Lasers continue to get closer to being actual weapons. One, "THOR (Tactical High-Power Microwave Operational Responder), which is a $10 million system that is shipped in and used from a standard 40-foot shipping container. The container can be hauled around on a flatbed truck or placed on the ground." Or placed on a modularized auxiliary cruiser along with other containers housing electrical generators and capacitors.
I wouldn't mind American slavery education in the United States so much--right now the preferred 1619 curriculum is ignorant junk history--if it went into the long history of slavery around the world, explained that Africans waged war on each other and sold the losers to European slave traders; that Arabs have a long history of taking both African and European slaves in large numbers; that Europeans eventually decided that slavery was wrong and banned it; and that America ended it here by force of arms at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives in our bloodiest war ever. But no, the "education" will be about how unique and evil America is.
Note to self: buy more ammo. And claymore mines would be nice. Not that I really think it is going that way nationwide. But we could have pockets of violent and extremist stupidity just as we have in the past.
If our modern-day Red Guards could send this professor for badthink to toil in the fields they surely would. Tip to Instapundit.
If France and Germany cooperate they can lead a "geopolitical Europe?" Perish the thought. They've each had a couple tries at forming a European
Cool! Via Instapundit. I have dim memories of this era. But my Billy Blastfoff and Major Matt Mason sets got a lot of use back then.
Making a mountain out of a molehill. I don't think NATO is fragile and I don't think Libya will be anything near a "ultimate test" for NATO. The Egyptians do seem serious about sending in troops to Libya to back Hiftar--or at least to seriously bluff the Turks and deter their advance east. The Turks are sending Syrian mercenaries to fight in Libya because Turks don't want to die for Libya. I imagine that will continue after Egypt sends forces in. I wonder what Egypt will send? A brigade? A division? Plus special forces and air power, of course. A naval blockade, too? Will we see an Egyptian Mistral amphibious ship in action? Or maybe just advisors and firepower? I wonder what the Saudis will fund?
I think our military footprint in South Korea should not get smaller. It is already pretty small. Sure, the South Koreans can handle anything from North Korea short of nukes. But increasingly I see our forces there as a shield for our stuff in Japan and as staging area for operations outside of South Korea. I'd like to keep that.
Iran executed a man for spying for the Mossad and the CIA? Are the Iranians paranoid enough to believe the Mossad would share an asset with the CIA and risk him getting burned? Maybe the man spied for one or the other, but not both, I think. And the Iranians may be so paranoid that they are just executing some usual suspects to project the image of controlling the situation--and to scare off actual spies.
I keep reading that the Xi Jinping Flu tests are giving an awful lot of false positives. With a lot more tests given, a sizable percentage of false-positives is going to give a lot more cases, looking like a surge. Also, false positives could give a false impression of lots of people without symptoms at all who don't seem to spread the covid19 virus. We're supposed to make decisions based on data but how good is the data? Maybe we'd be better off with the ancient methods:
I'm so old I remember when the ACLU fought for civil liberties instead of being legal counsel for left-wing scumbag causes.
I don't know nearly enough about the belief structure of Islam to know if Islamists and jihadis form their view of Islam from a flawed or true interpretation of Islam. (Although a lot of Islamic people for a long time seems to have assumed Islam wants conquest given the amount of land that Islam has conquered since the 7th century.) What I do know is that regardless of why each side (if it can be simplified to two sides for the sake of this) believes Islam should be Islamist and eager to kill non-Moslems or live-and-let-live, there is a civil war within Islam over how to define Islam. I want the jihadis to lose regardless of why or how they think killing non-Moslems is Allah's plan.
For the life of me I don't know why it is double-plus goodthink to promote segregation.
Last week I mentioned that keeping schools closed won't harm well off children even as poor children get their futures crippled by online learning. Yeah.
I see the senator who claims to want income redistribution wants to use the Xi Jinping Flu as an excuse to "forgive" student loans. Which means that upper middle class kids will get tens of thousands of dollars for their pandemic pain while working blue collar people might get $1,200--and have the pleasure of paying taxes to pay for the not-magically forgiven loans.
Warren and all like her can take a long walk down a short pier as far as I'm concerned. Also, Monty Python wrote that--not me. And I have no problem with Walker. But sadly choices for that sketch were not available.
I don't want to hear another damn word about Democrats being the party of science.
The hand puppets from Hell. And note the new rail line through Iran that will compete with Pakistan's control of access to Afghanistan. I had hopes for this when announced. If only Iran wasn't controlled by nutballs. Still, it is an improvement.
Don't trust Chinese software. Tip to Instapundit.
Portland is dying. Don't be silly, it is being reborn much as Fallujah, Iraq was from May to November 2004.
You know what's wrong right now? There are people who see a crazy naked chick and draw all sorts of deeper meaning from the show. Get a grip people. I'm not the only one to notice the reporting insanity.
Um, to highlight the fact that Biden couldn't pass it? I mean, every time a lefty mocks the president for acing a test only those with dementia can't pass, doesn't that put pressure on Biden to take it, too?
I'm Irish, reject the cultural appropriation BS, and welcome this young lady's interest in performing traditional Irish dancing.
Whatever happened to "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?" People need to shut the ef up and leave people alone.
Seriously, what's the difference between racists and woke people in their attitudes about African Americans?
A lot of work was needed to disprove some pretty convenient anti-police BS. Via Instapundit. Question: When did The Atlantic get rid of their layers and layers of fact checkers that distinguish the professional media from mere bloggers?
In Libya, the Turks look like they are preparing to hit Sirte, which the LNA holds and which is key to preventing the GNA from striking south to take oil fields. The Turks have drones and now artillery to back their mercenaries. Egypt set a red line at Sirte. With Qatar financing the GNA which is also backed by Iran a little bit and with the LNA financed by the Saudis and also backed by Egypt and Russia--and don't forget the jihadis!--the Libyan civil war is turning into a lovely multi-war just as Syria changed. How Turkey finds this worth the expense and the animosity of NATO and the EU on top of everything is beyond me. What did Trump and Egypt's Sisi discuss about Libya, anyway?
I was listening to pundits I like (who intensely dislike Trump) on the GLOP podcast saying that moderates who voted for Trump in 2016 will abandon him in 2020 because they expected he would cut deals with Democrats in Congress. That's interesting given that I feared exactly that because I never viewed Trump as conservative. The funny thing is, as I've also mentioned, is that the relentless, often unhinged--and possibly illegal in the executive branch--Resistance to Trump denied Trump the chance to compromise with House Democrats. That Democratic refusal to deal with Trump pushed Trump to be conservative enough to satisfy me. Will moderate voters really punish Trump for Democratic obstruction and hostility? No Republican effort could get away with this against a Democratic president given media bias in favor of Democrats. You don't even need to like Trump to appreciate that letting Democrats get away with this is worse than four more years of Trump. But Democrats might get away with it. Sigh. I have a long history of despising Trump. I could not bring myself to vote for him in 2016 because I thought he had no hope of defeating Clinton, and did not want to soil myself voting for him and getting the corrupt Clinton. And I have often grimaced at Trump's behavior since the election. But the Democrats have behaved so horribly and seemingly illegally in ways that threaten rule of law that I will absolutely and without fail vote for Trump in the hopes that I can help deny Democrats the fruits of their horrible behavior. I'd rather endure Trump's behavior for four more years. I hope enough people agree with me.
The Chinese Communist Party says everything is fine with the massive Three Gorges Dam. If WHO agrees, run for your lives.
This is really interesting. But if there were earlier technological civilizations on Earth wouldn't they have used up the fossil fuels we use? Or are they more common than we think? Or are we wrong about how they form? What would be a more likely energy source for such a past civilization that perhaps we could not use because that was used up? And the research might help us determine if industrial civilizations ever existed on other planets and moons in our solar system.
I don't have an opinion on the offered solution to Chinese claims on the South China Sea. I do think America should rally the world in defense of international waters as much as possible and deny that China has legal authority there. But Chinese claims are pointless in one sense if China doesn't--or can't afford to try--regulate foreign ships plying those waters. And in war, Chinese legal claims would be pointless if China can't enforce their claim. So while I want America to resist Chinese legal claims I'm more interested in America rallying countries to have the military power to make such claims moot.
The irony of their defense given the circumstances of the crime and the fact that poor Black arsonists would be sitting in jail waiting for trial should not be lost on people. That's quite the status privilege they are trying to assert. Throw the book at them, I say. Tip to Instapundit.
The United States is trying to end the Syrian multi-war with new sanctions. I just thank God we didn't further militarize the problem 500,000 dead ago.
I strongly disagree with this Congressional push to make Space Force adopt Navy rank structure. It isn't a space navy until it moves out of the Earth-Moon system, as far as I'm concerned.
I won't assume Brexit is a done deal until the British are truly and finally out with all the formalities achieve. I have no doubt that Remainers will use the pandemic as an excuse to stay in the EU. And the EU will make Britain pay to do that just as hard as the EU has tried to make Britain pay for leaving. I hope the British government keeps a stiff upper lip throughout and escapes the proto-imperial power that would conquer Britain.
So under the NFL rule, players could actually put the names of violent criminals justifiably killed by police on their helmets? That would be interesting.
One would think that Ethiopia could come to some agreement with Egypt and Sudan over the Ethiopian GERD Nile River dam. But I don't see how war--short of conquering Ethiopia, which is beyond Egypt's capability--would solve the issue in Egypt's favor.
The United States ordered the Chinese to close their consulate in Houston to hurt Chinese espionage efforts.
While I have long disliked both the militarization of our police and the expansion of police into federal agencies with no business having their own means of force, the liberal outrage over uniformed and marked Homeland Security police is just stupid. "'I mean, that he can pick on our city mostly because of the way we vote and make an example of it for his base is very frightening,' she said." I guess that woman hasn't noticed the 50-some straight days of rioting in the city unwilling to to stop it as perhaps a reason for the federal attention. The police are public uniformed and not secret police and they are civil servants and not Trump's private army. Now if you want to discuss how Antifa is the Democratic Party's private army, we can talk (although the Democrats just think they can turn Antifa on and off at will for their own objectives). Also, unmarked police vehicles are common things. TDS is real (I've given up on my preferred THC) and spectacularly stupid. Honestly, I'd keep the federal police tethered to the federal property and let the Democratic cities burn as long as the Democratic local leaders and mostly Democratic constituents are happy to let them burn. The feds don't need local permission to enforce federal laws (which are too many and too expansive as far as I'm concerned), but make them ask for help. Enjoy.
Turkey is angering their formal NATO ally Greece, too. But there's a long history of hostility there.
Rather than cancel my YouTube TV over their latest price increase, I ended up suspending my YouTube TV account for two months once my current paid month expires. It will be interesting to see whether they offer to roll back their price before I get used to not having it. I'm really not looking forward to the limited woke sports or campaign season TV news that has already gone insane during a TDS- and hate-fueled pandemic. What will that be like after Labor Day? I don't think I'll miss either one. Screw them all. They can enjoy their Two Months Hate without me. I know you're probably sick of reading this, but it is a crime against language to think that "liberal minded" is a synonym for "open minded."
Yes, the president has the authority to send federal police agencies into cities without local permission. But those are for relatively narrow purposes. Don't think that the federal government could plop 20,000 federal officers--if that was even possible--into Chicago and instantly replace city police who have built up intelligence and relationships over decades to help them police the city--however poorly they do it with poor city leadership.
Good.
Turkey and Russia say they want a ceasefire in Libya. I don't really believe either one, but it is possible that each doesn't want to pay the price to win and is happy to have a corner of Libya with a reliant and pliant client. And Turkey gets the Mediterranean fossil fuels, recall.
I don't want to hear another damn word about Democrats being the party of science. I've been agnostic on the issue--out of my lane, I've admitted--but the other side has treated opposing this treatment like a matter of faith and purity. Is it too much to ask to have a medical debate instead of one more political one? Tip to Instapundit.
The AR-15 that St. Louis man brandished to protect his home was an inoperable prop weapon for court. Assuming the man didn't make it inoperable before surrendering it.
Humanitarian news from the clusterfuck with a UN seat. Even without the foreign-supported civil war the place would be a mess.
Hate is not a family value.
The teachers refusing to go back to school in the fall are pissing me off. Poor kids will suffer without the resources upper middle class students will have to excel online. But the teachers want perfect safety--safety that they apparently don't think all those "essential" blue collar and health workers working every day to let the teachers stay at home need the same level of protections. Locals can figure out steps to make it safe and if older teachers can't be accommodated with remote teaching, let them retire or quit. I'm sure a lot of younger (and less vulnerable) recently graduated teachers would be eager for the opportunity. And not long after I wrote that I spot this at Instapundit!
Layers and layers of fact checkers.
Is the land bridge theory of the migration to North America wrong? Did people go directly to South America much earlier than the theory? In the early 1990s I knew someone in archeology grad school who described how the archeology mafia suppressed any evidence that would undermine the land bridge theory. Science! Of course, describing little pieces of stone fragments as parts of ancient tools could be wishful thinking more than anything.
Looks like the patch says "U.S. Border Patrol" to me. I think I'll believe my lying eyes rather than trust what professional journalists Raymond and Danner tell me.
Is Kamala Harris dumping opposition research on her VP rivals? I think they are missing the lede: Elizabeth Warren is a "woman of color?" Tip to Instapundit.
Sure, Lileks is a year late in addressing the stupidity, but until morons like Maysaud are laughed out of editors' offices, the job is not over.
I see the Wall Street Journal has entered a murder-suicide pact with the New York Times.
Do Europeans bizarrely shill for Iran despite Iranian terror in Europe or because of the terror?
The United States sent 7 Somali Islamic State jihadis to Paradise.
I give this satire two weeks maximum before it is actual news.
What the Hell is up with that?!
Some time ago I gave credit to California--despite my headaches from its far left government--for containing the Xi Jinping Flu. Fair is fair, I thought. I was perhaps premature in my congratulations.
From the "Well, Duh" files an admission that the mass protests and rioting initially over George Floyd spread the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic. It annoyed me that smart people denied the obvious. Although thus far we're just getting baby steps toward the obvious. I really an am optimist.
The Puckle Gun. Impressive for 1718.
At this point, I'd wear one of those stupid p**sy hats if it would get the Democrats to stop holding our schools and economy hostage.
Putin spearheaded with uniformed Russian troops without insignia an illegal invasion of Ukraine and then illegally annexed Crimea. Trump lawfully sent in federal police in marked uniforms to enforce federal law in Portland where lawless thugs have terrorized the city with the acquiescence of local officials. But other than those major differences they are just the same. Are people that stupid or that partisan? No wonder the dreck is unsigned.
It amazes me that Biden beat Bernie in the primary contest, yet post-victory Biden has surrendered the policy he will run on to Bernie. You can't even see Bernie's lips move when Biden speaks.
Israel reinforced their border with Hezbollah-occupied southern Lebanon just in case. It certainly could be defensive. But I've long thought Israel would have a go at really tearing up Hezbollah from behind a border shield.
The Marines are looking to make Okinawa a anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) bastion rather than being a power projection platform with conventional ground and air power as it has been since the end of World War II.
Chinese power in the waters around the Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula will increase in the future. Unless the political power that comes with that growth in military power ejects America from much of the land bases around there, I suspect Chinese ships in wartime would lead a short but exciting life. But for now, Iran is the 5th Fleet's biggest day-to-day problem.
Russia rolled out the unwelcome mat for Space Force with an anti-satellite weapon test.
Yeah, conventional wars between peers will likely be protracted despite the enduring allure of ending a war by Christmas. The only positive aspect to the unlikelihood that America can win quickly is that enemies are just as likely to be ill-prepared for a protracted war. But that just means that rather than being defeated quickly we settle in for a long war. Have a super sparkly day.
Britain is more welcoming post-Brexit than feared?" Racism and xenophobia "seemed to permeate Britain’s air" only because Remainers shamefully projected that onto Leavers in the referendum campaign and aftermath. A free Britain not under the proto-imperial EU's rule and able to forge its own immigration rules will be free to welcome immigrants.
Can you even imagine the months-long media "conversation" we'd have to endure on misogyny if a Republican attorney general said something like this?
If Democrats don't pay for holding Americans hostage in violence-wracked cities (lovely little city you have there. It would be a shame if something bad happened to it), we'll just be saying that this tactic works and we'll get more of it. Let's hope that the November election shows that the ultra-woke social media Red Guard mobs don't come close to reflecting America.
Don't tell the Democrats this or we'll all be on lockdown in individual safety cubes made from shipping containers.
"Mostly peaceful" protesters in Portland. Yet this is what the city is focused on? "The Portland Bureau of Transportation demanded the federal government on Thursday to remove a reinforced fence in front of the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse, because the fence was placed in a bike lane without permits." Oh FFS! The horror! At this point I assume the interest is in facilitating a Antifa suicide bike bombers.
Ever since she was a lying spokesperson for the State Department I have despised Marie Harf. Not even a pandemic can change her. She's basically Russia distilled into one person. I actually missed the chance to see her performance because as soon as she appears on the TV I turn it off rather than endure her.
Collusion.
Come on, people, if we don't ignore them how can we expect them to go away?
Apparently Hulu will have a series speculating on Hillary Clinton's spectacular political career had she not married Bill Clinton. I wonder who they assume she'd marry instead? Or--good God--does Hulu think Hillary could have advanced as far on her own political and interpersonal skills?
I don't understand why some Americans are so pro-mullah. The idea that the 2015 Iran deal was anything but a gift to Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions truly baffles me. Don't let the echo chamber band get back together.
I've mentioned that it seems like life works out for me even if it doesn't seem so at the time. It just occurred to me that a vision peculiarity allows me to easily read tiny print on my smart phone despite my age. That ability was not important when I was a kid. But the world evolved to my situation. So how is the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic going to end up helping me? Or is this the end of my streak?
You may wish to note that the media is focused on covering the states not at the top of this chart rating states for the rate of Xi Jinping Flu pandemic deaths:
Iran says that checking on one of our planes to make sure it isn't supporting terrorism is "terrorism;" but somehow their terror is just okey dokey.
People who still haven't accepted the results of the 2016 election claim Trump won't accept the result of the 2020 election.
Americans in the Green Zone are now protected from pro-Iranian militia rocket attacks; and growing Iraqi hostility to Iran is working for America. Iraqis were grateful for Iran's help after ISIL rose up in the first half of 2014 and caused the collapse of Iraq's security forces in the north. Without America there, whose forces left too soon at the end of 2011, bad trends of corruption and openings for Islamists took place. America returned in Iraq War 2.0 and now that ISIL is defeated as a territory-based caliphate, Iraqis started noticing--and rejecting--Iran's increased influence which could only turn out bad as in Lebanon and Syria. Funny enough, America's departure in 2011 when asked added to America's credibility and contrasted with Iran's post-ISIL drive to coerce Iraqis. Iraqis had to die in large numbers between America's departure and the defeat of ISIL to learn that lesson, unfortunately. I doubt that was Obama's intention in 2011, but that is one result.
Federal employees who put America through Hell on the BS Russia collusion fantasy need to go to prison and lose pensions to deter future homegrown radicalized election meddlers. As an aside, the acceptance of RUMORINT--much seemingly planted by Russian intelligence--as valid is just shocking, and makes our people look like a bunch of useful idiots. Via Instapundit. And yet the professional left-wing media insists on calling a BS artist trafficking in rumor and misinformation a "source." Amazing.
As an additional aside to the above story, I wonder if the British are regretting their participation in this scheme. I assume that absent the British working with the Obama administration on the assumption that Hillary would follow that Britain would already have a post-Brexit free-trade agreement with America. The British are our friends and a good ally--except for that Russia collusion BS role. And I'll get over this. But making them sweat a bit isn't a bad thing to deter that sort of thing. Also, I used to trust the scholarship of Brookings even though it is left of center.
Australia rejects China's claims to control the South China Sea.
The body count inflicted by "mostly peaceful protesters" (is that trademarked yet?) is growing.
Making policy follow science on the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic--let alone balancing the public health with other critical areas--is hard when the Covid19 science remains unsettled. As an aside, I could see early on that the advice not to use masks was not a decision based on science but a policy decision designed to reserve masks for health care workers. I gave my daughter a N95 mask to keep with her and explained they work, since she was in a crowded high school just in case it spread there. Those were the days when the models predicting massive spread and death weren't known to be wrong. Now the policy decision to wear masks has matched the science but the damage was done to the reflex to "follow the science" by the first mask policy decision.
The media has lost so much credibility that I don't assume their characterization of this dead man's comments is in any way accurate. I assume the two snipped examples given would look completely reasonable in the correct context.
Yes, Black lives matter. Of course they must under our Constitution and system of rule of law. But Black Lives Matter is a Marxist group, and more people should reject bending the knee to their schemes to conflate the two.
'Merica: "Chinese staff departed China's Houston consulate to a jeering crowd on Friday after the U.S. government ordered the building closed, calling it a hub for spying on American companies and researchers." Don't ever count Americans out.
Big if true. But it is 2020, so who knows? Still, I think this is disinformation to obscure American advanced aircraft developments.
Yes, what liberals don't understand is that the price of things isn't only about money. In socialism, money is basically worthless so the access politicians can grant to get things is in practice the real currency--which they exploit. Remember, capitalism doesn't cause greed. People cause greed. At least with free market capitalism everyone can benefit rather than just the politicians who control the supply:
Huh: "The Washington football team will simply compete as the Washington Football Team for the upcoming season, sources informed NBC Sports Washington on Thursday." WFT? WTF?!
Claims from Democrats that Trump was too slow to react to the Xi Jinping Flu Covid19 pandemic are ridiculous given that Democrats, the Chinese Communist Party, WHO, and the American media downplayed the virus early on and complained bitterly about what limited things Trump did. Do read it all and don't let the Democrats and their media allies memory hole this record.
The bright side is that the demand for American police brutality greatly exceeds the supply of American police brutality. Via Instapundit.
Apparently Democrats have to destroy America in order to save it:
It's science, damn it!
Okay, one more. This one is just funny--I think:
Spy versus spy.
Adults in a sea of children throwing tantrums.
Is the Navy fixing the troublesome Ford weapons elevators?
It's a mystery and we may never figure out the cause.
Poseidon is supposed to terrorize the West into inaction in the face of Russian aggression and tactical nuclear weapon use? Why? It sound like a propaganda weapon that is unlikely to work and if launched Lord knows where it would go. And what does its existence say about the reliability of Russia's ICBM force that is supposed to deter the West?
How is assuming people of color can't learn how to write to the standards of English grammar not a racist attitude!? The Woke Man's burden is truly heavy.
It will take years to smoothly pull 9,500 American troops out of Germany but it sounds like a number will move east and that the emphasis will be on maintaining Europe as a power projection platform.
INDOPACOM wants multi-year funding to build infrastructure to move, supply, and protect military forces throughout its vast region.
Putin beats his chest and flings poo. Naturally. And pointlessly.
