BOOK ‘EM, DANNO: U.S. Soldier Who Pledged Allegiance to ISIS Pleads Guilty for Supporting Terror Group. “Sgt. 1st Class Ikaika Kang wanted to ‘kill a bunch of people’ in Honolulu or Waikiki.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
August 31, 2018
THIS IS CNN: How to prepare for ex-President Trump.
Someday, Donald Trump will become ex-President Trump. After a guilty plea from his longtime “fixer,” Michael Cohen, alleging that Trump directed the commission of federal crimes, perhaps that day will arrive sooner rather than later. But whether it’s a week, 18 months or more than six years away, we need to start preparing now. That’s because, for all of the threat to our democracy Trump poses as president, he may pose an even bigger one as an ex-president.
No one knows how Trump will leave the Oval Office. Maybe he’ll resign. Maybe he’ll be impeached. Maybe he’ll be voted out in November 2020 — or maybe he’ll leave at the end of two terms in January 2025.
If Trump were a real danger, shouldn’t we be preparing for El Presidente for Life Trump, instead?
Anyway, the Deep State’s ongoing effort to delegitimize 2016’s free and fair election is a genuine concern — and Joshua A. Geltzer’s opinion piece here is yet another small example of just that.
PROCUREMENT: The Navy Is Fixing a Serious, Six-Year-Old Bug in the F-35 Fighter Helmet.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s pilot helmet is unlike any other. Made of kevlar and carbon fiber, the helmets are an extension of the aircraft sensors and control system and one of the first to employ augmented reality in military equipment. The helmet mounted display projects all of the information that used to be presented in cockpit-mounted heads-up displays (HUDs) including air speed, heading, altitude, and more. At the same time the pilot can see in all directions—including straight down—through a network of six infrared cameras facing outward in all directions. The helmet display can even overlay the aircraft flight path over the pilot’s field of vision, including ground targets and air defense threats detected by other friendly forces.
Getting all of that data in the F-35 pilot’s face is extremely useful: The pilot can look in all directions and still have critical information in his or her field of view. (Older HUDs were a step up from having to look down at gauges and dial on a control panel but are still fixed to front.) There is one enduring problem, though—the helmet mounted displays leak light. According to pilots, a green glow spills out of the helmet, preventing pilots from seeing the lights of an aircraft carrier at night. Military.com reports that the problem is serious enough the Navy restricts pilots with less than fifty landings in the F-35 from carrier night landings.
A carrier that can’t land its planes at night fights at a serious disadvantage. It’s good to see this problem addressed just as the F-35C is finally becoming operational with Carrier Air Wing 7.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: NBC, In-N-Out and Much, Much More. “Well this is certainly a surprise–a surprise that NBC tanked an investigation that didn’t fit in with it’s editorial agenda and industry alliances.”
TAMMY BRUCE: Too much of Trump’s time is spent cleaning up Obama’s and the Democrats’ deadly messes.
Consider the focus of newly elected President Barack Obama. In 2009, the first year of his first term, Obama began a public campaign to convince people that going to the doctor can be fraught with risk, and even dangerous. He argued on multiple occasions that doctors want to perform surgeries and cut things off just to make a buck.
”‘You come in and you’ve got a bad sore throat, or your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats,’ President Obama explained at Wednesday’s press conference. ‘The doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, ‘You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out,’ ” the Wall Street Journal reported in June 2009.
He then immediately moved the argument to pill taking.
” ‘If there’s a blue pill and a red pill and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well,’ he asked, ‘why not pay half price for the thing that’s going to make you well?’ ” the Journal reported.
In other words, why trust a doctor when you can take a pill? Besides, it’s less expensive. That’s the point and the irony — saving your life is the only time the government is suddenly interested in cutting costs. Why? Because it means more money for the system and its bureaucrats.
Read the whole thing,
CHANGE: Trump cancels pay raises for almost 2 million federal workers.
“We must maintain efforts to put our nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases,” the president wrote in a letter to congressional leaders.
Under Trump’s policy, roughly 1.8 million people wouldn’t get an automatic pay boost next year, including Border Patrol and ICE agents.
That stance puts vulnerable GOP lawmakers representing northern Virginia — home to tens of thousands of federal workers — in the political crosshairs. And it sets up an all-but-certain funding fight with Congress next month, as party leaders attempt to reach a sweeping agreement to keep the government open before the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1.
The deal used to be that Federal workers traded high pay for virtually guaranteed job security. Now they get better pay than almost anyone else, automatic pay raises most years, and they’re not only virtually un-fireable, but can’t or won’t be held to account even for criminal activity. And at least at the top echelons, have developed an attitude problem to go with their perceived invincibility.
All this has led to well-deserved outrage out here in flyover country, which as best as I can recall has a lot more seats than even northern Virginia.
STOP ME IF YOU THINK YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE: Argentina’s central bank hikes rates to 60% as the currency collapses.
THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MASSES: Two Years Later, the Elites Are Still Disconnected From Voters.
In our May Winning the Issues survey, we asked voters if they thought their voice was heard effectively in the political and public policy discourse on major issues. By a 21 percent to 61 percent margin, they said “no.” Republicans were at 32 percent to 49 percent (yes/no); independents at 11 percent to 72 percent, and Democrats at 20 percent to 63 percent.
Most people that we survey and talk with in focus groups aren’t angry as much as frustrated and despondent over what they see as a political system run by elites who do not understand the problems they are facing. A January 2017 Congressional Institute survey found that by a 73 percent to 15 percent margin, people agreed — elites don’t get them or their concerns.
Some political observers — elites themselves — have put the blame for the division we’re seeing in the country on ordinary people feeling that they have no purpose. That’s certainly not what I’ve seen in focus groups or in the results of our research.
In fact, it’s just the opposite. People believe that it is the elites and institutions that don’t value the average person and what they contribute to the nation.
The thinking goes: If average people actually contributed, they’d be elite, right?
ASHE SCHOW: SJWs Lose It After Peter Dinklage Cast As ‘Filipino.’ There’s Just One Problem.
Dinklage, an accomplished actor who happens to have dwarfism, will play Villechaize in an upcoming HBO movie called “My Dinner with Hervé.” The “Game of Thrones” star has been accused of “whitewashing” because Villechaize was supposedly half-Filipino.
Except he wasn’t.
Villechaize was actually French, and was of German and English descent. But because he looked like he may have been Filipino — and Wikipedia told them so — social justice warriors accused Dinklage of “yellow face.”
Never have so many known so little about so much.
MICHAEL LEDEEN: The Sessions Mystery. “If President Trump is as furious with Attorney General Jeff Sessions as he would have us believe, then why hasn’t he replaced the AG? Or why hasn’t Sessions stepped down? It’s a puzzlement, as the king famously sang in The King and I.”
I don’t know the answer, but it sure baffles me. I know lots of people in and around the Justice Department, and I keep asking them what I’m missing. Some of them have an intriguing answer, which crops up from time to time in blogs. The answer: the Trump-Sessions falderal is a deception, distracting us from what is really going on.
I think this is a fantasy, but it’s great fun, and it bespeaks the nutsyness that characterizes contemporary politics, here and throughout the Western democracies.
Needless to say, read the whole thing.
HEH: Trump to Ron DeSantis Critics: “Monkey Off!”
I prefer “Kindly Vox off,” myself.
SPACE: NASA Detects Small Leak on the ISS – and the Russian Crew Is Fixing It With Rags and Junk. “The station is regularly hit by micrometeorite debris; spacewalking astronauts report that after nearly 20 years aloft, the exterior hull looks as if it was hit by birdshot.”
PROGRESSIVES LOVE MAKING PEOPLE PLAY LIFEBOAT: Ohio Students Asked Which Victim Group They’d Vote Off a Spaceship Fleeing a Dying Earth.
IF YOU CAN’T WIN, CHANGE THE RULES: New Mexico Reinstates Straight-Party Voting Just in Time to Thwart Gary Johnson.
IT’S SAD THEY ACTUALLY HAVE TO MAKE THIS A RULE: New Dress Code for California School District: Must Cover Genitals, Buttocks, and Nipples.
THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC HAS BEEN AT WAR WITH US SINCE 1979: Declassified Interrogation Reports Show How Much Iran Shaped Iraq War.
Iran and the U.S. have been vying for influence in Iraq. Throughout the Iraq war, Iran sought to influence the Shia-dominated government in Iraq, often to the detriment of the Sunni minority.
Iran also provided arms and training to Shiite militias, U.S. officials say, so they could attack U.S. forces and pressure them to leave the country. U.S. forces left in 2011 after President Barack Obama and then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki failed to reach an accord to allow American troops to stay.
According to a June 18, 2007, interrogation report, Mr. Khazali said the training was carried out by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at three bases near Tehran, including the Imam Khomeini base, which Mr. Khazali said he had visited.
“There are Iranians and Lebanese Hezbollah conducting the training at these bases,” the report said, based on interrogation. “The Iranians are experts in full scale warfare while the Lebanese are experts in urban or guerrilla warfare.”
Bush’s failure to deal sharply with Tehran when it first became known they were killing Coalition forces has led to all kinds of nasty ripple effects ever since.
REPUBLICANS POUNCE! Texas GOP shares arrest mug shot to attack Beto O’Rourke for skipping debate with Cruz. “The mugshot appeared to reference a DWI arrest O’Rourke experienced more than 20 years ago. It was one of several photos posted on the Texas GOP account mocking O’Rourke over his decision not to debate Cruz on Friday in Dallas. O’Rourke is challenging Cruz for his Senate seat in November.”
The October Surprise reveal of a 24-year-old DUI conviction nearly sank George W. Bush’s presidential election in 2000, which the press certainly did not dismiss as something Bush “experienced” in his youth.
THAT SEEMS A BIT HIGH: Amazon and Sanders Butt Heads as Senator Prepares 100 Percent Tax Bill.
OH: Two Weeks After Ellison Abuse Allegations, DNC Offers No Update from “Review.”
In a statement to NPR, the DNC said, “These allegations recently came to light and we are reviewing them. All allegations of domestic abuse are disturbing and should be taken seriously.”
The Daily Caller wrote, “The DNC has offered no details on who exactly is running the probe, what evidence they have uncovered or when they expect to have enough information to either affirm or withdraw their support for Ellison.”
Multiple emails to a DNC spokeswoman by the Daily Caller requesting an update on the investigation have gone unanswered.
It’s almost as though the Democrats are more interested in protecting one of their own than in getting to the truth behind serious allegations of domestic abuse.
DIRECTIVE 10-289: Venezuela seizes Smurfit Kappa plant.
Venezuela claims that Smurfit Kappa engaged in price speculation, smuggling and refusing to sell to local businesses.
It has demanded that the Irish firm immediately adjust all prices for its products.
The seizure of the plant will last for 90 days.
But the company is going Galt:
“As a result of this action by the government of Venezuela, it is impossible for SKCV to manage its affairs in a way that complies with our normal business standards,” said Smurfit Kappa.
“Consequently, as of 28 August 2018, SKCV is not responsible for the use of its installations, machinery and equipment, its employees’ safety, that of its surrounding communities, any environmental impact, or the quality of the paper and packaging manufactured in the operations.”
“Get the hell out of my way!” the wise man once said.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: CNN Does Not Lie and Much, Much More. “CNN is standing by its story, anonymously sourced by Lanny Davis, that claimed Michael Cohen was going spill the goods on Trump’s foreknowledge of a meeting in Trump Tower between some campaign officials and a team of Fusion GPS connected RUSSIANS. Davis back tracked on his claim but CNN…they still claim their story is true. Almost like it was FAKE BUT ACCURATE.”
That’s CNN.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? California Eliminates Bail For Majority Of Suspects Awaiting Trial.