ADELE SCALIA: I’m An Immigrant, Minority Woman Going Republican Over Democrats’ Treatment Of Kavanaugh.
Just read the whole thing.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
October 5, 2018
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Kavanaugh Vote Approaches and Much, Much More. “This morning the Senate will vote to end debate (cloture) on the Kavanaugh nomination around 10:30am. If that motion passes, there will be 30 hours of debate before a vote on Mr. Kavanaugh’s nomination. That will take place around Saturday at 4 or 5pm. Expect some kind of social unrest if Kavanaugh passes and I think he will pass. McConnell wouldn’t schedule vote otherwise.”
ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Posts with the phrase “Well, that depends on what the meaning of the word is, is” are tagged as Spam by facebook.
Well, we can’t have an actual serial sexual predator being quoted when there’s a fake one in need of persecution.
THE OLD ONE CLEARLY HAD ITS LIMITS: White House targets Iran with new counterterrorism strategy.
National security adviser John Bolton outlined the new strategy, saying it focuses on targeting “all” terrorist groups — a category the document defines as including “radical Islamic terrorist groups.”
Such groups, Bolton said in a conference call with reporters, “represent the pre-eminent transnational terrorist threat to the United States and to the United States’ interests abroad.”
The relationship between Iran and the U.S. has become strained after Trump pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions to the country.
Our relations became strained in 1979 when the Mullahs’ Regime first committed an act of war on the US, and many more since. So while this might be a slanted report, at least Politico ended with a line which people probably won’t take the way Politico intended:
“This is not the Obama administration would be my message to Iran and anybody else,” Bolton said.
Indeed.
COLD WAR II: Pence intensifies warnings about China. Venezuela is Exhibit A.
In a speech Thursday to the Hudson Institute, Pence charged Beijing with wanting a new American president and actively interfering in the domestic and foreign affairs of the United States.
“Beijing also aims to extend its reach across the wider world,” Pence said. “Indeed, China is building its own relationships with America’s allies and enemies that contradict any peaceful or productive intentions of Beijing.”
Pence pointed directly at the economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, where he said Beijing has given a “lifeline” to the leaders there through $5 billion in questionable loans. He accused China, Venezuela’s largest creditor, of saddling the Venezuelan people with more than $50 billion in debt that will have to be repaid well after the government of Nicolás Maduro is gone.
And he blamed the Chinese Communist Party for convincing El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Panama to sever ties with Taiwan in an effort to get closer with China, a U.S. trade adversary.
Well, good. What I’d like to see next is President Trump re-announce the Monroe Doctrine, and also the resulting exploding heads.
TECH BLOGGER JOHN GRUBER ON Bloomberg’s ‘The Big Hack.’
I see no way around it: either Bloomberg’s report is significantly wrong, at least as pertains to Amazon and Apple, or Apple and Amazon have issued blatantly false denials. You can, perhaps, chalk up Apple’s denial to it being written by Apple PR. I don’t think this would happen, but hypothetically this issue could be deemed so sensitive — either within the company or as a national security issue — that the people at Apple with knowledge of the situation lied to Apple PR. But in my experience, Apple PR does not lie. Do they spin the truth in ways that favor the company? Of course. That’s their job. But they don’t lie, because they understand that one of Apple’s key assets is its credibility. They’d say nothing before they’d lie.
Schmidt signing his name to Amazon’s response is more telling. Presumably no one at Amazon would be more familiar with the details of such a breach than Schmidt.
One way or the other, there is more to come on this story, and the credibility of either Bloomberg, or Apple and Amazon, is going to take a significant hit.
Developing…
MATT MARGOLIS: Will the ‘Brett Bounce’ Unseat Bob Menendez in New Jersey? “What were Democrats thinking when they circled the wagons around the corrupt senator?”
That they’d get away with it, of course.
October 4, 2018
THE MORE YOU FLY THE MORE YOU SAVE: F-35 Hourly Flying Costs Plunge $12K. “Winters told a group of defense reporters that the costs of operating the F-35 fleet dropped by $1.1 million ‘per tail per year across the fleet’ and cited ‘a reduction of $12,000 per flight hour across the fleet.’ The head of Pentagon acquisition, Ellen Lord, has pressed hard for F-35 operating and sustainment costs to come down, as have key allies such as Britain.”
MOVING: These military veterans served their country. Now they’ll live in the Village of Valor.
The project, designed to house low-income veterans, secured a burst of financing on Tuesday when the Palm Beach County Commission approved $2 million toward the $31 million proposed rental complex.
Fundraisers have gathered $27 million toward the project; the county’s $2 million will be delivered after Village of Valor raises the remaining $2 million, according to the agreement with the county.
The village will include 130 apartments and 18 townhomes, with offices for social workers, Veterans Administration staffers and other providers who will encourage the integration into society of former military men and women who often feel forsaken.
I hope this lives up to expectations.
ROBERT SPENCER: New York Times Sees ‘Disturbing Trend’ of Treating Islam as ‘Not a Religion.’ “The media tries to destroy opposition to Sharia, a political system.”
They think the crocodile will eat them last.
WE’LL SEE: Will Anti-Trump Millennials Actually Turn Up to Vote?
Not if they need stamps to vote absentee, apparently.
NOAH ROTHMAN: The Revisionist History of the Neil Gorsuch Hearings.
Among the unsubstantiated assertions to which the left has attached itself is the notion that the accusations against Kavanaugh are self-proving because Justice Neil Gorsuch did not face them. Democrats did not strenuously object to Gorsuch’s confirmation, Democrats insist, thereby rendering their opposition to Kavanaugh’s ascension to the nation’s highest court an act of pure conscience. The first contention is a bizarre non-sequitur. The second is an outright fabrication.
The mere fact that Gorsuch did not face allegations of sexual assault whereas Kavanaugh does is not evidence in support of those allegations. To suggest otherwise is an odd exercise in throat-clearing that does not merit a serious response. As to the claim that Neil Gorsuch “sailed through” his confirmation hearings without so much as a serious Democratic objection, that is brazen revisionist history.
It certainly isn’t how I remember things.
THE LEISURE AGE: A four-day work week will be made permanent at a New Zealand company after a trial was so successful it found there was ‘no downside.’
The company my wife works for went to a four-day workweek every other week with no apparent loss in productivity.
CLAIM: A staggering number of troops are fat and tired, report says.
There might indeed be a problem, but I wouldn’t put too much weight behind a study based on BMI.
PRIVACY: Why Cops Can Force You to Unlock Your Phone With Your Face.
The question of whether cops can force someone to unlock their phone in the US for a search hinges on Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination—that no one “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against” themselves. Privacy advocates argue that this extends to the act of unlocking a phone or generally decrypting data on a device. But while that line of thinking has succeeded as a defense against having to produce a passcode, it works less reliably in the context of Touch ID or other biometrics. Something you know, like a passcode, is easier to view as testimonial—legally speaking, a statement made by a witness—than something you have, like a physical attribute.
“Big picture, a warrant is required for the search of a device except in certain circumstances at the border,” says Greg Nojeim, director of the Freedom, Security and Technology Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology. In the newly reported Face ID case, police did have a warrant to compel 28-year-old Grant Michalski of Ohio to unlock his smartphone, and Michalski has gone on to face child pornography charges.
You can manually disable Face ID by holding the Side Button (Sleep/Wake) and Volume Up Button together to bring up the “Slide to Power Off, Emergency Medical ID, and Emergency SOS” screen. Simply tap “Cancel”. Your iPhone is now locked and Face ID is disabled.
Good to know.
DOWN BUT NOT OUT: Number of Foreign ISIS Fighters Detained by SDF Jumps to More Than 700. “The coalition is still giving the static estimate of between 1,000 and 2,000 ISIS fighters estimated to remain in the Middle Euphrates River Valley.”
MICHAEL WALSH: The Great Cultural Revolution, American-Style. “Who knew that even Gold Rushers were symbols of the racist hegemonic toxic male patriarchy that has plotted against women and minorities from time immemorial?”
POLITICO: What Happens if a Democratic House Votes to Impeach Kavanaugh? “The raging, partisan screed that served as his opening statement last week has many questioning his judicial temperament, but that’s a problem to consider before giving him a lifetime appointment—not grounds for removal, even if he dials the anger up to 11 once he’s on the bench.”
This is not a balanced piece looking at the actual process.
Georgetown University Responds to Professor Who Tweeted About ‘Castrating’ Kavanaugh Supporters. “While the speech of our faculty members is protected, we are deeply committed to having our classrooms and interactions with students be free of bias and geared toward respectful dialogue. We take seriously our obligation to provide welcoming spaces for all students to learn.”
But:
In an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education, Fair re-upped her defiant tone, again noting that she was simply writing in her apparently long-practiced genre of re-fashioning personally-received hate mail into rhetorical attacks against conservatives.
She said, “I wasn’t looking for a fight. I want you to walk a mile–not even a mile–a block in our shoes. That’s it. It turns out I did it really effectively because I pissed them off.”
That doesn’t even rise to the level of “sorry-not-sorry.”
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Cloture Has Been Filed and Much, Much More. “The FBI has sent their report on Kavanaugh to the White House and Mitch McConnell has filed for cloture on Kavanaugh’s nomination. Cloture is a vote to end procedural debate and move to take a vote on the actual Kavanaugh nomination. Say what you will about Mitch McConnell, I know I sure have, this man DOES NOT mess around on judicial nominations. He doesn’t”
WHERE WE GONNA GO? PLANET X. Mysterious Planet ‘The Goblin’ Redefines Solar System.
Planet X, an as-of-yet unseen world could be shaping the orbits of smaller, extremely distant objects like the newly described 2015 TG387, nicknamed “The Goblin.” The Goblin is likely spherical and about as wide as the state of Massachusetts. And much like a handful of other distant solar system inhabitants, its orbital behavior might signal the presence of Planet X lurking in the distant outer dominions of the solar system.
The Goblin is the third minor planet to have been found in the outer solar system, following the discoveries of Sedna and, recently, another object called 2012 VP113. This region, which was once thought of as a cold, dark, and empty realm now appears to be a rich collection of exotic and extreme objects. And these three planets may be just the beginning of the discoveries.
It’s breathtaking how much we still have to discover about our own solar system.