The Fulcrum of the Balance. Since I publish so much bashing liberals for fake news I guess I should post a reminder that there are still people out there wistfully seeing a genius in Donald Trump. But on the plus side, Democrats are still writing things like this in a desperate attempt to save Trump from himself and ensure that he has a second term.
Supreme Court Seems Wary of Hurdles for Refunds of Fines After Exonerations. This country is not completely given up when the Supreme Court can act in a bi-partisan matter and do something right. I guess I should not say that till they rule, but from the comments they are making, I think they are going to rule the right way on this one. The flip side is that in a sane law abiding country, something like this would have never made it to the Supreme Court.
I find it interesting to see how other nations “Hollywood” interprets historical events for their audience. Here is a clip of some South Korean commandos saving the day for MacArthur during the Korean War. It has a very very lose basis in fact, but mostly is just the Korean version of Hollywood trying to make their customers feel good.
Jeff Sessions should have been a tough sell in the Senate, but he’s too nice. This is slander masquerading as news. If you read the article, you will find out that a Kennedy left a young girl to drown and this is likened to Sessions because he made racists comments in the past. Except that you are never told what Sessions actually did. It is always implied that he has this terrible dark past, but we are never given the details even though they had space in the story to recount Ed Kennedy’s most famous misdeed.
Ukraine Hates Its New Donated American Drones. The problems are being blamed on the fact that they are old and outdated. But drones are only useful against a technological competent foe if they don’t have to phone home. We have forgotten what it is like to fight people who are not goat herders.
How Did the Houthis Manage to Lob a Ballistic Missile at Mecca? I personally think that while the missiles were not supplied by Iran (being in country before the current conflict), they had to be the ones supplying the engineering to modify them to fly further. I don’t think that is something the Houthis could have manged on their own.
Will Trump Break the Special Forces? The title is almost enough for this to get placed in the Bogus News section. But the actual article is a good run down of a long standing problem.
Trump’s Nuclear Boast Is Obama’s Modernization Plan. This is in the bogus news section for two reasons. The first is that headline is very misleading. Nobody really knows what Trump is referring to. On the other hand, the article does correctly point out that anybody who hyperventilates about Trump wanting to “restart the arms race” without acknowledging that Obama was already planing on spending over a trillion dollars on nuclear weapons is being extremely misleading. In other words, this article is both an example of bogus news (at least in the headline department) and it highlights how others spread bogus news.
Stunned By Trump, The New York Times Finds Time For Some Soul-Searching. I am sure this ex-New York Times reporter has his own ax to grind. But there should be more news stories examining the media and how they decided what stories are worth reporting. It is extremely rare for investigative reporting to be done about the media itself.
It Happens This Fast. Cops get a lot of criticism for being too trigger happy. This may or may not be true depending on what situation we are talking about. But it is worth understanding that regardless if they are right or wrong, cops are paranoid for a reason. They all watch videos like the one in the linked post. The fact that the media hypes the questionable incidents but does not show the times when cops were not paranoid enough gives people a skewed perspective on why cops do what they do. Most people never see stuff like this and don’t understand how fast things can go south and so they judge cops on unrealistic standards.
One other thing this video should teach us is how poorly trained cops are. That is not to say that you should fault the ones in video for getting shot. Unless cops treat everybody extremely harshly regardless of probable cause, this sort of ambush is going to happen. But cops really should have better first aid skills then what was demonstrated in this instance. That is one of the thing you would think all Americans could agree on and support, but like most such things that everyone should agree on, you are never going see a push to train cops properly.
Entertainment of the Day
I am not sure this should really be call entertainment. But if you have never heard of BOPE it is a good (albeit very superficial) introduction. They are famous in certain circles.
