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Archive for 2019
January 23, 2019
OPEN THREAD: Hump Day Edition.
WHAT’S HILARIOUS ABOUT THIS IS THAT JEFF JARVIS IS ONE OF THE WHITEST GUYS I KNOW.
But there’s a lot of this nonsense going around:
The left’s race-talk has accelerated through the dimensional plane into some sort of stupidity hyperspace now.
UPDATE: Related:
NEWS YOU CAN USE: When To Take Aspirin To Prevent Heart Trouble.
TAMARA KEEL: Seismic Disturbance.
INTERESTING TAKE ON RUSSIAN RELATIONS WITH SERBIA: The czars and commissars both made pan-Slavism a big time foreign policy play. Putin has as well.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Belgrade — his first in more than four years — was eagerly anticipated by Serbian politicians. Despite the visit being described there as monumental, no agreement that could be described as monumental came out of it. In reality, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has little choice but to praise his Russian benefactor in public, while trying to convince the Kremlin behind closed doors to give Belgrade at least a little wiggle room on the most important Serbian foreign policy issue: recognition of Kosovo.
The Kosovo conflict seemed endless, but many events of the past eighteen months have made its resolution more possible than even the bravest optimists dared to dream just a short time ago. First, Brussels finally named a possible date for Serbia to join the European Union: 2025, signaling that the country’s accession is quite realistic, provided Belgrade complies with certain conditions, the main one of which is resolving the Kosovo conflict.
The essay argues that Serbia is attempting to “rid itself” of Russian support, at least on the issue of Kosovo. It’s worth a read.
VERY RELATED: Chapter 4 of Cocktails from Hell: 21st Century Russian Imperial Warfare. The chapter’s first sentence: “According to the Kremlin, the Kosovo precedent justifies the Crimean precedent.” Available on Amazon and at your local bookstore.
I’M GLAD THESE KIDS ARE PUSHING BACK ON THE LIES AND HATRED: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) quietly deletes inaccurate attack on students from Covington Catholic.
The only thing worse than a malicious lie is the people who try to keep it alive even after it has been thoroughly discredited.
And that’s exactly what Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., did Tuesday evening when she repeated a series of disproven allegations leveled against a group of Covington Catholic High School students who attended the March for Life last week. They were falsely accused this weekend of “mobbing” Nathan Phillips, a Native American protester — footage of the incident shows otherwise.
“The boys were protesting a woman’s right to choose & yelled ‘it’s not rape if you enjoy it,’” the congresswoman said in a since-deleted tweet.
Her comments were made specifically in response to President Trump, who also tweeted Tuesday in reference to the March for Life incident that “the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be. They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the good – maybe even to bring people together. It started off unpleasant, but can end in a dream!”
Rep. Omar’s tweet also claimed, falsely, that the Covington students “were taunting 5 Black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants.”
Her note concluded with a reference to Nick Sandmann, the most visible student from the March for Life incident, claiming the teen’s “family hired a right wing PR firm to write his non-apology” for his interview this week with NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie.
It’s rare when someone manages to get this much wrong in such little space with so few words, but Omar has so far shown a special talent for this sort of thing. Let’s work through her baseless accusations, misleading statements, and outright falsehoods one by one.
Remember, these are the people who lecture us on decency.
SPACEX STARSHIP FRACTURED BY FIERCE TEXAS WINDS: “A prototype “hopper” designed for takeoff and landing tests suffered a setback when high winds knocked its nose cone over.”
The blown cone incident occurred at SpaceX’s South Texas Launch Site in Boca Chica Village near Brownsville, Texas. Any bets national media will play this as an anti-Texas story?
YOU HAVE OPTIONS: The 2020 Lincoln Aviator Starts at $52,195 and Can Cost More Than $90,000. It looks nice. I rode in a new Continental in LA a couple of weeks ago and it was nice, though the driver still missed the Town Car.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 12 Medical Conditions That Can Kill You in 24 Hours or Less.
FOR WHEN 30 ROUNDS IN YOUR HANDGUN JUST AREN’T ENOUGH: Range Review: Kel-Tec CP33.
AT AMAZON, save on Bestselling Jewelry.
JUSTIFIED: Lawyer for Covington Catholic Families Gives Media 48 Hours to ‘Retract and Correct’ Smears. “Lawsuits will start to occur next week.”
SENATORS TELL TRUMP TO SEND ISIS POWS TO GUANTANAMO: Why not use the perfectly good terrorist detainment center for its intended purpose?
SOUTH KOREAN MARINES PREPARE FOR ACTION: This is a short but information-rich run down on the South Korean Marine Corps and its amphibious assault ships. The article includes a paragraph about the Corps’ “Spartan 3000” special rapid deployment brigade and its missions. The brigade is supposed to be “trained and ready to move anywhere in the Korean peninsula within 24 hours.” Yes, you read that right. Anywhere in the peninsula.
A COLD WINTER JUMP: Paratroopers from the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, U.S. Army Alaska, descend over Malemute Drop Zone after jumping from USAF C-17s.
WHAT THE PRESS MISSED ABOUT VANGUARD FOUNDER’S FORTUNE:
John Bogle, the founder of The Vanguard Group who died earlier this month at age 89, got rich by giving his mutual fund customers a better deal.
The obituaries seem to have missed that point, dwelling instead on the theory that if only Bogle had chosen to rip off his customers, he could have been even richer. That claim is highly speculative, and based on a fundamental misperception: a view of capitalism as a racket rather than as a system in which the incentives of entrepreneurs and customers sometimes align with results that are spectacularly rewarding for both.
The tone was set with a New York Times obituary. “Vanguard managed its indexed mutual funds at cost, charging investors fees that were far lower than those of virtually all of its rivals,” the Times wrote. “Vanguard’s consistent growth produced riches for Mr. Bogle, but not to the extent that another ownership structure might have done. For example, Edward C. Johnson III, the chairman of Fidelity Investments, has a net worth of $7.4 billion, according to Forbes. Mr. Bogle’s net worth was generally estimated at $80 million last year.”
In case anyone missed the point, the lead headline in Friday’s Times business section read “Jack Bogle was no billionaire.” That ran over an article crediting Bogle with “giving up his chance at great wealth by eschewing ownership of the company,” and describing Bogle’s $80 million as “small change by the standards of money management.”
“Instead of making billions, helping millions,” was the Times inside headline. An accompanying Times article described Bogle as someone “who didn’t care about his own bottom line.”
Concurrently though, media darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s policy adviser Dan Riffle “believes billionaires are immoral even if they’re good people,” tweeting, “Important point here. Bill Gates’ money hoarding makes him greedy, but maybe he goes 6/6 on the other deadly sins and, on balance, is a good person. Still, he’s a policy failure. The acquisition of that much wealth has bad consequences. A moral society needs guardrails against it.”
With Oceania now being at war with Eastasia, I eagerly await the Gray Lady’s denunciation of Times savior Carlos Slim.
THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW THE HISTORY OF THE F-4 ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT: China’s J-20 stealth fighter has no cannon.
It’s less unreasonable now to go all-in on missiles than it was in the 1960s, but you wouldn’t want to be the pilot caught in close quarters without a cannon.
PUT A RING ON IT: Saturn spent billions of years without its rings, NASA says. “The findings indicate that Saturn’s rings formed between 10 million and 100 million years ago.” It’s luck that we happened to be around to see them. Or is it?