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Hello everyone! Welcome to the ONT. Say, did you see this?

*Shakes head* Unreal

RIP Gene Hackman

Gene Hackman Takes Everything Hollywood Ever Was and Ever Will Be With Him

Gene Hackman is a character actor. We say that sometimes and it doesn’t seem to mean much. It’s code for they could never play lead, or they weren’t attractive enough to become movie stars. But in Gene Hackman’s case it means he could play anything. He could be tough and cruel. He could be evil. He could be funny. He could be tender and sweet. Never has an actor done so much with what one might describe ordinary looks. I never felt that way. I always had a crush on Gene Hackman. All it took was just one look in Woody Allen’s Another Woman and I’ve been in love with him much of my adult life.

Why Gene Hackman, people have always asked me. I don’t know why. He has what the Talking Heads would call a face with a view. He contains multitudes.

Gene Hackman passed away today. Weird circumstances too, I wonder if we'll ever find out what happened? Brilliant actor. Never saw him in a role where he wasn't stellar.

Friendly Fire

The Fall of the USS Gettysburg

At around 0300, on Sunday, 22 December, the Aegis cruiser USS Gettysburg (CG 64) shot down an F/A-18F preparing to land on USS Harry S Truman (CVN 75) while operating in the Red Sea.  The Carrier Strike Group to which each of these units was assigned was an element of the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, assigned to protect Red Sea merchant traffic from Yemen-based Houthi attacks.

First, we all need to understand that there is only one man who knows what happened on that day, and that is the commanding officer of Gettysburg.  Apart from the F/A-18F crew, which possesses a very small but critical piece of the puzzle, everyone else is just an observer, a post-exercise armchair quarterback.  Having said that, while Gettysburg’s captain knows what happened in terms of the detailed, incredibly complex sequence of events, unless the failure was the result of discrete, identifiable human error, he may not, in the immediate aftermath, understand why certain things did happen. For example, if systems or off-ship persons failed to operate as advertised, he wouldn’t know exactly why those systems or persons failed. That level of detail may only be revealed in the post-mortem. 
Slowly, those pieces are being put together, and each day more is understood as to what happened. That is a good thing, because this was a combat-level laboratory, in which strengths and weaknesses were on real-world display.  This was a night which should be closely studied, and learned from, against future nights in which the missiles are flying.

The author commanded 3 Aegis cruisers in his career, so I'm going to assume he knows what he's talking about.

Filth

COVID Response

The Most Important Meeting in the History of the World That Never Happened

There was a brief moment in Spring 2020, just a few days into “15 Days to Slow the Spread,” when we had a chance to change our trajectory. A distinct inflection point where if we had done just one thing differently, and caught the crazy COVID coaster before it got locked in its tracks, things could have turned out very differently over these last three plus years. In the third week of March a secret emergency meeting was scheduled to take place between President Donald Trump, the COVID Task Force, and eight of the most eminently qualified public health experts in the world. This elite group of scientists was slated to present the highest-level decision-makers in our government with an alternative POV to lock down; a much-needed second opinion on national turtling.

We didn’t know it at the time, but this would have been the most important meeting of the COVID-19 era. But it never occurred.

What happened?

An interesting read on the response to COVID.

Civilian Response

A small seafood restaurant turns into a national donation hub for LA fire victims

Lauren and Andrew Gruel, the husband-and-wife owners of a seafood restaurant in a Southern California surf town, are used to thinking local.

Most of the seafood served up in their Huntington Beach restaurant Calico Fish House is sourced from fishers in the area.

This week, that local ethos has stretched a bit further. About an hour's drive south of the Palisades and the Eaton Fires are raging in Los Angeles, the Gruels have set up their small business to double as a wildfire relief hub. From there, they've been coordinating efforts to get donated goods hauled to their neighbors up north.

Chef Gruel is very active on social media, the scenes from his restaurant (Calico Fish House, in Orange county on the PCH. If you're in the area, you should go, the food looks amazing) were inspirational. Really, the civilian response, not just to the Palisades fire but also to Eastern North Carolina, have been nothing short of amazing. We have a friend who let it be known “I'm taking supplies to NC, send me what you can”. My wife, being active in knitting circles, collected dozens of donated, hand-knit, scarves, hats and gloves and sent them along. No FEMA. No Government. Just Americans helping in a time of need. As it should be.

Fighting Cartels

Arming America to Win: Designating the Mexican Cartels
as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (

The Mexican cartels are widely recognized as transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) with partners at various levels of Mexican governance. In the past several years, the cartels have become more financially enriched and empowered to carry out organized crime, including mass human trafficking across the Southern border. Designating these cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) under Section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (that is, Section 1182 of Title 8 the U.S. Code) or Section 2656f of Title 22 of the U.S. Code, is both justified and will give American government and law enforcement new and necessary powers to combat and defeat them.

A policy paper from the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

The War At Home

How Trump can dismantle the imperial judiciary once and for all

When Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 78 that the Supreme Court would wield “neither force nor will” over politics, he never envisioned the judiciary having the final say on every political decision in the country. Now imagine his reaction if he were told during the American Revolution that, in the future, a single lower-court judge could unilaterally grant citizenship to illegal immigrants’ children, override the will of elected branches, and even force the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to maintain information about transgenderism on its website. He might have preferred staying under King George’s thumb. In just the past two weeks, liberal judges in carefully chosen jurisdictions have issued rulings that reshape major policy decisions. They have effectively granted citizenship to children of future illegal immigrants, blocked Trump from offering federal workers early retirement buyouts, ordered the National Institutes of Health to maintain wasteful grant programs, mandated that male inmates be housed in women’s prisons, restricted access to key government data, and dictated appropriations for USAID staff and private organizations.

SCOTUS needs to slap down these rogue courts.

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by beer:

posted by WeirdDave at 10:00 PM

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