Archive for 2019
October 31, 2019
ONLY IF HE WAS A DEMOCRAT: Alyssa Milano: If Katie Hill Were a Man There Would Be ‘A Very Different Outcome.’
HOW FAR HAS POPULAR SCIENCE SUNK? THIS FAR: People think beef is manly, and that’s a big problem: We can’t lower our meat consumption without rethinking masculinity.
QUESTION ASKED: Why Is Vindman a War Hero but Flynn a Traitor?
HORACE COOPER: The Shameless Hypocrisy Of Cities Suing For Climate Change ‘Damages.’ “Using an already discredited “public nuisance” legal claim, Rhode Island and several cities have filed lawsuits that blame all of Earth’s climate change on a few profitable energy companies. The suits allege that, by producing oil, these energy companies have contributed to climate change, which, they argue, may cause damage to their communities in the future. Their cases, incidentally, fail to mention the large amounts of fossil fuels used by these same cities for public transportation, municipal airports, city buildings, and public improvement projects.”
CIRRUS HAS A FACTORY HERE IN KNOXVILLE. I SHOULD REALLY VISIT IT. The Cirrus Vision Is the Private Jet That Lands Itself.
COLORADO: Department of Transportation in Total Disarray. “CDOT Executive Director: Shoshana Lew, a history major in college, became the head of CDOT at age 35 with no engineering or construction management experience due to political connections in Washington, D.C.”
The convergence of two events has turned CDOT upside down. The first was the Orwellian named “Keep Jobs in Colorado Act of 2013.” Previously under CRS Sec. 24-92-109 all public projects in excess of $50,000 had to be “awarded by competitive bid.” The drawbacks to this method include occasional “bid rigging” by competing contractors. In addition, so-called “change orders” can drive up costs of a competitively bid project. But overall this method, which was used for decades by CDOT, was the least subjective and generally viewed fairest method to have projects completed at the lowest cost.
The 2013 act substituted the “lowest bid” method with the so-called “best value” model in which bids come in as either (1) Design Build; or (2) Construction Manager/General Contractor (CMGC). While these techniques have various theoretical advantages, especially for unique highly complex projects, including potentially cutting down the time to complete a project, it is a highly subjective selection process with the opportunity for corruption massively increased. To prevent cronyism and exorbitant cost increases, it requires high expertise and absolute diligence on the part of CDOT. What CDOT got was the exact opposite.
Lew’s primary qualification, according to insiders, was her close relationship to Michelle Obama who called the newly elected governor for a favor — find a job for Shoshana Lew. Lew is the daughter of President Obama’s Chief of Staff and later Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew.
In a word: Democrats.
HMMMM: Joe Biden may have calculated Communion snub, political observer suggests.
Matthew Green, a political scientist at Catholic University, said Mr. Biden could have chosen to attend a church where the priest had known views about abortion and those receiving communion.
“Maybe a calculation was made that this could help Biden get some attention in a crowded primary race and maybe gin up support among the growing number of Americans who are either non-believers or non-church attendees,” Mr. Green said.
On the other hand: Nets Skip Joe Biden Being Denied Communion for Abortion Views.
On the gripping hand: These days, voters eager enough to participate in the primary process aren’t likely relying much on the Big Three TV networks as their primary source of news.
And finally on the…well, after the gripping hand, I’m not sure what’s left, but: ‘Rut Roh!’: Trump rises, Biden ‘slips’ in latest polling.
HOUSE FORMALIZES IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY IN PARTY-LINE VOTE:
Meanwhile, the GOP Senate majority has warned that the resolution is a non-starter in the upper chamber.
“They have denied President Trump basic due process and are cutting his counsel out of the process in an unprecedented way. House Democrats’ new resolution does not change any of that,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday. “The draft resolution that has been released does nothing of the sort. It falls way short, way short.”
The Trump campaign immediately slammed the resolution, calling it an “attempt to remove a duly-elected president for strictly political reasons” and adding that “voters will punish Democrats who support this farce.”
As Rick Moran adds at the PJ mothership, “If you’re going to overturn the election of a president, you would think that you’d want a few brave souls from the opposition to at least give the appearance of bi-partisanship. Democrats are realizing that this simply isn’t going to happen and it calls into question the legitimacy of their entire inquiry… Democrats don’t think they’ll be hurt much by the partisan appearance of their inquiry. It will certainly please the hysterical, anti-Trump vote — the real power in the party. They don’t care what impeachment looks like, they just want it done. That may well be their undoing.”
Trump himself tweeted in response, “The Greatest Witch Hunt In American History!”
UPDATE: Byron York dubs today’s vote “The Adam Schiff Empowerment Act:” “‘There’s no guarantee we can call any witnesses,’ said Republican Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a member of the Intelligence Committee, in an interview Wednesday. ‘The rules the Democrats rammed through simply confirm the absolute control Schiff has been exercising this entire time,’ Nunes said. ‘He shouldn’t be involved in impeachment at all since none of this has any intelligence component, but Pelosi obviously thinks Nadler is incompetent.’”
MORE: We’re putting the band back together! “Striking that in House Rules Committee meeting on impeachment inquiry resolution, No. 2 Democrat, Rep. Alcee Hastings, has actually been impeached. (Was federal judge, impeached, convicted, and removed for bribery in 1989.)”
DOES THIS MEAN I WON’T NEED THAT ROBOT LIVER? Liver damage from drinking may one day be REVERSIBLE: Scientists are developing a drug to undo tissue scarring in lung and liver disease.
THE ABA IS A PARTISAN JOKE, AND HAS BEEN SUCH FOR A LONG TIME:
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: First Common Core High School Grads Worst-Prepared For College In 15 Years.
LIVE AND WITH UPDATES: House Debates and Votes on Impeachment Inquiry Resolution. “The two Democrats who voted not to impeach are Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson and New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew. Justin Amash (I-Mich.), a former Republican, voted with Democrats in favor of the resolution.”
Of course he did.
TYLER O’NEIL: 5 Big Problems With Twitter Banning Political Ads. “”We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.”
What this says to me is that not even money will be able to counter Twitter’s selective rule enforcement and armies of bots.
UNDERREPORTED NEWS: President Trump Sings ‘God Bless America’ with Wounded Vet. “The kicker? This whole scene actually took place late last month, but somehow failed to generate the buzz of, say, an all-too-famous promotional picture of Barack Obama riding in Rosa Parks’ seat all by himself.”
Caution: The video comes with a three-hanky warning.
AL-BAGHDADI’S DEATH AS COUNTER TERROR INFORMATION WARFARE: Al-Baghdadi was a mass rapist, savage torturer, mass murderer and slaver. ISIS propaganda extolled his crimes.
American aid worker Kayla Mueller belonged to an ecumenical Christian group. In 2013, ISIS captured her in Syria. She was tortured, enslaved and, in 2015, murdered. A photo sent from ISIS to her family showed her with facial bruises and wearing a black hijab.
From al-Baghdadi’s perspective. Mueller’s photo was terrifying, sexually swaggering propaganda. Then-President Barack Obama sent condolences to Mueller’s parents.
But in 2019, the Pentagon named the operation to arrest or kill al-Baghdadi Operation Kayla Mueller.
…that name has received little notice. However, it puts a woman who’d been raped, a dead lady’s face, on the Delta Force assault and signals that the U.S. military attack on al-Baghdadi and his henchmen sought personal justice for the slaughter of an innocent human being who came to Syria to aid refugees.
This is information warfare kudos to the Pentagon and Trump administration, for at some psycho core, zealot killer creeps like al-Baghdadi think they are untouchable.
Read the whole thing.
QUESTION ASKED: Why is blackface “quite rightly unacceptable while drag gets bigger by the day…if the Black and White Minstrels are insulting and reactionary, why aren’t drag queens? If someone can explain to me why race-based parody is bad and sex-based parody ‘a bit of fun’, I’d love to know. Woke me up and tell me why!”
It’s Julie Burchill at Spiked, so read the whole thing.
MODERN MARINE CORPS SQUAD LEADER USING THE MARINE AIR-GROUND COMMON HANDHELD: The squad is involved in an exercise at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Kaneohe Bay. A second photo from Hawaii: two F-22 Raptors fly in formation with a C-17 Globemaster III following a personnel airdrop training mission on the northern side of Oahu, Hawaii, Oct. 17, 2019.
WHY ARE FEMINISTS AFRAID OF A STRONG BLACK MAN? Nation’s only all-male historically black college accused of ‘toxic’ masculinity.
HERE COME THOSE SANTA ANA WINDS AGAIN: Fierce Santa Ana winds knock over 18-wheelers on California highway, photos show.
We get winds like that on occasion here on Monument Hill, which is even more fun in icy conditions like during last winter’s “bomb cyclone” snowstorm.
DECOUPLING: China’s US trade war charm offensive was meant to stop foreign investors from leaving, but is it working? “China’s status as the workshop for the world has for years been steadily eroded by rising domestic costs, even before the outbreak of the trade war, leading to a long list of foreign manufacturers throwing in the towel, seeking cheaper production bases in countries like Vietnam and India.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UMaryland warns ‘cultural appropriation’ costumes have ‘no place’ on campus. I love the unselfconscious use of the phrase “have no place in an inclusive community.”
