WELCOME TO DOUG HENNING’S WORLD OF DELUSION: Joy Behar tells Kirsten Gillibrand she doesn’t believe Democrats are on even ground because they won’t ‘play dirty.’
Archive for 2019
April 25, 2019
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Japan Is Testing Earth’s Asteroid Defense System.
OUCH: Tesla Posts $700 Million First-Quarter Loss as CEO Elon Musk Says It Will Offer Insurance.
Analysts expected that Tesla would lose in the neighborhood of 69 cents per share in the first quarter, but Tesla’s real numbers, released today, were much, much worse than that. Tesla lost $2.90 a share, or $702.1 million in the quarter, according to CNBC, almost as much as they lost in the same quarter last year, mostly because of falling demand. Things still aren’t looking up.
The falling demand, much more than the financial loss, is what will worry Tesla the most. That’s because Tesla always positioned the Model 3 to be the mass-market car that would drive profit at the company. But the $7,500 federal tax credit for Tesla started phasing out on January 1, and while the company still sold 63,000 cars this quarter, that was also below analysts’ expectations.
Tesla doesn’t have much time to waste in its effort to grow from boutique carmaker to mass producer, as the bigs here and overseas move big into electric over the next two to five years.
ANOTHER ‘NON-PARTISAN’ LIBERAL DARK MONEY GROUP EXPOSED: The Washington Free Beacon’s Joe Schoffstall is a smart, young investigative journalist worth following closely. Today he shines light on the lefty Trump impeachment activity of the Six Thirty Fund.
YOU MIGHT NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOU: Banks Accused of Discrimination Against Gun Owners.
During the April 12 “Holding Megabanks Accountable: A Review of Global Systemically Important Banks 10 years after the Financial Crisis” hearing, Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat basically said imposing the institution’s ant-gun policy is a higher priority than wisely managing investors’ money.
In an April 18 Town Hall column, National Shooting Sports Foundation [NSSF] Senior Vice President of Government and Public Affairs and General Counsel Larry Keane applauded National Center Public Policy Research and Free Enterprise Project attorney Justin Danhof’s questioning of Corbat during the hearing.
It was gratifying to see Corbat and other banking executives “getting asked some hard questions about fiscal sanity of their decision to discriminate against firearms businesses” especially since “their answers aren’t likely to soothe investors,” Keane writes.
During the hearing, Danhof asked Corbat, “Can you tell us—your investors—exactly how much money we stand to lose because of this decision, and explain why you have this right while Warren Buffet has this wrong?”
He’s got some ‘splainin to do.
FINALLY: NYC To Ban Hot Dogs and Processed Meats To Improve Climate. “Mayor Bill de Blasio approved an ambitious $14 billion Green New Deal on Monday, April 22, to combat climate change. The plan will cut purchases of red meat by 50 percent in its city-controlled facilities such as hospitals, schools, and correctional facilities. The new commitment builds off of the Meatless Mondays campaign that was adopted by all NYC schools in 2017.”
THE ORIGINAL CHILDREN’S CRUSADES WERE CREEPY: Their modern incarnation is no different.
It’s hard to separate truth from legend when it comes to the 13th century. But there does seem to be a kernel of truth to the story of the Children’s Crusades.
Stephen of Cloyes was evidently a real person. And he appears to have been really 12 years old when he claimed to have received a message from God commanding him to lead a peaceful crusade to the Holy Land to convert Muslims to Roman Catholicism.
Stephen is said to have led an army of 30,000 children to Paris, where he demanded and received an audience with King Philip II. But Philip was not impressed with the little squirt. He declined to back Stephen’s grandiose plans. Stephen therefore decided to act without royal backing. Believing that the waters of the Mediterranean would part and that his followers could thus walk to the Holy Land, he led his army to Marseille.
There, the movement came to no good. The waters didn’t part. Legend has it that many were tricked into securing passage on a ship that took them to North Africa instead of the Holy Land, where they were promptly sold into slavery. Tough break, kids.
A similar movement appears to have been led by a boy named Nicholas of Cologne in Germany. There is even less known about it. But it was certainly no more successful.
Today we have Greta Thunberg, a now-16-year-old teenager with Asberger’s syndrome who lectures world leaders about climate change at Davos and at the European Parliament. Her parents really ought to be ashamed.
This week Greta did the British Parliament. And she helped lead traffic-disrupting protests in the London streets. There is a Greta Thunberg cult out there today.
The only good news is that Theresa May did not show up for Greta’s meeting with British leaders. On other issues, the news about May has not been good lately. But so far at least, she, like King Philip II, is not taking her orders on climate change from a child.
FBI AND IRS AGENTS RAID BALTIMORE’S CITY HALL AND THE HOME OF MAYOR CATHERINE PUGH: “Baltimore residents may find the scene this morning reminiscent of a similar story from roughly ten years ago. That was when the FBI also busted in the doors of City Hall and then-Mayor Sheila Dixon. She was later convicted of embezzlement and forced to resign. History seems to be repeating itself in Baltimore.”
Baltimore’s last Republican mayor left office at the start of 1967.
BIDEN’S ANNOUNCEMENT UNPACKED: A 21st Century version of Warren G. Harding’s 1920 appeal for a “return to normalcy.”
HERITAGE FLIGHT SKYRAIDER OVER FLORIDA: An A-1 Skyraider flies in formation with an F-16. The Skyraider’s nicknamed the Spad (after the WW1 aircraft) and as this post notes was one of the Vietnam War’s most potent ground support planes. It’s still an impressive airplane and the USAF is still looking for a high quality “light attack aircraft” for close air support. (The post at the last link has a lot of data on the A-1.) In 1999 I was at a small airfield in southern California. A Skyraider rolled onto the landing strip then sat there for about five minutes. The pilot slowly increased rpm until the sound split ears 250 meters away. Then he took off with a rush and climbed quickly. The Skyraider was originally a carrier aircraft. I thought the pilot might be emulating a carrier launch. If not, he was still having fun. Several observers, including me, clapped after the takeoff.
THE INVESTIGATION SHOE IS ON THE OTHER FOOT: Democrats Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine.
In the circumstances, it need hardly be emphasized that the entire Trump–Russia collusion gambit, based on the infamous Steele dossier’s pastiche of lies and defamations, was the dirtiest political trick in American history and is in the process of transmogrification into one of the greatest fiascos in the history of American political skullduggery. (One of the most rabid Trump-hating Democratic congressmen, Eric Swalwell, still professes to believe all of the Steele dossier, as if it were a catechism.) Though there is an elaborate psychopolitical effort underway to pretend otherwise, investigations already taking place by the inspector general of the Justice Department, a special counsel, and the attorney general of the United States, about to be joined by the Senate Judiciary Committee, will call upon the chief intelligence and law officers of the Obama administration, along with Hillary Clinton and members of her campaign staff, to account for their conduct. These include lies under oath to congressional committees, lies to federal officials, and misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. This is a series of dishonest statements and illegal acts that can only, at least provisionally, be seen as a coordinated campaign to influence the results of the presidential election and then to compromise the unwished-for outcome of that election. It will not be long before we hear the still familiar words, in reference to President Obama: “What did the president know and when did he know it?”
Flashback, March 2017: “Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.”
JULIE KELLY & LIZ SHELD: 25 Questions for Robert Mueller.
OBAMA WAS OBAMA WITHOUT HOPE: Joe Biden is Obama without hope. “Joe Biden’s inevitable 2020 presidential candidacy is a strange, strange thing. Biden has longed to be president all his political life: he first ran in 1988; he ran again 20 years later. Now we’re more than a decade past his last grab for power, and Biden, as he nears 80, thinks his day has come once more.”
I was a college freshman the first time Biden ran for President. I’m about to turn 50.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Seen on Facebook:
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University hosts no-whites-allowed faculty and staff listening sessions — to promote inclusivity.
They told me if Donald Trump became President, illegal race discrimination would be normalized. And they were right!
NICE: Fukushima agricultural exports bounce back from nuclear disaster to hit record high.
I’d been looking forward to trying the giant mutant tomatoes, but it turns out everything is normal-sized.
BOOM TIMES: Typical Worker’s Pay Nears $200,000 at Oil Refiner.
Oil and gas drillers and refiners had some of the highest-paid median workers in the energy and utility sectors in 2018, according to The Wall Street Journal analysis of annual pay disclosures by hundreds of big U.S. companies.
Houston-based Phillips 66 paid its median worker $196,407, the highest of any company in the sector. Phillips was followed by Anadarko Petroleum Corp. APC +11.60% at $183,445. Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which has roughly 72,600 employees, according to its latest proxy, had the third-highest median worker pay with $171,375.
Phillips 66 and Anadarko both boosted their 2018 median pay by about 15% in 2018 compared with 2017. Exxon raised its median pay about 6%. Oil-and-gas companies typically pay their workers better than many other sectors because they have fewer low-paid retail jobs and must compete in a tight labor market driven in part by the shale-oil boom.
Turns out we can drill our way to lower prices and our way out of wage stagnation.
PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR: Man With Gas Cans in St. Patrick’s Cathedral Planned to Burn It Down, Prosecutor Says.
OBAMA’S LEGACY: NORMALIZING ANTI-SEMITISM. Former Obama official lends a hand to anti-Israel Harvard students.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Joe’s Big Day. “Biden is very popular among the Democrats but he will face resistance from the radical elements in the party who care mostly about skin color, gender and sexual preference. And free stuff. The sad fact is Joe is an old, white guy. He also likes to touch people.”
You know what was fake news? Most of the Russiagate story. There was no Trump-Russia conspiracy, that thing we just spent three years chasing. The Mueller Report is crystal clear on this.
He didn’t just “fail to establish” evidence of crime. His report is full of incredibly damning passages, like one about Russian officialdom’s efforts to reach the Trump campaign after the election: “They appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect.”
Not only was there no “collusion,” the two camps didn’t even have each others’ phone numbers!
In March of 2017, in one of the first of what would become a mountain of mafia-hierarchy-style “Trump-Russia contacts” graphics in major newspapers, the Washington Post described an email Trump lawyer Michael Cohen sent to Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov. They called it “the most direct interaction yet of a top Trump aide and a senior member of Putin’s government.”
The report shows the whole episode was a joke. In order to further the Trump Tower project-that-never-was, Cohen literally cold-emailed the Kremlin. More than that, he entered the email incorrectly, so the letter initially didn’t even arrive. When he finally fixed the mistake, Peskov didn’t answer back.
That was “the most direct interaction yet of a top Trump aide and a senior member of Putin’s government”!
But it generated clicks and viewers and made them feel like bold warriors against the bad orange man.
Related: Mueller report: Donald Trump collusion conspiracy theories are now exposed. Will they end? “After two years of mass hysteria afflicting a huge portion of our political class, the cognitive dissonance after the Mueller report is painful.” (Bumped).
PERHAPS WE SHOULD BRING BACK DUELING: The Scruton tapes: an anatomy of a modern hit job.
JAMES PINKERTON: When Tech Elites Lose Their Religion. If they no longer have faith in the digital empire they’ve created, who will?
Speaking of centurions and imperiums, one can’t help but compare the digital status quo to the Roman Empire of yore. Yes, at its geographic peak, Rome dominated much of the known world, and yet there was a hollowness to its value system. As Edward Gibbon explained in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, long before the Empire actually fell, its guiding faith had fallen. “The wisest among the Pagans,” Gibbon wrote, “had already disclaimed its usurped authority.”
And then, seemingly out of nowhere, came a new faith. As doctors of the Christian church once said, back in the days when they were sure of themselves, sine auctoritate nulla vita—“nothing lives without authority.”
So who, or what, will provide the new authority? That we don’t yet know. All we know is that it’s coming, because vacuums are always to be abhorred.
Read the whole thing.