EVERY INSTITUTION HAS BEEN CORRUPTED: ‘Embrace China’: Biden’s Latest Diplomatic Hire Worked with CCP Front Groups.
Archive for 2022
October 7, 2022
SPOILER: IT NEVER ACTUALLY WAS. Tennessee Snail Darter No Longer a Threatened Species.
The litigation to stop the Tellico Dam was pushed by a then-faculty member at the UT College of Law, Zyg Plater. It was a clever, and at the time novel, leveraging of endangered species law, but it generated a lot of political blowback because (1) it was pretty obviously opportunistic; and (2) you could hardly come up with a less attractive species name than “snail darter.” People are more willing to accept sacrifices to save, say, bald eagles or California condors.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Dwindling Mississippi Grounds Barges, Threatens Shipments. “The largest US barge operator warned customers it won’t be able to make good on deliveries. Ingram Barge Company declared force majeure in a letter to customers due to “near-historic” low water conditions on the Mississippi, the top route to get US grains and soybeans to the world market.”
Plus:
This would be a great time to get diesel prices back down (frack, baby, frack) and ease restrictions on truckers and licensing truckers, but you know Washington won’t change course.
MICHAEL BARONE: It’s a hinge year in history — for Russia and China.
#JOURNALISM: “Real men wear white boots” and other tales of Lefty fails. “It has been an enormous collective effort to destroy Ron DeSantis via Hurricane Ian – Rahm Emmanuel’s ‘never let a serious crisis go to waste’ maxim – and they cannot, for the life of them, Katrina him into oblivion. Thwarted at every turn, the unrelenting slings and arrows bounce off as if he were encased in a protective force field.”
ENEMIES OF THE STATE: FBI Escalates Its War on Anti-Abortion Protesters.
WEIRD, THE PRESS TOLD ME SHE’S A MARGINAL FIGURE WHO HAS NO CHANCE: Lauren Boebert virtually tied with Democratic challenger in reelection bid: Poll.
October 6, 2022
LISTEN, SUG, DON’T FORGET TO SAY YOUR PRAYERS: US splashes $290m on anti-radiation drugs after Putin ups nuclear threat.
The US government has purchased a significant supply of radiation-injury drugs as the Russian president threatened the use of nuclear weapons.
A $290 million procurement of the drug Nplate, to treat acute radiation syndrome (ARS), was announced by the US Health and Human Services (HSS).
The government confirmed it was the first purchase of the drug, manufactured by the California pharmaceutical company Amgen.
The purchase comes after Vladimir Putin renewed his threat of nuclear war. In a speech last month he vowed to use “all the means at our disposal” to protect Russia and its people. “This is not a bluff,” he said.
The US government said the procurement of Nplate was not in response to the war in Ukraine.
An HSS spokesman told The Telegraph: “This is part of our ongoing work for preparedness and radiological security. It has not been accelerated by the situation in Ukraine.”
Flashback: The Unexpected Return of Duck and Cover.
With a 2022 twist! Don’t forget to wear your mask when you’re in the fallout shelter:
Here’s a link to the referenced document if you want to see it for yourself.
UPDATE: Biden Warns of Nuclear ‘Armageddon.’
President Joe Biden issued a warning about a potential nuclear “Armageddon” at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on Thursday evening, saying, “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
“I don’t think there is any such a thing as the ability to easily use a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” added the president.
It has been widely speculated that Russia could employ tactical nuclear weapons in an effort to turn the tide in its war of aggression against Ukraine. Russian forces have been pushed back toward their own border in recent days, causing observers to wonder whether Russian president Vladimir Putin may, in desperation, turn to weapons of mass destruction.
At the fundraiser, Biden called Putin “a guy I know fairly well,” and said Putin is “not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons” as a solution to his military’s underperformance.
Flashback: Biden called Trump ‘Putin’s puppy.’ The president-elect may put Moscow on a tighter leash.
—NBC News, December 22nd, 2020.
Still though, look at the upside!
(Updated and bumped; classical allusion in headline.)
THOUGHTS ON DIVERSITY.
Anyone who has studied the left’s march through the institutions and the regular examples of the O’Sullivan’s Law in action, knows the drill knows what happens to previously non-political or even conservative institutions.
The signs of their socio-political presence shouldn’t be a shock to anyone. They are just less bloody versions of what Orwell, Huxley, Dith Pran, and others warned us about.
While you were paying attention to other things, their world view is already deep in our military institutions of higher learning, specifically today the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA.
What already is well past the nose in the tent involves in not just narrowing the Overton Window of acceptable speech, but is now compelling speech through membership filtering, fear, and humiliation.
It demands written and spoken self-criticisms – and later (see any of the required DEI training events) often confessions of crimes you did not commit. Like the religious original sin, it is something you simply have by being and must atone for and perhaps never wash the stain away.
Yes, it is socio-political, but mostly political. It is its religious aspects that folds in to the compelled speech – you have to say certain words in certain ways in order to be accepted. A leftist Shahada, in a fashion.
Read the whole thing.
OPEN THREAD: Make this one special.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Nine Times Someone ‘F—d With a Biden’ and Got Away With It.
GLENN’S LATEST NY POST COLUMN: Biden hates Republicans so much, he would rather give oil money to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia than Texas.
It’s been a tough year for consumers, inflation is killing household budgets, and according to KPMG, 91% of top CEOs expect a long, tough recession. The Biden administration is even ready to reduce sanctions on Venezuela to get more oil flowing. So it’s desperate. But not desperate enough to undo the damage it’s done to the domestic oil industry, which is the first thing it’d do if it were serious.
Why not? There are a lot of reasons. Greens, who dominate the Democrats, don’t like fossil fuels. But there’s no reason to think that Saudi, Russian or Venezuelan oil is any better for the planet than American oil. It’s just a question of whether the money goes to Saudis, Russians or Venezuelans or to Americans.
And I suspect that’s the real problem. The domestic oil industry enriches people — and states — Democrats don’t like. Money going to Saudis, Russians or Venezuelans is one thing, but money going to Texans, Oklahomans or South Dakotans is another. Truth is, red states and their inhabitants rank higher on the administration’s enemies list than do shady foreign nations.
Read the whole thing.
IT WASN’T THE PANDEMIC THAT DID THIS, BUT THE PANDEMIC RESPONSE: The Pandemic Really Did Change Us on a Personal Level, And It Wasn’t For The Better. “The global coronavirus pandemic affected just about everyone across the globe in ways that we’re still trying to understand. It appears that one of the effects is that many of us became moodier along the way, often to the point of becoming more neurotic and less agreeable. According to a new study of 7,109 people aged between 18 and 90, the shift was most noticeable in younger adults. Amongst the elderly people included in the research, there were no statistically significant changes.”
Older people are less swayed by media hysteria.
TRUST THE TECH COMPANIES: Uber’s Former Security Chief Found Guilty of Covering Up 2016 Data Breach.
ROGER KIMBALL: “Bad Luck” and the Evanescence of Imperfection. Looking at recent headlines, he observes:
There are other items on that list. None is what you would call upbeat.
This colloquy of gloom reminded me of a famous observation from the writer Robert Heinlein.
“Throughout history,” Heinlein wrote in 1973, “poverty is the normal condition of man.”
“Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people.”
Then comes the kicker: “Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.”
“This,” Heinlein added, “is known as ‘bad luck.’”
Of course, Heinlein was speaking ironically with that last bit.
The issue was not “bad luck” but virtue-fired stupidity.
All those “right-thinking people”—the people with the socially certified ideas, the kinder, gentler, mask-wearing, anti-fossil-fuel types—are on the ramparts, proudly toppling the atavistic instruments of their prosperity.
Very soon now, they will look around at the wreckage their good intentions have wrought and wonder who is to blame for the poverty, the chaos, the ruins that lay strewn where once, not so long ago, a vibrant civilization stood, supported by a mighty economy.
I question whether the intentions were ever actually all that good. People are presumed to intend the natural and probable results of their actions.
TEAM BIDEN’S BIZARRE DODGES ON DELAWARE VISITOR LOGS MAKE THE PRESIDENT LOOK GUILTY AS HELL:
Why doesn’t the president want Americans to know who’s visiting him at his Delaware residences?
It’s increasingly clear that Biden has — or believes he has — something to hide: How else to explain the bizarre denial met by The Post in an appeal of its previously rebuffed Freedom of Information Act request to the Secret Service for relevant records?
The denial reiterated the frankly incredible claim that the agency simply doesn’t have any records of who’s come to see Biden in his home state —where he’s spent a quarter of his presidency so far.
Really? Nameless, faceless people are permitted to come and go at will from the home of the world’s most powerful man, with no paper trail created by the agency responsible for keeping him safe?
As Kentucky Rep. James Comer told The Post, “The claim that there are no visitor logs for President Biden’s Delaware residence is a bunch of malarkey.” Indeed, Congressional Republicans — mustered by New York’s own Elise Stefanik — are now crying foul and demanding a release.
They’re right to. We know that Joe took meetings with Hunter Biden’s shady business associates as vice president. And the heat’s been on Hunter (and by extension Joe, aka the “big guy”) for years, with the promise of more to come if the GOP is victorious in the midterms.
You can trust Ol’ Joe — just ask him! You have “his word as a Biden.”
IF YOU’D SAID THIS TWO YEARS AGO IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED AS “DANGEROUS MISINFORMATION:” Mouthwashes may suppress SARS-CoV-2. “This study shows that low concentrations of CPC in commercial mouthwash suppress the infectivity of four variants of SARS-CoV-2.”
HOW IT STARTED: Watch: Biden drops F-bomb while touring Hurricane Ian devastation in Florida.
President Joe Biden dropped an F-bomb in a hot mic moment during a visit to hurricane-ravaged Florida on Wednesday.
The candid moment came as Biden exchanged words with Fort Myers Beach Mayor Ray Murphy, who had just thanked the president for coming to the state.
The two men were shaking hands, and Biden began to say something that was not quite clear in the audio. Several Twitter sleuths suggested he said, “No one f***s with a Biden,” although the last word in particular was muffled.
How it’s going: Federal agents have evidence to charge Hunter Biden: report.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Howard Stern Didn’t Learn John Hughes’ Lesson. “What’s missing from Stern’s current model? Courage. Fire. Passion. Integrity. The old Howard Stern would spend hours ripping the 2022 model, and it would be can’t-miss radio.”
READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro Wireless Earbuds. #CommissionEarned
RIDE THE MOBIUS LOOP! California will start handing out $1,050 stimulus payments to residents this week to combat inflation.
Qualifying Californians will begin receiving relief payments of up to $1,050 this week to soften the blow of inflation.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a $308 billion state budget in June to deliver direct tax refunds to 23 million Californians as they struggle with inflation, which jumped 8.3% year over year.
“California’s budget addresses the state’s most pressing needs and prioritizes getting dollars back into the pockets of millions of Californians who are grappling with global inflation and rising prices of everything from gas to groceries,” said Gov. Newsom, Senate President Pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon in a joint statement.
The one-time payment, known as the Middle Class Tax Refund (MCTR), will be automatically delivered to residents starting Oct. 7, 2022, through Jan. 15, 2023, according to the Newsom administration. It anticipates that 95% of all payments will be issued before the end of the year.
Earlier: Top Democrat Acknowledges the Real Cause of Inflation.
In many ways, Rep. Ro Khanna is a far-left progressive. But the California Democrat also happens to be honest, and more prone to moments of genuine introspection than most in his party. Such was the case when Khanna appeared on Fox News on Sunday and acknowledged one of the biggest causes of our inflation woes that—because it’s politically inconvenient—most Democrats have refused to admit.
“I agree that there’s inflation, prices are up… there are two reasons for that,” Khanna said. “First, the Federal Reserve had quantitative easing for way too long and that was one of the main, primary culprits of this. They didn’t anticipate the inflation, monetary policy is largely determined by the Fed.”
What the congressman is referring to as “quantitative easing” is loose monetary policy, or, crudely simplified, the central bank’s printing of new money. As I’ve previously explained for BASEDPolitics, the Federal Reserve created trillions of new dollars out of thin air to “stimulate” the economy during the pandemic. This had the inevitable effect of making the dollars currently in existence less valuable.
Why, it’s as if “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore.”
FBI DOUBLE-STANDARD FAVORS EXECS ON SEXUAL MISCONDUCT: The parade of FBI whistle blowers to Capitol Hill continues as Sen. Charles Grassley issues statement regarding data showing FBI top-level supervisors and executives are disciplined less severely than agents in the field regarding sexual misconduct.