PROCUREMENT: F-35A Cost To Drop Below $80 Million Per Fighter In 2023.

In 2022, Lockheed Martin officials expect to negotiate the next multiyear F-35 contract with the Joint Program Office. The goal is to use the steady cash flow from a multiyear contract to drive down further the production costs once the contract kicks in.

As part of a pitch for multiyear contract, Lockheed Martin officials say such a deal will lower the F-35A price to less than $80 million per fighter, Marillyn Hewson, chief executive of Lockheed Martin, told analysts during a conference call today discussing the company’s 2018 year-end results and expectations for 2019.

“That’s our target, to continue to drive the unit cost down,” Hewson said. “And we won’t stop there, we will always be looking at ways that we can take the cost down in the program as it continues to mature and grows.”

That’s not much more than the Air Force pays for a fully loaded F-16 Block 52.

LAW ENFORCEMENT: I Spent 41 Days in Jail Because Deputy ‘Falsely’ Claimed Detergent Was Heroin.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: It’s Cold, Paul Ryan’s Wall and Much, Much More. “The DC asked Trump ‘did Ryan lie to you?’ The president responded that he did not think Ryan lied to him, that at the time, Ryan meant what he said. Trump is being charitable.”

HOTEL EUROFORNIA: U.K.’s May needs to renegotiate Brexit, but the EU won’t budge.

COLD WAR II: Beijing Set for ‘Ideological Battle’ with U.S.

“Chinese leaders will increasingly seek to assert China’s model of authoritarian capitalism as an alternative—and implicitly superior—development path abroad, exacerbating great-power competition that could threaten international support for democracy, human rights, and the rule of law,” he stated.

Xi and his advisers are imposing new dictatorial measures at home while backing authoritarian regimes around the world. The practice can be “corrosive to civil society and the rule of law,” the DNI said.

Xi also declared last year China will try to launch a program to reform the global governance system that Coats forecast will produce increased Chinese activism internationally and promote “a Chinese worldview that links China’s domestic vision to its international vision.”

“Beijing has stepped up efforts to reshape the international discourse around human rights, especially within the U.N. system,” he stated.

China’s Communists are feeling cocky enough to drop the non-ideological facade they’ve worn since brutally asserting their authority at Tiananmen Square.

HMM: Facebook just hired a handful of its toughest privacy critics.

On Tuesday, Facebook acknowledged that it had hired three veteran privacy law activists, including Nate Cardozo, an attorney formerly of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who has been very publicly critical of the company in recent years.

In 2015, Cardozo once wrote in an op-ed that Facebook’s “business model depends on our collective confusion and apathy about privacy.”

In addition to Cardozo, Facebook also hired attorney Robyn Greene, previously with the Open Technology Institute in Washington, DC, and Nathan White, who is set to leave his position at Access Now.

Will their new jobs entail changing Facebook’s sociopathic corporate culture, or making excuses for it? Time will tell, but either way they have their work cut out for them, as you’ll see below.

RELATED: Facebook to Shut Down Controversial iOS Market Research App as Apple Revokes Certificate.

In a statement given to TechCrunch and other websites, the company said that its “Facebook Research” app, which paid volunteers between the ages of 13 and 35 up to $20 a month to access nearly all their data, would no longer be available on iOS.

The news came just hours after TechCrunch’s exposé on the Facebook app, which used an enterprise certificate on iPhones to get people to sideload the app and skirt Apple’s App Store rules.

Two things.

First, Facebook used Apple’s beta program to gain root access to participants’ iPhones, which would presumably include all of their contact information, private text messages, emails, etc. So the data invasion — I almost wrote “breach” — extended far beyond those getting the $20 each month to participate.

Facebook’s abandonment of the program is pure window dressing — Apple revoked the certificates necessary for it to continue.

AND IT ISN’T JUST FACEBOOK: Google Also Exploiting Enterprise Certificates to Bypass iOS App Store for Data Collection.

Apple has also revoked Google’s certificates, shutting down their data invasion, also. But one would hope that going forward, Apple will be much more proactive about what kinds of access can be granted even outside the App Store’s strict rules. What Facebook and Google did was, to borrow a word, evil, but Apple getting caught prone here has left them has a real black eye.

The inescapable conclusion, if one hadn’t concluded it long ago, is that Facebook and Google are shitty companies run by shitty people.

WELL, HE’S RIGHT: Pink’s Husband Carey Hart Claps Back After He’s Slammed for Teaching Daughter, 7, How to Shoot a Rifle: ‘You Are Completely Ignorant.’

My eight-year-old is a little guy, but he tries really hard with a .22 every time we have a family day at the range.

YES. Federal Judge: Court Should Block Enforcement of Tampa ‘Conversion Therapy’ Ban. “Counselors have the free speech to engage in sexual orientation change efforts.“

Conversion therapy strikes me as mostly BS, but either people are free to practice their religious beliefs, or we’re forced to endure the establishment of non-religion. And that liberty should hold whether people are administering the therapy or choosing to receive it.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Obama’s FBI Ignored Lead That CHINA Had CLINTON EMAILS.

A “remarkably scandal-free administration,” because it’s only a scandal if the press chooses to cover it like one.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A reader sends this blast from the 2014 past: Dozens of Inspectors General Say Federal Agencies Hindering Oversight:

At least three federal agencies have hindered the oversight efforts of independent watchdogs by limiting their access to records, according to a complaint from more than half of the government’s inspectors general.

The officials, 47 of them, signed a letter to congressional oversight leaders on Tuesday saying the Justice Department, the Peace Corps and the Chemical Safety Board have withheld information on the basis that it was privileged.

The inspectors general, several of whom were nominated for their roles by President Obama, said such interpretations of the law represent “potentially serious challenges to the authority of every Inspector General and our ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner.”

The Inspector General Act of 1978 ensures that inspectors general have “complete, unfiltered, and timely access to all information and materials … without unreasonable administrative burdens,” according to the letter.

The officials said that watchdogs from other agencies have “faced similar obstacles to their work, whether on a claim that some other law or principle trumped the clear mandate of the IG Act or by the agency’s imposition of unnecessarily burdensome administrative conditions on access.”

The letter was sent to Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who head the Senate Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee, and Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the top members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

“It is deeply troubling that federal agencies are increasingly obstructing this vital mission and, in doing so, undermining the very foundations of our government,” Coburn said in a statement. “This is an extremely dangerous place to be for a government established to be of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Carper said the letter “outlines serious concerns that are unacceptable.” He added that he will “continue to work closely with the Inspectors General to address their concerns.”

It’s easy to be scandal-free when the investigators aren’t allowed to investigate.

Related: Victor Davis Hanson: The Silencing of the Inspectors General.

Plus, remember when Obama fire Inspector General Gerald Walpin in 2009? An Early Sign Of The Gangster Government To Come.

DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK: The city’s homelessness crisis is so out of control that Upper West Side residents are shelling out $120 a month each for private security guards to patrol their neighborhood seven days a week.

Enterprising security guards might pay some of that money forward to the homeless to stick around enough to appear menacing, but without causing enough trouble to get the security detail fired.

BECAUSE THEY COULD. NEXT QUESTION? Senators ask Facebook why it tricked kids into spending parents’ money.

BINGE ANYTHING PROBABLY ISN’T GOOD FOR YOU: Binge drinking can rewrite your DNA, cutting-edge study says.

SUSTAINABILITY: CBO Director Says Debt to Soar Past Postwar Levels at Current Trajectory. “Projected at 150 percent of GDP by 2049, and ‘even at its highest point ever even after World War II debt was far less than that at 106 percent of GDP”.”

The difference between World War II and an entitlement program? WWII had an end.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Flashback: Why Guns Are Better Than Butter.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Howard Schultz vs. AOC.

Just click on through for the Dem 2020 candidate roundup.

TOM HARRIS AND DR. TIM BALL: Record Cold Forces Rethink on Global Warming. “The recent weather is a stark reminder that a colder world is a much greater threat than a warmer one. While governments plan for warming, all the indications are that the world is cooling. And, contrary to the proclamations of climate activists, every single year more people die from the cold than from the heat.”

You don’t want to live in a John Ringo novel, but you do want to read all of what Harris and Ball have to say.

FLASHBACK: Climate Change Made Simple.

MINISTRY OF LOVE: Deaths mount as U.S. ups pressure on Venezuela’s Maduro.

The U.N. human rights office has said security forces in Venezuela detained nearly 700 people in one day last week amid anti-government protests — the highest such tally in a single day in the country in at least 20 years. Rights office spokesman Rupert Colville said Tuesday that 696 people were detained on Wednesday alone. Overall, some 850 were detained between Monday and Saturday, including 77 children.

Colville said “more than 40 people” were believed to have been in killed “in different manners” amid the recent protests, including 11 people reportedly killed by “unidentified individuals” linked to incidents of looting. He said one member of the Bolivarian Guard was reportedly killed in the state of Monagas.

If you’re opposed to socialism, it’s because you don’t care about people.

OLD NEWS: Roger Stone raid shows that CNN is no longer covering Robert Mueller. They’re working with him.

TO THROW ROCKS, OF COURSE: Why America Needs a Presence on the Moon.

If fuel can be made from frozen water at the Moon’s poles and then moved into low, medium or geosynchronous earth orbits, everything changes. Satellites can be refueled in space, requiring smaller rockets to place them into orbit. Routine travel to the Moon from a space station becomes practical. Missions to Mars become affordable. Most importantly, it may become economically viable to mine near-earth asteroids, potentially unlocking literally quintillions in resources, an economic bounty unmatched in human history.

The key terrain at these polar locations is incredibly small. While the lunar North Pole has some water, most is located at its South Pole in deep craters free from sunlight. To make fuel, processing equipment must be installed on two or three crater tops exposed to the sun, the largest of which is only a few football fields wide. Thus, these crater tops may become the solar system’s most exclusive addresses.

If the Moon does open to fuel production, several other points become strategically important.

Nothing terribly new here for space nerds, but a good read nonetheless.

(Classical reference in the headline.)

THIS WILL ONLY BOLSTER HER DEMOCRATIC CRED: Linda Sarsour Outs Herself as an Anti-Semite on Holocaust Remembrance Day. “Her 2019 statement fits her 2017 ‘definition of anti-Semitism’.”

CLAUDIA ROSETT: John Bolton’s Intriguing Notepad.

In most of the media, it’s playing as one of those gotcha moments. At Monday’s White House press briefing National Security Advisor John Bolton came to make some remarks on Venezuela. He carried a lined yellow legal pad, on which two short scribbled notes were visible to photographers. The scribble that made news was: “5,000 troops to Colombia.”

That sure sounds like a ramped-up threat to Colombia’s neighbor, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. A glimpse of inside pow-wows at the White House. It looked a lot more specific than President Trump’s warning that “all options are on the table.”

Was it a slip on Bolton’s part? Did the media steal a march on the National Security Advisor, by catching his note on camera?

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

CLOWNS TO THE LEFT OF HIM, JOKERS TO HIS RIGHT? Howard Schultz Blasts Kamala Harris’ Plan to Abolish Private Insurance: ‘That’s Not American.’ “What industry are we going to abolish next? The coffee industry?“

It might be nice if, just for once, the presidential spoiler candidate spoiled the Democrats’ chances.

BUT OF COURSE: House Judiciary Committee Democrats are considering investigating Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh for perjury.

Will the Senate Judiciary Committee have the cojones to punch back twice as hard and investigate Kavanaugh’s accusers for the same?

HE MEANS THE OTHER GUY, NOT MADURO’S THEFT OF AN ENTIRE COUNTRY: What has happened in Venezuela is a coup.

I tried to pick an excerpt, but this Oscar Guardiola-Rivera opinion piece is so juicy with Guardian-level lunacy that you might just want to read the whole thing.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Chad Prather Fights ‘Pushback’ for Conservative Views. “Some comedy clubs refused to book the star of Blaze TV’s new show ‘Humor Me’.”

THEY HATE YOU, THEY REALLY HATE YOU: Google May Face RICO, Defamation Lawsuits Due to SPLC Partnership, Lawyers Say. Google will pay employees to work for the SPLC for up to six months.