March 27th • 3h 27m
Shownotes
Every new episode of No Agenda is accompanied by a comprehensive list of shownotes curated by Adam while preparing for the show. Clips played by the hosts during the show can also be found here.
DOGE
Johanna Nazi client remark
NPR Distribution
The PRSS is one of the ways member stations get programming- when
your station plays Morning Edition, it is airing a feed. No big surprise
there. The innovation of the PRSS was a thing called ContentDepot-
where you could subscribe to programming like Car Talk and have .wav
files sent by satellite to your particular station's satellite receiver
to be played back later. At the time (like the 1990's) , it was great-
no more having to run tape on a live feed to record a show.
Problem
is that the PRSS was expensive. Not only do member stations have to pay
a hefty fee just to use the PRSS, they have to pay additional fees to
store their content there. As member station revenue has fallen off
(because no one listens to radio anymore and the audience is ageing
out) the burden of paying for it became greater and greater. Now, only
the largest NPR affiliate put up pre-taped programming on the PRSS-
everyone else has decamped to a place called the Public Radio Exchange,
where content is basically shared via a file sharing system. Much
cheaper and no expensive equipment required. The only thing NPR has left
(like over the air tv) is live events- Morning Edition and All Things
Considered- and even those are being strip mined for podcasting.
Boeing
F-47 BOTG
ITM boys,
I'm an engineer at one of the maintenance
air force bases where we deal with Boeing all the time so I've got some
standing here. Giving Boeing the contract for the F-47 is definitely NOT
good for America. Boeing is terrible to deal with. We're constantly in a
back and forth trying to get the parts we need to produce assets with
Boeing making sure that they send us all the lemons so we look bad. Then
with all the lemons and part shortages in hand they go complain that we
aren't producing enough.
I'm currently
involved with bringing in the workload for the Boeing KC-46 and it's a
disaster. This is the air refueler that was developed from the 767 and
you would think they would know their own aircraft but they don't. The
Boeing engineers can't answer any technical questions about the aircraft
and most of the time just ignore our requests for information. For
example, we recently asked them a specific question about a fuel control
part and they responded with the toll free number of their part
supplier. Boeing has technical authority over all this and the best they
can do is google a toll free number for the supplier. It's a joke. The
KC-46 program is coming up on being 3x over cost and they aren't even
done yet.
The F-47 won't be any different. They
are saying that it'll cost $20 billion but that number won't be under
$60 when they're done and I won't be surprised if it's over $100
billion. The big defense contractors plan on going way over cost knowing
that the government always ponies up and there are no repercussions.
Just look at all the contracts out there - Sentinel missile is $35
billion over and not done, KC-46 is 3x over, B-21 is over but they won't
say by how much, it's everywhere.
Boeing
commercial and Boeing military might as well be two different companies
so this won't do anything at all to help the quality problems the
commercial side is having. I've been on calls where we asked Boeing
military about something we've seen on the commercial side and they
actually told us they don't even know how to get ahold of the commercial
side.
John is right about one thing, the F-22
is a dynamite aircraft. So much so that we don't need a new fighter
between that and the F-35. Despite it's problems, give the F-35 a
software upgrade and it can do some of the stuff the F-47 is supposed to
do like being a drone leader.
I don't know
how Boeing landed this contract other than some sort of back room deal
where they were next up on the list of defense contractors needing a
handout. It doesn't help America at all, especially when the future of
war is less and less about fighters. At a time when Trump is supposed to
be cutting costs he's doing shady deals to hand out $60+ billion to
Boeing. It's rank hypocrisy and corruption.
Sorry for the long rant but it was too much to hear you get all giddy about Boeing pillaging us for more money.
F-47 more BOTG about the competition to build it
The USAF Next Generation Air Dominance program was a
competition between Locked Martin, Northrop Gruman and Boeing,and the
Air Force had selected a winner last year but the Biden admin didn't
want to approve it. Trump didn't pick Boeing, the AF did, they F-47 was
definitely a way to suck up to him though. The US Navy is also currently
competing bus from the same companies for their 6th generation fighter,
so one would expect this to pull Boeing out that competition since
developing a fighter is no small task.
Boing is
still making F-15s for foreign military partners and also have their USN
refueling drone, the MQ-25, that is in development. Both of those are
made in their St Louis plant and the F-47 very likely will also.
Big Pharma
Signal Gate
Walz connect the dots signal debacle
ITM John & Adam,
In anticipation for tomorrow's show covering the group chat debacle, here are some dots I've been toying with:
- Waltz was working in the DoD and as an advisor to Cheney in the W Bush days.
- Goldberg was publishing work actively supporting the invasion of Iraq at the time.
- The Cheney gang despises Trump
Could Goldberg have been invited on purpose? It's more likely he just goofed, but I'm seeing connections here.
TYFYC,
Sir Grantlius of the Great Plains
Newsom's Inferno
Shut Up Slave!
Go Podcasting!
Older Viewers Fuel YouTube Move to No. 1 Among TV Distributors in February
The service supplants Disney atop the Nielsen list for the second time.
