Author Archive: Stephen Green
May 4, 2020
May 1, 2020
WHY NOT TAKE A BREAK FROM THE SERIOUS NEWS FOR A FEW MINUTES? Florida Man Friday: If I Had a Hammer…
This week’s edition has more questions than answers, most of them involving a taser.
BOREDOM IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS: You can get a goat or a pig to sit in on your company’s virtual meeting.
MAYBE HE JUST FORGOT THE, YOU KNOW, THE THING: Joe Biden Lied About Where Tara Reade’s 1993 Sexual Harassment Claim Would Be.
The new safer-at-home order is in effect through at least May 27, meaning that Coloradans are expected to stay close to home past Memorial Day, the unofficial start of the summer and a popular weekend for camping and hiking. The fear is that visitors will either contract or spread the virus in areas of the state not as well equipped to deal with mass infections.
“You made the sacrifice of staying at home for 32 days,” Polis said at a news conference on Monday. “I think you can make the sacrifice of going to your second or third favorite park for another month.”
I think Karen should mind his own business.
HISTORY: Seven Artifacts Surrounding The 1960 U-2 Shootdown. “From his lofty perch, Powers’ had no idea of the blood-lust of the Soviet air defense forces arrayed below him. An SA-2 surface-to-air missile battery near Sverdlovsk finally locked onto Powers aircraft. The salvo inadvertently shot down a MiG-19 fighter pursuing Powers, but another missile blew off a chunk of Powers’ horizontal stabilizer, a fatal blow for a U-2C at that altitude. In a declassified CIA debriefing with Lockheed’s U-2 designer, Clarence ‘Kelly’ Johnson, upon Powers’ release from Soviet prison in 1962, the pilot explained exactly what happened the moment he lost control of his spy plane.”
A BILL WHITTLE PODCAST: The Cold War: What We Saw | A Pizza Hut Parade – Episode 13.
SURPRISING NO ONE PAYING ATTENTION: Funeral Directors Blow the Whistle on Deaths Falsely Attributed to Coronavirus.
IT’S REAL, AND IT’S THE OPPOSITE OF SPECTACULAR:
Garbage people in our national news media, as Glenn likes to remind you.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: The Stay-At-Home Peasants Are Revolting. “Many people have been noting recently that the likelihood of mild acts of civil disobedience will increase the longer this goes on. Heck, my governor just extended his order here in Arizona and we haven’t even been hit that badly with it. At some point I’m going to need a clearer explanation about why I can’t go see my eye doctor.”
Because shut up, prole.
REQUIRED READING: Why Was the U.S. So Late to Recognize the China Threat.
During the Cold War, the U.S. foreign policy was largely based on assumptions that the Soviet Union’s leaders were determined to spread communism worldwide; they possessed strategic patience and were adaptive in pursuing their goal. The USSR would never be America’s partner but a long-term rival, and therefore it must be contained. Moreover, U.S. decision-makers assumed that American society would fully support this approach.
However, after the end of that confrontation, strategists like former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger falsely assumed that Communist China could be changed into a benign actor, even a “responsible stakeholder,” or strategic partner of the U.S. were the U.S. to engage with China, believing that China’s rise was a positive thing.
We argue that China is not just a rival but a formidable enemy. Its goal is not just to weaken America but supplant it and the liberal international order it created with a Communist ideology-based model of global governance. The PRC is more dangerous than the Soviet Union because it is unpredictable and more formidable. It is an amalgamation of a rapidly rising power and an ideological regime with an aggressive leader in Chairman Xi Jinping. Xi is both extremely ambitious and paranoid about his regime’s security as well as his own. These factors make this enemy far less certain than the Soviets.
This is an excellent read from Bradley A. Thayer and Lianchao Han.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): China is also dangerous because it has so many of our leaders and institutions on the take or otherwise under its thumb. Just watch them pick up whatever the latest China line is, and you’ll have a good idea of who.
OH: Lawmakers Probe NIH Over Chinese Espionage Targeting U.S. Medical Research. “GOP members concerned NIH failing to hold spies accountable.”
It’s sad, but after so many decades hardly surprising, that the willingness to look into Communists infiltration is pretty much exclusive to one party.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: 5 Michigan businesses sue Gov. Whitmer over constitutional rights.
THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE DEMOCRATS: Gen. Flynn Never Violated Logan Act, But John Kerry Violated It Often.
BOEING: New report says SLS rocket managers concerned about fuel leaks. “Should leaks or other issues be discovered, the program will need time.”
Earlier this year, NASA moved the big rocket’s core stage to a test site at Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi. Before the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily halted work, NASA and Boeing teams were working toward a critical summer exercise. During this “green run” test, the clamped-down rocket will ignite its engines and burn for about eight minutes to simulate an ascent into orbit.
“Program officials indicated that one of the top remaining technical risks to the green run test is that the core stage may develop leaks when it is filled with fuel,” the report states on page 82. “According to these officials, they have conducted extensive scaled testing of the gaskets and seals used in the core stage; however, it is difficult to precisely predict how this large volume of liquid hydrogen will affect the stage.”
Fingers crossed, I guess. But as Glenn concluded a while ago, we could make it back to the Moon on Trump’s schedule, but probably not on a Boeing rocket.
THE SUICIDE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION (CONT’D): Alaska Borough School Board Yanks ‘Great Gatsby,’ Other Classics From Curriculum.
STACEY LENNOX: Insanity in One Indiana County As the State’s Reopening Begins.
Indiana’s positive test rate from the over 90,000 done to date remains below 20%. This is in line with most other states where the emphasis has still been on testing symptomatic individuals. Without the kind of epidemic levels of disease seen in the nation’s hotspots and significant areas of the state being less densely populated, the steps outlined by Gov. Holcomb seem reasonable and responsible.
So what is going on in White County, IN, and its county seat Monticello? With a population density of just 50 people per square mile and no recorded deaths as of this writing per Johns Hopkins, one would expect it to embrace Gov. Holcomb’s moves.
That assumption would be incorrect.
Read the whole thing.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Two Americas: Karens and Everybody Else. “For the slightly more daring, Karens are prone to outrageous outbursts and, better yet, are easily provoked. Do you have a smartphone camera, a social media account, and a willingness to push a Karens’ buttons? Then you could very well create the next viral sensation here in Non-Karen America. Maybe not the viral sensation we deserve, but the one we need right now.”
Karens include pushy neighbors, the Wuhan Stasi, and Colorado Governor Jared Polis.
This one is just for our VIP members, and I hope you’ll use that VODKAPUNDIT discount code if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.
I’M HERE TO ENCOURAGE PEOPLE OF ALL CREEDS AND COLORS TO EMBRACE THE HEALING POWER OF “AND”: Bill de Blasio isn’t an anti-Semite but…he is an idiot.