THAT SEEMS LIKE TOO MANY TO ME. DOES THAT SEEM LIKE TOO MANY TO YOU? Math Is Hard: Bernie’s Press Secretary Says 500 Million Americans Go Bankrupt Each Year.
Archive for 2020
March 16, 2020
WEIRDLY, 75 YEARS AGO WE DIDN’T HAVE A SCIENCE BUREAUCRACY EITHER: For 75 Years, The US Had an ‘Endless Frontier’ of Science. Now It’s Coming to an End.
YOU USED TO NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for March 16, 2020. “Between almost everyone dropping out, Biden continuing to rack up victories, and the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic, almost all the air has been sucked out of the Democratic Presidential race.”
COPYRIGHT, FAIR USE, AND EMERGENCY TEACHING AND RESEARCH: “It is evident that making materials available and accessible to students in this time of crisis will almost always be a fair use.”
FINALLY: Space Force Just Received Its First New Offensive Weapon.
U.S. Space Force has begun operating a new offensive weapon system, an upgraded version of a ground-based satellite communications jamming system, for the first time in its short history. The first iteration of the Counter Communications System entered U.S. Air Force service in 2004 and the program has now gotten transferred to the newest branch of the American military.
The Space Force declared it had reached initial operational capability with the Counter Communications System Block 10.2, or CCS B10.2, on Mar. 9. The Harris Corporation, which merged with L3 Technologies last year to form L3Harris Technologies, had received the contract from the Air Force to develop this upgraded variant of the system in 2014.
“CCS is the only offensive system in the United States Space Force arsenal,” Lieutenant Colonel Steve Brogan, the Combat Systems branch materiel leader within the Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center’s (SMC) Special Programs Directorate, said in an official news piece about the system in January 2020. “This upgrade puts the ‘force’ in Space Force and is critical for Space as a warfighting domain.”
Faster, please. And more lasers.
THIS SHOULD HELP EMPLOYMENT SOME: Amazon Hiring 100,000 New Workers To Meet Demand.
WE NEED A COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF THE ATLANTIC UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON: The Atlantic Must Stop Covering For The Chinese Communist Party.
China does not just want to hide their mishandling of the outbreak, but they want to blame the origin of the virus on the United States and paint themselves as heroes saving the rest of the world from the pandemic they started. China’s Communist Party-controlled newspaper, People’s Daily, attributed shipments of masks and other medical equipment to countries like Iran and Italy as their love and care for all people. The Washington Post reported that those shipments were not donations, but exports purchased by those countries.
Not to be deterred by facts, however, Atlantic Staff Writer Anne Applebaum upheld the lie that China was “sending aid” to Italy out of the goodness of their hearts.
In an article titled “The Coronavirus Called America’s Bluff,” Applebaum makes the case for why the Trump administration is just as bad as the Chinese Communist Party. Applebaum initially describes China’s failings in handling the virus, but then compares Trump to officials in Wuhan for being “concerned about the numbers—the optics of how a pandemic looks.”
She acknowledges China’s threats against it’s own doctors, but shifts blame away from the Chinese Communist Party because they did not instruct “anyone in the United States not to carry out testing.” She writes “many of those recounting China’s missteps have become just a little bit too smug.”
Interesting to see Applebaum, who made her bones with Gulag: A History, a frank re-assessment of Soviet Communism, and has a new book due out in June titled Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, shilling for the authoritarian Chinese.
SHOULD CONGRESS VOTE REMOTELY INSTEAD OF IN FORMAL SESSIONS TOGETHER? There’s been talk throughout the digital age of allowing senators and representatives to vote remotely, but the coronavirus crisis is prompting renewed interest in the idea.
“Not so fast,” warns Government Affairs Institute Senior Fellow Joshua Huder, who then lays out what I find to be a convincing case for not going in that direction. For one thing, he writes, “If we want more individual member influence, putting distance between members and the process does the opposite. It gives leaders even more opportunity to legislate in secret, manipulate the process, and otherwise keep rank and file in the dark.”
My concern would be the likelihood any digital remote voting would risk hacking by China, which has already hacked the Office of Personnel Management, much of the Department of Defense, and perhaps just Sunday the Department of Health and Human Services.
CULTURE SHOCK DESPITE NATIONAL QUARANTINING: Faith-based movie ‘I Still Believe’ topped the charts Friday on its opening day and ended the weekend second. Also debuting over the weekend was “Onward” from Disney. Country music’s Shania Twain and Gary “Lt. Dan” Sinise star in supporting roles for “I Still Believe.”
WHEN YOU’VE LOST WAPO…: Yeah, That Joe Biden Ad Gets Four Pinocchios.
(Not a WaPo link.)
HMM: Cyberattack on HHS meant to slow coronavirus response, sources say. “As federal state and local governments focus on handling the current public health crisis, national security officials are also tracking other threats — in particular those posed by terrorist or extremist groups and foreign adversaries who may seek to take advantage of all of the attention being focused on the coronavirus and conduct an attack.”
TYRELL CORPORATION REALLY STEPPING UP THEIR EFFORTS, IN ORDER TO EASE SOCIAL DISTANCING: Sex doll with implanted human hair leaves people ‘certain it’s a real person.’
KNOXVILLE: Neighborhood’s ‘Kindness Committee’ runs errands for neighbors who can’t leave home. My neighborhood’s doing something similar via its neighborhood Facebook page.
OF COURSE HE COULD HAVE: California’s Governor Just Admitted He Could Have Removed Diseased-Filled Homeless Camps All Along.
BIDEN SAYS A LOT OF THINGS: Biden Claims America Would Be Better Prepared for Outbreaks If He’s Elected, Here’s Why He’s Wrong.
Every time Biden speaks I’m reminded of my grandfather’s favorite insult: “He’s a man of few words, but dear Lord, the turnover.”
HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: University bans taxpayer advocate because of unspecified ‘safety and security’ fears.
We’ve heard this before:
UNEXPECTEDLY: Seven months later, New York Times’ 1619 Project leader admits she got it wrong. “It cannot be stressed enough that Hannah-Jones’s since-corrected version of historical events was key to the entire project, the premise of which is that America was founded upon, built upon, and primarily formed by slavery. But, hey, better late than never!”
HIGHER ED IS WORTH THE MONEY BECAUSE OF ITS CIVILIZING, MATURING EFFECT ON STUDENTS: WATCH: Police use tear gas as drunk students block street, throw beer bottles. “The incident involving the large crowd occurred as authorities are encouraging people to practice social distancing.”
INTERESTING ARTICLE: Estimates of the Demand for Mechanical Ventilation in the United States During an Influenza Pandemic.
I should note that the US has a huge number of CPAP machines, which aren’t ventilators but aren’t nothing. I wonder if they can be adjusted to provide more assistance than normal?
More here. According to this, the US is way ahead of other countries in the number of ICU beds per capita that can be equipped with ventilators: Well over twice as many as Canada, nearly 4 times as many as Australia and New Zealand. The CDC has a national stockpile of ventilators, too.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: We’re Still Open for Business! “We here at PJ Media are lucky, we are all still working while so many in the country aren’t. Somebody has to write about all of this insanity, and these are heady times for those of us who have been working remotely for years. What we are calling ‘social distancing’ now used to be referred to as my mood. Once I realized that I had enough toilet paper and vodka I knew that this was the crisis I’ve been prepping for.”
I THINK I’M GOING TO DISCONTINUE THE “CORONAVIRUS UPDATE” FEATURE. I started it when I thought the story wasn’t getting enough attention, which clearly isn’t the case anymore. I’ll still blog stuff that looks important, but no more twice-daily roundups unless conditions warrant.