Author Archive: Stephen Green
May 9, 2017
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How Bad Is the Democratic Senate Map for 2018?
The real question is what happens in the House. The historic average is that the President’s party loses 26 seats in the midterms, and the GOP majority is several seats smaller than that.
WELL, THIS IS THE 23RD 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: These ER Docs Invented a Real Star Trek Tricorder.
ATTRACTED TO MONEY AND POWER LIKE A MOTH TO A FLAME: Silicon Valley is ‘officially a retirement community for D.C. political vets’
Veterans of high-profile political campaigns and White House administrations such as LaBolt — who in years past would have turned their public-service resumes and connections into jobs as lobbyists on K Street, advisers at Fortune 500 firms or leaders of nonprofits — are increasingly heading west, attracted by the opportunities to put their political skills to use in the technology industry. It can lead to strange bedfellows: Democrats and Republicans who fought each other while working on opposing campaigns find themselves working on shared goals and trying to effect change outside the nation’s gridlocked capital.
It’s a new gold rush — to social media companies, tech start-ups, incubators and key players in the sharing economy.
“Mall shoes. White cars. Buffet specials. Come and get it, this town is now officially a retirement community for D.C. political vets,” said Matt McKenna, who worked for Clinton for nearly a decade of his post-presidency before joining the ride-sharing company Uber and then launching a crisis-communications firm in Sausalito.
Beyond healthy six-figure salaries and better weather than Washington, D.C., the moves make sense — skills developed in politics are in critical demand in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley.
Isn’t it time that the wealthy and well-connected technorati give something back via Glenn’s revolving-door surtax?
More here, from Jenn Jacques at Bearing Arms.
I only knew Bob through his work, but it was good and important work. Thoughts and prayers for him and his family.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): There’s a GoFundMe page for his family. I donated.
LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND STATISTICS: Fake Statistics Created ‘Rape Anxiety’ Among Female Students.
Keep them scared and they’ll demand protection, instead of maturing into strong, responsible, and independent young women.
DEADLY DUO: The U.S. Air Force is Trying to Link Together Stealth F-22s and F-15s.
The new pod—which can connect via Link 16, Common Data Link and Wideband Global SATCOM satellites—allows the fourth-generation jets to plug into the fifth-generation Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor air superiority fighter and to ground stations using the fifth-generation jets’ own network. While the Raptor has its own proprietary Intra-Flight Data Link (IFDL), the F-22 does not have the ability to transmit on the standard Link-16 network—though it can receive data. The Talon HATE allows the F-15 to connect with the Raptor’s IFDL network.
“This aerial network is a giant leap forward in tactical fighter capability with real-time connectivity and expanded information sharing,” said Paul Geery, vice president of Boeing’s Phantom Works Mission Solutions and the company’s Talon HATE program manager. “We are now demonstrating secure datalink connections between F-15Cs and F-22s in a way that integrates information for the pilot into a common operating picture.”
The key to the Talon HATE system is that it can share information between the F-22, F-15C and other platforms in real time. Right now, F-22 and F-15C pilots—who are the Air Force’s air superiority team—are forced to share data via voice communication over encrypted radio. The process, while effective, is inefficient. Real time machine-to-machine data transfers would allow the Air Force’s two key air dominance platforms to seamlessly share their data—and perhaps more importantly—share targeting information. Thus, a F-15C could use its AIM-120 AMRAAMs to engage a target that is being spotted far ahead by a stealthy F-22—without forcing the Raptor to use its expend its limited payload of missiles.
Networking is the ultimate force multiplier, and perhaps a good enough reason not to retire the F-15 just yet.
SEPARATE BUT EQUAL? Here’s Why Black Harvard Students Are Holding Their Own Graduation Ceremony.
“This is an opportunity to celebrate Harvard’s Black excellence and Black brilliance,” Michael Huggins, a soon-to-become Masters graduate from Harvard’s Kennedy School, told The Root. “It’s an event where we can see each other and our parents and family can see us as a collective, whole group. A community.”
“This is not about segregation,” He added. “It’s about fellowship and building a community. This is a chance to reaffirm for each other that we enter the work world with a network of supporters standing with us. We are all partners.”
Just not fellowship or community with anyone of a different color.
HMM: Chinese Millennials — Already Big Homeowners — Use Apps to Snap Up Overseas Property.
About 70% of Chinese millennials, those born between 1981 and 1998, own a home, the highest share of respondents from nine countries and regions who were surveyed in a recent HSBC study. Chinese parents often register home purchases under their child’s name to prepare the child for marriage and raising a family, which likely boosts the percentage.
Still, a growing sliver of Chinese millennials are looking to buy property abroad. Kevin Lee, chief operating officer of Beijing-based consulting firm Youthology, put the percentage in the low single digits but said it would continue to increase.
The lure? A millennial’s desire to hedge against yuan depreciation and find affordable homes in cities with cleaner air for their children to live in when they study abroad. In the past year, home prices have soared to more than 30 times household income in major Chinese cities.
Chinese young adults are worried enough to hedge against their own country’s future, yet are still doing better financially than California’s young adults — and Bernie Sanders sees California as the model to “transform” the Democratic Party.
IT ISN’T JUST CALIFORNIA: California’s Geriatric Liberal Leadership.
Jerry Brown, the nation’s oldest governor (he turned 79 last month), is serving a record fourth and final term as California’s chief executive.
Dianne Feinstein, the nation’s oldest U.S. senator (she turns 84 in June), first ran for San Francisco supervisor in 1970 – the same year Gov. Brown launched the first of what adds up to a dozen citywide, statewide and nationwide campaigns. Whether she seeks another term next year is a popular guessing game here.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, age 77, traces her California political ancestry to a House special election held 30 years ago. She succeeded Sala Burton, who won the seat following the death of her husband, the legendary gerrymanderer Phil Burton.
About the Burtons: Phil’s brother John, who turned 84 last December, is stepping down this month after an eight-year run as chairman of the California Democratic Party. It marks the end of six decades of Burtonian influence on state and local politics dating back President Eisenhower’s re-election in 1956.
The purpose of reciting these resumes isn’t to disparage anyone’s age. Rather, it’s to highlight California’s struggle to find a place in a Democratic Party that, come 2020, stands to benefit from a fresh face with fresh ideas.
The fresh faces will rise up their own. Fresh ideas are more difficult, and if the last decade or two of Democratic politics are anything to go by, not really wanted.
HAPPY LANDINGS: New Carrier Landing Tech Wows Pilots on First Deployment.
On the Bush, a Nimitz-class carrier, pilots have 786 feet of flight deck to work with, less than a tenth of a traditional runway length. But the requirements of landing are far more precise; pilots told Military.com they needed to fly the nose of the aircraft through a an imaginary box about one foot across in order to properly align their descent and snag a landing cable. On a dark night, Hornet pilots have described the experience of executing such a landing on a carrier as “emotional.”
One pilot assigned to the wing’s Strike Fighter Squadron 87, the Golden Warriors, which flies the F/A-18E Super Hornet, said the use of the new technology had caused accuracy rates to skyrocket — so much so that the target arresting cable, usually the second of three on the Bush, was wearing out faster than the others and had to be rotated.
“We were statistically too accurate,” said “JoJo,” the training officer for VFA-87, who asked to be identified by his callsign.
Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker, head of Naval Air Forces, said something similar last August about the carrier-variant F-35C, which was designed with native PLM technology, known in that platform as Delta Flight Path.
“They were landing in the same spot on the runway every time, tearing up where the hook touches down,” he told a Washington, D.C. audience about field testing of the capability. “So we quickly realized, we needed to either fix the runway or adjust, put some variants in the system. So that’s how precise this new system is.”
That’s not a bad problem to have.
GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld has your Morning Brief prepared.
RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Islamic State video shows beheading of Russian intelligence agent.
The video, which was released on media accounts associated with the Islamic State on Monday, showed the gruesome murder of Cpt. Yevgeny Petrenko, 36, whom the Islamic State said had infiltrated Islamist groups in Kazakhstan and the North Caucasus region of Russia before he was caught last year by the Islamic State in Syria.
The video was accessed through a copy provided on the site of the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist publications and media. It confirmed the video on Tuesday.
In an interview apparently given under duress, Petrenko, an agent for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said he had been abandoned by the Russian government and called on it to end its military campaign in Syria.
“I was supposed to infiltrate the special services of the caliphate and the leadership of the caliphate,” the man identifying himself as Petrenko, dressed in a black button-down shirt and a black hat, told an interviewer whose face was obscured. “One of my orders was to gain access to Omar al-Shishani or to his circle. But during this I was discovered and arrested by the security services of the caliphate.”
The Russians have a brutal reputation when it comes to payback for things like this.
IT’S NOT RACISM OR SEXISM WHEN THEY DO IT: What happens when the white guys are back in charge.
If Jill Filipovic had written this column about women or black men… well, you know the rest.
May 8, 2017
21ST CENTURY CRIME: Two Arrested In Attempted Prison Drone Delivery.
Authorities told the Associated Press that Charles Everett Adams and Justin Marvin Canady have been arrested and face multiple charges. The men were found at about 0300 Wednesday on prison-owned property in Lancaster County, SC., and fled the scene when approached by police.
When they were apprehended, they were in possession of a drone, marijuana, knives and cellphones.
It’s not quite “lawyers, guns, and money,” but it’s close.
JON GABRIEL: So, the Obama Presidential Library Is Really Ugly. “A discarded Chinese take-out box. The backside of a Star Wars sand crawler. The Washington Monument with the interesting bits lopped off.”
Heh. He’s too kind.
TUNE IN: NatGeo’s First Scripted Series Is ‘Genius’
Einstein’s romanticism doesn’t begin and end in the bedroom. Unlike most men of his generation, he is depicted as a soft-hearted Renaissance man who pursues his intellectual interests like lovers. Tight scriptwriting contrasts scenes of him professing his love for his secretary with impassioned lectures about the science of light waves delivered to eager students. Contrary to the portrayals of nerdy, emotionally-stunted scientists in popular shows like Big Bang and Scorpion, Genius’s Einstein exudes the kind of emotion normally reserved in our culture for figures like Shakespeare or Braveheart.
This twist should inspire some serious discussion about how men, specifically intelligent men, are portrayed in the media. Much has been made of the pressures put on boys to stuff their emotions in order to appear more masculine. Still more has been made of pushing girls into scientific professions, often at the expense of boys’ academic growth in the classroom. In the midst of this milieu arrives Einstein as a historical example of a man who can be both incredibly intellectual and deeply in touch with his emotional side. It’s a refreshing change of which parents should take note.
Read the whole thing, which makes the show seem like a refreshing change from National Geographic’s usual leftwing pablum.
I’m adding this one to the lineup for my sons.
FASTER THAN A SPEEDING PHOTON: The World’s Fastest Camera Shoots Five Trillion Photos Every Second.
At those speeds, events that take place in as little as 0.2 trillionths of a second can be documented and studied at a speed that humans can comprehend. To help demonstrate just how fast that really is, the researchers used the new camera to film a group of photons traveling about as far as a piece of paper is thick, making it seem as if the light particles were barely moving, instead of racing past at 671 million miles per hour.
As you might imagine, the technology that allows cameras like this to capture so many frames every second is radically different to how film cameras, or even modern digital cameras, work. The camera doesn’t actually snap away for a full second—capturing five trillion frames that quickly would require a roll of film that was miles long. Besides, the events it’s designed to capture are over in less than a picosecond; about one trillionth the time it takes you to say “one Mississippi.”
Instead, the record-breaking high-speed camera uses another innovative trick to achieve its astounding speeds. Every frame of film that’s recorded actually contains four separate images, captured one after the other, created by flashing a laser at the subject with each light pulse featuring a unique ‘code’ that allows the combined images to be later decoded and separated using an encryption key.
I still haven’t caught up editing the photos from my son’s football games last fall, shot at a somewhat slower 6.5 frames per second.
NEVER BRING A KNIFE TO A CHAIR AND VODKA BOTTLE FIGHT: Shopkeeper and his teenage son ‘fight off armed man with vodka bottle and chair’
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why Chris Pratt Must Stand Up to PC Scolds.
BUT OF COURSE: Islamic State Threatens More Attacks on Egypt’s Christians, Obama DHS Adviser Says They Have It Coming.
They shouldn’t have worn such short skirts.
“ANALYSIS”: 11 Million Voters Backed ‘Fascist’ Le Pen on Record Night for Far-Right.
You can be fascist or you can be far right, but you can’t be both.
POP: The debt-bubble landmine Obama left for Trump.
When this debt bubble bursts, just as the last one did, the manufacturing jobs Trump wants to save will be in even greater peril.
The country’s last bubble was in housing. Between 2000 and 2007, Americans nearly doubled their mortgage debt, from $5.9 trillion to $10.6 trillion.
This didn’t bother anyone in a position of power. The housing boom created millions of jobs, from construction to home-furnishing, and people felt rich.
What bothered the pols was when the illusion broke.
Since the 2008 crash, neither Democrats nor Republicans have been interested in creating a sturdier economy. Instead, they’ve built up another bubble, this time in the car and SUV industry.
How? The same way: cheap debt. In 2010, Americans owed $809 billion on their cars (after adjusting for inflation). Today, they owe nearly $1.2 trillion, according to the New York Fed.
That’s a 50% increase in an economy which has barely grown since 2009. And as Glenn likes to remind you, anything that can’t go on forever will stop.
NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL AN ABSENTEE BALLOT: ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet Votes In French Election From International Space Station.