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Friday’s Forum
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14 responses to “Friday’s Forum”
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How this escaped the vigilance of Hegseth and Trump, we’ll never know. But apparently there are some adults still working in the military.
NORAD F-16s Deploy to High North Under Operation Arctic Vanguard
blockquote>The Alaskan North American Aerospace Defense Command Region deployed F-16 Fighting Falcons from Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, to Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, in support of Operation Arctic Vanguard 26-4.2. During this NORAD operation, Alaskan NORAD Region is operating directly alongside the Canadian NORAD Region to execute critical defense missions across the Arctic, Sept. 13-26.
Under Arctic Vanguard, NORAD personnel and aircraft will forward deploy into Greenland to execute operations in austere conditions alongside partners from Denmark and other NATO countries. This operation supports the NORAD and U.S. Northern Command Nordic Bridge concept, which aligns the commands’ Arctic operations, exercises and training, activities and investments with other U.S. combatant commands, NATO, individual nations and regional partners.
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“Deploying combat airpower from Alaska across Canada and forward into Greenland validates our agile combat capabilities and demonstrates our seamless integration with the Canadian NORAD region, the Kingdom of Denmark and our NATO allies. Together, we maintain continuous vigilance and credible deterrence across North America’s northern approaches.” -
The big political story in Texas this last week is the incredible racist tweet put out by Bo French, who is running for one of the three spots on the Railroad Commission which regulates the oil and gas industry (don’t ask).
There is incredible pushback by many in the Republican party.
Which Republicans have spoken out against Bo French—and which have not
John Cornyn: The outgoing U.S. senator called on other Republicans to condemn what he described as “intolerance and racism,” warning that looking the other way could normalize it. “We all make mistakes but what does he do? No takedown of offensive post, no apology. Just doubles down and raises $ using it. The Republican Party is better than this. We should all condemn this bigotry directed at our fellow Texans or we will soon find ourselves a minority party.”
Dustin Burrows: The Texas House speaker was among those who publicly criticized French. “You can oppose immigration policy without demeaning people because of their race or ethnicity—this post has crossed the line. Delete it.”
Jared Patterson: The Republican state representative condemned French’s comments. “This is racist. It is wrong. And I condemn it without reservation.”
Drew Darby: The Republican state representative also joined the criticism. “This is racism, plain and simple.”
Karl Rove: The longtime Republican strategist said he would support Democrat Jon Rosenthal over French in November.
Ben Shapiro: The conservative commentator blasted French’s argument, questioning why conservatives should object to students of Indian ethnicity cheering for the Longhorns. “Are conservatives supposed to be upset that people from other ethnic backgrounds enjoy college football?” Shapiro said in an 11-minute video shared on his social-media channels. “They are putting up the Texas ‘Hook ‘Em Horns’ for a team in Texas. That’s literally the only thing we know about them. They are Texas fans.”
Then there are the defenders:
Brandon Hall: The State Board of Education member wrote, “I stand with Bo,” saying the controversy was about preserving the Texas way of life.
Andy Hopper: The Texas House member turned his criticism toward Cornyn, calling him a “smug globalist.”
Jake Lloyd Colglazier: The Fort Worth Young Republicans president also supported French. “The backlash against this perfectly reasonable post demonstrates the deleterious effect of mass immigration on our democratic system. Many of the TX politicians attacking Bo are doing so because they have significant foreign populations in their districts. The system is broken.”
Monty Bennett: The Dallas Express publisher echoed French’s concerns about foreign students at U.S. universities. “This problem is much bigger than just UT,” Monty Bennett, publisher of the right-wing news outlet Dallas Express, wrote on X on Sunday. “All our schools waitlist American kids, while opening their doors to foreign students. Now there’s over 1 million foreign students in U.S. Higher Education.”
It has been a pattern this year of anti-Hindu/anti-Islam rhetoric. Will there be an impact at the polls? We’ll see.
From ‘model minority’ to public enemy: Why Texas politicians turned on Indian immigrants
Many Texans have long considered Indian immigrants a model minority. But after more than six decades of Indians contributing to the economic and social fabric of their adopted state, some Christian nationalists and Republican politicians have labeled Hindu Americans a public enemy.
The growing bigotry even has a social media hashtag: #IndianInvasion.
Houston Muslim leaders tout voter mobilization as they bash new social studies curriculum
The Islamic Society of Greater Houston is helping to register about 1,000 voters a week at mosques across the city as some Texas officials grow increasingly hostile to the Muslim community, the group’s president said Wednesday.
At a press conference with local imams and community activists, President Emran Gazi said the weekly voter registration drives were energizing people who had previously not considered voting to be important.
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I tried to print an email from this iPad this morning and discovered I no longer know how. There’s a toolbar at top with Reply, Reply All, Forward, Trash, and File. IIRC (I don’t print from the iPad often) Print used to be under Forward. After a bit of internet searching I find Print is now under the OTHER Reply icon that shows only if you scroll to the bottom of the email.
First world problem, but it reminds me of my firm belief that these guys are inventing AI mostly because they’ve been writing spaghetti code with poor documentation for decades and they can’t manage their own code.
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I use Windows at work and Apple OS’s everywhere else (iPhone, iPad, MacBook) and on balance I prefer Apple. It’s become much less important than it used to be though, since so much of what I do is now browser based. Even work apps that are Windows only I can access via the Windows app on my Mac.
But there are certain things, like your “Print” example above, that just grate on me. Another is the continuation of a design choice that was well thought out and genius when we had 640×480 CRT monitors with one app at a time filling the whole screen and completely falls apart given modern giant screen setups with a half dozen apps open at a time: the decision to anchor the menu bar to the top of the screen rather than the Windows method of anchoring it to the top of the active window. Apple originally did it their way because (and this is hard to imagine now) a lot of people had difficulty controlling a mouse. With the Apple method you can just “throw” your mouse to the top and then gently adjust side to side. You can’t overshoot. I remember hearing this explained by an Apple designer years ago who went into the history and all the plusses and minuses of doing it both ways and thinking, “Man! These guys put in the hours!”.
But fast forward four decades and all this rationalization falls apart. My main screen is a 31″ curved wide screen. I often have 5 or 6 things open in various parts of my screen. In particular, I can have a small to do list in the lower right hand corner. If I need to do something with the menu, I have to travel my mouse the better part of a yard to do so. They should give this up, but I think they just don’t want to deal with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that occurs whenever they change some longstanding convention.
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Nothing quite like when Microsoft lost it and almost killed the desktop interface with Windows 8.
I was disgusted reading about it. Then I tried a display model at a store, and this failed to improve my opinion. So, I made a partition in a laptop and ran Win8 from it, alter also Win8.1
How bad was it? I renamed it WINDOS, which stands for Windows 8 Is Not A Desktop OS.*
I actually made another partition in the laptop to try Linux distros. I looked at Libre Office, Windows emulators, etc.
Fortunately sanity returned with Windows 10, which I call Windows AE, Apology Edition.
It ranks up there with “New” Coke**, the Ford Edsel, Colgate Lasagna (not making it up), and Polaroid instant movies (not a bad idea, but launched at the worst possible time).
*I’m contractually obligated with myself to denigrate Windows 8 for the rest of my life.
**I do know it was never called “New Coke” officially. I wonder, though, if they had just changed the super-secret formula and not said it was a different product, whether most people would have noticed. A lot of people in blind taste tests couldn’t tell it apart from classic Coke or even Pepsi.
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Not to say @MarkedMan is wrong, but my surmise is that the moved the “Print” option because of their belief that few people use it any more.
It turns out that kind of answer makes me madder than the one you gave, since when it happens to me, it means I’m becoming more and more out of touch. Bleh.
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The IRS issues an annual estimate of the “Tax Gap”, taxes owed minus taxes actually collected. This is not legal avoidance, which has become a huge amount, but illegal evasion, mostly by not reporting income. The last published report estimated this at 700 billion in 2022, half the friggin deficit in 2022! NYT (gift link) reports the Trump admin has “delayed” release. The IRS commissioner wants to reformat the report to focus on “addressable” evasion. “Addressable” remaining undefined.
The report is widely used to argue for more resources for IRS audits. The last thing Trump and the GOPs want is better tax enforcement. Also, it might give the average MAGA a clue how bad they’re being ripped off by the elites they’re voting for. “Addressable” will probably mean findable among people who can’t afford good tax lawyers.
Is there a statute of limitations on tax fraud? Can Congress increase the audit budget and direct where to apply it?
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@MarkedMan It’s all limited government! You know, limited to doing whatever it is they want the government to do.
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Trump has banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House on the grounds that they report only “fake news.”
He says that other outlets will follow. Presumably that includes “the failing” NYT, ABC, NBC, and CBS.
Only OAN, the Gateway Pundit, and the Conservative Treehouse allowed within the sacred precincts!
