Posts Tagged ‘Europe’

LinkSwarm For January 26, 2024

Friday, January 26th, 2024

The biggest story right now is that Abbott isn’t backing down from securing the border, and a whole bunch of states are backing him in his high-profile fight with the federal government.

  • Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, normally a cautious, careful politician, has become an absolute firebreather over The Biden Administrations deliberate failure to secure the border.

    As the standoff continues between the Biden administration and the state of Texas over the crisis at the southern border, Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas will continue to push back against the invasion.

    At the center of the current controversy is a recent U.S. Supreme Court order that allows federal agents to remove concertina wire and other barriers placed along the Rio Grande by the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

    Ground Zero of that battle is Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, where state forces have taken over a park along the border and have thus far prevented federal officials from entering.

    Abbott says the state is taking action because of a failure from the Biden administration.

    “The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States. The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now. President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them,” said Abbott. “The result is that he has smashed records for illegal immigration. Despite having been put on notice in a series of letters—one of which I delivered to him by hand—President Biden has ignored Texas’s demand that he perform his constitutional duties.”

    He went on to say the U.S. Constitution allows for states to push back against invasions:

    James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other visionaries who wrote the U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border. That is why the Framers included both Article IV, § 4, which promises that the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion,” and Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges “the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.”

    To that end, Abbott cited an executive order issued by him in November 2022 to “invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself.”

  • Nor is Abbott alone in this endeavor, as no less than 25 states have said they stand behind him.

    “President Biden and his Administration have left Americans and our country completely vulnerable to unprecedented illegal immigration pouring across the Southern border. Instead of upholding the rule of law and securing the border, the Biden Administration has attacked and sued Texas for stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country.

    “We stand in solidarity with our fellow Governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border. We do it in part because the Biden Administration is refusing to enforce immigration laws already on the books and is illegally allowing mass parole across America of migrants who entered our country illegally.

    “The authors of the U.S. Constitution made clear that in times like this, states have a right of self-defense, under Article 4, Section 4 and Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution. Because the Biden Administration has abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states, Texas has every legal justification to protect the sovereignty of our states and our nation.”

    Signatories include: Governor Kay Ivey (AL), Governor Mike Dunleavy (AK), Governor Sarah Sanders (AR), Governor Ron DeSantis (FL), Governor Brian Kemp (GA), Governor Brad Little (ID), Governor Eric Holcomb (IN), Governor Kim Reynolds (IA), Governor Jeff Landry (LA), Governor Tate Reeves (MS), Governor Mike Parson (MO), Governor Greg Gianforte (MT), Governor Jim Pillen (NE), Governor Joe Lombardo (NV), Governor Chris Sununu (NH), Governor Doug Burgum (ND), Governor Mike DeWine (OH), Governor Kevin Stitt (OK), Governor Henry McMaster (SC), Governor Kristi Noem (SD), Governor Bill Lee (TN), Governor Spencer Cox (UT), Governor Glenn Youngkin (VA), Governor Jim Justice (WV), and Governor Mark Gordon (WY).

  • Moreover, documents prove that Biden’s assault on America’s border security was intentional.

    As President Joe Biden’s immigration crisis overwhelms the United States and wreaks havoc on the state’s resources, confidential documents suggest the president’s open border policies were intentional.

    The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) filed a lawsuit against Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claiming the agency halted the 287(g) program, which assists in the deportation of illegal migrant child rapists, attempted murderers, assailants, carjackers, and other known criminals.

    In August 2023, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed that the government ended the program in January 2021— right after Biden entered office. However, the compromised agency gave no reason why the government did that.

    The 287(g) program allows local law enforcement agencies to work closely with ICE to capture illegal aliens who have committed crimes. They were then able to turn the migrants over to federal officials for arrest and deportation.

  • The Biden Administration is also spending billions on welfare programs for illegal aliens.

    Expenditures on one of the most controversial federal programs aiding the millions of illegal immigrants and refugees from Afghanistan, Cuba, and Haiti have skyrocketed more than $2 billion in two years, according to a new report by a non-profit government spending watchdog.
    Spending on the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) jumped from $8.9 billion in 2022 to more than $10.9 billion last year, auditors at OpenTheBooks.org (OTB), the Hinsdale, Illinois-based watchdog, found.

    Most of the ORR spending explosion came in grants under ORR’s Refugee and Entrant Assistance program that provides a lengthy list of services to such individuals, including emergency housing assistance, work authorizations, public assistance benefits, medical screening, school enrollment, employment, and mental health referrals, and legal assistance.

    Such spending was $33.4 million in 2021, the first year of President Joe Biden’s administration. But it hit $404.5 million the next year and then increased to $616.6 million last year, according to federal data obtained by OTB under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
    Much of the funding went to seven social service organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops ($66.5 million), the International Rescue Committee ($66.4 million), Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services ($66.2 million), Church World Service ($64.9 million), U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants ($64.6 million), HIAS (originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)($56.4 million), and the Ethiopian Community Development Council ($51.6 million).

  • Trump says he’ll reverse all this:

  • Trump won New Hampshire. Some takeaways the media doesn’t want you to think about.

    1. More Democrats voted for Haley than Republicans.

    Much like the morning after a drunken hookup with that salad-phobic dude from the IT department, the sun rose to reveal Darling Nikki’s reality. It turns out that a whopping 70% of Haley’s votes were grudge votes from Democrats according to exit polls.

    I’m surprised Haley didn’t dump a bucket of Gatorade over herself Tuesday night as she celebrated another shattering loss. More importantly, either Haley doesn’t know a bunch of patchouli ghoulies voted for her, or she doesn’t care.

    According to my calculator, 70% of her 136,461 votes is 95,522. Do the subtraction and Haley received a paltry 40,938 Republican votes compared to Trump’s 172,202. In other words, Trump got well over four times as many Republican votes, and Haley got hammered like Thor for the second time.

    And yet Haley still got more votes than Biden…

  • Things that make you go Hmmm: “U.S., Chinese Researchers Wanted to Engineer Virus Similar to Covid One Year before Pandemic Outbreak, Internal Docs Show.”
  • LA Times urges people fleeing California not to tell other people how much it sucks or why.

    In an editorial fit for The Onion or the Babylon Bee, Los Angeles Times’ letters editor Paul Thornton wrote a column this week entitled “If you want to leave, fine. But don’t insult California on the way out.”

    The column acknowledges an exodus from the state, but sees the problem as former Californians sharing their experiences about what drove them from the Golden State.

    It is like Captain William Bligh asking the mutinous crew of the Bounty for a reference as they head for the lifeboats.

    Thornton wrote that “more than 800,000 Californians moved away in 2022, and many thousands more left last year. Often, the departees, cash in hand from the sale of their $1-million bungalows, feel the need to express disdain for their home state, and even some anger too.”

    He then begs them to keep mum about their reasons for leaving the state, which commonly range from rising crime to high taxes to runaway spending.

  • And speaking of the LA Times, 115 staffers were just laid off. Sucks to be you. I would suggest learning some Python, but with so many startups shutting down, it probably wouldn’t help. Instead, maybe they should learn to weld. (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.)
  • “Senate Candidate Says Fraudulent Donation to Speaker Phelan Made in His Name…Jace Yarbrough, an attorney and Air Force veteran, was shown on a recent campaign finance report as having sent a $75 donation to Phelan on December 24, just days after he filed to run for the open Senate District 30 seat. Yarbrough, however, has categorically denied making any donation to Phelan…He also emphasized his role as counsel to State Sen. Angela Paxton (R–McKinney) during the impeachment trial of her husband Attorney General Ken Paxton that was championed by Phelan.”
  • “‘Europeans Will Succumb to Islam, Says Former Intelligence Chief.”

    Islam is on the verge of completely taking over Europe, in all ways—at least according to one who should know, Hans-Georg Maaßen, Germany’s top domestic intelligence chief from 2012 to 2018. In a recent interview, he stressed several points that spell the imminent downfall of Europe to Islam.

    His warnings are buttressed by disturbing demographic changes. According to conservative estimates from Pew Research, over the next 25 years—meaning most of the current generation’s lifetime—Europe’s Muslim population will triple to a staggering 76 million. In fact, the actual current and future numbers of Muslims appear to be higher, though there are no official tallies. For example, in an earlier, 2011 study, Pew Research found that “The number of Muslims in Europe has grown from 29.6 million in 1990 to 44.1 million in 2010. Europe’s Muslim population is projected to exceed 58 million by 2030.” Clearly 58 million in five years’ time is more significant than 76 million in 25 years’ time.

    Not only is mass migration responsible for Islam’s exponential growth in Europe, but once there, the average Muslim woman has significantly more children than the average European woman. “Muhammad” is taking West Europe by storm as the number one name for newborn baby boys.

    During his interview, Hans-Georg Maaßen said that these large numbers are intentional, and the work of Europe’s ruling elite. For this intelligence chief, the “great replacement” theory is no myth. The more ideologically mixed a population is forced into becoming, the less able it is to identify itself, much less protect any beliefs:

    [O]ur politicians want a different population. The political left follows the course of the anti-German ideology. The more heterogeneous a population, the less able it is to articulate itself and have a democratic say. The more politics accept immigrants from other countries as they see fit and grants them citizenship, the more politics select the people of the state and influence the election results. These migrants then vote differently than the locals.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • New “Christian” program to combat “divisive politics” involving David French turns out to be funded by the far left and the Rockefeller Foundation. Imagine my shock. (Hat tip: Not the Bee.) Vaguely related:

  • Journalist who criticized tennis players Novak Djokovic for not getting the jab dies of suddenly.
  • B-21 Raider officially enters production. Though the B-21 has contained costs better than some Air Force programs, I believe the days of expensive manned bombers has passed.
  • Director Norman Jewison dead at 97. He directed more popular and critically acclaimed films, but for me he’ll always be the director of the vastly underrated Rollerball. (Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • America’s largest skyscraper will be built in…Oklahoma City? Yeah, can’t see the economic case there.
  • The Critical Drinker and Ben Shapiro discuss out the future of entertainment.
  • Forty years ago, we found out how 1984 wasn’t 1984.
  • Enjoy a look at that time when the Soviets tried to use World War II-era tank destroyers to blast a hole through Chernobyl.
  • Heh:

  • “Laid-Off LA Times Reporter Sits On Street Corner With Sign Reading ‘Will Call You Racist For Food.'”
  • “Hours After Hillary Condemns ‘Barbie’ Snub, Oscar Statue Found Dead In Apparent Suicide.”
  • LinkSwarm For August 18, 2023

    Friday, August 18th, 2023

    San Diego tries enforcing the law, a sampler of the lies Obama told about his life, Blade-Runners take on Big Brother’s cameras, a nuke rises in Texas, and a Cthuloid horror swims the chilly waters of Antarctica. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • San Diego tries “this one weird trick” to deal with homeless problem: Enforcing the law.

    Police began enforcing San Diego’s controversial new camping ban Monday, and although officials said they’ve so far focused only on Balboa Park, the new ordinance combined with other enforcement of laws long on the books has already made notable changes in the encampment landscape.

    The “Unsafe Camping Ordinance” allows officers to force people off public land if they’re sleeping within two blocks of a school, shelter, trolley station, waterway or park “where a substantial public health and safety risk is determined.”

    Capt. Shawn Takeuchi, head of the city’s neighborhood policing division, said his five-member team did arrest several homeless people Monday by Balboa Park, but only for existing warrants.

    Others were given a warning, he said. If any of the same people are found illegally camping a day later, they’ll get a ticket even if they’ve moved locations.

    Nobody in Balboa Park accepted offers for shelter Monday, the captain added. Enforcement will continue to focus on schools and parks in the near future, and officials declined to say where the team might move next.

    Do you think Austin’s government might start enforcing the city’s camping ban? Of course not. Then how are they supposed to rake off the graft? (Hat tip: Instapundit, who offers some takeaways worth highlighting:

    1. The homeless respond to policy and incentives like anyone else. The mere announcement of a future camping ban (plus some enforcement of other existing rules) rapidly cleared out major problem areas.
    2. The provision of shelter or housing is neither necessary nor sufficient to accomplish these clear-outs. Of the people asked to leave Balboa Park on the first day of enforcement (issuance of warnings), none accepted offers of shelter.
    3. The NGOs that have colonized the homeless problem have neither the incentive nor the knowledge to solve it. The head of one shelter was confused by the magical disappearance of his potential clients. “Where did they go?”

    )

  • Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz explains why the latest Trump indictment is a joke.
  • Charles F. McGonigal, a former FBI agent pushing the Russian collusion fantasy pleads guilty to Russian collusion. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Hunter Biden’s tax charges dismissed, but only as a prelude to filing more serious charges against him.
  • Biographer David Garrow reveals some of the many things Obama lied about.

    There is a fascinating passage in Rising Star, David Garrow’s comprehensive biography of Barack Obama’s early years, in which the historian examines Obama’s account in Dreams from My Father of his breakup with his longtime Chicago girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager. In Dreams, Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African American playwright August Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends his incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness against his girlfriend’s white-identified liberal universalism. As readers, we know that the stakes of this decision would become more than simply personal: The Black American man that Obama wills into being in this scene would go on to marry a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago named Michelle Robinson and, after a meteoric rise, win election as the first Black president of the United States.

    Yet what Garrow documented, after tracking down and interviewing Sheila Miyoshi Jager, was an explosive fight over a very different subject. In Jager’s telling, the quarrel that ended the couple’s relationship was not about Obama’s self-identification as a Black man. And the impetus was not a play about the American Black experience, but an exhibit at Chicago’s Spertus Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.

    At the time that Obama and Sheila visited the Spertus Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a Black mayoral aide named Steve Cokely who, in a series of lectures organized by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans. The episode highlighted a deep rift within the city’s power echelons, with some prominent Black officials supporting Cokely and others calling for his firing.

    In Jager’s recollection, what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple’s relationship was Obama’s stubborn refusal, after seeing the exhibit, and in the swirl of this Cokely affair, to condemn Black racism. While acknowledging that Obama’s embrace of a Black identity had created some degree of distance between the couple, she insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to condemn Cokely’s comments. It was not Obama’s Blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism.

    Snip.

    Perhaps the most revealing thing about Jager’s account of her fight with Obama, though, is that not one reporter in America bothered to interview her before David Garrow found her, near the end of Obama’s presidency. As Obama’s live-in girlfriend and closest friend during the 1980s, Jager is probably the single most informed and credible source about the inner life of a young man whose election was accompanied by hopes of sweeping, peaceful social change in America—a hope that ended with the election of Donald Trump, or perhaps midway through Obama’s second term, as the president focused on the Iran deal while failing to address the concerns about rampant income inequality, racial inequality, and the growth of a monopoly tech complex that happened on his watch.

    The idea that the celebrated journalists who wrote popular biographies of Obama and became enthusiastic members of his personal claque couldn’t locate Jager—or never knew who she was—defies belief. It seems more likely that the character Obama fashioned in Dreams had been defined—by Obama—as being beyond the reach of normal reportorial scrutiny. Indeed, Garrow’s biography of Obama’s early years is filled with such corrections of a historical record that Obama more or less invented himself. Based on years of careful record-searching and patient interviewing, Rising Star highlights a remarkable lack of curiosity on the part of mainstream reporters and institutions about a man who almost instantaneously was treated less like a politician and more like the idol of an inter-elite cult.

    Snip.

    Progressive theology is built on a mythic hierarchy of group victimhood which has endured throughout time, up until the present day; the injuries that the victims have suffered are so massive, so shocking, and so manifestly unjust that they dwarf the present. Such injuries must be remedied immediately, at nearly any cost. The people who do the work of remedying these injustices, by whatever means, are the heroes of history. Conversely, the sins of the chief oppressors of history, white men, are so dark that nothing short of abject humiliation and capitulation can begin to approach justice.

    It goes to say that nothing about the terms of progressive theology is original. It is the theology of Soviet communism, with class struggle replaced by identity politics. In this system, Jews play a unique, double-edged role: They are both an identity group and a Trojan horse through which history can reenter the gates of utopia.

    Read the whole thing to see all those facts about Obama that the media ignored…including his fantasies about having sex with men.

  • Yuan hits 16 year low against the dollar.
    

  • The origins of the global warming scam.

    Members of the IPCC, such as Pedro Moura-Costa (above) and Gareth Philips, had major conflicts-of-interest. They owned, created and/or worked for businesses — such as Ecosecurities and SGS Forestry — that would directly profit from the report’s conclusions.

    In fact, the IPCC panel members’ companies were positioned to earn millions of dollars from the report. But the mainstream media did not report these conflicts and instead piled on the “global warming” and “carbon offset” bandwagons.

    Solar energy portal Ecotopia reported that members of the IPCC “…had vested interests in reaching unrealistically and unjustifiably optimistic conclusions about the possibility of compensating for emissions with trees… [and] should have been automatically disqualified from serving on an intergovernmental panel charged with investigating impartially the feasibility and benefits of such ‘offset’ projects.”

  • Social Justice strikes again: Woke Hawaiian Official Stalled Release Of ‘Revered Water’ Until It Was Too Late To Save Maui.”

    According to accounts of four people with knowledge of the situation, M. Kaleo Manuel, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner and DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management, initially refused West Maui Land Co.’s requests for additional water to help prevent fires from spreading to properties managed by the company. Manuel eventually released water but not until after the fire had run its course.

    His office has not yet commented on the delay of water resources.

    How much damage could have been prevented with the extra water is not yet known. However, the question of “Why?” needs to be addressed in the wake of one of the worst natural disasters in Hawaii’s history. Though bureaucratic red tape might be the most obvious suggestion, a recent interview with M. Kaleo Manual offers some interesting and disturbing insight. Manuel waxes philosophical on “water equity” (“equity” being a pervasive woke buzzword) and an ancient “reverence” of water as god-like. He uses these beliefs to support his rationale for keeping tight controls over Hawaiian water supplies; not as a resource to be used, but as a holistic privilege offered by the government.

  • Economist who named BRICS says the idea of a common BRICS currency is “embarrassing.”

    “It’s just ridiculous,” [Lord Jim O’Neill] told the Financial Times in an interview on Monday. “They’re going to create a BRICS central bank? How would you do that? It’s embarrassing almost.”

    The economist spoke ahead of the 15th BRICS summit next week, where the nations will meet to decide whether to expand membership to other countries and may also float the idea of the common currency.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Blade Runners” take out new London monitoring cameras. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • What’s the matter with Sweden?

    The following story was related to me by a former Governor of Minnesota, who was of Norwegian descent. A number of years ago, a Norwegian dignitary (the Prime Minister, I think) visited Minnesota. Talking to our governor, the Prime Minister tut-tutted about Minnesota’s crime rate, saying that there was much less crime in Norway. Minnesota’s governor replied, “We don’t have a crime problem with our Norwegians, either.”

    That anecdote came to mind when I read, in the London Times, “Sweden’s slide from peaceful welfare state to Europe’s gun-killings capital.”

    Today, Sweden is Europe’s capital of gun homicide. Last year, according to the Swedish national council for crime prevention, 63 people were shot and killed: more than double the European average and, per capita, multitudes higher than London or Paris.

    … The effect on Swedish society has been striking. As well as the lives lost, the violence has brought down a government, changed laws and policies, and become the biggest talking point in a country that once prided itself on its reputation as a peaceful welfare state.

    Violent crime will do that, although, to be fair, Sweden’s homicide rate is considerably lower than ours. But it is now significantly higher than homicide rates in quite a few other European countries, including Norway. Why is that? Have Swedes suddenly started getting violent? No.

    It has also kicked the hornet’s nest of integration. Today, one fifth of all people living in Sweden were born outside the country.

  • Dow Chemical is planning to build a small nuclear reactor to power their plant in Calhoun County. Good for them. The TRISO-X fuel they’re using sounds like it will be a pebble bed reactor design.
  • “Target Sales Dipped in Last Quarter Due to Pride Backlash.”
  • Is Adobe sell AI-generated stock art based on artist’s work?
  • Jihadi dumbass kills himself while cleaning his gun.
  • William Friedkin, RIP.
  • Enjoy contemplating this horrifying Cthuloid abomination swimming in antarctic waters.
  • A guide to the things considered disrespectful when working in a Japanese office. Like “going home on time.”
  • Is there any UK tradition more glorious than tossing hot pennies off a high building for the joy of seeing poor people burn their hands grabbing them?
  • “Country Music Industry Confused By Man Actually From Country Making Actual Music.”
  • “Prince Immediately Regrets Waking Rachel Zegler With A Kiss After She Starts Ranting About The Patriarchy.”
  • Good boy!
  • Netherlands: Let The Power Fall

    Sunday, July 9th, 2023

    The Europhilic, farmer-oppressing, climate cult-believing government of The Netherlands has fallen over immigration policies.

    The Dutch government collapsed on Friday after failing to reach a deal on restricting immigration, which will trigger new elections in the fall.

    The crisis was triggered by a push by Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s conservative VVD party to limit the flow of illegal immigrants to the Netherlands, which two of his four-party government coalition refused to support.

    “It’s no secret that the coalition partners have differing opinions about immigration policy. Today we unfortunately have to conclude that those differences have become insurmountable. Therefore I will tender the resignation of the entire cabinet to the king,” Mr. Rutte said in a televised news conference.

    Tensions came to a head this week, when Mr. Rutte demanded support for a proposal to limit entrance of children of war refugees who are already in the Netherlands and to make families wait at least two years before they can be united.

    This latest proposal went too far for the small Christian Union and liberal D66, causing a stalemate.

    Mr. Rutte’s coalition will stay on as a caretaker government until a new administration is formed after new elections, a process which in the fractured Dutch political landscape usually takes months.

    News agency ANP, citing the national elections committee, said elections would not be held before mid-November.

    Two parties poised to take advantage of Rutte’s coalition falling: The pro-farmer BBB Party, and Geert Wilders libertarian/anti-Islamist PVV.

    Opposition parties in the Netherlands were pleased with the fall of the Rutte IV Cabinet. BBB frontwoman Caroline van der Plas tweeted a photo of herself smiling asking others to show the face they made when they heard the news.

    “Goodbye Rutte, Kaag and the rest!” writes PVV leader Geert Wilders. He said he has requested a parliamentary debate.

    PvdD leader Esther Ouwehand hopes for “the definitive end of the Rutte era.” She said, “Unprecedented that the prime minister created a new crisis in an attempt to save his own skin.”

    Rutte’s government is the one that tried to seize land from farmers to prevent them from farming as part of their global warming/anti-meat/land seizure agenda. That government deserved to fall. Actually, what it deserved was having angry farmers armed with torches and hay rakes track members down in the streets and thrash them within an inch of their lives, but the Dutch haven’t been much in the revolution business since 1648.

    From this remove, it would be nice if the elections could pave the way for a BBB/PVV Euroskeptic coalition focused on property rights, abandoning insane climate change mandates, restricting Islamist immigration, and protecting free markets and free speech. But European politics seldom proceeds along such (to us) logical lines.

    The Ukraine War Is Crushing Germany’s Green Energy Delusions

    Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022

    The combination of pretending to transition to a green energy future combined with dependence on Russian gas and the fallout of the Russo-Ukrainian War has Germany looking at some very tough choices:

  • “Europeans have chosen to largely remove natural gas from their industrial space, and so we are seeing huge amounts of industrial closures across the entire industrial space.”
  • “Natural gas isn’t just part of their electricity system, it’s part of their petrochemical system, which is what makes their manufacturing sector possible. So in shutting all this stuff down the Europeans are choosing, maybe not consciously, but they are choosing a general de-industrialization trend for the entire continent.”
  • “No one is making nitrogen-based fertilizer in Europe anymore. No one is smelting aluminum anymore. A lot of the steel foundries are shutting down.”
  • And so far it’s a relatively mild winter in Europe. Next year will be worse.
  • Zeihan talks about how Germany “fudges” some of it’s green energy pledges. (In a previous video he mentioned some bit of legerdemain where they don’t count fossil fuel baseload power that spins up to take over for solar at night.) So exactly what has Germany’s much-vaunted green energy programs accomplished? Not much.

    In 2000, Germany obtained 84 percent of its energy from fossil fuels. By 2019, it was 78 percent. As Vaclav Smil pointed out a couple of years ago, at this rate, Germany would still be deriving 70 percent of its energy from fossil fuels by the year 2050.

    Sure, Germany hasn’t managed to transition away from fossil fuels, but they have managed to make their energy infrastructure expensive and unreliable…

    LinkSwarm for September 9, 2022

    Friday, September 9th, 2022

    Ukraine is carving out big gains in Kharkiv, Texas is in the money, Biden taps Clinton’s bagman to divy up the graft manage climate change funds, more groomers unmasked, and some big changes in the UK. Plus a bit about tanks. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
    

  • Ukraine’s counteroffensive in Kharkiv has been extremely successful.
    • Ukrainian successes on the Kharkiv City-Izyum line are creating fissures within the Russian information space and eroding confidence in Russian command to a degree not seen since a failed Russian river crossing in mid-May.
    • Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv Oblast counteroffensives advanced to within 20 kilometers of Russia’s key logistical node in Kupyansk on September 8.
    • Ukrainian forces will likely capture Kupyansk in the next 72 hours, severely degrading but not completely severing Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum.
    • Ukrainian forces are continuing to target Russian GLOCs, command-and-control points, and ammunition depots in Kherson Oblast.

    

  • Texas Tax Haul Soars By Record 26% in 2022 Fiscal Year.”

    On Thursday, the state comptroller reported that the Lone Star State’s tax revenue rocketed by 25.6% to a total of $75.21 billion.

    It’s only the fifth time since 1988 that revenue grew by a double-digit percentage — and it’s double the next largest increase over that 34-year span.

    “Revenues continue to outpace even our most recent forecast as All Funds tax collections closed the fiscal year $841 million above the projection in our Certification Revenue Estimate,” said state Comptroller Glenn Hegar in an official release.

    That’s a stark contrast to California, which saw July revenue come in 12% below forecast.

    Texas has been a major beneficiary of migration from California: Over the last census cycle, 34% of new Texans arrived from California alone. Meanwhile, New York saw personal income tax collection fall 3.2% from April 1 through July.

  • Biden Brings in Professional Bagman John Podesta to Divvy Up the $316 Billion in Climate Change Money to DNC Donors Ahead of Midterm Election.”

    Joe Biden has hired John Podesta to be the new Clean Energy Czar, citing his experience in progressive causes….

    Bottom line, John Podesta is being now being hired to divvy up the $316 billion in Green New Deal money recently authorized by congress. That is what Podesta specializes in, the distribution of taxpayer money to DNC allied groups and networks in advance of the 2022 midterms. Podesta, Hillary’s fixer, is a bagman, nothing more.

  • Worse, one of the many bag clients he’s adept at channeling money into Democratic pockets for is China.

    President Joe Biden on Friday tapped John Podesta to oversee $370 billion in climate spending, a move that has China hawks on Capitol Hill concerned over Podesta’s encouragement of Chinese investment in American infrastructure and praise for the top U.S. adversary on climate change.

    Podesta has called for Chinese investment in American infrastructure, arguing in 2013 that there are “great opportunities for Chinese firms to directly invest in this nation, to build American infrastructure, to create American jobs, and generate steady and handsome returns.” He added, “There’s also the ability for Chinese firms to invest here and learn best practices, and take those home to the tremendous and growing middle class market in China.”

    Instead, in the intervening decade, the Chinese government has committed widespread economic espionage—one 2017 estimate found that China steals up to $600 billion in trade secrets a year. Engineers in China, meanwhile, use popular social media platform TikTok to access nonpublic data from U.S. users.

    Podesta has also praised China’s efforts to combat climate change, arguing in 2015 that the Chinese “are beginning to do a fair amount.” China, which is the world’s top carbon emitter, went on to dramatically accelerate its coal consumption, which reached a record high in 2020.

    That record has China hawks on the Hill concerned that America’s top adversary has a new—and powerful—ally in the White House. Podesta’s role will see the liberal consultant implement $370 billion in spending toward alternative energy, a sector that China dominates when it comes to raw materials. As such, alternative energy companies receiving the Podesta-steered funding could turn to China to secure supplies. The new Biden aide will likely take no issue with that dynamic, given that he has argued the United States and China should “align” on a green economy. Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) and Ted Cruz (R., Texas) argued that the move reflects the White House’s soft-on-China stance.

    (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)

  • Russia halts natural gas to EU, saying it won’t resume until sanctions are lifted.
  • Related: “European energy trading risks collapse over $1.5 trillion in margin calls.” Seems like there’s a lot of news about margin calls this week…
  • More European fun: Greece and Turkey are slouching toward war with each other.
  • “Teachers’ Union Boss Admits Teachers Have Become ‘Social Justice Warriors.'” Randi Weingarten is the gift that keeps giving. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • California Gov. Newsom Reaped $10.6 Million In Campaign Cash From 979 State Vendors Who Pocketed $6.2 Billion.”
  • Democratic County Administrator Robert Telles charged in the death of journalist Jeff German, “an investigative reporter with the Las Vegas Review-Journal who had spent the last few months exposing misdeeds and turmoil in the official’s office.” For all Sundown Joe’s dark mutterings about “UltraMAGA,” it seems like Democrats are the ones doing all the killing…
  • “Special Master Order Reveals Biden’s Direct Involvement In Trump Raid.”
  • “More North Texas Teachers Charged with Sexual Assault of Students.”

    A now-former elementary school teacher previously charged with sexual abuse of a 7-year-old student was arrested again and charged with sexually assaulting a second victim.

    Victor Moreno, 28, was charged in July with continuous sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony, and an improper relationship between a student and educator, a second-degree felony.

    The accused pedophile’s victim was a second-grade girl in Irving Independent School District, where Moreno was a teacher at the time of the alleged assaults during the 2020-2021 school year.

    Snip.

    Meanwhile, a teacher’s aide in Mesquite Independent School District was arrested Tuesday after being accused of engaging in inappropriate relationships with students.

    Bryan Garcia, 22, was charged with two counts of sexual assault of a child and one count of indecency with a child.

  • “American Library Association Removes Webpage Promoting ‘Secret’ LGBT Messaging In Libraries.”
  • Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov says he might call it quits.
  • Chilean voters reject Social Justice constitution. Good.
  • “Germany: Green Politician Resigns After Inventing Nazi Death-Threats Against Himself.”
  • Queen Elizabeth II dead at age 96. As an American, I hold no truck with royalty, but she always struck me as a classy broad. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Stacey Abrams Announces That With A Heavy Heart She Will Succeed Elizabeth II As Queen.”
  • Clinton nonprofit funneled $75,000 to ‘defund the police’ group.” This is my shocked face. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Higher Ed’s New Woke Loyalty Oaths: A ballooning number of hiring and tenure decisions require candidates to express written fealty to political doctrines.” And you can bet those doctrines have nothing to do with constitutionally limited government based on universal rights…
  • Russia seems a lot more interested in selling T-14 Armata tanks abroad than in sending them to Ukraine.

  • Indeed, they’re talking about restarting old production lines to start manufacturing older BMP-2s. “The costs and challenges of bringing more modern designs into production are now surely aggravated by Western sanctions cutting access to many basic electrical components, requiring pricey and time-consuming workarounds.”
  • This is like a scene from a porn movie, only a lot creepier. “Las Vegas landlord requires tenant to sign sex contract in order to lease home.”
  • “Libs of TikTok returns to Twitter, threatens lawsuit if removed permanently.
  • The Supreme Court is going to bitchslap Eric Adams halfway to Albany: “Mayor Adams vows door-to-door checks on gun permits.”
  • Fat Leonard is on the lam.
  • “Employees Shocked as Lesbian Vegan Doughnut Shop Goes Out of Business.” The landlord hadn’t been paid for months, and the owners bounced paychecks to employees.
  • Take this, low prices! (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “No turkey, however bloated and stupid, could ever be big enough to convey the mesmerising awfulness of Amazon’s billion dollar Tolkien epic.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Amazon is so confident that actual viewers will hate it that they put a three day waiting period on reviews. In any case, here the one-star reviews they allowed to slip through. Makes you wonder what other reviews they’re manipulating… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.
  • Kim Kardashian Is Starting Her Own Private Equity Company.” Why not? But I’m betting being a genius at self-promotion doesn’t equate to being a genius at investing, especially since she’s starting in the middle of a fierce, widespread downturn…
  • Easiest way to win Dad of the Year? Pick your son up from school in a tank. Looks like a Scorpion light tank, most likely the FV107 Scimitar reconnaissance variant.
  • “FBI Drops Investigation After Discovering Trump’s Top Secret Nuclear Documents Were Just Print-Outs Of Hillary Clinton Emails.”
  • Ian McCollum on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and Civilian Firearms Ownership

    Saturday, March 12th, 2022

    There are a lot of small countries, especially in the southern and eastern areas of Europe for whom [a Russian invasion] may not have been a plausible scenario two weeks ago, but it’s kind of looking like one now. And if you are a small country close to the borders of Russia, you’re in this difficult defensive position. None of these countries have a military that can, with a straight face, suggests that it could simply put up a toe-to-toe, stand their ground fight and defeat a military the size of the Russian army.

    I’m going to point out that this is not necessarily true. Finland did it in The Winter War in 1939-1940. But he gets to that.

    Yet you want you have to provide some sort of plausible threat to an invading occupier like Russia to avoid being invaded in the first place. The whole point is that the best possible success in repulsing an invasion is to not get invaded in the first place. So how can you convince a country like Russia that your very small little republic is not worth invading, that it is too difficult to invade? A lot of these countries are looking around, and going “Would NATO actually step up and help us directly, help defend us in case of an invasion? Any maybe NATO would, maybe NATO wouldn’t.”

    One big solution is civilian military firearms ownership and preparedness. And here modern Finland comes up:

    There is a specific division called SRA which is essentially reservists shooting society, and it is it’s actually technically in some cases for gun, rifle, pistol, shotgun and precision rifle. In competition it requires competitors to essentially carry a military loadout; they have to wear armor, they have to carry water, they have to carry a minimum amount of ammunition during the stages…It’s specifically to encourage military readiness .

    “Having a large community of competent civilian marksmen is something that can contribute a very real deterrent to invasion.”

    True. Every nation in Europe should make civilian firearms ownership more widely and legally available, for this and other reasons.

    The Silence of the PIIGS

    Sunday, February 6th, 2022

    Let’s talk about the European Debt Crisis.

    [The sound you hear is the countless multitudes clicking off to another blog.]

    Way back last decade, dispatches on the ongoing crisis were a regular staple of the blog. To summarize the crisis for those who weren’t paying attention back then:

  • A bunch of countries joined the Eurozone without following the requirements outlined for membership, including limiting budget deficits to 3% of less of their GDP, and overall debt-to-GDP ratio of 60% or less. How were they able to join? Simple: They lied and the Eurocrats turned a blind eye, because EU.
  • Foremost among those running into trouble were the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain). (Cyprus and Malta also had serious issues, but their tiny size meant they presented no systematic risk for other nations, and Cyprus relieved its problems by becoming the dirty Russian money laundering capital of Europe.)
  • Ireland was probably the most incongruous of the five, since their debt only spiked when the Irish government nationalized Anglo Irish Bank to prevent it from collapsing.
  • In all other cases, the cause of of the problem was obvious: Each ran huge budget deficits to underwrite generous welfare state programs for countries with below replacement birth rates, and they were allowed to get away with it for a while because they used Germany’s credit rating in lieu of their own thanks to the Euro.
  • The problem finally came to a head after the SubPrime Meltdown in 2008 made various banks and regulatory agencies actually scrutinize balance sheets and realize just how broke the PIIGS were.
  • Greece was the worst, being the most dysfunctional, and absolutely refusing to slow down spending on their own. There followed a reoccurring farce where various Euro regulatory agencies (including the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank, collectively known as “the Troika”) demanded Greece end their ridiculous high levels of deficit spending, Greece refused, the Troika threatened to cut off the tap entirely, Greece promised to be better, the Troika reluctantly extended them another loan, and then Greece continued to spend recklessly, setting up the next round of the farce.
  • A bunch of Eurozone countries then implemented “austerity,” which involved not cutting spending to balance their budgets, but merely reducing the deficits slightly.

    None of these “austerity” measures eliminated deficit spending, and none addressed the issue that’s driving all of Europe (and us) bankrupt, namely unwillingness to carry out structural reforms of the welfare state. The few tiny reforms that have been undertaken have been, as NRO’s Michael Tanner notes, ridiculously timid, and even those have been heavily weighted in future years. “So far, European governments haven’t even been willing to take a penknife to the welfare state, let alone an axe.” Plus a huge round of tax hikes…

    Actual austerity would mean (at a minimum) reducing spending to the amount of money actually taken in. As best I can tell, none of the PIIGS, or France, or the UK has undertaken such real austerity. That “severe” Greek austerity that just caused a change in government? It reduced Greece’s official deficit spending from 9.0% of GDP to 7.5% of GDP. They didn’t even want Greece to stop digging a hole, they just wanted them to dig more slowly.

    Austerity did not fail, it was declared difficult and left untried.

  • Eventually growth in the Eurozone picked up just enough, and the Troika managed to install enough of their own functionaries in various PIIGS positions to ensure that their half-assed, anemic austerity programs were actually followed that, along with Brexit and the Rise of Trump, it got Eurozone debt crisis off the front page and back under the rug.
  • So fast forward to today. Has the European debt crisis been solved?

    Hah! Of course not. Does the EU ever really solve anything? European debt grew during the pandemic, but this time they get to blame Flu Manchu rather than slow growth, high taxes, declining births and a bloated welfare state.

    Spain, Italy and Greece have all continued their PIIGS-ish ways. The UK, under ostensibly conservative Tory governments for the entire pandemic and constant attack for “austerity,” and they’re still piling up debt like one of the PIIGS, though the double-whammy of Brexit dislocations and idiotic lockdowns are more to blame than increased spending per se.

    Ireland, with the lowest deficit for the period, seems to have proved that their membership among the PIIGS was transitory.

    What then of Portugal? Have they improved? It turns out only slightly and relatively. Their debt increased by 13.9% for the period, making them better not only than Spain, Italy, Greece and the UK, but also France, Cyprus, Malta, Hungary and Slovenia. They evidently managed a balanced budget in 2019 (at least on paper). Their Flu Manchu deficit spending is still unsustainable, just slightly less unsustainable than many of their fellow Eurozone grave-diggers.

    Ireland seems to have escaped PIIGSdom, but the others as are still very much in trouble, with debt-to-GDP rations at or above 100%:

  • Greece: 174.15%
  • Italy: 133.43%
  • Portugal: 119.46%
  • Spain: 95.96%
  • Ireland is down at 62.42%.

    We don’t have much standing to condemn others, as the United States ratio stands at 106.70%. Donald Trump had numerous virtues as President, but he was no deficit hawk, and Biden would crank up deficits even higher if the Senate let him.

    We can see the fruits of this orgy of deficit spending in the worldwide inflation we’re seeing. (Feel free to argue whether government budget deficits or central bank quantitative easing is more at fault.) Inflation may ruin nations, but it’s the deficit-spender’s friend, letting him pay off debt on the cheap with now devalued currency. And it’s the working poor whose lives are most impoverished by it.

    Robbing Peter to pay Paul has always been a popular proposition to get Paul’s vote, but we’re now robbing Peter and Paul’s unborn grandchildren to delay financial reckonings until after the next election cycle.

    It will not end well.

    LinkSwarm for December 10, 2021

    Friday, December 10th, 2021

    If it looks like I’ve been absent from Twitter, it’s because I received a seven day timeout merely for posting one of Twitter’s pre-loaded gifs, probably this one:

    (If it’s not animated, it says “Die in a fire” at the end.)

    Now on to the LinkSwarm!

  • Inflation hits 39 year high. Unexpectedly!
  • The Biden Administration is functionally pro-China.

    Josh Rogin delivers an unnerving scoop in the Washington Post:

    Administration sources confirmed that in an October call between Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the other co-sponsor, Sherman made it clear that the administration prefers a more targeted and deliberative approach to determining which [Chinese] goods are the products of forced labor. She also told Merkley that getting allied buy-in was critical and more effective than unilateral action.

    “To be clear, the Department of State is not opposing this amendment,” a State Department spokesman told me. “We share the Congress’ concerns about forced labor in Xinjiang.”

    In other words, while the administration supports the legislation in public, they are asking Democrats to essentially water it down in private. Sherman’s specific criticism relates to a part of the bill that would require a presumption that all products coming from Xinjiang are tainted by forced labor unless the importer can prove otherwise. This happens to be the exact provision corporations are also objecting to. Maybe it’s a coincidence.

    “It isn’t partisan or in any way controversial for the U.S. to be unequivocally, resoundingly opposed to genocide and slave labor,” Merkley told me. “The Senate passed this legislation in July, and it’s time to get it over the finish line.”

    Watering down congressional efforts to punish China for the Uyghur genocide is not what Joe Biden promised when he was running for office, or when he took office.

    Snip.

    Month by month, the Biden administration is proving more and more reticent to confront the Chinese government in substantive and consequential ways. The investigation into the origins of COVID-19 is effectively dropped, and Biden didn’t mention China’s refusal to cooperate with the WHO’s separate investigation in his teleconference summit with Xi Jinping.

    Biden did not mention China, the Uyghurs, Hong Kong, or the origins of COVID-19 in his address to the United Nations.

    Snip.

    Elsewhere, Biden nominated Reta Jo Lewis to run the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Senator Marco Rubio contends that, “Reta Jo Lewis is currently a strategic advisor for the U.S.-China Heartland Association, which is a conduit for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) United Front Work Department (UFWD), which aims to influence key Americans at the subnational level and ultimately undermine America’s national interests.”

    As I noted yesterday, even the proposed diplomatic boycott of the Olympics is moot, because the Chinese government announced that U.S. politicians were not invited before Biden could even officially announce the decision.

    Why, it’s almost like his son is on China’s payroll

  • Another day, another Washington Post hitpiece against Kamala Harris.

    The rumors started circulating in July: Vice President Harris’s staff was wilting in a dysfunctional and frustrated office, burned out just a few months after her historic swearing-in and pondering exit strategies. A few days later, Harris hosted an all-staff party at her official residence, where most of her office bit into hamburgers and posted pictures of smiling, congenial co-workers on Twitter, pixelated counterpoints to the narrative of an office in shambles.

    “Let me tell you about these burgers at the VP’s residence!!” chief Harris spokesperson Symone Sanders gushed in a tweet. “The food was good and the people were amazing.” Her official defense against reports of staff unrest was more searing. She called people who lobbed criticism behind nameless quotes “cowards” and stressed that working for a groundbreaking vice president was a difficult job, but not a dehumanizing one. “We are not making rainbows and bunnies all day,” she told one outlet. “What I hear is that people have hard jobs and I’m like ‘welcome to the club.’ ”

    Five months later, Sanders is leaving the vice president’s office, the highest-profile member of an end-of-year exodus that includes communications chief Ashley Etienne and two other staffers who help shape the vice president’s public image. Sanders told The Washington Post her departure is not due to any unhappiness or dysfunction, but rather because she is ready for a break after three years of the relentless pressure that came with speaking for and advising Biden and Harris while navigating a global pandemic.

    But the quartet of soon-to-be-empty desks reignited questions about why Harris churns through top-level Democratic staff, an issue that has colored her nearly 18 years in public service, including her historic but uneven first year as vice president. Now, those questions about her management extend to whether it will hamper her ability to seek and manage the presidency.

    “Historic” because she checks social justice warrior diversity boxes, “uneven” because the Post will never be allowed to call it “horrible” for the same reason.

    Critics scattered over two decades point to an inconsistent and at times degrading principal who burns through seasoned staff members who have succeeded in other demanding, high-profile positions. People used to putting aside missteps, sacrificing sleep and enduring the occasional tirade from an irate boss say doing so under Harris can be particularly difficult, as she has struggled to make progress on her vice-presidential portfolio or measure up to the potential that has many pegging her as the future of the Democratic Party.

    “One of the things we’ve said in our little text groups among each other is what is the common denominator through all this and it’s her,” said Gil Duran, a former Democratic strategist and aide to Harris who quit after five months working for her in 2013. In a recent column, he said she’s repeating “the same old destructive patterns.”

    “Who are the next talented people you’re going to bring in and burn through and then have (them) pretend they’re retiring for positive reasons,” he told The Post.

    The Washington Post spoke with 18 people connected to Harris for this story, including former and current staffers, West Wing officials and other supporters and critics. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity to be more candid about a sensitive topic. The vice president’s office declined to address questions about Harris’s leadership style.

    Her defenders say the criticism against her is often steeped in the same racism and sexism that have followed a woman who has been a first in every job she’s done over the past two decades.

    “Shut up, because social justice!”

    Her selection as President Biden’s vice president, they say, makes her a bigger target because many see her as the heir apparent to the oldest president in the nation’s history.

    “Shut up, because social justice!”

    They also say Harris faces the brunt of a double standard for women who are ambitious, powerful or simply unafraid to appear strong in public.

    “Shut up, because social justice!”

    Some pro-forma Harris defense snipped.

    Staffers who worked for Harris before she was vice president said one consistent problem was that Harris would refuse to wade into briefing materials prepared by staff members, then berate employees when she appeared unprepared.

    “It’s clear that you’re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,” one former staffer said. “With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you’re constantly sort of propping up a bully and it’s not really clear why.”

    For both critics and supporters, the question is not simply where Harris falls on the line between demanding and demeaning. Many worry that her inability to keep and retain staff will hobble her future ambitions.

    Why should we remotely worry about her future ambitions when she’s obviously not even up to her current job?

  • Biden’s plans to relieve port crowding at LA/Long Beach haven’t worked.

    Looking all the way back to Nov. 2, five weeks ago, the total number of excess dwell containers in Long Beach was down 22% as of Wednesday (the decrease is even higher, at 32%, when comparing to Oct. 28). Yet the numbers in Long Beach have plateaued more recently. Furthermore, the number of total import containers at Long Beach terminals has not decreased — it has actually slightly increased. There were 57,042 import containers at Long Beach terminals on Nov. 1 and 57,970 on Tuesday.

  • Another redpilled liberal abandons the Democratic Party.

    I embraced my people, and my people embraced me. They gave me everything I had always imagined I wanted: a Ph.D. from an Ivy League university; a professorship at NYU, complete with a roomy office overlooking Washington Square Park; book deals; columns in smart little publications; invitations to the sort of soirees where you could find yourself seated next to Salman Rushdie or Susan Sontag or any number of the men and women you grew up reading and admiring. The list goes on. Life was good. I was grateful.

    And then came The Turn. If you’ve lived through it yourself, you know that The Turn doesn’t happen overnight, that it isn’t easily distilled into one dramatic breakdown moment, that it happens hazily and over time—first a twitch, then a few more, stretching into a gnawing discomfort and then, eventually, a sense of panic.

    You may be among the increasing numbers of people going through The Turn right now. Having lived through the turmoil of the last half decade—through the years of MAGA and antifa and rampant identity politics and, most dramatically, the global turmoil caused by COVID-19—more and more of us feel absolutely and irreparably politically homeless. Instinctively, we looked to the Democratic Party, the only home we and our parents and their parents before them had ever known or seriously considered. But what we saw there—and in the newspapers we used to read, and in the schools whose admission letters once made us so proud—was terrifying. However we tried to explain what was happening on “the left,” it was hard to convince ourselves that it was right, or that it was something we still truly believed in. That is what The Turn is about.

    You might be living through The Turn if you ever found yourself feeling like free speech should stay free even if it offended some group or individual but now can’t admit it at dinner with friends because you are afraid of being thought a bigot. You are living through The Turn if you have questions about public health policies—including the effects of lockdowns and school closures on the poor and most vulnerable in our society—but can’t ask them out loud because you know you’ll be labeled an anti-vaxxer. You are living through The Turn if you think that burning down towns and looting stores isn’t the best way to promote social justice, but feel you can’t say so because you know you’ll be called a white supremacist. You are living through The Turn if you seethed watching a terrorist organization attack the world’s only Jewish state, but seethed silently because your colleagues were all on Twitter and Facebook sharing celebrity memes about ending Israeli apartheid while having little interest in American kids dying on the streets because of failed policies. If you’ve felt yourself unable to speak your mind, if you have a queasy feeling that your friends might disown you if you shared your most intimately held concerns, if you are feeling a bit breathless and a bit hopeless and entirely unsure what on earth is going on, I am sorry to inform you that The Turn is upon you.

    Snip.

    You don’t get to be “against the rich” if the richest people in the country fund your party in order to preserve their government-sponsored monopolies. You are not “a supporter of free speech” if you oppose free speech for people who disagree with you. You are not “for the people” if you pit most of them against each other based on the color of their skin, or force them out of their jobs because of personal choices related to their bodies. You are not “serious about economic inequality” when you happily order from Amazon without caring much for the devastating impact your purchases have on the small businesses that increasingly are either subjugated by Jeff Bezos’ behemoth or crushed by it altogether. You are not “for science” if you refuse to consider hypotheses that don’t conform to your political convictions and then try to ban critical thought and inquiry from the internet. You are not an “anti-racist” if you label—and sort!—people by race. You are not “against conformism” when you scare people out of voicing dissenting opinions.

    When “the left” becomes the party of wealthy elites and state security agencies who preach racial division, state censorship, contempt for ordinary citizens and for the U.S. Constitution, and telling people what to do and think at every turn, then that’s the side you are on, if you are “on the left”—those are the policies and beliefs you stand for and have to defend. It doesn’t matter what good people “on the left” believed and did 60 or 70 years ago. Those people are dead now, mostly. They don’t define “the left” anymore than Abraham Lincoln defines the modern-day Republican Party or Jimi Hendrix defines Nickelback.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Chinese real estate giant Evergrande has officially defaulted.

    “The defaults of Evergrande and Kaisa move us to the second step of this China Property downturn, with systemic risk being gradually replaced by idiosyncratic risk,” said Robin Usson, credit analyst at Federated Hermes. He is of course referring to the much bigger risk that is the downturn in China’s residential – and in general property – sector, which as Goldman recently showed is the world’s largest asset and arguably the most important pillar propping up China’s entire economy. Should China’s housing market crash, all bets are off.

    Smoke and mirrors all the way down…

  • Study: “It is almost certain that in Wisconsin’s 2020 election the number of votes that did not comply with existing legal requirements exceeded Joe Biden’s margin of victory.” (Hat tip: TPPF.)
  • Liberal elites can deride “replacement theory” all the want, but it sure seems to be a major concern in European nations.

    The rising star on the right is Eric Zemmour, who, writes The New York Times, “became one of France’s best-selling authors in the past decade by writing books on the nation’s decline — fueled, he said, by the loss of traditional French and Christian values, the immigration of Muslim Africans bent on a reverse colonization of France, the rise of feminism and the loss of virility, and a ‘great replacement’ of white people.”

    Zemmour is being called “the Donald Trump of France.” And he and Le Pen are now running third and second behind Macron in the polling to become the next president of France, which suggests the power of the issue on which they agree: uninvited and unwelcome Third-World migration.

    “You feel like a foreigner in your own country,” said Zemmour in his announcement speech Tuesday, declaiming, “We will not be replaced.”

    Neighboring Spain is gripped by the same concern. Refugees and migrants from the global south use Morocco as a base from which to breach the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the African coast.

    Spain has taken to pushing the intruders back into Morocco.

    Madrid has accused Rabat of using the migrants as a diplomatic weapon to extort changes in Spanish policy.

    Italy, whose native-born ethnic population has been in a steady decline, patrols the Mediterranean Sea to prevent migrants from Libya from reaching its shores.

    Drowning deaths are not uncommon. The Channel and the Mediterranean Sea are more formidable and unforgiving waters to cross than the Rio Grande.

    Greece is attempting to keep Turkey from moving refugees and migrants from Middle East wars onto the Greek islands off Turkey’s coast.

    Half a decade ago, Turkey was bought off with billions of euros to prevent the millions of Arab and Muslim refugees within its borders from crossing over into the EU.

    In the recent clash between Poland and Belarus, the weapon of choice for Alexander Lukashenko was — migrants.

    Brought into Belarus from the Mideast, they were moved to the Polish border, forcing Warsaw to deploy troops to keep thousands out of Poland. Lukashenko was exploiting the migrants to punish Poland and the EU for supporting sanctions on his regime.

    After Europe united against him, Lukashenko moved the migrants away from the border and sent many back to Syria and countries whence they came.

    In the hierarchy of European fears, the perceived threat to national identities that comes with mass migrations from the failed and failing states of the Third World appears to rank as a greater concern than the prospect of a Russian army driving toward the Rhine.

  • Speaking of refugees: Is “Kurdistan” in trouble? Lots of the refugees showing up on the Polish/Belarus border are Kurdish. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Don’t look now, but Twitter just suspended the account tracking the Ghislaine Maxwell trial.
  • “Tesla Officially Moves Headquarters From California to Texas.”
  • LA crime has gotten so bad that even Hollywood liberals are getting strapped. “‘Even hardcore leftist Democrats who said to me in the past, ‘I’ll never own a gun’ are calling me asking about firearms,’ said Joel Glucksman, a private security executive. “I’d say there has been an increase of 80 percent in the number of requests I’m getting this year.'” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Actual Hispanics hate the social justice neologism “Latinx.”

    Only 2 percent of those polled refer to themselves as Latinx, while 68 percent call themselves “Hispanic” and 21 percent favored “Latino” or “Latina” to describe their ethnic background, according to the survey from Bendixen & Amandi International, a top Democratic firm specializing in Latino outreach.

    More problematic for Democrats: 40 percent said Latinx bothers or offends them to some degree and 30 percent said they would be less likely to support a politician or organization that uses the term.

  • Promoting FedStock, life imitates The Matrix.
  • Judge blocks de Blasio’s private employer mandate for New York City and Louis Rossmann goes on an epic rant, including how it would disproportionately fall on minorities. “You are coming up with a policy because de Blasio is such a stupid cuntrag that it actually turns the clock back 40 or 50 years.” Also: “I don’t know who the fuck would sign up to do this job. I’d expect to disappear if I were doing this job…I would expect to end up on the bottom of the East River.”
  • “Jussie Smollett Found Guilty of Staging Hoax Hate Crime.” Hopefully this will be the beginning of the end for the lucrative Hate Crime Hoax industry. (Previously.)
  • Heh:

  • Facebook admits that it’s “fact checks” are merely opinion.
  • If you parcel out your business It needs to multiple companies, but all of them rely on AWS (which had an outage Tuesday), you haven’t necessarily reduced your risk.
  • More on that AWS outage.

    The outage at Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud-computing arm left thousands of people in the U.S. without working fridges, roombas and doorbells, highlighting just how reliant people have become on the company as the Internet of Things proliferates across homes.

    The disruption, which began at about 10 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday, upended package deliveries, took down major streaming services, and prevented people from getting into Walt Disney Co.’s parks.

    Affected Amazon services included the voice assistant Alexa and Ring smart-doorbell unit. Irate device users tweeted their frustrations to Ring’s official account, with many complaining that they spent time rebooting or reinstalling their apps and devices before finding out on Twitter that there was a general Amazon Web Services outage. Multiple Ring users even said they weren’t able to get into their homes without access to the phone app, which was down.

    Others said they weren’t able to turn on their Christmas lights.

    This is why I don’t run “smart anything” or IoT devices in my house. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Let’s Go Brandon boat wins boat parade, until award is cancelled due to liberal tears.
  • Boom:

  • Boom 2:

  • “Unemployment Rate Among Cuomo Brothers Rises To 100%.”
  • Those are some epic zoomies.

  • Bosch’s New Fab And The State of European Semiconductors

    Wednesday, June 23rd, 2021

    This is interesting for what it says about the state of European semiconductor manufacturing:

    German tech giant Bosch has opened the doors to a new semiconductor manufacturing facility in Dresden, which it hopes will plug the significant hole currently plaguing automotive supply chains.

    The site – which was estimated to cost the company in excess of €1 billion (AU$1.57 billion) to build – will reportedly begin producing much-needed chips for vehicles by early September this year. It is so far unclear how the product will be distributed, and if German manufacturers – including Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz – will be given priority in the queue.

    “The new [factory] is the single largest investment in the company’s history. This cannot be stressed too much. Its size and additional production capacity alone are impressive. The very latest methods of data-driven continuous improvement in production make the Dresden plant a smart factory,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

    “To put it another way: in this plant, natural and artificial intelligence have joined forces with the internet of things to form a productive symbiosis.”

    Here Alte Jungfer Merkel is no doubt repeating some generic technomarketingspeak handed to her by an aide, as I suspect Merkel is as ignorant of current developments in artificial intelligence as I am of the songs she sang in the Freie Deutsche Jugend.

    Here’s a Deutsche Weil English video segment on the fab, for which the headline says “Europe aims for independence from Asia”:

    How cutting edge will the Bosch fab be?

    The 300mm fab has been under construction since June 2018 and as recently as October 2019 it was stated that the Dresden wafer fab was expected to start operations in spring 2020…

    The fab makes use of 5G communications and artificial intelligence [there’s that phrase again -LP] for extensive automation and will be used for the manufacture of power semiconductors and ASICs for automotive applications down to a minimum geometry of 65nm, according to a company spokesperson.

    (record scratch)

    300mm is industry standard, and Dresden makes sense, as Infineon, Global Foundries and X-FAB already have fabs there, so there’s a skilled labor pool to draw on. The strange thing here is spending $1.2 building a new 65nm fab, since that’s about seven process node generations behind the cutting edge. 65nm was cutting edge way back in 2005.

    You don’t need cutting edge process technology to build automotive integrated circuits, which tend to use older process nodes, but 65nm doesn’t give you much headroom for the long haul. It also doesn’t really do much to “compete with Asia,” since it’s hopelessly behind not only leaders TSMC and Samsung, but also about half the fabs run by Chinese companies SMIC and Unigroup. It’s hard to see investing $1 billion in building a older technology fab as opposed to contracting out production to foundries. (Of course, foundry capacity is highly constrained right now, and maybe Bosch leadership was able to see that coming when they broke ground in 2018.)

    Could it still turn out to be a decent investment? Possibly. In the short haul it will relieve the current capacity crunch and let Bosch gain share from competitors who can’t book foundry production. Plus semiconductor manufacturing seems like the sort of thing European governments like to subsidize. And indeed, the DW piece notes that “The German government also invested in the plant.” (It also wouldn’t surprise me to find out that various inscrutable, multi-acronym EU agencies unknown to voters in Barcelona and Gdansk are also kicking in money.) Fueled by taxpayer money, building a 65nm fab could still be a profitable proposition for Bosch.

    But fabs close all the time, even 300mm fabs. Building a fab dedicated to such an old process node makes profitability a much more challenging proposition, especially given the next (inevitable) industry downturn. You only have so many years before everything is obsolete. Bosch has given themselves a very short runway to profitability for this investment.

    Back in the 1990s, Europe was competitive with American and Japanese semiconductor companies, with fabs built in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and even Italy. Today, of those countries, only Ireland (Intel) and Germany have any 300mm fabs at all, despite having a highly educated workforce and modern technological infrastructure. (Russia evidently has one as well, owned by Crocus Nano Electronics (about which I know next to nothing), also running 65nm, that started production in 2015.) Europe’s semiconductor industry has been passed not only by Taiwan and South Korea, but also by China.

    While Europe was integrating, its semiconductor manufacturing capacity was stagnating. Highly integrated, yes, but also highly regulated and highly unionized.

    As I’ve said before, building cutting edge fabs is a very expensive game to play. Collectively, the world has decided that Europe is not a suitable location for one.

    LinkSwarm for November 20, 2020

    Friday, November 20th, 2020

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Coronavirus is up around the world again, Democrats keep behaving badly (talk about your evergreen themes), some fun dog links, and it’s time to celebrate Life Day again!

  • Good news, everyone! No more lockdowns in Texas! It took him long enough, but Governor Greg Abbott realizes what Democratic governors haven’t: all the Wuhan coronavirus infection curves seem the same, lockdowns don’t seem to work, masks don’t seem to work, the survival rate for the non-elderly, non-immune-compromised is well over 99%.
  • Speaking of which: Sweden, after having seemed to beat the bug through a strategy of herd immunity, now sees cases rising.
  • Indeed, all of Europe seems to be getting hit again. Nobody knows nuthin.
  • For liberals who still can’t understand President Trump’s appeal: “US Household Incomes Increased More in 2018 Than in the Previous 20 Years—Combined.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Hundreds of Companies That Got Stimulus Aid Have Failed.” Government can’t pick winners, but it can sure create losers. (Hat tip: Holly Hansen.)
  • Defunding the police and the damage done. “Homicides in Minneapolis are up 50 percent.”
  • Andy Ngo on all the politicians who have turned Portland into a shithole:

    This week brought news that Portland City Commissioner (as councilmembers are known) Jo Ann Hardesty called the cops over an argument with a Lyft driver days before the city council was scheduled to vote on her proposal to slash millions from the police budget.

    The hypocrisy is glaring, but the bigger lesson is about the damage an activist political class can do to cities all over America if they follow in Portland’s foolish footsteps.

    Hardesty has been a vocal advocate of Black Lives Matter and defunding the ­police. During a ride home, she allegedly belittled and berated her driver over a partially open window, a COVID-19 recommendation from the ride-sharing service itself. After the driver had enough of the abuse and canceled the ride, Hardesty refused to get out and called 911.

    Portland politics have become the subject of national scrutiny by both the media and President Trump following more than 120 days of riots this year. While much attention has ­focused on the city’s feckless mayor, Ted Wheeler, others on the council have equally enabled a rapid descent into disorder.

    Since Hardesty was elected to the council in 2018, her staunch hostility to police has earned her the approval of Black Lives Matter and ­antifa activists in Portland. Ordinary Portlanders have paid the price for that approval.

    Days after her abuse of emergency services, the council took up Hardesy’s proposal to slash $18 million from the police budget. Already in June, she had spearheaded a successful effort to cut $15 million. Her newest proposal narrowly failed, however. Dan Ryan, the commissioner who was the swing vote, had his home vandalized that night by a mob of antifa militants.

    Portlanders have suffered immensely this year from the grandstanding of left-wing politicians who run the city. Mayor Wheeler oversaw six months of anti-police riots that have turned downtown into an empty shell of itself. When the federal government sent in reinforcements in July to protect a federal courthouse under siege, the city council passed a resolution banning Portland Police from communicating with federal agencies.
    see also

    Hardesty’s initial police-defunding package has had deadly consequences. As part of the cuts, police units that investigate gun ­violence, work in schools and patrol the transit system were disbanded. The result? In just the first month, shootings increased by almost 200 percent compared to the previous year. In the months since, homicides and shootings have continued to soar.

  • Ding-dong, the witch is… still Speaker of the House. I foresee two more years of robust NRCC fundraising.
  • “Biden to Continue Obama Tradition of Packing White House with Corporate Lobbyists:

    With Joe Biden poised to take office in 2021, reports suggest he plans to follow in Obama’s footsteps by hiring a bunch of corporate lobbyists in senior roles.

    At least two former lobbyists who will assume top roles in the Biden administration previously served on Biden’s staff during the Obama administration. Steve Ricchetti, who served as then-Vice President Biden’s chief of staff, will join the White House as counselor to the president. Ricchetti founded his own lobbying firm in 2001 and worked on behalf of corporate clients such as AT&T, Eli Lily, and the American Bankers Association.

    Ron Klain, who also served as then-Vice President Biden’s chief of staff, will take on the role of White House chief of staff in the Biden administration. Klain is a veteran of the K Street lobbying firm O’Melveny & Myers. His clients included U.S. Airways, AOL Time Warner, and ImClone, a pharmaceutical company whose CEO was convicted for fraud. Klain also lobbied on behalf of mortgage giant Fannie Mae in an effort to fight off stricter oversight from Congress.

    Rep. Cedric Richmond (D., La.) will also join the Biden administration in a senior advisory role. The move was blasted by environmental groups that pointed out Richmond’s close ties to Big Oil. During his 10 years in Congress, for example, Richmond received more than $340,000 in donations from the oil and gas industry and frequently joined Republicans in voting against legislation opposed by the industry.

    Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, will join the incoming administration as a deputy chief of staff. She is a cofounder of Precision Strategies, an “integrated strategy and marketing agency” that was recently hired by the American Investment Council, a lobbying group for private equity firms.

    If the election fraud isn’t overturned…

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Just because California’s peasants are locked down due to the cornavirus and can’t have Thanksgiving with the family doesn’t mean that Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom can’t have a maskless dinner with high-rolling lobbyists at swanky restaurant The French Laundry. Rules are for the little people, not for your betters in the ruling class…
  • Speaking of Newsom: Courts don’t seem to agree with his rule by fiat:

    The judge ruled that Newsom violated the state constitution by unilaterally ordering that all registered voters be sent mail-in ballots. More importantly, she found good cause for a permanent injunction restraining Newsom from issuing any further unconstitutional orders that make “new statutory law or legislative policy.”

    The court rejected Newsom’s extraordinary claim that a state of emergency centralizes the state’s powers in the hands of the governor, thus turning California into an autocracy. This is the unlawful basis on which Newsom has collapsed our system of checks and balances, issuing 58 executive orders and changing over 400 laws unilaterally.

    Specifically, the judge rejected Newsom’s argument that Section 8627 of the Emergency Services Act gives him autocratic powers. At least 24 of his executive orders rely on that section.

    As far as the most damaging order, Newsom’s arbitrary and unscientific lockdown scheme, that too is newly vulnerable. The Pacific Legal Foundation’s new lawsuit uses the same separation-of-powers argument our victory established as a successful legal theory.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Speaking of some pigs being more equal than others: “As America locks down, 20 lawmakers from 3 states really just flew to Maui to mingle with a bunch of lobbyists at a posh resort for 4 days.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • So the largest city in the state that voted to removed pedophiles from the sex offender registry is considering eliminating the sex crimes unit due to budget cuts.

    (Hat tip: Ian Miles Chong.)

  • Michigan’s Speaker of the House throws cold water on the idea of impeaching Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
  • Evidently being a horrible anti-Semite means you get suspended from the Labour Party for all of three weeks.
  • Another day, another hate crime hoax. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Cincinnati Democratic city councilman P.G. Sittenfeld indicted on bribery. Bonus: Sittenfeld was the third Cincinnati city council critter indicted this year.
  • Is actor Matthew McConnaughey going to run for governor of Texas? Eh. I like Hugh Hewitt, but the governor suggestion is just sort of tossed out there by him.
  • Another male feminist/anti-#GamerGater turns out to be a creeper. What are the odds?
  • I’m an unabashed partisan, but I’m getting pretty tired of politicians filling up my phone with text messages begging for money. Yeah, the Georgia runoff is important, I get it. But multiple text message begs a day just piss me off.
  • You know what’s worse than getting accidentally ejected from a fighter plane? Getting partially ejected.
  • IThoughtThisWasAmerica.jpg.
  • Heh:

  • “Disney Capitalizes On Success Of Baby Yoda With Baby Jar Jar.” To be fair, Baby Jar Jar is probably more tolerable than the original…
  • Speaking of Star Wars remakes being more tolerable than the original, the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special is now out on Disney+.
  • Speaking of Disney, science fiction author Alan Dean Foster claims Disney is screwing him out of royalties. Not cool, mouse. Not cool.
  • 8-Bit version of Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer.” Stumbled on this again after posting it many years ago, and it provides great background music to work by…
  • Man finds shelter for 300 dogs ahead of hurricane. In his own house.

  • High Golden Retriever.
  • Doggy fashion-plate: