Archive for 2024
January 2, 2024
BIDEN FINALLY DEIGNS TO SIT FOR AN INTERVIEW AND IT’S WITH… RYAN SEACREST? Biden has to be reminded by Jill that ice cream is his favorite food during rare interview.
ASSUMING THEY DON’T FIGURE OUT HOW TO DUMP HIM: NBC News Admits That Biden Is a Huge Gamble for the Democrats.
HMM: Russian Jets Downing in Ukraine Fuel F-16 Speculation.
A total of eight Russian jets have been shot down over Ukraine in the last three weeks, including three Su-34 fighter-bombers on December 22.
The Patriot air defense system has been credited for most of the downings. However, pro-Russian Telegram channels have speculated whether the Lockheed Martin platform has already joined the battle.
They have even attributed an F-16-launched cruise missile for the demolition of a Russian vessel in the Black Sea this week.
The Netherlands said last week it was preparing to deliver 18 F-16s to Ukraine, without revealing the delivery schedule.
It comes after Amsterdam sent five of the aircraft to Romania in November to train Ukrainian pilots.
A total of 61 F-16s have been pledged by the country and Denmark to help Kyiv counter the Russian Air Force and mount a counter-attack.
Background: What F-16s Would Mean for Ukraine.
IT’S THAT WAY WITH EVERYTHING: Don Surber: It’s what they don’t say that matters: Media reports on Supreme Court have the same eerie omissions.
So what are these ethics lapses, as USA Today called them?
All the stories mentioned accusations against Clarence Thomas, NYT via a link to a previous NYT story on the toothlessness of the new ethics code. A few mentioned questions about the sales of Sonia Sotomayor’s books.
But none of the stories mentioned Ketanji Brown Jackson’s failure to disclose her husband’s income from advising clients on medical malpractice litigation. The Center for Renewing America filed a complaint about that and also about her failure to disclose who donated to the party she threw to celebrate her becoming a justice.
It may be thin soup but the attacks on Thomas and Sotomayor are even thinner. Funny Faces had more substance.
What we really need is for Phineas J. Whoopee to pull down his three-dimensional blackboard and explain to the Chumlees of the Fourth Estate what actual ethics lapses are.
AP, NYT, USA Today and the Jeff Bezos Post failed to mention a president who has pocketed millions from foreign governments and companies via his brother and his son.
AP, NYT, USA Today and the Jeff Bezos Post failed to mention a Secret Service that has did not recommend the prosecution of Hunter Biden for bringing his cocaine to the White House.
AP, NYT, USA Today and the Jeff Bezos Post failed to mention a Congress whose members rake in millions each year from insider trading of stocks based on information only congressmen and senators have access to.
This weekend, Democrat Congressman Jamie Raskin went on TV and banged his gums about Clarence Thomas. Raskin DEMANDED the justice recuse himself from any Trump cases the court may hear.
Raskin said, “He absolutely should recuse himself. The question is, what do we do if he doesn’t recuse himself?”
News reports on what Raskin said on CNN failed to include this tidbit.
In 2022, Business Insider reported, “Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland violated a federal conflict-of-interest law by failing to properly disclose stock shares his wife received for advising a Colorado-based financial technology trust company.
“The congressman likewise disclosed information about the sale of Reserve Trust stock eight months after Sarah Bloom Raskin dumped the stock in late 2020 for $1.5 million, an Insider analysis of federal records indicates.”
Why doesn’t HE resign?
Why, indeed?
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Appeals Court Allows California’s Public Spaces Gun Ban to Go Into Effect.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: WATCH: 5 craziest campus videos of 2023.
DECOUPLING: US Overtakes China as South Korea’s Top Export Market. “The change in positions partly reflects China’s economic challenges, which led policymakers to come up with a series of stimulus measures last year. Still, one month’s data doesn’t offer conclusive proof of a conscious or enduring shift in trading patterns.”
MICHAEL WALSH: Enough!
SHOW TRIALS ABOUND: Jimmy Lai trial resumes, Chairman of CFHK Foundation, James Cunningham named as co-conspirator along with several foreign citizens.
Our own ruling class sees the CCP as a role model more than an adversary.
CDR SALAMANDER: DDG to FFG to OPV: Small Ships, Big Sticks, & Scaled Escalation. “This whole problem is, once again, with our acquisition process that is mostly concerned with their internal … whatever they do … as opposed to producing the best warship to meet a need.”
This is basically a description of our entire society at present.
Also: China Now Has More Warships Than the U.S.
Flashback: Big fleet, small ships, or small fleet, big ships?
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Nobody Knows Anything and That’s Half the Fun. “Conventional political wisdom went missing in 2016 and hasn’t been seen since. Here is the one prediction I will make: it won’t be found in 2024.”
JUSTICE: Where Is Biden’s ‘Gender-Fluid’ Thieving Ex-Nuclear Waste Chief Today? “In Old Joe Biden’s America, there’s justice if you’re a patriot, which could mean spending years in prison for strolling through the Capitol and taking selfies after the cops opened the doors on Jan. 6, 2021, and there’s justice if you’re a member of the leftist elite, which means that you can essentially do anything you want, and little or nothing will happen to you. Sam Brinton, the gender-fluid, in-your-face, cross-dressing, puppy-playing former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy in the Department of Energy, is a member of that elite group, and so despite facing numerous luggage theft charges, he ended 2023 as a free man.”
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: US office buildings face $117BN debt time bomb: Mortgages due this year threaten to sink US economy as thousands of workplaces remain empty.
Economists last month found 40 per cent of office loans on bank balance sheets were underwater – owing more than the property is worth.
Smaller regional banks who loaned the money to buy them could themselves be at risk if the loans default as they are not big enough to handle the losses.
Moody’s Analytics estimates 224 of the 605 loans that will expire soon will be tough to repay or refinance because their owners have too much debt or the buildings aren’t making them enough money.
The analysts predict buildings would need to be generating at least nine per cent of their debt in annual income or their owners will struggle to refinance.
One example is the Seagram building on Park Avenue in Manhattan, which was mortgaged at $760 million in 2012.
The loan assumed the building would bring in $74 million in revenue a year, but the best it ever did was $69 million in 2018 – and only $27 million in 2022, according to the Financial Times.
The light at the end of the tunnel for office space owners is that the Federal Reserve is expected to start cutting interest rates earlier than predicted.
I’m not too sure about that last part with the mixed signals the Fed is sending.
THE SALENA ZITO INTERVIEW: John Fetterman Plays Against Type.
RULE OF LAW: SBF Charges Dropped Proves System Is Rigged. “The charges that are dropped relate to bribery of politicians and illegal campaign contributions. Quelle surprise. . . . Dropping the charges is about protecting the Establishment, not SBF. SBF is a minor beneficiary of the scheme to protect the people in power. This is how the system works these days.”
HARVARD CRIMSON: For Harvard’s Sake, It’s Time to Let Claudine Gay Go.
UPDATE (From Ed): Harvard President Claudine Gay Hit With Six New Charges Of Plagiarism.
(Bumped, by Glenn).
COME SEE THE ANTISEMITISM INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Swedish MEP Slams ‘Crazy’ Anti-Semitic Leftist Who Accused Israel of Terrorism.
I’M SO OLD I REMEMBER WHEN GETTING RID OF TRUMP WAS SUPPOSED TO RESTORE DECORUM IN WASHINGTON: PROBE THIS: Dem Staffer Filmed Backdoor Love Romp in Same Building Where Joe Biden Said the N-Word.
WORD IS GETTING AROUND!: “Making Discrimination OK Again: The Losers in a 2020 California Referendum Are Back Again with a Sneakier Version” by the WSJ’s Bill McGurn.
If you haven’t signed the petition, please consider doing so. You don’t need to be a Californian.
And if you have a X/Twitter account, this one in tagged to Senate leaders and Gavin Newsom. By liking and/or retweeting, you’re giving them your opinion.
They can’t vote, but they can dream. And you can bet their parents can and will vote.
Don’t divide us.#NoACA7photoparade #KeepDiscriminationIllegal #NoACA7 pic.twitter.com/KUyn3vAp2N
— Gail Heriot (@GailHeriot) December 27, 2023
Cheers!
HMM: Why Cutting IRS Funding Is Not Conservative. “However, defunding and weakening the IRS is not conservative. To the contrary, it will ultimately drive up deficits and raise middle-class taxes.”
That’s first-order thinking. Second order thinking notes that the IRS has been politicized and lawbreaking for over a decade, and that agencies care about their budgets.
Of course, third-order thinking would cut the budgets in ways that specifically cause pain to agency administrators.
AT AMAZON, Shop the Winter Sales. #CommissionEarned
PIRACY: Shipping firms split on return to Red Sea as Houthi attacks continue.
Hapag-Lloyd and Evergreen Line, the container shipping arm of Evergreen Group, told CNN Wednesday that they would continue to reroute vessels via the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s southern tip. MSC said the same Tuesday.
“At the moment we still consider the situation too dangerous to pass,” a spokesperson for Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd said in a statement. “We continuously assess the situation and plan a next review on Friday.”
In an update posted to its website at 5 a.m ET on Friday, Hapag-Lloyd said it continued to divert its ships to avoid the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
Evergreen Line referred CNN to a December 18 statement in which the company said it had instructed its container ships to suspend navigation through the Red Sea “until further notice.”
The West used to hang pirates summarily and merchant vessels were free to travel as they saw fit.