OPEN THREAD: Enjoy the weekend.
May 2, 2024
MISTER, WE COULD USE A MAN LIKE JOHN FACENDA AGAIN! In the meantime, this mini-Facenda (I don’t know if it’s a real person or AI simulation) will have to do:
College campus protestors get the NFL Films treatment
(original video by @JHolmsted ) pic.twitter.com/JHCVaMm9Wb— Heavens! (@HeavensFX) May 2, 2024
And for those who prefer their backing scores slightly less orchestral:
The Benny Hill edit. Well done, @mamaswati
Original video from @JHolmsted pic.twitter.com/QBa5VlEPyo
— Tony Katz (@tonykatz) May 2, 2024
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Lawmaker presses Pentagon official on Russia’s potential space nuke.
BIDEN’S LATEST BIG GOVERNMENT INTRUSION TARGETS THE INTERNET:
In the roughly six years since Trump repealed net neutrality, we haven’t seen internet service providers throttle speeds or charge us for every tweet. In fact, internet speeds have only increased, as has investment into broadband access. Yet, for some reason, the Biden administration is nonetheless bringing back net neutrality regulations.
Last week, the Federal Communications Commission voted to reinstate the rules along party lines.
“I think in a modern digital economy, we should have a national net neutrality policy and make clear the nation’s expert on communications has the ability to act when it comes to broadband,” Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Biden appointee, said. “This is good for consumers, good for public safety and good for national security.”
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, a Republican appointee, voted against the reinstatement and blasted it as a “power grab.”
In September, Steve wrote, “Net neutrality was Barack Obama’s gift to Netflix, who then gave him a sweetheart production deal a short time after he left office. I wonder what Joe Biden expects to get.”
IT’S NOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST:
This is how the anti-American pro-t*rr*rist disgusting slobs left the UCLA campus today: pic.twitter.com/RJchPSQrpf
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 2, 2024
And hey, remember how the Tea Party protesters left places cleaner than they found them, and the press called them barbarians?
On this day, VICTIMS OF COMMUNISM DAY (spasiba to Tovarich Glenn Reynolds), and in view of Ed Driscoll’s thorough post over at Instapundit on George Orwell and his Spanish War period, I would like to take the opportunity to add to the discussion by quoting from Paul Johnson‘s history of the 20th century, from which there is much to learn, not least the appalling truth about the “Republican” camp during the Spanish Civil War.
Tom Wolfe is quoted as saying that, with the publication of the Venona transcripts, “it turns out that “the Loyalists secretly called in the Soviets at the very outset of hostilities—and if they’d won, Spain would have been the first Soviet puppet state!”
True enough. But according to Modern Times (A History of the World from the 1920s to the 1990s), Paul Johnson points out that while the war lasted, this was already the case: the Kremlin’s Soviet NKVD (forerunner of the KGB), not the Spanish, were in fact already in charge of the country (or of that part held by the so-called Loyalists).
Behind [Prime Minister Juan] Negrin’s complaisant ignorance, the Communists — that is, Stalin’s secret police — took over Republican Spain. The result was one of the major political tragedies of the century
Read the whole thing.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: DA Gascon’s Top Adviser Charged with 11 Felonies.
2024: A LYNDON LAROUCHE ODYSSEY! RFK Jr. potluck complicated by staffers’ fear of microwave radiation among other unusual campaign details: Report.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign and its staffers want to be taken seriously in the middle of two party heavyweights in President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
They’re also reportedly afraid of microwave ovens, a detail that was included among various tidbits about the campaign dropped into a Wall Street Journal article Thursday.
An excerpt in the article on Kennedy’s campaign hit on the claim while discussing some oddities of the campaign.
“Several staffers fear the electromagnetic radiation from microwave ovens, complicating a volunteer potluck,” the story reads. “(People were advised to bring crockpots.)
Can’t say it’s surprising that RFK Jr.’s staffers share many of their boss’s, err, idiosyncrasies.
(Classical allusion in headline.)
LET’S HOPE THIS PANS OUT: New Vaccine For Deadly Brain Cancer Shows Incredible Results in Clinical Trial.
UCLA’S CHANCELLOR TALKS ABOUT HIS “PAIN,” Eugene Volokh has a quote: “What if widespread disorder is … bad? And should be prevented?”
FORTUNATELY, I NEVER DO: New Research Reveals Why You Shouldn’t Wear Makeup While Exercising.
AN OLD-SCHOOL FISKING: So a Guy in a Bathrobe Walks Around a Family Cruise Ship…
THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA chooses 9 companies for Mars Exploration Program concept studies.
More fun with the United Keffiyehs of Benetton crowd here: Hollaria Briden Takes Pro-Hamas Protester Hayley Becker to the WOODSHED With Hilarious Thread.
BY 2030 THEY’LL WANT TO CONTROL IT REMOTELY: Full Stop: Feds Require Automatic Braking For New Cars By 2029.
SHE’S RIGHT, YOU KNOW:
These are the chads I would have rolled my eyes at in college for yelling at my friends and I to show them our boobs while we ran by their houses and now they’re … our last line of sanity. https://t.co/SsQvovRm7P
— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) May 1, 2024
And you know what looks prophetic? Anthony Bradley’s book from last year, Heroic Fraternities: How College Men Can Save Universities and America.
FOLLOW THE MONEY: Are Americans Finally Done With the ‘Sustainability’ Scam?
WOEING: Second Boeing whistleblower dies suddenly after claiming safety flaws ignored.
A whistleblower who accused Boeing of ignoring safety flaws in the 737 MAX airplanes has died.
Joshua Dean, a former Spirit AeroSystems quality auditor, claimed he was fired for flagging concerns about lax standards at the company’s manufacturing plant in Wichita, Kansas.
His sudden death at the age of 45 on Tuesday came after suffering from a fast-spreading infection, according to his family and lawyer.
Dean’s lawyer Brian Knowles said it is a ‘loss to the aviation community and the flying public’.
Knowles told Al Jazeera: ‘He possessed tremendous courage to stand up for what he felt was true and right and raised quality and safety issues.
‘Aviation companies should encourage and incentivise those that do raise these concerns.
‘Otherwise, safety and quality are truly not these companies’ top priorities.’
They certainly don’t seem to be these days, Joan Sammon writes at the Pipeline: Boeing: From Aviation Excellence to ESG Disaster.
The disastrous list of failures offers a prescient example of how influences from outside a company and even from outside an industry can distract a board and C-suite from its core business and cause irreparable damage. The accounts reveal how the decisions of three decades ago have intersected with the decisions of three years ago, leaving in their wake the death of innocent people, the stench of mediocrity, and a litany of leadership lessons from which other corporate leaders can learn.
In the days following the January door plug blow out, a post appeared on an aviation blog written by an anonymous, purported current employee. The author flatly asserted that four bolts that were supposed to hold the door plug in place were “…not installed when Boeing delivered the plane [to Alaska Airlines], our own records reflect this.” The whistleblower further described the Renton, Washington-based 737 production system as a “…rambling, shambling, disaster waiting to happen” — even asserting specific details about the exact plane that lost the door plug mid-air.
This check job [of the door plug] was completed on 31 August 2023, and did turn up discrepancies, but on the RH [right hand] side door, not the LH [left hand] that actually failed. …it was inevitable something would slip through- and on the incident aircraft something did.
While the account is stunning on its face, it aligns with similar details revealed in a whistleblower lawsuit brought by former Boeing employee John Barnett about the 787 program in South Carolina. Details of that complaint describe a similar fundamental shift away from the two factors that had made the Boeing brand an industry leader — precision engineering and quality manufacturing. The suit describes a contentious work environment that fostered speed over quality. It describes how managers worked to force out senior employees who remembered the higher standards and Boeing’s brand promise of decades ago.
Barnett ended up dying from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, after day two of what was supposed to be three days of testimony about what he allegedly knew about the Boeing failures, and what he had done to try to correct or effect the defective manufacturing processes. Barnett’s curiously timed death is considered by family, friends and his attorneys to be suspicious.
America’s Newspaper of Record adds: Boeing Sadly Announces Whistleblower Shot Self In Back While Falling Off Skyscraper Directly Into Wood Chipper While Wearing Cement Shoes.
WHEN GARLAND TELLS THE TRUTH, IT’S NEWS: AG Merrick Garland Admits That It’s *Gang* Violence, Not ‘Gun Violence.’
“YOU CAN’T LOATHE COLBERT ENOUGH,” SAYS CHRISTIAN TOTO, BUT YOU CAN CERTAINLY TRY: Colbert Defends Anti-Israel Protests, Shamed Anti-Lockdown Voices. “Far-Left host ignores violence, antisemitism and other hallmarks of pro-Palestinian riots.”
READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation). #CommissionEarned
‘MORNING JOE’ MIKA HAS A MELTDOWN WHEN AL SHARPTON COMPARES CAMPUS RIOTS TO JAN. 6:
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” got both sides of the aisle going this morning.
Joe Scarborough said that Democrats needed to call out the campus chaos more than they have been doing. Not only hasn’t there been a loud outcry by Joe Biden or many Democrats, but some Democrats, like the members of the Squad, have even expressed support for the radicals. He claimed they had to push for a ceasefire.
Al Sharpton stepped on the narrative big time, comparing the campus riots/violence to Jan. 6.
“How do the Democrats, how do all of us on that side, say January 6 was wrong if you can have the same pictures going on, on college campuses, you can lose the moral high ground? Sharpton asked.
That’s when Mika Brzezinski had a meltdown. “Good Lord, don’t make a parallel to January 6th!” co-host Mika Brzezinski said in response. “For some reason, that’s not allowed.” Whoops, she just said the quiet part out loud — you aren’t supposed to be saying that, Al!
To coin a popular Insta-phrase, we’ve descended into some sort of bizarre hell-world in which Al Sharpton is a voice of sanity.
