February 5, 2025

FAST OR SLOW THEY ALL BLINK. TRY NOT TO SING “ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST” IT SCARES THE CATS (MAYBE THAT’S JUST ME):   Two more nations blink.

Posted at 2:05 am by Sarah Hoyt

February 4, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

A MISSION FOR ELON: America’s Air-Traffic Control System: An International Disgrace. Long before the Obama and Biden administrations’ DEI mandates, America’s system was already one of the worst in the developed world. And it’s only gotten worse since then. It could fixed with a reform that would help drain the D.C. swamp, shrink the federal budget deficit, improve aviation safety, reduce flight delays, conserve fuel, lower carbon emissions, and save money for airlines and passengers. Are you listening, DOGE?

Posted at 9:10 pm by John Tierney

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Smashing the ‘rice bowls’ — Why elites are lashing out at Trump and Musk’s reforms.

Related:

UPDATE:

Posted at 8:45 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TRUMP IS GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL — AND USA TODAY’S “RACE AND INEQUALITY EDITOR” IS BIG MAD: Donald Trump is going to the Super Bowl — and ruining one of America’s best days.

Ahhh, the Super Bowl. Where families gather to watch the big game. Eat lots of food. Drink some. Party a little. Get together with friends to laugh, chill, hang out. It’s one of the few moments, the extremely few, few moments, where Americans genuinely come together.

We put aside politics. We put aside our differences. We take part in a great American tradition. It’s actually pretty cool. Well, it was. Because now President Donald Trump is attending the game.

Punchbowl News was the first to report that Trump will attend Super Bowl 59 between Philadelphia and Kansas City in New Orleans. So the most divisive president of our lifetime is attending a game that often serves as a genuine moment of unity. Trump soils everything. Now, he’s doing the same to the biggest game of the year.

The fact Trump will be at the same game as someone as thoughtful as Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is playing in, is a remarkable contradiction. This week, Hurts spoke about the evolution of the Black quarterback, and how he doesn’t take this moment lightly, where two Black quarterbacks are again playing in the Super Bowl. It’s the kind of thoughtfulness we’ve come to expect from him; that kind of depth Trump doesn’t possess.

Yeah, it’s not like the guy ever owned a professional football team himself. Oh wait:

In this March 8, 1984 file photo, Donald Trump shakes hands with Herschel Walker in New York after agreement on a 4-year contract with the New Jersey Generals USFL football team. The New Jersey Generals have been largely forgotten, but Trump’s ownership of the team was formative in his evolution as a public figure and peerless self-publicist. With money and swagger, he led a shaky and relatively low-budget spring football league, the USFL, into a showdown with the NFL. (AP Photo and caption.)

A year ago, NBC ran the following bit of gaslighting about Biden: Biden is skipping a Super Bowl interview. His advisers say it’s part of the plan.

For the second year in a row, President Joe Biden is passing on the opportunity to sit down for a Super Bowl interview that could reach millions of Americans on Sunday — a move his advisers say is part of their larger communication strategy.

So Biden couldn’t even do a TV interview before the game his last two years in office, let alone appear there in person. In contrast, according to CBS, Trump will be the “first sitting president to attend NFL’s biggest game.”

Related: “NFL to remove ‘End Racism’ messaging in end zone ahead of Super Bowl: Sources,” and the New York Times is almost as angry at that prospect as USA Today is about Trump appearing at the game:

At his annual Super Bowl news conference Monday, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell strongly supported the league’s policies designed to promote diversity at the club-employment level and said they would continue.

But during Super Bowl LIX, and with President Donald Trump apparently planning to attend on Sunday, the NFL might be making another kind of statement on the Caesars Superdome field itself. According to two league sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, league officials recently changed one of the slogans expected to be stenciled in the back of an end zone from “End Racism” to “Choose Love.”

The game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles will mark the first time since February 2021 that “End Racism” is not included as a message in the back of a Super Bowl end zone.

The switch, conveyed internally to high-level employees earlier this week, could be perceived as a nod to the current political climate. Following the lead of Trump, who was inaugurated last month, many corporations and institutions are abandoning their diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Goodell did not follow suit when asked about the league’s policies on Monday, saying he was “proud” of the league’s diversity efforts.

“We got into diversity efforts because we felt it was the right thing for the National Football League,” Goodell said. “And we’re going to continue those efforts, because we’ve not only convinced ourselves we’ve proven it to ourselves — it does make the NFL better.”

Regarding that last paragraph, Roger Goodell morphed into Howell Raines so slowly, I hardly even noticed. As Jonah Goldberg wrote in 2003:

Diversity is another of those words we imbue with all nobility and goodness without question or reservation. And that’s nonsense. If diversity were always and everywhere good we would be clamoring for more midgets in the NBA. We would demand that mobsters get jobs at the FBI and we would consider it a grave problem that not enough blind men — and women! — were applying to be crossing guards, snipers, and surgeons.

I think the FBI may have taken that comment a bit too literally, based on their actions of the last eight or nine years…

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

WHY THEY’RE SQUEALING SO LOUDLY:

Posted at 6:49 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DO NOT TRUST CHINA, CHINA IS ASSHOLE: Chinese-Made Patient Monitor Contains a Secret Backdoor.

A medical device used in hospitals has been found hosting a backdoor, paving the way for an unauthorized user to remotely control and tamper with the equipment.

The threat was discovered in three firmware versions for a patient monitor called the Contec CMS8000 (also sold as the Epsimed MN-120), which can display a user’s vitals, including heart rate, according to an advisory from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The equipment, from China-based Contec Medical Systems, was mysteriously configured to connect to an IP address for a third-party university with no connection to the manufacturer.

The backdoor enables the IP address at the unnamed university to remotely download and execute unverified files on the patient monitor, CISA’s report says. In addition, the same backdoor automatically sends patient data to the IP address.

“Once the patient monitor is connected to the internet, it begins gathering patient data, including personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI), and exfiltrating (withdrawing) the data outside of the health care delivery environment,” an advisory from the Food and Drug Administration adds.

Funny how this keeps happening:

● “Federal authorities have long harbored concerns that DJI drones flying in American airspace surreptitiously transmit sensitive surveillance data back to the Chinese Communist Party. After all, Beijing’s national security laws require Chinese companies to provide ‘mandatory access to devices and programs through backdoors’ to the CCP. At least seven states have in recent years grounded their fleets of DJI drones amid the concerns. The company was sanctioned in 2021 for its involvement in surveilling Uyghur Muslims, and the Department of Defense classified DJI a ‘Chinese Military Company’ in 2022.”

● Vodafone Found Hidden Backdoors in Huawei Equipment.

● Former TikTok exec: Chinese Communist Party had “God mode” entry to US data.

● DeepSeek’s Popular AI App Is Explicitly Sending US Data to China.

Posted at 6:48 pm by Ed Driscoll

DEMOCRATS CHOSE THE FORM OF THEIR DESTRUCTOR.

Dr. Strangetweet:

We told you to leave us alone.
We didn’t want to get too political.
We didn’t want to get too involved.

But you made us.

You went after our kids, our jobs, our money, and our lives.

You made us care. Remember?

Well this *waves hand* is our response.

Enjoy the bed you made.

You’ve wasted our tax dollars on your pet projects and money laundering for decades.

You’ve wasted our tax dollars on useless government programs and departments for decades.

And we have nothing to show for it.

Not just we, the taxpayers, but we as Americans. “Hurr durr America’s standing in the world.”

Who cares? The world sees us as a cash cow they can milk and milk until it runs so dry, the very citizens paying the taxes are hurting.

And if that tap is turned off, you know what the world will do?

They’ll laugh and move on.
We’re broke.
Kaput.
Nada.
Trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

We’re out.

And the rest of the world, who wouldn’t have our back today doesn’t give a damn.

I take that back. There are maybe 4 countries.

“That’s because of Trump!!”

Boy, are you stupid. They don’t love the Democrats. They just want the cash.

And as long as the US puts the world in front of its own citizens, they don’t care what happens to us.

So look…

Take all your yelling and screaming about Trump and Elon and the young men who are subjecting the deep state to the glaring glow of the ’tism, and, respectfully, get bent.

This IS what people voted for.
This IS what payback looks like.
You thought Trump was gonna arrest all his political opponents?

LOL a masterful mind-melt DJT did to you.

No, see his ultimate revenge is sunlight.

Pulling back the curtain on your corruption, exposing all your deeds done in secret on the taxpayer dime.

That is his vengeance.

Watching you stand by, wailing as he slowly and methodically disassembles your power structures and your money laundering and your kickbacks…

That gives him more pleasure than arrest anyone.

See, he learned from his arrest:

Don’t make martyrs.
Why go after the person, exalting them to a martyr status when, instead, you can destroy them by destroying the things they love.

“Like the Constitution!!”

LOL Find Department of Education in the Constitution for me, chief.
The old adage is true:

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

And right now, DJT is chilly.
But this doesn’t end there.

See, there is another guy mentioned above that just wanted to shoot rockets into space and make electric cars.

And he was one of you for a long time, until you went crazy. He stood against your crazy so you went after him.

How’d that work out for you?

So right now, you have DJT being so cold, the Arctic shivers when he shows up.

But Elon? Elon is a straight killer.

Just call him Sub Zero. You created the current version of Elon.

Him being the hand of Don destroying your systems, revealing them to the American citizens? That’s your doing.

He is your fault.

Let that sink in.

Hell hath no fury like an electorate scorned… eventually.

Posted at 5:28 pm by Stephen Green

SHOCK AND AWE: Purge begins as DOGE enters FBI to obtain names of 5,000 agents who worked January 6 cases and face firing.

The FBI is being forced by Elon Musk’s DOGE to hand over the names of 5,000 officials who worked on January 6 cases.

Those officials could face being fired for failing the Trump ‘loyalty test’ being given to rank-and-file employees.

Officials working for Musk at DOGE were spotted by CNN entering FBI headquarters on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to collect the information.

FBI agents filed a lawsuit Tuesday trying to block the release of their names or identifying details after Trump administration officials demanded documents about who worked on January 6-related cases.

The agents say their jobs could be terminated within days.

The ‘loyalty’ test asks questions such as: ‘What was your/your employee role in the investigation(s) or prosecutions(s) relating to events that occurred at or near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021? Select all that apply.’

It then lists a series of boxes that includes investigatory work such as surveillance, a grand jury subpoena, or an arrest.

According to the lawsuit ‘the very act of compiling lists of persons who worked on matters that upset Donald Trump is retaliatory in nature.’

It said the move was ‘intended to intimidate FBI agents and other personnel, and to discourage them from reporting any future malfeasance and by Donald Trump and his agents.’

The group of agents warned of ‘unlawful and retaliatory’ actions against them, and said the information sweep could violate civil service protections.

As long as they haven’t done anything wrong, what do they need to worry about? (To coin a phrase.)

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll