BATTLESWARM BLOG: The State of the War Against ISIS.
It’s amazing how much more quickly things can change on the ground in the Middle East once the lawyers in the White House get out of the way.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
July 15, 2017
SARAH HOYT: What Happens When the Artist Chides His Audience?
I’m writing this from my garret, watched over by two small mice, who – enviously – watch my three remaining crumbs of bread. Tomorrow I eat them, and then it’s all up in the air whether or not I have the strength to finish the novel, my magnum opus upon which I have labored unrewarded for the last twenty years.
How many of you nodded along with that thinking it made any sense?
How many of you know I’m joking, but still think that is the way it should be?
Come on, reach deep into your soul and tell me the truth. How many of you think that for a work to be authentic it must be labored over in extreme poverty for a very long time, unappreciated by anybody until, possibly sometime after the author’s death, it is declared a genius masterpiece and talked about in hushed, reverent tones for the rest of eternity?
You can tell me the truth. You’re not an idiot. It’s the culture that’s stupid.
Read the whole thing.
THE LONG COUNTERMARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS: Former Airline Industry Lobbyist Now Lobbying For ATC Privatization From Inside The FAA.
SHE DIDN’T BUILD THAT: Elizabeth Warren Is Building an Impressive War Chest.
July 14, 2017
NO FREE PARKING: Searching for Parking Costs Americans $73 Billion a Year.
INRIX today published a major new study combining data from the INRIX Parking database of 100,000 locations across 8,700 cities in more than 100 countries, with results from a recent survey of nearly 18,000 drivers in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, including close to 6,000 across 10 U.S. cities. With the goal of analyzing and ranking the economic costs of “parking pain” in these markets, INRIX research found that, on average, U.S. drivers spend 17 hours per year searching for parking at a cost of $345 per driver in wasted time, fuel and emissions.
INRIX analyzed the parking market in 10 of the U.S.’s largest cities, and revealed that New York drivers endure the worst challenges. On average, drivers in the Big Apple spend 107 hours per year searching for a parking spot at a cost $2,243 per driver in wasted time, fuel and emissions, amounting to $4.3 billion in costs to the city as a whole.
A Federal “parking tax” levied on automobiles in our most congested cities, with rapidly escalating fees based on a vehicle’s size and price, and with revenues devoted to carbon reduction, ought to alleviate the problem.
Glenn hasn’t had any luck getting wealthy coastal residents to pay their fair share towards saving the environment, but given the vitriol progressives direct at car owners, perhaps this proposal will gain more traction.
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE: Shifting ice on Jupiter’s moon could probe its interior.
Tremors on Earth have helped scientists probe the interior of the planet, and shakeups on icy moons could do the same. By simulating icequakes on Jupiter’s icy moons Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede, as well as Saturn’s frozen satellite Enceladus, researchers have concluded that each world would have its own unique sound signature. Including an instrument to track the trembling crust on each world on future missions could reveal insights about the habitability of the icy layers beneath the surface.
“It’s doubtful that it’s completely quiet on Europa,” said Steve Vance, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Vance presented the results of how seismic investigations can shed light on the interior of icy worlds at the Astrobiology Science Conference in Mesa, Arizona, in April.
A global ocean is thought to lie beneath Europa’s icy crust. As Jupiter tugs on the moon with its enormous mass, it pulls and stretches the world enough to melt the ice that would otherwise remain solid.
Many of us have been waiting to see under Europa’s crust for 35 years already.
TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS: Self-driving Taxis Will Become the Most Disgusting Spaces on Earth.
YOU FIRST: The Four Most Effective Things You Can Do About Climate Change, According To Science.
Don’t bother clicking. The four things are what you’d expect from people happy to have everyone else reduced to a pre-modern existence: “Do Not Have That Child,” “Live Car-Free,” “Skip That Flight,” “Eat a Plant-Based Diet.”
Steak, I’d just add, is entirely plant-based.
PROCUREMENT: France and Germany to develop new European fighter jet.
“Today there are too many European standards and qualifications and sometimes there is competition among Europeans internationally,” French President Emmanuel Macron told a news conference, flanked by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“I can confirm this is a deep revolution but we are not afraid when they are carried out peacefully, in a structured way and over time,” Macron said.
France and Germany said their new combat system, which analysts say could involve a mixture of manned and unmanned aircraft, would replace the Rafale and Eurofighter, rival jets that compete fiercely for global sales.
That would mark the end of a decades-long split since France withdrew from the Eurofighter project in the 1980s to produce its Rafale warplane with Dassault Aviation.
Defense industry experts called the move a setback to Britain and its leading arms contractor, BAE Systems.
“It is a sign to the British. It means ‘you are leaving the EU and we are driving forward. We are no longer interested in you blocking the EU on defense’,” a senior German defense industry official told Reuters.
Anti-British nastiness aside, presumably the new jet will be stealthy — and it’s also a safe bet that Europe won’t buy nearly enough of them.
BUT OF COURSE: Vulnerable Dem. Senator Profits From the Very Outsourcing He Condemned.
If it weren’t for projection, they’d have nothing left but lies and hate.
GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD: Department of Energy Invests Additional $46M in Struggling Solar Energy Sector.
When it comes to solar power, the forecast seems only partially sunny. The industry has long benefitted from federal subsidies, but the future of these programs is uncertain. On Wednesday, the Department of Energy announced that it was investing $46.2 million in 48 solar energy projects as part of its SunShot Initiative. The timing of the investment is somewhat unusual, though, since the industry has struggled in recent years. Investor interest in solar energy companies has been declining for several years, the result of a slew of major bankruptcies and overall difficulty bringing the technology successfully to market.
“The SunShot Initiative is a proven driver of solar energy innovation,” SunShot Initiative Director Charlie Gay said. “These projects ensure there’s a pipeline of knowledge, human resources, transformative technology solutions, and research to support the industry.”
That’s not an investment; it’s a subsidy.
HMM: US retail sales fall for a 2nd month as consumers pull back.
Retail sales fell 0.2 percent after declining 0.1 percent in May, the Commerce Department said Friday. Spending at retailers has grown 2.8 percent over the past 12 months, a relatively modest pace given that the sales figures aren’t adjusted for inflation.
The decline reflects in part a transformative shift by consumers toward Amazon and other online retailers. Sales at department stores, once the anchors of shopping malls and the pride of local communities, have steadily dwindled. Even former sources of strength in retail, like restaurants and auto dealers, have faced weakening sales.
The spending figures are closely watched because consumers account for roughly 70 percent of U.S. economic activity. If their spending slows, it can drag down growth across the broader economy.
The U.S. economy has expanded at a tepid annual pace of roughly 2 percent since the Great Recession ended eight years ago.
A “big, big tax cut” sure would be nice about now.
DEB HEINE: Russiagate Roundup.
HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? Permian Basin Operators, Not OPEC, will Determine Normal Oil Prices from Here Out.
Kleptocratic petrostates hardest hit.
VOX: It’s OK to scare the crap out of people on climate change.
It’s fine for activists to be congenitally positive — that’s their job. But I’m with Slate’s Susan Matthews: it’s just weird for journalists and analysts to worry about overly alarming people regarding the biggest, scariest problem humanity has ever faced. By any sane accounting, the ranks the under-alarmed outnumber the over-alarmed by many multiples. The vast majority of people do not have an accurate understanding of how bad climate change has already gotten or how bad it is likely to get, much less how bad it could get if we keep electing crazy people.
When there are important things that people don’t understand, journalists should explain those things. Attempts at dime-store social psychology are unlikely to lead to better journalism.
Over my 407 years in the climate-o-sphere, I’ve cycled through just about every school of thought on the right way to communicate climate change. What I’ve come to believe is that on this, as on most matters, nobody really knows anything. Even if there are accurate statements about how people in general respond to messages in general, they won’t tell you much about how you ought to communicate with the people you want to reach.
Writing that is consciously pitched to reach and inspire some mythical average reader (as encountered in social science studies filtered through popular journalism) tends to be flavorless and dull.
Similarly, the dry, hedged language of science is not the only serious or legitimate way to communicate, though climate scientists often mistake it as such.
tl;dr? People are too dumb and too irrational to know what’s good for ’em.
I believe it was noted scientist Bill Nye who recently defined “science” as, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
THIS IS CNN: Host Says President Would Have Sold Uranium to Russia.
FLASHBACK: Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.
Take away projection, and all they’d have left is lies and hate.
OH: Co-founder of firm behind Trump-Russia dossier will not testify before Senate next week.
The committee on Wednesday announced a July 19 hearing that listed Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, as a witness. His inclusion raised the specter of public testimony about the dossier’s seamy and contested claims of sexual misconduct and a years-long Kremlin conspiracy to get Trump elected.
But the request for Simpson to appear was voluntary, and it’s unclear whether the committee will seek to compel his testimony.
Let the subpoenas fly.
FREEDOM CAUCUS CHAIRMAN: ‘Zero Chance’ for Tax Reform if Congress Doesn’t Start Now.
DAVID HARSANYI: The Insufferable Hypocrisy Of ‘Morning Joe.’
After famously leaving the Democratic Party, Ronald Reagan went on national television in 1964 to deliver a brilliant distillation of his views on limited government and individual liberty in “A Time for Choosing.” Reagan gave the speech, though he knew it would be toxic among his peers and possibly hurt a nascent political career, to help long-shot candidate Barry Goldwater.
Joe Scarborough famously left the Republican Party in 2017 by going on CBS’s “The Late Show” where host Stephen Colbert teed up some preplanned questions that allowed “Morning Joe,” to the delight of a crowd of applauding automatons who couldn’t tell the difference between sanctimony and bravery, to indulge in some self-aggrandizement.
Reagan went to bed the night of his pre-taped speech “hoping I hadn’t let Barry down.” Joe went to bed the night of his pre-taped show believing that Americans enjoyed his cringe-inducing third-rate MOR protest song. “It’s one of the great tragedies of my political life that Democrats get all the great musicians,” the lead singer and guitarist for the band Scarborough had recently explained. Well, fortunately, Joe will have a chance to reverse this historic injustice when he finally registers as a Democrat.
Tell us what you really think, David.