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LinkSwarm for October 13, 2023

Friday, October 13th, 2023

Bad news: Still unemployed. Good news: Applied/submitted for lots of jobs.

Good news: My dog’s operation was a success! Bad news: The lump was cancerous. Good news: The cancer was a Stage 1 soft tissue melanoma, which is the lowest level and has little chance of recurrence.

Also: Today is Friday the 13th. Also, a Hamas leader has declared a “Day of Jihad.

Good times, good times.

  • Hunter Biden is the gift that keeps giving. “Hunter Biden Raided Daughter’s College Fund For $20,000 To Buy Hookers And Drugs.”

    At the time, Maisy, now 22, was in her final year of high school. She and her two older sisters, along with Joe Biden and First Lady Jill, had tried to stage an intervention just weeks earlier at the President’s Delaware home to get Hunter to go back to rehab.

    He promised to go, but instead ended up smoking crack in a hotel, he confessed in his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things.

    Emails and messages from his laptop show money he took from Maisy’s educational savings account went in part to paying various suspected prostitutes who visited him at hotels in the following days, his Porsche 911 car loan, sex webcam subscription fees, and other personal expenses.

    Hunter’s assistant Katie Dodge plaintively emailed him on December 28 that year that he had University of Pennsylvania tuition bills of $27,945 due (likely for his eldest daughter, Naomi), a $1,700 payment for his Porsche, $4,244.70 for Maisy’s high school Sidwell Friends, her $3,000 paycheck and $1,000 for another employee.

    Hunter tersely told Dodge to pay for the Porsche and his health insurance, but that she would only be getting half her paycheck – and that he would ‘deal with tuitions when time comes.’

  • Israeli tanks enter Gaza.
  • Following reports of Syria launching missiles at northern Israel, Israel hit the country’s two main international airports, “in the capital of Damascus and Aleppo in the north. It happened while an Iranian plane was inbound.” Also, the number of Americans killed by Hamas is now up to 27.
  • “Israel Warns Palestinians to Evacuate Northern Gaza ahead of Possible Ground Invasion.” I would bet so.
  • A day late, a shekel short: “Israel Loosens Strict Gun Control Laws To Arm ‘As Many Citizens As Possible.'” Benjamin Netanyahu and the entire Israeli political establishment deserve a good measure of blame for not doing this much sooner.
  • Speaking of guns in Gaza evidently Hamas now have a lot of rifles chambered in 5.56 NATO thanks to the Biden Administration’s abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan.
  • Steve Scalise drops out of the House Speaker race. Does this mean Jim Jordan is back in the picture? Jordan was briefly the frontrunner before Scalise emerged as the candidate preferred by a majority of Republican House members, and Jordan was also endorsed by Donald Trump. Update: Yep, it’s Jordan.
  • Even House Democrats are slamming The Squad for their anti-Israel/pro-Hamas bias.
  • Parents finally start winning battles against school tranny groomers.

    A revolt against government policies that many say usurp parental authority is spreading across the nation—especially in blue states where lawmakers have promoted transgender ideology and “gender-affirming care”—according to parents, attorneys, and teachers.

    For more than a year, California parents have shown up in droves at legislative hearings and phoned in by the hundreds to protest policies that encourage schools to keep social gender transitions of children secret. Teachers also have begun to refuse to hide information about a child’s gender identity from parents.

    Meanwhile, Democratic members of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus have spearheaded legislation supporting so-called gender-affirming care, especially for children, touting it as a “first-in-the-nation” model.

    Parental rights groups such as Our Duty have pushed back against the model, while groups such as Planned Parenthood, Equality California, and others support it.

    California school districts claim that they’re required by law to keep gender transitions secret from parents unless a child wants to tell his or her parents. But recent court rulings tell a different story.

    A federal judge on Sept. 14 blocked California’s Escondido Union School District from punishing two teachers who refused to comply with guidance issued by the California Department of Education that encourages educators to keep gender transitions of students secret from their parents.

  • The People’s Republic of California is getting ready to declare war on classic cars. “California is looking seriously at instituting, or allowing local governments to institute, zero emission zones in the near future. In preparation for such a move, the California Air Resources Board (or CARB) is reportedly gathering information about classic cars.”
  • Guy walking around Costco finds a whole hell of a lot more than 7% inflation.
  • The Texas Senate passes universal school choice. Now it goes to the House where Dade Phelen will find some way to kill it.
  • “El Paso Woman Sentenced to Prison for Impersonating Federal Agent, Wire Fraud.”

    Federal prosecutors announced that an El Paso woman received a prison sentence of more than seven years after admitting to impersonating immigration agents to swindle money from “undocumented noncitizen victims and their family members.”

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that 53-year-old Ana Maria Hernandez pleaded guilty in April to 10 counts of wire fraud and one count of impersonation. Prosecutors say she pretended to be an official with Citizenship and Immigration Services and promised victims she could help them acquire American citizenship and collected fees.

  • Exxon is buying Pioneer Natural Resources for $59.5 billion in an all-stock deal that will make it the “undisputed US shale king.
  • Poor construction in illegal alien-populated Colony ridge is affecting Harris County water. “Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey (R-Pct. 3) warned his fellow commissioners on Tuesday that improper drainage construction in Colony Ridge was causing erosion and excessive silt to wash downstream into the county’s main source of drinking water.”
  • Follow-up: Josh Kruger, the recently-murdered gay left wing journalist who taunted conservatives, has been accused of grooming his accused killer from age 15. “The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the family of Kruger’s alleged killer, 19-year-old Robert Davis, says Kruger began a years-long relationship involving drugs that began when Davis was just 15-years-old. Davis remains at large.”
  • Every single donation sent by Christianity Today staffers went to Democrats.
  • Halt and catch fire.
  • Compilation of live action versions of video game ragdolls.
  • “White House Claims $6 Billion To Iran Absolutely Not Related To The Exactly $6 Billion Worth Of Rockets Being Fired Into Israel.”
  • “Emperor Hirohito Calls For Ceasefire After Bombing Of Pearl Harbor.”
  • I think he likes the apple.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • Below is the tip jar, if you’re so inclined. Thanks to everyone who donated to the Non-Homeless Blogger Fund. I’m bad at thanking people individually the way I should, but let me know if you want public recognition in this space or not.





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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military, Obama Scandals, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | 3 Comments »

    Verifying the Hamas Baby Beheading

    Wednesday, October 11th, 2023

    Among the most horrifying Hamas atrocities to come to light following their terrorist attack on Israel is the report that they beheaded babies.

    Hamas terrorists slaughtered at least 40 babies and young children — decapitating some of them — at a kibbutz near the Gaza border, shaken Israeli officials and reporters at the scene said Tuesday.

    “It’s hard to even explain exactly just the mass casualties that happened right here,” visibly distraught i24 News correspondent Nicole Zedek said during a broadcast from Kibbutz Kfar Aza near Sderot about a quarter-mile from the Gaza Strip.

    “Babies with their heads cut off, that’s what [the soldiers] said. Gunned down. Families gunned down, completely gunned down in their beds,” Zedek said of the “sheer horror.

    “This is nothing that anyone would have even imagined,” she said.

    Top CNN reporter Nic Robertson, dressed in a military helmet and flak jacket, said, “There were so many murdered members of this Kibbutz.

    “Men, women, children, hands bound, shot, executed, heads cut,” he said.

    French journalist Margot Haddat added in a translated tweet, “It’s so macabre that no one wanted to reveal it until they had 100 percent confirmation.

    “It is a horror, a massacre. For those asking for the source. They are multiple: Israeli army, internal intelligence service and atrocious images which reached me and which I was able to cross-check,” she said. “But the best source remains this: courageous journalists from the foreign press who were able to see / agreed to see with their own eyes the bodies in Kfar Aza.”

    Here’s a tweet embedding that i24 report:

    I think that a journalist interviewing a soldier who witnessed the aftermath of the slaughter counts as confirmation.

    I wanted to verify this story not because I doubted the bloodthirsty murderers of Hamas were capable of such atrocities, but because it was just a little too on-the-nose. One should always question any narrative that fits a little too neatly into your preconceptions. And indeed, the story has undergone a subtle telephone game shift in the retelling, with it described as “Hamas beheaded 40 babies” instead of the still horrific “Hamas killed 40 young children and babies, some of whom were beheaded.”

    Israel is fighting an enemy who believes it is righteous to decapitate babies as long as they’re Jewish babies, because all slaughter of Jews, any Jews, is permitted because they believe them quite literally to be “apes and pigs.”

    That’s who Israel is fighting.

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    Posted in Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, unions, video | 32 Comments »

    Israel-Hamas War Update for October 9, 2023

    Monday, October 9th, 2023

    So many links, so little time. So lets dig in.

  • Nine Eleven Americans were killed in the terrorist attack on Israel.
  • Victor Davis Hanson on why the attack happened now.

    a) Ostensibly, radical Palestinians wanted to stop any rumored rapprochement between the Gulf monarchies—the traditional source of much of their cash—and Israel, by forcing the issue of Arab solidarity in times of “war”, especially through waging a gruesome attack aimed at civilians and encompassing executions and hostage taking. Iran likely was the driving force to prompt the war—given its greatest fear is a Sunni Arab-Israeli rapprochement.

    b) Arab forces have had only success against Israel through surprise attacks during Israeli holidays, as in the Yom Kippur War (i.e., was it any accident that the present attack began 50-years almost to the day after the October 6, 1973 beginning of the Yom Kippur War?). And so they struck again this Saturday during Simchat Torah, coming at the end of a weeklong Jewish celebration of Sukkot—in hopes that others will join in as happened in 1973. (So much for the Arab warnings not for Westerners to conduct war during Ramadan).

    c) Hamas may have reckoned that recent Israeli turmoil and mass leftist street protests over proposed reforms of the Israeli Supreme Court had led to permanent internal divisions and thus a climate of domestic distraction if not an erosion of deterrence.

    But, more importantly, in a larger sense the Biden administration has contributed both to the notion that Hamas was a legitimate Middle East player, and to the perception that the U.S. was backing away from its traditional support for Israel—to the delight of Hamas—based on the following inexplicable policies:

    1) In February Secretary of State Blinken had bragged that not only had the Biden administration resumed massive aid to the PLA cancelled by Trump, but cumulatively had transferred $1 billion—even as Palestinian authorities bragged that they would continue to pay bounties to the families of “martyrs” (i.e., those killed while conducting terrorists attacks against Israel).

    And millions of American dollars also went into Gaza, run by Hamas—despite the Biden administration’s efforts to keep mostly quiet the resumption of such inexplicable support.

  • How Hamas managed to launch its surprise attack.

    How did Hamas, the bloodthirsty jihad terror group in Gaza, perpetrate mayhem and destruction inside Israel on a scale never before seen?

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Saturday that “since this morning, the State of Israel is at war.” This was as Hamas fired over two thousand rockets into Israel, and over a hundred Israelis were murdered as jihad terrorists entered Israel and began killing people indiscriminately.
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    There has never been a Hamas jihad offensive from Gaza of this magnitude. In fact, throughout the history of modern Israel, there has never been anything like this, even when the Jewish state faced jihad coalitions of the neighboring Arab states in major wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973. So how was Hamas able to do it?

    For one thing, it was Shabbat in Israel, and the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. In that, this latest jihad resembles the 1973 war, which was launched on Yom Kippur. The idea in both cases was to catch the Israelis napping and at minimal preparedness, with large numbers of military personnel off for the holiday.

    But that was by no means all. There were widespread reports that as Hamas’ relentless rocket barrage began, Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome missile defense system was down. Reports on this so far are sketchy, but if the Islamic Republic of Iran, which as the chief financier of Hamas is clearly behind these attacks, has managed to breach Israeli security and interfere with the functioning of the Iron Dome, the ominous implications cannot be overstated. If Israel cannot manage to get the Iron Dome up and running on a secure basis, the Hamas attacks on Saturday could turn into a larger war that engulfs the entire region, as the Islamic Republic of Iran finally attempts to make good on decades of genocidal rhetoric directed at Israel.
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    Hamas also took advantage of vulnerabilities in Israel’s defenses. As jihadis screamed “Allahu akbar,” a bulldozer destroyed Israel’s fence at the Gaza border, allowing jihadis to pour into Israel in large numbers. Hamas’ military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, issued a triumphant communique on Telegram:

    Under intense missile cover and targeting of the enemy’s command and control systems, the Mujahideen of the Qassam Brigades were able to cross the enemy’s defensive line and carry out a simultaneous coordinated attack on more than 50 sites in the Gaza Division and the southern region of the occupation army, which led to the overthrow of the division’s defense, and our Mujahideen are still They are [sic] fighting heroic battles in 25 locations so far, and the fighting is currently taking place at the “Ra’im” base, the headquarters of the Gaza Division.

    It is a jihad of victory or martyrdom.

    Why wasn’t there a full-fledged wall at the Gaza border? Well, just imagine how the Biden regime, which resumed shoveling millions to the Palestinians after Trump stopped doing so, would have reacted if the Israelis had tried to construct such a thing. They would have denounced it as another “apartheid wall” and demanded that it be dismantled.

    The Israeli government, however, could fall as a result of this and certainly bears a great deal of responsibility. Yet here again, the ultimate fault lies with the Biden regime. Ever since Benjamin Netanyahu was reelected prime minister and embarked upon efforts to reform the Israeli judiciary, the Bidenites have been undermining him in every way possible, and have even been accused of funding the massive protests in Israel against the Netanyahu government.

    How much of what Hamas was able to get away with on Saturday was the result of the U.S. pressure upon Israel and favoring of the Palestinians, as the American government turned a blind eye to the genocidal jihad rhetoric that permeates the Palestinian areas every day? How distracted was the Israeli government in having to spend the bulk of its time on internal disagreements that the Biden regime had exacerbated instead of paying the necessary attention to national defense?

  • How could Hamas fund these attacks? Well, their sugar daddy Iran just got $6 billion from the Biden administration.

    Prominent Republicans laid into the Biden administration for empowering Iran on Saturday, just hours after Hamas launched thousands of rockets into Israel and sent large groups of terrorists surging across the Gaza border.

    The historic attack on Israel comes just weeks after the Biden administration agreed to release $6 billion in frozen Iranian oil revenue in exchange for the release of five American prisoners. While the Biden administration insisted that the revenue could only be used for humanitarian purposes, Iranian leaders made clear after the deal closed that they would use the revenue how they saw fit.

    As Iran is Hamas’ primary financial backer, a number of influential Republicans lawmakers and primary candidates swiftly drew a connection between the administration’s indulgent approach to the anti-American regime and the terrorist organization’s willingness and ability to carry out its most complex and sprawling operation in decades.

  • “America’s Betrayal of Israel.

    For the better part of the past decade, the United States has pursued a foreign policy designed to strengthen Iran and enable it to form a strong sphere of influence in the region. This is the idea behind what Tony Badran and Michael Doran called “the realignment,” a vision of a new world order in which America partners with Iran in order to “find a more stable balance of power that would make [the Middle East] less dependent on direct U.S. interference or protection.” Those words aren’t Badran and Doran’s; they’re Robert Malley’s, Barack Obama’s lead negotiator on the Iran deal who, as Semafor reported this week, helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government—first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations. Biden himself, in an op-ed in The Washington Post, spoke of “an integrated Middle East,” using the phrase no less than three times to make clear that his administration was intent on pursuing his predecessor’s commitment to seeing Iran not as a U.S. foe but as our collaborator.

    And the Biden administration wasn’t just talking the talk. It was also walking the walk, from unfreezing billions in assets to make it easier for Tehran to support its proxy Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon to sending huge cash infusions used primarily to pay the salaries of tens of thousands of unvetted “security personnel.” And while the previous administration halted all aid to the Palestinians—directly because of the “pay for slay” policies that support the families of those who slaughter Israelis—the Biden administration was quick to reverse the decision.

    Lots of people argued that this was simply clear-minded realpolitik after decades of disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bullshit. Here’s how you know this policy was, and is, motivated not by what’s best for America but by what would kneecap the Jewish state: Because it extended to inside Israel’s borders.

    In addition to creating the external circumstances for terror, the Biden administration did everything in its power to derail Israel’s democratically elected government and prevent it from being able to see an attack like today’s coming. That the Israelis let themselves fall for this was stupidity of criminal order. But the invisible hand here was America’s. Biden himself took to CNN to call Netanyahu’s government “the most extreme” he’s ever seen, and lost no opportunity to lecture his Israeli counterpart about democratic values. The former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, took the unprecedented step of intervening in the country’s domestic affairs, announcing ominously that he “think[s] most Israelis want the United States to be in their business.” And if words weren’t enough, the administration also sent American dollars to support the anti-Netanyahu NGOs organizing the protests that brought Israel to a halt for months.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Israel orders the complete siege of Gaza. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
  • Hezbollah has been getting frisky, firing shells into northern Israel, but I’m not sure there’s any sign of a widespread attack. Yet.
  • Israeli continues to pound targets in Gaza. No sign of a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza. Yet.

    • I think this is a good place to end the most, since there’s probably a zillion stories I could link…

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 11 Comments »

    The Final Solution To The Gaza Problem

    Sunday, October 8th, 2023

    Let’s look at what the most logical outcome to Hamas’ largest large scale attack on Israel might be.

    You’re not going to like it.

    First, some context in this Haviv Rettig Gur Times of Israel piece linked by David Bernstein at Instapundit:

    It was a horror, interminable, impossible. Hour after hour, families sat huddled in their homes awaiting rescue from the Hamas fighters streaming through their towns and villages.

    Families were butchered in cold blood. In one home, a terrorist shot the parents dead, took a child’s cellphone and started broadcasting it all in a livestream on their Facebook account. Grandmothers were pulled in wheelchairs to waiting vehicles ready to carry them as hostages into Gaza. Then came the mothers carrying babies. Footage circulated on social media, put there by Hamas, of an Israeli child asking his mother if the gunmen that surrounded them were going to kill them. “They said they won’t,” the mother replied as they were taken outside to some unknown fate.

    The stream of videos didn’t stop. An IDF soldier’s body was paraded in Gaza. A young woman, bleeding, was pulled by the hair from a car after being kidnapped and taken into the Strip. And all of it was broadcast by Hamas to the world in joyful pride, sparking celebrations in Tehran, Ramallah and no small part of the online pro-Palestinian activist world.

    And all the while came the stream of messages on Twitter and Whatsapp from Israelis still surrounded by the roving gunmen, friends and relatives begging for a rescue that never came.

    Hour after agonizing hour.

    Snip.

    Until Saturday, Israelis believed they were strong and safe. On Saturday, they started to believe that they were neither.

    In that simple shift, the Hamas attack was massively successful.

    As Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokesman Abu Hamza put it while the attack was still underway: “This powerful enemy is an illusion made of dust and capable of being defeated and broken. Our heroes made the enemy small and humiliated, feeling death everywhere.”

    Theories abound about Hamas’s reasons for the assault. Many suggested it was an Iranian-ordered disruption of Israeli-Saudi normalization. Others focused on internal Palestinian politics and suggested Hamas was positioning itself, even at the cost of an inevitable and crushing Israeli retaliation, as the unquestioned leader of the Palestinian struggle after Mahmoud Abbas’s death. Still others said the reasons were simpler: The two Hamas leaders in Gaza who prepared and launched the operation were military chief Muhammad Deif and political head Yihye Sinwar. The first lost his family to an Israeli airstrike aimed at him, the second sat 22 years in an Israeli prison. Neither needed an overwrought geopolitical rationale to piece together such an operation.

    There is probably some truth in all these theories. All make sense. But none are how Hamas itself explained the operation in real-time.

    Here lies a part of Palestinian thinking and discourse that many of Palestine’s Western defenders ignore, both because it’s a hard sell to Western audiences and because they don’t really understand it themselves. Palestinian “resistance,” as conceived by Hamas, is about much more than settlements, occupation or the Green Line. A larger theory of Islamic renewal is at work.

    As he announced the start of Saturday’s attack, Hamas military commander Deif said it was meant to disrupt a planned Israeli demolition of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. And when Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh called on Saturday for “every Muslim everywhere and all the free people of the world to stand in this just battle in defense of Al-Aqsa and the Prophet’s mission,” he meant just that, that the fight was over holy things, over Islam’s redemptive promise.

    This reclamation of Islamic dignity through the ultimate defeat of the Jews occupies a great deal of Hamas’s political thought, permeates its rhetoric and profoundly shapes its thinking about Israeli Jews and its strategy in facing Israel. Israel is more than a mere occupier or oppressor in this narrative, it is a rebellion against God and the divinely-ordained trajectory of history. And by showing Israelis in their weakness, the thinking goes, Israelis are somehow actually made weak. Redemption requires only the faith of its believers to be fulfilled, and seeing is believing.

    The footage from Saturday, the snuff videos shared gleefully by Hamas supporters, including in some Western far-left circles, weren’t an aberration. Hamas gunmen didn’t get “carried away,” as some explained. They were the essence of the whole enterprise. They were Hamas’s basic message to Israelis: That they weren’t being killed and kidnapped just for tactical advantage in the struggle for Palestinian independence, but rather were being humiliated and dehumanized as traitors against God.

    Snip.

    The Israel that emerged from Hamas’s “Al-Aqsa Deluge” operation was different from the one that went into it. A tectonic shift had occurred in the country’s psyche. The horrors inflicted by Hamas sparked rage and an intense feeling of vulnerability. Where Hamas had always seemed an implacable but ultimately containable enemy, it had now proven it could bring the danger into Israeli homes, could slaughter children and kidnap grandmothers while all the vaunted power of the Israel Defense Forces was helpless to stop it.

    Hamas had made itself an intolerable threat.

    The change is so profound and palpable that many Israeli analysts, apparently assuming that Hamas understands the consequences that this psychological fallout will have for Gaza, argued on Saturday that the terror group was surprised by its own success.

    “In my estimation,” tweeted analyst Avi Issacharoff, “the military and political leadership of Hamas did not expect these successes. They meant to kidnap two or three as part of a massive killing spree. But this many? Their problem is that this success may turn into a Pyrrhic victory. It seems to me there’s now a consensus in the Israeli elite and among the public that what was won’t be anymore.”

    Snip.

    There are many different kinds of power. There is the power of the confident, safe and strong. But there’s also the very different sort of power of the wounded, weak and desperate. These are psychological states, not objective realities. And pivoting from one to the other changes everything.

    “A wounded tiger,” Arthur Golden wrote in Memoirs of a Geisha, “is a dangerous beast.”

    It’s an image with a long pedigree in Israeli strategic thinking. Moshe Dayan was said to have urged Israel to act like a “wounded tiger,” unpredictable and desperate, to deter its enemies from attack.

    Palestinians sometimes use the image to mock Israel or shrug off the impact of an Israeli reprisal attack.

    Hamas is now putting that old adage to the test. Israelis can handle humiliation; they are less moved by the politics of honor than are their enemies. But these heirs of a collective memory forged in the fires of the 20th century cannot handle the experience of defenselessness Hamas has imposed on them. Hamas seemed to do everything possible to shift Israeli psychology from a comfortable faith in their own strength to a sense of dire vulnerability.

    And it will soon learn the scale of that miscalculation. A strong Israel may tolerate a belligerent Hamas on its border; a weaker one cannot. A safe Israel can spend much time and resources worrying about the humanitarian fallout from a Gaza ground war; a more vulnerable Israel cannot.

    A wounded, weakened Israel is a fiercer Israel.

    Hamas was once a tolerable threat. It just made itself an intolerable one, all while convincing Israelis they are too vulnerable and weak to respond with the old restraint.

    I largely agree with this analysis. Also, for the first time since the Yom Kippur War, Israel has formally declared war on Hamas, which means that what will now ensue will be a very different type of war than Operation Cast Lead.

    Let’s review how Israel had tried to deal with Hamas:

    1. Israel tried occupying Gaza. That didn’t work.
    2. Israel tried building walls and letting Hamas run Gaza. That didn’t work.

    This leads inexorably to the only viable solution for Israel to prevent Hamas attacking and murdering Israeli citizens from Gaza.

    1. Palestinians will no longer be allowed to occupy Gaza.

    No Palestinians in Gaza = No terror attacks from Gaza.

    Occupation didn’t work. Coexistence didn’t work. But ethnic cleansing will.

    Keep in mind, it doesn’t have to be the ethnic cleansing Nazi Germany inflicted on Europe during World War II. It could be the ethnic cleansing the Allies implemented in Europe after World War II. If you were an ethnic German east of the Oder-Neisse line, you were no longer be allowed to live where you were. If you were lucky, maybe you got to pack a few suitcases before being trucked west. That’s what happens when your nation starts an illegal war of aggression and loses.

    The parallels with Hamas and Gaza are obvious.

    Palestinians could be deported from the Gaza strip and replaced with Israeli settlers. Hell, Israel is rich enough that it could even financially compensate existing land owners. With Israelis running and owning everything, and no more money spent on murder tunnels and rocket attacks, Gaza would quickly transition from a clapped-out Arab city to a modern western one. In ten years, all that valuable seaside property is going to look more like the French Riviera than a Damascus slum.

    And where will Israel forcibly relocate Palestinians to? Obviously the West Bank. Moreover, beyond war crime trials for the leaders, Israel doesn’t even need to slaughter Hamas footsoliders off the battlefield. They merely need to hand them over to the tender mercies of hated rival Fatah, who will no doubt be delighted to do it for them. And Palestinian-on-Palestinian bloodletting rarely makes the nightly news. In their heart of hearts, Fatah probably hates Jews almost as much as Hamas, but they no longer make such a public spectacle of their hatred. Why divert all that international guilt-geld into missiles and murder tunnels when it can be more profitably diverted to high living and Swiss bank accounts? Fatah’s current corrupt state is largely a regression to the Arab governing mean.

    Would Egypt object? Formally, I’m sure. But remember that the current Egyptian government is in power because they literally deposed their own homegrown jihadist lunatics. An Israeli Gaza would probably offer Egypt a lot of economic growth possibilities, from more direct rail and road ties to be having low-labor-cost Egyptian maquiladoras for Israeli factories in Gaza.

    How would the rest of the Arab World react to genteel ethnic cleansing of Gaza? The first answer is “Who cares?” The second answer is feigned indignation masking real indifference. It’s an open secret that other Arabs hate the Palestinians and treat them like dirt. No Arab state in 2023 is going to war over Gaza. The worst you’ll see is some more toothless UN resolutions, and maybe temporary suspensions of trade agreements, followed by quiet reinstatement 6 months to a year later. Hamas is backed by Saudi Arabia’s bitter rival Iran, so don’t expect many tears to be shed over their demise in Riyadh.

    Expect impotent rage among European lefty types at their favorite victims/psychopathic killers getting snuffed out. But when has Europe needed an excuse to hate Jews? Europe will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. Expect a few mostly toothless trade sanctions and cancellation of a few meaningless cultural exchange programs. They probably won’t even suspend Israel from the Eurovision Song Contest. Plus the Russo-Ukrainian War is still going to be the top foreign policy concern in the EU for some time to come.

    And the Biden Administration? Certainly the ideological core of the Democratic Party is hostile to Israel, but Biden himself has made all the proper noises condemning Hamas. U.S.-Israeli defense and intelligence cooperation goes so deep into the deep state that it’s hard to see anything short of Israel tossing nukes around to sever it. And even that might not be enough. And Biden is unlikely to want to risk alienating Jewish voters (and donors) ahead of the 2024 Presidential election.

    Israel has declared war on Hamas, and countries that lose wars (as opposed to police actions) typically lose territory. Spain lost numerous overseas territories following the loss of the Spanish-American War. Today no party in Madrid demands the reconquest of Guam.

    After disposing of as many Hamas fighters as it deems necessary, Fatah might be too hard pressed to deal with the sudden influx of population to launch a futile intifada to recapture Gaza. Hell, Israel might even give some West Bank settlements back in order to transfer Jewish settlers to Gaza.

    Keep in mind, I’m not advocating this as a course of action (not my circus, not my monkeys). I’m saying that if Israel has finally found the existence of a jihadist death cult that periodically kidnaps, tortures and murders Israeli civilians for the crime of being Jews on its doorstep intolerable, as now appears to be the case, then this is the one course of action that logic dictates is necessary to ensure, with absolute, 100% certainty, that it never happens again.

    And if Fatah does decide to follow Hamas’ path of total war against Jews? Israel can build it’s defensive wall higher and deeper. If the situation becomes intolerable in 2053, or 2073, then the same solution may come into play again.

    From the river to the sea, Israel would be free…of Palestinians.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 63 Comments »

    Texas Helps Solve Ukraine’s Shell Problem

    Tuesday, September 19th, 2023

    Many observers have been shocked at the furious rate of ordinance expenditure seen in Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine. Much attention has been focused on smart munitions like Stingers and HIMARS, but plain old dumb artillery shells are also being used up at a furious rate.

  • “Recently, the COO of Lockheed Martin said that Ukraine consumes a year’s worth of production for some munitions in just one month.”
  • “In March 2023, the Ukrainian minister of Defence Oleksiy Reznikov said that Ukraine uses on average 110,000 units of 155mm caliber shells per month. But he stressed that Ukraine can fire 594,000 shells per month, if the ammunition was available.”
  • “This discrepancy between what is actually fired and what could be fired means that over 300 western artillery systems that Ukraine has are sitting unused 80% of the time. That’s why Ukraine wants 250,000 artillery shells per month from the European Union alone.”
  • “According to the Ukrainians, in order to achieve their battlefield objectives, they need at least 60% of the full ammunition set, or 356,000 shells per month. If the EU were to provide 250,000 shells, the other 106,000 would have to be supplied by other western partners, primarily the United States.”
  • “But there’s a problem. The United States is currently producing only 24,000 155mm artillery shells which is up from 16,000 shells produced in February 2022, prior to the Russian invasion.”
  • America isn’t into grinding artillery duels, we’re into speed, precision munitions and air superiority.
  • “The unguided shells have been the cornerstone of the 18-month old conflict, since each day, thousands of shells are fired from both sides.”
  • “Since the Russian invasion began, the Pentagon has invested billions of dollars to produce record levels of artillery shells, not seen since the Korean War in the early 1950s. By 2024, the United States wants to produce 80,000 shells per month. That would be a 500% increase from prior to the invasion.”

    • Part of the solution to that problem is coming from Mesquite, Texas. (For those outside Texas, Mesquite is part of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, and is east of Dallas and south of Garland.)

    Earlier this year, the Mesquite City Council approved the construction of a manufacturing facility for military manufacturer General Dynamics and Tactical Systems.

    The 240,011-square-foot building is expected to employ 50 salaried and 75 to 100 hourly employees after the city approved the new $60 million industrial campus in 2021.

    “This unique opportunity is a direct result of our strong partnership with the U.S. Army and a very responsive and collaborative Mesquite, Texas, community,” said Steven Black, vice president and general manager at General Dynamics. “We are very excited to grow our company in this region.”

    Mesquite City Manager Cliff Keheley echoed similar sentiments, saying he is “excited” to have Mesquite become a “robust commercial center” so that residents “no longer have to leave” the city to work.

    “Once the installation is complete, the manufacturing facility will effectively produce 20,000 units per month for the Department of Defense, which will contribute to the inherently necessary defense capabilities of the United States and our allies abroad,” General Dynamics said in a letter to the city.

    According to The New York Times, those “20,000 units” refer to 155-millimeter artillery shells for howitzers. The U.S. government is planning to increase its production of 155-millimeter shells from 15,000 to 90,000 per month to keep up with the need in Ukraine.

    “We don’t want to say we’re profiting off of a conflict like that — we’re not feeling any of the effects of war,” Mesquite City Manager Cliff Keheley told the Times regarding the war in Ukraine. “But at the same time, it’s a global scale of the economy, and that generates a need.”

    My guess is that the shells manufactured in Mesquite will be used to backfill U.S. shell stock sent to Ukraine.

    It’s not complete solution to Ukraine’s shell problem, but it’s a start. But Ukraine is going to need a lot more help than that to supercharge its current grinding counteroffensive.

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    Posted in Military, video | 21 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for September 15, 2023

    Friday, September 15th, 2023

    The Biden economy continues to batter ordinary Americans, CIA’s bribing experts to protect China and the deep state, Ukraine makes Russian ships and air defense systems in Crimea go boom, UAW goes on strike, and sanctuary city chickens come home to roost. Plus a personal update at the end. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Joe Biden continues to work his special brand of magic on the economy: “Real household income suffers biggest drop since Great Recession.”

    Nominally, households earned more money in 2022 than they did in 2021. But thanks to inflation caused by Bidenomics, real household income (that is, income adjusted for inflation) not only fell, but fell by an amount not seen since the Great Recession.

    According to Census Bureau numbers released Tuesday, median household income fell from $76,330 in 2021 to $74,580 in 2022, a decline of 2.3%. This is the biggest drop in real household income since 2010, when it fell 2.6%. Even at the height of the pandemic, when millions of people couldn’t work, real income only fell 2.2%.

    The decline in real income was driven entirely by near-record-high inflation. According to the Census Bureau, inflation rose 7.8% between 2021 and 2022, which was the largest inflation increase since 1981.

    Isn’t not being able to feed your family a small price to pay for our elites not having to deal with mean tweets? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • The deep state at work: “CIA Bribed Analysts To Change Lab-Leak Conclusions.”

    A ‘senior-level’ CIA whistleblower has come forward to allege that the agency bribed analysts to change their opinion that Covid-19 most likely originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, according to the NY Post.

    The whistleblower told House committee leaders that his agency ‘ tried to pay off six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they changed their position and said the virus jumped from animals to humans,’ according to a Tuesday letter from the chairmen of two House subcommittees investigating the pandemic response and US intelligence, Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) and Mike Turner (R-OH).

    The pair have requested all documents, communications and pay info from the CIA’s Covid-19 Discovery Team by Sept. 26.

    “According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” reads the letter from the House panel chairmen.

    “The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis.

    “The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” the letters continue, adding that the analysts were “experienced officers with significant scientific expertise.”

  • Hunter Biden indicted on federal gun charges. A whole lot of observers think this is just an excuse to avoid indicting him (and his father) on bribery and corruption charges.
  • Ukraine seems to be systemically destroying Russian air defense systems in occupied Crimea and going after all of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
  • Trump supports Paxton.
  • Abbott’s busses won the border battle.

    Washington refused to fully fund construction of a wall along the Mexican border as Congress obeyed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — whom Republicans bow to — and the galaxy of gangs, drug cartels, pedos, Chinese spies, terrorists and Methodists who back Democrats. There are some overlaps. My point is, Democrats cannot destroy the nation without help.

    There seemed to be no stopping the onslaught. What to do? What to do? What to do?

    Well, they were messing with Texas and as Texans say, don’t mess with Texas.

    Its governor’s press office said in June, “In April 2022, Governor Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to charter buses to transport migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C. The Governor added New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia as additional drop-off locations last year and most recently added Denver as a busing destination last month. Since beginning the migrant busing strategy last spring, more than 21,600 migrants have been transported to these self-declared sanctuary cities while providing much-needed relief to Texas’ overwhelmed border communities.”

    Battles are usually fought with horses, tanks or aeroplanes. Greg Abbott used buses. As of June, he shipped 500 busloads of illegal aliens to sanctuary cities. The shipments continue.

    You want ’em, you got ’em.

    It turns out, sanctuary cities don’t want them.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
    

  • Virginia Democratic statehouse candidate Susanna Gibson is complaining that there are videos of her having sex with her husband online. Gee, how did they get online? “Gibson had an account on Chaturbate, a legal website where viewers can watch live webcam performances that feature nudity and sexual activity…The videos show Gibson and her husband, John David Gibson, having sex and at times looking into the camera and asking viewers for donations in the form of ‘tokens’ or ‘tips’ to watch a private show.” It did not take Columbo to crack this case. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might bolt the party that’s trying to screw him over.

    The Democrat Party has a latent disaster on its hand vis a vis one RFK Jr.

    On the one hand, they are fully dedicated to sabotaging his campaign. Under no circumstances whatsoever will he be permitted to win the nomination.

    Even if he had 80%+ support from the electorate, the sick truth is that party leadership (influenced by the consultant and donor classes) would rather lose with Brandon than win with RFK Jr. because of what he’s liable to do to the Deep State and D.C. largesse were he ever to assume office. It would be a proverbial bloodbath for the administrative state and all of the grifters who feed on it.

    On the other hand, they need to keep RFK Jr. within the Democrat Party fold because if he were to go rogue and run third party — which he, frankly, should have been doing all along — it would be a veritable death knell for the Brandon entity’s prospects in 2024, which are wafer-thin as it is.

    Whatever perceived threat Cornel West poses to Brandon’s re-election with his Green Party run, magnify that threat by 10x, 100x and you’re in the ballpark of what RFK Jr. would do to the party. It’s not outlandish to speculate that a strong third-party run by RFK Jr. might literally break the Democrat Party for years or possibly forever. That’s how sick of the party’s BS its own members, not to mention independents and non-voters (the largest, unserviced voting bloc in the country), are.

    RFK Jr. has already proven himself nearly bulletproof from relentless Democrat Party and corporate state media attacks — arguably on the same level in this regard as “Teflon” Don.

  • “Hays County district clerk files petition to remove DA, citing new Texas law.”

    There’s a petition to have the Hays County district attorney removed from office.

    The person who filed it? The Hays County district clerk.

    The petition was filed by Hays County District Clerk Avrey Anderson on Tuesday, Sept. 12. I

    It alleged that Hays County DA Kelly Higgins implemented and executed a policy or policies that refused to prosecute a class or type of criminal offense under state law.

    The petition said DA Higgins has made public declarations that he would not prosecute the following:

    • simple drug possession offenses
    • simple cannabis possession offenses
    • procedures committed by a licensed physician in the case that they are treating transgenders
    • procedures committed by a licensed physician in the case they are performing abortions

    According to the court documents filed, there’s been an excessive amount of felony possession of cannabis, methamphetamine and cocaine cases being declined for “random and nonspecific reasons.”

    I know one of the first questions in your mind: Is Higgins a Soros-backed DA? Answer cloudy. She got $2,000 from Chip Shields in Portland, OR. Shields founded Better People, a pro ex-con thing, but I can’t find a direct Soros link to Higgins. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Things that make you go Hmmmm: “A representative of the Harris County attorney’s office told a district court judge that the county would use all legal means to prevent the deposition of the deputy director of election technology Jason Bruce.”
  • UAW goes on strike over wages, pensions…and mandating electric cars.
  • Let the child sex mutilation lawsuits begin.
  • Goodbye, Mittens.
  • National Review looks back at Simon and Garfunkel. Don’t agree with everything here, but they did make some great music Back In The Day…
  • “14-year-old son died after attempting the ‘One Chip Challenge.’ You don’t want to jump into that sort of thing without building up your resistance first. Me, I’m pretty sure I could do it, especially if I could find a way to make money off it. Maybe I could get 100,00 people to pledge a buck for every one I eat, and then then see how many I can eat on a live-stream…
  • Ever wanted to hear The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz do an album of REM covers? Yeah, me neither, but here’s “Shiny Happy People.”
  • Ooopsie! (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Democrats Complain That Illegal Immigrants Are Destroying Their Sanctuary Cities.”
  • “Experts Believe Aaron Rodgers Ankle Injury A Result Of Being Unvaccinated.”
  • Boing! Boing! Boing!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • Also, my most recent job just ended. So here’s the tip jar, if you’re so inclined:





    I don’t usual rattle the jar, because I make good money when employed, and I’m hardly destitute, but every bit helps. If you know of any remote Senior Technical Writer positions, let me know.

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud | 1 Comment »

    Ukraine Hits Two Ships in Sevastopol Dry Dock

    Wednesday, September 13th, 2023

    A Ukrainian strike hit two ships in dry dock at Sevastopol harbor in occupied Crimea: One Ropucha-class landing ship and One Kilo-class submarine.

    A suspected overnight Ukrainian missile and drone attack on the Crimean port of Sevastopol has reportedly damaged a landing ship and submarine belonging to the Russian Black Sea Fleet, in what appears to be the latest blow inflicted by Kyiv against Moscow’s navy.

    The Russian state-run Tass news agency reported that the overnight attack injured 24 people in Sevastopol, with Moscow-installed city governor Mikhail Razvozhaev blaming a “missile attack.” Photos and videos of the port showed a series of explosions and fires raging around the docks. The first strikes were reported at around 3 a.m. local time. Tass reported witnesses hearing around 10 explosions.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said Sevastopol was attacked by three naval drones and 10 cruise missiles. In a statement, the ministry said that all unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed, along with seven cruise missiles. The target, it added, was the S. Ordzhonikidze ship repair plant.

    Razvozhaev posted a photo from the scene appearing to show the side of a Ropucha-class large landing ship that sustained damage, The New York Times reported. The Russian Baza news outlet reported that the damaged landing ship was the Minsk, and that the Kilo-class Rostov-on-Don attack submarine was also hit.

    Video supposedly of the strike and aftermath (with the caveat that sometimes footage from similar strikes gets reused, and the guy’s voice at the beginning sounds strangely familiar).

    Suchomimus also has a video:

  • The fire on the Minsk seems so extensive that the ship is likely gutted.
  • The Rostov-on-Don submarine was commissioned in December 2014.
  • If it suffered a direct hit, it’s likely out of commission for the indefinite future.
  • “The dry dock will likely be out of commission for a while. These are pretty sturdy things, so I don’t think it will be fully destroyed. But the one here is now clogged with two destroyed or damaged ships, not to mention damage to various bits of machinery.” But don’t forget that Russia managed to lose a floating dry dock in Murmansk when it sank in 2018.
  • This was one of three military dry docks in Sevastopol. Russia has three civilian dry docks in Novorossiysk (which may or may not be able to handle military ships) and one in Rostov-on-Don, currently occupied by the damaged Sig oil tanker. They’re used for regular maintenance in addition to repair.
  • On the Kilo-class submarine: “Russia has just five active in the Black Sea. These are important targets, as Russia uses these to launch Kalibr missiles, so one of these being destroyed does impact Russia’s capabilities to launch strikes over the Black Sea.”

    • As Suchomimus notes, Russia seems to be losing a naval war to a country without a navy…

    Update: They’re both toast.

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    Posted in Military, video | 17 Comments »

    LinkSwarm For September 8, 2023

    Friday, September 8th, 2023

    I haven’t been covering the Ken Paxton impeachment because I don’t think I have anything novel to say about it that hasn’t been covered better elsewhere. Enjoy the Friday LinkSwarm!

    

  • U.S. credit card debt tops $1 trillion. Thanks, Joe Biden.
  • Truth about our current economic situation:

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Chinese nationals gate-crashed U.S. institutions more than 100 times in recent years.
    

  • How John Stewart created Tucker Carlson.

    The feature that really made The Daily Show famous was its masterful use of archival video clips to reveal the hypocrisy of the chattering classes. Stewart would set his target on some party shill or professional talking head being condescending, self-important, dishing out blame, kissing whatever ring he’d been paid to kiss. And then the show would play a clip of the same talking head’s appearance on a C-SPAN 3 four-in-the-morning call-in show from ten years ago, back when he’d been paid to kiss another ring, saying the exact opposite thing.

    There was a clip, there was always a clip. And our righteous host would send these hacks packing.

    Through all this, certain public figures would be transformed into storylines with narratives and characters, with inside jokes and recurring bits. The media’s storytellers became the subjects of a theater of the absurd. It got so that when certain figures would show up in a segment, you knew you were about to witness them receive their just comeuppance, a great spectacle of spilled archival blood. The audience would titter in excited anticipation.

    It was a delight to watch.

    Snip.

    What had created a culture of “just talking on TV without any accountability,” as one Daily Show writer put it, was not only the sheer volume and speed of the news. It was this true fact that will sound insane to anyone under the age of thirty: People on television reasonably assumed that no one would hear what they had said ever again.

    As essayist Chuck Klosterman records in The Nineties: A Book, the key characteristic of twentieth-century media was its ephemerality. You experienced it in real time and internalized what was important and what it felt like. Then you moved on. “It was a decade of seeing absolutely everything before never seeing it again.”

    People used to argue with their friends about the plot of a show or what the score had been in the ball game because, well, how were you going to check? Unless you had personally saved the newspaper or recorded it on your VCR, you would need to go to a literal archive and pull it up on microfilm.

    TV news was even shakier, as networks often recorded over old tapes. Some of this footage only exists today because of the obsessive efforts of one Philadelphia woman who recorded news broadcasts on 140,000 VHS tapes over forty years.

    And so, if you were a pundit or a commentator or a “spin doctor” PR flak, you could say whatever suited your needs at the moment, or even lie with impunity — as long as your lie did not become its own pseudo-event. Your lasting impact was whatever stuck in viewers’ heads and hearts. And if you changed your tune in the months or years afterwards, who would remember?

    The Daily Show would remember.

    The explosion of live broadcast and cable news had created a new, completely under-valued resource for whoever thought to harness it: catalog clips. Soon, new digital technology could preserve content in amber, allowing for its retrieval, repurposing, or referencing at any time.

    It’s a long essay, and I don’t necessarily agree with all the writer’s points, but it’s worth reading.

  • How Sweden got Flu Manchu right.

    There was no state of emergency, no curfews, no orders to stay at home or shelter in place. Young Swedes were encouraged to continue with their sports training and events. Schools remained open, and so did offices, factories, restaurants, libraries, shopping centers, gyms, and hairdressers. As a rule, borders were not closed to fellow Europeans and public transportation kept running.

    There were no mask mandates and not even a recommendation for the public to use masks—until January 2021, when they were recommended on public transportation during rush hours (7–9 a.m. and 4–6 p.m. on weekdays). While some other governments forced school children to wear face masks, Tegnell even warned against making children wear them, saying that “school is no optimal place for face masks.”6

    One can see how Sweden’s path diverged from that of its peers by consulting the latest Human Freedom Index, which has data through 2020. During this first year of the pandemic, Sweden’s freedom rating only fell by 0.19 on a 10‐​point scale, compared to 0.49 in Britain and 0.52 in the United States. The only rich country that saw a smaller decline in freedom than Sweden was Singapore, at 0.16.7

    Snip.

    Analysts from other countries—and even some Swedish scholars—predicted disaster. One influential Swedish model, inspired by the famous British Imperial College study, predicted that Sweden would have 20,000 COVID-19 patients needing intensive care by early May 2020 and a need for intensive care units around 40 times over capacity. By July 1, Sweden would have 82,000 COVID-19 deaths. The Imperial College model predicted between 66,000 and 90,000 deaths without mitigation efforts, and a peak demand of intensive care unit patients 70 times higher than capacity.

    Snip.

    When you look at excess deaths during the three pandemic years, 2020–2022, compared to the previous three years, you get a very different picture. According to this measure, Sweden’s excess death rate during the pandemic was 4.4 percent higher than previously. Compared to the data that other countries report to Eurostat, this is less than half of the average European level of 11.1 percent, and remarkably, it is the lowest excess mortality rate during the pandemic of all European countries, including Norway, Denmark, and Finland.

    (Hat tip: John Tierney at Instapundit.)

  • Sweden got immigration wrong.

    The latest violence has erupted in Malmo following a Quran burning by an ‘Anti-Islam activist’ according to the BBC.

    “A group of angry protesters tried to stop the burning, which resulted in a showdown between them and police,” the report states.

  • “Poland Aims To Create Largest Army In Europe Within Two Years.” Golly, who would need a large army with such historically peaceful neighbors as Germany and Russia?
  • Surprised I didn’t see this elsewhere: “Murder & Drug Chaos Forces Lockdown Of Entire Texas Prison System.”

    e Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) declared a statewide lockdown of all its correctional facilities on Wednesday morning, citing increased contraband-related incidents and drug-related inmate homicides.

    TDCJ said most inmate-on-inmate homicides “are tied back to illegal drugs … and over the last five years, the volume of illegal narcotics entering the system has substantially increased.”

    In response to the drug and murder epidemic in Texas jails, TDCJ is implementing the following strategies to restore order:

    • Systemwide Lockdown: Each facility will limit the movement of inmates and their contact with those outside the prison. Inmates and staff will undergo intensified searches to intercept and confiscate contraband.
    • Digital Mail: TDCJ is completing the rollout of the digital mail program. Over the last few years, there has been a significant increase in paper soaked in K2 or methamphetamines coming into our facilities. The digital mail program will halt this contraband being sent through traditional mail. Effective September 6, 2023, all inmate mail should be addressed and sent to the Digital Mail Center. All mail received this week will be delivered to the digital mail processing center. More information about this program can be found here: TDCJ News – TDCJ Digital Mail Rollout.
    • Increased K9 Searches and Other Technology: To assist in contraband detection and outside funding related to contraband, TDCJ will be deploying additional resources. Specialized search teams and narcotic dogs will be deployed to units and staff will be subject to enhanced search procedures.
    • Comprehensive Searches: All persons entering our facilities at all locations will undergo comprehensive searches.

    “Due to the fact staff will be concentrating on these search efforts, visitation will be canceled until further notice. Inmates will still have access to the phone system and tablets,” TDCJ said.

    If drugs are getting into Texas prisons, there’s over a 90% chance correctional staff are getting them in there.

  • “Over 1,600 Scientists Sign ‘No Climate Emergency’ Declaration.”

    “There is no climate emergency,” the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL) said in its World Climate Declaration (pdf), made public in August. “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”

    A total of 1,609 scientists and professionals from around the world have signed the declaration, including 321 from the United States.

    The coalition pointed out that Earth’s climate has varied as long as it has existed, with the planet experiencing several cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age only ended as recently as 1850, they said.

    “Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming,” the declaration said.

    Warming is happening “far slower” than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

    “Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools,” the coalition said, adding that these models “exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases” and “ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.” For instance, even though climate alarmists characterize CO2 as environmentally-damaging, the coalition pointed out that the gas is “not a pollutant.”

    Carbon dioxide is “essential” to all life on earth and is “favorable” for nature. Extra CO2 results in the growth of global plant biomass while also boosting the yields of crops worldwide.

    CLINTEL also dismissed the narrative of global warming being linked to increased natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, and droughts, stressing that there is “no statistical evidence” to support these claims.

    “There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are,” it said.

  • “California mom Jessica Konen won a $100,000 settlement from her daughter’s school district, Spreckels Union School District, after Buena Vista Middle School had socially transitioned her 11-year-old daughter, Alicia, without her knowledge or consent.”
  • “Hospital Employee Leaks DEI Training Materials That Say Three Year-Olds Can be Transgender.”
  • Remember how the UK was economically lagging other countries in Europe and Remainers blamed Brexit? Yeah, not so much.

    The Office for National Statistics (ONS) now says that the UK economy actually recovered from the pandemic recession back in 2021. It turns out that wholesalers and the healthcare sector, in particular, had produced much greater output than previously thought.

    These updated figures suggest that the UK economy is as much as two per cent larger than previously believed. This means that the UK can no longer be considered the worst-performing economy in the G7. In fact, post-Brexit, the UK recovered from the pandemic at a similar rate to France and at a faster pace than Germany, Europe’s largest economy.

    The ONS’s revision is extraordinary. As one leading economist put it: ‘The entire UK economic narrative – post-pandemic – has just been revised away.’ The very basis for the Remainer elites’ narrative of doom has now been shattered before our eyes.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • San Francisco: A dozen overdose deaths in one day.
  • Hollywood types are starting to get evicted due to the strike. Perhaps someone should let them know that you can find jobs outside the movie industry…
  • Dwight has a swell Medal of Honor story. In Vietnam, he flew four surrounded soldiers to safety hanging off his helicopter skids…
  • Why in God’s green earth is Amazon allowing people to sell AI generated mushroom foraging books on its site?
  • John Lennon wrote “I Am the Walrus” to troll English teachers and make fun of Allen Ginsberg.
  • Mark Felton visits Buckingham Palace, and is Not Amused. “The rooms open to the public are, of course, lavishly decorated. The amount of gold painted furniture, pianos and urns, similar to what I imagine Liberace’s house look like. The walls are hung with the usual assortment of well-fed Hanoverians.” Plus: No bathrooms for you, lowly peasant!
  • Can you spot the Transwoman?
  • “Vials Of Mysterious Substance At Wuhan Lab Labeled ‘Save For 2024 Election.'”
  • Boop!

    (Hat tip:

    • Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Uncategorized, unions | 1 Comment »

    Ukraine Drone Hits Russian Fab

    Thursday, September 7th, 2023

    I missed this bit of news from late August.

    A Russian microchip factory likely producing technology for sophisticated weapons has been targeted in a significant strike, Daily Express US has heard.

    A drone downed over the Bryansk region in Russia this week fell on the Kremny EL factory, dubbed “Silicon El”, according to the Mash Telegram channel.

    Military blogger Romanov Light said a fire broke out at the plant’s 16th building and was extinguished around an hour later – at 1.50am local time. Staggering footage shared online shows the shocking moment the plant was struck.

    Michael Bociurkiw, global affairs analyst and senior fellow at The Atlantic Council, told Daily Express US the microchip factory was a significant target.

    It was one of several Russian sites struck in one of the biggest waves of attacks on Russian soil since Putin’s illegal war began.

    According to Wikipedia’s vaguely accurate list of semiconductor fabs around the world, Kremny EL was running a 500 nm process, which was state of the art…in 1987. This clearly translated from something that’s not English, they seemed to originally be running power supply chips. Lots of military applications for those, and not too demanding as far as chip design goes.

    So it was a military target. Could they use it for smart weapon guidance systems? Yeah, you could build something as powerful as, say, a 386 on it, and that’s plenty sophisticated enough to guide bombs and missiles with.

    How long will the strike set Russia back? Hard to say, but the contamination means the entire fab will need to be decontaminated before they can process wafers again. Maybe a month. Debris may have damaged some of the machines, though the tech is so old that there are probably lots of spare parts for things that can be had despite sanctions. If they hit the power center, the air-handling system, or the DI water system, that could take a while to repair, especially if they need modern western parts. And if they took out the power, all the wafer processing machines will have to be requalified, which is a gigantic pain in the ass and quite time-consuming. But most of the in-process wafers will be safe inside FOUPs, and can probably continue processing, once the fab is up and running again.

    Still, it will be a setback for Russia. It’s just unclear how large a setback.

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    Posted in Military, Obama Scandals | 17 Comments »

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