IT REALLY DOESN’T SEEM THAT LONG: Reflecting on (Almost) 20 Years of VodkaPundit — Where Do We Go from Here?
Archive for 2021
November 10, 2021
STAY IN STYLE FOR FALL: Elibeauty Let’s Go Brandon FJB Beanie Knit Hat Pro America Stretchy Cap Warm Cap. #CommsisionEarned
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Thanksgiving Dinner Staples Are Low in Stock Thanks to Supply-Chain Issues.
Supplies of food and household items are 4% to 11% lower than normal as of Oct. 31, according to data from market-research firm IRI. That figure isn’t far from the bare shelves of March 2020, when supplies were down 13%.
For grocery shoppers this holiday season, it means that someone with 20 items on their list would be out of luck on two of them.
Although U.S. supermarket operators started purchasing holiday items early, aiming to avoid shortages, many holiday essentials are already in short supply.
Although?
STOP PRETENDING CNN MATTERS: “Basic cable telecasts that had a larger audience than CNN’s ‘Reliable Sources’ in the critical demo on Sunday include BET repeats of ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ and ‘Martin,’ multiple repeats of Nick Jr.’s ‘Paw Patrol,’ Disney Junior’s ‘Mickey Mouse Funhouse’ and ‘The Chicken Squad,’ and Adult Swim’s ‘Bob’s Burgers.'”
I NOTICE THEY SEEM TO BE PUSHING CHRISTMAS STUFF EVEN EARLIER THIS YEAR: PEAK 2021 No signs of early Christmas spend as online sales continue to underperform in October, but spending could see last minute splurge.
THEY ALSO BREATHLESSLY REPORT ON MISSING WHITE WOMEN THEN COMPLAIN NO ONE HYPES MISSING BLACK WOMEN: Liberal Media Chases Away Black Cops, Complains There Aren’t Enough Black Cops.
ANDREW BRANCA ROUNDUP: Rittenhouse Trial Day 6: State’s Autopsy Expert Supports Self-Defense Narrative In Another Disastrous Prosecution Day.
Branca’s a self-defense expert, but remember that what expert outside observers think doesn’t matter. It’s what the jury thinks. And the jury is being threatened and followed.
SPACE: SpaceX to launch Crew-3 astronauts for NASA today. Here’s how to watch it live. “Liftoff is scheduled for 9:03 p.m. EST.”
BUILD BACK BACKWARDS: America’s Ports Need More Robots, but the $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Won’t Fund Automation.
At most major ports around the world, the cranes that unload shipping containers from boats to trucks are largely automated. That means they can operate around the clock at lower cost and—extra importantly right now—have zero risk of catching COVID-19. One recent study found that cranes at the mostly automated port in Rotterdam, Netherlands, are roughly 80 percent more efficient than cranes at the Port of Oakland, California, where humans still man the controls. In other words, it takes nearly twice as long to unload the same ship in Oakland as it would in Rotterdam.
One of the major hurdles to automation is the expense. It can cost as much as $500 million to install new, fully automated terminals at existing ports, according to the Journal of Commerce, a trade publication. Even if it might make sense to do that in the long run, short-term considerations keep American ports operating at their current, less efficient status quo.
Conveniently, Congress has just passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending bill—one that includes $17 billion for port infrastructure. Of that $17 billion, about $2.6 billion is specifically earmarked for defraying the cost of upgrading equipment at America’s ports, nominally to reduce air pollution.
If you were a member of Congress looking to spend a bunch of money to immediately and meaningfully upgrade American infrastructure in a way that would help solve the current supply chain logjams, automating ports should be at or near the top of the list. It’s quite literally a no-brainer.
The bad news, however, is buried on page 308 of the 1,600-plus page bill: “The term ‘zero-emission port equipment or technology’ means human-operated equipment or human-maintained technology.”
If only Team Biden had watched the Discovery channel last year during lockdown:
BIDEN AI ACTIVIST AT FTC: Never heard of Meredith Whitaker? Neither have 99 percent of the rest of us, but she illustrates the enduring truth of the Reagan Era maxim: “Personnel is policy.” How so? Let me count the ways.
Whitaker announced Friday, according to Santi Ruiz of the Washington Free Beacon, that she is headed to the FTC as a “senior advisor” on Artificial Intelligence (AI). But guess what, AI is not Whitaker’s forte. She got the boot at Google, Ruiz reports, because:
“Although Whittaker has presented herself as an expert in artificial intelligence ethics, some former colleagues have accused her of inflating her credentials, noting that she has no formal training in the field and has done no peer-reviewed research. One manager described her impact inside Google as ‘nonexistent in the AI bias space, if not negative’ and said that ‘there is not a lot of value’ in the work she touted.”
No matter as Whitaker shares other Biden FTCers “obsession” with using anti-trust policy to advance the far-left agenda. Personnel is policy. Democrats understand this. Trump didn’t, neither do many Washington GOPers, still, after all these years.
BURIED VALOR: Biden’s Pentagon Literally Erasing Proof That Our Soldiers Sacrificed It All in Afghanistan.
An enormous collection of Afghanistan War footage has been removed from the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service by the Pentagon, according to a report in Task and Purpose. More than 120,000 photos and 17,000 videos have been removed from the DVIDS official record.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said the images that were archived, so Afghans who helped the U.S. in the war will not be put in danger. The problem? A large number of the archived images do not show any Afghan soldiers or civilians.
Read the whole thing.
USC PROFESSOR REFUSES TO REMOVE BLUE LIVES MATTER FLAG FROM OFFICE DOOR: ‘Blue lives protect black lives’ “‘We are in an environment where there is a lot of homogenization of ideas, and diversity should include diversity of ideas,’ [Professor James Moore] told The College Fix. ‘This [USC] is supposed to be a safe space for diversity of thought,’ the professor said. ‘We are charging people very good money to teach them to think. I am just trying to deliver.’”
HERE COME AL GORE’S CLIMATE SPIES IN THE SKY: The former Veep says he and his Climate Trace compatriots are a year away from being everywhere, as reported by Jeff Dunetz at The Lid, quoting an MSDNC interview with Andrea Mitchell:
“We get data consistently from 300 existing satellites, more than 11,000 ground-based, air-based, sea-based sensors, multiple internet data streams and using artificial intelligence,” Gore explained.
“All that information is combined, visible light, infrared, all of the other information that is brought in, and we can now accurately determine where the greenhouse gas emissions are coming from.
“And next year we’ll have it down to the level of every single power plant, refinery, every large ship, every plane, every waste dump, and we’ll have the identities of the people who are responsible for each of those greenhouse gas emission streams.”
You know what comes next, right?
“If investors or governments, or civil society activists want to hold them responsible, they will have the information upon which to base their action and holding them responsible.” Just like the KGB’s neighborhood informants, only much more sophisticated.
UPDATE: Apologies, my friends, for failing to include the link when this post first went live. It’s there now.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Please Democrats, ‘Race Card’ Yourselves Into Oblivion. “I, for one, would like to encourage the Democrats to keep this up. It’s a message that isn’t accomplishing anything that they think it is. The only people who buy it made their purchases a long time ago. They’re not winning over any new hearts and minds with this tired, pathetic line of attack. Last Tuesday was ugly for them, and anyone with eyes to see can knows that it was probably a precursor to what will be an absolute slaughtering at the polls next November.”
TOP SELLER: Timberland Men’s Genuine Leather RFID Blocking Passcase Security Wallet, Brown, One Size. #CommissionEarned
CONFLICT OF INTEREST: Biden Appointees Will Not Recuse Themselves From Union Case Brought by Former Employer.
“MISINFORMATION” IS JUST ANYTHING THAT THREATENS THE ESTABLISHMENT NARRATIVE:
It has nothing to do with truth or falsity.
ALWAYS SOUND ADVICE: Youngkin Aide Lays Out Winning GOP Strategy: Ignore CNN. “The cable news cycle moves very quickly, and if you try to run your campaign reacting to what’s on cable news, or reacting to what’s on Twitter, you’re gonna be changing your message every day, and we saw Terry McAuliffe doing that, you know, he would throw up an attack, and then he would, you know, change it three days later.”
I THOUGHT IT IMPOSSIBLE BUT HE KEEPS GETTING CREEPIER: Al Gore Calling For Government Tracking And Surveillance To Combat Climate Change.
THE NEXT REPUBLICAN SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA: DR. OZ?
BRIAN WILLIAMS IS LEAVING NBC NEWS AT THE END OF THE YEAR:
Williams, host of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, says the program “will remain in good hands, produced by the best team in cable news.”
While ratings have dropped off in recent months, The 11th Hour was an overall success for MSNBC. It was consistently the most-watched show on cable news in its timeslot during the Trump years, and was really an extension of Williams’ role as MSNBC’s breaking news anchor, a role he stepped into a year earlier following his removal from NBC Nightly News and a six-month suspension for telling and re-telling the made-up story of being in a helicopter that came under fire during his coverage of the Iraq War in 2003.
Williams sings the praises of NBC in his goodbye note.
“Good friends were in great supply at NBC,” said Williams. “I was fortunate that everyone I worked with made me better at my job. I’ve had the best colleagues imaginable. That includes great bosses.”
Williams is leaving NBC News, but says he isn’t leaving the business entirely.
No, I’m sure he’ll be back:
BIDEN’S BUNGLED BUGOUT: Biden Abandoned U.S. Military Families in Afghanistan.