Author Archive: Stephen Green

NEW JERSEY: Our Gun Control Policies Failed, So Let’s Double Down.

The state of New Jersey is one of those most hostile states toward the Second Amendment and they have been for quite a while. The only sort of pro-gun move I’ve ever seen was the repeal of a law that mandated only smart guns be sold in the state once the technology was viable, and they only did that because it became clear that the law was making it so companies didn’t want to develop such guns.

Literally everything else has been outright hostility.

It’s pretty bad when folks in New Jersey move to Illinois to get a taste of gun freedom, yet it’s how things fall.

What’s more, the gun control policies in place simply aren’t working.

That’s no accident. Gun control isn’t about making polices that work. It’s about making gun ownership impossible, or nearly so.

(ALMOST) A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE: Kerch Crumples.

One year ago, the Kerch Strait Bridge was hit for the second time, following the October 2022 attack. Russians tried to repair that damage, but the results seem to be…subpar.

I’m not an expert in bridge structural integrity, but that warping/sagging/bending doesn’t look good. In a video game, that looks like a structure you’d get one chance to jump off of before it collapses into the sea.

Taking out the Kerch Bridge — it’s remained at least in partial operation — has been a big part of Kyiv’s effort to make Russian occupation of Crimea “untenable.”

THE ELITES WOULD HAVE YOU FORGET The Falling Man.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: Underappreciated Albums: ‘Hearts And Bones.’ “‘Hearts And Bones’ is the album that relaunched Paul Simon’s career to all-new heights by crashing and burning.”

CHRISTIAN TOTO: ‘Am I Racist?’ – 2024’s Funniest Comedy.

The documentary finds Walsh going undercover to expose DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) proponents.

The result? A devastating peek behind the curtain of the Identity Politics racket. “Racist?” doubles as the year’s funniest comedy.

“Woman?” made its interview subjects squirm. This time, it’s the audience that might wriggle in their seats between the laughter.

The best part might be when “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo gets tricked into paying reparations to Walsh’s producer.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED THE VENEZUELA APARTMENT TAKEOVER WAS JUST RIGHT-WING PANICMONGERING:

HMM: It Looks Like Trump May Have Helped Himself in the Debate. “Reuters interviewed ten undecided voters before and after a debate. Six of them shifted toward supporting Trump, three leaned toward Harris, and one remained uncertain. That’s a rather solid outcome for Trump.”

PROGRESSIVE “JUSTICE”: Harris County Justice Cancels All Warrants. “A Harris County justice of the peace has recalled all warrants issued through his court thwarting law enforcement efforts in his jurisdiction to enforce traffic laws, pursue fraudulent check writers, and detain individuals who had failed to appear in court.”

IN PLENTY OF TIME FOR THE HOLIDAY SHOPPING SEASON: Potential port strike has retailers, manufacturers scrambling. “For retailers, that means holiday shipments might not arrive on time. Manufacturers might not receive parts, materials and supplies needed for production, which will lead to assembly lines shutting down. And farmers won’t be able to get their products to overseas markets, which could lead to lost sales.”

Plus: “East Coast and Gulf Coast ports handle about 43% of all US imports.”

THREAD:

Read the whole thing.

IT IS UNWISE TO ASK UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS, COMRADE:

The State Steno Pool knows what its job is — and performed it to near-perfection during last night’s three-on-one “debate.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Biden Admin to SpaceX: Drop Dead! “Biden-Harris would have us lose the New Space Race — putting our entire national security at risk — in a fit of partisan pique against the man whose other company, X, had the temerity to restore free speech to just one social media platform.”

BIDEN’S INCREASINGLY HOLLOW MILITARY: Small fleet, fewer flights weaken Army aircraft training, report says.

U.S. Army helicopter crews are flying one-third of the hours they did at the peak of the past two decades, as the number of manned aircraft has declined by 20%, according to a government report.

The same report also noted that the Army saw the availability of aircraft increase as its fleet of craft has gotten younger. The Congressional Budget Office’s findings, aimed at documenting how the Army is using its aircraft, are based on service aviation data from 2000 to 2023.

In 2011, the Army saw its peak of average flying hours in manned aircraft, the majority of which are helicopters.

At that time, air crews flew an average of 302 hours each year. As of 2023, the average flight hours have dropped by more than one-third to 198 hours, according to the report.

“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in battle,” the wise man once said.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: ABC News Moderators Were the Big Winners of Last Night’s Debate. “The real problem was the interference from moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis, who were the most egregiously biased I’ve ever seen, and I’ve watched George Stephanopoulos do a number of these things.”

JAPAN: A robot begins removal of melted fuel from the Fukushima nuclear plant. It could take a century.

A long robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week, high-stakes mission to retrieve for the first time a tiny amount of melted fuel debris from the bottom.

The robot’s trip into the Unit 2 reactor is a crucial initial step for what comes next — a daunting, decades-long process to decommission the plant and deal with large amounts of highly radioactive melted fuel inside three reactors that were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Specialists hope the robot will help them learn more about the status of the cores and the fuel debris.

Here is an explanation of how the robot works, its mission, significance and what lies ahead as the most challenging phase of the reactor cleanup begins.

Nuclear fuel in the reactor cores melted after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant’s cooling systems to fail. The melted fuel dripped down from the cores and mixed with internal reactor materials such as zirconium, stainless steel, electrical cables, broken grates and concrete around the supporting structure and at the bottom of the primary containment vessels.

The reactor meltdowns caused the highly radioactive, lava-like material to spatter in all directions, greatly complicating the cleanup.

Well, that’s exactly what robots are for. On the other hand, this being Japan, you have to wonder about the chances of a giant mutated robot flattening Tokyo.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Audio reveals moment two Delta planes collided on Atlanta runway: ‘We just hit something… could you tell us what that was?’

The shocking incident took place at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia just after 10 am on Tuesday, when a Tokyo-bound flight clipped the back of a jet headed to Louisiana as it was taxiing for takeoff.

‘We just hit something on the taxiway, could you tell us what it was?’ one of the pilots asked in the audio.

Air traffic control responded: ‘The whole tail of that CRJ is off.’

No word yet how that happened but there is this: Diversity in the Skies: FAA’s Controversial Shift in Air Traffic Controller Hiring.

IS THIS MORE OF THAT SMART DIPLOMACY?