifically to help counter the Air Force’s shrinking force.
There were some caveats to the solicitation: it needs to be cost-effective, low-risk and not considered an alternative to the larger F-35 procurement program, The War Zone reported. It seems those requirements were met, based on the reported features.
The F-15X seems to make sense logistically, as an evolved version of an older fighter with plenty of trained ground crews, spares, etc. It also probably makes sense as as “second day” jet. That is, the 15X would perform more prosaic missions on the second or third day of a major conflict, after stealthier (but more maintenance-heavy) F-22s and F-35s get done the most dangerous, initial operations. And with more modern avionics than the aging F-15C/D fleet, the F-15X might fill in the gaps left by our too-small fleet of F-22s.
But that’s all conjecture, based on what little is publicly known so far.
THAT AND FIVE MILLION BOLIVARS WILL GET YOU A CUP OF COFFEE IN CARACAS: Venezuela is the clear global leader in oil reserves.
I’m not kidding about the five million bolivars for a cup of coffee. Although with Venezuela’s inflation rate, that month-old figure is just as stale as yesterday’s coffee.
“DON’T BE EVIL” — UNLESS IT’S IMPORTANT TO MARKET SHARE: GOOGLE PLANS TO LAUNCH CENSORED SEARCH ENGINE IN CHINA, LEAKED DOCUMENTS REVEAL. “Teams of programmers and engineers at Google have created a custom Android app, different versions of which have been named ‘Maotai’ and ‘Longfei.’ The app has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government; the finalized version could be launched in the next six to nine months, pending approval from Chinese officials. The planned move represents a dramatic shift in Google’s policy on China and will mark the first time in almost a decade that the internet giant has operated its search engine in the country.”
JAILED SUPER-FAST, RELEASED AFTER WEEKS OF DELAY: Tommy Robinson news: Former EDL leader freed on bail after winning contempt of court challenge.
EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: There’s a ‘serial farter’ on the loose in the West Village.
SUZANNE VENKER: Feminism is the last thing in the world boys need. Boys need feminism like a fish needs a trawler.
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BIG MONEY: Tom Steyer’s $110 million plan to redefine the Democrats. “The billionaire investor is on a collision course with party leaders.”
Unlike the $80 million being spent by Michael Bloomberg on House Democratic races, Steyer will put his cash toward building out NextGen America and Need to Impeach, his two growing political organizations, as well as funding clean-energy ballot initiatives in Arizona and Nevada. Steyer has already doubled his initial $20 million investment in Need to Impeach to $40 million and has not ruled out adding more.
Steyer already dropped over $5 million into his For Our Future PAC, and he is expecting more outlays on behalf of individual candidates — such as the $1 million he put behind Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum — though likely not in any of the remaining primaries.
Between the two organizations, he’ll have close to 1,000 people on staff, in addition to over 2,000 volunteers. The Need to Impeach email list alone has already topped 5.5 million, which its research — anyone who signs up with the effort has their information run through a series of voter files and other databases — shows includes a very exact 697,780 infrequent voters in the 63 most competitive House districts.
All Democrats have to do is act crazy, and Steyer will back them.
More seriously, that’s a formidable operation, but it can be beaten by genuine grassroots activities open to any Instapundit reader.
BLUE WAVE? Toss-Up Senate Races Abandoned by Koch Network Feature Unusually Strong Libertarian Party Contenders. “Neck-and-neck races in Indiana and Nevada could determine the balance of the Senate. Both feature Libertarians who have previously cracked 5% yet aren’t being polled.”
Matt Welch:
Nevada’s Tim Hagan, an engineer and longtime Libertarian activist, has on three occasions trounced the point spread in a swing-district state Senate election, earning 5.1 percent of the vote in 2016 (the Democrat won 47.9 percent to 47.0), 4.8 percent in 2008 (46.5–45.8), and 7.6 percent in 2006 (47.6–44.8). Hagan has never dipped below 3 percent in any of the nine elections he has run in, hitting a high of 23.7 percent in a 2014 race for Clark County assessor (in which no Republican ran).
And yet in this crucial swing-state race between vulnerable Republican incumbent Dean Heller and Democratic challenger Jacky Rosen, who the Real Clear Politics polling average separates by less than a percentage point, Hagan is nowhere to be found in six of the seven publicly available polls that have been conducted since he secured the L.P. nomination in early March. Only a Suffolk University survey of 500 likely voters last week included Hagan’s name, showing him with 2.4 percent. (Heller edged Rosen in the poll, 41–40, while 8.6 percent were undecided and 5.4 percent went for none of the above.)
To reiterate a point I made a month ago about the New York gubernatorial race, not listing Hagan as an option constitutes journalistic malpractice.
Handicapping elections is a tricky business, even with much better polling than this. So why, as Matt puts it, the journalistic malpractice?
WHEN AFTER ALL, IT WAS YOU AND ME. AND DAN RATHER. ACTUALLY, MOSTLY JUST DAN RATHER. Richard Fernandez: Who Killed the News? “Fake news has been been as a tool of statecraft for centuries. Fake news itself is not a problem; it only becomes a problem for elites when it veers out of control. . . . Facebook suspending Alex Jones accomplishes nothing when manipulation is after all the company’s core business.”
WHEN YOUR STATE’S CHIEF LEGAL OFFICER IS DUMB AS A BAG OF HAMMERS: Massachusetts attorney general: Because of Trump, downloadable guns are a real thing.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Origins Of Our Second Civil War.
How, when, and why has the United States now arrived at the brink of a veritable civil war?
Almost every cultural and social institution — universities, the public schools, the NFL, the Oscars, the Tonys, the Grammys, late-night television, public restaurants, coffee shops, movies, TV, stand-up comedy — has been not just politicized but also weaponized.
Donald Trump’s election was not so much a catalyst for the divide as a manifestation and amplification of the existing schism.
We are now nearing a point comparable to 1860, and perhaps past 1968. Left–Right factionalism is increasingly fueled by geography — always history’s force multiplier of civil strife. Red and blue states ensure that locale magnifies differences that were mostly manageable during the administrations of Ford, Carter, Reagan, the Bushes, and Clinton.
What has caused the United States to split apart so rapidly?
Read the whole thing. But I think more than anything it’s the contempt that the political class feels for much of the citizenry, which is now being returned in kind.
Plus, what can be done?
A steady 3 to 4 percent growth in annual GDP would trim a lot of cultural rhetoric. Four percent unemployment will make more Americans valuable and give them advantages with employers. Measured, meritocratic, diverse, and legal immigration would help to restore the melting pot.
Reforming the university would help too, mostly by abolishing tenure, requiring an exit competence exam for the BA degree (a sort of reverse, back-end SAT or ACT exam), and ending government-subsidized student loans that promote campus fiscal irresponsibility and a curriculum that ensures future unemployment for too many students.
We need to develop a new racial sense that we are so intermarried and assimilated that cardboard racial cutouts are irrelevant.
Religious and spiritual reawakening is crucial. The masters of the universe of Silicon Valley did not, as promised, bring us new-age tranquility, but rather only greater speed and intensity to do what we always do. Trolling, doxing, and phishing were just new versions of what Jesus warned about in the Sermon on the Mount. Spiritual transcendence is the timeless water of life; technology is simply the delivery pump. We confused the two. That water can be delivered ever more rapidly does not mean it ever changes its essence. High tech has become the great delusion.
Finally, we need to develop a new racial sense that we are so intermarried and assimilated that cardboard racial cutouts are irrelevant. Our new racialism must be seen as a reactionary and dangerous return to 19th-century norm of judging our appearance on the outside as more valuable than who we are on the inside.
Whether we all take a deep breath, and understand our present dangerous trajectory, will determine whether 2019 becomes 1861.
As a great man once said, when your heart is filled with patriotism, there is no room for bigotry.
SHE’S NOT WRONG: The Unmade Bed and the Fall of Civilization.
IT’S SOMEWHAT ODD WHEN ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS REVIEWS ANOTHER: Blue Collar Space and the Omnipresence of Risk.
I MEAN IT. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT OUR EDUCATION? Why The Battle For Medieval Studies Matters To America.