Archive for 2020
December 2, 2020
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Let’s Start Jailing Lawmakers Who Violate Their Own COVID Restrictions. “Imagine the pure, poetic justice of seeing Newsom, Cuomo, and some of the other Hitler youth (stole that from Animal House) cooling their heels in a holding cell after being caught with their masks off and their pants down.”
ONE FOR MISSILE DEFENSE DENIERS: Merry Christmas, Hawaii: U.S. Missile Defenses Just Improved.
Anyone who dismisses Hawaiians’ fear of attack should revisit the January 2018 false missile-attack alert issued by the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. When the agency announced an attack was underway, many Hawaiians panicked. The public fright demonstrated rational people fear nuclear-armed missiles, especially when malign regimes threaten ICBM attacks.
Perhaps dismissive sophisticates have also forgotten the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.
The column analyzes the impact of the Missile Defense Agency’s successful November 16 anti-ballistic missile test. In that test an SM-3 Block IIA missile fired by a Navy guided-missile destroyer hit and killed a target ICBM as it plunged toward Hawaii. Plus Christmas and Pearl Harbor!
CAN THE LEGACY AEROSPACE COMPANIES DO ANYTHING RIGHT ANYMORE? Component failure in NASA’s deep-space crew capsule could take months to fix. “Replacing the PDU isn’t easy. The component is difficult to reach: it’s located inside an adapter that connects Orion to its service module — a cylindrical trunk that provides support, propulsion, and power for the capsule during its trip through space. To get to the PDU, Lockheed Martin could remove the Orion crew capsule from its service module, but it’s a lengthy process that could take up to a year. As many as nine months would be needed to take the vehicle apart and put it back together again, in addition to three months for subsequent testing, according to the presentation.”
The alternative approach is to cut metal to get to the part. This is terrible design. On the “bright” side, the whole program is so screwed up that this delay may not matter: “If engineers choose to remove Orion from its service module, the capsule’s first flight on the SLS may be delayed past its current date of November 2021. But the SLS has experienced its own set of delays: it was supposed to fly for the first time in 2017 but hasn’t done so yet. It’s not clear if the SLS itself will make the November 2021 flight date either; a key test of the rocket coming up at the end of the year has been pushed back, with no new target date set. So it’s possible that Lockheed Martin and NASA can fix Orion before the SLS is ready to fly.”
SPACE: Elon Musk says SpaceX will attempt uncrewed Mars flight in two years, human landing in four to six.
NASA is hoping to get just as far as the Moon in four years, but at this point it’s hard to see how they make that deadline.
OH: California’s Highest-Paid Govt Employee Worked for Org Tied to Chinese Espionage. “Taxpayers paid $1.7 million to ex-pension fund manager Meng.”
COME ON, PEOPLE, WE CAN MAKE IT TO AN EVEN HALF-BILLION: History: Most FBI background checks ever, 434M guns in America. It would be even more if stores could keep enough inventory in.
BUFF, WITH FRIENDS: A B-52 flies in formation with F-16 Fighting Falcons and F-15E Strike Eagles during a Bomber Task Force mission in CENTCOM’s area of responsibility. Photo taken Nov. 21, 2020.
TRUMP-ERA MODIFIED LIMITED HANGOUT REACHES CONCLUSION: Sad tale of Time’s Up and Hollywood’s failed activism.
CHRISTMAS AT THE WHITE HOUSE, with Michael Yon.
Plus: “Allegations of war crimes against Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan. My gut instinct: The allegations are lawfare designed to target Australia and the Aussie military, who are famously disciplined. I’ve seen this sort of lawfare against British and Americans.”
WHO SHOULD BIDEN APPOINT AS SECRETARY OF EDUCATION?: He promised voters that he would appoint a teacher. But a piece in the New York Daily News urges him to break that promise. It suggests instead that he appoint the current chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Here is one reason such an appointment would be controversial: While she served as Asst. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights, she issued the notorious transgender bathroom guidance, which, as I explain here, was at best a misinterpretation of applicable law. (The guidance was withdrawn by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary DeVos in the early days of the Trump Administration, but it can easily be brought back during the Biden Administration.)
Some people are assuming that Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the Supreme Court held that gender identity discrimination can be a form of sex discrimination under Title VII, vindicates the transgender bathroom guidance. Actually it’s the opposite. It makes the cases against the guidance even stronger.
There are other reasons that such an appointment would be controversial. I may touch on some of them later.
LORDING IT OVER THE REST OF US IS THE ENTIRE POINT: San Jose Mayor Attends Thanksgiving Party After Telling Citizens to ‘Cancel Big Gatherings This Year.’
Related (From Ed): San Francisco Mayor London Breed had her own French Laundry party — the night after Gavin Newsom’s.
FLASHBACK: Donald Trump is a symptom of a new kind of class warfare raging at home and abroad. Regardless of who’s sworn in on January 20, that won’t go away.
Related thoughts here.
WHY IS THE LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF VIOLENCE? Two Leftist Women Arrested On Charges Of Terrorist Attack on a Railroad.
Seattle – Two people arrested on the BNSF Railway tracks near Bellingham, Whatcom County, were charged with terrorist attack and other violence against a railroad carrier, and appeared in federal court today, announced U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran. Samantha Brooks, 27, and Ellen Reiche, 23, both of Bellingham, Washington, were arrested Saturday night in Bellingham as they allegedly placed a ‘shunt’ on the tracks. A shunt disrupts the low level electrical current on the tracks and can disable various safety features.
“Since January there have been 41 incidents of shunts placed on the BNSF tracks in Whatcom and Skagit counties—causing crossing guards to malfunction, interfering with automatic breaking systems, and, in one case, causing the near-derailment of tanks of hazardous chemicals,” said U.S. Attorney Moran. “These crimes endanger our community. I commend the agents from Customs and Border Protection, FBI, BNSF Police, and state and local partners who prioritized stopping this criminal conduct.”
I find all of the above quite shocking, considering that all the best people told me that Seattle was enjoying Mayor Durkan’s Summer of Love this year.
OH: Even a Large Number of Democrats Believe Biden Stole the Election. “According to Rasmussen, 30 percent of Democrats believe that it’s ‘very likely’ that their own party won the election through illegitimate means. Unsurprisingly, Republicans overwhelmingly believe the election was stolen with 75 percent, and Independent voters believe it was stolen at 39 percent. Overall, nearly half the country believes the election is illegitimate at 47 percent.”
In the spirit of bipartisanship, the audit should be deep and far-reaching.
IT’S COME TO THIS. Media: MAGA Hats are Racist but Hammer and Sickle Ushankas from Russia “Need Context.”
There was no claim made about the photo beyond describing exactly what the photo showed. Unless USA Today means to dispute that Jen Psaki is pictured, which they admit she is, or the she isn’t wearing a hat with what appears to be a hammer and sickle on the front, which they aren’t, this isn’t a “check” on anything.
As Peter Cook tweets, the hammer, sickle, and red star “should be as reviled as the swastika:”
Earlier: OK, Cancel Culture, Now Do the Wildly Racist Karl Marx.
THIS DESERVES SOME ANTITRUST SCRUTINY: Salesforce to Acquire Slack for $27.7 Billion: The move caps an acquisitive streak by Salesforce and ends Slack’s run as an independent publicly traded company.
I suspect it was deliberately time to hit the seam between two administrations.
‘SHUT UP,’ THEY EXPLAINED: College Republicans at University of Oregon Face Backlash Over Social Media Posts.
AGAIN, THE BEE, TOMORROW’S NEWS TODAY: Kamala Harris Proposes Housing Plan Where Everybody Gets Free 10’x10′ Room And Three Meals A Day.