Archive for 2021

UNDER BIDEN, MILITARY REALLY FOCUSING ON ITS CORE OBJECTIVES:

Navy task force recommends pledge to respect ‘intersectional identities’ in attempt to combat all forms of discrimination.

● “Armed with a recently approved charter to affirm its direction, the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center’s Diversity and Inclusion Council is working to create an organizational culture that fosters equality and equity throughout the enterprise.”

‘Our Army Combat Fitness Test shouldn’t be the equivalent to an Instagram yoga a** model’: Steven Crowder.

‘FRAIDY BEAR: Why Russia Is Terrified of SpaceX — and Starlink.

What does Russia have against cheap, fast, reliable internet from space? For one thing, Russian security services object that internet operated by a foreign satellite network would be immune from surveillance under Russia’s System of Operational Search Measures legislation (“SORM”). For another, they suspect that Starlink is part of a U.S. government plot to deploy “predatory, clever, powerful, high-technology … shock and awe … to advance, above all, [American] military interests.”

Yes, seriously.

And yet, there also seems to be an economic motivation to this ban on Starlink and other satellite networks. As Ars points out, “Russia is planning its own satellite Internet constellation, known as ‘Sphere.'” And in contrast to SpaceX’s Starlink, which is a privately funded and privately built communications system, the 600-satellite Sphere constellation will be a project built and run by the Russian state under the aegis of its Roscosmos space agency. And that could be a problem.

Sphere, you see, is rumored to cost $20 billion to build, may not begin launching until 2024, and won’t be completed before 2030. Given the amount of investment required, Russia’s government certainly doesn’t want to pay for the Sphere project only to discover three years from now that all of Sphere’s potential customers have already signed up for Starlink — and that it will never recover its investment.

It seems more likely that Moscow (and Beijing, too) is worried that Starlink users will be able to circumvent state censorship.

Like Glenn, Melissa and I signed up for Starlink last week, and hope they live up to their promise to have it available in the second half of the year. We’ll be trading some of Comcast’s top speeds that we don’t really need, in exchange for slightly lower prices, no data caps (yet?), and — best of all — no more subsidizing Comcast’s basic cable channels they require us to pay for.

BLUE CITY BLUES: Downtown San Francisco is reeling. More remote work could add to the pain.

Not only have companies realized that employees can be more productive and don’t need to be micromanaged, it allows them to recruit from a wider pool. Offering flexibility is also key to attracting talent, and not doing so puts businesses at a disadvantage, she said.

“Trust has been built. The technology is there to support it,” she said.

“Somebody doesn’t have to sit on the freeway for three hours or on BART for an hour and a half. They can get more work done,” she said.

Not to mention the $3,000-a-month studio apartments above poop-strewn sidewalks.

IT’S CLEAR OUR ELITES REGARD CHINA AS A ROLE MODEL, NOT A WARNING: An Uneasy Echo Between ‘Post-Insurrection’ America and the Political ‘Rectifications’ of Communist China. “There are uncanny parallels between what has happened post-Jan. 6 in America and the CCP political campaigns of yesteryears. . . . The CCP elite uses political campaigns to consolidate power and “normalize” communist rule over China. In most political campaigns, the Party designates a segment of the population as the enemy (“counter-revolutionaries,” “capitalist roader,” etc.), then relies on propaganda organs to set the new political reality and acceptable discourse. Through indoctrination or intimidation, the rest of the population is made to struggle against the demonized segment lest they are struggled against. . . . There are uncanny parallels between what has happened post-Jan. 6 in America and the CCP political campaigns of yesteryears. The establishment is promoting one accepted way to view the Capitol riots in the face of evidence challenging that view, and is designating as enemies the segment of the American population that supports former President Donald Trump or expresses skepticism about the outcome of the 2020 election. The current political climate has prompted people to report their family and friends to the authorities—the FBI received more than 100,000 such tips, according to the Washington Post. In China, virtually all the Party’s political campaigns feature the establishment of a political orthodoxy and encourage informants in a bid to turn the masses against each other.”

Related: Aim of Impeachment Was to Paint All Trump Voters as Criminals.

CAN’T GET THE COVID VACCINE? THIS MAY BE WHY: The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz brings together multiple reports of foreigners crossing the Southern border with Mexico to obtain the Covid vaccine shots.

“Texas only vaccinates Texans. California immunizes anyone with a pulse: residents, illegal aliens, vaccine tourists, even governors who believe the COVID rules he sets don’t apply to him,” Dunetz observes.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Get Ready for COVID-19 Variants Panic Porn Perma Mandates. “It behooves the Democrats to keep producing COVID panic porn for the inevitable day when Ol’ Gropes starts tripling up on his public senior moments and is babbling a lot about trouser ferrets and the leprechaun who brings the weed to his tree house. They’re going to need an excuse for keeping the most powerful and visible man in the world out of the public eye.”

ROGER KIMBALL: New York Times Shows Need for ‘Reality Czar.’

We saw it with the paper’s hysterical coverage of the Covington Catholic High School teens, their reporting about Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers, and last year’s biggest fantasy, the 1619 Project.

At first, the Times said that the 1619 Project was was a “major initiative” to “reframe” the understanding of American history.

America, the authors of the 1619 Project asserted, was founded as a “slavocracy,” the American Revolution was fought principally to preserve the institution of slavery, and 1619, when a ship bearing slaves arrived in Virginia, was “our true founding.”

Virtually every substantive claim in the 1619 Project was refuted by historians. The Times silently altered some of the more egregious errors, but again the damage had been done.

So maybe the Times is right and we do need a “reality czar” and a coordinated task force to police “misinformation.”

But the focus of the efforts should not be on people expressing differing opinions about the integrity of the 2020 election or the best way to respond to the CCP virus.

It should be on the machinations of that vast engine for the production of politicized misinformation, The New York Times.

Or as America’s real Newspaper of Record put it: Ignorant Senator Shares New York Times Article Thinking It’s Real.

REFILL THE SWAMP: Biden’s ethical standards aren’t worth a hill of beans — the ugly truth about ‘Honest Joe.’

Starting with the obvious, Hunter Biden is still in business with the Chinese Communist Party.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki admitted a little over a week ago that the president’s wayward 51-year-old son still owns 10 percent of Chinese equity firm BHR Partners.

So much for Joe’s promise that “no one in my family will . . . have any business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or a foreign country. Period. Period. End of story.”

But that was B.E., aka before the election. Everything’s changed now.

Biden watered down his family’s ethics rules immediately after the election to a vague statement about “appropriate distance” from the presidency.

Previously: Hunter Biden emails ‘name Joe Biden as “The Big Guy” who’d get 10% share in deal with Chinese energy firm’, report says.

What would be inappropriate? A measly 5%?

FACT CHECK? Kamala Lies to Axios with ‘Start from Scratch’ Vaccine Claim that Fauci Debunked.

Even after CNN fell on its face running this claim from an anonymous source, only to be corrected by media darling Anthony Fauci, Vice President Kamala Harris said it out loud to Axios reporter and co-founder Mike Allen for the website’s HBO show. Allen just accepted this garbage.

HARRIS: There was no stockpile! Right? It’s, in many ways —

ALLEN: No stockpile of?

HARRIS: Of vaccines! Right? So we’re looking at, there wasno national strategy or plan for vaccinations. We were leaving it to the states and local leaders to try and figure it out. And so in many ways, we are starting from scratch on something that’s been raging for almost an entire year.

Allen could only follow up with “So are you having to adjust your sights now of what’s possible, given that?” Pathetic. And that’s the headline Axios put on it, no need for a reality check:

But it gets worse. Twitchy reported that Axios originally tweeted Kamala’s kooky claim with the Fauci rebuttal from January….and then they took that tweet down, and kept running the uncorrected video in tweets.

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

FROM IAN GRAHAM:  Stellar.

Meet Stellar – urban crime-fighter who tackles injustice with swift and decisive action, carrying the burden of freeing society from oppression, fighting for the weak and wounded.

She is brave.

She is beautiful.

She is just a comic book character… or at least she was.

Macy Davis is an athletic high school student with an eye for Patrick Newell, the young artist who created Stellar. When Macy’s best friend, Keri Cartwright, discovers Patrick’s comic book heroine, she convinces Macy to masquerade as Stellar because to Macy, Stellar is Patrick’s perfect girl. But when Macy dons a homemade costume to surprise Patrick at the Halloween Dance, her debut takes an unexpected twist and the reveal is more than anyone, including Macy, could have ever imagined.

YOU NEED A BOB (BUG OUT BAG) IN YOUR LIFE: Many Shades of BOB.