Author Archive: Stephen Green
September 9, 2021
MORE LIKE 50 SHADES OF JIMMY: Shades of Jimmy Carter: Dems Fret Over Biden’s Growing Unpopularity.
WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT REPORTS? Pro-China misinformation operation attempting to exploit US Covid divisions, report says.
THAT’S $68K PER REFUGEE: Biden’s Handlers Want You to Cough Up $6.4 Billion to Resettle 94,000 Afghans in the U.S.
MAYBE ONE OF ELON’S PEOPLE CAN SHIP IT BACK BEFORE THEN: NASA has collected its first Mars sample. But it needs $4 billion, 10 years, and new technology to bring the rock to Earth.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Democrats Are In Perpetual Denial Regarding Terrorists. “It’s embarrassing for this country to have people in charge who believe that a religious fanatic terrorist organization with a decades-long body of work is going to change because a bunch of emotionally stunted reality avoidance idiots here want them to.”
STOP WHINING AND START LAUNCHING: Amazon slams SpaceX, tells FCC that Musk-led companies are rule-breakers.
STATE IS A JOKE, JUST NOT A FUNNY ONE: No Joke: State Department Cranky About Taliban’s Lack of Diversity.
September 8, 2021
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Can Joe Rogan Break Fake News’ Back Before It’s Too Late?
THE WAR ISN’T OVER UNTIL THE TALIBAN AND AL QAEDA AND ISIS AGREE IT’S OVER: ‘The Threat Will Be So Large’: Lindsey Graham Says Biden’s Decisions Will Force U.S. Back to Afghanistan.
THE NEW NEW MATH: Math merit matters. “One problem asks for a ratio of girls to boys. The student wonders whether one of the boys might identify as female, or one of the girls as male. In another problem, Ms. Hernandez knitting a scarf for her grandson should be changed to Mr. Hernandez knitting for a grandchild, the student says.”
SHOCK POLL: Biden Approval Under 40% Overall, Even Core Dems Fleeing. “Biden is so deep underwater that he must be suffering from nitrogen narcosis.”
CONRAD BLACK: Barring a Miracle (They Do Occur), It Is Hard To See Biden’s Presidency Going on Three More Years.
Hourly pay scales are increasing at 7.5%, new car prices at 10%, rental accommodation at 12%, and new homes at 20%, all well ahead of the official rate of inflation, contrary to the smug assurances of Treasury Secretary Yellen and even some Federal Reserve spokespersons, that inflation was a mere bubble.
Historically, the only sustainable way of fighting stagflation has been to counter inflation with increased supply and achieve that goal and the corresponding non-inflationary increase in demand through the encouragement of demand in the tax system. The present administration is committed to raising taxes and to colossal spending increases, which would exacerbate both stagnation and inflation.
After 13 years of negligible interest rates, there isn’t much that’s useful left in the toolbox. The inflation of the sort that is already building up historically has been attacked by reducing demand and sharply increasing interest rates. Any such policy now would produce a disaster that would be a fiscal and monetary replication of the debacle in Afghanistan.
Not since Herbert Hoover prescribed higher taxes, higher tariffs, and a shrinkage of the money supply as the remedy for the Great Depression has an American administration more poorly judged the policy prescriptions necessary to fight deteriorating economic conditions.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE YOUR NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY: The CDC Just Made an Orwellian Change to the Definition of ‘Vaccine’ and ‘Vaccination.’
NICE. DOES THIS MEAN MY BETA PROGRAM WILL START SOON? SpaceX Produces 5,000 Starlink Dishes Per Week, But Plans a Production Boost. “The company currently has over 600,000 pre-orders for Starlink. So producing only 5,000 dishes per week means SpaceX would need more than two years to address its backlog. Waiting that long would be especially painful for prospective Starlink users since many are saddled with unbearably slow internet speeds. The good news is that SpaceX plans on increasing the 5,000-dish capacity by ‘multiples’ in the coming months, according to Johnsen’s remarks at the conference.”
AMERICA LAST — IF THEN: Biden’s $3.5 Trillion ‘Infrastructure’ Plan Includes Massive Attacks on U.S. Energy Producers.
BLOWBACK: Kamala-Backed Bail Fund Freed Alleged Domestic Abuser Now Charged With Murder. “A bail fund promoted by Vice President Kamala Harris freed an alleged domestic abuser just weeks before police arrested him again for murder. Minneapolis police arrested George Howard on Aug. 29 after the career criminal allegedly shot 38-year-old Luis Martinez Ortiz to death following a road rage incident. Roughly three weeks earlier, the Minnesota Freedom Fund bailed out Howard following a domestic violence charge, the group confirmed in a statement.”
Plus: “Just a fraction of the bail money, however, was used to release protesters and rioters.”
EVERYTHING IS PROCEEDING AS I HAVE FORESEEN: Could China Take Over Bagram Air Base Abandoned by Biden? “Mainland China is supposed to be this post-colonialist Communist workers’ paradise or whatever. The cruel reality is that Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative is the most explicitly colonialist project since King Leopold II of Belgium turned the peoples and resources of Africa’s Congo basin into his private personal fiefdom to exploit.”
HMM: Microsoft President Brad Smith warns that U.S. is repeating a key Sept. 11 mistake in digital era.
Tightly controlled silos of information about cyberattacks persist among U.S. government agencies, Smith writes in a new update to his book, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age, originally published two years ago.
“It’s impossible to avoid the grave conclusion that the sharing of cybersecurity threat intelligence today is even more challenged than it was for terrorist threats before 9/11,” writes Smith, with co-author Carol Ann Browne, in one of three new chapters in the paperback edition of the book, released Tuesday.
One anecdote illustrates the challenge from Microsoft’s perspective:
“Repeatedly in late 2020 we found people in federal agencies asking us about information in other parts of the government, because it was easier to get it from us than directly from other federal employees. A culture of holding information tightly is so ingrained in the government that even its contracts with us forbid us from letting one part of the government know that another part has been attacked.”
The next big war will be a war of digital systems and ours aren’t nearly hard enough.
THAT’S A PROBLEM: Mars Missions Can Only Last 4 Years Due to Radiation.
As the world once again sets its sights on the moon, it can seem like continuing on to Mars is the next logical step. Some space travel fans like Elon Musk have talked excitedly about seeding Maritan colonies within the next decade, but a new study from UCLA could put a damper on such plans. According to the latest data, humans could only safely spend four years on Mars before receiving an unsafe dose of radiation.
The researchers set out to answer two key questions for a hypothetical crewed Mars mission: Is it possible to safely send astronauts to Mars? And could the timing of a mission reduce the amount of radiation astronauts encounter? The answer to both of those questions is “yes,” but there are caveats.
While it’s possible for astronauts to live and work safely on Mars, this is not a long-term proposition. The team calculated that it is possible to shield a spacecraft sufficiently to protect the crew on the way to and from Mars, but that can only do so much. Cosmic radiation on the red planet is a real threat. Unlike Earth, Mars lacks a magnetic field to deflect these deadly rays. Even with shielding and medical monitoring, the clock is ticking from the moment the crew sets foot on Mars.
Mars colonies will likely have to be underground but I suspect Elon Musk knows that and is preparing well in advance.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: California Is Probably Too Stupid to Recall the Tyrant Newsom. “From the outside, it may seem absurd that the thoroughly beleaguered Biden could help Newsom right now. It might be in any other state. California, however, marches to the beat of a drummer that the rest of the country will never meet. Things are so nonsensical there that Kamala Harris was able to rise to power.”