Weekend Data Dump

Apollo. I have memories of eagerly watching them on TV, but I honestly don't remember which ones. Some of my prized childhood toys were Billy Blast-off and Major Matt Mason. When I was little I eagerly looked forward to the far future of 2001 and imagined the kind of space program we'd have if 2001 A Space Odyssey had any predictive power at all. Alas it did not and our Apollo program turned out to be a dead end. Sure, the program helped spur technology that we take for granted on Earth, but the failure to keep going in space has always been a disappointment to me.

Reality bites (translation). But will their experience triumph over their beliefs?  Tip to Instapundit.

Yeah, my experience is that Canadians are oddly obsessed with America. What with the poutine, hockey, and odd "bacon," Canada can seem like an alternate America in a multi-verse only slightly "off" from America Prime south of the border.

Will North Koreans notice that while the man was free to leave South Korea to live in North Korea, that the man will never be free to move out of North Korea? Perhaps that simple difference should be noted.

This is nice, and I mentioned it before, but fog and smoke will always be a problem for the anti-small boat mission. And I wonder if ablative or reflective material on the target would slow down or defeat the laser weapon.

While I am very interested in the Close Combat Lethality Task Force coming up with ideas to make infantry more effective (and I had some thoughts here on the USNI Blog to change training to reflect advances in firearms technology), I wonder if the high pay recommended will worsen the already great "force protection" imperative that makes commanders and their civilian leaders leery of risking infantry in combat. The whole purpose of infantry is to fight, after all.

Sweden, which amazingly for such a small country has its own ability to build advanced fighter aircraft, will join with the British to design and build a new fighter plane.

I'm not optimistic that Sudan can be a success in Arab Spring 2.0, but perhaps this is a good first step. Or it is just a means to calmly install a new ruling group. We'll see what the transition team provides--if even the second phase of the transition is allowed to take place.

Yes, Trump threw money and dirt at Clinton in 2016 and will do so again against his 2020 opponent. But the authors might have bolstered their credibility if they noted that Clinton threw much more dirt and money (twice as much, if memory serves me) at Trump in 2016. Implying that Trump had a money or dirt edge is incorrect.

So we should count on a small number of "Chinese nationalists who preach autarky, generals who advocate militarism, CEOs who favor protectionism" not driving Chinese foreign policy? The idea put forward that we are thwarting their rise is nonsense. We've enabled it. What we are trying to thwart is China's attempt to use their rise to threaten neighbors who are our friends and allies. We are not to blame for causing Chinese actions in that area. That so-called militant minority doesn't have to get everything its way to drive threats to us and our allies and friends.

So is nullification just as fun when everyone does it?

ISIL's evil lives on in the form of explosive booby traps in buildings and even the rubble in Iraqi cities, which will take years to clear and allow people to go home.

I just don't see the diplomatic talks with the Taliban producing a real peace deal. I have no idea what we think they will accomplish. We can't trust the Taliban, the foreign jihadis, or the Pakistanis. And that's on top of the Russians, Iranians, and the corruption that afflicts all of the country including our allies there. All I know is that we don't want a jihadi sanctuary there again (remember 9/11?) and I am grateful that few American or coalition troops die supporting our side's fight against the various enemies of Afghanistan who would also threaten the West.

Great progress has been made in dramatically reducing poverty and hunger around the world despite the so-called scourge of global warming; yet somehow some UN apparatchiki say global warming will get in the way of reducing those problems even more.

Listen you haters, the Hope and Change made all this perfectly acceptable.

If an American soldier commits a crime for many in the global Left it is an indictment of the soldier, the military, the United States, and the very mission that put that soldier in a foreign land; but a humanitarian can rape little kids with little worry that any broader harsh judgments will be made. Even if he is innocent as he proclaims, the predator problem exists in both UN peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.

Yeah, that's pretty much the situation I found myself in.

I do often say you should check the "definitions" section of any "fact" you think is solid.

If California finds it so important to pay for illegal immigrant health care, they should be free to enjoy the cost and results. It isn't all of them, but having set the precedent how can California refuse to pay for all of them?

Given that I am worried that the European Union will cripple NATO if the EU gets more power and tries to build its own imperial armed forces, and given that Von der Leyen presided over the near-complete de-fanging of the German military,  I'm fully behind Von der Leyen getting the top job in the European Union.

I don't think there is any chance this UN "process" brings peace to Syria--unless it is just a means to legitimize Assad's victory over the desert he created to crush his enemies.

The wrong people are slapping COEXIST bumper stickers on their cars.

Wow, Nazis are everywhere! Tip to Instapundit.

Speaking of Von der Leyen, who wants to sit in the EU throne, she thinks that Brexit could be delayed a third time. As a proper EU autocrat-in-waiting, I'm sure she believes that the will of the British people expressed in the Brexit vote can be delayed forever.

The new AC-130J  gunship is in action.

Membership in NATO and the EU require a certain commitment to rule of law. Romania is fighting to destroy the killer of rule of law--corruption--but the fight is far from over.

Initially the cannon fodder of the Iran-Iraq War, the Basij were made the street-level force of thugs who would break heads in case of domestic insurrection. And the Basij have expanded their portfolio into a more general effort to watch and control society to keep threats to the Shia Islamist regime from growing.

If Secretary Acosta goes (and I don't feel I know enough to judge his actions), a lot more people better be on the list. Yeah, it will be inconvenient. On the other hand, it is just an inconvenience because he was shielded from consequences until after his "sell by" date.

It would me amazing if there isn't voter fraud given the opportunities left in the registration system that allow for fraud. Sadly, it will be claimed that Non-Existent-Americans are deprived of voting rights if the system is cleaned out.

If Putin is willing to talk to Ukraine's new President Zelenskiy about the Donbas (but not Crimea!), it must mean the Russians are truly losing that so-called brilliantly conceived "frozen" conflict. And they did talk on the phone.

So these are basically potential truck bombs that serve a light lunch before detonation?

I've long suspected that a good portion of student loan debt consists of paying for beer and pizza decades after consumption. Tip to Instapundit.

Pay is not the only issue between the US men's and women's national soccer teams. Risk is also part of the differences and that must be considered when judging "equality."

Russia has improved their fires request capability--but is still a decade and a half behind America.

Yeah, when I was in the service, a lot of attention was paid to using chemical weapons protective gear.

The money to cut Turkey out of the F-35 production and maintenance system should probably come out of the State Department budget.

Good luck India.

First they came for the Republicans, but I said nothing because I'm not a Republican. Welcome to the party, pal. Enjoy your rules.

I did not notice that Twitter had a global outage.

Since I discovered this racket when I worked for the Michigan state legislature, it has always outraged me that while statutory penalties for violations of the law may be fairly small, the real penalties are the court costs and fees levied on top of that in a secret sanction that is not easy to see until you run afoul of the law and find yourself in jail because you can't pay. Why that isn't unconstitutional is beyond me. It is definitely morally wrong. The idea that you have to pay to use the court system to defend yourself is an outrage under either situation, and poor people are screwed. Courts are a basic function of the state and should be funded with general tax revenue rather than relying on oppressive "costs and fees" imposed on people brought into the system. Yes, this isn't as bad as billing a family for the cost of the bullet used to murder your loved one. But it is in the same general category. It should be stopped. The bail aspect is new to me. I'm not sure what I think of it, but I sure can see that illegal aliens who skip out on hearings are treated with far more care and compassion than poor citizens accused of crimes. Tip to Instapundit.

The real hockey stick graph relevant to our lives.  Tip to Instapundit.

Badassery at sea.

He has a point. Also, it's soccer.

The United States is a maritime power, with the Indo-Pacific region the place where maritime interests are most in need of defense. And space power is increasingly needed to exercise sea control.

A parasitic army with a dying country as its host. And they have nukes and nuclear know-how for sale. Have a super sparkly day.

The robotic battlefield will take a little longer. Although base perimeter and route security missions seem more likely in the near term.

If you are on the correct team, you can get away with the most vile acts.

The Bastille Day military parade. Macron is such a fascist. The tides shift swiftly in American liberal thought for the president of what was recently the Republic of Nuanced Sophistication.

It sure looks like the will of the British people expressed in the Brexit referendum will be denied on the odd grounds that it can take place only on the terms that Remainers and the EU approve. One can argue against whether a referendum was the right way to decide the question, but the question was nonetheless put to the people on the understanding that its result would be the final outcome. Yet here we are.

Trump should not have told "the Squad" of four hard-left Congressional representatives to go back to their place of origin. That was ugly. They are American citizens. He should have just stuck to the truth that they are morons.