Cheryl Rofer
LG&M
New Mexico, United States
Contact Cheryl
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
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Past articles by Cheryl:
Maybe We Should Turn STRATCOM Off And Then On Again – Lawyers, Guns & Money
On Thursday, Air Force General Anthony Cotton, the head of the US Strategic Command, the service in charge of nuclear weapons, argued in testimony before Congress for more nuclear weapons, specifically a sea-launched cruise missile or SLCM-N. Back in the nineties, we pronounced this “slickem.” All things old are new again. General Cotton referred to a “strategic gap or challenge in the… → Read More
Federal Reserve Statement On Silicon Valley Bank – Lawyers, Guns & Money
> Washington, DC — The following statement was released by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome H. Powell, and FDIC Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg: Today we are taking decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system. This step will ensure that the U.S. banking system continues to perform its vital… → Read More
Saving Something By Destroying It – Lawyers, Guns & Money
Hey, I see that that guy Joe from Scranton got a guest essay in the New York Times Tuesday, and nobody seems to have noticed. It’s early days yet in the budget fight – the budget was released this morning – but Joe’s getting out ahead of the pack. Once again, as he did to the Russians last February, Joe is setting the narrative. > The budget I am releasing this week will make the Medicare… → Read More
War Crimes Happen – Lawyers, Guns & Money
And what is to be done? That is the position of militaries that want to commit war crimes. It is not far from the position of the United States Department of Defense. > The Pentagon is blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence with the International Criminal Court in The Hague gathered by American intelligence agencies about Russian atrocities in Ukraine, according to current… → Read More
Melon’s Latest Innovation – Lawyers, Guns & Money
In an innovative attempt to check who’s actually reading the links before they comment on Twitter, the new owner has broken all links from tweets. Additionally, images are not being allowed through to distract the serious reader and as another way to protect against child sexual exploitation. This should decrease numbers of both users and advertisers, unless they prove their loyalty by attacking… → Read More
Intelligence Analysis Is Not Scientific Investigation – Lawyers, Guns & Money
Several developments this week in stories I’ve been following. I finally have some time to post about them. Questions about how SARS-CoV-2 jumped from animals to humans and the so-called Havana Syndrome have both been subjects of recent intelligence assessments. Intelligence assessments are different beasts from scientific conclusions. I wrote about that for Scientific American. Intelligence… → Read More
There’s A Lot To Be Depressed About – Lawyers, Guns & Money
Last week, a CDC report, “Youth Risk Behavior Survey” dropped. It shows devastating levels of depression in young people, particularly young women. A great many people, predominantly middle-aged white men as far as I can see, have hastened to tell us that it’s all because of those newfangled phones. There might just be a few other things that might depress young women. * Getting into the right… → Read More
The Transformation Of Joyce Carol Oates – Lawyers, Guns & Money
Until very recently, my Twitter experience of Joyce Carol Oates has been to see one of her absolutely off-base tweets dragged. I’ve never been fond of her writing, although a few of her articles have seemed on target. But she is now on fire! With Truth about American politics and many other things! I hadn’t been paying attention, but she has been undergoing a gradual transformation in her… → Read More
Betting On Putin’s State Of Mind – Lawyers, Guns & Money
A couple of Twitter threads this morning point to the central problem of strategy in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Rob Farley’s argument with Emma Ashford starts here: > A bunch of folks here who are absolutely, utterly desperate to avoid learning any useful lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War. And it’s a shame because I’ve had respect for a lot of these folks. — Robert Farley (@drfarls)… → Read More
Twitter And Its Substitutes – Lawyers, Guns & Money
I get my news from Twitter. I follow experts in various fields, from universities, think tanks, wherever. I also follow individual reporters and editors who have proved their worth and governmental officials. I do not follow “official” news feeds from media. I use Tweetdeck on the desktop with an ad blocker, and my mobile is an Android. Both of those seem resistant to Elon Musk’s mucking about.… → Read More
Looking For A Response From The Times – Lawyers, Guns & Money
Haha, right? A coalition of organizations has put together a letter to the New York Times criticizing its recent inaccurate articles contributing to the moral panic against transgender people. The signers are people who have contributed to the Times and are LGBTQ+, along with allies. A couple of excerpts: > The newspaper’s editorial guidelines demand that reporters “preserve a professional… → Read More
The Ohio Train Derailment – Lawyers, Guns & Money
On February 3, a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous materials derailed near the town of East Palestine, Ohio. Fifty cars derailed, ten of which carried hazardous chemicals. Federal investigators say a mechanical issue with a rail car axle caused the derailment. A fire broke out in the rail cars, residents were evacuated, and the material in some of the cars was drained and set on fire.… → Read More
Russia Opens The Floodgates – Lawyers, Guns & Money
Russia controls one side of the Kakhovka Dam at the end of the Kakhovka Reservoir on the Dneiper River. Back when Russia was withdrawing to the east side of the Dneiper, they exploded a couple of mines at the dam. The reservoir provides drinking water to many Ukrainians and is the main water supply to Crimea, where they have been filling reservoirs. It is also the only water supply to the… → Read More
Quite A Story From A Single Anonymous Source – Lawyers, Guns & Money
Seymour Hersh published today, on his Substack, a long story about an involved plot by the United States to blow the Nordstream2 pipelines. No, I’m not going to link. It’s garbage. Over the past few years Hersh has argued that Osama bin Laden was not responsible for 9/11, and that Bashar al-Assad is not responsible for gassing his people. His venues have gone from the New Yorker to the London… → Read More
LGM Classical – “You Can’t Dance To It” – Lawyers, Guns & Money
In the comment thread to my first post in this series, Erik comments that you can’t dance to classical music. Well. Music and dance are intimately intertwined. Always have been. The waltz, like twerking, was a scandal of its time and felt to be corrupting of the youth. The first piece I think of when I think of dance and classical music is Maurice Ravel’s La Valse. Ravel wrote it for orchestra… → Read More
They’re Going To Try To Shoot Down The Balloon – Lawyers, Guns & Money
Once the balloon is over water, its uncontrolled landing no longer presents a danger to people. A fleet of planes and ships – Coast Guard, Navy, and Air Force – is gathering off the coast of the Carolinas for shootdown and pickup of the surveillance package. It’s being eagerly followed on Twitter. Some accounts to follow if you don’t already. > Now on task: 3x USAF KC-135 Mid-Air Refueling… → Read More
Chinese Spy Balloon Over The US – Lawyers, Guns & Money
A Chinese spy balloon has been spotted over Montana. NORAD says they saw it before that, and it was probably launched from China. It’s at an altitude above that of commercial flights, which probably means above 50,000 feet, but it can be seen from those flights, according to reports. There are a few videos that claim to be of the balloon, but who knows, and some of them are of the moon, which is… → Read More
LGM Classical – Lawyers, Guns & Money
One of our readers requested classical music commentary. I had thought of a couple of classical music posts over the past month but thought maybe rock and country were the official LGM flavors. So I volunteered. You know how it is with volunteers, though. They are hard to direct. Let me give you some idea of what to expect. I took piano lessons when I was a kid, up until I was ten or eleven… → Read More
The Enemy Gets A Vote – Lawyers, Guns & Money
It’s easy to get down in the weeds of getting Leopard tanks to Ukraine or when the spring offensive will come, but I want to draw back to a bigger picture. Vladimir Putin, or Russia, depending on how you look at it, is determined to bring Ukraine back into their sway. The shelling of civilians, a war crime, makes that point clear. The concern about NATO is not entirely rhetorical. Putin and his… → Read More
Not Enough Disruption? – Lawyers, Guns & Money
For the past few weeks, a paper in Nature has provoked vapors among those who want more scientific disruption. Bill Broad summarized it in the New York Times. The paper defined “disruption” by a pattern of citations in the scientific literature. Horrifyingly to some, those disruptions have decreased since 1950. There are layers of assumptions. First, that a pattern of citations in scientific… → Read More