Saturday’s Forum

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. CSK says:

    Trump has invited all and sundry to take part in a “big protest” about election fraud in D.C. on January 6.

    “Be there, will be wild!” he promises.

    I’m sure it will.

    1
  2. OzarkHillbilly says:

    737 MAX: Boeing ‘inappropriately coached’ test pilots, say senators

    Boeing officials “inappropriately coached” test pilots during recertification efforts after two fatal 737 MAX crashes killed 346 people, a US congressional report has concluded. The report by the Senate commerce committee raised questions about testing in 2020 of a key safety system known as MCAS tied to both fatal crashes. The committee concluded Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Boeing officials “had established a pre-determined outcome to reaffirm a long-held human factor assumption related to pilot reaction time”.

    It appeared that the “FAA and Boeing were attempting to cover up important information that may have contributed to the 737 MAX tragedies”.
    ………………………………..
    Friday’s report cited a whistleblower who alleged Boeing officials encouraged test pilots to use a particular control during an exercise, resulting in a pilot response time of around four seconds. Another pilot in a separate test reacted in approximately 16 seconds.

    The account was corroborated during an FAA staff interview, the committee added.

    I’m a little confused, I understand these were test pilots, so the protocols are different, but this just sounds like the pilots received training.

    The Senate commerce committee chairman, Roger Wicker, said the report included “significant examples of lapses in aviation safety oversight and failed leadership in the FAA”. The committee also said “multiple independent whistleblowers contacted the committee to allege FAA senior management was complicit in determining the 737 MAX training certification level prior to any evaluation”.

    And who exactly expected something else from a trump FAA?

    1
  3. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @CSK: With the Proud Boys in attendance, could it be anything else?

    3
  4. OzarkHillbilly says:
  5. OzarkHillbilly says:
  6. CSK says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    At this point, it may well be only the Proud Boys who show up.

  7. OzarkHillbilly says:

    via Cheryl Rofer:

    Hari Kunzru
    @harikunzru

    You may want to mute this account for a while because I feel I may have to individually insult every member of the outgoing administration in crude and personal ways

    Too funny.

    2
  8. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Jared Kushner you vacuous dainty preening overpromoted nub of mediocrity, squeezed like an entitled smear of toothpaste into a silk suit bought with tear-stained dollars wrung out of the suffering tenants of your slum apartments

    Perfection.

    1
  9. CSK says:

    I love it. Are you the author?

  10. Sleeping Dog says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    An obvious ploy to boost food sales at EU truck stops.

  11. Teve says:

    @anacaballos_

    .@GovRonDeSantis told reporters on Tuesday that Pfizer shipments were on hold.

    “It’s a production issue with Pfizer. It has nothing to do with the federal government or nothing to do specifically with Florida. This is just what’s happening nationwide.”

    Two days later:

    @megtirrell

    Pfizer puts out statement in response to numerous states saying they’ve been told their allotments of #covid19 vaccine have been reduced, & as FL cited Pfizer production issues as reason – noting no issues and millions of doses in warehouse they haven’t received instructions for.

    2
  12. Teve says:

    @DrEricFeigl-Ding

    Pandemic relief in each country from its government: (up to %wages)

    100% of wages in Japan
    90% Netherlands
    90% Norway
    87% Germany
    84% France
    80% Italy
    80% UK
    75% Canada

    0% USA

    Tiny checks or limited unemployment–not nearly enough. #COVID19

  13. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @CSK: If you ar asking me, no. Hari Kunzru at the link in the above comment. He’s a Brit, if you couldn’t tell. They have a unique way of insulting people that I love.

    1
  14. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Teve: Covering trump’s ass is job #1.

  15. Teve says:

    @realDonaldTrump

    He didn’t win the Election. He lost all 6 Swing States, by a lot. They then dumped hundreds of thousands of votes in each one, and got caught. Now Republican politicians have to fight so that their great victory is not stolen. Don’t be weak fools!

  16. CSK says:

    @Teve:
    Knowing Trump’s inability to punctuate properly, is he attempting to say “Don’t be weak, fools?” or “Don’t be weak fools?”

    2
  17. Teve says:
  18. Teve says:

    “Donald Trump is Leaving Behind Blueprints to End Democracy”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/opinion/trump-democracy.html

    1
  19. al Ameda says:

    @CSK:

    Trump has invited all and sundry to take part in a “big protest” about election fraud in D.C. on January 6.
    “Be there, will be wild!” he promises.

    Does rally security fall to the Space Force ‘Guardians’?
    Or is this a Proud Boys gig?

    1
  20. CSK says:

    @al Ameda:
    Oh, definitely a Proud Boys gig. Possibly a few Kyle Rittenhouse clones will show up to do their part.

    1
  21. Tyrell says:

    Another day another phone scam. This time someone claiming to be with Amazon saying my account was broken into. I have no account with them. The last few weeks it has been the IRS, SS, Wells Fargo, VISA, and Blue Cross. The HD also called, telling me that places I had been had infections and trying to get personal information. How do these people keep getting these phone numbers? Something needs to be done about this. I am sure some people fall for these scams. I have numbers blocked, but they just get new ones.
    None of these organizations actually call people.
    “You have the right to remain silent”

    7
  22. gVOR08 says:

    I’ve mentioned Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump which is an in-depth review of history concluding that conservatism is always and in all places reactionary. Basically Cleek’s Law – Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.

    Sean Illing did an interview with Ross Douthat in VOX. I can’t pass up quoting Douthat,

    Well, the GOP stands for the idea that liberals are wrong. Whatever liberals want is wrong — that’s what the GOP stands for.

    OK, I hate to cite Douthat in support of anything. He’s an exceptionally erudite, very articulate idiot. But – blind squirrel, stopped clock, whatever. And it is a neat statement of the thesis.

    3
  23. DrDaveT says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    They have a unique way of insulting people that I love.

    This sentence is ambiguous as phrased, but I think I know which way you meant it. 🙂

    4
  24. CSK says:
  25. DrDaveT says:

    @gVOR08:

    Well, the GOP stands for the idea that liberals are wrong. Whatever liberals want is wrong — that’s what the GOP stands for.

    The part of this that keeps me shaking my head is that they can’t look backward and see that this is why the current GOP would have opposed child labor laws, emancipation, public education, votes for women, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and a thousand other bits of incremental progress that they would never dare say today was a bad idea. I’ll give them credit for opposing Prohibition and backing the interstate highway system, which makes them something like 2-for-10,000 in picking the correct side of history to be on.

    5
  26. Teve says:

    @maggieNYT

    SCOOP – Sidney Powell was in Oval Office last night as POTUS discussed making her special counsel for election fraud. @KannoYoungs and me

    To quote Geoff Peterson, “Balls.”

    1
  27. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @DrDaveT: Heh, I suspect you do. 🙂

  28. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Teve: God doesn’t love me that much.

    1
  29. Moosebreath says:

    @Teve:

    “making her special counsel for election fraud”

    Well, she certainly is an expert on the subject, amirite?

    2
  30. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Tyrell:

    A couple of things could be happening. A computer is simply random dialing and if someone answers the call drops to a scammer. They could have bought a list of names, addresses and phone numbers. There is a company called Acxiom that aggregates and sells consumer information. Years ago I did a project for Anheuser-Busch that utilized Acxiom, to show the breadth of their data, they sent me, my profile. Scary how much info they had. Think of them as Google, before Google for data collection.

    4
  31. Mister Bluster says:

    After days of silence, Trump says Russian cyberattack may have been China
    After staying mum this week on a massive cyberattack that U.S. officials suspect was perpetrated by Russian government hackers, President Trump broke his silence Saturday by suggesting that China may have been the culprit, linking it to his obsession with voter fraud in the past election.
    “The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality,” Trump tweeted late Saturday morning. “I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).”

    I may need to be restrained..

    2
  32. Teve says:
  33. Mikey says:

    @Mister Bluster: This is just more projection–the one who’s petrified is Trump, petrified of placing any blame whatsoever on Russia.

    It’s pretty obvious what @Teve said: Putin owns Trump.

    2
  34. MarkedMan says:

    @Tyrell: You really shouldn’t answer your phone unless you recognize the number. Let it go to voice mail, or if it’s a land line, hook it to an answering machine.

    2
  35. dazedandconfused says:

    @Teve:

    Everybody who praises him owns him. Something a old KGB case officer is sure to notice.

    1
  36. gVOR08 says:

    @DrDaveT:

    The part of this that keeps me shaking my head is that they can’t look backward

    That is part of the problem. Every accomplishment liberals fought for, in some cases died for, is now baked into the cake and taken completely for granted. In effect it’s become part of conservative heritage. It is maddening.

    1
  37. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK: Just like the question “how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop,” the world will never know.

  38. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Tyrell: The wonders of auto dialing. They don’t need your number at all. They just put out a bunch of simultaneous calls and play the pitch to the ones that answer most quickly. If you want to avoid them, put your phone far enough away so that it takes 4 or 5 rings to get to it.

    1
  39. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @DrDaveT: Why are you giving credit to the current GOP for not opposing settled law issues? If any of those things were subject to periodic Congressional Review, the GOP would STILL be against them. Every. Last. One.

    3
  40. DrDaveT says:

    @Teve:

    @realDonaldTrump

    He didn’t win the Election. He lost all 6 Swing States, by a lot. They then dumped hundreds of thousands of votes in each one, and got caught.

    It continues to amaze me that it breaks no laws for a sitting (lame duck or no) President to make this statement in public.

    2
  41. DrDaveT says:

    @dazedandconfused:

    Everybody who praises him owns him.

    Cue Phil Specter:
    To own, own, own him
    Is to love, love, love him…

  42. DrDaveT says:

    @DrDaveT:

    Specter

    Gah, Spector. Never an edit option when you need one…

    1
  43. JohnSF says:

    @DrDaveT:

    “A specter is haunting DrDaveT…”

    🙂

    3
  44. Teve says:

    From /.

    Apple-criticising banner ads added to some of Facebook’s iOS apps

    By tapping the Learn More button, the app opens an article written by Facebook in which the company says Apple’s policies announced at WWDC 2020 with iOS 14 will “harm the growth of business and the free internet.” Facebook refers both to the new App Store privacy labels and also an option in iOS 14 that prevents apps from tracking users.

    The fact that Facebook is now showing these messages in its iOS apps criticizing Apple demonstrates that the company is trying to get popular appeal to change Apple’s mind about its new App Store privacy rules. That’s because Facebook is one of the companies that will be most impacted by Apple’s new privacy policies as its social networks rely heavily on ads and personal data from users.

    In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple said it doesn’t want to force Facebook to change its business model, but the company expects Facebook to be more transparent about how it collects data from users and let them choose whether or not to offer such data.

    You read that correctly. FB is telling people that Preventing FB from spying on Everything you do on the internet will be the death of freedom. It wouldn’t be surprising to me if the press release was written by one Ashleigh McEnany.

    2
  45. Teve says:
  46. JohnSF says:

    @Teve:
    Just so you Americans don’t have to be alone with the stench of corruption: Waste, Negligence and Cronyism: Inside Britain’s Pandemic Spending

  47. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker: Or… and I know this is heresy, one could just turn the damn thing off. I have.

  48. Teve says:
  49. Teve says:

    EFF: Facebook’s Laughable Campaign Against Apple Is Really Against Users and Small Businesses

    Facebook has recently launched a campaign touting itself as the protector of small businesses. This is a laughable attempt from Facebook to distract you from its poor track record of anticompetitive behavior and privacy issues as it tries to derail pro-privacy changes from Apple that are bad for Facebook’s business.

    Facebook’s campaign is targeting a new AppTrackingTransparency feature on iPhones that will require apps to request permission from users before tracking them across other apps and websites or sharing their information with and from third parties. Requiring trackers to request your consent before stalking you across the Internet should be an obvious baseline, and we applaud Apple for this change. But Facebook, having built a massive empire around the concept of tracking everything you do by letting applications sell and share your data across a shady set of third-party companies, would like users and policymakers to believe otherwise.

    Make no mistake: this latest campaign from Facebook is one more direct attack against our privacy and, despite its slick packaging, it’s also an attack against other businesses, both large and small.

  50. Teve says:

    @EmilyCrockett

    If a senator objects, both houses of Congress would have to vote to exclude a state’s electoral votes for that to actually happen.

    So it won’t happen—but good God, if we had a Republican House right now these guys might actually do the coup.

    Feels like a weird premonition of what’s going to happen in 8 or 12 years.

    2
  51. Teve says:

    @LLinWood

    Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Minnesota & Pennsylvania are states in which martial law should be imposed & machines/ballots seized.

    7 states under martial law.
    43 states not under martial law.

    I like those numbers.

    Do it @realDonaldTrump!

    Nation supports you.

    @realMikeLindell

    Look @dougducey you made the list and your crooked buddy @BrianKempGA! @realDonaldTrump please impose martial law in these 7 states and get the machines/ballots!

  52. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, I used to turn off my phone to save on battery use, but the idle status uses so little electricity that I don’t anymore. My big problem is that the last time I turned off the phone, I forgot that it was off and missed calls that I’d been waiting on for about 3 days. With as few calls as I expect, I can’t afford to miss any.

    On the other hand, I usually have my phone far enough away from me that Tyrell picks up the scam calls before I get to my phone. 😀

    1