HMM: Launch-and-Landing Failures Add to $13 Billion Ship’s Troubles.

The Navy’s costliest warship, the $13 billion Gerald R. Ford, had 20 failures of its aircraft launch-and-landing systems during operations at sea, according to the Pentagon’s testing office.

The previously undisclosed failures with the electromagnetic systems made by General Atomics occurred during more than 740 at-sea trials since the aircraft carrier’s delivery in May 2017 despite praise from Navy officials of its growing combat capabilities. The Navy must pay to fix such flaws under a “cost-plus” development contract.

The new reliability issues add to doubts the carrier, designated as CVN-78, will meet its planned rate of combat sorties per 24 hours — the prime metric for any aircraft carrier — according to the annual report on major weapons from the Defense Department’s operational test office.

Not good, if they can’t get EMALS sorted out.

AS ALWAYS, THEIR FIRST LOYALTY IS TO THE PUBLIC-EMPLOYEE UNIONS: House Dems Reject GOP Proposal to Block Raises for Federal Employees Guilty of Sexual Misconduct: Vote was chaired by Democrat Tony Cardenas, who is accused of drugging teenage girl. Well, you can see why he’d want to avoid establishing a precedent.

VIDEO: Sen. Sherrod Brown Complains That Trump Rips Babies from Families on Same Day His Party Pushes for Infanticide.

I’M A SPACE TANKER, BET YOU WEREN’T READY FOR THAT: The Air Force May Not Build a New Stealth Tanker After All—But What About a Space Tanker?

CHARLIE BROWN, MEET LUCY AND HER FOOTBALL: Pelosi Says No wall money in U.S. border deal talks.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Supreme Court’s conservatives appear poised to expand Second Amendment gun rights.

If this interests you, I recommend my Second Amendment Penumbras piece.

HMM: Mind-Altering Cat Parasite Linked to Schizophrenia in Largest Study Yet.

Many scientists are at pains to point out we can’t yet show that the mind-altering cat parasite is actually producing these psychological changes itself – as opposed to merely being associated with them – but while the debate goes on, still more evidence of these alarming coincidences turns up.

In that vein, the new study, led by researchers from Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, analysed data from over 80,000 individuals who took part in the Danish Blood Donor Study – a giant cohort, providing the basis for what the team calls the “largest to date serological study” in this area.

In terms of T. gondii, compared to a control group, the blood work revealed individuals with the infection were almost 50 percent more likely (odds ratio 1.47) to be diagnosed with schizophrenia disorders compared to those without an infection.

As the researchers explain, the link became even more evident when they filtered the data to account for ‘temporality’ – which meant only looking at participants who hadn’t yet been diagnosed with schizophrenia when T. gondii was found in their blood.

“The association was even stronger when accounting for temporality and considering only the 28 cases who were diagnosed with a schizophrenia disorder after the date of blood collection,” the authors write.

According to the researchers, this “corroborates that Toxoplasma has a positive effect on the rate of schizophrenia and that T. gondii infection might be a contributing causal factor for schizophrenia.”

While the link between the parasite and schizophrenia has been observed in previous research, the researchers claim their study is the first to examine temporality of pathogen exposure like this.

Maybe we need a vaccine. In the meantime, beware of crazy cat ladies.

A BAR SO LOW IT’S ACTUALLY A TOOTHPICK RESTING ACROSS TWO THIMBLES: Howard Schultz is just too sane for today’s Democrats.

Schultz was a Clinton Democrat when that meant Bill Clinton, though as a donor he stuck with Hillary and dutifully wrote checks to Barack Obama, John Edwards, the Democratic National Committee and others. But in 2019, he says he can’t in good conscience run as a Democrat.

“What the Democrats are proposing is something that is as false as the Wall,” he says, indicating “free” health care, “free” college and the entire litany of “free” things “which the country cannot afford.” He worries about the national debt, unfunded liabilities and other examples of fiscal recklessness.

He thinks that the Democrats’ current liquidate-the-kulaks ­ap­proach to taxes may prove counterproductive to the long-term interests of the United States.

Indeed.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN POLYPROPYLENE:

● Shot: D.C.’s Homicide Rate Soars In The Midst Of National Decline.

—The Daily Caller, Sunday.

● Chaser: On patrol with the enforcer of D.C.’s plastic-straw ban.

—The Washington Post, Monday.

Good to see Washington, DC taking crime so seriously.

(Non-paywalled version of the Post’s story here.)

BECAUSE COMMUNISTS: Why Did Soviets Invade Afghanistan?

One day in October 1979, an American diplomat named Archer K. Blood arrived at Afghanistan’s government headquarters, summoned by the new president, whose ousted predecessor had just been smothered to death with a pillow.

While the Kabul government was a client of the Soviet Union, the new president, Hafizullah Amin, had something else in mind. “I think he wants an improvement in U.S.-Afghan relations,” Mr. Blood wrote in a cable back to Washington. It was possible, he added, that Mr. Amin wanted “a long-range hedge against over-dependence on the Soviet Union.”

Mr. Blood’s newly published cable sheds light on what really drove the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan only two months after his meeting with Mr. Amin. Spoiler alert: It was not because of terrorism, as claimed this month by President Trump, who said the Soviets were right to invade. Among the real motivations, the cable and other documents suggest, was a fear that Afghanistan might switch loyalties to the West.

There’s some interesting history here from the New York Times, if you can get past the needless anti-Trump stuff and some oh-so-NYT pro-Soviet notes.

CLIMBDOWN: Virginia lawmaker says she wouldn’t have co-sponsored controversial abortion bill if she had read it closely. “In the video of Tran’s comments, House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, asked Tran if a woman would be able to request an abortion as she was going into labor. Tran said that would be allowed under her bill. In her letter, Adams said the scenario Gilbert described would classify as a ‘partial birth infanticide’ that would be illegal under state law.” Well, but not if this bill had passed.

TYLER O’NEIL: Howard Schultz Shoots Down Liz Warren Attack With Passionate Defense of the American Dream.

ASPIRING NOVELIST LEARNS TO LOVE BIG BROTHER: SJW mob shames debut Young Adult novelist Amelie Zhao into withdrawing her novel, surrendering her dream.

The book, which had positive buzz (Barnes & Noble called it one of the most anticipate YA releases of the year), has been the subject of a massive Social Justice Warrior pile-on on social media, as Jesse Singal discussed in a tweetstorm. Very few people have even read the novel, but the mob attacked it as racist for a variety of reasons, one of them being that Zhao created a fantasy world where “oppression is blind to skin color” (this, from the press release). It’s a fantasy world, and people haven’t even read the book, but the mob was certain that Blood Heir is racist, and that its author — a young woman raised in Beijing, but now living in New York City — ought to be shut down.

Today, they got their wish.

Read the whole thing. In the 50th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury wrote,  “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”

Bradbury didn’t appreciate how SJWs would speed up the destruction in the 21st century. Why burn books en masse when you can simply torch the galley copy?

SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Incendiary Devices Found Outside Eugene Police HQ after Police Shooting of Armed Antifa Radical.

SPACE: China’s Military-Run Space Station in Argentina is a ‘Black Box.’ More here.

BEGUN, THE CREDENTIAL WARS HAVE: American Bar Association rejects higher standards for law schools: They would hurt minority students.

PROCUREMENT: F-35A Cost To Drop Below $80 Million Per Fighter In 2023.

In 2022, Lockheed Martin officials expect to negotiate the next multiyear F-35 contract with the Joint Program Office. The goal is to use the steady cash flow from a multiyear contract to drive down further the production costs once the contract kicks in.

As part of a pitch for multiyear contract, Lockheed Martin officials say such a deal will lower the F-35A price to less than $80 million per fighter, Marillyn Hewson, chief executive of Lockheed Martin, told analysts during a conference call today discussing the company’s 2018 year-end results and expectations for 2019.

“That’s our target, to continue to drive the unit cost down,” Hewson said. “And we won’t stop there, we will always be looking at ways that we can take the cost down in the program as it continues to mature and grows.”

That’s not much more than the Air Force pays for a fully loaded F-16 Block 52.

LAW ENFORCEMENT: I Spent 41 Days in Jail Because Deputy ‘Falsely’ Claimed Detergent Was Heroin.

LIKE FISH, MEDIA ROTS FROM THE HEAD: David Reaboi writes this in The Federalist today:

“As media companies have found their resources shrink, they found it more profitable to jettison some of the work from highly paid, more experienced reporters and editors in favor of increasingly ideological woke clickbait generated from young staffers, listicles, and fulsome explorations of things like the ‘internet culture’ beat. The importance of agitating for political priorities and enforcing new cultural standards blinded many in the industry to the reality of their failing business model.”

Being a journalist of more than 30 years experience, I may be a bit biased on this topic, but that paragraph is about as succinct a summary as I have yet read of the state of mind in so many corners of the mainstream media. The rest of the post is here and well worth your attention.

THE SUPPLY OF DIVERSITY-TALK FAR OUTSTRIPS DEMAND: UF launches ‘diversity’ podcast. Hardly anyone listens.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: It’s Cold, Paul Ryan’s Wall and Much, Much More. “The DC asked Trump ‘did Ryan lie to you?’ The president responded that he did not think Ryan lied to him, that at the time, Ryan meant what he said. Trump is being charitable.”