WARTHOG ON THE HUNT: Fine photo of an Air National Guard A-10 Thunderbolt II getting in a little target practice at Idaho’s Orchard Combat Training Center.
Archive for 2019
August 23, 2019
IF YOU CAN’T BEAT’EM, WELL THEN, JUST REPLACE’EM: That appears to be a key part of Beijing’s emerging strategy for dealing with Hong Kong, replacing it as a world financial center with the city just across the border from it, Shenzhen. Those units of China’s Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) are still nearby.
HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Wisconsin Republicans to reintroduce campus free speech bill. Good.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. All The People Who Think They Are Better Than You Are Much, Much Worse.
Never before have so many snobs had so little to be snobbish about. It’s not like the ruling caste that turns up its collective snout at the people who actually make this country work has a CV full of achievements to back up its arrogance. Our elite is anything but. It’s a collection of pedestrian mediocrities who inherited our civilization from the people who actually created it and fought for it, and like every spoiled child who was handed free stuff by his doting mommy and daddy, our elite is resentful and obnoxious.
We’re ruled by a bunch of Veruca Salts.
Kurt Schlichter, so read the whole thing.
Short version: Non-gun owner shocked by the legal hurdles involved in buying a gun, because Obama told her it was so easy.
AFRICAN NATIONS CANCELING DEALS WITH CHINA: Troubles begin for the lender when the lendees realize their kneecaps are in danger.
WELL: Former Overstock CEO: James Comey wanted me to sleep with Maria Butina. “‘There was political espionage conducted against Hillary Clinton, Rubio, Cruz, and Donald Trump,’ Byrne tells the Bulls & Bears panel, and that it was run by Peter Strzok. Byrne then claimed that he’d been offered ‘a billion-dollar bribe’ to keep quiet, that Warren Buffett told him to go public, and that all of this has to do with Strzok, McCabe and others.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Granny Maojackets’ Emails Are Back!
The more we learn about the Comey-era FBI, the more it seems as if it functioned as a subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee. The conclusion of this article questions “whether there are two systems of justice inside the FBI — one for the Clintons, and one for the rest of the country.”
Clinton apologists are fond of reminding everyone that they have never been indicted for anything. I’ve written for years that that is because they are very good criminals.
Maybe they’ve had more inside help than we knew.
Pretty sure the “maybe” is rhetorical.
PROBABLY BECAUSE THE ROCK HAS THE LIFESPAN OF KEITH RICHARDS: NASA Names Record-Setting Mars Rock After The Rolling Stones.
I’LL BELIEVE IT’S A CRISIS WHEN THE PEOPLE WHO TELL ME IT’S A CRISIS START ACTING LIKE IT’S A CRISIS:
OUR PARTNER IN MIDDLE EAST PEACE: Abbas Doubles Down on ‘Pay-to-Slay’ Policy, Says Palestinians Will ‘March Into Jerusalem By the Millions.’
MEMRI has the full translation here.
DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Justice: 64% of federal arrests are noncitizens, with a 200% increase.
A WARNING TO JEWS: Ignore it at your peril: The Democratic Party is becoming unsalvageable.
IT’S COMPLICATED: Examining Claims About Induced Demand, Adding Road Capacity and Traffic Congestion. “The ‘iron law of roadway congestion’ isn’t.”
Here are some of the limitations with what Duranton and Turner did. First, their detailed analysis deals only with urban Interstates. Analytically, they treat parallel arterials and all other roadways in the metro area as a large blob. That leaves them unable to analyze (as opposed to only speculating about) the extent to which drivers shift trips from parallel arterials to the newly expanded urban Interstate (which would not represent new driving, but simply a re-allocation of existing driving).
Second, the authors’ premise that all such freeways have a “natural level of saturation” implies that all urban Interstates should fill up to the point of serious peak-period congestion. But in fact, actual congestion levels (in both extent and duration) vary considerably among the set of a metro area’s freeways. And the extent of congestion also varies enormously among large metro areas overall. In 2014, Randal O’Toole’s Antiplanner blog provided data on daily VMT per lane-mile on urban freeways around the country, finding a range from as low as 9,000 to a high of 22,000.
Third, since most metro areas in recent decades have added relatively little freeway capacity, the authors’ analytical results, even if correct, would tell us only that making marginal increases in freeway capacity produces little in the way of freeway congestion reduction.
We have a similar real-word experiment going on right where I live. The I-25 “gap” of two-lane highway between Monument (a Colorado Springs exurb) and Castle Rock (a Denver exurb) should have been widened 20 years ago, when traffic first became a noticeable problem. Instead, the decision wasn’t made until about two years ago, and only after two highway patrol officers were killed by oncoming traffic (the shoulders are quite narrow in most places) during routine ticket stops. And instead of two new lanes north and south, we’ll get just one new toll lane in each direction. In other words, the expanded interstate was obsolete at the planning stage, forget about 2022 when it’s finally completed.
Yet our “addiction to cars” or some such will get the blame for the unimproved traffic snarls, accidents, and deaths.
UPDATE: Link was missing. Fixed now — sorry!
WHAT COULD GO WRONG?: The California Legislature is close to prohibiting schools from suspending students for willful disobedience.
WHY ARE THE “MAINSTREAM MEDIA” SUCH CESSPITS OF HATE? The Media’s Intersectional Embrace of Anti-Semitism.
THE CITIZENRY RESPONDS MORE SENSIBLY THAN THE ELITE: Arming up: Gun background checks spike after 80% of mass shootings.
WHY ARE OUR UNIVERSITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF SEXISM? Women-only STEM college programs under attack for male discrimination.