D-DAY OUTRIGGER ESCORT: Members of Members of the Outrigger Canoe Club escort the Virginia-class fast attack submarine USS Hawaii as it arrives in Pearl Harbor, June 6, 2019. Cool photo.
Archive for 2019
June 12, 2019
THE HILL’S REBECCA KLAR: Trump administration to send migrant children to former Japanese internment camp.
ALEX GRISWOLD ON TWITTER: The “former Japanese internment camp” is also just a U.S. Army base that’s been continually operating since the 1860’s.
I’m old enough to remember when The Hill was a reasonably forthright, centrist publication. But despite the old Instagag, that has me feeling pretty old right now.
MARK HARMON ALLEGEDLY ‘BODY CHECKED’ PAULEY PERRETTE ON NCIS SET: REPORT.
Walter Cronkite and global cooling. RatherGate. Katie Couric’s Christmas poems to ObamaCare. Charlie Rose. Ben Rhodes’ brother. Les Moonves, and now this. We need a complete and total shutdown of CBS until we can figure out what the hell is going on there.
HMM: Trial Judge Reverses, Wendi Adelson Will Face Defense Questioning In Dan Markel Murder Case.
This one has been going on for a while, but there’s lots of background from Paul Caron at the link.
BAD THINGS HAPPEN WHEN YOU MAKE POLITICS YOUR RELIGION: Don’t get divorced because of Trump. The tough work of settling America’s political differences.
NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” MAKING NEW FRIENDS ACROSS THE AISLE: I’m a libertarian and I agree with AOC on over-the-counter birth control, Glenn writes in his latest USA Today column.
JOANNE LIPMAN: Tech overlords Google and Facebook have used monopoly to rob journalism of its revenue.
Over the past decade, the news business has endured a bloodbath, with tens of thousands of journalists losing their jobs amid mass layoffs.
The irony is, more people than ever are consuming news. There’s never been a greater need for factual reporting, from the White House down to the local school board.
Why the disconnect? Look no further than a new study by the News Media Alliance, which found that in 2018, Google made $4.7 billion off of news content — almost as much as every news organization in America combined made from digital ads last year. Yet Google paid a grand total of zero for the privilege. News industry revenue, meanwhile, has plunged.
Nice work if you can finagle it.
TO POINT OUT, EARLY AND OFTEN, THAT LOS ANGELES AND SAN FRANCISCO ARE RAPIDLY BECOMING DETROIT WITH PALM TREES. Rush Limbaugh: Here’s Why Trump Should Start Going To California.
AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.
“BUT”: Inflation below 1 million percent but Venezuela crisis drags on.
Forget it, Jake — it’s Reuterstown.
THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Media Takes Break From Speculating on Trump’s Health to Fret Over Fox News Speculating on Biden’s Health.
REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: It Started With a Lie: Bruce Ohr’s Linchpin Role in Russiagate.
Ohr has since confirmed to Congress who the conspiracy theorists were: “Chris Steele, as I understand it, was hired by Fusion GPS to do research or gather information. He provided information to me,” Ohr has testified. “Glenn Simpson, who is, as I understand it, a principal of Fusion GPS, on a couple of occasions, he provided information to me. And on one occasion my wife, who was a contractor with Fusion GPS, provided some information to me.”
The average opposition researcher would be hard-pressed to get the attention of an associate deputy attorney general, let alone his cooperation. But the Fusion GPS crowd had the right connections. Steele and Ohr are close enough that Steele could sign an email to his old friend with “Love and Best Wishes to you, Nellie and all the family.” Simpson is an acquaintance of long standing. Nellie is, well, Ohr’s wife.
Fusion GPS didn’t just get Bruce Ohr’s valuable attention, the firm used it to make an ask. Nellie Ohr acknowledged in her own congressional interview what Fusion GPS had in mind when Steele invited her and her husband to breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel on July 30, 2016. “Chris Steele was hoping that Bruce would put in a word with the FBI to follow up on the information in some way.” He did just that.
With one phone call, Ohr arranged to take an assortment of unverified accusations — some of them lurid, all of them partisan-financed — directly to the deputy director of the FBI.
Read the whole thing.
KAMALA HARRIS AND WONKETTE — THE UNNERVING NEED TO BELIEVE IN POLITICIANS:
The other day Wonkette offered an article with a headline that declares — cleaning it up for your sensitive eyes — “Kamala Harris Doesn’t Have To Explain Herself To Your Dumb [Tushes].”
Infuriated by headlines about a Harris speech declaring that she is defending her record as a prosecutor, Stephen Robinson writes:
Is Harris on trial here? Why is she “defending her record”? Did she lose all her cases like the prosecutor who faced off against Perry Mason each week? That guy needed to explain himself. Harris put [bad words] in prison. She imprisoned [bad words] so well she was the first woman elected district attorney of San Francisco and the first black woman to become attorney general of California. She’s the Serena Williams of law and order.
While she’s undoubtedly better than Hamilton Berger, Harris’s record is a little more complicated than that. The article ends with a link to the Wonkette store selling Kamala Harris merchandise.
What is interesting here isn’t Harris’s record, or not-so-surprising development that a left-of-center web site wrote a piece fervently defending Harris’s record. (Whatever else you think of Robinson’s argument, he’s absolutely right when he declares, “it’s insulting to claim that black people can only have an adversarial relationship with the criminal justice system or that a black woman can’t prosecute crimes without betraying her community.”)
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their sycophancy makes perfect sense.
NICE: Handshake Deal Shatters F-35 Price Target.
Lockheed Martin has tentatively agreed to a one-year contract with two priced options with the U.S. Defense Department that dramatically lowers the unit recurring flyaway costs for the F-35A a year ahead and beyond the previously stated goal of $80 million by the 14th lot of low-rate initial production (LRIP 14) in fiscal 2022.
If finalized, the “handshake” agreement would lower the cost of a currently $89.3 million F-35A by 8.8%, or $7.86 million each, from LRIP 11 to LRIP 12. A priced option in the deal would further lower the price of an F-35A to less than $80 million by LRIP 13, although Pentagon and Lockheed officials declined to provide specific figures for the option year.
“The handshake agreement, once finalized, will represent the largest F-35 production contract and the lowest aircraft prices in program history,” said Greg Ulmer, vice president and general manager of the F-35 program.
More like this, please.
BETO AND ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: Beto O’Rourke recently argued, “Race is the No. 1 indicator for where toxic and polluting facilities are today,” and some in the media are saying he is right. Here’s some counter-evidence: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights tried and failed to come up with empirical evidence that would support such a claim. Its study found that coal ash dumps are more likely to be found near whites. (Repost: Link is working better now.)
WHATEVER GETS YOU THROUGH THE NIGHT.
● Shot: “I have never witnessed a concerted effort by any news organization to take a stand one way or the other on a political issue, to damage one particular party or help another.”
—CNN’s Jim Acosta, quoted by NewsBusters, yesterday.
● Chaser:
—As spotted by Twitchy, yesterday.
HE FIGHTS: Trump Blasts Biden in Iowa, Says Obama ‘Took Him Off the Trash Heap’ in 2008.
Well, he’s right.
120 YEARS AGO TODAY: They say there are 8 million stories in the Naked City. The Ukranian-American photographer Weegee (real name: Arthur Fellig) managed to document a lot of them in black and white. He was born this day in 1899.
June 11, 2019
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MEMO TO GEORGE SOROS AND CHARLES KOCH: FUND CAMPUS DEBATES: My friend Richard Vedder wrote this last month, but I didn’t see it until today. It’s not a bad idea. A conspicuously well-funded campus debate program designed to bring real left-right engagement on campuses could be a good thing. Call it “Safe Spaces for Serious Ideas.”
MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH: Bill Maher tells CNN’s Chris Cuomo “that political correctness has become a ‘cancer on progressivism,’” adding that “’The vast majority of liberals in this country hate it,’ Maher said. ‘They think political correctness has gone way too far.’”
Leftists such as Vox’s Carlos Maza are thrilled to use PC as a weapon against conservatives. They’re only angry when it’s used against them, ala Alinsky’s Rule #4 and often by their fellow leftists, as the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, and Mark Lilla, a Columbia professor who wrote The Once and Future Liberal, a 2017 jeremiad against identity politics that led to a colleague at Columbia accusing him of “contributing to the same ideological project”’ as David Duke, have discovered the hard way.
Or this leftwing author, banned today by his fellow “Progressives” at Twitter, because his book cover featured the stars of the American flag with little Klan hoods in them:
As of the time of this post being written, Neiwert’s account remains suspended. The Daily Beast notes that “The type of ban likely means that Neiwert could change the image on his profile and be reinstated—but he said he is refusing to do so ‘on principle.’”
OPEN THREAD: Make this one special.