Archive for 2025

January 28, 2025

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 12:17 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 28th, 2025

INTO THE LIARS’ LIONS’ DEN: Why Did JD Vance Grant His First Vice Presidential Interview to Margaret Brennan and CBS News?

My suspicion is that Vance wants to do these types of interviews.  He wants to demonstrate that the Trump administration will not shy away from tough questions, knowing that he is particularly well equipped to ‘win’ the exchanges.  He is interested in delivering the president’s point of view beyond friendlier precincts, of course, but I don’t necessarily think he sees granting these sit-downs as a ‘reward’ for the interviewer or the outlet.  I think he’s more likely to see these events as rewards for himself and opportunities to advance the administration’s messaging.  Given the role CBS played at his lone debate last fall, plus their overall reputation these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if Vance intentionally selected Brennan and Face the Nation as a message unto itself, confident that Brennan would represent a useful foil.  If that was the calculation, it was the right one.  Vance isn’t alone in proving that if Republicans are quick on their feet and equipped with facts, they can dominate interviews meant to be adversarial.  Here’s another recent example from a man who’d be unanimously confirmed as Secretary of State just days later:

“‘No, no, no — we can’t move on.’  Polite but firm aggression, a refusal to allow unfair or biased framing go unchallenged, an insistence on meeting each point. This is the way.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 28th, 2025

I MEAN, HE’S NOT WRONG. “A picture of young successful happy people at a trendy cocktail party reads as right wing. A picture of a dad in flannel drinking a beer at Texas Roadhouse also reads as right wing. Right wing is both cool, hip and metropolitan, and down to earth, older, mature, and working class. This is how you know that conservatism is culturally ascendant. We run the gamut. The only pictures that read as left wing are those of ugly, fat, mentally ill, dysfunctional, friend-less weirdos.”

Posted at 11:46 am by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 28th, 2025

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Chinese launch startup secures early funding for fully reusable rocket plane.

Nayuta Space is developing a series of stainless steel rockets named Black Bird, referring to a creature from Chinese mythology rather than the common blackbird. The Xuanniao-1 (Black Bird-1) will use nine Canglong-1 methane-liquid oxygen engines developed by Beijing Aerospace Propulsion Technology Co. Ltd., a commercial rocket engine maker founded in 2018.

The company aims, eventually, to achieve reusability of both stages. The first stage will, unlike the Falcon 9 for instance, not use a reentry burn, instead relying on “aerodynamic recovery,” using the atmosphere and positioning of the stage to do most of the deceleration. This is to save fuel otherwise used for the reentry burn, which on the Falcon 9 uses three Merlin engines for 20-30 seconds, depending on mission and landing specifics.

Nayuta Space also aims for a Starship chopstick-style catch of the first stage, called an “eagle grab,” thus saving mass through not needing landing legs. The company claims to be the first commercial company in China to develop aerodynamic recovery technology. Second stage recovery is a more distant goal.

The entire recovery field still belongs to SpaceX but that will change.

Posted at 11:41 am by Stephen Green on Jan 28th, 2025

THEY REALLY DO WANT YOU DEAD:

Full text:

Blizzard technical artist and Associate Art Director of Gearbox both wish death to 50% of America in a post and likes to their public Facebook.

This is the type of atmosphere that Activision President Rob Kostich is fostering as he doubles down on woke DEI and ESG today.

HR turns a blind eye to open calls for violence and death at these studios.

They’ve gotten away with these for years as they mistakenly thought they were protected and on the right side of history.

There’s plenty of rot in the public sector but one small way to fight it is to stop buying Activision games.

Posted at 10:39 am by Stephen Green on Jan 28th, 2025

“ENJOY THE WATER”: Trump’s Gift to California is All Wet.

Droughts in California are a lot like famines in Africa: sure, bad stuff happens but the worst effects are entirely man-made. Crops fail, locusts swarm, and food certainly becomes more expensive. But to get a genuine famine, with scenes of mass starvation like we became depressingly familiar with in Ethiopia 40 years ago — that requires epic economic mismanagement, usually by local warlords who use food as a weapon to maintain political control.

I’ve come to believe that Sacramento Democrats use droughts to maintain political control, too. It’s impossible to scare a population into giving up their money and their freedoms for the sake of Gaia when cities aren’t burning down every now and then, and when there’s enough water for everyone to flush their toilets whenever the need arises. (I visited friends in the Bay Area in ’91 or ’92 when toilet flushing was strictly rationed — ugh.)

Enter, stage right: President Donald Trump.

Much more at the link.

Posted at 10:08 am by Stephen Green on Jan 28th, 2025

NEIGHBORS SNITCHING ON NEIGHBORS IS A HALLMARK OF LIFE UNDER TOTALITARIAN REGIMES. That’s why it’s so concerning that these bias response hotlines have leaked out from college campuses and are quickly being adopted by state and municipal governments.

Posted at 9:53 am by Greg Lukianoff on Jan 28th, 2025

BLUE STATE BLUES:

Kevin Dalton adds: “Living in California means driving by miles-long caravans of illegally parked and occupied RVs to go to your boat that you can’t even temporarily live in if your house burned down because, wait for it, you don’t have the proper permit to sleep on your own boat.”

Those folks probably have enough money and influence to demand change — but will they?

Posted at 9:37 am by Stephen Green on Jan 28th, 2025

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Fantasy Politics — Trump Takes Aim at the Federal Income Tax. “From this voter’s perspective, President Trump has hit all of the right notes to begin this term in office. I feel well represented by a politician in this representative republic for the first time in a long time. As I’ve mentioned a couple of times to my “Five O’Clock Somewhere” partner in thought-crime Stephen Green, our new president has begun by dealing with all of the things I wanted dealt with first. I couldn’t imagine it getting any better. Until it did.”

Posted at 9:06 am by Stephen Green on Jan 28th, 2025

PLEASE CONTINUE THIS STUFF AT LEAST THROUGH 2028:

Posted at 8:39 am by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 28th, 2025

UNEXPECTEDLY: The New York Times Still Refuses To Admit Kash Patel Was Right About Russiagate.

In their lede, Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman, and Alan Feuer accuse Patel of having “repeatedly undercut the work of the very agency he is set to lead by making false statements” about the FBI’s sham investigation into Trump for supposed collusion with Russia. Lost on them is the reality that Patel’s understanding of the FBI’s corruption and willingness to “undercut” their partisan witch hunts make him the perfect candidate to clean house at the bureau.

* * * * * * * *

When FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty to fabricating evidence in the FISA warrant application, it was Goldman who broke the news and made sure to soften the blow. They wrote sympathetically about Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, whom Durham would prosecute for spreading lies about Trump and Russia to the FBI. When Sussmann was indicted by Durham, Savage and Goldman even “gave Sussmann’s team an assist in getting ahead of the news,” as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland noted.

If you’re still not convinced Savage and Goldman are deep state apologists, recall that Goldman was the one whom the FBI worked with to downplay the Hunter Biden investigation, and Savage downplayed Special Counsel Robert Hur’s findings about Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal, falsely claiming Hur found “insufficient evidence to charge Mr. Biden.”

(The third person in the hit piece’s byline, Alan Feuer, isn’t a Russia hoax veteran like the other two, and was presumably included to help with the non-Russiagate parts of the hit job. He is nonetheless on the record complaining that Biden’s DOJ was not going to succeed in dragging Trump into a courtroom before the 2024 election.)

There are few people who understand the magnitude of the abuses committed by the FBI during the Russia hoax as well as Kash Patel. That’s probably why Russia collusion hoaxers like Savage and Goldman don’t want him running it.

When the New York Times finds a hoax involving Russia, they never let it go! The New York Times can’t shake the cloud over a 90-year-old Pulitzer Prize.

The New York Times is looking to add to its list of 132 Pulitzer Prizes — by far the most of any news organization — when the 2022 recipients for journalism are announced on Monday.

Yet the war in Ukraine has renewed questions of whether the Times should return a Pulitzer awarded 90 years ago for work by Walter Duranty, its charismatic chief correspondent in the Soviet Union.

No need for anyone to hold their breath waiting.

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 28th, 2025

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 28th, 2025
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