THE MORE BONEHEADED AN IDEA IS THE CLOSER THE CHANCES REACH CERTAINTY THAT BIDEN WILL ACT ON IT: Will Biden Make the ‘Boneheaded’ Move of Nationalizing the Texas Guard?
Author Archive: Stephen Green
January 29, 2024
WE LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES: The Geopolitics of World War III.
On January 2, 2024, Foreign Minister Israel Katz proclaimed “We’re in the middle of World War III against Iran [led] radical Islam, whose tentacles are already in Europe.” He claimed that Israel, in engaging in a war against Hamas and other Iranian proxies, was defending “everyone.” Although his rhetoric may seem overblown to many in the United States and Europe, it should not be dismissed out of hand. Sometimes, regional conflicts, such as the Japanese conquest of Manchuria of 1931-32 or the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, foreshadow dangers that are more geographically extensive and militarily intense. Do the barbaric events of October 7, 2023, and the Israeli military campaign in Gaza prefigure a broader, global armed conflict? Or is this merely a local conflict, one that is likely unresolvable short of one side or the other engaging in genocide or ethnic cleansing?
We have written this paper in a specific context. Over thirty months ago we made a geopolitical prediction regarding the emergence of a global conflict with four fronts. However, social scientists rarely test their theories by predicting future political events. Who wants to be characterized as a Jonah or a Cassandra? As one eminent strategist argued, the future of war (in detail) is unknowable. And, with perhaps one notable exception, social scientists rarely engage, on a routine basis, in disprovable prediction. Without predictive tools, social scientists and strategists must rely on intuition, a knowledge of history, and good theories—all of which are often in short supply.
Read the whole thing.
Meanwhile, Biden can’t seem to decide which side he’s on — unless he already has: Biden is planning to throttle Israel’s arms supply as fury grows against Netanyahu’s bombing campaign in Gaza.
SAY ANYTHING: Nikki Haley Botches Response to $83.3 Million Jury Verdict Against Trump. “Rather than blasting the absurdity of the jury’s actions, Haley decided to use the situation to attack Trump.”
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Instant Karma’s Gonna Get You With a Tractor-Trailer.
THE SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED: A newly identified ‘Hell chicken’ species suggests dinosaurs weren’t sliding toward extinction before the fateful asteroid hit. “Our work focusing on the life stage of our specimen demonstrates that dinosaur diversity may not have been declining before the asteroid hit, but rather that there are more species from this time period yet to be discovered – potentially even through reclassification of fossils already in museum collections.”
RAYMOND IBRAHIM: ‘Europeans Will Succumb to Islam,’ Says Former Intelligence Chief.
ROCKET REPORT: Chinese firm tests vertical landing.
Chinese launch startup Landspace executed a first vertical takeoff and vertical landing with a test article Friday at a launch and recovery site at Jiuquan spaceport, Space News reports. The methane-liquid oxygen test article reached an altitude of around 350 meters during its roughly 60-second flight before setting down in a designated landing area. The landing had an accuracy of about 2.4 meters and a landing speed of less than 1 meter per second, the company said.
Part Starship, part Falcon 9 … The test is part of the development of the stainless-steel Zhuque-3 rocket first announced in November 2023. The company is aiming for the first flight of Zhuque-3 next year. It is an ambitious project: The rocket is intended to have a payload capacity of 21 tons to low-Earth orbit in expendable mode, and 18.3 tons when the rocket is recovered downrange. If Zhuque-3 comes to pass—and these are promising early results—this would be the closest thing to a Falcon 9 rocket anyone has yet developed.
Over to you, New Glenn.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Jon Stewart’s Return a ‘Bad Omen’ for Late Night TV. “Stewart’s hard-left shtick alienates half the country and every late-night competitor not named Gutfeld will be sniping at the same targets.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: The U.S. just sold its helium stockpile. Here’s why the medical world is worried.
On Thursday, the U.S. government sold the Federal Helium Reserve, a massive underground stockpile based in Amarillo, Texas, that supplies up to 30% of the country’s helium.
Once the deal is finalized, the buyer — which will likely be the highest bidder, the industrial gas company Messer — will claim some 425 miles of pipelines spanning Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, plus about 1 billion cubic feet of the only element on Earth cold enough to make an MRI machine work.
Regulatory and logistical issues with the facility threaten a temporary shutdown as it passes from public to private ownership, and hospital supply chain experts worry the sale could have serious consequences for health care down the road — especially when it comes to MRIs.
To be sure, a Federal Helium Reserve shutdown wouldn’t mean that MRIs would suddenly power down across the country, said Soumi Saha, senior vice president of government affairs at Premier Inc., which contracts with helium suppliers on behalf of 4,400 hospitals in the United States. “But we are stressing about this shortage. From a health care perspective, MRI machines are the No. 1 concern.”
Plus: “The sale of the government’s stockpile of the nonrenewable element could exacerbate an existing supply shortage.”
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE: After Three Years on Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Mission Ends. “Originally designed as a technology demonstration to perform up to five experimental test flights over 30 days, the first aircraft on another world operated from the Martian surface for almost three years, performed 72 flights, and flew more than 14 times farther than planned while logging more than two hours of total flight time.”
Inguinity could have flown more but rotor damage during its last landing has grounded it.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Israel Still Uninterested in the Opinions of World’s Pro-Hamas Leftists. “Foreign policy in this administration is essentially being influenced by loud, ignorant college kids.”
WOEING: Alaska holds Boeing accountable, wants to be made whole for $150M in losses.
“It’s not acceptable what happened. We’re gonna hold them accountable. And we’re going to raise the bar on quality on Boeing,” said Alaska Air Group CEO Ben Minicucci. “We’re gonna hold Boeing’s feet to the fire to make sure that we get good airplanes out of that factory.”
Alaska said it has begun “a thorough review of Boeing’s production quality and control systems.”
And to validate the “quality of our aircraft as they progress through the manufacturing process,” it has expanded oversight of Boeing’s MAX assembly lines in Renton.
The Airbus sales pitches practically write themselves.
THE LEFT’S WAR ON WOMEN (CONT’D): Man Instructed To Pose As ‘Transgender’ Allegedly Raped Female Inmate At Rikers Island, Lawsuit Reads. “We have some accounts from inside the prison that as the [transfer] request was being made…the [DOC] officer said something along the lines of ‘if you want to go into the women’s facility, all you have to do is say you’re trans.”
January 25, 2024
IF THEY DON’T SNATCH DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY, IT WON’T BE FOR LACK OF TRYING: You’ll Love the RNC’s Next Big Stupid Way to Lose in 2024.
THOSE ARE JUST THE GOTAWAYS: Hawley raises alarm after border gotaways exceed Kansas City, St Louis populations combined last fiscal year.
THIS CAN’T GO AS BADLY AS BIDEN’S EXIT FROM AFGHANISTAN… CAN IT? It’s (Almost) Official: U.S. Bugging Out of Iraq.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: ‘A Mass Extinction Event For Startups.’ “Big startups are shutting down. According to PitchBook, more than 3,000 private venture backed startups failed in the last year.”
CHANGE: Sweden verges on NATO membership after Turkey vote, Hungary signal. “Sweden applied for NATO membership in May of 2022, just months after Russia invaded Ukraine. The decision was a sharp turn in Swedish foreign policy, which had previously favored a non-aligned status.”