Archive for 2022
October 11, 2022
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Michigan Proposition 3 Could Usher in Sex-Change and Abortion Tourism for Minors.
PRIME DEAL: DEWALT 20V MAX* Charger. #CommissionEarned
WHEN PUBLIC HEALTH ISN’T TRUSTED: More than 40% of Americans lied about COVID-19 risk during pandemic, study shows. “The most common reasons for the lack of transparency were that people wanted to feel normal or to exercise personal freedom.”
UPDATE: A friend messages: “Haha, another 50% lied to the survey.”
FEWER AND FEWER PEOPLE UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP: Biden Drops Below 50% On All 10 Of Americans’ Top Priorities.
HURRICANE IAN IS OVER, but just a reminder that if you’re at risk from hurricanes a Water Bob may be a good solution.
I’M ALL FOR ENSURING THAT CALIFORNIA AND NEW YORK CAN’T IMPOSE THEIR IDIOTIC STANDARDS ON THE REST OF US: From Prof. Michael McConnell (Stanford) on the Dormant Commerce Clause.
LINCOLN BROWN: Vivek Ramaswamy Traces the Roots of ESG—It’s Been Going on a Lot Longer Than We Knew. “Ramaswamy said that the problems of ESG are not state or even national economic ones. They make up a transnational, trans-partisan battle for the heart and soul of democracy itself. It is not Democrats versus Republicans, Left versus Right, black versus white, or gay versus straight. Rather, the real issue at stake is democratic-republican self-governance versus monarchy.”
STEWART BAKER: Stealth Quotas: The Dangerous Cure for “AI bias.” “You probably haven’t given much thought recently to the wisdom of racial and gender quotas that allocate jobs and other benefits to racial and gender groups based on their proportion of the population. That debate is pretty much over. Google tells us that discussion of racial quotas peaked in 1980 and has been declining ever since. While still popular with some on the left, they have been largely rejected by the country as a whole. Most recently, in 2019 and 2020, deep blue California voted to keep in place a ban on race and gender preferences. So did equally left-leaning Washington state. So you might be surprised to hear that quotas are likely to show up everywhere in the next ten years, thanks to a growing enthusiasm for regulating technology – and a large contingent of Republican legislators. That, at least, is the conclusion I’ve drawn from watching the movement to find and eradicate what’s variously described as algorithmic discrimination or AI bias.”
As I’ve noted in the past, affirmative action is one of those things that elites want, regardless of what the voters think.
HMM: China asked Elon Musk not to sell Starlink within the country.
In an interview with the Financial Times last week, Elon Musk revealed that figures in the Chinese government have asked him directly to withhold Starlink access within China. Musk told FT that, in the publication’s summary, “Beijing has made clear its disapproval of his recent rollout of Starlink…in Ukraine” and “sought assurances he would not sell Starlink in China.”
It’s unclear from the description whether Musk agreed to Beijing’s request, but Starlink’s service map shows no plans to deploy in China. Adjacent countries like Taiwan, Mongolia and Vietnam are listed as “pending regulatory approval.”
Yesterday: CCP Gov’t Loves Elon Musk’s Suggestion that China Should Take Over Taiwan.
Musk should really stick to space and cars.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Democrat Candidate in Ohio Senate Race Has Debate Meltdown.
Maybe national Democrats have been ignoring this race because they knew he was a weaker candidate than the media polls suggested.
STACEY LENNOX: The FDA Should Have Been Ready for the Vaccine Information Shared by Florida’s Surgeon General. “It is infuriating that Twitter had the nerve to censor the tweet in the first place, since the FDA acknowledged cardiac risks to men under 40 over a year ago. On Sept. 17, 2021, the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBAC) met to discuss the approval of a booster dose of the mRNA vaccines for all Americans over 16. Doran Fink, M.D., deputy director of the clinical side of the FDA’s Division of Vaccines and Related Products Applications, provided some insight into the frequency of myocarditis.”
Read the whole thing.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Are we headed for a rail strike after all? “A strike would be a potential disaster for the economy and a political disaster for the Biden administration which was involved in the deal reached last month. Luckily for the White House, whatever happens won’t happen until after the election. Part of me wonders if this wasn’t the deal all along, i.e. you can still vote to reject this but do hold out so whatever happens will happen after the election when it won’t be another millstone around the necks of pro-union Democrats.” Highly plausible.
PRIME DEAL: GE Profile Opal | Countertop Nugget Ice Maker with Side Tank. #CommissionEarned
FALLOUT: Bank of Finland says war is ‘bleeding’ the Russian economy.
The Russian economy will shrink by both four percent this year and next, the Bank of Finland said in its latest Russia forecast, published on Monday.
In a statement titled “War bleeds the Russian economy,” the central bank said (siirryt toiseen palveluun) western sanctions continue to raise both the “direct and incidental costs of war.”
“The Russian economy is decoupling from the world economy,” Laura Solanko, a bank senior adviser, said in the statement.
EU import bans are reducing Russian budget revenues, while export bans are limiting Russia’s ability to arm and supply its invasion force, the bank explained.
BoF economists forecast the Russian economy facing a serious recession.
“The lack of access to high-tech inputs is eroding Russia’s opportunities for future growth,” the bank said in a statement.
Losing 4% is nothing worse than a not-so-nasty recession, although losing access to chips and electronics could pinch more going forward.
But whatever happens, sanctions have never stopped a war.
SO IT’S SOMETHING BEING INFLICTED ON THE MASSES BY A SMALL, NEUROTIC GROUUP OF BULLIES? Ecological restoration is like ‘gender confirmation surgeries,’ trans river scientist tells Princeton students.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Gavin Newsom Can Destroy California (Some More) with This 1 Weird Trick.
Plus:
- Walk away: Tulsi Gabbard waves ‘aloha’ to the Democrat Party
- John Fetterman tries to memory-hole his radical soft-on-crime history
- Kamala cackles out her biggest whopper yet
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
WELL, IF DANA BUSBIBER OBJECTS . . . Dana Dusbiber, who teaches at Luther Burbank High School is objecting to Shakespeare because of his outdated ‘white’ man’s perspective. Sounds kinda racist, though.
BOOM, BOOM, OUT GO THE LIGHTS: Eiffel Tower and other monuments go dark early for ‘energy sobriety.’ Will it help?
What did socialists use before candles? Electricity!
Plus: “The worst part about all this misery is the ‘90% self-inflicted’ part. The poke-your-eye-out-with-a-stick-complain-about-your-eye-hurting blind adherence to impossible, repeatedly proven unreliable renewables, the arrogance with which they dismiss the answer under their very feet and their complete impervious attitude to the citizens they supposedly are entrusted with protecting. Protecting from what? My post on the Dutch also noted their natgas fields in Groningen which can be readily spooled up and running, and the Germans have untapped shale reserves they will not touch.”
Related: Woke elites control the institutions meant to serve us.
THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE COLLEGE OF LAW IS #1 in bar passage in Tennessee.
NEWS FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Labor union president resigns following leaked recording of racist conversation. “Ron Herrera, President of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, and one of four people heard on leaked audio recordings during a 2021 meeting in which several high-ranking political leaders participated in mocking colleagues and making racist comments about a councilman’s son, has resigned from his position as the union’s president.”
Plus: Nury Martinez resigns as LA City Council president after racist comments surface.
Why are Democrat-run cities such cesspits of bigotry and hate?
UKRAINE: RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 10. “Russian forces conducted a massive missile strike attack against over 20 cities, including Kyiv, on October 10. . . . Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have ordered the missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure in retaliation for a “terrorist act” at the Kerch Strait Bridge, likely in part to curry favor with the Russian pro-war nationalist camp that has been demanding such retaliation. . . . The October 10 Russian attacks wasted some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets, as opposed to militarily significant targets.”