WHO? BidenWatch for October 12, 2020. “Biden refuses to reveal his position on court-packing, but he still wants to take your guns and hike your taxes until your eyeballs bleed, plus more on the enthusiasm gap, fracking flip-flops, and we’re all going to be millionaires (the Weimer Republic kind).”
Archive for 2020
October 12, 2020
LOCKDOWNS ARE BAD FOR CHIDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS: Study: Kids’ hospitalizations accompany rising unemployment rates. “COVID-19 has led to widespread job loss in the United States. And now a new study reports that when unemployment rates rise, so do hospitalizations of children.”
JEFF DUNTEZ: Adam Schiff Favors Ending Small State Voting Rights – and That’s Just the Beginning. “Removing the Electoral College (in favor of a popular vote) is serious, like a magnitude 10 earthquake serious. I won’t here go into how the Electoral College functions, suffice it to say that the majority of the votes cast throughout the physical United States would NOT count. Elections would be mostly determined by the votes of five big states New York, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Illinois. For example, in 2016, Hillary won those five states by a total of 8.4 million. Trump one the rest of the country by 5.5 million. If the electoral college is eliminated, the 45 smaller states will no longer matter to national candidates.”
IT’S ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK:
HARD TARGET: China Invades Taiwan: Two Scenarios.
HIS OCCASIONAL FLICKERS OF RATIONALITY ONLY MAKE IT WORSE: Andrew Sullivan Becomes Season Ticketholder On TDS Train.
THINGS YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO NOTICE:
A FRIEND ON FACEBOOK SAYS, “ICONOCLASM HAS ITS OWN MOMENTUM.” “A group of protesters toppled statues of former presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and shattered the entrance to the Oregon Historical Society in Portland’s South Park Blocks…”
From the comments: “I was told that this was about Confederate soldiers. . .”
FROM THE WHITE HOUSE: Proclamation on Columbus Day, 2020.
On this Columbus Day, we embrace the same optimism that led Christopher Columbus to discover the New World. We inherit that optimism, along with the legacy of American heroes who blazed the trails, settled a continent, tamed the wilderness, and built the single-greatest nation the world has ever seen.
In commemoration of Christopher Columbus’s historic voyage, the Congress, by joint resolution of April 30, 1934, modified in 1968 (36 U.S.C. 107), has requested the President proclaim the second Monday of October of each year as “Columbus Day.”
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim October 12, 2020, as Columbus Day. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities. I also direct that the flag of the United States be displayed on all public buildings on the appointed day in honor of our diverse history and all who have contributed to shaping this Nation.
Lovely.
BABYLON BEE: Pope Francis Declares That The Catholic Church Will No Longer Accept Donations Earned Via Capitalism. Harsh, but fair.
SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “Special needs mom of 7 kids having pics of sick children shoved in her face by senators who support late-term abortion up until the moment of birth is the grossest, most fucked up hypocrisy I’ve ever seen.”
COURT-PACKING IS WHAT WE SAY IT IS: Team Biden Just Pushed Out Insane New Talking Points on Packing the Supreme Court.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Amy Coney Barrett Will Violently Overthrow… Precedent?
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Suppose they threw a Biden-Harris rally and nobody came?
Answer: You don’t have to suppose anything because it happened.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Black Lives Matter so Abe Lincoln has got to go.
- Bloomberg’s hit piece on Amy Coney Barrett, revealed.
- Murder hornets, meet feral super-pigs.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
ROGER SIMON: China and Iran Want You to Vote for Biden.
It’s no secret the totalitarian governments of China and Iran favor Joe Bidenin the presidential election.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would like nothing more than to go back to the status quo ante, the pre-Trump world when American politicians convinced themselves (or pretended to) China would turn democratic if we gave them favorable trade terms and shut up about their monstrous repressive policies, including the hundreds of thousands—or is it millions—languishing in “reeducation” camps while the rest of their population becomes subject to the pervasive Orwellian surveillance of the “social credit“ system.
Then there’s the little matter of the as yet still mysterious provenance of the novel coronavirus, appropriately called the CCP virus hereabouts, that has wreaked such havoc across the globe. When we will know the truth about what really happened in the Wuhan virology lab? Would a Biden administration even want to know?
And, yes, as most of us realize, there’s considerably more, but it was all okay in the view of Democrats like Biden and Sen. Dianne Feinstein—she of the Chinese chauffeur who, mirabile dictu, was suddenly exposed as a spy after twenty years of service to her—as long as there was money to be made.
And there was, a lot, as Hunter Biden, not to mention Feinstein’s husband and Michael Bloomberg, can attest.
Hunter’s father had to revise his initial praise of China, pooh-poohing the idea they might be an enemy, when things started to get a little obvious and handlers whispered in his ear this was not exactly the road to the White House.
So it’s hard to feel reassured about how Joe would behave toward the communist regime once in office. There’s a great deal more reason, actual evidence of deals, to believe the Chinese have “special leverage” with Biden than there ever was that the Russians had something on Trump.
And politicians like Biden and Feinstein are far from alone in their fealty to Beijing. They have plenty of support among American progressives. As is well known, many of our universities, from Harvard on down, have been bribed with huge sums by the CCP to regard them favorably, even have had spies on the faculty, with Confucius Institutes, essentially communist propaganda arms, installed on many campuses.
Would a President Biden fight this network of corruption that actually justifies and teaches totalitarianism to our youth? Does he even think or know about it?
We know Trump would because he already has. He does it.
Related: Biden stands up for China:
THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Students say successful women should be celebrated…except when it comes to Amy Coney Barrett.
HIMARS IN ACTION: Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division fire missiles from the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. Their unit is participating in a Decisive Action Rotation at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, Calif. Photo taken Sept. 14, 2020. Here’s a photo from 2017 that shows the launcher firing a rocket from a beach in South Korea. For background on the HIMARS, see this Artillery update from 2017. The HIMARS is a very useful weapon system. It can fire precision-guided rockets and the 12 ton truck-launcher can fit into a C-130 transport plane. Here’s a photo of a U.S. Marine HIMARS landing on a beach. The Army and Marines have both experimented with using advanced sensors to spot targets for the long range, precision-guided rockets HIMARS and its the larger MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) can fire. An Air Weapons update from 2018 reported the Marines discovered the F-35B is a very good forward observer for the HIMARS. The Marines fired HIMARS from the flight deck of an amphibious assault ship — a clever way to give the assault ship the ability to provide gunfire support for Marines ashore. The 2018 article includes some of the data in the 2017 update.
UPDATE: When the Marines use the F-35B as a forward observer the plane remains in stealth-mode, as best it can. The plane detects targets and relays target information — to the ship though I understand it could be sent directly to the HIMARS launcher. In some ways it’s comparable to a hidden spotter providing information to a sniper. The rockets are accurate out to 70 kilometers and there are longer range versions. In stealth mode the F-35B does not carry external weapons. The plane could be detected if the data transmission were intercepted, but given the plane’s capabilities, it’s difficult for an enemy to quickly turn that into targeting data (ie, target the F-35B). In comparison, if the jet were conducting the attack or even carrying external weapons it would almost certainly reveal its presence and position.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UW Madison student government passes resolution supporting removal of Lincoln statue.
Forget abolishing the police. I think we should abolish student governments. They seem to be a breeding ground for smug, ignorant authoritarianism.
PETER BEINART: America May Need International Intervention. “Even Democrats may find it hard to imagine, but the ‘leader of the free world’ would benefit from United Nations oversight.”
The Democrats can’t cheat enough to win, so we have to import legions of corruptocrats from the UN?
Whatever the case, Beinart sure doesn’t sound very confident in his side.
SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY: The latest revelations show Team Obama invented the whole RussiaGate scandal.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump Needs to Pressure Biden to Come Clean About Court Packing. “This obfuscation is tedious. Team Biden-Harris is dancing around it because they’re desperate to pick off undecided and independent voters and they know that threatening retribution after the election may not go over so well. That’s precisely why President Trump needs to turn up the heat on this issue. Biden likes to present himself as a moderate and the man who’s going to unite the country. The president should expose the radical, partisan retribution plans Biden has if he wins.”
NOW THEY TELL US: WHO warns against COVID-19 lockdowns due to economic damage.