Author Archive: Stephen Green
May 31, 2018
GET WOKE, GO BROKE? Dick’s pulled the plug on selling assault-style weapons and now its hunting business is ‘under significant pressure.’
However: Dick’s soaring sales prove it can succeed without assault rifles.
Never mind the fact that Dick’s never sold assault rifles, because those are illegal.
NOT YOUR GRANDFATHER’S C-RATIONS: New MRE Headed for the Front Lines Includes Mini Spinach Quiches. “Even sooner than that, troops will see their dreams of a pepperoni pizza MRE come true as new ration with ‘high-heat-tolerant mozzarella cheese’ is released.”
WHAT’S IN A NAME? Pentagon Rebrands PACOM as ‘Indo-Pacific Command.’
“In recognition of the increasing connectivity of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, today we rename the U.S. Pacific Command to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command,” Mattis said Wednesday at the command’s headquarters in Honolulu. “Over many decades, this command has repeatedly adapted to changing circumstances, and today that carries that legacy forward as America focuses west.”
For weeks, Mattis had occasionally referred to the Far East as the “Indo-Pacific” region. Speculation about the name change heated up a week ago when one reporter publicly inquired about it at the Pentagon. Mattis made it official at the change-of-command ceremony in which Adm. Harry Harris turned PACOM over to Adm. Phil Davidson.
Under the U.S. military’s scheme for dividing the globe into six geographic combatant commands, India was already part of Pacific Command. No personnel or assets are being moved as part of the change.
The name change is more than mere branding. As China continues to install more anti-ship/anti-aircraft missiles along their own coast and in the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean takes on new importance. In the event of a shooting war, the US Navy will have a much easier time sinking Chinese shipping there than closer to the Chinese Mainland/SCS.
MARGOT CLEVELAND: 3 Reasons Rod Rosenstein’s Special Counsel Appointment Was Illegal.
In appointing Mueller as a special counsel, Rosenstein apparently ignored governing federal regulations. Those regulations are codified at 28 C.F.R. § 600.1-600.10 and limit the circumstances under which a special counsel may be appointed. A special counsel may only be appointed when, among other requirements, a “criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted.” The regulations also require the attorney general (or in the case of recusal, the acting attorney general) to provide the special counsel “with a specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated.”
The May 2, 2017, special counsel appointment, however, referred not to a criminal investigation, but to a counterintelligence investigation. It also lacked any specific factual statement. It was not until more than two months later that Rosenstein referenced a detailed factual scenario—and one that had no connection to the presidential campaign!
Read the whole thing.
LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND JOY REID’S BLOG: A Month Later, MSNBC Still Mum On Joy Reid’s ‘Hacking’ Claims.
WHAT WERE HER PARENTS THINKING? Florida woman named Crystal Methvin arrested again on drug charges.
DAVID SOLWAY: Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures: Part 1.
As many observers have noted, America is now embroiled in a de facto civil war in which the nation is being relentlessly attacked and disassembled from within, not by the conservative Right, as The New Yorker and other progressivist outlets irresponsibly lament, but by the domestic Left.
Reputable commentators like Kevin Williamson at National Review and John Podhoretz for the New York Post believe the nation is descending into chaos — and place the onus squarely on the Left. In a prescient article for PJ Media about the potential result of a political coup orchestrated by the Left under the guise of the faux Mueller investigation, Roger Simon writes: “That word sounds hyperbolic but it isn’t. We could see anything from civil war to social atrophy. Who knows if our country will survive it?” (As one commenter worries, “we are in some very real danger the next time a Democrat gets elected to the highest office” — no paranoiac hypothesis.)
It is a state of affairs that, in its insidious way, is no less critical than the bloody civil war that split the nation in the 1860s.
Read the whole thing. I’m looking forward to Part 2.
FAKE NEWS: Staff Emails Undermine Congressman’s Claim of Being ‘Blocked’ From EPA Summit. “Rep. Kildee alleged in television appearances and op-ed the EPA restricted access to summit.”
Kildee’s claims, which he repeated in television appearances over the weekend and in an op-ed published in the Detroit Free Press, don’t hold up to scrutiny, according to official documents and email correspondence obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The documents show Jordan Dickinson, a senior legislative assistance handing energy and environmental issues in Kildee’s office, reached out to the EPA on Friday, May 18 about attending. Though the request came four days after the deadline to register for the summit had passed—and nearly two months to-the-day after the event was announced—the EPA told Dickinson they were “optimistic” about there being enough space to accommodate him last-minute.
In a follow-up email confirming Dickinson’s attendance, the EPA told the staffer that Wednesday’s portion of the summit was “limited to federal agency folks” and individuals representing state and territorial governments. Furthermore, the draft agenda that Dickinson was sent, along with information about the event’s logistics and security, denoted the first day of the summit was open to “all invited guests” while the second day was confined to state and federal agencies partnering with the EPA.
At no point throughout the email exchange did Dickinson indicate the congressman or other staff members were interested in attending the summit as well. In his initial email, Dickinson only clarified he wanted to attend because “we have some people in town from Michigan who are attending and also this is a top priority for my boss.”
Kildee, who has served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 2013, does not serve on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce or the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the two committees with the most extensive congressional jurisdiction over the EPA.
On Tuesday, EPA Associate Administrator Troy Lyons penned a letter, obtained by the Free Beacon, to Kildee in response to his allegation. Lyons disputed the assertions that Kildee and his staff made in having “mischaracterized the events that took place” in order to score political points.
The long knives have been out for Scott Pruitt for a long time.
SCIENCE: Your Next Glass of Wine Might Be a Fake — And You’ll Love It.
The breakthrough started with baby food. In 2012, Hicks was about to become a father. He started wondering what, exactly, was in the organic, premium-priced products that he and his wife were planning to feed their newborn, so he sent samples off for laboratory analysis. “If you know Kevin,” Walker says, “you understand that that’s just totally something he would do.” When the bills—as much as $1,500 for a single sample—started to add up, Hicks created a lab of his own, which he dubbed Ellipse Analytics. He had a bigger plan. He invested several million dollars in equipment and hired a team of scientists and technicians and before long, Ellipse had enticed paying clients to commission chemical breakdowns of entire consumer categories, like protein powders and sunscreens. Walker saw the potential for wine, and he pushed Hicks to use his technology for their own business.
Like anything else, wine is a combination of chemicals. Ellipse can test for some 500 different attributes and measure the results at the parts-per-billion level. Hidden in that data, Walker realized, were the precise combinations of esters and acids and proteins and anthocyanins and other polyphenols that make a wine taste creamy or flinty, or give it aromas of blueberries or vanilla or old leather—the chemical compositions of America’s most popular wines. Walker also knew that most wine gets a boost from additives such as Mega Purple (for color), oak extract (for tannins and flavoring), and similar chemistry-set concoctions. Using cheap surplus wines readily available on the bulk market and blending in natural additives, he thought, it might be possible to make some pretty convincing copies of popular premium wines.
In 2015, Walker and Hicks started Integrated Beverage Group and set out to duplicate wines that they knew Americans already liked. They planned to do this in plain sight, naming their brand Replica and urging consumers to compare their products with well-known names that usually cost as much as double the price. It didn’t take long before they realized that, in most cases, even professional critics couldn’t distinguish their facsimiles from the originals.
Bring it on.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: McCabe’s Secret Letter About Comey Firing and Much, Much More. “Here’s a fun fact: if Trump is being investigated for obstructing justice by firing Comey, guess who is also under some legal scrutiny? Mr. Rosenstein. He should recuse himself but he won’t because the laws only apply to certain people these days.”
A GOOD START: At least 50 Taliban leaders die in HIMARS strike in Afghanistan, US says.
Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, said a weapon system known as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which is capable of firing GPS-guided rockets, destroyed a command-and-control position that was a known meeting place for high-level Taliban leaders. He said at least 50 leaders were killed.
Additional, unspecified numbers of Taliban officials were killed in U.S. airstrikes over a recent 10-day period, the spokesman said.
If it was so well-known, why did we not hit it like this before?
LIFE AFTER AMAZON: I just ordered from Walmart.com, and it felt Amaz-ing.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Turkish Currency Slide Poses a Political Challenge to Erdogan. “The lira’s recent drop has some voters questioning the long-dominant leader’s handling of the economy.”
Turkish households have been on the front row of the lira’s slide. Their eroding spending power is on display at gas stations, in particular, because Turkey imports most of its fossil fuel.
“I’m filling only half of my tank,” said 40-year-old Funda Sevinc, as she parked at a service station in Istanbul on Tuesday. “And we are going out less on the weekends.”
Many economists say Turkey must signal it is committed to prodding the lira, or risk being hit by an exodus of foreign investors. But the president, who survived a military coup attempt in 2016 and has a strong base of support among small businessmen and middle-income workers, says he is opposed to high interest rates because they slow down investment. Instead, Mr. Erdogan has urged Turkish people “who have euros and dollars under their pillows” to support the national currency by buying lira.
Hoarders and wreckers gotta hoard and wreck.
ANALYSIS: Trump’s ‘Syraqistan’ strategy is a success — and a failure.
The centerpiece of the new campaign has been simple. “I would bomb the sh*t out of them,” as then-candidate Donald Trump explained in November 2015 of his intended strategy against ISIS. Indeed, he has. According to the U.S. Air Force, 29 percent more munitions were dropped by U.S. aircraft on Iraq and Syria in 2017, the first year of Trump’s presidency, than in 2016, the last year of Obama’s presidency.
Trump has also struck a fine balance post-ISIS. He has wisely resisted calls to flood Syria with U.S. troops, even as he has remained willing to strike at Bashar al-Assad’s regime for egregious atrocities — a position the U.S. public supports. Recent polling by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, for example, finds that seven-in-ten Americans support future airstrikes in Syria if Assad uses chemical weapons again.
War yields no shortage of suffering and destruction. All things considered, however, Iraq and Syria have gone well for Trump, and he has been widely credited for as much. But less acknowledged is that the president has employed a nearly identical strategy in Afghanistan. If anything, in fact, the campaign in Syria and Iraq has been the more restrained effort.Two-and-a-quarter times more munitions were dropped by U.S. aircraft on Afghanistan in 2017 under Trump than in 2016 under Obama, according to the U.S. Air Force. Trump has, in short, let slip the dogs of war, and bigly. After all, the president wasn’t shy about using the military’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb, the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, in Nangarhar province in April 2017, reportedly killing nearly a hundred. Nor does the aggressive campaign show any signs of abating. The number of munitions dropped in April 2018 was the highest for any single month since 2012.
But if the campaign in Iraq and Syria has gone well, then Afghanistan has been a dud. The Taliban and other insurgents have more than doubled the percentage of Afghanistan’s 407 districts under their control in the last two years. Today, just 56 percent of Afghanistan’s districts are controlled by the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, down from 60 percent a year ago and 71 percent two years ago.
Afghanistan might not actually be the graveyard of empires, but it’s certainly a black hole for good intentions.
ANDREW MCCARTHY: The Obama Administration’s Hypocritical Pretext for Spying on the Trump Campaign.
It has been credibly reported that Halper, a longtime source for the CIA and British intelligence, was tasked by the FBI in the Trump-Russia investigation to make contact with and get information from at least three Trump campaign officials. He even sought a role in the campaign from co-chairman Sam Clovis. Page, on the other hand, was the target of four FISA court surveillance warrants, which enabled the Justice Department and FBI to monitor him for a year, starting at the height of the 2016 campaign.
To obtain such a warrant under FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978), the FBI and Justice Department must convince a judge that there is probable cause to believe the target is an agent of a foreign power — in Page’s case, of Russia. As we’ve previously outlined, because Page is an American citizen, the Obama administration had to have told the court that he was either: (a) “knowingly engage[d] in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of [Russia], which activities involve[d] or may [have] involve[d]” federal crimes; or (b) “knowingly engaged in any other clandestine intelligence activities for or on behalf of [Russia], that were undertaken “pursuant to the direction of an intelligence service or network of [Russia],” and that “involve[d] or [were] about to involve” federal crimes.
Assuming the Obama administration told the FISA court that Page was a clandestine agent of Russia, I’d make two observations: First, the only publicly known allegations that Page was engaged in such clandestine activities come from the Steele dossier, and appear to be unverified.
Second, Page has never been charged with a crime, which would be odd if the FBI had been able to verify its FISA application claims — posited four times over a year of surveillance — that he was engaged in activities that appeared to be federal crimes.
That is odd, especially for a “remarkably scandal-free Administration.”
SCHOOLED: Army Ranger and Benghazi Survivor Shoots Down David Hogg on Gun Control. “Thank you for confirming it’s not the gun, it’s the person.”
May 30, 2018
MYSTERIES OF THE EAST: In Japan, a Buddhist Funeral Service for Robot Dogs. “An electronics repair company gives a compassionate farewell to mechanical pets, with a traditional ceremony held in a historic temple.”
NOT EVEN A FLESH WOUND: ‘Dead’ Russian Journalist Appears at a News Conference in Ukraine.
Mr. Babchenko created a sensation in Kiev on Wednesday by appearing at a news conference, billed as a police briefing about his assassination, at which he was greeted by whoops of surprise and scattered applause. It came less than 24 hours after his wife said she had found him bleeding to death on the floor of their apartment, shot in the back.
“First of all, I would like to apologize that all of you had to live through this, because I know the horrible feeling when you have to bury your colleagues,” Mr. Babchenko, 41, told the stunned room. “Separately, I want to apologize to my wife for all the hell she had to go through.”
Mr. Babchenko and the senior officials from the Ukrainian security services who appeared with him said that a contract for $40,000 had been put on his life, and that the only way to track down those responsible was to make it seem as if it had happened.
More to come, I’m sure.
BLUE WAVE? Joe Scarborough Admits Dems Might Lose in 2018 Due to Trump’s Conservative Achievements. “Democrats might be in for a surprise…”
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Seven Times Robert De Niro Childishly Insulted President Trump. “The Oscar winner’s box office figures are fading as his attacks on the president grow worse.”
Get woke, go broke.