Archive for 2021
January 25, 2021
I’M SURE THESE TWO EVENTS ARE ENTIRELY UNRELATED:
Shot: California Governor Gavin Newsom expected to lift strict stay-at-home orders, sources say.
—Central California’s ABC 30, today.
Chaser: California campaign to fire Newsom nears threshold needed for ballot.
—Fox News, today.
CAN BIDEN CONTINUE TRUMP’S TOUGHER APPROACH ON CHINA?
President Joe Biden’s incoming secretary of state, Antony Blinken, agrees former President Donald Trump’s administration got communist China right.
During his Jan. 19 Senate confirmation hearing, Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “President Trump was right in taking a tougher approach to China. I disagree very much with the way that he went about it in a number of areas, but the basic principle was the right one. And I think that that’s actually helpful to our foreign policy.”
But Hunter Biden’s China investment scandal lurks in the diplomatic and criminal background.
The mainstream media and social media magnates who stifled preelection public examination of the Biden family’s involvement in what looks like and smells like a multimillion-dollar political payoff racket may have gotten Joe Biden elected.
However, until the Biden-China scandal is fully vetted, we won’t know if Beijing has inside information (blackmail leverage) that might soften Trump’s tougher approach.
Knowing matters. Given China’s documented record of pervasive spying, global intellectual property theft, a huge military expansion program, imperialist seizure of territory, bullying of neighbors, violations of treaty commitments, police-state terror and genocide of Muslim Uighurs, a softer approach at this moment in history ultimately puts American security at risk.
Read the whole thing. (bumped)
ECO-TOURISM, KIND OF: Oklahoma lawmaker proposes ‘Bigfoot’ hunting season. “Establishing an actual hunting season and issuing licenses for people who want to hunt Bigfoot will just draw more people to our already beautiful part of the state.”
LEAVING IN A MIST: Somewhere in the eastern Pacific a U.S. Navy Landing Craft, Air Cushion (LCAC) leaves the well deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Essex.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Joe Biden Is the Worst 5 Day President Ever. “I almost have to hand it to Ol’ Gropes, he’s spreading the pain all over the place. There have already been multiple moments for schadenfreude but that feeling is fleeting when I realize that I’m going to be miserable too. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure there will be a knock at the door.”
RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: President Biden to reinstate COVID-19 travel rules, add South Africa, sources say.
ANOTHER INDUSTRY SAVED BY DONALD TRUMP: Halfway Through The Fall 2021 Law School Admissions Cycle: Applicants Are Up 22%, With Biggest Increases Among The Highest LSAT Bands. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next year, with no “Trump Bump.”
SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY: New Evidence Implicates FBI Higher-Ups in Dishonesty of Anti-Trump Lawyer.
The court filings reveal, among other things, that Clinesmith knew much earlier than has been reported about Page’s cooperation with the U.S. government, and was not alone in knowing that he had provided information on the Russians to the CIA — or in covering up that knowledge.
Several officials within his tightly compartmentalized chain-of-command — including former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, his counselor Lisa Page and counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok — learned of Page’s role with the CIA before they first sought to wiretap him during the 2016 presidential campaign. The CIA had confirmed his role two months earlier in an August 2016 memo it sent to the FBI. And Page’s status as a CIA contact had been documented in the FBI’s own electronic files going back to 2009.
Yet they all withheld this critical information attesting to Page’s loyalty from the spy court.
A rotten organization, headed by rotten, corrupt people.
SOMETIMES THEY ADMIT THINGS: Shocker: MSNBC host admits ‘Trump would be getting crushed’ if he had done what Joe Biden did.
BIG TECH BLUES: Google threatens to withdraw search engine from Australia.
Australia is introducing a world-first law to make Google, Facebook and potentially other tech companies pay media outlets for their news content.
But the US firms have fought back, warning the law would make them withdraw some of their services.Australian PM Scott Morrison said lawmakers would not yield to “threats”.
Australia is far from Google’s largest market, but the proposed news code is seen as a possible global test case for how governments could seek to regulate big tech firms.Tech firms have faced increasing pressure to pay for news content in other countries, including France, where Google struck a landmark deal with media outlets on Thursday.
In Australia, the proposed news code would tie Google and Facebook to mediated negotiations with publishers over the value of news content, if no agreement could be reached first.
On the one hand, this might be a case where the cure is worse than the disease — at least according to the man who invented the world wide web.
On the other hand, Google and Facebook.
NOT SATIRE: A confounding kimchi kerfuffle shows the CCP has made people at home hungry for news of China’s dominance. “When China came for their kimchi, South Koreans knew they had had enough. Over the past several weeks, China’s state-backed Global Times has turned its crosshairs on Korea’s beloved fermented cabbage dish, running a provocative series of pieces asserting a version of the dish from China’s Sichuan province is the authoritative version, and pointedly reminding Koreans China was the world leader in the kimchi industry.”
ICYMI: Reuters: Special Report: How U.S. CDC missed chances to spot COVID’s silent spread.
Critics have widely asserted that the CDC fumbled key decisions during the coronavirus scourge because then-President Donald Trump and his administration meddled in the agency’s operations and muzzled internal experts. The matter is now the subject of a congressional inquiry. Yet Reuters has found new evidence that the CDC’s response to the pandemic also was marred by actions – or inaction – by the agency’s career scientists and frontline staff.
Also.
THE MEDIA — AND ESPECIALLY SOCIAL MEDIA — ARE BASICALLY THE INTELLECTUAL EQUIVALENT OF THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY: How the Media Monetarized Polarization.
EVERY SUNDAY: I do a promo post for (mostly) indie writers on my blog. Yes, the links are to Amazon. I’m assured AWS (data storage) is the bulk of Amazon business. Ebooks are barely a blip, and for now the best hope of indie writers, and writers on the right. Btw, did you know you could pick Project Veritas in the Smile program? I mean “Everyone does business with authority like everyone does business with gravity” but…. doesn’t mean we can’t put it to use. Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike and Book Promo.
CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES? D.C. Mayor Bowser: Dem-Led House, Senate Will Pass D.C. Statehood, Bring It to Biden’s Desk.
We don’t need to address no stinking constitutional issues! What are you going to do? Vote them out?
THIS IS GOING TO END WITH WAR WITH CHINA: Sunday Talks, Tom Cotton Discusses China Targeting Trump Officials With Targeted Economic and Financial Weapons.
One way or another. But you knew that.
WE DIDN’T VOTE OURSELVES INTO THIS MESS: Masked Xhem Xir Whatever. .
JUSTICE FOR ASHLI BABBIT: Who shot Ashli Babbitt?
And while we’re at it, justice for the dead of Benghazi.
All the Marxism in the world won’t wash the bloody hands of this lot of clowns. We’d best stop them before they fill mass graves.
BECAUSE THIS IS THE EARLY 20th CENTURY: Biden’s Transport secretary Buttigieg tells laid-off Keystone XL workers he hopes they get ‘different union jobs’.