Archive for 2022
February 7, 2022
MICHAEL WALSH: Sic Semper Tyrannis.
It’s become axiomatic that inside every leftist is a totalitarian screaming to get out. So if there’s one positive thing Covid has done is identify those people for all to see: the slave-muzzle wearers, proudly exhibiting their servile natures. They’re the Karens, the mask nazis, the buttinskis who can’t leave you or your family alone, the ones who screech at the sight of the unmasked like Donald Sutherland ratting out a real human being at the end of the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers:
These are the same people who want to force you into electric cars but not provide a reliable source of electricity for them. Who wish to destroy the energy industries that built our nation, and leave you freezing or sweltering in the dark. Who condone and even encourage mass looting of shops, the murder of small Asian women waiting for a subway train, the shooting of policemen by the underclass, and the flouting of nearly every law of civilized behavior on the streets in the name of “social justice.” And these are the people who, under the rubric of “climate change” and “the Great Reset,” want to strip you of your home, your cars, your livelihood and, eventually, your life. No matter which office they hold, high or low or none at all, these people are your enemies and should be treated accordingly.
Make no mistake: Covid was only a beta-test, one that a submissive population passed with flying colors. Instantly repealed, without all that pesky business about amending the Constitution, were the first, fourth, fifth, and the eighth articles of the Bill of Rights. (The ninth and tenth, of course, have long since been rendered null, void, and nugatory. You remember them, the ones that reserve all unenumerated rights not mentioned in the Constitution to the people and the states.) This is why former president Barack Obama infamously referred to our founding document as a “charter of negative liberties.” Which is precisely what the Founders desired.
Read the whole thing.
WE WERE SOMEWHERE AROUND WILMINGTON ON THE EDGE OF THE GOLF COURSE WHEN THE DRUGS BEGAN TO TAKE HOLD: You Can’t Make This Up: Biden’s HHS to Fund Crack Pipes, Needles, and “Harm Reduction” Vending Machines.
HMM: NASA and SpaceX say lagging Dragon parachute may be normal phenomenon.
NASA and SpaceX are studying why parachutes on two consecutive Dragon missions opened late but said they don’t believe the issue poses a safety risk.
Officials said at a Feb. 4 briefing that it’s possible that the delayed opening of one of four parachutes on both the Crew-2 splashdown Nov. 8 and the CRS-24 cargo mission splashdown Jan. 24 may be an artifact of the aerodynamics of those parachute systems, but they will examine the phenomenon in more detail before the next Dragon missions.
Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager, said that lagging parachute on the CRS-24 mission opened 63 seconds after the other three, compared to 75 seconds on the Crew-2 splashdown. He added lagging parachute openings had been seen on earlier cargo missions but did not identify specific ones. Bill Gerstenmaier, vice president of build and flight reliability at SpaceX, later suggested those earlier incidents involved a different version of the parachutes than the Mark 3 parachutes used on the current Dragon spacecraft.
“This lagging parachute phenomenon is something we see with these large ringsail parachutes,” Stich said. “What we think — and this is just a theory at this point — is that aerodynamically the three other canopies may sort of shade, if you will, one of the other canopies, and it just struggles to inflate at times.”
Because this happened on two consecutive missions, he said, NASA and SpaceX are taking extra time to inspect the parachutes and examine other data from those missions. “So far we don’t see anything that looks strange in any of the imagery, or off-nominal.”
The delayed opening of the fourth parachute did not affect the descent of either capsule. “If you looked at the actual data, you wouldn’t even detect the fact these chutes that we saw on Crew-2 and on CRS-24 were actually late,” Gerstenmaier said. “If you look at the descent data, it looks just like a regular four-chute parachute return.”
A difference that makes no difference is no difference, but you would kind of like to understand what’s going on.
WHOOPS: This ice skater from California renounced her U.S. citizenship to compete for China and then fell a bunch and placed dead last. “And here’s where the not-so-funny stuff comes in…The last thing you want to do in an honor-shame culture is bring shame to your family, community, and nation. When you couple that with a communist dictatorship in which the Party is always right and always strong, however, you get a recipe for disaster. Have you ever wondered why Chinese athletes often cry when they place 2nd or 3rd? It’s because they know the CCP will ruin their lives… if they are allowed to live at all.”
A SMALL MEASURE OF JUSTICE: Horrendous Ratings Of Beijing’s Genocide Games Damaging To NBC And Advertisers.
This was supposed to be the big coming-out party of Chairman-for-life Xi with his 100-year-old Communist Party. Instead, it’s turning out to be a massive faceplant and it’s hurting both NBC and the game’s advertisers. for an Olympics
Even Putin can’t be bothered to stay awake for the ‘excitement’ of it all.
China’s Wuhan Wheezer boomeranged just in time for many Olympic hopefuls to find themselves quarantined in horrible conditions. By comparison, photos of the food visiting athletes have been given there make Michelle Obama’s nightmarish lunch program look like it had been designed by Jamie Oliver. . . . The whole experience is getting to be a dumpster fire.
But even the ratings themselves aren’t really worth a damn.
For all its pretensions, China is still in many ways a third world country. And a genocidal one at that. It’s unsurprising many people don’t feel the desire to watch.
THE OLYMPICS ARE GARBAGE, AND THEIR ADMINISTRATION HOPELESSLY CORRUPT. Learning the Lessons of the Horrific Beijing Olympics – And How to Reform Future Games.
FOR SOME PEOPLE SHE HAS BEEN ALL ALONG: The Dan Markel Murder Case: Is Wendi Adelson Now A Suspect?
GREEN DREAMS USUALLY END BADLY: How Brad Pitt’s green housing dream for Hurricane Katrina survivors turned into a nightmare. And as here, usually worse for the dreamees than for the dreamers.
AND EVERY TECH COMPANY’S ADVERTISING BUSINESS SHOULD BE SEPARATED FROM THE REST: The Case for Splitting Amazon in Two: Cloud-computing division AWS subsidizes Prime, harming consumers in the long run.
But the report’s most notable trend is the large and growing gap between the company’s cloud-computing division, Amazon Web Services, and everything else it does. AWS reported $5.3 billion in operating income on only $18 billion in revenue. That means that non-AWS businesses lost $1.8 billion during the quarter. And the $119 billion in non-AWS revenue includes presumably high-margin divisions like advertising, suggesting that Amazon’s e-commerce and third-party logistics operations are operating at a multibillion-dollar loss.
The shift to an AWS-dominant business model has been a decadelong process. It is no coincidence that when Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and longtime CEO, stepped down last summer, AWS chief Andy Jassy took over the company. But it raises a problem for Amazon: Under long-established U.S. antitrust laws, Amazon’s bisected business model is potentially anticompetitive and illegal.
Tech companies used to be able to count on more or less automatic support from Republicans on this stuff, but even GOPers who are sympathetic on the issue are likely to choose to sit this one out.
TO BE FAIR, IT’S ONLY MODERATELY WORSE THAN THEIR LAZY IGNORANCE ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE: The Media’s Lazy Ignorance About the Guns On Which They Report is Apparently Bottomless. “The weapon wasn’t a .45-caliber Glock pistol; it was a Glock model 45, which is a 9mm pistol. There are .45-caliber Glocks, but this isn’t one of them. Audi used to make a car called the Audi 5000, but that didn’t mean it had 5,000 horsepower. It was just a model designation.”
EVERYTHING IS PROBLEMATICAL: Vermont school district cancels ‘Flannel Friday’ due to ‘equity’ concerns.
MASKS ARE FOR THE PROLES: N.Y. School Board Photographed Unmasked Inside for Legislative Event, Parents Livid.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO CHEER FOR RAPE: Some in a cheering crowd called for her to be raped. Many were women.
BLUE ON BLUE: Garcetti former chief spox to prosecutors: Charge Biden ambassador pick with perjury. “The former spokesperson of the current mayor of Los Angeles and future US ambassador to India has lodged formal complaints with prosecutors on every level, accusing Garcetti of perjury in a sexual-harassment scandal. . . . Seligman isn’t going away quietly, even if few media outlets or senators want to discuss it. Not only did Seligman’s attorneys file complaints with prosecutors, they also have involved California regulators — and at least a majority of the current Senate.”
Plus: “Absent documentary evidence that proves Garcetti knew of the situation, prosecution is unlikely. But that doesn’t make it politically safe for senators to blithely confirm Garcetti either, of course, especially those who made a big show of ‘believe all women’ three-plus years ago. That’s clearly why Seligman and her attorneys have decided on a full-court legal press — to derail Garcetti’s appointment politically and force him to stay in Los Angeles to be held accountable.”
SHAKEDOWN: Spotify CEO offers grovelling apology over Joe Rogan, commits $100 million to ‘marginalized groups.’
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Now Rogan should take the $100 million offer to move to Rumble, after sticking Spotify with a $100 million virtue-signaling bill . . .
He should do it anyway. As the Rumble folks know, his presence is enough to make them a highly viable competitor to existing platforms, and we need that. And so does Rogan.
“MODERATE JOE” WAS ALWAYS A LIE: Supreme Court Frontrunner Was a Zealous Advocate for Gitmo Terror Suspects. Ketanji Brown Jackson pushed conspiracy theories about Bush administration policies, records show.
I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ONE MORE WORD ABOUT HOW PROGRESSIVISM IS CARING: San Francisco Promotes Illegal Drug Use, Overdose Deaths ‘Skyrocket.’