VERY MERRY DEALS in Home and Kitchen are here. #CommissionEarned
Archive for 2022
December 13, 2022
FOR OUR TOWNHALL VIP SUPPORTERS: Artemis I Was a Complete Success, but About That Followup Mission…
It’s probably gonna be a couple of years.
Back when NASA was much more serious about timetables, there wasn’t much time wasted between spaceflights. The Saturn V rocket that took men to Luna from 1969-72, had its first unmanned test flight in November of 1967. The first crewed flight took place just 13 months later. Those 13 months included half of a two-year delay in manned space flight after the tragic Apollo 1 launchpad fire that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee during a rehearsal.
By every account, Artemis I succeeded in every way during a much more difficult and intricate mission than Apollo 4. So why can’t NASA get Artemis II off the ground probably any sooner than 2025? “I would say that we’re going to try our best to get there,” in 2024, Orion program director Howard Hu told space reporter Eric Burger last week, but don’t count on it.
There are two causes for the long delay: one structural and one cultural.
Much more at the link.
REMEMBER, MERRICK GARLAND CALLED PARENTS WHO COMPLAINED ABOUT THIS SORT OF STUFF DOMESTIC TERRORISTS: Loudoun grand jury indicts ousted Superintendent Scott Ziegler following report on sexual assault response.
Flashback: The left is losing its war on parents.
IS IT? IS IT REALLY? Higher Ed is a Public Good. Let’s Fund It Like One.
I’m not even convinced that modern higher education is a net positive for society, much less that it possesses the characteristics of an economic “public good” like national defense or highways.
December 12, 2022
SAME REASON A DOG LICKS HIMSELF: BECAUSE HE CAN. Why is Buttigieg using taxpayer-funded private jets? “I doubt many members of the media will rouse themselves to ask Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg many tough questions about why he’s used taxpayer-funded private jets at least 18 times since taking office, even though that sort of thing was a big deal back when former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price did it. I mean, if there’s anybody in the administration who shouldn’t be flying on private jets, it’s the guy who’s always nagging you to reduce your carbon footprint by buying an electric car. But hey, Buttigieg is a Democrat, so when he flies on a private jet at taxpayer expense, it isn’t a bad thing.”
I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.
Which apparently means never.
I’M STILL NOT RECOVERED FROM MEDICINE SIDE EFFECTS FROM HADES, SO I’M GOING TO BED EARLY AND HOPING TO BEAT IT: But there’s a full short story for free on my site. So, have that. (And yes, some typos): Good Will To Men.
SEE IN A PROPER CON THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN TOOLS TO ENSURE MUTUAL LOYALTY: King and queen of the crypto con may be turning on each other.
WELL, FOR DEMOCRATIC HACKS IT IS: Janet Yellen thinks the job market picture is just peachy.
OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.
BECAUSE IT’S NOT SPACEX? After Artemis 1, it will take NASA 2 years to send astronauts to the moon. Why so long?
AT AMAZON, Crock-Pot 6-Quart Countdown Programmable Oval Slow Cooker with Dipper. #CommissionEarned.
CHANGE: Philadelphia forced to remove box that hid Columbus statue since BLM protests.
The statue in Marconi Plaza has been covered since June 2020, when progressive Mayor Jim Kenney announced plans to completely remove it as protesters took to the streets after George Floyd’s murder.
But on Friday, a judge ordered the city to finally free the statue and remove the plywood box.
Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt said “the City accepted the donation of the Columbus statue in 1876” and was not able to just ditch it.
“It has a fiduciary duty to preserve that statue, which it designated an historic object in 2017. The Columbus statue is not City property,” the judge ruled.
Local outlet WPVI-TV filmed city workers removing the box late Sunday.
A handful of onlookers cheered as the controversial statue finally emerged from underneath its covering, which since October had been painted the green, white and red of the Italian flag.
Attorney George Bochetto, who represents the statue’s supporters, told the local station that he is “delighted” that “the rule of law still matters.”
“That we are not a society ruled by cancel culture mobs. That all ethnic groups can proudly protect and honor their diverse heritages,” Bochetto said in a statement, referring to the 2020 protests.
He also told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the court’s decision was “not just significant for the Columbus statue and Italian Americans, it’s significant for every ethnic group in this country.”
The mayor’s spokesman, Kevin Lessard, said the city is “very disappointed” in the court’s ruling.
Of course he is: “In all of his political writings, [the late Roger] Scruton takes on the Left for scorning existing norms and customs, and for promoting a ‘culture of repudiation.’ The Left is ‘negative.’ It dismisses ‘every aspect of our cultural capital’ with the language of brutal invective: accusing every defender of human nature and sound tradition of ‘racism,’ ‘xenophobia,’ ‘homophobia,’ and ‘sexism.’ Like 1984’s ‘two minutes of hate,’ this language tears down, intimidates, and can never build anything humane or constructive—it is nihilistic to the core. At the same time, Scruton wants to reach out to reasonable liberals who eschew ideology and who still believe in civility and the promise of national belonging. His conservatism can discern the truth in liberalism (another Aristotelian trait) while the partisans of repudiation see half the human race as enemies.”
BRENNAN IS WORSE THAN A DISGRACE:
In a functioning republic he’d be in jail, except that in a functioning republic, he’d never have held the jobs he’s held.
And I’m getting very tired of the “have you no decency?” routine coming from people who have made very clear that they possess no decency whatsoever.
ORANGE MAN BANNED: Here’s How Twitter Execs Reinterpreted Trump Tweets To Justify Banning Him.
Twitter executives, including former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde, reinterpreted then-President Donald Trump’s final Jan. 8, 2021, tweets to overrule the initial finding of the site’s safety team that they were not in violation of the rules, according to internal messages published by journalist Bari Weiss Monday.
Trump first tweeted that the “75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me … will have a Giant Voice long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” before tweeting a follow-up roughly an hour later saying he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021. Members of Twitter’s safety team initially rejected increasingly agitated calls from Twitter staff to ban Trump, saying that neither message was in clear violation of the rules, as they contained no overt or coded incitement to violence. (RELATED: Twitter’s Safety Team Found Trump’s Final Tweets Did Not Violate Policy, But He Was Banned Anyway)
Less than 90 minutes after this initial assessment by the Twitter safety team, Gadde messaged another higher-ranking staffer that the safety team, suggesting that the team may have been incorrect to interpret the term “American Patriots” as being in reference Trump voters as opposed to the rioters present on Jan. 6., Weiss reported.
“The biggest question is whether a tweet like the one this morning from Trump, which isn’t a rule violation on its face, is being used as coded incitement to further violence,” Gadde messaged the other staffer, whose name was redacted. “Eg use of term ‘American Patriots’ and ‘They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!’”
Read the whole thing.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but this latest look into Twitter’s previous management’s misdeeds will likely have zero traction in the DNC-MSM: Nets Bury Heads in the Stand, Shut Out Mention of Fourth Twitter Files Batch.
On Saturday night, journalist Michael Shellenberger dropped the fourth batch of what’s become known as the Twitter Files and detailed the depths in which Twitter executives in January 2021 sought to concoct a rationale to ban former President Trump from the platform following the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
But like we saw with the previous three tranches from Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss (and an addendum from Taibbi), the major broadcast networks of ABC and NBC continued to ignore the bombshell files showing a pattern of deception, lies, and excuses from Twitter employees to censor conservatives and opposing views to the far-left Twitter workforce. CBS remained out to lunch with their total stuck at 26 seconds they gave to the first release.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their lack of coverage makes perfect sense.
Evergreen:
LUGGAGE THIEVERY IS NOT CAREER-ENHANCING: Department of Energy fires gender fluid nuclear official amid luggage theft charges.
DEVELOPING: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas after U.S. files criminal charges.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested by Bahamian authorities this evening after the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York shared a sealed indictment with the Bahamian government, setting the stage for extradition and U.S. trial for the onetime crypto billionaire at the heart of the crypto exchange’s collapse.
Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on Twitter that the federal government anticipated moving to “unseal the indictment in the morning.”
Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder said that the United States had filed unspecified criminal charges against Bankman-Fried and was “likely to request his extradition.”
In a statement, Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis said, “The Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law.”
“While the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, The Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX, with the continued cooperation of its law enforcement and regulatory partners in the United States and elsewhere,” continued the statement.
Subsequent reports have only reinforced this rumor, and the latest is that Ellison is being represented by DC law firm, WilmerHale…
… best known for its Government Affairs Department Chair, Jamie Gorelick, who was the former No. 2 ranking member in the Clinton Justice Department, and in a recent interview, she referred to Garland as her “wingman.”
If indeed Ellison is working the Feds while currying favor with SBF’s former closest friends, the days of Bankman-Fried — who may or may not soon commit Epsteincide — outside of a prison cell are numbered.
On the other hand though, Jamie Gorelick? What could go wrong?
CLIMATE CHANGE: Mysterious Patterns Span The Arabian Desert, And We May Finally Know Why. “The deserts of Saudi Arabia were once the lush and fertile homes of ancient people more than 8,000 years ago. Today, the remnants of these long-gone communities still stand – frozen, or rather, desiccated in time.”
OCEAN TRAVEL: ‘Miniboat’ built by Rhode Island students makes it to England. “The boat, dubbed Inspiration, was made by students at Central Falls High School, Veterans Memorial Elementary and Raices Dual Language Academy, all schools located in Central Falls.”
NO. NEXT QUESTION? Is it bigotry to focus on Sam Brinton’s thefts?
Brinton is not just some random non-binary dude who happened to get caught up in a scandal and would otherwise have been anonymous. He was hired specifically to push gender ideology on the American public, and in the most in-your-face manner. So in-your-face that some LGBTQ+ activists actually worried that Brinton was something of a potential time bomb, given his sketchy history.
Brinton was trotted out as part of the LGBTQ++/565=screw you crowd. Along with Adm. Rachel Levine, Karine Jean-Pierre, and Biden’s embrace of the Dylan Mulvaney crowd hiring Brinton was explicitly a cultural and political statement. A symbol. And as a symbol, not merely a public employee of no note, it is totally fair to examine his conduct.
It is the Biden crowd, not we, who made Brinton this symbol of competence and diversity. On Bastille Day the Biden Administration sent Brinton and Levine to the French Embassy as the United States’ representatives to their celebration. That is extremely high profile, and was done to make a point.
So Brinton is a high profile symbol chosen specifically for his gender fluidity. That makes his behavior significant. Conservatives didn’t latch on to him to make a point, the Left did.
And, unsurprisingly, his behavior tracked exactly with the expectations of people who believe that Brinton’s gender confusion is a result of a mental illness of some kind. The guy parades around in female clothing, does bondage seminars, describes his bizarre sexual practices and teaches them to others, and steals women’s luggage to wear their clothes.
This all fits together. It’s not like the last item, stealing women’s clothes, is shockingly different that everything else. It shocks nobody, and demonstrates that normalizing his behavior was always stupid. It’s all of a piece–his crimes are connected to his other perversities, not some shocking exception. How many of those outfits he proudly parades around in were stolen? I would bet it would be more than one.
We have social norms to constrain human nature and desire; we are born as monsters of gluttony, utterly self-centered, and as basic barbarians. Parents, schools, churches, and other people shape the character of a child into something civilized, establishing boundaries that enable us to become good people. Tossing away all those boundaries creates Sam Brintons.
America’s newspaper of record “reports” that Brinton is really escalating his alleged crimes: Christmas Canceled After Sam Brinton Steals Santa’s Sack.
SUZANNE VENKER: Is She Marriage Material?
We hear plenty in America about whether or not a man is “marriage material.” But no one ever asks what makes a woman marriage material.
Seems to me that’s the more pertinent question since women are the ones who bow out of marriage the most.
Indeed, the overwhelming majority of divorce is filed by wives who use the all-encompassing umbrella of “irreconcilable differences” to get out of an abuse-free marriage.
If you’re a man who wants to avoid this fate, the best way to do so is to pay close attention to what a woman says and does when you’re dating her.
This was, in fact, my approach when dating.