Posts Tagged ‘Houston Rockets’

LinkSwarm for April 20, 2018

Friday, April 20th, 2018

Finished my taxes! Now I need to go back and do all the stuff I let slide while I was doing my taxes…

  • The Syrian strike and Russia’s crummy air defense systems:

    The attack on April 13th went up against a 21st-century Russian superweapon–the S-400 Triumf air-defense system, a mobile state-of-the-art anti-aircraft and missile network featuring four distinct missile types targeting aircraft in any performance envelope from treetop level to high altitude – including stealth aircraft (at a range of 150 miles, yet). For a decade we have been assured by military analysts that the S-400 is a game-changer – a system that could rend the heavens in twain and call into question the very concept of air power under battlefield conditions.

    And yet, last Friday, the epoch-making Triumf failed to let out so much as a peep as 105 cruise missiles trashed Bashar Assad’s chemical warfare plants. Not a single SAM left the rack while the attack was proceeding. (The Syrians did fire over 40 missiles at nothing, but only after the attack was completed. This is standard behavior among Arab armed forces – the Libyans and Iraqis did the same thing.) The Russians claim to have shot down over 70 of the attacking cruise missiles. How do we know this isn’t true? First, because the targets were utterly destroyed, and second, because the French were involved. If the Russians had shot down any U.S. missiles at all we would be hearing from Paris that American “missiles de croisière” are useless, and that’s why we had to turn to the French, who invented the cruise missile in 1689. (This is scarcely an exaggeration – Emmanuel Macron has gone on record to state that it was he, le président de la France, who persuaded Donald Trump to carry out the strike.)

    Some might argue that the new AGM-158 JASSM stealth missile foxed the S-400, but half the missiles launched were actually thirty-year-old BGM-109 Tomahawks, the equivalent of Colt Peacemakers as far as the world of missile development is concerned. If the mighty S-400 can’t shoot down a thirty-year-old missile, what can it do?

    Also this: “Russia today is what it always was – a Potemkin village hiding a nation in a state of suspended collapse.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • President Donald Trump’s approval ratings hit 51%.
  • Republicans: “Hey, how about you vote on these Trump nominees?” Democrats: “Ha ha! Slow walking! Filibuster!” Mitch McConnell: “Well then, I guess we’ll just have to keep the senate open on weekends during campaign season.” Democrats: “Uh…”
  • Democrats: Give Us the House so We Can Raise Your Taxes.” You would think they would have learned from Walter Mondale’s example…
  • “Trump overrules Sessions: DOJ won’t target marijuana in states like Colorado where the drug is legal.” Good. The federal government should stay out of the marijuana prohibition business on Tenth Amendment grounds.
  • Rush Limbaugh enumerates some of the many conflicts of interest among mainstream media members with ties to the Democratic Party.
  • In the UK, a machete attack every 90 minutes.
  • How gentry liberals really hate the poor. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Mark Steyn remembers Enoch Powell, who got more right than wrong.
  • UK Prime Minister Theresa May is concentrating on: A.) Brexit, B.) Muslim rape gangs, or C.) Plastic drinking straws?
  • Deleted Facebook Cybercrime Groups Had 300,000 Members.”

    Hours after being alerted by KrebsOnSecurity, Facebook last week deleted almost 120 private discussion groups totaling more than 300,000 members who flagrantly promoted a host of illicit activities on the social media network’s platform. The scam groups facilitated a broad spectrum of shady activities, including spamming, wire fraud, account takeovers, phony tax refunds, 419 scams, denial-of-service attack-for-hire services and botnet creation tools. The average age of these groups on Facebook’s platform was two years.

  • Everything is hackable.
  • “Pasta Is Good For You, Say Scientists Funded By Big Pasta.”
  • Egg McMuffin’s vaunted honesty and integrity evidently doesn’t extend to his campaign filing timely FEC reports. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • More on the same theme:

    Former presidential candidate Evan McMullin owes his former campaign staff members tens of thousands of dollars and most believe he has no intention of ever paying them, a former campaign worker tells The Daily Caller News Foundation.

    Right before McMullin’s failed bid for president in 2016 as the conservative alternative to President Donald Trump, the campaign was inundated with debt. The disastrous fiscal situation was a combination of frivolous spending by McMullin and his campaign manager Joel Searby, according to the former staffer.

    McMullin received news weeks before Election Day 2016 about how dire the campaign’s finances were, and he had “no remorse” and said “I have qualms about this thing ending badly in debt,” the former staffer claimed. McMullin’s cavalier attitude towards the campaign’s spending struck many as a surprise, particularly because he billed himself as a fiscal conservative, he added.

    The staffer also claims the campaign never paid him somewhere between 12-15 thousand dollars on top of a few thousand dollars in reimbursements. While he has since recovered, he expressed concern about former staffers with “families and children.”

  • “911 operator who hung up on emergency calls is sentenced to jail.”
  • The Littlest Weasel accomplished one thing: he raised Laura Ingraham’s ratings by 20%.
  • “Three New Plaintiffs Join James Damore’s Discrimination Lawsuit Against Google.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Here’s a cool piece by Houston Rockets center Clint Capela talking about what it was like to move from Europe to Texas:

    I’ll never forget the first time I went to a steakhouse here. I thought I’d eaten steak before. I was expecting this small, flat circle of meat, maybe a couple of fries on the side. Fine. C’est bon.

    So in Texas, steak is a different thing. I’m at this restaurant and they put this plate in front of me, and, well, there was barely any plate visible — all I saw was this was this big, big piece of meat. I look around, maybe I had been mistaken in what I ordered. Maybe this waiter was playing a prank on me. It looked like a whole farm animal in front of me. But everyone with me laughed and nodded and told me that in Texas, this is a steak.

    Then I was introduced to these other foods I’d never seen before but were totally amazing. Mac and cheese, man. Guys, you are blessed for having mac and cheese here. It’s a work of art. Bravo, guys.

    And that was the first time I thought, O.K. O.K., I think I can get used to this place.

    But if he really wants to be “King of Books,” he should know that road runs through me

  • Pro-tip: If you’re trying to smuggle hundreds of pounds of cocaine, it is best not to document your expensive vacation travels on Instagram. (Hat tip: Jammie Wearing Fool’s twitter feed.)
  • First they came for the buxom barmaids
  • The next horror movie monster: Tumbleweeds:

  • A tweet:

    Seems an overreaction. Let he who has never taken a sacred oath using a dinosaur handpuppet cast the first stone…