THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA chooses 9 companies for Mars Exploration Program concept studies.
Archive for 2024
May 2, 2024
More fun with the United Keffiyehs of Benetton crowd here: Hollaria Briden Takes Pro-Hamas Protester Hayley Becker to the WOODSHED With Hilarious Thread.
BY 2030 THEY’LL WANT TO CONTROL IT REMOTELY: Full Stop: Feds Require Automatic Braking For New Cars By 2029.
SHE’S RIGHT, YOU KNOW:
These are the chads I would have rolled my eyes at in college for yelling at my friends and I to show them our boobs while we ran by their houses and now they’re … our last line of sanity. https://t.co/SsQvovRm7P
— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) May 1, 2024
And you know what looks prophetic? Anthony Bradley’s book from last year, Heroic Fraternities: How College Men Can Save Universities and America.
FOLLOW THE MONEY: Are Americans Finally Done With the ‘Sustainability’ Scam?
WOEING: Second Boeing whistleblower dies suddenly after claiming safety flaws ignored.
A whistleblower who accused Boeing of ignoring safety flaws in the 737 MAX airplanes has died.
Joshua Dean, a former Spirit AeroSystems quality auditor, claimed he was fired for flagging concerns about lax standards at the company’s manufacturing plant in Wichita, Kansas.
His sudden death at the age of 45 on Tuesday came after suffering from a fast-spreading infection, according to his family and lawyer.
Dean’s lawyer Brian Knowles said it is a ‘loss to the aviation community and the flying public’.
Knowles told Al Jazeera: ‘He possessed tremendous courage to stand up for what he felt was true and right and raised quality and safety issues.
‘Aviation companies should encourage and incentivise those that do raise these concerns.
‘Otherwise, safety and quality are truly not these companies’ top priorities.’
They certainly don’t seem to be these days, Joan Sammon writes at the Pipeline: Boeing: From Aviation Excellence to ESG Disaster.
The disastrous list of failures offers a prescient example of how influences from outside a company and even from outside an industry can distract a board and C-suite from its core business and cause irreparable damage. The accounts reveal how the decisions of three decades ago have intersected with the decisions of three years ago, leaving in their wake the death of innocent people, the stench of mediocrity, and a litany of leadership lessons from which other corporate leaders can learn.
In the days following the January door plug blow out, a post appeared on an aviation blog written by an anonymous, purported current employee. The author flatly asserted that four bolts that were supposed to hold the door plug in place were “…not installed when Boeing delivered the plane [to Alaska Airlines], our own records reflect this.” The whistleblower further described the Renton, Washington-based 737 production system as a “…rambling, shambling, disaster waiting to happen” — even asserting specific details about the exact plane that lost the door plug mid-air.
This check job [of the door plug] was completed on 31 August 2023, and did turn up discrepancies, but on the RH [right hand] side door, not the LH [left hand] that actually failed. …it was inevitable something would slip through- and on the incident aircraft something did.
While the account is stunning on its face, it aligns with similar details revealed in a whistleblower lawsuit brought by former Boeing employee John Barnett about the 787 program in South Carolina. Details of that complaint describe a similar fundamental shift away from the two factors that had made the Boeing brand an industry leader — precision engineering and quality manufacturing. The suit describes a contentious work environment that fostered speed over quality. It describes how managers worked to force out senior employees who remembered the higher standards and Boeing’s brand promise of decades ago.
Barnett ended up dying from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, after day two of what was supposed to be three days of testimony about what he allegedly knew about the Boeing failures, and what he had done to try to correct or effect the defective manufacturing processes. Barnett’s curiously timed death is considered by family, friends and his attorneys to be suspicious.
America’s Newspaper of Record adds: Boeing Sadly Announces Whistleblower Shot Self In Back While Falling Off Skyscraper Directly Into Wood Chipper While Wearing Cement Shoes.
WHEN GARLAND TELLS THE TRUTH, IT’S NEWS: AG Merrick Garland Admits That It’s *Gang* Violence, Not ‘Gun Violence.’
“YOU CAN’T LOATHE COLBERT ENOUGH,” SAYS CHRISTIAN TOTO, BUT YOU CAN CERTAINLY TRY: Colbert Defends Anti-Israel Protests, Shamed Anti-Lockdown Voices. “Far-Left host ignores violence, antisemitism and other hallmarks of pro-Palestinian riots.”
READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation). #CommissionEarned
‘MORNING JOE’ MIKA HAS A MELTDOWN WHEN AL SHARPTON COMPARES CAMPUS RIOTS TO JAN. 6:
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” got both sides of the aisle going this morning.
Joe Scarborough said that Democrats needed to call out the campus chaos more than they have been doing. Not only hasn’t there been a loud outcry by Joe Biden or many Democrats, but some Democrats, like the members of the Squad, have even expressed support for the radicals. He claimed they had to push for a ceasefire.
Al Sharpton stepped on the narrative big time, comparing the campus riots/violence to Jan. 6.
“How do the Democrats, how do all of us on that side, say January 6 was wrong if you can have the same pictures going on, on college campuses, you can lose the moral high ground? Sharpton asked.
That’s when Mika Brzezinski had a meltdown. “Good Lord, don’t make a parallel to January 6th!” co-host Mika Brzezinski said in response. “For some reason, that’s not allowed.” Whoops, she just said the quiet part out loud — you aren’t supposed to be saying that, Al!
To coin a popular Insta-phrase, we’ve descended into some sort of bizarre hell-world in which Al Sharpton is a voice of sanity.
It’s simple. It was purchased with Arab money. Oh, Academia was primed for that sort of crap, since those beliefs are its default, but for a long time was some rough balance. Academia actually had a vibrant, if small conservative/libertarian presence. They also had brains, so their influence was out of proportion to their numbers.
But oceans of oil money began to flood the hallowed halls of our elite (and not so elite) institutions. It paid for endowed chairs for anti-American and anti-Israel professors. It paid for embedded Islamic Studies departments. It paid for university-affiliated NGOs carefully putting forth the pro-Islam/anti-West cant. And it paid for full-fare students from those oil-rich countries, plumping the coffers of these schools with cash that had a catch.
That catch was simple. Make Islam and the savage authoritarians in the Arab world objects of admiration rather than disgust.
Plus this from Melanie Philips: “The significance of these campus insurrections is far greater than support for Hamas or even murderous hatred of the Jewish world. The universities have become ground zero for the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy of Islamising the west.”
Of course, any attempt to root out this malign foreign, anti-Western influence will be met by cries of “ISLAMOPHOBIA!” helpfully amplified by the universities.
WELL, JUST LOOK AT CAMPUSES TODAY: ChatGPT shows better moral judgment than a college undergrad. If it’s better than an undergrad, it’s probably twice as good as a faculty member. And three times as good as an administrator. . .
WHAT TWO-TIERED JUSTICE SYSTEM? Alvin Bragg May Not Prosecute Pro-Palestinian Rioters Who Occupied Columbia University.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Dobbs didn’t cause the birth dearth. “It is a step in the right direction that liberal columnists such as Catherine Rampell are not only acknowledging that birthrates are declining in the United States but also admitting it is a problem. Unfortunately, Rampell then reverts to fact-free blind partisanship by blaming the Republican Party for the phenomenon.”
That’s the usual progression. First, there is no problem. Second, there is a problem, but it’s the Republicans’ fault. But the facts are different: “The 17 states with the highest general fertility rates are all designated by Cook Political Report as Republican, or GOP-leaning, including such Republican strongholds as North Dakota, Nebraska, Louisiana, Utah, and Texas. By contrast, the bottom six states — and nine of the ten states with the lowest fertility rates — are all either Democratic or Democratic-leaning. … Only two Democratic states have birthrates above the national average, compared with 20 Republican states with above-average fertility.”
SEND WEAPONS, NOT MEN: Macron Says He’ll Consider Deploying Troops in Ukraine in Specific Circumstance.
LINCOLN’S PRAYER FOR AMERICA: Today is the National Day of Prayer among millions of Evangelical Christians, Catholics, conservatives and anybody else who wants to send up appeals for divine intervention to save this country. Lincoln’s prayer in 1863 on the first National Day of Prayer seems especially relevant these many years later.
RECREATE ’68 — YOU’RE REALLY DOING IT WRONG:
The next generation of leaders pic.twitter.com/pZ7trKm0Cf
— Elder of Ziyon 🇮🇱 (@elderofziyon) May 2, 2024
And in some cases a lot of snacks:
Hey we noticed you from across the renaissance festival Palestine encampment and really liked your vibes. pic.twitter.com/ul3hJBKMBD
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 2, 2024
CORN, POPPED: House Republicans Just Put Democrats in a Real Bind.
WELL, YES: Most gun ‘magazines’ are high capacity, 11 rounds or more. Like basically every other gun control talking point, the “high capacity magazine” thing was a lie.
I CAN’T RECALL AN UPWARD REVISION SINCE TRUMP WAS IN OFFICE: US Factory Orders Rise In March… But February Saw Yet Another Downward Revision. “This is the 17th monthly downward revision in the last 22 months… come on!!!”
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden May Have Just Created an International Incident With Comment Insulting Our Allies, Japan and India.
“One of the reasons why our economy’s growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants,” Biden said at a Washington fundraising event for his 2024 re-election campaign and marking the start of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
“Why is China stalling so badly economically, why is Japan having trouble, why is Russia, why is India, because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants. Immigrants are what makes us strong.”
* * * * * * * * *
Um buried lede here is that Biden is admitting the border invasion is intentional https://t.co/jm9eJ0QLqm
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) May 2, 2024
He really is: Biden-Harris HQ Is Campaigning for Donald Trump Again.
Trump: Look at Paris. Look at London. They're no longer recognizable. I'm going to get myself into a lot of trouble, but you know what? That's the fact, they are no longer recognizable. We can't let that happen here pic.twitter.com/sRr6pdU2rb
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) May 1, 2024
Flashbacks:
● Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”
● Former Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”
● “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”
Related: Japan won’t forget Biden’s ‘xenophobia’ accusation.
The other possibility is that he just went off script, and his inner grouchy grandpa persona leaked out. His summit with Kishida was all of three weeks’ ago, so it is understandable if he has forgotten about it. And perhaps he has been binge-watching the remake of Shogun on those long spells at his Delaware retreat and imagines it still to be the Edo period.
Whatever the explanation, two things are certain. Firstly, this won’t be forgotten any time soon — the Japanese have only just about forgiven the Democrats for Bill Clinton skipping the country on an Asian tour in 1998 (the “Japanese passing” incident). And Donald Trump just made a load of new friends in Japan.
But, look on the bright side! Unlike Papa Bush, during a key milestone on his way to losing reelection, Biden only metaphorically vomited on Japan.
UPDATE: Biden’s base hands Trump another campaign ad:
This image is Trumps most powerful attack ad – handed to him on a silver platter by radical progressives. pic.twitter.com/AMThqWPZ2r
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) May 2, 2024
READER FAVORITE: 10-Minute Strength Training Exercises for Seniors: Exercises and Routines to Build Muscle, Balance, and Stamina. #CommissionEarned
THERE HE GOES AGAIN: Antony Blinken’s Big, Stupid Middle East Trip. “Poor SecState Blinken — never the sharpest penny in the pantry — finds himself tasked with the impossible.”