Random Thoughts (3)

by

1) As I was watched the Fox News interview of Kamala, the thought that kept running through my head was, “Why did she agree to do this, especially on Fox?”

From such questions, investigations are born.

She had already done a run of media exposures (I don’t call her time on the “The View” and “Call Her Daddy,” interviews) the previous week and they went as well as expected; CBS had to basically take a chainsaw to the video in order to make her “60 Minutes” interview even remotely palatable. For all of the criticism of her for running from the media, she knows the strength of her game and it’s not hanging around people who want serious answers from serious questions.

So, given her run-and-hide strategy, why do an interview with a hostile network like Fox?

Because her time at Fox was not meant to be “another” interview, but rather it was to provide the hostile environment, the platform, for her to display some spunky behavior and one-liners for campaign ads and the rest of the media to fawn over. She was going to use Brett Baier and Fox as a campaign prop, go into the proverbial lion’s den, hijack and divert the questioning so she could get in some choice quotes for tape, and then get out.

The fact that the interview was going to take place less than an hour before airing, leaving little time to edit, and was only supposed to last 20 to 25 minutes (and she was late even for that), lends credence to the strategy that she was going to do a drive-by. A confirmation of that came the next morning when the legacy media decided to use a style guide of calling her performance “feisty.” You go, girl.

It was a risky strategy at best because it depended on the interviewer deciding to yield the tempo and initiative to the interviewee in fear of being called a bully. But Baier didn’t fall into that trap and instead kept pushing her to answer his questions.

Read more

The Cuban Missile Crisis, as Viewed From a Soviet Launch Facility (rerun)

by

This month marks the 62nd anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world dangerously close to thermonuclear war. Reflecting on this crisis seems particularly appropriate in our current era, when the threat of nuclear war has again come forward from the background to which it had been hopefully consigned. More countries now possess or are on track to possess nuclear weapons, and some of them are ruled by very malevolent people and true fanatics.

Several years ago,  I read  Rockets and People, the totally fascinating memoir of Soviet rocket developer Boris Chertok, which I reviewed  here.  Chertok’s career encompassed both military and space-exploration projects, and in late October 1962 he was focused on preparations for launching a Mars probe.

On the morning of Oct 27, he was awakened by “a strange uneasiness.” After a quick breakfast, he headed for the missile assembly building, known as the MIK.

At the gatehouse, there was usually a lone soldier on duty who would give my pass a cursory glance. Now suddenly I saw a group of soldiers wielding sub-machine guns, and they thoroughly scrutinized my pass. Finally they admitted me to the facility grounds and there, to my surprise, I again saw sub-machine-gun-wielding soldiers who had climbed up the fire escape to the roof of the MIK. Other groups of soldiers in full combat gear, even wearing gas masks, were running about the periphery of the secure area. When I stopped in at the MIK, I immediately saw that the “duty” R-7A combat missile, which had always been covered and standing up against the wall, which we had always ignored, was uncovered.

Chertok was greeted by his friend Colonel Kirillov, who was in charge of this launch facility. Kirollov did not greet Chertok with his usual genial smile, but with a “somber, melancholy expression.”

Without releasing my hand that I’d extended for our handshake, he quietly said: “Boris Yevseyevich, I have something of urgent importance I must tell you”…We went into his office on the second floor. Here, visibly upset, Kirillov told me: “Last night I was summoned to headquarters to see the chief of the [Tyura-Tam] firing range. The chiefs of the directorates and commanders of the troop units were gathered there. We were told that the firing range must be brought into a state of battle readiness immediately. Due to the events in Cuba, air attacks, bombardment, and even U.S. airborne assaults are possible. All Air Defense Troops assets have already been put into combat readiness. Flights of our transport airplanes are forbidden. All facilities and launch sites have been put under heightened security. Highway transport is drastically restricted. But most important—I received the order to open an envelope that has been stored in a special safe and to act in accordance with its contents. According to the order, I must immediately prepare the duty combat missile at the engineering facility and mate the warhead located in a special depot, roll the missile out to the launch site, position it, test it, fuel it, aim it, and wait for a special launch command. All of this has already been executed at Site No. 31. I have also given all the necessary commands here at Site No. 2. Therefore, the crews have been removed from the Mars shot and shifted over to preparation of the combat missile. The nosecone and warhead will be delivered here in 2 hours

Chertok, who at this point was apparently viewing the Cuban affair as a flash in the pan that would be resolved short of war, was concerned that moving the Mars rocket would cause them to miss their October 29 launch date, and suggested that the swap of the rockets be delayed for a few hours. Kirillov told him that this was impossible, and that he should go to the “Marshal’s cottage,” where some of his associates wanted to see him. Chertok’s response:

Yes, sir! You’re in charge! But, Anatoliy Semyonovich! Just between you and me do you have the courage to give the ‘Launch!’ command, knowing full well that this means not just the death of hundreds of thousands from that specific thermonuclear warhead, but perhaps the beginning of the end for everyone? You commanded a battery at the front, and when you shouted  ‘Fire!’  that was quite another matter.

Kirillov:

There’s no need to torment me. I am a soldier now; I carry out an order just as I did at the front. A missile officer just like me, not a Kirillov, but some Jones or other, is standing at a periscope and waiting for the order to give the ‘Launch’ command against Moscow or our firing range. Therefore, I advise you to hurry over to the cottage.

Read more

“Vote Your Conscience”?

by

David Reaboi:

I’ve always hated this idea that your vote is “sacred” and that you should “vote your conscience.”

Nonsense. It’s only ever been transactional and strategic. Nobody cares about your lofty ideals; only 1 of 2 candidates will be elected, and abstaining is also making a choice. Sitting out an election is your right—but there’s nothing valorous about not being able to make up your mind in a simple binary.

In most elections the only options are bad and worse. When worse is much worse, writing in your ideal candidate is especially foolish. Nobody will get your point and you make it more likely that worse gets elected.

Public life would be better if fewer people thought about politics and elections as battles between good and evil and more people thought in terms of making incremental improvements by choosing less-bad alternatives. This is unlikely to happen unless the stakes are lowered by reducing the size and power of government.

Douthat on Late-Term Abortion

by

Last week, Russ Douthat of the New York Times wrote an opinion piece, “What Do Liberals Believe About Late-Term Abortion?”, in which he outlined some of the parameters of the debate regarding both late-term and abortion in general. This year the Democrats have used the abortion access issue as key part of their electoral strategy.

Some excerpts.

First, Douthat provides a definition:

“The phrase ‘late-term’ itself is contested, but for the purposes of this discussion I’m talking about abortions that take place around or beyond the threshold of potential fetal viability, which (thanks to medical advances) currently sits somewhere in the range of 22 weeks to 25 weeks of pregnancy.”

Then to put the number of late-term abortions in perspective:

“… (the) belief, that these procedures are vanishingly rare, turns on the question of what “rare” means. Relative to other abortions, yes, late-term procedures are extremely rare: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 percent of American abortions take place at or after 21 weeks, which, by my calculation, would be slightly under 10,000 out of slightly under one million.

“On the other hand, relative to other causes of childhood death that liberals take extremely seriously, thousands of late-term abortions loom quite large. The CDC reports that in total just over 10,000 American children under age 14 died of natural and unnatural causes in 2022. As the demographer Lyman Stone points out, if you included late-term abortion in those numbers, it would instantly be the leading cause of childhood death, eclipsing diseases, drugs and gun violence.”

He then covers the implications:

“…if you accept that they will be killed in meaningful numbers (numbers that would almost certainly increase under Harris’s preferred legal order), well, then you need to either retreat to the life-begins-at-breath position — radical but consistent, mystical but stable — or else come up with some other marker that establishes personhood at, say, 35 weeks of pregnancy and consigns viable fetuses before that line to a less-than-human status.

“Having followed these debates for many years, I think it’s fair to say that the pro-choice side — not every pro-choice individual, but the political collective — consistently refuses to make this choice, preferring to occupy an ambiguous zone where late-term abortion is permitted in law, minimized as a reality and left unjustified by any consistent argument about human life or human rights.”

Read more

Not-Quite-Random Columbus Day Musings

by

Who were the most geopolitically significant individuals in world history? Columbus is the first obvious example, given the holiday. He served as the catalyst for the Western migration to the Americas. Who else ranks up there? The first three names that come to mind are Jesus, Mohammed, and Karl Marx, the founders of Western civilization, Islamic civilization, and world Communism, respectively. Communism is relatively new compared too many past civilizations, but the scale of its global impact far exceeds that of the greatest individual empires. Any other nominations?