Weekend Data Dump

I'm not confident it was a good idea to ban Russian military aircraft from flying over American territory under the Open Skies Treaty. I don't assume the Russian portrayal is accurate. Perhaps they went beyond the treaty provisions in some manner that angered us. But as a general rule we should want this minimal transparency. Of course, if we have means to see the Russians anyway, that's a partial excuse. But there are drawbacks to gaining an advantage, if that is the case. I hope that this doesn't increase Russia's already healthy level of paranoia and let them think the worse in the absence of this capability. That's dangerous in a crisis. I'll be watching for more on this.

Funny enough, the idea of explaining the Cuba embassy sound incident as mass hysteria of State Department employees, as Scott Adams discussed, occurred to me. But since some of the employees seem to have suffered actual hearing loss, I do assume this is the effect of some real surveillance device gone awry. Those complaining about nausea or dizziness might be mass hysteria, but actual hearing loss? Anyway, the Cubans deny rather strenuously doing anything. Maybe they aren't lying. But perhaps the Russians, Chinese, or Iranians are up to something. Maybe it is mass hysteria. But the issue of actual hearing loss cases would have to be explained.

The election of Roy Moore to the U.S. Senate is being described by Democrats as a defeat for President Trump. Which is kind of funny given that Moore is exactly the kind of man that the Democrats would insist Trump "disavow" after Moore makes some kind of outrageous statement, as he is certain to do. Why would Trump have any responsibility to do that given that he already campaigned for Moore's opponent? Yet Moore will likely back Trump proposals. Sounds like a victory to me.

A discussion of why the Trump administration hasn't screwed up the Puerto Rico hurricane response. Honestly, CNN seems too eager to have something to hit the president with to be credible on the issue. Of course, Bush was unfairly clubbed over Katrina. So the charge is wrong but it might work. And is the San Juan mayor attacking Trump to cover her own failure to "substantially" participate in the recovery effort? That's what it sounds like from one FEMA official on Fox. And from another mayor. We'll see. And I'll say it again, I have a long history of not liking Donald Trump. He was a Democrat all his life until (?) he ran for president.  But the unrelenting effort to portray everything he does as evil is just insane, and prompts me to defend him when apart from his temperament, he's done nothing wrong.

Once again, a professor wants to nullify the path to success for the poor, arguing that believing that hard work is important to success is mere "white ideology." She shouldn't generalize from her personal experience of earning bullshit degrees and falling into a cushy university job teaching bullshit courses with no reason to work or even think very hard.

Canada's reserve ground forces are depleted and there is a big effort to recruit. The really amazing thing is that one of the reasons given for insufficient recruiting is that Canada is no longer fighting in Afghanistan! Which runs counter to the idea that the wars have been very costly in lives. Not that each death isn't a tragedy. But big picture the losses have not been crippling.  I was also amazed to learn that Canadian reservists can volunteer just for domestic emergencies. That's dumb. Why burden reserve units with "soldiers" who can't deploy?

The NFL support for players kneeling in a political statement during the national anthem wouldn't have been as bad for the NFL reputation if the NFL hadn't come down hard against political statements in memory of the 9/11 attacks or in memory of Dallas police officers slain in the line of duty.

Corruption in Mexico made their earthquake worse and corruption in Puerto Rico has made responding to the hurricanes worse. I do drone on about rule of law. But it is not irrelevant. Tip to Instapundit for the latter link.

More on the X-37B.

Red on Red violence in Russia as a soldier shoots and kills 3 other soldiers, and is in turn killed. No word on motive.

I noted an American air attack on ISIL in Libya (I think in last week's data dump). We carried out another since then. Apparently, Libya is ISIL's Plan B in case of the fall of the Syria-Iraq caliphate.

After the Las Vegas Slaughter, liberals who claim to be part of the "Resistance" against what they say is the fascist Trump administration simultaneously want that fascist Trump administration to crack down on gun ownership. Got it.

In a related matter, I really resent liberal attitudes that because I don't agree with their solutions (that likely won't work) that my distress over the Las Vegas mass shooting doesn't count. That I "don't care." Explain why gun death rates and violent crime rates are down dramatically over the last 25 years a great deal despite liberalized gun laws? If their reasoning was sound, shouldn't those things be up if their desire to reduce the number of guns is the solution to a mass murderer who we don't yet understand? I just don't share the assumption that a problem can only be solved by more government involvement or more regulations. Is it really a demonstration of superior caring to wrongly think that approach would solve the problem?

Also, people saying that Trump-voting country western music fans deserved to die are deplorable. I know that these online pieces of breathing garbage don't represent more than a small fraction of those on the left. But with social media, it appears larger. Which inflames opinions of all. I struggle (but successfully) to remember that the few deplorables don't represent all on the left side of the aisle. In my career I worked with many good and decent people on both sides. I don't forget that. Not once at the time of 9/11 or after did I ever think that the Twin Towers victims deserved their deaths because they were New York liberals who opposed fighting jihadis. They were Americans murdered by scum. Yet remember that the vile Michael Moore virtually endorsed that kind of thinking by saying that al Qaeda should have targeted red state Americans because they are the real enemies rather than blue staters (who sympathize with the jihadis?). It is depressing beyond the personal tragedies of lives snuffed out too soon.

Fully automatic weapons are basically illegal. While I don't think it would have much effect given the few crimes like Las Vegas, I have no problem with banning "bump stocks" (I never heard of them until now; and as the week goes by this seems to be a bipartisan consensus) that simulate fully automatic fire--or banning any other device that converts a semi-automatic weapon to a fully automatic weapon. They were approved by the Obama administration, actually. Sure, it will affect some group of people who snap and can't buy one with Amazon Prime. So I won't say it is a worthless gesture. But people who plan their crime ahead of time--as the Las Vegas shooter did--could build their own or smuggle them in. People planning to kill scores of other people will violate gun laws just as easily. Yet because it won't infringe on gun ownership rights significantly, I think, banning them is fine. I await an analysis of what new law would have stopped that monster. Still, if it makes some people feel better, ban the bump stock. I agree with preventing the ownership of automatic weapons or near-automatic weapons equivalents. And I concede that the wider publicity given to bump stocks is a factor in favor of banning them because until now few people knew they were available.

On a related matter, contrary to Hillary Clinton, "silencers" don't make weapons quiet. What they can do is reduce the hearing damage to those who fire weapons. I have minor but measurable hearing loss from firing M-16s (under Army supervision) despite using ear plugs. It is surely valid to weigh the benefit versus some small threat of reducing the noise signature; and consider alternatives to silencers to protect hearing; and consider whether those alternatives have their own dangers by reducing your ability to hear non-gunshot noises (I always turn my head when crossing the street, when wearing head phones especially, to avoid being hit by a quiet car. Electrics pose a special danger to the blind who can't hear them coming, remember).

The Taiwanese say they can resist a Chinese invasion for more than two weeks now. Given that so many people wrongly say China couldn't possibly pull off an invasion, that's an amazing disconnect. Really, Taiwan needs to be able to throw any invaders into the sea. If China ends a war on the island, China will build up their army four another round that will end with the conquest of Taiwan. I hope that this Taiwanese statement reflects their logistics capabilities and ammunition stocks being sufficient to last more than two weeks to buy time for America and Japan to resupply the Taiwanese.

I've wondered if the dispatch of the Navy hospital ship Hope was done for the optics rather than need. And one story I read agreed. But this story says the ship is very much needed. So I don't know.

In theory I don't have a problem of thinking about reconstruction of Puerto Rico like rebuilding Iraq or Afghanistan from war damage. But if that is how we approach the cost, we have to include improving rule of law in Puerto Rico to prevent corruption from wrecking reconstruction and ruining what is rebuilt in time for the next natural disaster. Maybe Puerto Rico should be made into some type of free trade and low-tax zone to encourage investment as the major way of rebuilding beyond immediate recovery needs.

More on Libya.

Well, why take chances? The things people study.

The Iraqi offensive against the ISIL Hawija pocket seems to be going smoothly.

And the Hawija offensive seems to have been concluded successfully. Next stop, the border with Syria.

Slovakia will send troops to help train Iraqis.

Communists ruin everything. Which is why I have no use for Black Lives Matter despite being fully on board the objective of keeping police from unnecessarily shooting civilians. Remember, this is what communists do. They try to be the vanguards of a popular movement to leverage that resolve for the political ends of the communists--revolution. That the communists are unlikely to succeed here is no defense of their tactics.

The Las Vegas killer is not a terrorist--he was a mass murderer. Unless information comes out that the man had a political objective to "justify" this killing, this is simply not terrorism despite the number of dead.

I'm reading that experts are frustrated with people who want China to deal with North Korea because Koreans resent China--so America must talk to North Korea. I am well aware of the animosity. I know that North Korea is not a puppet controlled by China. But are the experts aware that China dominates the foreign trade with North Korea, making China's role in pressuring North Korea vital? America can surrender to North Korea's nuclear agenda by talking; or America can destroy North Korea with military power. The fact is that China is critical for something (tip to Instapundit) in between that de-fangs North Korea without destroying them as a state.

Strategypage discusses Yemen. I don't discuss it much because it seems like a giant clusterfuck where factions fight and negotiate and steal together in seemingly random and revolving alliances.  I'm fine supporting the Saudi coalition that is denying Iran a foothold and fine hunting jihadis there. But otherwise I can't imagine it is worth it for America to intervene there in force.

Secretary of State Tillerson's on-camera refusal to deny calling Trump a "moron" was no implicit admission. He recognized that a denial on that query just requires him to deny every question of one of his alleged statements lest a failure to deny even one is taken as an admission. A spokeswoman later explicitly denied it, but at least Tillerson can continue to refuse to comment on such questions.

So a liberal Hollywood type accused of multiple sexual harassment seems to defend himself by noting his plans to work against Trump and guns. Well, it worked for Bill Clinton who was given a pass by liberals for being pro-abortion. It was an open secret in Hollywood, but the Compassionate Class said nothing. And the Obama and Clinton families and their retainers associated with the (alleged) scumbag. The latter article says those Democratic families are in a bind, but that assumes the media goes after them with the same enthusiasm that they'd go after Republicans by demanding--at every public appearance--they repudiate the man and all of complicit Hollywood. The media will cover for all the Democrats involved, as much as they can. Tips to Instapundit.

Withdraw from the Iran deal and walk away. We have to start over. The sooner the better. The claim that the verification process confirms that Iran is abiding by the deal is outrageous. More accurately it can be said that we don't see any violations--and the Iran deal is structured to shield Iran from thorough inspections. And Russia is helping Iran avoid actual inspections. The deal is a farce and strengthens Iran's nuclear drive. End it so we can stop pretending we have a deal.

Not every important advance in technology has "cyber" as the prefix. Better diesel engines help, too.

I'm not sure whether to be angry with Russia for stealing or the NSA's failures to secure their information. In the back of my mind when this stuff is revealed, I hope it is a disinformation effort to mislead the Russians. Sadly, the simplest and so most likely explanation is that we screwed up.

There is a debate about tactical nuclear weapons. We do need them. But the issue gets complicated by the fact that in some cases "tactical" nuclear weapons are really strategic weapons with a much shorter range (why would Russia target Berlin with an ICBM when a shorter range weapon would do the job?). And the introduction of precision weapons has eliminated the need for tactical nukes to achieve a number of battlefield effects. But that doesn't mean that smaller nukes intended to strike forces on the battlefield are still unneeded when an enemy like Russia assumes they will have to use nukes to make up for weakness in their military.

If Congress "does something" after the Las Vegas Massacre to mandate a nationwide database of gun purchases to limit the rate of purchase (which wouldn't have stopped the Las Vegas shootings), the database will be hacked and criminals will have a convenient list of homes to case in order to steal weapons while the homes are empty. No doubt liberals will then demand gun owners whose weapons are stolen and used in a crime because of that knowledge be sued for failing to control their weapons. Will liberals be sued for failing to keep the information secret as it is now?

I see Hurricane Nate is the new Great Wet Hope for Democrats eager to blame Trump for failure.

I suspect Trump is yanking the chain of Rocket Man by hinting at a coming storm after meeting with American military leaders. A storm may be coming, but if so I think it will be next year if China doesn't deal with North Korea. We need time to prepare for an operation of that scale.

Oh good grief, are people this effing dull-witted? "Why Catalonia Will Fail Where Crimea Succeeded". Crimea didn't "succeed"--Russia succeeded with rigged votes, intelligence operatives, and an occupying army to conquer and annex Crimea.

The Left and the alt-Right both celebrate race as the defining component of existence. I hate that trend given that in America we offer a hope of moving past tribal identities to create our own supra-tribe based on the ideals of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution which define being an American as embracing our ideals rather being based on blood or soil from the Old World. No good can come of this. And the Left is committed to supporting this trend.

Is it my imagination or did Secretary of State Tillerson go from demon of the left for his oil industry background to potential undeserved potential victim of President Trump in the eyes of the left?