READER FAVORITE: AUTIWITUA Men’s Waterproof Tactical Shorts Outdoor Cargo Shorts. #CommissionEarned
Archive for 2024
February 8, 2024
NOW THIS ACTUALLY IS SMART DIPLOMACY:
Happy Warriors beat Wolf Warriors any day.
What a great message by @USAinHKMacau –
–
Remember CCP has one, and only one diplomatic message.. "Shut up". That's all they have. They lose the conversations… so make them talk.. https://t.co/UzqTD85zOD— Mark Simon (@MarkSimonHK) February 8, 2024
WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT OFFICIAL WARNINGS? Don’t wear Apple Vision Pro while piloting a self-driving Tesla, officials warn. “As The New York Times asks, are people legitimately attempting to use the headset while driving, or is it all a stunt? ‘Several of the videos taken in cars appear staged, and in many, it is clear that someone other than the driver is recording,’ writes Jesus Jiménez for The New York Times. ‘The videos are not widespread.'”
But still worthy of Pete Buttigieg’s official attention.
FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY: Dem Paradise: Squatters Occupy 1,200 Atlanta Homes, Open Strip Club.
THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW: Back in the day when Joe Lockhart was President Bill Clinton’s chief White House spokesman, he referred to Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman as a “ruthless killer.” The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross reports this morning that Lockhart is now the ruthless killer’s payroll.
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT… MIMAS? Saturn’s Moon Mimas Harbors Global Ocean beneath Its Icy Shell, Study Suggests.
Evidence that some moons may have oceans beneath their surface is growing, but the detection of such watery worlds is challenging.
Mimas — the innermost, and smallest (radius = 198.2 km, or 123 miles), regular moon of Saturn — is an unlikely candidate, owing to differences in its surface properties compared with other icy moons, such as Enceladus.
This theory is challenged by Sorbonne Université researcher Valery Lainey and colleagues, who assess observations of the small moon made by Cassini.
Previous research suggested two possibilities for Mimas’ interior: either an elongated rocky core or a global ocean.
The new study reveals changes to the rotational motion and orbit of the small moon that are affected by its interior.
Applying the solid-body model would require the rocky core to be elongated, almost pancake-shaped, which does not match the observations.
Instead, the measurements of Mimas’ position suggest that the evolution of its orbit is better explained as being influenced by an internal ocean.
The more water we find out there, the better.
LET’S CHECK IN JOHN GILL’S WEEK THUS FAR:
Feb 3: Biden turns down Super Bowl interview
Feb 5: Biden claims he recently met a dead French prime minister
Today: Biden claims he met a dead German Prime Minister pic.twitter.com/DNzHAF6bwA
— John Hasson (@SonofHas) February 8, 2024
UPDATE: Another Day, Another Dead Person Biden Claims to Have Spoken With. “No wonder Biden isn’t doing the Super Bowl interview.”
PROVIDE FOR TREBLE DAMAGES AND PERSONAL LIABILITY: Bill would compel universities to follow SCOTUS affirmative action ban.
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Oakland Becoming a ‘Ghost Town’ Due to Crime as Gov. Newsom Sends 120 CHPS Officers to Help.
THE FUTURE IS GRIM FOR COLLEGE SPORTS: Dartmouth basketball team can unionize, government official states.
IT AIN’T OVER YET: Fed’s Barkin says recent progress on inflation might be a ‘head fake.’
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Maybe Karine Jean-Pierre Is Too Stupid to Know That Biden’s Lost It. “If Biden’s handlers want to keep trotting him out in front of cameras so that he can babble about conversing with dead Frenchmen who he thinks are German, they have to know that there will be very valid questions asked. Despite the fact that she seems to not be aware that it is in her job description, KJP is the one who is going to field the majority of those questions.”
NEW RESPECT FOR Seth Barrett Tillman. He’s a smart guy and he convinced me years ago with his and Josh Blackman’s take on officers of the United States, which turns out to matter now.
THE WAGES OF TAKING YOUR MBA TO WAR: “Something very predictable happened in our quarter century roadtrip on the way to Tomorrowland; we realized instead we wound up on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride instead. I would like the record to show here in 2QFY24 that this exact problem was discussed in detail back when I was a JO in the mid-1990s. This is not shocking to anyone who is wearing the uniform of a GOFO. They lived the same history I did. We knew we were living a lie that we could sustain a big fight at sea. An entire generation of Flag Officers led this lie in the open and ordered everyone else to smile through it. Ignore your professional instincts, and trust The Smartest People in the Room™.”
PUTTING MORE WOMEN IN CHARGE WOULD PRODUCE A KINDER, GENTLER CULTURE, THEY SAID: Report: Fired USS Lake Erie captain instilled a ‘culture of fear’. “
Capt. Danielle DeFant — who commanded the ship for roughly 14 months — was ousted following an investigation that began after three unnamed subordinates aired grievances about “toxic command climate and/or sexual discrimination.” . . .
In one incident, a conning officer responded to a question from DeFant that was meant for the officer of the deck, causing DeFant to grab him by the collar and reprimand him.
The investigator noted that, in response, DeFant pulled the officer close and whispered something along the lines of, “was I talking to you … You’re not the [OOD] … I was talking to the OOD … don’t ever interrupt me again.”
The Navy has had leadership problems lately. Full report here.
FIGHT THE POWER: Law Prof Presses Male Sex-Bias Allegations In New Suit After Federal Judge Tosses His Title IX Claim. “A professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law has filed a new lawsuit against the school stemming from a former associate dean’s alleged comments in 2016 that she didn’t want to see white men teaching anymore in the trial advocacy program that he headed. Law professor David Schott alleges in his Feb. 2 suit that he notified the law school dean of the alleged comments by Viva Moffat, the associate dean of academic affairs. In the years that followed, he was subjected to a ‘steady barrage of adverse actions and false statements,’ the suit contends.”
DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE: Inside the Biden administration’s indifference towards rescuing Americans from Afghanistan.
The Biden administration’s failures put countless lives at stake on the ground, and the best a lot of Democratic representatives could do was ask their Republican counterparts to save the lives of their constituents. In one poignant case, a Democratic congressman relied on a GOP office active in the evacuation of American citizens to evacuate a bus full of nuns from Afghanistan, those who worked on the evacuation confirmed to The Spectator.
While Democrats were more than willing to acknowledge the failures on the ground to their Republican counterparts behind the scenes, the Democratic Party marched publicly in lockstep with the White House — causing Republicans huge consternation. “Fuck them,” one of the GOP staff working on rescuing Americans said of his counterparts on the other side of the aisle. “They wanted their constituents out, just wanted us to do it for them once they realized the White House lied to everybody. And the omertà is always in force. Expose Biden and you might as well burn a Qur’an in Mecca.”
It’s unclear whether the Pentagon official was referring to not “giving a fuck” about the complaints from Congress or about the problem of abandoned Americans itself.
On a different call in early 2022, one of the State Department’s Coordinators for Afghan Relocation Efforts’ liaisons to the legislative branch, Courtnay Rosenberger, told a staffer that her department isn’t interested in solutions. This admission came when one staffer told CARE, “I’m just trying to find solutions.”
Read the whole, damning thing.
BORDER BETRAYAL: Impeach Mayorkas? Fifty-two percent agree.
WORST APPROVAL RATING SO FAR. Biden Hits Worst Approval Rating in NBC Poll.
NICE SHOOTING, NAVY: Chalk Up the First Kill for a 50-Year-Old Gun.
SUSTAINABILITY: U.S. Debt on Pace to Top $54 Trillion Over Next 10 Years.
The report did offer a sliver of relief: Recently enacted legislation to curb federal spending and a U.S. economy that has been growing faster than expected are making the fiscal picture slightly less bleak. Annual deficits over the next decade are 7 percent smaller than the $20.3 trillion the budget office forecast last year.
That decline reflects several conflicting forces. A deal that President Biden and congressional Republicans struck last year to limit discretionary spending for two years reduces deficits over the decade. So does a surge of 5.2 million new workers into the labor force, most of them immigrants.
But those deficit declines are partly offset by an increase in the estimated budget costs from Mr. Biden’s clean-energy agenda, an aging U.S. population and higher interest rates on the national debt.
The budget office’s director, Phillip L. Swagel, said that even with the decline in deficits, the nation remained on track to rack up more debt as a share of its total economic output in 2034 than at any other time in its history.
Anything that can’t go on forever will stop.
LIGHTNING DEAL: Biofreeze Patches Menthol Pain Relieving Patches. #CommissionEarned
THEY’D BE WISE TO. Should Poland Go Nuclear? “Many Ukrainians will admit that giving up the country’s nuclear arsenal in the 1990s was a tragic mistake, setting the stage for Russian interference and aggression in the years to come.”