CDR SALAMANDER: Admiral Paparo Goes Salamander at Brookings: Real talk on drones and magazine depth.

NATO ACTS:

BREAKING:

The Chinese vessel Yi Peng 3 has been chased, intercepted, and boarded by Danish Navy vessel Y311 Søløven after the Chinese vessel destroyed 2 undersea telecom cables linking Finland-Germany and Sweden-Lithuania.

The vessel sailed from Russia & the captain is Russian pic.twitter.com/gRJ3rxobBC

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 20, 2024

THE PUBLIC DIFFERS FROM THE POLITICAL CLASS: Public likes Trump’s picks: RFK Jr., Musk, Rubio, and Huckabee most popular.

LIZ SHELD: Morning Greatness: Trump Selects Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education.

UPDATE: “Apprentice — there’s a word with resonance. We seem to be talking about teaching young people specific marketable skills rather than channeling them into college. I’m sure that will be controversial… especially now that we’ve seen that it’s the college-educated who vote Democratic and the working class has turned to Trump.” Indoctrination is how leftists reproduce, so that’s a real kick in the nads.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD:

THIS IS BEAUTIFUL! The View had to read a legal notice about the fake claims made against Matt Gaetz, or he would've sued them into oblivion 😂

He's not even Attorney General yet, and they're already walking on eggshells.
pic.twitter.com/yHwzd3T1kF

— George (@BehizyTweets) November 20, 2024

PUNCH A NAZI:

Tell me how a masked mob chanting "whose streets?" "our streets" through an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood is "freeing Palestine" rather than just open antisemitism.
Imagine a group of masked Klansmen shouting the same slogans through a black neighborhood and you get the idea. https://t.co/cafRwcQdQ0

— David Bernstein (@ProfDBernstein) November 20, 2024

THEY LITERALLY DON’T THINK THOSE SHOULD BE ALLOWED: X Is the Nonpartisan News Source, Which Drives Liberals Nuts. “Twitter was crucial to the success of the MAGA movement not because Elon Musk made Twitter/X a MAGA haven–look at those poll numbers, and you can see that Democrats and Republicans are here in equal measure–but because the news media was so like Pravda that having a space where people could see a more synoptic view of the world destroyed the Truman Show the media was trying to create.”

Related:

The media wants you to think @elonmusk has turned X into a conservative echo chamber.

Turns out it's the most balanced platform in the world. pic.twitter.com/BgABhAVm72

— Cabot Phillips (@cabot_phillips) November 19, 2024

RUSSIANS! UNDER MY BED!

If Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset, why has the US military allowed her to serve in it for 26 years, up to and including today as a Lt. Col. in the Army Reserve?

It's rather to difficult to explain that except with the conclusion that the accusation is utter baseless bullshit.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 19, 2024

Telling paragraph about Tulsi in the NYT. There's no evidence she's working with Russia. But she agrees with Russia about some geopolitical issues.

Would they ever write this paragraph about a Member of Congress parroting Israeli, Saudi, Turkish talking points? pic.twitter.com/Ncwo8Bd7t1

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) November 19, 2024

THAT’S WHO THEY ARE, THAT’S WHAT THEY DO: Media Lie About Pete Hegseth’s Christian Faith To Falsely Smear Him As Racist.

SOME THOUGHTS ON APPOINTMENTS from a friend:

Bill Hagerty has the creds and integrity to take on the job. He will be an easy confirm.

A good man with international business experience and a understanding of Asia.
Not a flashy guy no baggage, no drama. Exactly what we need.

The test of Musk influence and the influence of DOGE Committee will be the Sect of Agriculture choice and the Farm subsidies that depend on decisions made at that level.

Stay tuned.

OPEN THREAD: Party on.

SHUT THEM DOWN, THEY’RE PRE-EMPTED: The California Coastal Commission’s ruling to limit SpaceX launches threatens national defense.

SEISMIC PRECURSOR: Mysterious Signal Preceded The Most Powerful Eruption of Modern Times. “The fracture also caused a Rayleigh wave, a type of acoustic wave that moves along a solid surface – in this case, Earth’s surface. The wave was detected 15 minutes before the main volcanic eruption on January 15, 2022, from about 750 kilometers (466 miles) away.”

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: How Trump will keep the left on defense — in transition and beyond.

I DON’T THINK IT’S THE BEER: “Beer drinkers tend to have lower-quality diets, engage in less physical activity, and are more likely to smoke cigarettes compared to those who consume wine, liquor, or a combination of alcoholic beverages.”

IRAN:

My guesstimate is that it would take the, ah, disappearance of a dozen people or less (maybe even as few as five) for the spark to finally hit the powder. Block deployment of IRGC support forces, and there would be a boom today.

One of the largest factors preventing the boom is our current Regency, which has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the mad mullahs. And to fund them. This has been Obama policy from the start, in defiance of facts, logic, morality, and more.

Why? One can surmise either an incredibly naive belief in the stabilizing influence of Iran as a regional power, or that a significant number of our policymakers have been on the payroll of (or blackmailed by, or both) Iran, or its patron, China.

SPACE: SpaceX launches sixth Starship but aborts booster landing. The booster, though, did successfully put the Starship upper stage, known as Ship 31, onto a suborbital trajectory. During its time in space, SpaceX briefly reignited one of the vehicle’s Raptor engines, a test of that capability needed for deorbit burns on later missions.”

I REMEMBER WHEN IV VITAMIN C WAS CONSIDERED A QUACK TREATMENT: High-dose IV vitamin C plus chemotherapy found to double survival time in advanced pancreatic cancer.

WELL, THAT’S NICE: The 2025 BMW X3 Gives You a Lot More—for the Same Money.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Even the mighty shotgun has some shortcomings. “A shotgun is a short-range tool, ideal for ranges of 40 yards and closer when loaded with standard 00 buckshot loads. While it’s true that hunters can sometimes down game at 70 yards or slightly farther, their shotguns, magnum loads and sights/scopes have been optimized for longer ranges, and therefore are not optimized for shorter ranges that are vastly more common for defensive purposes. Certainly, a shotgun can be used at longer ranges with slugs in a pinch, but expecting 100-yard groups smaller than 6 inches with your 18-inch-barreled home-defense shotgun is wishful thinking.”

If I’m shooting people at 100 yards, I’m not doing home defense anymore.

ORBITAL MECHANICS MAKE THAT DIFFICULT: Why can’t we just launch all of Earth’s garbage into the sun?

DOUGLAS HOLZ-EAKIN ON CUTTING ENTITLEMENTS.

SPACEX PRESIDENT PREDICTS RAPID INCREASE IN STARSHIP LAUNCH RATE: “It’s going to be hard to catch us, but I certainly hope people try.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:

Let’s check in on Rosie O’Donnell two weeks after the election… pic.twitter.com/GHmSdWlAJZ

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 18, 2024

THAT’S BECAUSE THEY DON’T SPANK THEM: Poll: Many parents struggle to manage kids’ anger.