Weekend Data Dump

I have this book and even wrote a paper based on it. But I'm not sure that it is valid to say it inspired the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But my memory on this is hazy now. And I don't even remember what the paper focused on. But it is a good book and is an interesting opportunity to compare the predictions of the military future by an expert and how an actual war unfolded.

Good for her to slam her elite classmates for their casual communist fanboys and fangirls. Nobody could get away with such casual support for the Confederacy or Nazism. But somehow you can celebrate murdering communist bastards without social stigma in our so-called elite institutions. Excuse me, but this is personal. I enlisted at the ripe old age of 26 because I felt it was my duty to stand up for America and the West against the evil that the Soviet Union represented. I was lucky the Soviet empire cracked just after I finished my Signal Corps training, and that I never had to ship off to Europe to make good on stopping the mass-murdering, lying SOBs. Yeah, wear your stupid Che shirts you pampered POS fools. Or would they argue that "true" Nazism or Confederacy hasn't actually been tried yet? Tip to Instapundit.

West Point deserved this tweak from the Navy cadets last week at the big game, sadly enough. I'm glad Army won the game. But the Commander-in-Chief's trophy won't solve the problems at West Point.

In a world seemingly dominated by the virtual world, it is possible to build a virtual restaurant and convince people it is real. And great. That's freaking sad. Tip to Instapundit.

It is interesting that I'm getting steady hits from a wide geographic span on my Iran-Iraq War paper that I posted on this blog some years ago.

That Wisconsin John Doe persecution of conservatives by elements of the state government was worse than it seemed, apparently. It seemed pretty bad before when it looked like the Madison Inquisition to overthrow an elected governor. If despotism is descending on America, the vanguard hit first in Wisconsin.

At this rate, it won't be too long before colleges require Trump supporters to use separate water fountains.

In response to sexual predator revelations in Hollywood, government, and the media, Bernie Sanders says we need a "cultural revolution." When a socialist like Comrade Bernie who honeymooned in the Soviet Union suggests that solution, check your ammo supply. But at least he didn't say we need a "final solution" to the problem. Tip to Instapundit.

This level of bias doesn't seem right at all. When I was a nonpartisan research analyst, I didn't even vote in primaries or sign petitions lest my objectivity be questioned on the job. I busted a gut for both parties because that was my job. I even withdrew from being the treasurer for a judge's reelection (and judges don't run on a party label in Michigan) campaign (my then-wife worked for him, so don't get the completely wrong idea that I was a political player).

Uganda has withdrawn a small amount of their 6,000 troops in Somalia trying to keep the lid on that anarchic region. A thousand are scheduled to leave by the end of the year. I suspect our help to Uganda has been in part to keep Uganda in Somalia.

North Korean media says their ruler can control the weather. I'm torn between wanting President Trump to Tweet his congratulations, urge Kim to expand his powers to control the climate, or boast that he himself can control the climate already based on hyperventilating critics who blame him for killing the planet already. Tip to Instapundit.

The whole Senator Sessions Russian collusion story always seemed ridiculous to me, and now CNN has walked back their spring story obsession. CNN's fruit identification skills aren't too good, it seems.

The Navy won't activate mothballed Perry-class frigates for SOUTHCOM; and will instead send the LCS and the light catamaran T-EPF ships to SOUTHCOM for the drug interdiction mission. Good, I want the Perry hulls for armed amphibious transports (APDs) and I suggest modularized auxiliary cruisers for the SOUTHCOM mission.

Perhaps the FBI should be investigated.  And if the defense of the apparent conflict of interest is that it--and so many more odd things--is "normal," we have a bigger problem. Tip to Instapundit,

If the intelligence community leaders couldn't see their actions from the point of view of Trump, how good are they at avoiding mirror imaging the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans, and jihadis? Sometimes I think we waste a lot of money collecting intelligence "data" that simply reinforces what our intelligence people would conclude anyway.

"We will fight them in the thermosphere, we will fight them in the stratosphere ... we will never surrender!" I'm not sure what else to say.

I can't imagine this affects that many people, but I guess I have no problem with transgender people serving in the military. If they wish to defend our country, great! That kind of service to country is honorable. But I don't think the military should pay for the transition to avoid people joining--or remaining in--just to get this paid for by the military. Or does holy Obamacare not cover this in the civilian world?

The European Union and NATO shouldn't be working to cooperate on defense issues. The established NATO should be the entity that defends Europe rather than wasting money on new and separate EU military capabilities. Proto-imperial Europe's defense goals will destroy NATO for the benefit of Russia, if the EU royalty gets its way.

In 2000, the British were told that snow would soon be a thing of the past due to global warming. Heavy snowfalls wouldn't be possible because it would be too warm. Today, icy conditions persist across Britain. I know that the now renamed "climate change" industry says that of course snow will logically increase because of warming temperatures. But why is the consensus that explains this problem away more credible than the consensus of 2000 that said snow was doomed? Is there no way to falsify their claims?

Rather than being shows of force to compel North Korea to back down, I think exercises that test how warplanes of different capabilities and stealth from multiple countries can operate together are more like practice for war. In this case, Japanese F-15s and a patrol plane worked with American B-1s, F-18s, F-35s, and a refueling plane. The exercise wasn't large, but it was a chance to test the ability to mesh disparate capabilities together.

Maduro's socialists swept mayoral elections in Venezuela. Which indicates that rather than wanting to blame the opposition for the coming economic collapse by letting them gain some meaningless local power, the regime wants more power to survive the coming collapse by having all the levers of power in their hands.

Granted that these people probably want a communist solution to everything, but it is hard to argue with this: "At this point, the amount of utterly baseless, contradictory propaganda, mass hysteria, and just flat out insanity the ruling classes have demanded [liberals] swallow is more than any human mind, no matter how medicated, could possibly handle. Is it any wonder so many of them of lost it and started seeing Nazis and Russians coming out of the woodwork" By "ruling classes" he is speaking of liberals, of course.

California, whose governor claims global warming is causing wild fires in his state, had one fire caused by a campfire at a homeless camp getting out of control.  So rather than mankind's carbon footprint, the core bum footprint is the real problem there.

And again, yes the Democrats turning the opposition dial to 11 is more of a threat to constitutional government than anything that Trump might do. Just stop it, liberals. It was once embarrassing for you and kind of funny to watch. But "resistance" is going way too far--and setting a dangerous precedent for future transfers of power.

A former Facebook executive says the social media platform is ripping apart society. Seems that way. But I was never much into it and abandoned it earlier this year for good. Haven't missed it.

The far left is devouring even very liberal people. This should not be a shock to the left but it is. Remember that the far left is as dictatorial and abusive as the far right. Yet the far left is tolerated and even celebrated by liberals orders of magnitude more than conservatives tolerate the far right. If you disagree, tell me how far the claim that nobody has tried "true" Nazism would get you.

It amuses me to read a defense of polling which missed the 2016 election outcome by saying that the polling accurately reflected the popular vote and that only 70,000 votes in key states changed the outcome. This would be persuasive if the election was decided by the national popular vote. Why should the pollsters get credit for being pretty accurate in measuring a contest that did not exist?

Go away if you want to live? San Francisco prides itself on its compassion for the homeless. And technically no human is involved in pushing them away. So moral superiority intact! No word on whether the robot yells at, shoots at, or just vacuums up the campers.

So Hillary Clinton's campaign paid to have fake news about Trump created. You'll never guess what happened. After Slate published it the Clinton campaign asked if anyone would look into that troubling allegations. Huh. She sure did persist. Tip to Debra Heine.

In an era when it is popular to damn Europeans for drawing Middle Eastern borders in defiance of ethnic and tribal factors, note that the Central Asian states had their borders drawn by the Soviets between the world wars in defiance of ethnic and tribal factors. From Mauldin Economics's short book on geopolitics. I love maps.

Related to the above, if Russia's geography means we should understand (and therefore accept) Russia's desire to control a buffer in the west regardless of the desires of those people to be Russia's buffer; shouldn't Germany be building up their army and air force to defend themselves given their poor geographic position? Russia's geography is no license to kill any more than Germany's is. No Europeans want to invade Russia and if Russia doesn't threaten the West, nobody can invade Germany. Get with the program.

Roy Moore lost in Alabama. He deserved to lose. Hopefully Jones is a short-termer. So Republicans are now even with Democrats for nominating a horrible candidate. Honestly, I'd have been happier if Moore had won and then been expelled from the Senate for what was sure to be in-office antics. Then Alabama would have gotten a do-over on the election. So the seat would have remained Republican and Republicans would get to loudly reject the buffoon. But I could be wrong. Anyway, that's not what happened.

America has suspended aid to the Somali military which doesn't seem to want to use it to support the military rather than corrupt officials. So Somalia will remain a clusterfucked playground for jihadis and periodic "natural" disasters of food shortages and health crises.

Did an MSNBC political analyst say that it is unfortunate that tax policy is set by the result of elections? Well, not really. She said it is unfortunate that Democratic voters will be hit harder by the new tax law. But Democratic wealthy voters say they want higher taxes, so what's the problem? And I don't remember the media complaining that the 2009 "stimulus" went mostly to Democratic districts.

It is disturbing that Russian planes crossed the sort-of-DMZ in eastern Syria (the deconfliction line) where we protect Syrian rebels. What is really disturbing is that one of our F-22s had to aggressively maneuver to avoid a collision with the Russian plane. The F-22 should keep its distance and fire under the cloak of stealth with long-range missiles rather than let a foe get within distance to use the Mark I eyeball which stealth doesn't affect. Lower tech planes should be doing the eyeball-to-eyeball stuff with the F-22 back providing overwatch.

Hah! I tried to order a used book twice on Amazon. Once the seller didn't send it and I cancelled the purchase (twice without the cancellation showing up--which I suspect is a means to avoid allowing me to give them a one-star rating); and once the seller ran out so the order was cancelled by them. Then I discovered I already have two copies of that title.

I suspect I will gain from the tax deal given that I take the standard deduction and my home is nowhere near the limit, nor is my state taxation, of reaching local tax deductions. The Democratic idea that I should be outraged that people who already pay a lot more federal taxes than I do will receive more of a break is incomprehensible to me. They'll still pay a lot more than I do. We'll see if it is simpler. And I'll see if it makes up for the sizable increase in state taxation that I endured 5 years or so ago, that rather surprised me. (But I didn't whine about it.)

David French wonders why the defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria isn't getting much attention. For me, it is because I see this as a campaign and not the war. The Long War will go on until the Islamic world settles the civil war it is raging over who defines Islam--jihadi scum or more moderate Moslems. When we are no longer collateral damage in that war we can stop fighting. Defeating ISIL is good and necessary campaign victory. It isn't the end of the war. Which has no end in sight yet despite some hopeful signs that appear occasionally in the Arab Moslem world.

The curious case of the street that did not rage in the day. Perhaps a lot of Arabs are wondering whether in an age of Iranian and jihadi terror killing Arabs every day it was wise to make the Palestinians queen of the prom. Indeed, their appeal has become more selective.

I'm listening to analysts discussing why it is important to investigate the president for obstructing an investigation into what even they admit was not a crime by Trump in relation to Russia. I know my nuance level is deficient when I puzzle over the "crime" of obstructing an investigation to a non-crime.

So some in the FBI who wanted to spy on American X without a court order instead spied on Foreigner Y who the FBI knew talked to American X to get around that minor little domestic process problem? That's very bad. At some level we have to trust the integrity of our federal employees not to use loopholes that run counter to the spirit of constitutional protections. When Congress bans all such spying because those operating under the foreign spying law can't be trusted not to target Americans, blame the FBI for the next intelligence failure that lets a jihadi get through our intelligence screen.

I basically initially discount Democratic objections about anything given their longstanding habit of turning every policy disagreement into a battle between light and dark. Good versus evil. No policy is too dry or trivial to avoid this treatment. This pre-dates the anti-Trump "turning it to 11" Resistance. So now the end of "net neutrality" that seemed more like a gift to Google and Facebook is the end of the world as we know it? Good grief, people. We'll be fine. The Internet worked--and grew to massive proportions--before "net neutrality" was put in place 3 years ago and it will work after it is gone.

Yeah, I'm not sure enough to say Mueller has tainted the Trump investigation despite the revelations.  I still don't see the underlying crime to justify this effort, mind you. But while people will have opinions and still be able to do their jobs (although they might not if the culture supports failure to do their duty), I don't understand why it is legal for civil servants to donate money to political groups. If you care enough to donate, care enough to get another line of work.

The Washington Post might want to explore their own role as a "useful idiot" in magnifying Russia's 2016 effort to discredit the American election system. Get back to me on dangerous pro-Russian policies when there is evidence that Obama ignored a Russian invasion (Georgia) to "reset" relations with Russia and offered "flexibility" on American policies that Russia will like.

France and Russia discussed Syria. Which is worrisome. It seems like a meeting of business and pleasure because Russia feels (wrongly, I think) it needs to screw America and France just likes to screw America.