UP TO THE JOB OF PRESIDENT? SHE ISN’T EVEN UP TO THE JOB OF CAMPAIGNING FOR PRESIDENT:
CNN: What's on Kamala's schedule today?
Kamala spokesman Adrienne Elrod: "She's talking to voters and getting her message out there."
CNN: She has literally nothing on her schedule today.
Kamala spokesman: Well, yeah. pic.twitter.com/NPCnGNiuTH
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 13, 2024
NEITHER ONE OF THEM IS EXACTLY BURDENED BY COMPETENCE: Not Even KJP Can Name Any of Kamala’s Policy Achievements.
NEW INSPIRATION FOR THE BIDEN-HARRIS IRS: Battle axes unearthed in a cemetery in Russia may have belonged to 11th-century taxmen.
VIDEO: Harvard’s Can’t Fail Track For Moneyed Morons. “The Z-list is like, you have a student who is so academically inept that no tutor, no study drug, no recommendation from a senator, can can mask the fact that this is a person does not belong here. This is a dumb person.”
ERIC BERGER: I trust NASA’s safety culture this time around, and so should you.
If it does not precisely repeat itself, history certainly echoes. Two decades after Columbia, Starliner is presently docked to the International Space Station. As with foam strikes, issues with reaction-control system thrusters are not unique to this flight; they were also observed during the previous test flight in 2022. So once again, engineers at NASA are attempting to decide whether they can be comfortable with a “known” issue and all of its implications for a safe return to Earth.
NASA is the customer for this mission rather than the operator—the space agency is buying transportation services to the International Space Station for its astronauts from Boeing. However, as the customer, NASA still has the final say. Boeing engineers will have input, but the final decisions will be made by NASA engineers such as Steve Stich, Ken Bowersox, and Jim Free. Ultimately, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson could have the final say.
Decision-makers today have some decided advantages over their predecessors for Columbia. Whereas the shuttle had made dozens of successful flights by 2003, Starliner remains very much in its test and development phase. Therefore, it’s difficult to fall into the “we’ve seen this before” trap. Additionally, whereas the shuttle had a limited lifetime in orbit due to fuel cells and other consumables, mission managers have the luxury of studying Starliner’s issues not over a matter of days but over weeks and even months.
Finally, in a massive change from 2003, NASA managers have a readily available back-up option to get the crew home: the reliable Crew Dragon spacecraft.
I wonder if the existence of Crew Dragon influenced NASA’s decision to go ahead with Starliner’s extended-stay crew flight test, despite one failed unmanned test and a second flight test that, while successful, had issues with the maneuvering thrusters.
BUT DAVID PLOUFFE IS BACK AND DOING ALL HE CAN TO REPEAT THE OBAMA MAGIC FROM 2008: No, Harris Is Not the Frontrunner… Yet.
THAT WOULD COME IN HANDY: New Mars study suggests an ocean’s worth of water may be hiding beneath the red dusty surface.
This water — believed to be seven miles to 12 miles down in the Martian crust — most likely would have seeped from the surface billions of years ago when Mars harbored rivers, lakes and possibly oceans, according to the lead scientist, Vashan Wright of the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Just because water still may be sloshing around inside Mars does not mean it holds life, Wright said.
“Instead, our findings mean that there are environments that could possibly be habitable,” he said in an email.
His team combined computer models with InSight readings including the quakes’ velocity in determining underground water was the most likely explanation. The results appeared Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
If InSight’s location at Elysium Planitia near Mars’ equator is representative of the rest of the red planet, the underground water would be enough to fill a global ocean a mile or so deep, Wright said.
Are we looking at the future site of Elon City?
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: X Rated — Trump Triggers All the Right People In Interview With Musk. “Trump and his supporters were due a breath of fresh air after a couple of weeks of choking on the noxious fumes created by the horse manure produced by the media rebranding of Kamala Harris.”
MEET THE NEW BOSS, SAME AS THE OLD BOSS: This new Hamas chief signals more war, not less for Gaza. “Unlike Haniyeh, who was based in Qatar, and acted as Hamas’s chief representative abroad, Sinwar has been based in Gaza since his release from an Israeli prison in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange. In Gaza, Sinwar, whom the U.S. designated a terrorist in 2015, served as Hamas’s politburo from 2013 until 2017, when he became the movement’s leader in Gaza. Sinwar is one of Hamas’s longtime military commanders. Israel regards him as the ultimate mastermind of Operation al-Aqsa Flood.”
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: This Tim Walz ‘Stolen Valor’ Story Will Have You in Tears.
SCIENCE: Three Studies of MDMA Treatment Retracted by Scientific Journal.
The journal Psychopharmacology has retracted three papers about MDMA-assisted therapy based on what the publication said was unethical conduct at one of the study sites where the research took place.
Several of the papers’ authors are affiliated with Lykos Therapeutics, the drug company whose application for MDMA-assisted therapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder was rejected last week by the Food and Drug Administration.
The company said the research in the retracted papers was not part of its application to the F.D.A.
In declining to approve Lykos’s application, the agency cited concerns about missing data and problems with the way the company’s study was designed, according to a statement released by Lykos on Friday.
The F.D.A. has asked Lykos to conduct an additional clinical trial of its MDMA-assisted therapy, which would have been the first psychedelic medicine to win approval by federal regulators. Lykos has said it would appeal the decision.
It’s a shame this didn’t pan out because it’s been 24 years and two long wars since the last PTSD treatment was approved.
LESLIE CORBLY: Devouring Democracy: The Left Embodies the Archetype of Female Predation. “The archetype of female predation is the devouring mother. Rather than providing nurture and care to her children, this mother weaponizes her children’s dependent status, using it as a mechanism to increase her power. Those under the care of the devouring mother are perpetual infants, never moving out of a state of dependence on their caregiver who shields the child from external threats while perpetrating unspeakable harm within the ‘safe space’ of the mother/child relationship.”
SOME PARTS OF AMERICA STILL WORK: SpaceX Ties Another World Record Set by… Yeah, SpaceX.
LAUGHING WOLF HAS A FEW THOUGHTS ON Kursk. “To call the situation fluid is an understatement on par with referring to the Sun as warm. Ukraine has wisely not said a lot and apparently not shared a lot. For all that many suspect the U.S. knew and said nothing, I’m getting suspicious that we may have known and been told far less than that, and that Ukraine has learned a lesson about sharing plans and info with the U.S. Nothing concrete, just odd bits of data that don’t fit the pattern. Then again, most of our allies learn that lesson, sometimes painfully, as sharing with our politicians is pretty much a bad idea.”
YOU’RE GONNA NEED BIGGER SCARE QUOTES AROUND “CONSERVATIVE”: A ‘Conservative’ Columnist Endorses Harris.
TWO CANDIDATES, NOT ONE DAY IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR:
Graphic showing how Trump, Vance, Harris, and Tim Walz have spend their adult lives. Striking that the Democratic ticket has literally no private sector experience. pic.twitter.com/IntZb6eLKT
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) August 12, 2024
Term limits might help.
SHE KNOWS WHOSE SIDE SHE’S ON: Kamala Uses Hamas Claims To Bash Israel.
YOU DON’T SAY: Locking up items to deter shoplifting is pushing shoppers online.
Locking up merchandise at drugstores and discount retailers hasn’t curbed retail theft but is driving frustrated consumers to shop online more, retail experts tell Axios.
Why it matters: Retail crime is eating into retailers’ profits and high theft rates are also leading to a rise in store closures.
Secured cases can cause sales to drop 15% to 25%, Joe Budano, CEO of anti-theft technology company Indyme, previously told Axios.
Barricading everything from razors to laundry detergent has largely backfired and broken shopping in America, Bloomberg reports.
The big picture: Aisles full of locked plexiglass cases are common at many CVS and Walgreens stores where consumers have to wait for an employee to unlock them.
Target, Walmart, Dollar General and other retailers have also pulled back on self-checkout to deter shoplifting.
“Locking up products worsens the shopping experience, and it makes things inconvenient and difficult,” GlobalData retail analyst Neil Saunders said, adding it pushes shoppers to other retailers or to move purchases online.
Driving the news: Manmohan Mahajan, Walgreens global chief financial officer, said in a June earnings call that the retailer was experiencing “higher levels of shrink.”
The American-style retail shopping experience was invented in a high-trust environment. As trust erodes, so does the experience.
GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Even Sports Media Is Getting in on the Whitewashing of Tim Walz.
BILL WHITTLE: How to beat Harris, Part 1: ‘Equity.’
More to come.
EVERY TIME I FEAR THAT THE DEMOCRATS’ ELECTION FORTIFICATIONS IN PLACES LIKE PENNSYLVANIA, MICHIGAN, AND WISCONSIN HAVE BECOME IMPENETRABLE, I SEE A BACK-FLIPPING PANDER LIKE THIS ONE:
Kamala Harris — who recently copied President Trump’s “no tax on tips” campaign promise — voted in 2022 to pass legislation that allowed the IRS to track down workers’ tips so that they could be taxed. pic.twitter.com/n52u7PvTLS
— Alana Mastrangelo (@ARmastrangelo) August 12, 2024
The only thing Harris-Walz seems to feel comfortable about is the media running cover for them — which could prove to be enough, of course.
“I’M NOT GONNA BE IGNORED, DAN!” Has the Media Finally Had Enough of Kamala Harris’s Silent Treatment? “There is, however, a dance that must be performed for the public between Democrats and their enablers in the mainstream media. The media pretends to ask tough questions and Democrat candidates pretend to answer them. The problem is that Harris isn’t playing her part in the dance — and the press is starting to pipe up a bit in frustration.”
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