Posts Tagged ‘Houston’
Sunday, April 17th, 2022
In Houston, the Galleria (located centrally just outside the 610 loop at Westheimer) has long been the ne plus ultra of retail shopping, filled with high-end shops for designer clothing, jewelry, etc. While other malls built out, the Galleria built up, with four floors around a large open atrium and an ice rink. The Galleria was where rich people shopped.
My most vivid memory of the Galleria was my family taking us there to see Star Wars, where it was playing in one of only 50 theaters nationwide, right after a rave write-up in Time magazine.
A long time ago in a decade far away, Time magazine, Star Wars and the Galleria were all important.
We got there in the early afternoon, and not only was the next showing sold out, the line for tickets stretched all the way around the ice rink and halfway up the other side. It turned out that all showings until midnight were already sold out.
Needless to say, we didn’t see Star Wars that day.
Instead, we saw it a month or two later at the movie theater in Greenspoint Mall. Greenspoint was still pretty new at that point, built out on north IH-45 at Gears (later Greens) road just the year before, at a time when north Houston was experiencing rapid growth but there were still miles and miles of green fields interspersed with tracts of tall pine forests. It was a mall anchored by large department stores Sears and Foley’s (a Houston-area department store chain that Macy’s would purchase and largely ruin), which would later be expanded to include Joske’s (a Dallas department store later bought by Dillard’s), JCPenney, Montgomery Ward and Lord & Taylor. Greenspoint was a good mall where middle class Houstonians shopped.
As Houston grew, new malls opened in the northwest (Willowbrook) and northeast (Deerbrook). That, age and changing demographics changed the character of Greenspoint over the years. It went from being a mall where middle class Houstonians shopped to one where gangbangers shot at each other and your hubcaps got stolen. (Word was that if you reported getting your hubcaps stolen to the HPD, they didn’t even ask how many if it happened at Greenpoint; they just assumed it was all four.) Thus Greenpoint became know as “Gunspoint,” and stores started closing. Macy’s was the last anchor tenant, and closed in 2017. After that it was mainly known for the carnival in the parking lot. It’s actually unclear to me whether Greenspoint is still alive or not; I sort of assumed Flu Manchu killed it off, but there are tweets from people this year that talk about visiting, so maybe not.
What brought back all these mall memories was the fact that there was a shooting outside the Galleria yesterday. Video below. (Language warning of the “black people talking about other black people” variety.)
Which brought this up:
More opining:
Sharpston was a now-dead mall that was close to the Galleria (at least in Houston terms, around five miles away).
This sort of broad daylight shooting at the Galleria would have been unthinkable thirty years ago. But it’s all too thinkable with the general rise in Harris County crime under Soros-backed DA Kim Ogg, Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo, and hard left activist judges. (Houston mayor Sylvester Turner is also a Democrat, but he notably rejected calls to defund the police back in 2020 and his policies don’t seem to have been a driver for the crime increase.) But it’s the Democrats in Harris County government whose policies are responsible for putting violent felons back on the streets.
Decline is a choice. Democrats activists have decided that getting their hands on the money and putting felons back on the streets in the name of “racial justice” is a far more important goal that keeping law-abiding citizens safe from crime.
Tags:Crime, Democrats, Galleria, Greenspoint Mall, Harris County, Houston, Lina Hidalgo, Texas
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Texas | 10 Comments »
Friday, February 4th, 2022
The Carter-era “misery index” (inflation + unemployment) is rising, Canada’s truckers are still honking, more Democratic sleazebag activity, the far left is coming for your kids, China continues to misbehave, and a tragic cheese display collapse shocks onlookers. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Biden continues to work his magic on the economy. Expected job numbers: +200,000. Actual job numbers: -300,000.
But! There are other stories stating that jobs numbers “beat” expectations. Why? Some super sketchy “seasonal” adjustments.
Why the BLS is applying such a grotesque seasonal adjustment to it, is unclear (actually, if one assumes that the Biden admin tapped the BLS secretary on the shoulder, then it is very clear).
It’s not just outside analysts who reach this conclusion: in Table C to its report, the BLS showed “December 2021-January 2022 changes in selected labor force measures, with adjustments for population control effects” and confirmed that if one had used an apples-to-apples basis for the January numbers, the number of Employed workers (from the Household Survey) would be down -272K. Instead, thanks to the population control effect adjustment of 1.471 million, the final number was 1.199 million!
In summary, while the markets had been trading for months on fake data when the BLS failed to catch up to covid reality, and was applying stale seasonal adjustments, they are doing so again today, only in the opposite direction with the BLS now overextending itself in the opposite direction, with a January seasonal adjustment that has never been greater!
Inflation hit 5.8% in 2021, the most in 39 years. Pretty sure this year is going to be a lot worse.
How bad is inflation? Dwight sent over this link on an Austin restaurant shutting down that includes an eye-opening inflation tidbit. “He pointed out that a container of fryer oil that a year ago cost about $17 had risen to about $50.”
Canada’s freedom truckers seem to be making headway with regional governments, some of whom have promised to lift vaccine mandates, but asshole authoritarian Justin Trudeau is refusing to budge.
Video footage of a voting fraud mule making 53 trips among 20 ballot drop-boxes.
Regular BattleSwarm readers have already seen extensive evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis for Flu Manchu, but National Review‘s Jim Geraghty has a new piece along those lines.
There are two naturally occurring viruses that are particularly similar to SARS-CoV-2. The first is RaTG13, which shares 96.2 percent of its genome with SARS-CoV-2, according to a paper released by the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Shi Zhengli. This virus was collected from bat feces in a copper-mine shaft in Tongguan, Mojiang, Yunnan Province, China, that was the site of a small-scale deadly viral infection with some curious similarities to Covid.
In April 2012, six miners were assigned to clean bat guano from the mine shaft. Four miners had been working at the site for two weeks, and two had been working there for four days when they all grew ill with a cough and fever and experienced difficulty breathing, aching limbs, heavy and bloody mucus and saliva, and headaches — symptoms of a viral respiratory infection that are similar to the effects of Covid. All six miners were admitted to a Kunming hospital in late April and early May, and three died — one after two weeks, one after a month and a half, and one after three months. The other three survived.
Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a prominent Chinese pulmonologist whose high-profile role has been compared to that of Dr. Anthony Fauci in the United States, consulted on the cases of the miners. Recognizing that the virus afflicting the miners could be comparable to SARS, researchers sent blood samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for antibody testing.
In 2012 and 2013, teams of researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology conducted a study of coronaviruses in bats in that abandoned mine shaft — and one of the samples they collected was RaTG13.
The second virus that is particularly similar to SARS-CoV-2 is really a cluster of three similar viruses discovered in Laos in autumn 2021. A team led by Marc Eliot, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, collected saliva, feces, and urine samples from 645 bats in caves in northern Laos and found three new viruses that were each more than 95 percent identical to SARS-CoV-2, which they named BANAL-52, BANAL-103, and BANAL-236.
Some skeptics of the lab-leak theory contend that the BANAL viruses proved that SARS-CoV-2 is likely a naturally occurring virus, and because Laos was roughly 1,000 miles from Wuhan, this pointed away from the notion that the Covid pandemic could be traced back to a leak from Wuhan Institute of Virology or any other labs in the city. But there is ample reason to believe that viruses from Laos — perhaps not the BANAL trio, but similar ones — were also shipped from Laos to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In 2010, Wildlife Trust, a nonprofit international conservation organization dedicated to protecting wildlife, announced it was rebranding itself under the name EcoHealth Alliance. The organization’s president, Peter Daszak, declared that his group had become “the central organization defining the intersection of local conservation and global health” and touted itself as being “on the forefront of informing the public, businesses, and the scientific community about emerging diseases, including potential pandemics.” It is safe to say that EcoHealth Alliance is one of the largest, best funded, and best connected nonprofits, focusing upon “field research and develop[ing] tools to save ecosystems and predict and prevent pandemics.”
EcoHealth Alliance/illegal gain of function section snipped.
We know for a fact that the people collecting samples do not always follow the necessary safety procedures. And the risk of accidental infection does not disappear once the viruses and bats are brought back to the laboratories.
Lab accidents happen. The first argument against the lab-leak theory that can be safely dismissed is the notion that Chinese scientists were simply too careful or too diligent to ever let a virus escape their lab. Accidents occur even in the most well-trained and highly regarded research facilities in the world. In June 2014, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that they had unintentionally exposed personnel to potentially viable anthrax. A month later, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found samples of smallpox, dengue, and spotted fever just sitting in a storage room. A decade earlier, the Chinese CDC’s National Institute of Virology in southern Beijing had accidentally released SARS. Twice.
In February 2019, Lynn Klotz, a senior science fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, laid out a report in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists detailing that from 2009 to 2015, a federal program “received a total of 749 incident reports from select-agent research facilities,” including “1) needle sticks and other through the skin exposures from sharp objects, 2) dropped containers or spills/splashes of liquids containing pathogens, and 3) bites or scratches from infected animals.”
China obviously places the same importance on lab safety as it puts into quality control. Lets pick it up where more CCP perfidy kicks in:
Finally, there is the undeniably suspicious behavior of the Chinese government since the first cases were reported in Wuhan in December 2019. Until January 21, 2020, the Wuhan Regional Health Commission insisted that “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission has been found.” On January 4, 2020, former CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield was incredulous during a phone call with his Chinese counterpart, George Gao. Redfield described asking his old friend Gao, “George, you don’t really believe that mother and father and daughter all got it from an animal at the same time, do ya?” Gao insisted there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. But Redfield recounted that two days later, Gao broke down during a call, “audibly and tearfully distraught after finding ‘a lot of cases’ in the community who had never visited the wet market.”
In late January and early February, the Chinese government ordered all labs processing samples of the strange new virus to destroy them. On January 3, China’s National Health Commission ordered institutions not to publish any information related to the unknown disease and ordered labs to transfer any samples they had to designated testing institutions, or to destroy them. The justification for this order was public safety, although it is hard to see the public-safety benefit in suppressing information about the disease.
It took a year to get a World Health Organization investigative team into Wuhan, and when that team arrived, it encountered angry refusals to turn over raw data about the earliest cases. According to the New York Times, “disagreements over patient records and other issues were so tense that they sometimes erupted into shouts among the typically mild-mannered scientists on both sides.” The Chinese government has refused to allow another team of investigators to enter Wuhan or the labs in the city. The Chinese government does not care if it looks guilty.
A much-hyped U.S. intelligence-community investigation completed in August offered almost nothing useful, declaring, “All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.” Ninety days of effort, with all the resources of the U.S. government, generated nothing new.
To paraphrase Ebright, in the autumn of 2019, there were three institutions in the entire world that were doing gain-of-function research on novel coronaviruses found in bats. One was in Galveston, Texas, one was in Chapel Hill, N.C., and the third was in Wuhan, China.
In theory, the pandemic could have started with some random Chinese person who didn’t have any connection to the bat coronavirus research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the Wuhan CDC. This person would have a spectacularly unlucky run-in with a bat or other animal, and that random Chinese person caught the exceptionally rare naturally occurring animal virus that infects, sickens, and spreads among human beings like wildfire. This same hyper-contagious bat virus would have the exceptionally unusual trait of being extremely difficult to find in bats.
This extraordinarily unlucky person would then travel to the metaphorical doorstep of one of the three labs in the world doing gain-of-function research on novel coronaviruses found in bats and start infecting other people in the city of Wuhan. Under the natural-origin theory, the Wuhan laboratories just happen to be mind-bogglingly unlucky that events played out in a way that so closely mimics the consequences of a lab accident.
That would be a remarkable series of coincidences.
Read the whole thing.
Data point. “Younger, working-age people began dying in greater numbers as vaccine mandates hit.”
More data:
Cyber-attack China hack?
Also in China: The Genocide Olympics get underway.
“Youngkin Governs For Parents Who Say: Get Away From Our Kids, You Freaks.”
Glenn Youngkin is governing Virginia according to the implicit campaign slogan that powered his victory: stop messing with our kids, you freaks! That’s the polite version, anyway. Other Republican officials should follow his lead and solidify the GOP as the party of parents.
Youngkin ran as a conservative champion of normalcy, especially in schools. His campaign was assisted when his opponent declared parents should not have a say in what their children are taught, thereby confirming everything Youngkin was running on.
Since being sworn in, Youngkin has banned school mask mandates, banned teaching racist ideas from sources such as critical race theory, and requested the new state attorney general, Jason Miyares, to investigate the apparent coverup by Loudoun County officials of a rape committed by a skirt-wearing boy in a girls’ bathroom. He has also started cleaning house in the bureaucracy.
These measures have provoked pushback from the usual suspects. Left-wing teachers are now worried they’ll get in trouble for teaching the race essentialism derived from critical race theory. Some counties have defied the governor over school mask mandates, and are punishing students who choose not to wear them. But Youngkin is holding firm, knowing this is what he was elected to do.
Across the nation, parents are in revolt against the Democrat-led educational establishment, and Republicans should eagerly join the fray. After all, it was the Democrat-loving teachers unions that fought to keep schools shut down long after we knew that children were at almost no risk from Covid-19. Likewise, it has mostly been Democrats and their allies forcing children to wear masks when school is open, even though (as a few on the left are finally admitting) masks are particularly harmful for children, while offering no real benefits.
There are other indignities and cruelties, of course, from shutting down outdoor playgrounds to forcing schoolchildren to study or eat lunch outdoors in freezing temperatures. And these miseries have been inflicted long after any plausible ability to defend them as emergency measures, or to plead ignorance of the consequences. Under pressure from the teachers unions and education bureaucracy, Democrats have chosen to sacrifice the well-being of children. Even many liberals now want an alternative to the endless school shutdowns, masks, and other pandemic security theater.
Speaking of leftists trying to get their hands on your children: “BLM ‘Week of Action’ Teaching Students Nationwide to Affirm Transgenderism, Disrupt Nuclear Family.”
Students across the country as young as kindergarten-age are learning that “everybody gets to choose their own gender” and are receiving kid-friendly lessons on disrupting “Western nuclear family dynamics” as part of this week’s national Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.
The activist-driven curriculum for the Week of Action, which kicked off Monday, is based off the 13 “Black Lives Matter Guiding Principles.” Those principles include a commitment to restorative justice, being transgender affirming and queer affirming, creating space for black families that is “free from patriarchal practices,” and “the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics and a return to the ‘collective village’ that takes care of each other.”
Black Lives Matter at School offers kid-friendly versions of the 13 principles designed for elementary and middle-school students.
The Week of Action also includes a list of four national demands: end zero-tolerance discipline policies; mandate black history and ethnic studies; hire more black teachers; and fund counselors, not cops, according to a “starter kit” on the Black Lives Matter at School website.
In the starter kit, New York City kindergarten teacher Laleña Garcia, author of a children’s book about BLM principles, writes that while “discussing big ideas with little people” it is necessary to “consider age-appropriate language so that our students or children can grasp the concepts.” For example, she suggests not talking about police violence with “our youngest children.”
When discussing BLM’s principle of being transgender affirming, Garcia offers the following kid-friendly language: “Everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind. Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else, and no one else gets to choose for them.”
When discussing the BLM principle of a “Black Village,” which includes the goal of disrupting the Western nuclear family structure, Garcia suggests teaching kids that “there are lots of different kinds of families; what makes a family is that it’s people who take care of each other; those people might be related, or maybe they choose to be a family together and to take care of each other. Sometimes, when it’s a lot of families together, it can be called a village.”
Speaking of Democratic policies endangering kids: Repeat child sex offender illegal alien arrested at the border.
Now Twitter is kicking off accounts critical of teacher’s unions. Check out The Chalkboard Review.
Even in San Francisco, the backlash against the Soros-backed-Democrat-DA crime wave has begun: “S.F. police will no longer cooperate with DA Boudin over police shooting investigations.”
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said he intends to sever an agreement with the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office spelling out the D.A.’s lead role in investigating police use-of-force incidents, in-custody deaths and police shootings.
The agreement was originally struck in 2019 following intense debate in San Francisco over the role the city’s police department should play in investigating its own officers following a rash of police shootings. Police and the District Attorney’s Office renewed the agreement last year.
Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker gave $300,000 in federal Flu Manchu relief funds to #BlackLivesMatter.
Speaking of which, there’s more crooked Pritzker shenanigans.
The more we learn about the Jenny Thornley affair, the more it appears that senior members of the Pritzker administration, including potentially the governor and his wife, may have facilitated a fraud on the state by a now-indicted former campaign aide to enrich her and then obstructed efforts to bring her to justice.
This is a tangled web, so stay with me as I set forth a timeline of events and characters, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The former executive director of the Illinois State Police Merit Board, Jack Garcia, discovered evidence that one of the employees under his direction, Jenny Thornley, was stealing money from the people of the state
Garcia is a well-known, skilled investigator who previously supervised the divisions of internal investigations and forensic services, before becoming the first deputy director of the Illinois State Police. Thornley was a campaign aide for Gov. J.B. Pritzker (her husband, Jared, was also a senior political appointee at the Illinois comptroller’s office) and close enough to Pritzker and his wife, M.K., that she had their personal telephone numbers.
After assembling the evidence and building the case, Garcia scheduled meetings to fire Thornley and refer her for prosecution on the morning of Feb. 3, 2020. However, on the eve of that day, Thornley contacted (at least) the governor’s wife (pictured, at left) and asked her to intervene, alleging that Garcia had assaulted her sexually a week or so earlier.
The governor’s chief counsel promptly called the merit board (which is an independent agency created “to remove political influence” from State Police hiring, promotion and discipline) to “advise” it to: (a) cancel her firing and the referral for prosecution, (b) suspend Garcia (the experienced investigator who uncovered the Thornley fraud) and (c) retain an outside counsel proposed by the governor’s office. The merit board went along, but also suspended Thornley, and Garcia voluntarily took and passed a lie detector test.
Then Thornley sued to stop the investigation of her own claim of sexual harassment.
The outside counsel, Christina Egan, nonetheless completed an investigation by July 2020 (at the cost of $500,000 paid by the people of Illinois), confirming the evidence Garcia assembled that Thornley had stolen money and committed forgery, and finding no evidence of Thornley’s sexual assault allegation. The State Police Merit Board then reinstated Garcia, fired Thornley, referred her for prosecution. She has now been indicted for theft and forgery.
However, after Thornley was fired, someone with clout in the Pritzker administration somehow granted her disability payments reserved for people that are actually state employees. These payments (amounting to some $71,000) went on for more than a year, ending days before she was indicted for theft and fraud. These extensive payments were for “injuries” sustained from an “assault” that Egan determined had not occurred.
Speaking of Democratic family corruption: “Smoking gun documents tie Nancy Pelosi’s son to fraud and bribery scheme to remove permit violations against squalid San Francisco flop house owned by his ex-girlfriend and probed by the FBI.”
Speaking of Pelosi corruption:
Speaking of crooked Democratic governors, Washington state’s Jay Inslee (he of the spectacular presidential race flameout) wants to criminalize voicing allegations of election fraud. “Shut up and do the will of the party, comrade!” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
But that’s not the only stupid idea he has! He also wants to drive out all the state’s billionaires with a wealth tax.
One swampy hand washes the other. “ATF Asks Judge to Order Hunter Biden Gun Inquiry Closed.”
Is national concealed carry coming?
“‘You Have Blood On Your Hands,’ Former Official Calls on Harris County Judge, Commissioners to Resign.”
The criminal justice system in Harris County is broken,” said Aimee Castillo, sister of murder victim Josh Sandoval.
Suspect Devan Kristopher Jordon was out on three felony bonds when he allegedly shot Sandoval during a home invasion robbery last May. Jordon had also missed a court date the week prior to the murder, but authorities did not issue an arrest warrant.
“I think the criminal justice system is just a revolving door. They murder, they go in, and they come out, and they go in,” said Glenda Martin, Sandoval’s mother. “I think it’s a horrible thing.”
Commissioner Tom Ramsey (R-Pct. 3) presented a resolution honoring Sandoval’s life and noted that the suspect was also affiliated with the same crime ring allegedly responsible for the murder in Houston of an off-duty New Orleans police officer last August.
“There are people who are hurting people who are being allowed to walk around and they should not be period. That is the point,” intoned Commissioner Jack Cagle (R-Pct. 4).
The fieriest moments of the meeting, however, came later from Steve Radack, former constable and former commissioner who said Democrats on the commissioners court had “blood on their hands.”
“I never dreamed that after serving 32 years on this court that there would be three members of this court — Hidalgo, Garcia, and Ellis — who would kiss the rears of hardened criminals, who victimize law-abiding citizens, including law enforcement officers,” said Radack. “I’m calling on you three to resign from office so the healing can begin.”
Hmmm. “Two Texas inmates killed at Beaumont federal prison in fight involving MS-13.”
Speaking of criminal scumbags, Michael Avenatti was convicted of defrauding Storm Daniels of $300,000. This is, what, his fourth felony conviction?
On the “Washington Football Team”
Heh:
This is a pretty crazy IT hiring story. You’ll just have to read it…
Get a rope. “Tulsa police find stolen $300,000 1967 Ford Mustang Shelby stripped and hidden in field.” (Hat Tip: IowaHawk.)
The scam of New York City sidewalk sheds.
Heh:
Quel formage!
Minneapolis names some snowplows. I do rather like Ctrl Salt Delete…
“Joe Biden Beats Out Brussels Sprouts For America’s Least Favorite Vegetable.”
“I said all the frisbees!”
Tags:#BlackLivesMatter, Adrian Garcia, ATF, Austin, Beaumont (Texas), Bill Scott, Border Controls, bribes, cars, cheese, Chesa Boudin, China, Communism, coronavirus, Crime, Critical Race Theory, data security, Devan Kristopher Jordon, dogs, EcoHealth Alliance of New York, education, fraud, George Gao, George Soros, Glenn Youngkin, Guns, Harris County, Harris County Commissioners Court, Houston, Hunter Biden, Illinois, inflation, J.B. Pritzker, Jack Cagle, Jack Garcia, Jason Miyares, Jay Inslee, Jeff Zucker, Jeffrey Toobin, Jenny Thornley, Jim Geraghty, Josh Sandoval, Lalena Garcia, Lina Hidalgo, LinkSwarm, Loudoun County, Media Watch, Michael Avenatti, MS-13, Nancy Pelosi, Paul Pelosi Jr., pedophilia, Peter Daszak, police, Republicans, Robert Redfield, Rodney Ellis, San Francisco, Shi Zhengli, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Tom Ramsey, transexual, Twitter, unemployment, unions, vaccine mandate, Virginia, voting fraud, Washington Redskins, Wuhan Institute of Virology
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Guns, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »
Friday, January 28th, 2022
More Democrats accepting foreign payola, Russia sabre-rattles over Ukraine, a Supreme Court justice retires, Canada revolts, Harris County’s soft-on-crime policies are getting cops killed, and the war over tranny madness spreads. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm.
“China’s Huawei Pays Tony Podesta $1 Million for White House Lobbying.”
Long time Democratic power broker Tony Podesta has earned $1 million over the past half year lobbying the Biden White House at the behest of a blacklisted Chinese tech giant, recent federal disclosures show. Huawei, which was placed under trade sanctions during the Trump administration, paid Podesta $500,000 in the fourth quarter of 2021 in an attempt to shake off the trade impact of the restrictions, according to the disclosure form filed on the evening of Jan. 20.
With the $500,000 Podesta made from the previous three months lobbying the White House, he has been compensated $1 million over a six-month period for the lobbying effort.
Podesta’s latest lobbying campaign targeted the Executive Office of the President and centered around “telecommunications services and impacted trade issues,” the disclosure said.
Huawei, once the world’s largest telecom makers, has been facing international scrutiny in recent years. U.S. authorities have flagged the China-based company as a national security threat, saying the company’s close ties with China’s ruling communist regime, as well as Chinese law, could make it a potential espionage tool for Beijing.
A stream of U.S. sanctions since 2019—which have barred Huawei from using U.S. technology and software, and shut out its gears from critical U.S. infrastructure—have slashed the company’s annual revenue by a third. In November, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that further tightened restrictions on Huawei by restricting it from receiving new equipment licenses from U.S regulators.
Battered by the restrictions, Huawei has ramped up its U.S. influence operation in recent months. Podesta is one of half a dozen lobbyists the firm has engaged since July, which includes a former congressman and one former congressional aide, according to disclosure filings….
Tony Podesta’s brother, John Podesta, served as White House chief of staff to former U.S. President Bill Clinton and the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. He was also a former counselor to President Barack Obama, overseeing climate and energy policies.
There’s your swampy Democratic Party corruption and graft, right there out in the open for all to see.
Speaking of open corruption: “Companies Linked to Putin’s Pipeline Contributed to Schumer Campaign.”
Affiliates of two European companies that fund Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline contributed to the campaign of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), who Republicans say has blocked sanctions on the Kremlin-backed project.
ENGIE North America and BASF Corporation each gave $2,500 to Schumer in September through their corporate political action committees, according to newly disclosed Federal Election Commission records. ENGIE North America’s parent company and a BASF subsidiary are part of a consortium of five companies that finance Nord Stream 2, which will transport natural gas from Russia to Germany. While President Joe Biden has called the pipeline a geopolitical threat to Europe that helps Russian president Vladimir Putin, last year he waived sanctions on the project.
Republicans have pushed for legislation to enforce sanctions only to be met with resistance from Senate Democrats and the White House. Schumer for months blocked Republican requests to vote on a sanctions bill. He approved a vote on sanctions legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) earlier this month in exchange for Cruz lifting holds on several State Department nominees. The bill received bipartisan support by a 55-44 vote, but Senate Democrats used filibuster rules to block its passage. Democrats say they want to use sanctions against the pipeline as a last resort should Russia invade Ukraine.
(Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)
Nor is this foreign influence peddling new: “Convicted Pedophile Funneled Millions In Foreign Cash Into Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign.”
Convicted pedophile, UAE adviser and central witness in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, George Nader, has pleaded guilty to his role in helping the UAE funnel millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions into US campaigns during the 2016 presidential election, according to The Intercept, citing federal court documents filed last month.
In a December sentencing memo, federal prosecutors disclosed that Nader had agreed months early to plead guilty to a single count of felony conspiracy to defraud the US government by pumping millions in donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign – concealing the foreign origin of the funds.
Snip.
Nader is accused of taking instructions from UAE Crown Prince [Mohammed bin Zayed], and gave regular updates on his efforts to get close to Clinton.
In total, Nader transferred nearly $5 million from his UAE business to [Los Angeles businessperson Ahmad “Andy”] Khawaja – CEO of a Los Angeles-based payment processing company. According to prosecutors, the funds were disguised as a routine business contract between the two men. Of the total transferred, more than $3.5 million came from the UAE government and was given to pro-Clinton Democratic political committees. Prosecutors have yet to publicly identify what happened to the remaining $1.4 million Nader transferred to Khawaja.
Khawaja’s money laundering for Democrats was previously mentioned in this LinkSwarm. How many of the travails of the last five years boil down to Democrats trying to avoid going to jail for their corruption?
Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer announced he’s retiring. Biden, pandering as always, announces he’s going to nominate a black woman.
Speaking of the Supreme Court, the Biden Administration has reluctantly decided to obey its ruling on business vaccine mandates.
Canadian truckers have formed the largest convey in history to protest vaccine mandates and lockdowns. It seems pretty massive:
How massive would the protest have to be to make Justin Trudeau change course? Leftists hate giving up government control of people’s lives, no matter how unpopular….
“Trudeau Claims Truckers Only Hate Him Because He’s Black.”
Speaking of which: “L.A. Schools Will Require Non-Cloth Masks (Even for Sports) and Vaccination Next Year.” As if parents even needed another reason to flee Los Angeles public schools…
School masking and closure policies are even driving liberal moms out of the Democratic Party.
Tracy Compton, a mother of two in Fairfax, Virginia, had voted for Democrats for as long as she can remember, until the COVID-related school closures.
‘I tried and went to apply to work with the Democratic Party. I was told I was not allowed to become a member of the Democratic Party [in Fairfax].’
A recording of a reorganization meeting showed fellow Democrats deeming Compton too ‘anti-school’ to be part of their political efforts.
What made Compton anti-school?
She wanted the public schools to fully reopen.
When Compton worked to collect signatures for a recall petition for the local school board, she was welcomed out of the rain by a Republican party tent, even after telling them she was a Biden voter.
In contrast, when Compton offered the petition to those inside the Democrat party tent, she was yelled at.
Now? Given a hypothetical matchup between Kamala Harris or President Joe Biden vs. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, she said she’d vote for the Republican in a heartbeat.
“Florida Is so Red, Democrats Can’t Even Field Candidates in Some 2022 Races.”
All Florida trends are coming up sunshine for continued freedom from Covidstan. Recently Republican registrations surpassed Democrats in the state for the first time. Net domestic migration to the state also increased during COVID. Many commentators attribute both to Governor Ron DeSantis’s pandemic management policies. Just how bad does 2022 look for Democrats in the state? According to the Miami Herald:
Evidence is piling up that Democrats in Florida have no clear bench of candidates willing to challenge Republican incumbents in South Florida, in what’s expected to be a daunting and expensive 2022 cycle for their party.
Two first-time candidates who made early announcements they would run for South Florida House seats have both since dropped their bids to pursue runs for state office. A rumored likely candidate for federal office, former state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez, was recently nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as an assistant secretary at the Department of Labor.
The three Florida seats in question represent districts in Miami, including Reps. Carlos Giménez, Maria Elvira Salazar, and Mario Diaz-Balart. Giménez is the former mayor of Miami-Dade County and an immigrant from Cuba. Salazar defeated Clinton ally Donna Shalala in 2020, and Diaz-Balart has represented his district since 2002. The Herald called these districts competitive and said redistricting provided Democrats an opportunity.
However, the only potential candidates are a few retreads who lost in 2020. Reportedly, Shalala, who is knee-deep in Clinton ick, may be considering a rematch with Salazar. She served as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Health and Human Services and as President of the Clinton Foundation from June 2015 to March 2017. Former representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who lost to Giménez in 2020, may also jump in the race. To date, neither woman has announced their intentions.
Unless you owe someone favors, why run an almost certainly losing campaign in a red wave year?
Masks don’t work:
Lockdowns don’t work:
“During the last year’s attempts to defund the police and reduce the number of violent encounters on the street, Baltimore kicked off what they call the Safe Streets Project.” Surprise! A Safe Streets worker was one of three people killed in a shootout. Dwight would be disappointed if I didn’t include this:
In addition to looting, murder and arson, the primary accomplishment of #BlackLivesMatter seems to be making donations disappear.
No one appears to have been in charge at Black Lives Matter for months. The address it lists on tax forms is wrong, and the charity’s two board members won’t say who controls its $60 million bankroll, a Washington Examiner investigation has found.
BLM’s shocking lack of transparency surrounding its finances and operations raises major legal and ethical red flags, multiple charity experts told the Washington Examiner.
“Like a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction,” CharityWatch Executive Director Laurie Styron said of BLM.
BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors appointed two activists to serve as the group’s senior directors following her resignation in May amid scrutiny over her personal finances. But both quietly announced in September that they never took the jobs due to disagreements with BLM. They told the Washington Examiner they don’t know who now leads the nation’s most influential social justice organization.
Paul Kamenar, counsel for conservative watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center, said a full audit and investigation into Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the legal entity that represents the national BLM movement, is warranted.
“This is grossly irregular and improper for a nonprofit with $60 million in its coffers,” Kamenar said.
You don’t say…
Fifty years ago yesterday, three Black Liberation Army gunman ambushed and murdered NYPD officers Gregory Foster, 22, and Rocco Laurie, 23.
Are illegal aliens being given fake IDs at the border? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Sundown Joe unwittingly greenlights a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Right now there’s a lot more jaw-jaw than war-war. I’ve avoid penning a thumbsucker on the situation because I’ve been too busy.
China deploys satellite grappling technology. Gee, if only an American president had created a special branch of the armed forces to handle space-related national security concerns… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Virginia Republican Delegate Nick Freitas is done with having Critical Race Theory advocates calling all who oppose them racist:
(Hat tip: Not The Bee.)
Pro-illegal alien amnesty Americans for Prosperity: Here, Republicans, have some endorsements. Republicans: Hard pass.
Illegal alien charged in murder of Harris County Constable Corporal Charles Galloway.
And three more Houston police officers were shot yesterday.
In California, 26 year old child molester sentenced to juvenile detention because he identifies as female. Another gift from Soros-backed DA George Gascon.
Today’s unexpected ally in the war on transgender madness: actor Sean Penn.
Sean Penn is doubling down on his defense of traditional gender roles.
In two separate interviews this month, the two-time Academy Award-winner and ex of Madonna made comments bemoaning his perception that men are becoming more feminine.
“I am in the club that believes that men in American culture have become wildly feminized,” the 61-year-old told the UK-based publication The i in an interview ahead of the UK release of his new film “Flag Day.”
“I don’t think that being a brute or having insensitivity or disrespect for women is anything to do with masculinity, or ever did. But I don’t think that [in order] to be fair to women, we should become them.”
In a subsequent interview the “Milk” star did with The Independent this week, he dug his heels into the polarizing opinion, going even further in his critique of men who challenge gender norms.
“There are a lot of, I think, cowardly genes that lead to people surrendering their jeans and putting on a skirt,” he told the publication. Furthermore, he noted that the women in his life don’t seem bothered by the patriarchy.
“I have these very strong women in my life who do not take masculinity as a sign of oppression toward them,” he said.
Penn is wrong about an awful lot, but he’s right about this.
Intel to build $20 billion chip manufacturing facility near New Albany, Ohio (near Columbus), starting with two fabs. Intel had already announced a big investment initiative, and announced their were building two new fabs in Arizona last year. The Ohio location is a surprise, since there’s no fab infrastructure there, but evidently Ohio is throwing lots of money at them.
Vegetarian “meat” company Impossible Foods just laid off a bunch of people. “Technocratic elites have decided in the so-called ‘Great Reset’ in a post-COVID world that peasants should eat plant-based meat instead of the real thing as a way for ‘sustainable nutrition.'”
Yikes!
Bill Burr contracts Flu Manchu, reacts to it in Bill Burr-esque ways.
The new Superman is a “bisexual climate warrior.” Those comic book issues aren’t exactly flying off the shelf.
Speaking of comics: This comic page just sold for $3.3 million. A wee bit rich for my blood. And is possibly more than the artist made over his entire career working at Marvel…
Heh.
“Biden Warns Russia That If They Invade Ukraine, America Will Evacuate Haphazardly And Leave $86 Billion In Weapons Behind.”
“Biden Administration Mounts Daring Mission To Evacuate Hunter’s Remaining Cash From Ukraine.”
“Amy Schneider’s Winning Streak Ended After Being Asked To Name The Gender That Has Two X Chromosomes.”
I’m sending out a new SF/F/H book catalog Real Soon Now. Drop me a line if you want a copy.
I think my dogs want me to step away from the laptop.
Tags:#BlackLivesMatter, 2016 Presidential Race, Ahmad Khawaja, Baltimore, BASF, Bill Burr, Black Liberation Army, California, Canada, Carlos Gimenez, China, Chuck Schumer, corruption, Crime, DC Comics, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Democrats, ENGIE, Florida, George Gascon, George Nader, Gregory Foster, Harris County, Houston, Houston Police Department, Huawei, Impossible Foods, Intel, Joe Rogan, Justin Trudeau, LinkSwarm, lobbyists, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Unified School District, Maria Elvira Salazar, Mario Diaz-Balart, Mohammed bin Zayed, Nick Freitas, NYPD, Paul Kamenar, pedophilia, Republicans, Rocco Laurie, Russia, Sean Penn, Semiconductors, Social Justice Warriors, Stephen Breyer, superheroes, Supreme Court, Texas, Tony Podesta, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, vaccine mandate, vegans, Virginia, Vladimir Putin, Yoko Ono
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, December 31st, 2021
Greetings, and welcome to the last LinkSwarm of 2021!
Remember how all those media pundits opined that 2021 couldn’t help but being better than 2020?
Yeah, not so much.
Assuming the official death tolls are accurate (probably not, but I doubt the methodology has changed from 2020 to 2021), there were approximately 375,000 deaths in the United States of America in 2020 from Flu Manchu. With some 821,000+ total deaths, more people have died this year than last year. So much for Joe Biden shutting down the virus…
Joe Rogan’s interview with Dr. Robert Malone has evidently dropped, but I haven’t watched it yet. Maybe Saturday.
Ghislaine Maxwell has been convicted of sex-trafficking girls for Jeffrey Epstein in a story the Democratic Media Complex has done it’s best to pay as little attention to as possible.
Ron DeSantis vs. Critical Race Theory.
Over the past year, DeSantis has emerged as one of the most articulate political spokesmen for the anti–critical race theory movement. His new policy agenda builds on successful anti-CRT legislation in other states but goes two steps further. First, it provides parents with a “private right of action,” which allows them to sue offending institutions for violations, gain information through legal discovery, and, if they win in the courts, collect attorney’s fees. Second, it tackles critical race theory in corporate “diversity, equity, and inclusion” training programs, which, DeSantis says, sometimes promote racial stereotyping, scapegoating, and harassment, in violation of state civil rights laws.
At heart, the battle against critical race theory is a fight against entrenched bureaucracies that have used public institutions to promote their own racialist ideology. “This is an elite-driven phenomenon being driven by bureaucratic elites, elites in universities, and elites in corporate America, and they’re trying to shove it down the throats of the American people,” DeSantis said. “You’re not doing that in the state of Florida.”
Following his speech, DeSantis invited me to address the crowd. I explained that the reason critical race theory has upset so many Americans is that it speaks to two deep reservoirs of human sentiment: citizens’ desire for self-government and parents’ desire to shape the moral and educational development of their children. Elite institutions have attempted to step between parent and child.
DeSantis has deftly positioned himself as a protector of middle-American families. One of the guest speakers, Lacaysha Howell, a biracial mother from Sarasota, said that left-wing teachers tried to persuade her daughter that the white side of their family was oppressive. Another speaker, Eulalia Jimenez, a Cuban-American mother from the Miami area, said that left-wing indoctrination in schools reminded her of her father’s warnings about Communism in his native Cuba. Both believed that critical race theory was poison to the American Dream.
As they begin their next session in January, Florida legislators have the opportunity to craft the gold standard for “culture war” policy. The governor’s team has worked with a range of interested parties, including the Manhattan Institute, which has crafted model language for prohibiting racialist indoctrination and providing curriculum transparency to parents. The battle is ultimately about shaping public policy in accord with public values. “I think we have an ability [to] just draw a line in the sand and say, ‘That’s not the type of society that we want here in the state of Florida,’” said DeSantis yesterday. The stakes are high—and all eyes are on Florida to deliver.
(Previously.)
How the Democratic Media Complex managed to destroy what was left in the public’s trust in it:
“Washington State Democrats Want Decreased Penalties for Drive-By Shooters.” Because too many shooters are black. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
All the Republican candidates in Texas Donald Trump has endorsed for 2022. Including incumbents Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton and Sid Miller, plus Dawn Buckingham for Land Commissioner.
Speaking of Texas:
China’s Xian locks down over Mao Tze Lung.
“Houston Grand Jury Indicts Four More Defendants in $35 Million CARES Act Fraud Conspiracy.”
Earlier this month, a federal grand jury in Houston indicted four men on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering in a scheme to rip off the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) by submitting over 80 false applications for forgivable loans and writing checks to relatives and fictional employees, among other fraudulent activities.
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) stated in a press release on December 15 that 29-year-old Hamza Abbas of Richmond, 55-year-old Khalid Abbas of Richmond, 55-year-old Abdul Fatani of Richmond, and 53-year-old Syed Ali of Sugar Land could be sentenced to up to 20 years on each count of wire fraud.
The indictments against them are the most recent in an apparent scheme that prosecutors say involved 15 defendants from Texas and Illinois, all of whom are accused of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The DOJ stated that Khalid Abbas, Fatani, Ali, and another defendant, Houston resident Amir Aqeel, 53, have been charged with money laundering in the superseding indictment. The money laundering counts carry potential sentences of up to 10 years.
Last year, a grand jury also indicted Aqeel on a charge of aggravated identity theft. The government accuses Aqeel of using stolen identities to apply for the PPP loans.
According to the DOJ, several of the accused have already pleaded guilty for their involvement, including Siddiq Azeemuddin, 42, of Naperville, Illinois, Richard Reuth, 58, of Spring, and Raheel Malik, 41, of Sugar Land, all of whom entered their pleas in October. Houston residents Abdul Farahshah, 70, Jesus Perez, 31, and Bijan Rajabi, 68, pleaded guilty in late November.
Rifat Bajwa, 53, of Richmond, Pardeep Basra, 52, of Houston, Mayer Misak, 41, of Cypress, and Mauricio Navia, 42, of Katy were also indicted last year on charges of participating in the conspiracy and committing wire fraud.
Why, it’s almost like just about all the defendants share some characteristic in common. If only I could put my finger on it…
Speaking of criminals, did mentioned that a second CNN employee was being investigated for child sex allegations? “The allegations against Rick Saleeby, a former senior producer for Jake Tapper’s “The Lead,” appear to be connected to reporting by Project Veritas. Saleeby resigned from CNN this month.” It’s hard to keep the media pedophiles straight without a scorecard…
When does Biden apologize to Trump?
Aluminum is up 40% this year.
“Austin Office of Police Oversight Violated Department Contract, Arbitrator Rules.”
The City of Austin’s director of the Office of Police Oversight (OPO), Farah Muscadin, abused her authority, a third-party arbitrator decided this week.
In a 31-page decision, Lynn Gomez, the arbitrator, ruled that Muscadin and the OPO violated Article 16 of the Austin Police Department’s employment contract that was negotiated in 2018. Article 16 governs the parameters of civilian oversight of the department, which progressive groups lobbied hard for during the labor standoff.
“Contrary to the city’s claim, Director Muscadin was not acting within the scope of her authority…[she] clearly was seeking to dictate some future outcome rather than simply making a recommendation as Art. 16 permits,” Gomez ruled.
“[T]he evidence and arguments raise[d] by the city indicate that the city does not consider itself or OPO bound by Article 16’s provisions.”
You may remember Muscadin from such hits as “I’m spending taxpayer money to push Critical Race Theory” and “defund APD and give the money to my radical leftwing cronies.” She should resign.
Has the Biden Amdenistration tipped its hand that considers Taiwan too strategically important to not defend it in the case of a Chinese attack?
Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defence for Indo-Pacific security affairs, told a Senate hearing three weeks ago that Taiwan was “critical to the region’s security and critical to the defence of vital US interests”. In words strikingly similar to MacArthur’s, he emphasised the island’s location “at a critical node within the first island chain, anchoring a network of US allies and partners”.
This may well be remembered as the moment Washington came clean on its intentions regarding Taiwan. In Beijing at least, the statement is being read as dropping all pretence that the US could acquiesce to a unification of Taiwan with China.
Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in China, believes that US strategic thinking regarding Taiwan has always followed the lines laid out by MacArthur.
Even after establishing diplomatic relations with China, the US “worked to ensure the continuation of a state of separation across the Taiwan Strait”, Wu said. “When we ask the US if they do not hope to see the unification of China, they deny that. But judging from the US’s concrete actions, it is clear that they indeed do not hope to see China unify. Ely Ratner has now said this out loud.”
In Washington, too, some observers think the testimony allows little conclusion other than that the US should not allow Taiwan to become part of China under any circumstances.
Hopefully true, but betting on Joe Biden’s stalwart fortitude is putting your hopes on an extremely weak horse…
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez spotted in Miami Beach while New York City Flu Manchu cases hit alltime highs. As always, Covid Theater rules are for the little people.
Incoming New York City mayor Eric Adams is keeping Bill De Blasio’s private employer vaccine mandate. Because even nominally sane Democrats still hate you and your freedom to say no.
Family Guy sticks it to China:
Everything we know about famous psychological testing is wrong.
Sometimes the inevitable does happen: Betty White dead at age 99, just 18 days shy of 100. Still a hell of a run…
Remembering that we also lost Norm Macdonald this year, here he is slamming Carrot Top.
For those who didn’t get enough Harry Reid bashing in my obituary, here’s a classic Dennis Miller rant on the late senator.
A Twitter thread on electronic warfare during The Battle of the Bulge. Why yes, this is relevant to my interests. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
The challenge of moving a 17 ton magnet.
Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia gets a new tower.
I really should have bought this for Dwight for Christmas.
The Critical Drinker is not thrilled at the latest Matrix film:
Ultimately The Matrix Regenerations fails on just about every level possible. It fails to properly honor the past by leaving it well enough alone. It fails to tell a compelling new story, or add new ideas to the world it created. It fails to establish interesting new characters, or take old ones in a new direction. It fails to surpass the spectacle, energy and originality of a 20 year old film. And most of all it fails to deliver a compelling reason for its own existence. The Matrix Retaliations is a film that never should have been made in the first place.
Left-wing sponsors vs. right-wing sponsors:
“Pfizer Assures That Vaccine Is Almost As Safe For Kids As COVID.”
“After Conviction For Sex Crimes, Ghislaine Maxwell Announces New Job At CNN.”
Abandoned Christmas puppies find homes.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Tags:#BlackLivesMatter, 2022 Attorney General's Race, 2022 Election, 2022 Lt. Governor's Race, Abdul Farahshah, Abdul Fatani, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Aluminum, Amir Aqeel, Austin, Austin Police Department, Barcelona, Betty White, Bijan Rajabi, Bill De Blasio, Carrot Top, China, Christopher Rufo, CNN, coronavirus, Crime, Critical Drinker, Critical Race Theory, Dawn Buckingham, Dennis Miller, dogs, Dr. Robert Malone, Elections, Ely Ratner, Eric Adams, Farah Muscadin, Foreign Policy, Ghislaine Maxwell, Glenn Greenwald, Hamza Abbas, Harry Reid, Houston, Jake Tapper, Jesus Perez, Joe Biden, Joe Rogan, Khalid Abbas, LinkSwarm, lockdown, Lynn Gomez, Media Watch, Military, Norm Macdonald, Raheel Malik, Republicans, Richard Reuth, Rick Saleeby, Ron DeSantis, Siddiq Azeemuddin, Social Justice Warriors, supply chain, Syed Ali, Taiwan, Texas, The Matrix, vaccine mandate, video, Washington, World War II, Xian
Posted in Austin, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, November 26th, 2021
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Enjoy a Black Friday LinkSwarm!
Kurt Schlichter says that the Kyle Rittenhouse case has redpilled a whole lot of normies:
ou know, a few more rampages by inept alleged “white supremacists” like Kyle Rittenhouse – he only managed to shoot white criminals! – and everybody is going to be thoroughly awakened to the reality of the leftist scam. The trial that followed the Kenosha Kid’s act of social hygiene constituted only one tab in the big bottle of scarlet pills America’s been force-fed lately. Others include being confronted at work with mandates for vaxes that don’t act as advertised, as well as being inundated with racist CRT garbage, and having one’s kids come home from school with creepy porno crap that makes you wonder if they hit up the Lincoln Project lending library.
There are more pills going on than in Hunter’s medicine cabinet.
Why the festival of figurative pharmaceuticals? Because the left got out over its skis. It went too far, too fast, and now normal folks who just want to live their lives and usually show no interest in political/cultural controversies are showing up at school board meetings asking why the hell their kids are accusing them of slavery. Combined with a crusty old pervert in the White House who is causing economic inflation and international humiliation, and the left is in trouble. Deep trouble. See, the truth is getting out despite the media’s lies. Its pet political party is looking at being demolished next November. But instead of slowing down and taking stock, the Marxists are doubling down on failure knowing they only have their micro-majorities for a year. This genius strategy got them Glenn Youngkin and will get them many more based pols who are many times more hardcore.
It is only going to get worse for them, which means it is only going to get better for America.
Remember, leftism only succeeds when surrounded by a fog of lies. When the fog lifts, people reject it. And the media pumped out all the fog it could. There were people who literally did not know the collection of criminals and/or perverts Kyle exorcised were as white as Mitt Romney at a Cure concert. Really. That was the media’s doing, lying that the only reason Kyle didn’t want to have his brains bashed in by these scumbags was his pallor and reporting that nonsense accordingly. But when people watched the trial, they saw something entirely different from what they had been fed by the Enemy of the People, and it stuck. People were shocked – not people like us who are fully woke to the fact the media is nothing more than a collection of semi-literate, poorly-paid hack transcriptionists for the liberal elite – to see that they were being lied to, and hard. Not little lies. Not careless errors. No, these were calculated, intentional lies designed to push the party line. And their lies were revealed to all in that Kenosha courtroom.
The liberal champions were Binger and Lunchbox, the Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumbass of assistant DAs who were incompetent when they weren’t straight-up lying. And people saw it all. Normal people, the kind who used to have some faith in the people in charge of the system.
Now they are like us. They got woke.
Everyone pushing the Russian Collusion hoax should be fired:
As the Democratic National Convention descended into chaos in July 2016, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, co-founders of Fusion GPS, high-tailed it from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia to stanch the political bleeding following the release of damning internal emails that showed party honchos had rigged the process in favor of Hillary Clinton.
Simpson and Fritsch, serving multiple paymasters at the time including Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, had a plan to divert media attention away from the crisis: spin a dark tale of collusion between the Kremlin and Donald Trump to stop Hillary Clinton from winning the White House.
Russian hackers were already blamed, without evidence, for infiltrating the DNC email system and giving the correspondence to WikiLeaks. Expanding on that accusation by revealing the secretive work of Christopher Steele, portrayed as a “former Western intelligence officer,” to friendly journalists successfully changed the subject.
“They wanted to have some discreet conversations with a few reporters to let them know they might be able to help with stories about Trump, particularly on Russia,” Simpson and Fritsch wrote about themselves.
Snip.
This unfolding scandal is not only about how inaccurately the media covered Sergei Millian or the bogus Steele dossier. There was no collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russians. Period.
And everyone knew it at the time. Tom Hamburger knew it, Rosalind Helderman, everyone at MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and more knew it was fabricated garbage peddled by a well-known paid smear merchant who was disguising another paid political operative as a “western intelligence officer.”
It was intentional, not “one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history,” as Axios’ Sara Fischer described it in a roundup of other news organizations that still refuse to acknowledge misleading reporting and editorializing on the Steele dossier—again, a red herring since coverage of phony election collusion exceeded beyond allegations contained in the dossier.
“CNN and MSNBC did not respond to requests for comment about whether they planned to revisit or correct any of their coverage around the dossier,” Fischer reported. “The Wall Street Journal told Axios, ‘We’re aware of the serious questions raised by the allegations and continue to report and to follow the investigation closely.’” Mark Maremont, a Journal reporter, first disclosed Millian’s name in a January 2017 article, suggesting he was responsible for a “compromising video” on Donald Trump.
David Corn, author of an October 31, 2016 article for Mother Jones titled, “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump,” that was sourced directly by Steele and Simpson right before the election, told Erik Wemple, the Post’s media critic who commendably called out high-profile dossier propagandists in a lengthy series last year, that he has no plans to retract his previous reporting. “My priority has been to deal with the much larger topic of Russia’s undisputed attack and Trump’s undisputed collaboration with Moscow’s cover-up.”
Fischer claims a “reckoning” is hitting newsrooms across the country. With the exception of a cowardly response by the Post’s editor, that’s about as accurate as the dossier itself. A true reckoning would involve more than a few editor’s notes or burying collusion coverage down the media’s deep memory hole.
In any other honorable profession, one that still takes itself seriously and is capable of self-policing to preserve the tattered shreds of integrity and accountability that remain, mass firings, not faux “reckonings,” would empty newsrooms. Reporters, columnists, cable news hosts, and paid contributors would be shown walking papers. Editors would step down in humiliation. Public apologies, not mealymouthed caveats and explainers buried in the entertainment guide, would be plastered on the front page of every newspaper and website; talking heads would make amends to the victims—including Donald Trump—for this reckless, destructive hoax and also to their audience for intentionally misleading them for years and then announce their early retirement.
Collusion between Donald Trump and the Kremlin to influence the outcome of the 2016 election never happened—but every news organization, big and small, contributed to spreading this lie. It’s breathtaking malfeasance on a scale unrivaled in American history. The media should not be permitted to proceed with business as usual.
Fire them all.
Remember: The reason why accused Waukesha Christmas Parade Murderer Darrell Brooks Jr. was out on the streets to kill was because Soros-backed DA John Chisholm wanted him there.
Slow Joe and the Democrats: Not so popular.
A list of all 26 times Bill Clinton flew on the Lolita Expresss.
Poland’s Presidnet comes out against Flu Manchu vaccinations.
In depth meta-analysis of the use of Ivermectin to treat Flu Manchu. Maybe it only really helps in countries that have notable body parasites? (Hat tip: Maybe Borepatch? After so much turkey, everything blur together in the mind…)
“Jordan Peterson says he spoke to a senior government adviser who told him Canada’s COVID restriction policies are completely driven by opinion polls and not science.”
The Rittenhouse verdict showed the leftists aren’t wild about Constitutional rights:
Despite whatever anger President Joe Biden might express about the jury’s verdict, the 12 jurors in this trial focused on the facts and the law, and chose justice, even after threats were made against them, against the city, and corrupt media narratives continued to circulate with the aid of social media giants which were still banning accounts who spoke in Rittenhouse’s defense. Together, these 12 jurors bravely chose justice over the mob.
In doing so, these 12 displayed more courage than nearly all of our politicians and every single one of our media elite. Once again, we are reminded that the best of America resides not in our coastal power centers, our ivory towers, or even here in our nation’s capital. The best of America resides in the inherent fairness, righteousness, and bravery of her citizens.
But it’s worth focusing on where the left goes next. Because they don’t intend to let this jury verdict be the last word. Hours after the verdict was handed down, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) was calling it “a miscarriage of justice” and calling for federal review of the verdict by Merrick Garland’s heavily politicized Department of Justice.
The media narrative, meanwhile, has turned toward decrying “gun laws” and the ability of a 17-year-old to carry an “assault rifle,” and is openly conflating the right to self-defense with “vigilantism.” In other words, they’re saying it out loud: they’re coming for your guns, for your right to defend your family, and ultimately, for your sovereignty.
In early November, the Supreme Court heard arguments in New York Rifle & Pistol Association Inc v. Bruen. The question before the court is whether New York’s concealed carry permit regime, which requires the petitioner to show a “genuine, specific need” to concealed carry a firearm for self-defense and vests the ability to judge that need in a state bureaucrat, violates the Second Amendment.
During the argument, it became abundantly clear how the left views the Second Amendment — that is, a constitutional entitlement that grants each of us an unambiguous right to carry by virtue of our citizenship.
“Illinois Pension Shortfall Surpasses $500 Billion, Average Debt Burden Now $110,000 Per Household.”
The radical left is trying to live down to the worst paranoid fantasies of the Moral Majority crica 1985:
A leaked audio recording revealed California teachers mocking parents over concerns about homosexual and transgender indoctrination at school, said a source who attended a recent teachers union conference in Palm Springs.
The recording, obtained by The Epoch Times, captured two seventh-grade teachers, Kelly Baraki and Lori Caldeira from Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, Calif., telling other teachers how to recruit students into LGBTQ clubs, also known as “Gay-Straight Alliance” (GSA) clubs, at school.
“It was horrifying to listen to not just one teacher but really all of the teachers in all of these seminars, excoriating parents,” said the source, who goes by the pseudonym Rebecca Murphy.
Murphy attended the California Teachers Association (CTA) conference in late October. She told The Epoch Times the teachers “mocked” parents for their concerns, and suggested they know better than parents about what’s best for their children.
“They laughed at the parents,” Murphy said.
Every. Knee. Must. Bend.
Times Up for Time’s Up. “The vast majority of Time’s Up’s remaining staffers were laid off Friday.” #MeToo was never meant to take out powerful Democrats like Andrew Cuomo.
Sweden names it’s first female Prime Minister…and she resigned the same day.
Can the Supreme Court be trusted on the Second Amendment? It’s a very mixed bag. (Hat tip: KR Training.)
Republicans sue Harris County to stop the Democrats’ redistricting plan.
The Social Justice Warrior behind the effort to cancel Dave Chapelle resigns. “You come at the king, you best not miss.”
Things that make you go “Hmmm”:
The World War II armaments factory built in a tube line.
“Tonight on Most Shocking!”
“Clever Business Owners Ward Off Looters With Kyle Rittenhouse Scarecrows.”
“Black, White Americans Join Hands Around Common Cause Of Launching Journalists Into The Sun.”
Tags:Bill Clinton, Canada, Crime, Darrell Brooks Jr., Dave Chappelle, Democrats, feminism, George Soros, Guns, Houston, Jeffrey Epstein, Joe Rogan, John Chisholm, Kurt Schlichter, Kyle Rittenhouse, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Ray Epps, Second Amendment, Supreme Court, Texas
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Guns, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | 1 Comment »
Saturday, November 6th, 2021
Astroworld was the name of a now-defunct Houston amusement park. Then it was the name of rapper Travis Scott’s album. Now it’s evidently the name of a rap festival in the parking lot of NRG stadium (close to where the Astroworld theme park used to be) where eight people just died:
At least eight people are dead and dozens more injured after a sold-out crowd of roughly 50,000 surged during rapper Travis Scott’s performance late Friday at the Astroworld Festival outside NRG Park, overwhelming security forces and resulting in one of the deadliest concerts in U.S. history.
As Scott’s performance started shortly after 9 p.m., the chaotic crowd seemingly swallowed everyone in it, Instagram user SeannaFaith wrote.
“The rush of people became tighter and tighter. .. Breathing became something only a few were capable. The rest were crushed or unable to breathe in the thick hot air,” she wrote. “It was like watching a Jenga tower topple. Person after person were sucked down…. You were at the mercy of the wave.”
“We begged security to help us, for the performer to see us and know something was wrong,” she continued. “None of that came, we continued to drown.”
Then, one person fell. And another.
“We had a mass casualty event here at Astroworld,” Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña said.
Seventeen people were taken to the hospital, 11 of whom Peña described as being in cardiac arrest. Eight are confirmed dead. Some of the victims might be children.
Sounds quite similar to the tragic 1979 Who concert in Cincinnati, where 11 people died. It seems the lessons from that have been forgotten.
The original Astroworld park also had a reputation as being deadlier than other parks in the Six Flags family. Two workers were killed during construction in 1968, and a maintenance worker was killed after being struck by a roller coaster car.
There’s was also some weird scheme to build a virtual Astroworld theme park on blockchain technology. It always seemed more like buzzword bingo than a business plan, and I don’t think much has come of it.
Tags:Astroworld, Houston, Texas, Travis Scott
Posted in Texas | 5 Comments »
Thursday, October 28th, 2021
Another week, another roundup on the supply chain issues plaguing America and the world.
The supply chain problem is one of the big reasons economic growth dropped to an anemic 2% in Q3. The Trump boom/post-Flu Manchu recovery has ended, and the Biden economy has kicked in.
Here’s a pretty revealing thread about the Los Angeles/Long Beach Port problems:
All this, of course, is on top of the previous banning of older trucks and non-union owner operators.
But remember: There’s no problem a government “solution” can’t make worse: “Biden hopes fines on lingering cargo containers ease congestion at major U.S. ports.” “The twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will charge carriers $100 per day for each container lingering past a given timeline starting Nov. 1.” Yeah, that’s going to magically conjure trucks and drivers out of thin air.
Another problem is the change in containers, and the requirements for matching truck chassis types, has added still another point of failure (from 2015):
Ten years ago, the largest container vessels that entered the ports carried 8,500 twenty-foot containers, or TEUs. Each shipping company operated their own cargo ships. The containers inside were generally all the same, and they were loaded systematically for efficient unloading at each dock.
Now, the ships are much larger, carrying 14,000 TEUs, said Philip Sanfield, a spokesman for the Port of Los Angeles, adding that the ships are only getting bigger, and soon ships carrying 16,000 TEUs will enter the seas. The companies have begun forming alliances with one another to share these larger ships. Each company’s cargo containers are different – so it takes longer for dock workers to sort and unload them. It saves the shipping companies money, but makes for longer hours for dock workers and truckers.
“That’s an inefficiency in the system that is driven by an efficiency: the move toward larger vessels,” says Thomas O’Brien of the Center for International Trade and Transportation at Cal State Long Beach. “But the impact is felt on the dock side.”
One example of how this plays out: a truck driver spends hours waiting at the docks for the container he or she has been assigned to haul, which has to be moved from the bottom of a tall stack of other containers.
But even before waiting for a cargo container, the driver must be matched with a chassis – the trailer that the container sits on top of. That process also involves a lot of waiting, and often some hunting. Drivers have to find one that will match the cargo container that he or she has been assigned to haul.
In the past, this matching process was relatively simple because the shipping companies also owned their own chassis fleets and managed them from their shipyards.
But during the recession, the shippers got out of the chassis business, turning them over to third-party companies to lease and maintain. The transition has created scattered mix of chassis on various terminals, and ultimately, a chassis shortage at a time when bigger ships are showing up with more cargo. Truckers told KPCC it’s difficult for them to know where they can find a chassis that will match the container they are assigned to haul, and often find themselves on what amounts to a wild goose chase.
“There were times, when we would have 10 to 15 guys looking for one particular chassis, and we just had to wait,” said Danny Lima, the employee truck driver. “I heard stories that there are no chassis at one certain terminal because they were all at another terminal. “
“I’m praying that there is going to be a chassis,” says Rafael, the independent trucker. “Because I can spend an hour driving around the terminal looking for chassis.”
Another problem: California’s Flu Manchu restrictions.
California had some of the most stringent COVID-19 limitations of any state in 2020 when the horrendous backlog began. There was a need for more workers as demand for imported goods was skyrocketing, but California had far fewer available due to drastic government restrictions.
In addition, overly generous government unemployment payouts reduced the need or incentive for people to work, reducing the available supply of willing truckers or longshoremen.
When the supply chain is pinched like this, inflation rears its ugly head.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has blamed recent inflation on supply chain bottlenecks. When these bottlenecks occur, consumers and businesses soon experience shortages of basic commodities and goods like new and used cars, washing machines, or medical supplies. Inflation soon follows.
Unfortunately, many bottlenecks in supply chains occur because of government meddling.
Politicians’ recent alarm over the Port of Los Angeles should be focused on how government officials forced docks and logistics companies, and everyone else, to follow everchanging, arbitrary COVID-19 restrictions, which worsened repeated green and labor mandates that have gummed up supply chains for years.
A trade group for air cargo companies like UPS and FedEx is urging the Biden Administration to push out the vaccine mandate:
A trade group for air cargo giants like UPS and FedEx is sounding the alarm over an impending Dec. 8 vaccine deadline imposed by President Joe Biden, complaining it threatens to wreak havoc at the busiest time of the year — and add yet another kink to the supply chain.
“We have significant concerns with the employer mandates announced on Sept. 9, 2021, and the ability of industry members to implement the required employee vaccinations by Dec. 8, 2021,” Stephen Alterman, president of the Cargo Airline Association, wrote in a letter sent to the Biden administration and obtained by POLITICO.
The letter, sent to the Office of Management and Budget , asks the administration to postpone the deadline until “the first half of 2022.” At issue is the requirement by the Biden administration that federal workers be fully vaccinated by Dec. 8. Unlike private businesses, companies that act as federal contractors cannot opt out by instead submitting their workforces to frequent Covid testing.
(Hat tip: Not the Bee.)
Our supply chain problems are a culmination of years of bad policy decisions by America’s elites:
Our vulnerability to supply chain disruption clearly predates the Biden Administration, forged by the abandonment of the production economy over the past 50 years by American business and government, encouraged and applauded by the clerisy of business consultants. The result has been massive trade deficits that now extend to high-tech products, and even components for military goods, many of which are now produced in China. When companies move production abroad, they often follow up by shifting research and development as well. All we are left with is advertising the products, and ringing up the sales, assuming they arrive.
Unable to stock shelves, procure parts, power your home, or even protect your own country without waiting for your ship to come in, Americans are now unusually vulnerable to shipping rates shooting up to ten times higher than before the pandemic. Not surprisingly, pessimism about America’s direction, after a brief improvement Biden’s election, has risen by 20 points. The shipping crisis is now projected to last through 2023.
Not everyone loses here. For years the American establishment saw China as more of an opportunity than a danger. High-tech firms, entertainment companies, and investment banks profit, or hope to, from our dependency, becoming in essence the new “China lobby.” Behind the scenes these representatives of enlightened capital often work to prevent condemnation for the Middle Kingdom’s mercantilist policy, and its joint repression of democracy and ethnic minorities.
After all, the pain is not felt in elite coastal enclaves, but in Youngstown, south Los Angeles, and myriad other decaying locales. Meanwhile, by enabling China’s focus on production, and the conquest of technologies related to making goods, we have devastated large parts of our country. This shift has cost us 3.7 million jobs since 2000. Throughout the period between 2004 and 2017, the U.S. share of world manufacturing shrank from 15 to 10 percent, while our reliance on Chinese inputs doubled, even as our dependence on Japan and Germany shrank.
Snip.
Some businesses are catching the drift. McKinsey and Company surveyed supply chain executives last year and found that nearly all respondents agree that their supply chains are too vulnerable. According to March 2020’s Thomas Industrial Survey, COVID-19 supply chain disruptions accelerated the search for locally-sourced materials and services. Up to 70 percent of firms surveyed said they were “likely” or “extremely likely” to re-shore in the coming years.
The exodus from China also includes Asian and other foreign firms. UBS projects 20 to 30 percent of all Chinese capacity moving, which on $2.5 trillion of Chinese exports would imply $500 billion to $750 billion shifting elsewhere, notably to the big market of North America. Last year, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s leading chip foundry, decided to build a $12 billion new plant in Arizona, and Samsung, a huge Korean chipmaker, is also shopping in the United States for a $17 billion plant. This would remove one of the most devastating causes of supply chain problems, which has dramatically slowed auto production.
Some major American companies, including Black and Decker, Whirlpool, General Electric, Apple, Caterpillar, Goodyear, General Motors, Little Tykes, and Polaris have begun to reshore some production. They are not alone. In 2019, for the first time in a decade, the percentage of United States manufacturing goods that were imported dropped, notes a recent Kearny study, with much of the shift coming from east Asia.
“After years of ‘Made in China,’ supply chains consider alternatives.”
The “Made in China” label is ubiquitous in the United States, stamped on everything from industrial machinery to a pair of flip flops. But risks — from rising costs, to a trade war, to a pandemic — have prompted companies to rethink their relationships with suppliers and China.
“We’ve realized that we put too much power in a single country,” said Dawn Tiura, CEO of Sourcing Industry Group.
Snip.
The same risk factors that drove supply chains to diversify also drove them to think about reshoring to the U.S. Proximity allows shorter transit times, lower emissions and the ability to tout a “Made in USA” label. Import duties are no longer a concern. Total cost of ownership is often lower.
A Thomas study that polled respondents in March found 83% of manufacturers are likely, very likely or extremely likely to reshore, up from 54% in March 2020. But reestablishing manufacturing bases in the U.S. could prove challenging, after decades of standing them up in Asia and Latin America.
“It is extremely difficult to reverse the 30+ year trend of outsourcing and offshoring manufacturing to emerging market countries,” a chemical manufacturer in the Thomas survey said. “We no longer have the talent and expertise nor capital equipment to effectively manufacture key critical components of major products and assemblies.”
“Ace Hardware Shelves Go Bare While Supply Chain Crisis Rages.” “We order twice a week. Normally it just takes two or three days to get back in stock on something…But during the pandemic and then with a certain category being out of stock, we’ve been out of certain products for three or four months.”
More on part supply shortages:
Health supplies:
Heh:
As far as local conditions in Texas, I can say that I’m only seeing small disruptions in the grocery store supply chain at my local HEB. Luncheon meat was very short there on a recent visit, but I didn’t notice any other particular absence. A few weeks ago, the big Member’s Mark store brand toilet paper at Sam’s was completely out, but it had been completely refilled a week later.
Reminder:
Here’s a piece that says lazy crane operators are to blame, according to some truck drivers. “The crane operators take their time, like three to four hours to get just one container.” Eh, something about this doesn’t ring true. Maybe they had to wait three or four hours for the operator to get their container off the stack.
Is the supply chain problem being deliberately inflicted on the American people to force them to swallow the vaccine mandate?
Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo may have accidentally leaked the cause of America’s supply chain issues.
“The reality is the only way we’re going to get to a place where we work through this transition is if everyone in America and everyone around the world gets vaccinated,” Adeyemo admitted in an interview with ABC News.
Starve them out, let the dissenters suffer, and those who bought into this agenda will turn against them.
Adeyemo said that the Biden Administration has already provided “the resources the American people need to make it to the other side.”
Basically, everyone should give into the vaccine mandate or face the consequences. They are masking authoritarianism as utilitarianism. The vaccine has not been mandated at the federal level in the US, yet, but it is apparent that the government plans to make life as difficult as possible for those who do not obey.
Echoing the Fed, Adeyemo said that inflation is “transitory,” and “as part of the transition we are seeing higher pieces for some of the things people have to buy… That’s exactly why the president was focused in the American Rescue Plan in ensuring on getting stimulus into the hands of the American people, so they’d be able to buy the products they need.”
Yes, the government expects us, the Great Unwashed, to be thankful for their measly handouts to purchase unavailable products at an all-time high. There is a reason people have recently nicknamed the president “bare shelves Biden,” with the hashtags #BareShelvesBiden and #EmptyShelvesJoe becoming a viral sensation.
Although the Biden Administration met with the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, which handles 40% of the nation’s goods, the promise of a 24/7 operation has not yet occurred. There is no ETA for when the ports will begin 24/7 operations either. Some ships are allegedly waiting 12 days at anchor before reaching the dock, and over 60 vessels are idled in the San Pedro Bay at the moment. With one of the nation’s busiest shopping holidays approaching (Black Friday) followed by ongoing seasonal shopping, this matter is likely to turn ugly.
Other voices of the same opinion
Relevant to LA and Long beach’s problems: “Port of Houston Awards Contract to Begin Houston Ship Channel Dredging.”
Tags:Ace Hardware, California, China, coronavirus, Economics, FedEx, Houston, Regulation, Samsung, supply chain, Texas, trade, TSMC, unions, UPS, vaccine, vaccine mandate, Wally Adeyemo
Posted in Democrats, Economics, Regulation, unions | 6 Comments »
Monday, October 11th, 2021
Supply chain problems have gotten so bad that Derek Thompson at The Atlantic deigns to notice them:
The coronavirus pandemic has snarled global supply chains in several ways. Pandemic checks sent hundreds of billions of dollars to cabin-fevered Americans during a fallow period in the service sector. A lot of that cash has flowed to hard goods, especially home goods such as furniture and home-improvement materials. Many of these materials have to be imported from or travel through East Asia. But that region is dealing with the Delta variant, which has been considerably more deadly than previous iterations of the virus. Delta has caused several shutdowns at semiconductor factories across Asia just as demand for cars and electronics has started to pick up. As a result, these stops along the supply chain are slowing down at the very moment when Americans are demanding that they work in overdrive.
The most dramatic expression of this snarl is the purgatory of loaded cargo containers stacked on ships bobbing off the coast of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Just as a normal traffic jam consists of too many drivers trying to use too few lanes, the traffic jam at California ports has been exacerbated by extravagant consumer demand slamming into a shortage of trucks, truckers, and port workers. Because ships can’t be unloaded, not enough empty containers are in transit to carry all of the stuff that consumers are trying to buy. So the world is getting a lesson in Econ 101: High demand plus limited supply equals prices spiraling to the moon. Before the pandemic, reserving a container that holds roughly 35,000 books cost $2,500. Now it costs $25,000.
The container situation is even weirder than it looks. With demand surging in the United States, shipping a parcel from Shanghai to Los Angeles is currently six times more expensive than shipping one from L.A. to Shanghai. J.P. Morgan’s Michael Cembalest wrote that this has created strong incentives for container owners to ship containers to China—even if they are mostly empty—to expedite the packing and shipping of freights in Shanghai to travel east. But when containers leave Los Angeles and Long Beach empty, American-made goods that were supposed to be sent across the Pacific Ocean end up sitting around in railcars parked at West Coast ports. Since the packed railcars can’t unload their goods, they can’t go back and collect more stuff from filled warehouses in the American interior.
And what about the truckers who are needed to drive materials between warehouses, ports, stores, and houses? They’re dealing with a multidimensional shortage too. Supply-chain woes have backed up orders for parts, such as resin for roof caps and vinyl for seats. But there’s also a crucial lack of people to actually drive the rigs. The Minnesota Trucking Association estimates that the country has a shortage of about 60,000 drivers, due to longtime recruitment issues, early retirements, and COVID-canceled driving-school classes.
In short, supply chains depend on containers, ports, railroads, warehouses, and trucks. Every stage of this international assembly line is breaking down in its own unique way. When the global supply chain works, it’s like a beautifully invisible system of dominoes clicking forward. Today’s omnishambles is a reminder that dominoes can fall backwards too.
However, there are two important words missing from Thompson’s analysis: “vaccine” and “mandate.”
The latest industry to suffer shortages: paints and plastics.
Like other manufacturers, petrochemical companies have been shaken by the pandemic and by how consumers and businesses responded to it. Yet petrochemicals, which are made from oil, have also run into problems all their own, one after another: A freak winter freeze in Texas. A lightning strike in Louisiana. Hurricanes along the Gulf Coast.
All have conspired to disrupt production and raise prices.
“There isn’t one thing wrong,” said Jeremy Pafford, managing editor for the Americas at Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS), which analyzes energy and chemical markets. “It’s kind of whack-a-mole — something goes wrong, it gets sorted out, then something else happens. And it’s been that way since the pandemic began.’’
The price of polyvinyl chloride or PVC, used for pipes, medical devices, credit cards, vinyl records and more, has rocketed 70%. The price of epoxy resins, used for coatings, adhesives and paints, has soared 170%. Ethylene — arguably the world’s most important chemical, used in everything from food packaging to antifreeze to polyester — has surged 43%, according to ICIS figures.
The root of the problem has become a familiar one in the 18 months since the pandemic ignited a brief but brutal recession: As the economy sank into near-paralysis, petrochemical producers, like manufacturers of all types, slashed production. So they were caught flat-footed when the unexpected happened: The economy swiftly bounced back, and consumers, flush with cash from government relief aid and stockpiles of savings, resumed spending with astonishing speed and vigor.
Suddenly, companies were scrambling to acquire raw materials and parts to meet surging orders. Panic buying worsened the shortages as companies rushed to stock up while they could.
Expecting these problems to be transitory? Dubai’s largest port operator says to expect supply chain problems to extend in 2023.
Adding to shipping woes: Marine fuel is at a seven year high.
India institutes rolling blackouts over a coal shortage.
Brazil is also having to import more natural gas.
Energy problems are only expected to get worse:
A global energy crunch caused by weather and a resurgence in demand is getting worse, stirring alarm ahead of the winter, when more energy is needed to light and heat homes. Governments around the world are trying to limit the impact on consumers, but acknowledge they may not be able to prevent bills spiking.
Further complicating the picture is mounting pressure on governments to accelerate the transition to cleaner energy as world leaders prepare for a critical climate summit in November.
Translation: Green energy mandates = blackouts.
In China, rolling blackouts for residents have already begun, while in India power stations are scrambling for coal. Consumer advocates in Europe are calling for a ban on disconnections if customers can’t promptly settle what they owe.
“This price shock is an unexpected crisis at a critical juncture,” EU energy chief Kadri Simson said Wednesday, confirming the bloc will outline its longer-term policy response next week. “The immediate priority should be to mitigate social impacts and protect vulnerable households.”
In Europe, natural gas is now trading at the equivalent of $230 per barrel, in oil terms — up more than 130% since the beginning of September and more than eight times higher than the same point last year, according to data from Independent Commodity Intelligence Services.
In East Asia, the cost of natural gas is up 85% since the start of September, hitting roughly $204 per barrel in oil terms. Prices remain much lower in the United States, a net exporter of natural gas, but still have shot up to their highest levels in 13 years.
Wait, you mean relying on Russian benevolence wasn’t an optimal strategy? Do tell.
There’s also panic buying to secure winter supplies, especially in China, where “the central government there has given state-owned energy companies a directive to secure winter energy supplies at any and all costs.”
Steel and roofing supplies are also facing shortages.
Steel, roofing and insulation materials are some of the most difficult products to get right now, said Ken Simonson, chief economist at the Associated General Contractors of America. Bar joists, which are used to frame roofs, can have lead times of anywhere from 10 months to 14 months.
Costs have also soared, with the index for steel mill products rising 123% YoY in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Producer Price Index. Copper and brass mill shapes jumped 45.3% YoY, while plastic construction products saw increases of just under 30% YoY.
Also in short supply: HVAC parts:
A few weeks ago I spoke with several people intimately involved with large companies in my industry and they all agree that we have probably another year of supply chain disruptions and problems. That wasn’t exactly music to my ears as the last year and a half has been an intense marathon trying to keep my buildings full of product that my dealers need. The reasons are everything that you have heard before here and on other media outlets – labor shortages, raw material issues and now, chip problems.
The chip problem could be a really big issue as those chips go into printed circuit boards that control furnaces – and we need furnaces now for Fall.
My one large exception mentioned above is that my inventory levels are absolutely enormous and we are setting new records daily. This is killing my turns and as a result cash, but this is the new model. We simply can’t predict when things will come in so we have to pile in sometimes a full years worth of a widget. We are absolutely bursting at the seams and it is extremely stressful trying to keep everyone happy. We don’t dare cancel any orders as we would go to the back of the line, so it is what it is.
Freight is a major issue right now. We get damage all the time and the LTL lines are all extremely slow and sloppy. Hardly a day goes by where we don’t have a freight problem.
Parts don’t really seem to be an issue. Sure, there are certain things that we have problems with, but in general the parts world is OK so there is that silver lining.
Even oats, the lowly horse and breakfast food, is hitting all-time highs.
This year, a devastating drought in North American oat fields has resulted in the lowest harvest for the cereal grain in years, pushing prices to record highs, a warning sign that breakfast inflation is imminent.
Scorching heat waves in Candian oat fields slashed production to an 11-year low. Canada, the world’s biggest exporter, ships most of its oats to the US, its largest consumer.
The result so far has been a new record high in oats futures trading on the CME. The sudden spike in prices has yet to ripple through supply chains to affect consumers, though that will be coming.
According to Bloomberg, “the situation for North American farmers was so dire in the summer that many cut their losses and harvested damaged plants to be sold as feed for animals.”
What this means for consumers is that dwindling supplies and record-high prices will soon affect foods like cereals, oatmeal, and granola bars, all popular breakfast items.
Randy Strychar, president of Ag Commodity Research and Oatinformation.com, said Cheerios, the US’ most popular cereal, is made entirely of oats. He said there’s no substitute for the ingredient: “You can’t make a Cheerio out of barley.”
General Mills, the maker of Cheerios and Nature Valley granola bars, nor Quaker Oats Company, the maker of oatmeal, among others, have yet to announce price increase of their oat products, but that could be imminent or at least create an illusion of stable prices through shrinkflation.
Retailers say they’re getting ready for a lot of bare shelves.
Before retailers can make their sales, they need stuff to sell. That’s where the trouble is this year. Container ships are packed, ports are clogged, contracts with carriers are falling to the wayside. And the rush to ship goods for the holidays is only adding traffic to what was already intense congestion.
“There aren’t enough containers. There aren’t enough ships. There aren’t enough trucks or trains. There is more volume now than any part of the supply chain pipe can adequately handle,” Burlington Stores Chief Financial Officer John Crimmins told analysts in late August. Trying to accelerate and pull forward orders “even further increased the pressure on the supply chain, helping to drive even higher rates,” the executive added.
So not only are retailers competing with each other for sales, they are competing just to get cargo space to ship goods into the country. Freight has skyrocketed as a result, and shipments still lag or even fail to materialize. Many of the bottlenecks are tied to the unexpectedly swift surge in consumer demand in the U.S. this year, combined with capacity shortfalls at numerous points along the supply chain.
That’s one reason big retailers like Walmart are chartering their own vessels. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
There’s even a backup for ships to unload at the Port of Houston:
Why does UK have a truck driver shortage? Evidently they get treated like garbage compared to European drivers.
Tags:Brazil, China, Economics, Energy Policy, EU, Houston, India, Long Beach, Los Angeles, natural gas, oats, oil industry, plastics, polyvinyl chloride, retail sales, supply chain, trade, UK, Walmart
Posted in Economics | 8 Comments »
Friday, July 23rd, 2021
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Mostly new links this time around, but some settling of contents may occur…
“Republicans Are Making It Easier to Vote and Harder to Cheat.”
The Republican National Committee (RNC) is invested in a comprehensive nationwide effort to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. We’re fighting for election integrity because it’s absolutely vital to protect the sanctity of your ballot from Democrat schemes to undermine voting security. We are involved in 19 election integrity lawsuits nationwide, and we’re winning the fight.
Our investment is partially driven by polling that consistently shows the American people supporting our common-sense approach to securing elections. A recent poll commissioned by the RNC found that 78 percent of Americans support a proposed voting plan with five key principles: presenting voter ID, verifying voters’ signatures, controlling the ballot’s chain of custody, bipartisan poll observation, and cleaning up voter rolls. The poll also found that 80 percent of voters support voter ID requirements; this sentiment matches up with other polling, including a recent one from NPR which found 79 percent of voters in favor of voter ID. The measures we are pushing are not controversial or dramatic. They are common-sense and they are supported by American citizens.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped Democrats from trying to generate false outrage and controversy at every level of this conversation. The Democrat election playbook is simple: lie and seek attention until the mainstream media eagerly takes the baton and turns Democrat lies into a false national narrative. You saw this in Georgia, where Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams’ lies about the state’s election reforms pressured the MLB into moving its All-Star Game out of Atlanta. These lies cost the good people of Georgia an estimated $100 million. You’re seeing it now in Texas, where local Democrats have stormed out of legislative debates on election integrity not once, but twice. Their latest stunt saw them leave the floor of the Texas legislature and hop on private planes to fly to DC in a juvenile quest for media attention.
Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media lapped it up. This is their playbook. When it comes to election integrity, Americans need to pay attention to the relationship between Democrat lies and the mainstream media machine.
(Hat tip: Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.)
Is the New York City mayor’s race a reality check for Democrats?
Back on June 24, the great Peggy Noonan hailed [Eric] Adams’s primary win as a victory of reality over progressive theory. “Adams was a cop for 22 years, left the New York City Police Department as a captain, and was the first and for a long time the only candidate to campaign on crime and the public’s right to safety. He was the first to admit we were in a crime wave.” Noonan observed, accurately, that African-American voters were not necessarily the most progressive voters in the electorate anymore, and that they represented a de facto force of, if not conservatism, then a realist wariness of the fringes of modern progressive thinking.
The notion of a centrist, tough-on-crime mayor replacing the notorious groundhog murderer and early pandemic denier sounds good, but we’ll see. Every elected official operates within a particular “Overton Window”: the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that time. Adams did not win this primary by a landslide. While he received the most votes in the first round, he was the top choice of less than a third of the city’s Democrats. He has 51.1 percent out of the final two.
New York City desperately needs a dramatic improvement in its policing and prosecution of criminals, but Adams will have to take on a lot of deeply entrenched opponents and a city media and cultural environment that have evolved to reflexively demonize the NYPD. Way back in 2005, Fred Siegel described the New York City of the David Dinkins years as an era of “hysteria that led upstanding liberals to insist that they were more afraid of the NYPD than they were of criminals.” Whatever you think of Rudy Giuliani now, the young(er) mayor of the early 1990s was willing to be utterly hated as he enacted his reforms, convinced that the broader public would look past the controversy and appreciate the effects of lower crime rates. It remains to be seen whether Adams has that same courage to exchange short-term unpopularity for long-term improvement in the city’s streets — or whether he’ll bump up against the city’s Overton Window of what policy changes are acceptable and settle for a series of half measures.
The irony is that we see the same phenomenon in the opposite direction at the national level in Washington. Many progressives interpreted Biden’s presidential win, the 50–50 Senate, and the slightly shrunken House majority in the 2020 elections as a mandate to enact sweeping changes in the country — and they’re largely hitting brick walls. The national Overton Window isn’t wide enough to accommodate the wildest fantasies of progressives.
I’m not sure the feasibility of Overton Window possibilities matters to the Social Justice left. There’s is a holy revolutionary cause, and they need to seize control of the Party before they can seize control of the nation. To that end, I suspect many think that letting moderate Democrats lose elections is a small price to pay for continuing their unpopular march through America’s institutions…
The Texan brings back The War Room to track 2022 Texas election races.
“Texas House Democrats’ COVID-Spreading Publicity Stunt Is Backfiring.”
Outnumbered by Republicans in Austin 83 to 67, the Texas House Democratic Caucus decided to head to D.C. to publicize its opposition to election integrity bills, fundraise, and drum up support for federal legislation that would nationalize election law by imposing California law as a template on the nation — banning meaningful voter ID, expanding mail balloting while eliminating fraud safeguards, prohibiting proactive voter list maintenance, and mandating same-day voter registration with no checks for eligibility to vote.
But the Democrats’ trip hasn’t turned out as planned.
Soon after meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris and numerous White House staffers and members of the U.S. House and Senate, three Democrats were diagnosed with COVID-19, then another two, and now a total of six. An aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a White House official tested positive soon after meeting with the Texas Democrats.
And the attention Democrats were hoping for soon turned sour, with Texas’s major newspapers, none of whom are friends of Republicans and have had little good to say about their election integrity bills, have nevertheless weighed in against the walkout. By two-to-one, Texas voters disapprove of the quorum-busting as well. Even national Republicans have piled on, with this tweet from Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s press secretary being emblematic.
Closer to home, Travis County GOP Chairman Matt Mackowiak said the quorum-breakers had “…engaged in performance theater for weeks claiming Gov. Abbott was putting lives at risk by reopening the state economy and waiving the statewide mask mandate, then they flew to DC on a private jet stocked with Miller Lite without masks, in violation of FAA rules, and now this farce turned into a super spreader event.”
But there are signs the Democratic solidarity is breaking down. With chairmanships, seniority, and even district boundaries on the line in a redistricting year, powerful Democrats are wavering while those seeking to move up sense an opportunity. A week ago, 80 House members were on the floor. As of Tuesday, 90, including several Democrats, were present. It’s a classic “prisoner’s dilemma” situation. If another 10 Democrats show up, the Texas House will have a quorum and can resume consideration of bills, leaving the other 50 holdouts with nothing for their efforts — except for perhaps being redrawn out of their districts by the Legislative Redistricting Board later this year.
When the Democrats do return, they will be asked to vote on bills that would bring mail-in balloting up to the standard for in-person voting by asking for ID in the form of writing a driver’s license number, or state ID number, or the last four of the Social Security number inside of a privacy flap in the ballot return envelope. The bill would also prohibit local elections officials from sending out unsolicited mail-in ballot applications, ban last-minute changes to election procedures, and clarify that properly appointed poll watchers must be able to see and hear election workers’ activities.
Asking for ID for mail-in ballots — one of the measures most vociferously opposed by Democrats — is supported by 81 percent of Texas voters, with voters from all demographic groups and both major parties approving of the safeguards.
With all due respect to Chuck DeVore, until the Texas election integrity bill is passed, their publicity stunt hasn’t backfired yet. There are few prices Democrats won’t pay for the ability to continue cheating.
“Judge Orders Thug-Loving Minneapolis City Council, Mayor to Hire More Cops.”
Barely a year after the Minneapolis City Council voted to to defund the city’s police department after the death of George Floyd, a judge has ordered the city to hire more cops, thanks to a lawsuit filed by fed-up citizens.
“Minneapolis is in a crisis,” wrote the eight plaintiffs in their complaint, citing the rise in violent crimes, including shootings, sexual assault, murders, civil unrest, and riots, Fox News reports.
Progressive city council members couldn’t wait to gut the police department and allow a surge in crime, most of which would affect poor black neighborhoods. The tsunami of crime recently took the life of a popular coach who was shot attending a memorial for another victim of Minneapolis’ violent crime surge. He was the 42nd person murdered this year in Minneapolis. No word from Antifa and BLM if they are planning a mostly peaceful riot in his honor.
The cop-hating Minneapolis City Council and Mayor Jacob Frey were ordered to “immediately take any and all necessary action to ensure that they fund a police force,” according to Thursday’s court order by Judge Jamie L. Anderson. The crime-loving city council and mayor have until June 30, 2022, to establish a police force of 730 sworn officers. They currently have 669 cops. Minneapolis saw nearly 200 cops file paperwork to leave the Minneapolis Police Department in the first three months after the George Floyd riots. No idea how many more will resign or retire by the June 30, 2022, deadline, as the nation has seen a surge in cops walking away from departments nationwide.
Matt Taibbi notes that NPR is unlistenable garbage:
NPR has not run a piece critical of Democrats since Christ was a boy. Moreover, much like the New York Times editorial page (but somehow worse), the public news leader’s monomaniacal focus on “race and sexuality issues” has become an industry in-joke. For at least a year especially, listening to NPR has been like being pinned in wrestling beyond the three-count. Everything is about race or gender, and you can’t make it stop.
Conservatives have always hated NPR, but in the last year I hear more and more politically progressive people, in the media, talking about the station as a kind of mass torture experiment, one that makes the most patient and sensible people want to drive off the road in anguish. A
Numerous examples snipped.
NPR sucks and is unlistenable, so people are going elsewhere. People like [Ben] Shapiro are running their strategy in reverse and making fortunes doing it. One of these professional analysts has to figure this one out eventually, right?
Evidently the primary mover behind the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping “plot” was the FBI. It’s FBI “informants” all the way down. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Want to keep track of violence in Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago? Hey Jackass has the trending data plants policy wonks crave!
Speaking of which: “Many Big-City Democrat Mayors Defunded Police While Spending Heavily on Their Security Details, Watchdog Finds.”
“In 25 major U.S. cities, officials have proposed cutting—or in 20 cases already cut—police budgets. However, what OpenTheBooks.com auditors found was that mayors and city officials still enjoy personal protection of a dedicated police detail costing taxpayers millions of dollars,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of Open The Books (OTB), said in a statement announcing the new data.
Snip.
In San Francisco, for example, the costs of the security detail protecting Mayor London Breed and other city officials spiraled up from $1.7 million in 2015 to $2.6 million in 2020.
Breed has proposed shifting $120 million from the city’s police department to mental health and workforce training programs. City officials declined to say how many officers are assigned to the security details, according to OTB.
In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot claimed to be opposed to defunding the police, but OTB found that officials quietly abolished 400 police department positions last year.
Those positions were eliminated even as the city’s “security detail costs peaked in 2020—up $700,000 over five years: $2.7 million spent on 16 officers (2015); $2.9 million for 16 officers (2016); $2.7 million for 20 officers (2017); $2.8 million for 16 officers (2018); $2.8 million for 17 officers (2019); and $3.4 million for 22 officers (2020)—an all-time high,” OTB stated.
In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio slashed $1 billion from the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) $6 billion annual budget, including $354 million transferred to mental health, homelessness, and education services.
But the mayor, who briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination last year, continues to enjoy tax-paid police protection for himself, his wife, and his son.
“Serial Swatter Who Caused Death Gets Five Years in Prison.” “Shane Sonderman, of Lauderdale County, Tenn. admitted to conspiring with a group of criminals that’s been ‘swatting’ and harassing people for months in a bid to coerce targets into giving up their valuable Twitter and Instagram usernames.” So not only has he gotten people killed, he got them killed for really shitty reasons. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
“ERCOT Expands Power Grid Reserve Capacity in Preparation for Summer Heat.” “To prepare, ERCOT has dedicated 38 percent more in generation to reserve capacity from this July compared to last. And they plan to dedicate 56 percent more reserve capacity for August compared to August 2020.” 1.) That’s good, but 2.) Isn’t mid-July a wee bit late to be rolling out such plans? Let’s hope they’ve been working on this a while…
California court says that state laws requiring people to use crazy SJW pronouns violates freedom of speech.
“Poll: American Women Are Not Fans of Kamala Harris.” You don’t say…
Speaking of Harris: “Last month, the Supreme Court smacked down then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ attempt to force charitable nonprofits to turn over the names of their top donors, calling the power-grab ‘facially unconstitutional.'”
Gun sales decline slightly from record highs in 2020. Does this mean I might finally be able to pick up an AR-15 without it costing me an arm and a leg?
“Wayne LaPierre a Bigger Risk Than Fire and Brimstone.” “Lloyd’s of London is dropping all coverage for the NRA’s Board of Directors through their officers and directors insurance plan.”
More Soros-backed DA justice: “Accused murderer set free after St. Louis County prosecutors fail to show up, but found time for McCloskeys.”
Last week, Circuit Judge Jason Sengheiser dismissed charges of first-degree murder, armed criminal action, and unlawful gun possession against Brandon Campbell, 30, when prosecutors from the Circuit Attorney’s Office did not attend hearings for the case in May, June, and July, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
“The court does not take this action without significant consideration for the implications it may have for public safety,” Sengheiser wrote in kicking the case.
“Although presumed innocent, (Campbell) has been charged with the most serious of crimes. While the court has a role to play in protecting public safety, that role must be balanced with adherence to the law and the protection of the rights of the defendant,” the judge continued.
Sengheiser then took aim at Kim Gardner’s office.
“The Circuit Attorney’s Office is ultimately the party responsible for protecting public safety by charging and then prosecuting those it believes commit crimes,” he wrote.
“In a case like this where the Circuit Attorney’s office has essentially abandoned its duty to prosecute those it charges with crimes, the court must impartially enforce the law and any resultant threat to public safety is the responsibility of the Circuit Attorney’s Office.”
Speaking of revolving-doors for criminals: “Criminal District Court Judge frees repeat violent offender from jail even after he’s charged with murder.”
Thirty-eight-year-old Brandon Andrus’s criminal history is so lengthy he has more mug shots than some people have selfies.
But that didn’t stop 185th Criminal District Court Judge Jason Luong from allowing Andrus to be a free man by giving him three felony bonds, one for assaulting a family member last year.
On June 14, police say Andrus and another man murdered 35-year-old Rodrick Miller.
(Hat tip: Holly Hansen.)
More of the same from the happy streets of Chicago: Man on felony bail killed another driver during highway robbery attempt, prosecutors say.” (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
Club for Growth slams Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney (R-ino) by comparing her to Hillary Clinton. Ouch! That’s gonna leave a scar…
The bribery charges against former Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are a big nothingburger.
Iran is backing Cuba’s oppressive communist government. Call it the League of Assholes. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Amazon’s New World Is Reportedly Frying High-End Graphics Cards.” Nothing like having your $2,000 Nvidia card bricked over a beta game…
Netflix to Wall Street: “Did I say we were going to gain two million new subscribers? Yeah, what I actually meant was we were going to lose 500,000 subscribers. Whoopsie! My bad!” Get woke, go broke.
Speaking of losing viewers, Nielsen ratings for broadcast are so far down that the networks are threatening to get rid of them.
More on that theme: “NBC’s ‘Today’ has smallest audience since at least 1991.”
James May launches his own gin. I don’t drink gin, but I bet that stuff sells out instantly, since the Top Gear/Grand Tour trio have one of the largest worldwide fan bases. I did not know that gin started out with neutral spirits before juniper berries were added.
Bernie Sanders Heads To Cuba To Tell Protesters To Be More Grateful For Their Excellent Social Programs.”
“Inspiring: US Women’s Soccer Team To Boycott Scoring Goals Until Racism Is Defeated.”
“FBI Discovers Building Full Of Dangerous Extremists Organizing Acts Of Terror Across Country…In a shocking twist, the organization is headquartered right in Washington, D.C., at the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building.”
“Stop using Tik-Tok! It’s Chinese spyware!”
Tags:2022 Attorney General's Race, 2022 Election, 2022 Texas Governor's Race, Amazon, Benjamin Netanyahu, Brandon Campbell, California, cats, Chicago, Chuck DeVore, Club for Growth, Crime, Cuba, Democrats, Elections, ERCOT, Eric Adams, FBI, First Amendment, Foreign Policy, George Soros, Guns, Hillary Clinton, Houston, Iran, Israel, Jacob Frey, James May, Jason Luong, Jason Sengheiser, Kamala Harris, Kim Gardner, LinkSwarm, Liz Cheney, Lloyd’s of London, London Breed, Lori Lightfoot, Mark McCloskey, Media Watch, Minneapolis, NBC, Netflix, New York City, NPR, NRA, Nvidia, NYPD, Overton Window, Patricia McCloskey, Ratings, Republicans, San Francisco, Shane Sonderman, soccer, Social Justice Warriors, St. Louis, Supreme Court, SWAT-ing, Texas, Today Show, Top Gear, TV, voting fraud, Wayne LaPierre
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | 2 Comments »
Friday, June 11th, 2021
Joe Manchin, controlling the border, and Soros-backed DA’s doing their best to bring back the high crime rates of the 1970s top this Friday’s LinkSwarm:
Seems like this should be a bigger story than it is: Mexico just had it’s midterm elections. But that’s not the big part: “97 politicians had been assassinated. Along with almost a thousand being attacked in some way, shape, or form. Just in this election cycle!”
West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin says that he will refuse to vote for the Democratic Voter Fraud Enablement Act of 2021. “I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy, and for that reason, I will vote against the For The People Act.”
Indeed, Manchin just crushed two anti-democratic Democratic power grabs:
Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) will oppose the Democratic Party’s legislation that would federalize elections, the For the People Act, citing the bill’s overtly partisan nature.
Manchin declared his position in an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail. According to Manchin, “voting and election reform that is done in a partisan manner will all but ensure partisan divisions continue to deepen.”
“I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy, and for that reason, I will vote against the For the People Act,” Manchin wrote.
Manchin also laid to rest the possibility he would ever support ending the filibuster.
“Furthermore, I will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster,” he said. “For as long as I have the privilege of being your U.S. senator, I will fight to represent the people of West Virginia, to seek bipartisan compromise no matter how difficult and to develop the political bonds that end divisions and help unite the country we love.”
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Manchin is thwarting The Will of The Party, so naturally Jemele Hill is calling him a racist.
Remember how Democrats were sure Hispanics would usher them into permanent majority status? Not in Texas:
Republicans swept key races for mayor in Texas on Saturday, setting back Democratic hopes that the state’s urban areas will deliver statewide majorities for them in the future. Most shocking: In McAllen, Texas, a border city of 150,000 people of which 85 percent are Hispanic, Republicans elected their first mayor since 1997.
Other cities with strong Hispanic populations also elected Republicans to replace retiring mayors. Fort Worth is the twelfth-largest city in the country and has more than 1 million people. Only a third of them are Anglo. But 37-year-old Republican Mattie Parker easily defeated Democrat Deborah Peoples, becoming the youngest mayor of a major Texas city.
The race was ostensibly nonpartisan, but the divisions were clear.
“We’ve never had a race that was this partisan,” Kenneth Barr, the former Democratic mayor of Fort Worth, told Politico. “This particular election has moved as far in the partisan direction as any we’ve ever had.”
Voters also elected Republican Jim Ross as mayor of Arlington, a suburb of 400,000 people that borders Fort Worth and is only 39 percent Anglo. Ross, a former Arlington police officer, was endorsed by several police associations who liked his anti-crime platform. He defeated Michael Glaspie, a former city-council member who was endorsed by the Dallas Morning News and leading Democratic politicians.
But it was the victory of Javier Villalobos in the overwhelmingly Democratic Rio Grande Valley bordering Mexico that shook political observers.
Villalobos, a former chairman of the Hidalgo County Republican Party, defeated Democrat Veronica Vega Whitacre, a fellow McAllen city council member, to become mayor. He campaigned as a conservative and said he wanted to cut water and sewage fees. He called for compassion for undocumented migrants but said the safety of local citizens had to be the first concern. His supporters questioned Whitacre’s wooly-headed claim that if migrants were flowing the other way, toward Mexico, they would be treated with as much compassion by Mexican authorities.
Whitacre’s loss was only the latest sign for Democrats that the Rio Grande Valley is slipping away from them. Biden won the region by 15 points last November, a far cry from Hillary Clinton’s 39-point margin in 2016. At the same time, Congressman Vicente Gonzalez won reelection by only 51 percent to 48 percent over Republican Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez in a district Democrats always carry.
“Democrats have a big problem in Texas,” Rio Grande Valley congressman Filemon Vela told the Texas Tribune in January, shortly after he became vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “For the first time in generations, or maybe ever, we lost . . . South Texas counties with significant Hispanic populations,” he said. “And we are going to have to . . . wrap our arms around exactly why that happened. It may be a difficult issue to reconcile.”
It’s not at all difficult to reconcile: The modern Democratic Party’s core policies of racist social justice, anti-police, soft-on-crime and pro-illegal alien are anathema to ordinary middle class Hispanic American citizens. Your ideas are unpopular and you’ll continue to lose as long as you let the radical social justice warriors set the agenda for the party.
Indeed, illegal border crossings hit 180,000 in May. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Governor Greg Abbott has announced plans to build the border wall in Texas the Biden Administration stopped work on.
Meanwhile, since being put in charge of the border crisis, Kamala Harris not only hasn’t visited the border, she laughs off questions about it. (Hat tip: Texas Public Policy Foundation.)
Speaking of illegal aliens, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision that those who entered the country illegally and were allowed to stay for humanitarian reasons are not allowed to apply for a green card. Also note the Justice Elana Kagan-penned decision makes no mention whatsoever of the “undocumented.” She refers to them, using the standard statutory language, as “aliens.”
“LA Sheriff Attributes Crime Surge To Soros-Backed DA Gascón, Supports Recall.”
The city of Los Angeles saw a sharp 36 percent increase in homicides in 2020—but the L.A. County sheriff said this year is looking even more grim, and he’s blaming the widespread uptick in crime on District Attorney George Gascón.
“In 2021, that 36 percent has now become 92 percent, which is a huge statistical jump,” Sheriff Alex Villanueva told The Epoch Times.
“We’re seeing increases in all the categories – assault with a deadly weapon, arson, rape… these things are continuing upward unabated.”
The widespread uptick in crime is the direct result of Gascón’s election as DA of L.A. County and his failure to prosecute offenses, according to Villanueva. Since Gascón took office, 2,690 cases—about 30 percent—“that normally would have gone through were rejected,” he said.
While Gascón has defended his reform policies, criminals in prison are toasting the DA to celebrate their early release, according to officials—and the sheriff said the DA’s policies are making it more difficult for him to do his job.
“You’re supposed to have a district attorney who represents the people … but [he’s] acting like a public defender,” Villanueva said.
“There’s no one left representing the people. I need to work in partnership with the person who’s representing the people. I don’t have that right now.”
Speaking of Gascón: “Double murderer approved for parole at third hearing; prosecutors barred from attending under Gascón’s reform.” “Howard Elwin Jones has been imprisoned at San Quentin state prison since 1991 for the December 1988 shooting and killing of 18-year-old Chris Baker and another boy at a party in Rowland Heights.” It appears that there’s nothing Soros-backed DAs enjoy more than putting violent, dangerous felons back on the street.
Dozens of Baltimore businesses plan to go Galt:
It comes as no surprise to readers that dozens of Baltimore City businesses, located in the Inner Harbor, in a stretch called “Fells Point,” are threatening the new city government, run by Mayor Brandon Scott, with not paying their taxes because they’re “fed up and frustrated” with the outburst of violence.
In a letter titled “Letter to City Leaders From Fells Point Business Leaders,” addressed to Mayor Brandon Scott, Council President Nick Mosby, Councilman Zeke Cohen, Madam State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, and Commissioner Michael Harrison, the 37 restaurants and small businesses are threatening to stop paying city taxes and other fees until “basic and essential municipal services are restored.”
What’s happening in Fells Point, known for its hipster pubs and taverns, as well as delicious seafood from the Chesapeake Bay, is experiencing an overflow of violent crime from other troubled areas.
The letter comes after three men were shot in Fells Point over the weekend.
“What is happening in our front yard — the chaos and lawlessness that escalated this weekend into another night of tragic, unspeakable gun violence — has been going on for far too long,” said the letter.
The 37 businesses are planning to place their city taxes in an “escrow account” and released them until these demands are satisfied:
- Pick up the trash
- Enforce traffic and parking laws through tickets and towing
- Stop illegal open-air alcohol and drug sales
- Empower police to responsibly do their job
The letter continued to say that minor crime that police “ignore” is what is contributing to more violent crime. So Marilyn Mosby’s halt on prosecuting petty crimes appears to be backfiring.
You don’t say. Baltimore has had a problem with open-air drug markets for over three decades. And the last Republican mayor left office in 1967…
“DeSantis Signs Bills Combatting Chinese Communist Party’s Influence In US.””The first bill is intended to safeguard public institutions from ‘undue foreign influence,’ DeSantis said at a press conference, noting that the bill will prohibit ‘agreements between public entities and the Communist Party of China or Cuba or any of these malignant forces.’ The second bill criminalizes theft and trafficking trade secrets under Florida state law.” If Trump doesn’t run again in 2024, right now DeSantis would be the early favorite for the GOP nomination.
More words from the man in question:
Things that make you go “Hmmmm”: “Obama Administration Lifted Block on “Gain of Function Research” Just Eleven Days Before President Trump Took Office, January 9, 2017.”
Own any of the estimated 40 million guns in America with a pistol brace? Congratulations! The Biden Administration wants to make you a felon.
“Today’s proposed rulemaking on pistol-braced firearms represents a gross abuse of executive authority,” said Aidan Johnston, Director of Federal Affairs for Gun Owners of America, in a statement.
[Pistol brace inventor Alex] Bosco said the rule would outlaw the vast majority of braces on the market and read like it was “reverse-engineered to make braces illegal.” He called it “arbitrary and capricious.”
How’s that socialized medicine working out for you, UK? “Hospital waiting list tops 5m in England.”
Old and busted: Young families buying homes. The new hotness: Pension funds buying homes. “The consulting firm found Houston to be a favorite haunt of investors who have lately accounted for 24% of home purchases there.”
The Kung Flu lockdowns were a war on the working class:
Fake Florida coronavirus “whistleblower” Rebekah Jones suspended from Twitter.
Charles C. W. Cooke wonders what use Chris Cuomo is to CNN?
Andrew Cuomo’s little brother is a continuous embarrassment to the cable-news network that employs him. So why does he still have a job?
At this point in the proceedings, one is tempted to conclude that Chris Cuomo must have laced CNN’s corporate offices with dynamite and informed the powers that be that, if he goes, they go, too. What else could explain the network’s eternal tolerance for being embarrassed and degraded by the man? Here, at the tail end of his long experiment in deficiency, Cuomo resembles nothing more keenly than the inadequate tee-baller who gets to stay in past eight or nine strikes because his uncle coaches the team. His ratings are poor. His insights are vacuous. His conduct is a permanent source of ignominy. All the perfumes of Albany could not sweeten this little man. “What’s in a name?” inquired Shakespeare. Little did he know.
It is unclear why Cuomo was selected by CNN to begin with. He’s a lawyer who knows nothing of the law; a journalist who knows nothing of journalism; an American who knows nothing of America. His temper is third-rate, his interests are bewilderingly narrow, he possesses no discernible sense of shame or self-knowledge, and the opinions he proffers are so ruthlessly subordinated to expedience that hypocrisy is his default mode. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s maxim that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” was meant as an extolment of the virtues of personal growth. Cuomo seems to have taken it literally.
On no single topic has the man’s unique set of professional and personal shortcomings been more obvious than COVID-19. In April of last year, Cuomo’s attempt to fake a two-week quarantine was ruined by his failure to remember that, just a week earlier, he had admitted on the radio that he had left the house to visit a property he owns in East Hampton and gotten into an argument with a stranger. And yet, rather than demote him for telling such a galling and obvious lie, CNN encouraged him to inject his peculiar brand of mendacity into a series of interviews with his own brother. Thus it was that while Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York was making the single worst mistake of the entire coronavirus crisis — herding the elderly into nursing homes and then covering up the death toll — Television Host Chris Cuomo of New York was using America’s most famous cable-news channel to portray him as a national hero. What America needed last year was a dispassionate examination of Andrew Cuomo’s official messaging. What America got was a smirking nepotist brandishing a comedy-sized nasal swab and tweeting obsequious fluff about his sibling. New York, Chris Cuomo concluded, was “doing way better than what we see elsewhere & no way that happens without the Luv Guv dishing the real 24/7.” In exchange, the “Luv Guv” dealt Chris in on a series of private, government-funded COVID tests that were unavailable to everybody else.
Watching Chris Cuomo work is a little like watching a man jump out of an airplane without a parachute and then become irrationally angry at those who tell him he’s going to die.
Speaking of CNN, they also brought back Jeffrey “lubin his” Toobin. Proving yet again that the the Democratic Media Complex will alwaqys refuse to apply its rules to their own.
Jon Del Arroz wins his lawsuit against Worldcon for calling him racist:
The snowflakes at Worldcon are having a very bad weekend. On Friday, the San Francisco chapter of Worldcon settled a lawsuit and agreed to pay restitution and to issue a public apology for banning conservative author Jon Del Arroz from their convention in 2018 and for besmirching him as a “racist.” Del Arroz is the most dangerous Hispanic voice in science fiction because he refuses to back down in the face of political bullies. He has also written an amazing series, The Saga of the Nano Templar, that my teen daughter is reading for the second time—that’s how good it is—and I don’t have to worry about garbage culture or leftist politics sullying her mind. The Adventures of Baron Von Monacle, a steampunk series, is also highly entertaining. (Always support freedom-loving artists!)
At the time of the banning, Del Arroz was under serious mob attack from social justice warriors trying to drive him out of the sci-fi community. SJWs even sent a spring-loaded exploding can of penis-shaped glitter to his home, which scared his wife and children. The ban came about when Del Arroz asked Worldcon for security measures because he feared for his safety due to the mob-like attacks on him and his family from industry insiders. Instead of helping him, Worldcon banned him and made public statements claiming the author was a “racist” and a “bully,” with no substantiated evidence to back those statements up. I’ve known Del Arroz personally for many years. He is a devout and kind man with a good sense of humor and a love of the art of the troll. He is not vicious, but provocative in a way that is necessary for freedom of speech to be preserved. He’s the one brave enough to exercise the First Amendment in ways that ensure we will keep it. We all need people like Del Arroz in the fight to preserve liberty.
Now we only need about a hundred such lawsuits to force institutional science fiction to regain its sanity… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Not-so-much news: Gun control bill fails. News: In California.
For all the disappointments of the Texas 87th legislature’s regular session, a number of pro Second Amendment bills were passed.
Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman resigns, said to be interested in running for Attorney General against incumbent Ken Paxton and George P. Bush.
This is probably the wrong Eva to use as clip art here.
Babylon Bee counts down genders:
“How to Protect Your Shopping Trolley From Improvised Explosives.” However, I feel compelled to point out a technical error: The Trophy active protection system is not yet available on the British Challenger tank, making it deeply unlikely that the system would be made available for a Tesco shopping cart.
Tags:2022 Attorney General's Race, 2022 Election, 2024 Presidential Race, 87th Texas Legislature, Alex Villanueva, ATF, Baltimore, Border Controls, border fence, Brandon Scott, California, Charles C. W. Cooke, China, Chris Cuomo, CNN, Communism, coronavirus, Crime, Deborah Peoples, Democrats, Demolition Ranch, drug lords, Elections, Elena Kagan, Emmanuel Macron, Eva Guzman, Filemon Vela, Florida, Fort Worth, France, G-7, George Gascon, George Soros, gold, Greg Abbott, gun control, Guns, H. P. Lovecraft, Hidalgo County, Hispanics, Houston, Howard Elwin Jones, hydroxychloroquine, Javier Villalobos, Jemele Hill, Jim Ross, Joe Manchin, Jon Del Arroz, Kamala Harris, LinkSwarm, Los Angeles, Marilyn Mosby, Matt Carriker, Mattie Parker, McAllen, McDonald's, Media Watch, Mexico, Michael Glaspie, Michael Harrison, Nanjing Normal University, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Nick Mosby, Rebekah Jones, Rio Grande Valley, Ron DeSantis, San Antonio, science fiction, Social Justice Warriors, sugar, Supreme Court, Tesco, Texas, Texas Supreme Court, Trophy active defense, Twitter, Veronica Whitacre, Vicente Gonzalez, video, Worldcon, Zeke Cohen
Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Guns, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas, Welfare State | 7 Comments »