CHANGE? At Least 400 LGBT Candidates Vowing Political Wave This Campaign Season. “Katie Hill is more than one of the Victory Fund’s favored candidates. Democrats are hoping she will be able to defeat Knight, a Republican seeking his third term in Congress.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
June 13, 2018
WELL, GOOD: Senate to Review Any Future North Korea Arms Treaty.
Sen. Jim Risch (R., Idaho), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he has discussed future Senate approval of a treaty with President Trump and his senior advisers regarding new arms talks with North Korea.
“We have been taken by the North Koreans at least a couple of times, and that’s not going to happen again,” Risch said in a meeting with reporters on Monday.
Senators were “deeply, deeply disappointed” by the Obama administration’s failure to submit the 2015 Iran nuclear deal to the Senate for debate and vote on ratification.
“We all know how that ended,” he said. “I think it would have been different had we had a different role in that.”
Both houses of Congress need to claw back the powers they surrendered to the Executive branch.
#METOO: Democratic candidate who admitted to domestic abuse wins South Carolina congressional primary. “A congressional candidate in South Carolina who admitted to abusing his ex-wife 45 years ago and lost all support from national and state Democrats has won his Democratic primary, CNN projects.”
Via Derek Hunter who tweets, “If he were a Republican, every Republican would be asked about this, repeatedly, like Romney was asked about Akin several times. I wonder if any Democrat will be asked about this once, let alone for days on end. Doubt it.”
JAKE TAPPER: I’m Amazed at How Poorly Bill Clinton Has Handled the #MeToo Movement.
What part of “Bill Clinton is a self-entitled and unrepentant user and abuser of women” is news, Jake?
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump Trusts Kim, Corey Stewart Wins, and Much, Much More.
Tyler O’Neil is filling in for Liz this week.
STUPIDITY ISN’T A CRIME, BUT THIS CHARGE IS CLOSE ENOUGH: Dancing FBI agent charged with assault after dropping gun during backflip.
And remember: Firearms should only be in the hands of trained government agents.
THE MOST 21ST CENTURY HEADLINE YET: SpaceX Ponders Hypersonic Decelerator For Second-stage Recovery.
Recovery of the second stage poses greater challenges than either the booster or the fairings because of its greater reentry velocity, relatively large mass and inherent instability. SpaceX currently deorbits the upper stage into the South Pacific through a retroburn of the engine. However, the upper stage also “tumbles” during reentry, normally resulting in the breakup of the structure in the upper atmosphere.
To stabilize the second stage and reduce its ballistic coefficient during reentry, SpaceX is therefore looking at several options—including a hypersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator (HIAD), a deployable, inflatable aeroshell with a built-in flexible thermal protection system able to protect the entry vehicle through atmospheric entry. The concept, based on the idea of a packable heat shield, has been tested in recent years by NASA under programs such as the Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment-3, or IRVE-3, which successfully demonstrated a 3-m-dia. (10-ft.) HIAD during a suborbital test in 2012.
Musk hinted that the company was evaluating atmospheric decelerators in mid-April when he tweeted, “This is gonna sound crazy, but . . . SpaceX will try to bring rocket upper stage back from orbital velocity using a giant party balloon.” Following a stabilized reentry behind the protection of the aeroshell, the second stage would then likely deploy airbags and a steerable parafoil, to be recovered by a vessel positioned downrange.
I was about to write “Godspeed,” but decided “Lord, please help them decelerate” might be more apropos.
BEFORE: Turkish President Erdogan Gains Complete Control of Media.
AFTER: Erdogan Challengers Struggle for Attention in Turkey Campaign.
Funny how that works.
IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS… The peaceniks of the media suddenly deplore dialogue.
On Monday night, MSNBC assembled a panel of spiteful Trump critics to throw a wet blanket over the summit. The doves turned into hawks and spent much of the evening trying to peck at Trump. Most of the people on the panel are apologists for this or that communist thug—just go back and look at MSNBC’s fawning coverage of Fidel Castro’s death—but on Monday night they played hardliners. Rachel Maddow, furrowing her brow as usual, objected to Trump even holding a summit. She has finally found a communist leader she thinks America should ostracize. When Obama met with the Castro brothers, she burbled with enthusiasm. But she covered this moment of historic diplomacy like a funeral, shuddering at the thought of North Korea joining the “community” of nations.
MSNBC saw the summit as just one more occasion for obsessive anti-Trump fault-finding. The disgraced Brian Williams is still hanging around for some reason and looked like he wanted to give the summit the kind of newsy, anchormanish treatment of old, but he couldn’t pull it off in the company of jabbering Trump haters, for whom wild opining is all that counts. Plus, Williams is too reduced a figure for the cocksure Maddow to give any equal time. But Williams’s ego still asserts itself from time to time. On Monday night he fed it by asking one of the sham historians on the panel an arcane, look-at-what-I-know style question about the USS Pueblo, a ship the North Koreans captured in 1968.
The utterly contemptible Nicole Wallace, whose smugness and nastiness are beyond caricature, drove much of the shrill coverage. She was at her whiny, know-it-all worst, droning on about Trump’s lack of “preparation” and so forth. But Trump seemed perfectly at ease, getting a stiff Kim Jong Un to crack a smile. Trump had said it would only take “a minute” for him to sense if the relationship between the two countries could improve. By that measure, the summit appeared to start promisingly. Normally such friendly gestures between an American leader and an adversary would warm the hearts of liberals. Not this time. The MSNBC panel looked on coldly and muttered suspiciously about Trump’s body language.
That’s weak tea, and they know it.
BYRON YORK: On North Korea, a president who tried something different.
Have you heard people say war is not an option in North Korea, or that it is unthinkable? Trump started thinking about it. His top military officers worked through a number of scenarios for war on the Korean Peninsula. And while they were doing it, Trump escalated his anti-Kim rhetoric to unheard-of levels. Kim was “Little Rocket Man,” and North Korean aggression would be “met with fire, fury, and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.”
Trump later explained he did it because he believed the old way had not worked. “Other administrations … had a policy of silence,” he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity after the summit. “That’s not the answer. That’s not what you have to do. So I think the rhetoric — I hated to do it, sometimes I felt foolish doing it — but we had no choice.”
So while Trump bellowed threats, his administration quietly planned to make good on those threats, if it came to that.
Put it together, and what seemed to some critics like a reckless strategy worked — or worked enough to pressure the North Koreans into at least temporarily stopping their provocations and wanting to talk. And when, after the talks were on track, the North Koreans resumed their provocative statements, Trump abruptly canceled them — and the North got back on board.
Will it work? Who knows? Not even the White House can say what exactly what it is that came out of Singapore.
But after three Administrations worth of failure and can-kicking, it was time to try something different.
NOW THAT’S REAL SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s hyperinflation at new dizzying high.
The latest figure comes from a National Assembly finance committee report looking at the period May 2017 to May 2018.
Meanwhile, the consumer price index in May surged 110.1 percent. It was the first time the index topped 100 percent in one month.
The International Monetary Fund has forecast that Venezuela’s hyperinflation will top 13,800 percent this year. Some lawmakers say that it could be worse: at least 100,000 percent and possibly 300,000 percent.
The only thing centrally planned economies never run out of is zeroes.
‘MERICA: Muslims Who Face More Prejudice Are More Likely to Radicalize. “Researchers found it ‘possible that the ethnic diversity of the United States is protective against radicalization because communities are less prone to organize along binary identity categories’.”
June 12, 2018
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why Hollywood Lies About Its Blatant Liberal Bias. “The industry deserves an honorary Oscar for pretending its progressive content is fair and balanced.”
If “Crash” could be named Best Picture, why not?
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Golden Arches in North Korea?
Just a coincidence, I’m sure, but didn’t the Moscow McDonalds mark the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union?
BRIDGET JOHNSON: ‘The Past Worked as Fetters on Our Limbs,’ Kim Declares as He Meets Trump. “Trump hails their ‘very, very good, excellent relationship’.”
THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MASSES: UK justice minister resigns over Brexit ahead of key votes.
Conservative lawmaker Phillip Lee, who voted to remain in the EU in Britain’s 2016 referendum, resigned as a justice minister so he could vote against the government on a key measure.
Lee said “the people, economy and culture of my constituency will be affected negatively” by Britain’s EU departure, and it is “irresponsible to proceed as we are.”
He called for Brexit to be delayed, and for the public to get a second referendum on the terms of any exit deal.
It’s become tradition in Europe to hold as many votes as required to produce the desired outcome, and then none further.
UPDATE: May WINS vote but agrees to HUGE rebels concession giving EU upper-hand.
Know your place, deplorable peasant.
HMM: Tesla’s Autopilot to get ‘full self-driving feature’ in August.
Autopilot, a form of advanced cruise control, handles some driving tasks and warns those behind the wheel they are always responsible for the vehicle’s safe operation. But a spate of recent crashes has brought the system under regulatory scrutiny.
“To date, Autopilot resources have rightly focused entirely on safety. With V9, we will begin to enable full self-driving features,” Musk tweeted here on Sunday, replying to a Twitter user.
Musk said the autopilot issue during lane-merging is better in the current software and will be fully fixed in the August update.
However, it was not clear what self-driving features would be included in the August update.
I’m not sure what I’ll do, the first time a Lyft comes to pick me up and there’s no one in the car.
CHARLIE MARTIN: 13 Weeks Redux: A Fat Nerd Does Diabetes.
GOVERNMENT IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS WE REFUSE TO DO TOGETHER UNTIL PRIVATE ENTERPRISE STEPS UP: Domino’s Pizza unveils U.S. infrastructure project filling potholes.
Domino’s is offering to fill ‘cracks, bumps and potholes’ to smooth road conditions. The initiative is aimed at ‘saving pizza.’ Picture courtesy of Domino’s Pizza.”Have you ever hit a pothole and instantly cringed?” Russell Weiner, president of Domino’s USA explains, stated in a press release. “We know that feeling is heightened when you’re bringing home a carryout order from your local Domino’s store. We don’t want to lose any great-tasting pizza to a pothole, ruining a wonderful meal.”
Domino’s has already been working with four municipalities to help repair potholes on roads, including Bartonville, Texas, Milford, Delaware, Athens, Georgia, and Burbank, California.
In Milford, Domino’s says it helped fix 40 potholes on 10 roads in 10 hours with four crew members.
“Facing an already harsher winter than usual for Delaware, this is an opportunity to get additional money to stretch our city’s limited resources,” said Eric Norenberg, city manager of the town, on the website.
Nice.
JOHN KERRY: I Would Caution Democrats Against Impeaching President Trump. “We shouldn’t be talking about impeachment. We ought to be talking about what is the agenda is for the American characters.”
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY YOU KNOW: Hypersonic weapons race.