Posts Tagged ‘airlines’

LinkSwarm for January 6, 2023

Friday, January 6th, 2023

Greetings, and welcome to the Friday LinkSwarm! By the time you read this, Kevin McCarthy will have lost more elections than Pat Paulsen.

  • Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “More U-Haul Trucks Left California Than Any Other State In 2022, Texas Top Destination.”

    More moving trucks left from California than any other state in 2022 for the third year in a row, while more Americans are flocking to Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, a new study published on Jan. 3 has found.

    The study was conducted by the moving truck rental company, U-Haul, and found that Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas were the preferred destinations for one-way moving trucks in 2022, with those states ranking as the top growth states on the annual U-Haul Growth Index.

    U-Haul’s Growth Index is compiled according to the net gain of one-way U-Haul trucks arriving in a state or city, versus those departing from that state or city each calendar year across the U.S. and Canada and is a strong indicator of what kind of job states and cities are attracting and maintaining residents, according to the company.

    Texas is the top destination for U-Haul trucks for the second consecutive year and the fifth time since 2016, according to the study. That is followed by Florida, which has been a top-three growth state for seven years in a row. South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, and Idaho also saw strong growth rates in 2022, the study found.

    I think I’ve posted a variation on this story just about every year I’ve published this blog…

  • Speaking of people fleeing high taxes, New York is hemorrhaging taxpayers as well.

    From July 2021 to July 2022, 300,000 more people moved out of the state than moved in. New York had the largest population loss—in both percentage and absolute terms—experienced by any state during that period.

    Sadly, this was both predictable and preventable.

    In March 2021, a study of New York found that its already staggeringly high tax burden had worsened due to an increase in the top marginal tax rate to almost 15% for those in New York City. The study projected that the flood of people leaving would only accelerate—and it did.

    Even before that study, the Empire State lost so many people that it cost New York a seat in Congress after the 2020 census. This exodus is a direct response to New York’s obscenely high taxes.

    Just how bad is it? Compared with other states, New Yorkers:

    • Pay the highest total tax burden and highest share of personal income (14%) in taxes.
    • Endure the second-worst overall business-tax climate.
    • Face the highest individual income-tax rate and income-tax collections per capita.
    • Pay the second-highest state and local corporate income tax collections per capita.
    • Have the fourth-highest property taxes and local sales-tax rate (on average).
    • Pay the highest cigarette taxes and ninth-highest gasoline taxes.
    • Pay the sixth-highest capital-stock tax rate.
    • Are tied for third-highest estate-tax rate.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Speaking of California: “California Officially Becomes a Sanctuary State for Child Mutilation.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Things that make you go “Hmmm“: “Virgin Islands AG Fired Three Days After Suing JPMorgan Over Jeffrey Epstein.”
  • Three Biden tax hikes that took place January 1. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Remember how I’ve noted that semiconductor memory manufacturers make money hand-over-fist in boom times and barely break even during busts? “Samsung Profits Plunge 69% As Global Chip Demand In ‘Full-Fledged Ice Age.'”
    

  • Turnabout is fair play: “U. Houston Prof Tells Students to Report Teachers Berating ‘White People or Christians to DEI Office.'”
  • Denver Mayor Michael Hancock takes pride in virtue signaling his city as a refuge for illegal aliens. Guess what?
  • Former Pope Benedict XVI dies at age 95.
  • Thanks to green energy policies and the Russo-Ukrainian War, it’s now too expensive to break bread in Europe. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • U.S. passes Qatar as world’s largest LNG exporter.
  • “How is it like being homeless in Portland?” “It’s a piece of cake really.”
  •  Jordan B. Peterson: “People camouflage themselves against the herd.”
  • This story should piss you off. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Drone swarm vs. carrier group simulation.
  • Ouch!
  • Some pretty amazing skiing.
  • Cereal experiments lame.
  • LinkSwarm for March 25, 2022

    Friday, March 25th, 2022

    It’s been a month since Russia invaded Ukraine, and Russian forces seem to have been pushed out of Irpin on the outskirts of Kiev.

    No wonder Russia is reported to be downsizing its war aims to the complete takeover of Donbas. Look for another Russo-Ukraine War roundup on Sunday or Monday. (Also, correction to a previous post: Despite complete encirclement, Mariupol still hasn’t fallen.)

    No on to the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • The big scandal in the Hunter Biden Laptop story isn’t Hunter’s deplorable actions, it’s Joe Biden’s corruption.

    Investigative reporter Peter Schweizer reiterated what he’s said about Hunter being close to criminal indictment. He said The New York Times “got a lot of cooperation from Team Biden” before they ran the story on Hunter that included their admission that the laptop was, indeed, real. He says Biden’s team was “trying to position themselves.” Of course, this case isn’t really about Hunter but the President of the United States, and a criminal indictment would open up “that whole can of worms” concerning dad’s connections to dirty money and the associated tax issues and huge national security concerns.

    Snip.

    George Soros, probably the most influential man in Ukraine, is a big part of this story, too. He gave $1 million to the humorously named Democratic Integrity Project, headed by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI analyst and staffer for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Jones had started the nonprofit (seems pretty profitable to me) after Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS approached him with the idea of forming the organization. Then, after filling its coffers to the tune of $7 million, Jones turned around and wrote a check to Fusion GPS for $3.3 million. I am not making this up. The same players keep turning up again and again.

    Fusion GPS’s task: to research how Russian intelligence operations were affecting elections around the world. And they brought in Hillary’s campaign chairman John Podesta to help. Still not making it up, my friends. This was after Podesta’s and the DNC’s emails had been purloined (the narrative became that they were hacked by Russia) and published by WikiLeaks, to the DNC’s embarrassment.

    (Incidentally, John’s lobbyist brother Tony was under investigation at that time for “cashing in” in Ukraine. He was paid $1.2 million to promote a plan conceived, ironically, by Manfort and Gates.)

    Then there’s the story you know, the investigation of Burisma by prosecutor Viktor Shokin until then-Vice President Biden got him fired by threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee. By now everyone has seen the video of Biden bragging about it before a live audience — without mentioning Hunter was on the Burisma board.

    There’s much more, involving Soros and an investigation by Shokin’s replacement into a Soros-funded organization, the ironically named Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC). This was when the new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch (remember her from Trump’s impeachment?) gave the prosecutor a list of people not to prosecute, including a founder of AntAC. Second-in-command George Kent had already tried to discourage the prosecutor from investigating. According to reporter John Solomon, their message to Ukrainian officials was this: “Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama.”

    There are others in Ukraine tied to both the Russia hoax and Trump’s impeachment. California Rep. Adam Schiff, running the impeachment, trotted out our diplomatic “experts” from Ukraine to talk about Trump and his “impeachable” phone call to President Zelenskyy. Those were Americans, our diplomatic corps, who’d been telling Ukrainian prosecutors who they could and could not prosecute and treating a Soros-funded organization like some sort of sacred cow. Soros supported Hillary and was Trump’s political enemy. He funded an organization conceived by Glenn Simpson. Something smells like bad borscht.

  • Questions asked: “Did The New York Times Admit Joe Biden Is Corrupt So Democrats Can Get Rid Of Him?” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The coming bloodbath for Democrats.

    Will Rogers once famously said he did not belong to an organised political party because he was a Democrat. Yet today the traditional factiousness of the Democratic coalition has been engulfed by an almost Stalinist attitude that brooks no dissent on its most treasured policies – even though these do not resonate well with the bulk of the electorate.

    To recover, Democrats need to find a way back to their historic base of working-class and minority voters, who now seem to be heading to the GOP. Franklin D Roosevelt’s alliance between big cities, small towns, labour unions and farmers was often awkward, but it still achieved remarkable success in restoring US confidence and winning the war. In contrast, President Biden’s boneheaded embrace of a progressive agenda that is widely detested across most of the population may prove to be one of the greatest political blunders of recent American history.

    Given the probability of a significant loss in this November’s Midterms, we should expect – and hope for – a full-scale brawl over the party’s trajectory. There needs to be something equivalent to the New Democrats who, under Bill Clinton, revived the party after the devastating defeats of George McGovern and Michael Dukakis in the 1970s and 80s by moving the party to the centre and connecting it to the country’s diverse regions. ‘Too many Americans’, wrote New Democrats Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck in 1989, ‘have come to see the party as inattentive to their economic interests, indifferent if not hostile to their moral sentiments, and ineffective in defence of their national security’.

    Snip.

    The economic metrics are awful. Despite nominal GDP gains and higher wages, inflation, largely driven by energy prices, has been particularly cruel to minority and working-class voters. Overall, when asked if they are better off now than a year ago, twice as many Americans said ‘worse’ than better in a recent poll.

    The cave-in to the greens has increased the Democrats’ economic vulnerability, particularly in the wake of Russian aggression and the continued role of China as the world’s dominant greenhouse-gas emitter. The well-funded American environmental elite lack the grudging sense of realism of their German counterparts, who have been forced to reconsider some of their energy policies in light of the invasion. But in resource-rich America, the green grandees still oppose boosting fossil-fuel energy supplies, despite 80 per cent of voters, and an equal percentage of Democrats, favouring the use of both fossil fuels and renewables. Public support for Net Zero / the Green New Deal hovers around 20 per cent.

    Essentially the Democrats’ Net Zero obsession could result in a political disaster. In February, according to Gallup, only two per cent of voters named climate or the environment as their biggest concern, one-fifth the number who named inflation and barely one-tenth the number who cited poor government leadership. Relentless climate scaremongering has not moved the needle among voters. ‘Climate catastrophism’, notes political strategist Ruy Teixeira, is a political ‘loser’, particularly among working-class voters of all races.

    Cultural issues represent another fault line between the bulk of the electorate and the tin-eared elites of the party. Democrats’ have embraced what former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville scathingly labels ‘the politics of the faculty lounge’, such as support for the increasingly discredited Black Lives Matter movement and its calls to ‘defund the police’. This idea may be beloved at places like Harvard, but among the less elevated mortals it is widely unpopular, even among minorities, including two of the nation’s Democratic African-American mayors, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and New York City’s Eric Adams.

    Voters view crime as the second-most pressing issue, after the economy and inflation. Here again the survey results are equally distressing for the progressive agenda. Voters, according to one recent survey, blame the Democrats for the current crime wave by a margin of two to one. Moderate Democrats, like retiring Florida congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, herself a refugee from Vietnam, found her support for legislation that would penalise undocumented criminals got her labeled as ‘anti-immigrant’ by the party’s dominant progressive mob.

  • “Hispanic Texans Overwhelmingly Believe There Is a Border Crisis and Support Security Measures.” “Almost three-quarters of respondents agreed that there is a crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico with only 23 percent disagreeing with that characterization.”
  • Turns out even Democratic primary voters don’t think you should be talking to kindergartners about sex:

  • “DeSantis signs bill to make school curriculums more transparent for parents.”
  • Donald Trump is suing Hillary and her Russia Collusion Hoax Co-Conspirators. Good. The discovery alone should be epic…
  • Speaking of Trump lawsuits, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is suspending his investigation into Trump indefinitely. Time to pull this timeless montage out of the closet again:

  • The Biden Administration really wants to increase the price of oil, even if it means illegally roping in the SEC to enforce green “climate justice.”
  • Biden also said that food shortages are coming. That’s some mighty fine leadership you’ve got going on there, Lou…
  • No wonder Biden’s approval rating now matches Trump’s lowest. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit. )
  • U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela will resign early from Congress. The South Texas Democrat announced last year that he wouldn’t seek reelection. He’s leaving early to take a job at a law firm.” Yeah, people don’t leave the United States Congress early for a law firm job. There’s something else going on there. (Hat tip: Push Junction, who noted Republicans have a good chance to flip the seat.)
  • Hidalgo Staff Allegedly Plotted to Steer $11 Million Contract, ‘Slam the Door’ on Competing Bid, per Warrants. A grand jury investigation found probable cause of tampering with governmental documents and misuse of official information related to a contract awarded to a woman with ties to local and national Democrats.” My working theory is that whenever you see something like this going on, kickbacks, graft and illegal donations to hard left groups and individuals are all but a certainty.
  • Also: “Hidalgo Says Communications About $11 Million Vaccine Outreach Contract Were Private, Taken Out of Context.” When you’re talking about a public official discussing a public contract using taxpayer money with her public staff, also paid using taxpayer money, there is no such thing as “private.”
  • Nicholas Moran cautions to avoid drawing too many conclusions from the limited video information coming out of the Russo-Ukranian War. “That tanks unsupported by the other arms are easy prey is tanking 101, and what we are seeing in Ukraine isn’t revolutionary, it’s exactly what you would expect to happen if you send vehicles in unsupported into areas infested with infantry and not denied to enemy air.” Also: We’re only seeing the Ukrainian side because they’re the ones uploading cell phone footage, and an important reminder that an anti-tank hit is not an anti-tank kill. (Previously.)
  • Borepatch is not impressed with the level of security in the latest online voting scheme.
  • Heh:

    

  • This seems disturbing: “Seven hospitalized ‘including four juveniles’ in mass fentanyl poisoning after deadly drug is released through air vents.” This was in Ohio. So add “aerosolized Fentanyl” to the list of things to worry about…
  • “United Airlines Rolls Back Vaccine Requirements for Employees. United Airlines announced that it would be changing its policy and that unvaccinated workers would be allowed to return to their normal positions by March 28.” Personally, I’d try to get them to pay through the nose for my return…
  • Utah’s legislature overrides the Republicans governor’s veto of a bill banning men from women’s sports.
  • Another week, another high-profile staffer quitting Kamala Harris’ office. “On Monday, in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’ disastrous visit to Poland, it was reported that her National Security Adviser Nancy McEldowney, will become the latest staffer to leave Harris’ office.”
  • Not just Texas: A tornado ripped through New Orleans this week.
  • Interesting thread on how fake science on dietary fat causing heart disease led to the sugar-and-carb engendered obesity epidemic in today’s America.
  • There’s a construction labor shortage in Houston.
  • “Investors at BuzzFeed are reportedly pressuring CEO Jonah Peretti to close down its entire money-losing news operation as senior journalists announced their resignations on Tuesday.” See, the problem here is that they used “Buzzfeed,” “journalists” and “news” all in the same sentence…
  • Speaking of failing leftwing outlets, the Texas Observer is circling the drain.

    In September, the Observer’s editorial staff comprised 13 journalists. As of this month, after a rash of resignations — and one firing — only four of them remain. The five-person business team dwindled to zero in February. This mass exodus, former staffers said, can be traced to a series of board decisions — from the handling of a complaint by former Editor-in-Chief Tristan Ahtone, which led to his resignation; to promising Executive Editor Megan Kimble the top job in the interim, only to pass her over for an outside hire; to unilaterally halting publication of the magazine just days before it went to print.

    Read on for the blow-by-blow, but evidently the staff got too uppity for the board of directors and we’re shown the door, with some side orders of “diversity” and “a web-first publication.” I would say this was all good schadenfreude, but I doubt I’ve even thought of the Observer since George W. Bush was governor…

  • Babylon Bee banned from Twitter for naming “Dr. Rachel Levine” Man of the Year.
  • Louis Rossmann finds the same problems plaguing New York City also plague D.C., namely high retail vacancies and general disorder. “It’s literally like somebody just picked up all the problems of New York City, control-C, and control-V them somewhere else.”
  • Speaking of New York City, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams wants you to know that athletes and actors are simply better than you common peasants, so vaccine mandates don’t apply to them. “The exemption for athletes and entertainers comes ahead of the upcoming baseball season, opening the field for unvaccinated Mets and Yankees to play home games too. Roughly two-thirds of Yankees players and at least ten Mets remain unvaccinated and will now be able to participate, Jon Heyman of the MLB Network noted.” Plus Kyrie Irving on the Brooklyn Nets.
  • I LOLed:

  • “Taliban Spokesman Finally Banned From Twitter After Sharing Babylon Bee Headline.”
  • Just How Screwed Are Russian Airlines?

    Thursday, March 24th, 2022

    The answer is: “Pretty screwed.”

    Some takeaways:

  • They’ve lost virtually all their international routes.
  • They’re basically back to Soviet-era route choices.
  • Aeroflot now has only one international flight route…into Belarus.
  • It’s not just flights to and from Russia that are affected. Lots of international flights between Europe and Asia transited now-closed Russian airspace. Flights from Helsinki to Tokyo now take three hours longer.
  • Russia has also been locked out of the Global Distribution System (GDS), which connects just about all global travel providers.
  • Middle East airlines are still flying too and from Russia, mainly Moscow. But without GDS, no one can directly book connecting flights to other Russian cities.
  • A majority of the world’s airliners are leased from an outside company. More than half of Russian airliners are leased from companies outside the country. All those are refusing to continue doing business in Russia.
  • The Cape Town Treaty governs aircraft repossession, and Russia is a signatory to the treaty.
  • But instead of following the terms of the treaty, Russia has just sanctioned the theft of those aircraft.
  • Both Boeing and Airbus have suspended all maintenance support with Russia. Without legitimate spare parts, even Russian-owned aircraft could be banned from flying internationally. And even Russian Sukhoi depends on German Lufthansa Technik for spare parts.
  • One side effect: Without outside airline ability to overfly Russian territory, Anchorage is likely to become an international hub again.
  • One possible winner: Anchorage-based startup Northern Pacific Air.
  • LinkSwarm for October 30, 2021

    Saturday, October 30th, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to a Saturday LinkSwarm! To get this out, even a day late, I’ve tossed all the Virginia Governor’s race/Louden County news into a separate post, hopefully on tap for tomorrow.
    

  • “Biden Freezes ICE; Suspends 85% of Criminal Alien Deportations.” Democrats regard criminal illegal aliens as a far more precious resource than American jobs.

    One of President Biden’s first acts on immigration is to suspend investigations, arrests, and deportations of most criminal aliens for the next 100 days. In a memo titled “Review of and Interim Revision to Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Policies and Procedures”, sent on Wednesday to all immigration agency heads, Acting DHS Secretary David Pekoske announced the deportation freeze and new enforcement priorities that go into effect now. The memo imposes restrictions on immigration enforcement actions that are even tighter than those adopted (with disastrous results) by the Obama administration, and make the country a sanctuary not only for criminal aliens, but all who are here in defiance of our laws.

    According to the memo, virtually all removals will stop for 100 days. In addition, only the following categories of illegal aliens will be subject to removal as of February 1, 2020:

    • National security threats — those who have been involved in or are suspected of involvement in terrorism, or who are otherwise deemed a threat;
    • Recent illegal border crossers — those who have arrived illegally after November 1, 2020; and
    • Aggravated felons — those who are currently incarcerated for an aggravated felony conviction and who are determined to be a threat to public safety.

    If you’re any other kind of illegal alien felon, Democrats evidently want you here, victimizing Americans.

    In practice, this means that ICE must release criminal aliens and others in custody who are not covered in these definitions. This will include aliens convicted of domestic violence, sex offenses, drunk driving, theft causing loss of less than $10,000, vehicular homicide, an infinite number of misdemeanor crimes, and much more. It means that when USCIS refuses green cards or other benefits because the applications were fraudulent, that unqualified applicant will be able to stay anyway. It means that in the next 100 days, if a local police officer arrests a previously deported gang member, even one with a serious criminal history, for a new crime that is not an aggravated felony, ICE will not be able to take action to remove that gang member again.

    MI-13 must love Biden… (Hat tip: Sharyl Attkisson.)

  • “Joe Biden to Ban Cash Bail for Violent Criminals — in the Interest of ‘Equity.'” There’s no end to the number of other people’s dead bodies social justice warriors are willing to step over on their way to utopia…
  • San Francisco prosecutors quit, and District Attorney Chesa Boudin faces a second recall effort over failure to prosecute crimes.

    Walgreens closed 22 stores in San Francisco where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized.

    A couple of readers asked “Why just San Francisco?” if it was California Proposition 47 that put the $950 limit on nonviolent misdemeanors.

    The answer is total lack of enforcement in San Francisco.

    Please note San Francisco DA faces second recall effort as residents ‘fed up’ with progressive ‘zero consequence’ policies.

    A second recall effort launched against San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin demonstrates how residents are “fed up” with his progressive policies, as his push to reduce jail funding and refusal to prosecute repeat offenders ensures the streets remain marred with open-air drug dealing and violent crime now stretching into the suburbs, a leader of the prominent local police union tells Fox News.

    Last week, the first Republican-backed recall effort fell just 1,714 signatures short of the 51,325 required to trigger a special election to bring the question of ousting Boudin before voters. Now a second recall effort is being organized, which Boudin brushed off Monday night as proof that his so-called successes in reducing incarceration has “angered the billionaire class.”

    But it’s his progressive approach that’s actually hurting average San Franciscans, San Francisco Police Officers Association President Tony Montoya tells Fox News, as Boudin’s “swiftest revolving door in criminal justice” sends the message to offenders that there are no consequences for their actions.

    Snip.

    Prosecutors Brooke Jenkins and Don Du Bain told KNTV they have stepped down from their posts in San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office due to his lack of commitment to prosecuting crimes.

    “Chesa has a radical approach that involves not charging crime in the first place and simply releasing individuals with no rehabilitation and putting them in positions where they are simply more likely to re-offend,” Jenkins said in the interview. “Being an African American and Latino woman, I would wholeheartedly agree that the criminal justice system needs a lot of work, but when you are a district attorney, your job is to have balance.”

    Du Bain added that he believed Boudin “disregards the laws that he doesn’t like, and he disregards the court decisions that he doesn’t like to impose his own version of what he believes is just – and that’s not the job of the district attorney.”

  • Biden Administration says they’re not going to let anything stand in their way when it comes to firing those who refuse to knuckle under to their vaccine mandate. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “John Kerry Holds $1 Million Stake in Equity Fund Linked To Uyghur Labor Abuse.” Because of course he does.

    The Chinese private equity fund in which John Kerry holds a $1 million stake is not only invested in a tech company blacklisted for human rights abuses but is also a major shareholder in a solar panel company linked to labor abuses of the Uyghurs.

    Last December, that private equity fund, Hillhouse China Value Fund L.P., purchased a 6 percent stake in LONGi Green Energy, a Chinese solar panel manufacturer, making it the company’s second largest shareholder.

    LONGi has come under fire from human rights groups and U.S. lawmakers for sourcing many of its raw materials from companies suspected of using forced labor in Xinjiang, a region in northwest China where the government has cracked down on the Uyghur population and other ethnic minorities.

    Hillhouse is also a major funder of a tech company tied to the Chinese government’s surveillance of the Uyghurs, as first reported by the Washington Free Beacon last week. News of that investment led Republican senators to call on Biden to fire Kerry over ethics concerns. Further insight into Hillhouse’s holdings is likely to increase scrutiny of Kerry’s finances and raise questions about whether he is using his role as climate envoy to block regulations on Chinese solar panel imports. While Kerry has acknowledged that many solar panels are produced with forced labor in Xinjiang, he has also indicated resistance to additional financial restrictions or penalties on these goods.

    So Kerry is working the China grift and the green grift at the same time. No wonder he couldn’t resist…

  • Speaking of which: China produces more CO2 than the U.S., India, Russia and Japan combined. “China’s emissions are so vast that its biggest companies, few of which are household names, create more pollution than entire nations. China Baowu, the world’s top steelmaker, put more CO2 into the atmosphere last year than Pakistan.”
  • Manchin and Sinema continue to terrorize democrats by daring to doing what their constituents want rather than doing the Holy Will Of The Party.

    Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) are the gruesome twosome. They may have different reasons behind their opposition to the $3.5 trillion spending package, dubbed human infrastructure, that Democrats want to pass via the reconciliation process, but the results are the same. The far-left can’t get everything they want—which has infuriated them to no end. They don’t like the price tag. They don’t like the ethos behind it. They don’t like the tax structures. The tax on billionaires is out due to Manchin’s opposition. Sinema isn’t moving on hiking corporate taxes. Now, paid family leave has been nixed and most of the climate change provisions are gone too. Manchin and Sinema are the angels of death for the far-Left. It’s not hard to figure out why. These two will do what they think is best for the constituents of their respective states. Period. This has been known about Manchin for years, and he’s not afraid to lose re-election. If that’s the case, he will happily take his houseboat and go home. Sinema is the same with regards to Arizona. She’s there to serve them. Not Chuck Schumer, not the liberal media, not the hordes of illegal alien activists who harass her in the bathroom. And polling shows that voters in West Virginia and Arizona aren’t too keen on the $3.5 trillion bill

  • “Desperate Democrats Aren’t Making Sausage, They’re Dropping Live Pigs Into a Woodchipper.”

    If you haven’t been following the situation on Capitol Hill — and it’s in so much flux that it’s almost impossible to stay completely up to date — I’ll give you a brief rundown before we get to that odor.

    “Build Back Better” is Biden’s slogan for a massive expansion of welfare, spending, regulation, the likes of which we haven’t seen since LBJ’s Not-So-Great Society. Massive change on slender majorities is not a good idea, either politically or for the nation’s social fabric, but Dems gotta Dem.

    BBB comes in two parts.

    The first is a $1.2 trillion-with-a-T “infrastructure” bill that doesn’t contain much actual infrastructure spending, but is nonetheless supported by enough Republicans to almost guarantee its passage. (We’ll get back to the “almost” momentarily, so stick a pin in that.)

    The second is another, even larger bill so absurd that its contents fall under comic sci-fi writer Douglas Adams’ “bistromathics.” There have been several versions of this bill, ranging in price from the current “compromise” bill costing $1.8 trillion (so they say) to the original Bernie Sanders (CPUSA-Vermont Oblast) version weighing in at $3.5 trillion (but actually $5 trillion).

    No one knows what any version would actually cost. My friend and colleague Stephen Kruiser heard from a Senate aide on Thursday that the current bill is 2,500 pages, has no table of contents, and we probably won’t know what’s in it even if it does pass.

    This brings us to a defining concept of bistromathics, recipriversexclusion, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. So if Democrats claim the bill costs precisely $1,790,238,032,455, then you can be sure it costs some figure exactly not that (but higher).

    But they can’t get any version passed, because the hard left keeps demanding more and more radical proposals Democratic leadership can’t deliver.

  • Former Clinton Operative Charged With Securities Fraud.” This is my shocked face.

    Authorities in Denver have ordered the arrest of Steve Bachar, a longtime Clinton operative and “socially responsible” investor who has been charged with felony theft and securities fraud. The former co-chair of the Clinton Global Initiative is also under investigation for unrelated allegations that he mishandled millions of dollars allocated for personal protective equipment at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Bachar is accused of stealing as much as $1 million and lying to an investor “in connection with the offer, sale or purchase of a security,” according to the criminal complaint filed by the Denver district attorney’s office. The crimes are alleged to have occurred between October 2017 and August 2018. The former Clinton operative told the Denver Post the criminal charges were “outrageous, unfounded, and false,” and he looks forward to letting “the facts come to light.”

    Bachar, who served as White House advance lead and in the Treasury Department under former president Bill Clinton before joining the Clinton Global Initiative, also served on the national finance committee for Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign in 2016 and as an adviser to former governor John Hickenlooper (D., Colo.). His private sector career as a corporate attorney and cofounder of Empowerment Capital Management was focused on “socially responsible investing.”

    This is not the first time the socially responsible investor has been accused of serious wrongdoing. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bachar allegedly pocketed nearly $2 million from health care companies that believed they were purchasing life-saving personal protective equipment such as masks and gowns.

    According to a lawsuit filed by a Denver-based health care company, Bachar agreed to sell them 4,200 cases of N95 masks for $2.4 million in April 2020 but never delivered the masks and did not return their initial payment of $604,000. Over the summer, Bachar was ordered to pay nearly $4.5 million to the companies he allegedly defrauded but has yet to comply with the civil judgments against him.

  • Speaking of corrupt Democratic crime families, former New York Governor has been charged charged with sex cri-cri-cri-crime.

    With the obligatory Eurythmics video

    (I actually own their 1984 soundtrack, but “Sexcrime” isn’t nearly as good as “Doubleplusgood.”)

  • Remember how much the liberal media tried to demonize Florida’s lack of lockdowns and mandates because they hate Ron DeSantis? Well, Florida now has the second lowest rate of Flu Manchu in the country.
  • Biden begs the Middle East to increase oil production while halting production in Alaska:

    While the administration begs overseas adversaries to ramp up oil production with jobs and development to the benefit of foreign citizens, Americans remain handicapped by Democrats’ zealous animosity towards fossil fuel extraction on domestic land.

    Underneath the tundra surface of Alaska’s North Slope sits an estimated 4.3 t0 11.8 billion barrels of untouched recoverable oil located within the flat wetland boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Then-President Donald Trump opened ANWR’s 1.6 million acres of the 19.6 million-acre refuge for drilling in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, with leases approved since then now in jeopardy under the new administration.

    Biden has been yanking permits and demanding new environmental assessments in an effort to cancel projects altogether. Last week, the Interior Department tossed out the analysis completed under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), long held as the gold standard of assessing environmental impacts, and ordered a new supplemental review for leases in the Arctic refuge two months after they were suspended.

  • In Wisconsin, more of that voting fraud that doesn’t exist:

    Racine County Sheriff’s Department investigators have presented evidence that the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) committed felony election fraud by telling nursing home staffers to violate state law and fill out ballots on behalf of nursing home residents who were unable to themselves.

    During a news conference Thursday, Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said WEC commissioners and staff who prohibited legally-required special voting deputies from entering nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic and instead told nursing home staff members to assist residents in voting committed a Class I felony, which is punishable by a maximum sentence of three years, six months in prison and $10,000 in fines.

  • I missed this for my Texas Critical Race Theory fight roundup: “Keller ISD’s Timber Creek High School is Brewing Division.” “Over the last year, teachers and staff at a North Texas school have been going against the district and teaching racist propaganda, creating division among students, parents, and staff. Under the supervision of teachers, students are leading the charge in this growing division Keller ISD’s Timber Creek High School has been experiencing since the previous school year.”
  • “Illinois Supreme Court Rules Tax On Guns & Ammo Unconstitutional.”
  • Portugal’s socialist government may collapse because leftwing parties don’t think its socialist enough:

    Portugal’s six-year experiment with leftwing “anti-austerity” government will end this week in a political crisis leading to early elections unless António Costa, the socialist prime minister, can strike a last-minute budget deal with the radical left.

    The anti-capitalist Left Bloc (BE) and old-guard Communist party (PCP) have vowed to withhold crucial support in a budget vote on Wednesday unless the minority Socialist party (PS) government makes further concessions in a bill already seen as the most leftwing in recent history.

    “They are asking the impossible and I can’t see the PS giving way,” said Francisco Seixas da Costa, a political commentator and former secretary of state for European affairs. “The pact has exhausted its possibilities and the BE and PCP can see no further advantage in co-operating with the government.”

    Costa has offered a €40 increase in the national minimum wage to €705 a month and a €700m increase in investment in the national health service, alongside higher old-age pensions and public sector wages. The BE and PCP are pushing for bigger increases in these areas as well as labour reforms that the government fears would clash with EU rules.

    After offering hope to struggling centre-left parties across Europe and inspiring neighbouring Spain’s mainstream socialists to follow a similar path, Portugal’s broad left pact is foundering over the smaller parties’ dissatisfaction with their peripheral role, and the limits of EU policy.

    If the budget is defeated, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Portugal’s centre-right president, has said he will immediately dissolve parliament and call a general election two years ahead of schedule. Costa, meanwhile, has stated he would remain in office at the head of a caretaker government until the ballot was held, probably in January.

  • Freedom Flu update: Skywest cancels more than 100 flights.
  • This has been all over everywhere this week, but it still angries up my blood: Fauci Funded ‘Cruel’ Puppy Experiments Where Sand Flies ‘Eat Them Alive’; Vocal Cords Severed.”
  • No less than four versions of “Let’s Go Brandon” are in the iTunes top 10.
  • “Gas Stations Across Iran Crippled After Massive Cyberattack.”

    Iran has announced that the country’s energy infrastructure was hit by a massive cyberattack on Tuesday, which left state subsidized gas stations across the country out of commission, resulting in very long lines of cars observed waiting to fill up in many towns and cities.

    The timing is interesting given it happened near the two year anniversary mark of deadly nationwide protests following serious gas shortages and price hikes in the fall of 2019. The ‘activist’ nature of the hack is further revealed in that Iranian media is reporting that a message showed up in national computer systems that were hacked that addressed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the words, “where is the gas?”

  • Americans are more generous than Europeans — by a large margin.”

    By nearly every measure Americans are more generous with their money and time than anyone — including Europeans.

    Indeed, American charitable giving exceeds the entire GDP of most European countries.

    According to the Almanac of American Philanthropy, Americans donate around seven times as much as continental Europeans to charitable causes per capita. Per person, even after adjusting for differences in household income, Americans donate twice as much of their income as the Dutch, three times as much as the French, five times as much as Germans, and ten times that of Italians.

  • Tulum, Mexico: Come for the warm Caribbean sun, stay for the non-stop cartel shootings. (The cartel is evidently the Jalisco New Generation.
  • Reno outlaws Indiana Jones, Lash Larue, and Devo. (Hat tip: Dwight.
  • “Supply Chain Crisis Solved As Each Migrant Coming Into Country Will Be Asked To Help Carry A Shipping Container.”
  • “Biden Promises He Will Stop Being A Bad President If Everyone Gets Vaccinated.”
  • To wash out the taste of the Fauci news, have some funny beagle content:

  • LinkSwarm for October 22, 2021

    Friday, October 22nd, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to the Friday LinkSwarm! Manchin stands firm, Psaki drips with contempt, #NeverTrump and #BlackLivesMatter share a sugar daddy, and “Let’s Go Brandon” pops up everywhere.

  • It’s suddenly beginning to dawn on Democrats that Manchin means it.

    Joe Manchin means what he says. Democrats and the media may not grasp this as it happens so rarely in Washington, and neither group has included that in its calculations. However, that reality keeps getting clearer and clearer, and the Punchbowl crew warn Democrats to figure it out — fast:

    Manchin has been remarkably consistent, and all the major media outlets have reported it time and time again. If you’re surprised by what Manchin is saying now, maybe you’ve been really busy, tied up on other endeavors and haven’t listened to or read what he’s said. That’s understandable. Life moves pretty fast.

    But if you have listened to Manchin and you’re still surprised by or enraged at his positions, that may be because you’re irrationally hopeful he will change his beliefs, or you’re engaging in wishful and likely unrealistic thinking. Maybe you’re just listening to what you want to hear. But don’t worry, you aren’t alone. Half of official Washington has decided that they’re going to ignore what Manchin says and believe he has a secret set of beliefs he’s waiting to unveil.

    Here’s what you have to understand about Manchin: He says what he means. When he gets heavy pressure from the left, it helps him back home.

    Here’s the reality: Joe Manchin is a filibuster-supporting conservative Democrat who is also an ardent supporter of coal, skeptical of big government and massive spending packages. He never pretends otherwise. Let’s all stop acting surprised when he says the same thing for the umpteenth time.

    No kidding. That’s always been the reality, right along with the reality of an evenly split Senate. One would think that Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer would have put those two realities together and realize that launching a massive progressive-agenda reconciliation bill would have been a no-sale from the very beginning. Up to now, Democrats seem to have talked themselves into a fantasy that Manchin was just looking for a deal, or that they could pressure him into folding.

    Now that neither approach has worked — so far, anyway — The Hill reports that Democrats have begun to panic:

    Democrats are facing growing headaches over their sweeping social spending bill as they struggle to show momentum ahead of an end-of-the-month deadline.

    President Biden will meet with groups of moderates and progressives on Tuesday, and he’s facing pressure from some in his party to take a tighter rein on the talks.

    Instead of narrowing their differences, Democrats are dealing with a near constant whack-a-mole of new problems in recent days ranging from climate provisions and child care to increasingly intense infighting between moderates and progressives.

    The “whack-a-mole” is also a product of Democratic fantasy. They larded up the reconciliation bill with the entire progressive wish-list agenda, and as those items get attention, they also draw opposition. This omnibus approach to the hobby-horse list from the Bernie Sanders wing might have worked if Democrats had a clear and significant majority in each chamber of Congress, or if they had worked out the details with Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema beforehand. Biden doesn’t have the former and didn’t do any work on the latter, which is why Democrats are playing “whack-a-mole” now.

    Now, as The Hill reports separately, Manchin’s entirely predictable opposition to Green New Deal-esque legislation threatens to torpedo Biden’s entire agenda:

    The hard left is so used to the MSM pandering to their delusions of popularity that cold, hard reality always comes as something of a shock to them. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • In West Virginia, Biden is at 76% disapproval vs. 19% approval. What sort of leverage can Biden exert on Manchin? (Hat tip: Jim Gerghaty.)
  • Senate Republicans successfully filibuster Democrats’ voting fraud bill. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Evidently Commie Girl isn’t a popular choice to be Comptroller of the Currency.

    Unsurprisingly, some influential Senate Democrats are getting cold feet about the prospect of President Biden nominating Saule Omarova to lead the OCC. The Cornell law professor educated in the USSR who has proposed that the Fed take over most retail banking activities from the private sector (which a Fedcoin – or ZuckCoin – just might help it to do) while wholeheartedly supporting the progressives’ “Green New Deal” agenda.

    This has, understandably, made many in both Congress, and the industry she is about to regulate, uncomfortable.

    Various Omarova commie policy proposals we’ve previously covered snipped.

    According to CNBC’s main source (who remains anonymous) is that these Senators have already shared their misgivings with President Biden.

    Her selection, coupled with her views on how to overhaul the US banking system, prompted several Senate Democrats or their staff to complain to the White House and suggest that the president’s choice will be tough to support on Capitol Hill, according to a person familiar with the matter.

    This person declined to be named in order to speak openly about private discussions between the White House and Senate offices.

    Others surrounding the OCC nomination process said a handful of moderate Democrats harbor reservations about Omarova and her aspirations to “end banking as we know it,” as she suggested in a Vanderbilt Law Review article.

    Those people cautioned that skeptical senators likely haven’t made a final decision yet but are leaning against her candidacy.

  • Why UK coronavirus death statistics can’t be trusted:

  • “Coronavirus always mutational drift at a steady rate.”

    “Just from a science point of view it doesn’t make sense.”

  • Speaking of untrustworthy coronavirus information, Joe Rogan slams Google:

  • Speaking of Google, supposedly they’re purging “Let’s Go Brandon” videos from YouTube, so let’s see how long until they ban this:

    And this evidently topped iTunes’ rap charts:

  • Virginia Tech is going to limit attendance to crack down on “Fuck Joe Biden” chants.
  • Despite having a vaccine, Putin has given Russian workers a week off due to soaring Flu Manchu cases.
  • In-N-Out Burgers closes it’s Fan Francisco store after refusing to become the city’s vaccine police.
  • Just in case it was still unclear to , yes, the National Institute of Health did fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, despite Anthony Fauci swearing up and down otherwise.
  • Lileks on Comrade Psaki and “needs“:

    It’s not just the vexation you get when a lot of people are crammed into one place, though. It’s imposed, by dint of not doing anything about the disorderly elements. We will not police the streets so you will step over needles. We will not clear out the encampment so you will have an inert RV fill the neighborhood with smoke when it burns. We will not do something about petty theft, so you will have to wait for the clerk to get a key. We will not confine the mentally ill, so you will be trailed for a block by someone scrabbling a hand in his pants.

    When you complain, you will be told you’re lucky not to be in the situation of the people who are causing the problems.You should be grateful you don’t have to steal Tide. You should be grateful you can afford to replace your broken stove, even though the replacement won’t come for 8 months. (It’ll be 9 next month.) I suppose that’s true, but it’s setting the bar rather low, and making the disorderly uncivil elements the baseline. Anything above that, it’s gravy.

    Revanchist running-dog lackey of the plutocratic hegemony that I am, I am suspicious when the state determintes your needs and justifies their construction. You don’t need the treadmill is you don’t need 14 varities of ice cream is you don’t need that car is you don’t need that hamburger when there’s bug protein is you don’t need fast access to unprotected detergent is you don’t need to go to that wedding is you don’t need . . . this. That. The other thing. And it is churlish of you to think you need this when (insert aching never-solved non-analogous problem that still exists despite decades of expenditures here).

    Ever seen the old Soviet ads? They’re lovely. They didn’t have 15 different brands. They just had a nice ad for marmalade, in general. No confusion. Yes, but did they actually produce any marmalade? Of course! But if there wasn’t any marmalade, because the wreckers and kulaks had prevented the fufillment of the Five-Year Fruit Spread Goals, everyone shared the experience. There was Marmalade Equity. And Comrade Brezhnev had his toast dry? He may have had some at diplomatic occasions, where it was expected.

    What you might take away from the exchange above is this: the press secretary has access to a treadmill, and it works, and if it doesn’t, there are ten others in a row just like it. And membership in the fitness club comes with the job.

  • And never forget that she, and the mandarins she represents, hate you.

    This is what Trump’s critics meant when they said we needed to restore “civility” to the White House: they meant we need the right kind of disdain for the right kinds of people, expressed in the right kinds of ways. Gone are the mean tweets, the off-color jokes, the rough pugilism. Now instead we have Jen Psaki, sneering avatar of an aristocracy that regards working Americans as less than dirt. People are straining to put food on the table and gas in their cars; they increasingly fail to see the point in going to work at all. Psaki’s response is that of the anointed class she represents: shut up and take it.

    We are ruled over by a cabal of solipsists who feel outraged that the regressive pigs in flyover country express any opinions at all—about the fruits of their labor, about the security of their nation, about the health of their bodies. Their response is that we should “lower expectations” for affordable food, “welcome competition” from a rapidly arming China, and “follow the advice of health experts” on pain of unemployment.

    Who can forget the treacly grin with which Psaki invited us to “stay tuned” for Biden’s forthcoming vaccine decree? She delights in her role, which is to act out the revenge fantasies of all who felt wounded in 2016 by the mere suggestion that their virtue is less than immaculate. We have to reckon with the fact that Psaki, loathsome though she may be, is doing her job exactly as intended. Her affronts are outrageous only to the people who already hate her: from her target audience they elicit shouts of “YAS Kween” and “drag him!” She is not slipping up when she insults your intelligence and riles up your countrymen against you, when she lies unblinkingly out in the open and defies you to do anything about it. That is her job, and she is good at it. She is doing exactly what she was put there to do.

    No one with a spine should take instruction on “civility” from such a feckless cretin or anyone who enjoys her act. If we are to re-learn civic excellence, it will not be from a movement whose moral framework consists of slander and self-satisfaction. Remember that in 2022 and 2024 when they call you a fascist or a bigot or a domestic terrorist or whatever: these are people who think Jen Psaki is a good person. Their opinion about your morals literally doesn’t matter at all.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Heh:

  • “Never Trumpers and Black Lives Matter Have the Same Backer.”

    The press releases went out on schedule and the media rewrote them into news stories. A group of “principled” Republicans was going to fundraise to support Democrat congressmen.

    The stories rolled out on schedule from different media outlets while appearing nearly identical. And the real story, as usual, was not what was on the page, but what had been deliberately left out. Reuters described the Renew America Movement as a group of Never Trump Republicans “whose leadership includes former Republican Governors Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Bill Weld of Massachusetts.” Hardly a single story mentioned the actual leaders.

    The Renew America Movement was co-founded by Evan McMullin (pictured above) and his running mate Mindy Finn. Its national political director, Joel Searby, who is quoted in the media’s writeups, was the chief strategist for the McMullin campaign. Donations to RAM go through Stand Up Republic, which is the anti-Trump group that McMullin and Finn originally set up. The press release for the new pro-Democrat campaign even came from Stand Up Republic. The media actually had to work not to mention McMullin or Stand Up Republic in its stories about the RAM campaign.

    And the media did a fine job of lying by omission to the public in order to elect Democrats.

    Snip.

    Stand Up Republic had scored $800,000 from Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund Voice and $750,000 from the Hewlett Foundation. Omidyar, a Franco-Persian billionaire, is the richest man in Hawaii and the digital version of George Soros. His projects include the pro-terror site, The Intercept, and a plan to “Reimagine Capitalism”. Hewlett is a more conventional leftist setup.

    The “principled” Never Trumper network championing “moderates” to “heal our country” is actually backed by the same money as Black Lives Matter radicals and racists.

    The Hewlett Foundation is one of the backers of the Democracy Frontlines Fund which poured tens of millions into a variety of black nationalist groups including the Movement for Black Lives.

    The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) is a BLM umbrella group which is backed by billion-dollar leftist foundations like the Ford Foundation. Considering its wealthy anti-Israel backers, it’s unsurprising that M4BL has embraced the antisemitic BDS movement, falsely accused Israel of genocide, and tried to oust any Jewish groups that wouldn’t join them in destroying Israel.

    The Omidyar Network promised last year that it was committing $500,000 to “racial justice” and focusing on 5 groups including the Movement for Black Lives. It also couldn’t let the anniversary of September 11 pass without announcing a joint initiative with Soros, the Ford Foundation, and other leftists to pour money into Islamic groups fighting against America’s counterterrorism.

    Omidyar is also the sugar daddy of the Never Trumpers, funding The Bulwark together with the Hewlett Foundation. Omidyar’s Democracy Fund has provided $1.6 million to Bill Kristol’s Defending Democracy Together. It’s all just Democrats funding Democrats… together.

    (Hat tip: R. S. McCain.)

  • Did Southwest Airlines blink on firing employees over vaccine mandates?
  • Biden channels his inner Cornholio:

  • Fun with Slow Joe:

  • Sarah Hoyt is not impressed by arguments about the inevitability of communism:

    Yeah. Okay, the commies got a plan. That is sort of their one and only given strength. They plan, they organize, they work towards the world’s stupidest things, but they do it TOGETHER. (Eh, mostly.)

    But to believe it’s working you’d have to forget everything from the collapse of the Soviet Union (THEY surely try to forget it) to the repeated smacks on the nose they have got in America, to the fact many of you don’t seem to know that the only reason that the Soviet Union survived that long was because we FED THEM. (Seriously. We should give all those who lost relatives to the Soviet Union and its depredations, including the poor bastards in Africa destroyed by Russia’s Cuban mercenaries a chance to disinter FDR’s corpse and kick it around. It’s no more than a very mild form of justice.)

    Communism is in fact an idea so stupid that only intellectuals can believe it and try to apply it. Fortunately for them they do attract most intellectuals with the siren song of “because you’re smarter than other people, you see this.”

    Snip.

    Orwell was a believer, even if a heretic. As an adult, read the damn thing and tell me it’s in the least likely.

    Not only would it fall apart within years — if not weeks — because no one can manage a large economy well enough for it to survive that long (yeah, China. Sure buddy. If you think China is working out that well, you haven’t looked closely), but it could never extend to the whole world, or everyone would starve and die out.

    The other thing is that it’s 1940s tech extended indefinitely. This might work — eh, sort of — under really tightly controlled regimes, but sooner or letter a clever monkey (ape, d*amn it. We’re apes) throws a wrench in. The internet is a big wrench, and their attempts to put the genie back in the bottle have been markedly unsuccessful. But it doesn’t take the internet. The Soviet Union was brought down by typewriters and copiers.

  • Alec Baldwin kills a cast member of the movie he’s shooting. It may not have been his fault.
  • “Minnesota Hospital Shuts Down ER and Urgent Care Amid Nurse Strike.” That’s Allina Health in Plymouth.
  • The Washington Post wants us to invade Haiti. Remember when it was Republicans that were accused of being the warmongers?
  • Fauci flops, but the industry tries to hide it. ” IMDB just got caught with its pants down. Social media is noticing that they changed the Fauci film 1.6 audience score to 5.8, but they neglected to change the demographic data or the raw distribution, so it looks like they just faked the top-line number.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “DC assistant chief: I was told “have an abortion or be fired.” “D.C. Assistant Police Chief Chanel Dickerson…said when she became pregnant as a young police cadet, she was told she had to have an abortion to keep her job.”
  • Boom:

  • New evidence suggests the Norse were in Newfoundland in 1021.
  • Remember all the fawning coverage that former Democratic congresswoman Katie “Naked Bong Hits” Hill received despite banging a staffer? Yeah, it turns out that one of the journalists giving her that fawning coverage, Alex Thomas, was banging her too. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Is the most dangerous stretch of water in the world a three foot wide stream in Yorkshire?
  • Here’s a chance to buy the very earliest Apple Macintosh prototype ever offered at auction, this one with the unreliable, abandoned 5 1/4″ “Twiggy” drive, only a few prototypes of which exist.
  • “Panic At White House As All The Stores Are Out Of Depends.”
  • An oldie but a goodie: Living the dream:

  • A Pilot on the Southwest Vaccine Mandate SNAFU

    Saturday, October 16th, 2021

    Here’s a pilot discussing the recent Southwest Airlines issues.

    His points:

  • Southwest was already running their entire operation too lean, too understaffed, too many hours for the people who are there, and thus the small disruptions spreads out everywhere. “Eventually you have to call in either sick or fatigued, and that’s gonna snowball.”
  • They’re running a lot of overtime to keep the operation running.
  • Too many pilots/trainers laid off during the pandemic, so getting them back up to speed has been a challenge.
  • The mandate is a real issue, because major airlines are considered federal contractors, and the mandate goes against union rules. “It’s a big problem.”
  • Mandate deadline is December 8.
  • Southwest is in the middle of negotiations with their pilot union.
  • The union can’t be leading the strike, because that would be illegal. But individual pilots are a different story.
  • $15 an hour airport support personnel may indeed just quit and work somewhere else.
  • A lot of older pilots (and pilot trainers) are just going to retire.
  • Time to haul this out again:

    Freedom Flu Spreads To American, United

    Thursday, October 14th, 2021

    It seems that more and more airline employees are coming down with “Freedom Flu.”

    American Airlines said they would be following Biden’s (as yet unissued) Flu Manchu mandate. Result:

    United Airlines said it was going to fire 600 employees over the Flu Manchu mandate. But a federal judge just bared United Airlines from putting workers on unpaid leave:

    A federal judge has extended a ban on United Airlines putting employees on unpaid leave for seeking a medical or religious exemption from the airline’s requirement to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

    U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman in Fort Worth, Texas, granted a restraining order Tuesday in favor of employees who are suing the airline over the mandate.

    Lawyers for the employees and the airline agreed last month that United wouldn’t put the workers on unpaid leave, but the judge wrote that the agreement will expire before he can rule on the merits of the matter. That would leave “hundreds of workers” at risk of being put on indefinite unpaid leave or forced to get a vaccination that violates their religious beliefs or medical restrictions.

    The restraining order expires Oct. 26.

    I don’t think I’d undertake any air travel over the rest of the year…

    Southwest CEO Talking Out Of Both Sides Of His Face

    Wednesday, October 13th, 2021

    What are we to make of Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly?

    In an interview with ABC News, he said that no employees would be fired over the Flu Manchu vaccine mandate:

    During an interview with ABC News Tuesday, Gary Kelly, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, stated that no employees would be fired over the company’s vaccine mandate. However, the airline announced on October 4 that all 56,000 U.S. Southwest employees needed to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by November 24, or face termination.

    Yet the very same day, we hear that Southwest is going to comply with Biden’s (still unissued) order:

    Dallas-based Southwest Airlines will ignore a Texas Executive Order prohibiting any entity from imposing Covid-19 vaccine mandates on employees or customers.

    Instead, the beleaguered airline will comply with a yet-to-be issued Biden federal mandate which requires that government employees and contractors get vaccinated, according to CEO Gary Kelly in a Tuesday interview with CNBC.

    “I’ve never been in favor of corporations imposing that kind of a mandate. I’m not in favor that. Never have been,” Kelly told “Squawk on the Street,” adding “But the executive order from President Biden mandates that all federal employees and then all federal contractors, which covers all the major airlines, have to have a [vaccine] mandate … in place by December the 8th, so we’re working through that.”

    How do you reconcile the difference between these two positions? They’re going to enforce the mandate but not fire people who don’t meet the mandate requirements? How? Keeping them on with unpaid leave until they quit?

    Kelly still hasn’t come clean about the reasons behind the cancelled flights. He needs to do that, and to clarify Southwest’s positions on imposing vaccine mandates on their employees, at a bare minimum.

    In related news, that non-existent mandate is now closer to existing because draft language has finally been submitted.

    Are Biden’s Vaccine Mandates About To Destroy The Airline Industry?

    Sunday, October 10th, 2021

    It appears that the Biden Administration vaccine mandate (for which no written rule actual exists) is doing for the American airline industry what it and other Flu Manchu restrictions have already done for the global supply chain.

  • I’m seeing multiple reports that a walkout by air traffic controllers in Jacksonsville have caused hundreds of flight cancellations:

  • It looks like Southwest Airlines pilots are having a massive sickout over the vaccine mandate.

  • Their union is suing the federal government over it:

    In what appears to be one of the first cases of a union pushing back against the new COVID vaccination requirements handed down by the Biden Administration, a union representing pilots at Southwest Airlines is suing to stop the vaccine requirement from being forced until a lawsuit is resolved.

    Bloomberg reports that the union representing Southwest’s pilots has asked a court to grant a temporary stay against the federal vaccination rules until an ongoing lawsuit over what they allege are violations of US labor laws is resolved.

    In a court filing on Friday, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association also asked for an immediate hearing on the request before a federal court in Dallas, claiming the carrier has continued to take unilateral actions that violate terms of the Railway Labor Act, which governs relations between airlines and employee unions. The “unilateral action” in question is the company’s attempt (at the Biden Administration’s direction) to force workers to either get the jab, or be fired or sent on unpaid leave, Bloomberg reports.

    “The new vaccine mandate unlawfully imposes new conditions of employment and the new policy threatens termination of any pilot not fully vaccinated by December 8, 2021,” the legal filing said. “Southwest Airlines’ additional new and unilateral modification of the parties’ collective bargaining agreement is in clear violation of the RLA.”

    According to the guidelines set out by President Biden (and “voluntarily” embraced by most of the major airlines), Southwest has a deadline of Oct. 4 under the federal mandate for employees to get jabbed or have an approved medical or religious exemption. SW is affected by the mandate because it has contracts with the federal government (like many large businesses).

    The union represents 9,000 pilots at the airline, and a strike could easily disrupt American air travel (remember the air traffic controllers strike in the 1980s?)

  • Keep in mind that almost all the airlines are set to fire pilots that don’t comply. What happens when just about all the airlines are grounded because of employee strikes and sickouts? If you think Biden’s poll numbers are bad now, just wait.
  • It’s not just pilots and air traffic controllers. All sorts of professions, from bus drivers to police officers to ferry operators, are staging sickouts over vaccine mandates in various parts of the country.
  • There’s something about vaccine mandates that are so holy to our leftwing ruling class that they’re willing to tear the country apart to impose them. Some have said money from drug companies, but that explanation seems too simple for how hard they’re fighting to impose them no matter the cost, and the lengths to which the Democratic Media Complex is willing to go to suppress any mention of disagreement with The Holy Narrative.

    This is about control.

    It must be resisted.

    Update: Southwest just cancelled 1,000 more flights. And I’m seeing rumors on Twitter that other airlines crews are joining in:

    LinkSwarm for April 17, 2020

    Friday, April 17th, 2020

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! With all those “China lies” links earlier in the week, this one may be a little light.

  • Snapshot of what the Coronavirus lockdown is doing to the economy. Bonus: “Scooter sharing companies like Lime and Bird, which were booming, have suffered potentially fatal blows.” So there is an upside! (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Another 5.2 million people filed for unemployment.
  • Dead body found found outside state unemployment office.
  • The Wuhan Cornavirus shutdown may kill off a lot of legacy media. No one is going to be sad to see Buzzfeed die, but the Chicago Tribune is another thing. Still, for the last twenty years or so, newspapers have had a chance to choose to be profitable or liberal, and an overwhelming majority choose liberal.
  • Airlines are farked. United “will fly fewer people during all of next month than on a single day in May 2019.”
  • Know who else is screwed? China. Not just from the lies and the virus and the killing and the GLAVIN, but also the $1 trillion bursting debt bubble of their smoke and mirrors economy.
  • 668 sailors infected with the Wuhan coronavirus on France’s Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier. The de Gaulle has had numerous maintenance issues over the years, but last year it helped fly strike packets against the last remnants of the Islamic State at Baghuz Fawqani.
  • Speaking of China and aircraft carriers, a Chinese naval group featuring the Shandong, their newest carrier, is carrying out maneuvers near Taiwan.
  • Speaking of fighting commies, Dwight continues his historical video excavations with a look at how to avoid Viet Cong booby traps.
  • Wholesale gasoline hits 12 cents a gallon in North Dakota.
  • Other countries: We’re not taking those stinking deportees back. America: Well then, I guess you don’t need these visas.
  • Gretchen Whitmer, the worst governor in America.

    Among the complaints was that Whitmer had prohibited sale of seeds and other garden supplies, at a time when vegetable gardens need to be planted. Executive Order 2020-42 is titled, “Temporary requirement to suspend activities that are not necessary to sustain or protect life,” and is quite specific about which activities are and are “not necessary.” Stores with “more than 50,000 square feet” (e.g., Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot) are ordered to close areas of the store “by cordoning them off, placing signs in aisles, posting prominent signs, removing goods from shelves, or other appropriate means” that sell carpet or flooring, furniture, and “garden centers and plant nurseries.” So if Grandma went to Walmart for groceries and hoped to pick up some tomato plants or cucumber seeds while she was there — sorry, Grandma! You could get a thousand-dollar fine and 90 days in jail for disobeying Whitmer’s orders.

    Posting photos from a Walmart in Grand Rapids showing the now-banned seeds cordoned off with yellow tape, one Twitter user declared: “@GovWhitmer has banned us from growing our own food. This is [bleeping] insane.” Another user posted a photo indicating that it’s now apparently forbidden to sell American flags in Michigan. Barbecue grills, lawn chairs — anything in the garden section is now streng verboten in Michigan. References to Whitmer as a “dictator” proliferated on social media over the weekend, as Michigan residents came to grips with the consequences of the governor’s draconian order.

  • Those draconian restrictions explain the giant protest against her. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “The Only 2016 Campaign That Deliberately Colluded With Russians Was Hillary Clinton’s”:

    or more than two years, the campaign, presidential transition, and official government administration of Donald Trump operated under a cloud of suspicion that they had engaged in a treasonous conspiracy to steal the 2016 election from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Trump and his top associates were accused of collusion and of conspiring with the Russians to subvert American democracy.

    The former director of the Central Intelligence Agency publicly declared Trump to be guilty of treason, an offense punishable by death. The former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the country’s premier law enforcement agency, intimated that the president had illegally obstructed justice.

    In the end, none of it was true. After a nearly two-year-long investigation that issued 2,800 subpoenas, interviewed 500 witnesses, and used nearly 300 wiretaps and pen registers, Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded that there was no evidence of collusion by Trump or his associates.

    But that doesn’t mean 2016 was free of Russian collusion. To the contrary, there is clear evidence that a 2016 presidential campaign willfully and deliberately colluded with Russians in a bid to interfere with American elections. It wasn’t Trump’s campaign that colluded with shady Russia oligarchs and sketchy Russian sources to subvert American democracy: it was Hillary Clinton’s.

    In fact, the entire Russian collusion conspiracy that held the nation hostage for more than two years was the brainchild of a foreign national who was working on behalf of a sanctioned Russian oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin. At the same time he was telling the media that Trump was the undisclosed agent of Russia, that foreign national was lobbying the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to ease up on his Russian benefactor.

    As it turns out, the DOJ official being lobbied was the spouse of one of that foreign national’s co-workers at the firm that hired the two of them to foment Russian hysteria on behalf of the Clinton campaign. And in a twist almost too absurd for even the most bizarre Franz Kafka novel, that firm was itself working on behalf of a Russian billionaire’s corporation that had been charged by U.S. federal prosecutors with illegally evading U.S. sanctions.

    (Hat tip: Rep. Devin Nunes.)

  • Feverish Wuhan coronavirus-infected Fredo Cuomo breaks quarantine and complains that he’s not allowed to punch strangers out because he’s a celebrity.
  • Black Georgia State Democratic Rep. Vernon Jones says he’s going to vote for President Trump. “President Trump’s handling of the economy, his support for historically black colleges and his criminal justice initiatives drew me to endorse his campaign…When you look at the unemployment rates among black Americans before the pandemic, they were at historic lows. That’s just a fact.”
  • The City Council of Watuga, Texas (in north Tarrant County) voted to ban mere citizens from recording city council members. Glik vs Cunniffe would like a word with you…
  • 65-year old woman in shoots 19-year old home invader.
  • “In first, Kim Jong Un a no-show at annual “Day of the Sun” commemorations.” Hmmm. (strokes chin) (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • A history of The Rolling Stones lips logo.
  • Heh, Election Edition:

  • What’s the deal with birds? (Hat tip: Amy Alkon.)

  • Heh:

  • Good boy!