DEALING WITH SH*T: Never forget that decent plumbing is the sine qua non of civilization. Hug your plumber today.
Archive for 2018
November 6, 2018
FAKE NEWS: New York Times Election Eve Op-Ed Likens Trump to Hitler. “And they wonder why he hates them.”
THE PILOT SHORTAGE CONTINUES: Japan is in a particular pinch, but it isn’t alone.
One solution:
…it has become something of a status symbol for nations to have female fighter pilots. Earlier in 2018 India joined the growing number of nations that allow women to take those jobs when three female fighter pilots completed their training. The Indian Air Force has 1,600 women in uniform and about a hundred are pilots. Like many other nations India has had women flying helicopters and transports since the 1990s. Over 40 nations have women in the military and most allow female pilots for non-combat aircraft. But a growing number are allowing women to fly jet fighters. Even Moslem nations are doing this.
Long post, good read, lots of interesting anecdotes. Check out the Indian Air Force’s pregnancy leave policy for female pilots.
LET’S HOPE WE NEVER HAVE TO FIND OUT: China’s J-20 Is No Match for the F-22 of F-35.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Socialist students: ‘Free’ tuition would stimulate economy.
IT MIGHT NOT BE ENOUGH. IT MIGHT NOT BE PERFECT. BUT IT’S WHAT YOU CAN DO: Go Out and Vote for Shock Therapy.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Good Election Day morning. “A reporter in Michigan called and left a voicemail for GOP Senate candidate John James and thought she had hung up the phone when the voicemail recorded her saying ‘fucking John James … that would suck.’ She’s been fired. ‘I have listened to the voicemail left by Brenda Battel to Mr. James’ campaign, and find no reason to defend this behavior,’ Huron Daily Tribune editor Kate Hessling said in a statement. ‘Brenda Battel’s employment has been immediately terminated.’ Now James is black and if he had been a Democrat, this woman would have to go into hiding or leave the country after the SJWs got done with her. We’d be talking about it and university classes would be designed around this hate incident. Alas.”
LEOPARD READY TO HUNT: A German Leopard 2 tank deployed in Norway participates in NATO exercise Trident Juncture.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Northwestern Law Dean Cites School’s ‘Difficult Time’ As Reason For Faculty Cuts.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The constant exhortations — from liberals and anti-Trump conservatives — to vote Democrat a bit tedious and unpersuasive.
With Trump’s successes on SCOTUS picks, tax reform, deregulation, and other conservative issues, “anti-Trump conservative” is an increasingly preposterous position.
BYRON YORK: Of course Trump is talking about the economy. Who says he’s not?
A talking point has taken hold in the final hours of midterm election campaigning. The economy is booming, the story goes, but President Trump won’t talk about it at his massive rallies, preferring instead to dwell on illegal immigration, the caravan, and “fear.” Republicans, locked in tough re-election races, are tearing their hair out, panicked, at Trump’s refusal to emphasize the nation’s economic progress, which is their strongest campaign pitch.
The journalists and other political types who are repeating the talking point take as their text something Trump said Friday at a rally in Huntington, W.Va. “They all say speak about the economy, speak about the economy,” Trump told the crowd. “Well, we have the greatest economy in the history of our country, but sometimes it’s not as exciting to talk about the economy, right? Because we have a lot of other things to talk about.” From that flowed the assertion that Trump is not, in fact, talking about, or talking much about, the economy.
[Skipping numerous examples of talking heads parroting talking points.]
Is he focusing on illegal immigration and ignoring, or relatively ignoring, his own administration’s economic achievements? The place to look for an answer is not in the TV talk but in the videos and transcripts of the president’s actual stump speeches.
Look at three recent Trump appearances, the ones that served as the basis for all the weekend talk. First, there was Trump’s speech in Huntington, with the “not as exciting” quote that gave pundits a theme. Then there was a speech in Columbia, Missouri, and also one in Macon, Georgia.
Please see here to see how much of the Huntington speech Trump devoted to the economy and how much he devoted to illegal immigration. By my count, Trump spoke about 2,330 words on economic issues and about 1,640 words on illegal immigration. I’ve included the entire transcript, with economic passages highlighted in yellow and illegal immigration passages highlighted in blue, for you to judge for yourself.
Spoiler, the talking points are bullshit. As usual. “Add the three speeches together, and Trump spent about 5,320 words on the economy versus about 4,730 words on illegal immigration. One can think that is too much of one thing, or not enough of the other, but where is the evidence that Trump is ignoring the economy to obsess about illegal immigration?”
BRIGHTEN UP YOUR DAY WITH THIS THOUGHT: No matter who wins today, the robocalls and ceaseless TV ads will be gone. For a while.
AS GLENN WAS SAYING, THEY DO SEEM LIKE AN EMOTIONALLY FRAGILE BUNCH: NYT Makes Changes To Election Needle So Readers Won’t Get Upset.
The NYT is working to avoid triggering panic attacks among people who felt the election needle duped them into believing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would easily win. The needle supposedly created confusion between real-life election data and flawed predictive polling.
“Until we get a sufficient sampling of early results to make that model meaningful, we won’t even surface the needle,” Managing Editor Joe Kahn told Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo Monday. There will now be two needles – one for the House and one for the Senate – and neither will be placed high up on the front page, he said.
“People have expressed a concern that even though our real-time election model is extremely valuable, that despite that, we should still be very cautious about featuring the needle prominently in our coverage on Election Night—not because we’re not confident in it, but because certain readers may have a nervous reaction to the re-introduction of the needle,” he added.
I’ve noticed a lot more pre-election, pre-excuse-mongering from the Left in just the last few days — but I’m still not getting cocky.
MASSACHUSETTS’ “QUESTION 3” ON TRANSGENDER BATHROOM LAW: Today Massachusetts voters will decide whether to retain or repeal a law requiring public accommodations to allow transgender individuals to use the bathroom that matches their psychological gender rather than their biological anatomy. (In the absence of such a law, the owner of the facilities would have discretion over the issue.) As the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby writes, at least one poll indicates that the law will probably be retained.
In a related matter, here are the reasons that Attorney General Sessions’ decision to withdraw the Obama Administration’s transgender bathroom guidance was correct on the law.
These issues are related, but they are not the same. Sessions’ position was simply that Title IX does not address the transgender issue. Federally-funded schools should therefore be able to assign bathrooms based on sex (i.e. anatomy), gender (i.e. psychological identification) or the number of letters in your surname. It’s up to the school, not the feds. Massachusetts voters, on the other hand, are facing a policy question. Should they support a law that requires public accommodations to allow transgender individuals to use the bathroom they prefer? Or should that law be repealed in favor of an approach that allows for discretion on the part of the owner of the facilities? I report, Bay Staters decide.
WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? Google wants to improve your smart home with iRobot’s room maps. “Google and iRobot have announced they’re working together to improve smart home technology using mapping data collected by iRobot’s robot vacuums. The two companies say the aim is to make smart homes ‘more thoughtful’ by leveraging the unique dataset collected by iRobot: maps of customers’ homes.”
For what it’s worth, I have a non-WiFi-enabled Neato Botvac and have been quite happy with it.
NOTHING CREEPY HERE: Wallace Campaign Uses ‘Orwellian’ Door Hangers Noting Whether Constituents Vote is Public Record.
IowaHawk has some thoughts:
Plus:
VIDEO: U.K. and U.S. Engaging in the ‘Slow and Cruel Assassination’ of Julian Assange, His Mother Claims. “‘Criminals in power’ are ‘bullying my son to death’.”