Archive for 2024
March 5, 2024
ONE CHINA, EVENTUALLY: Beijing’s Post-Election Plan for Taiwan. “China’s public response to the election, while swift, hardly denoted a nation sulking over the defeat it was supposedly handed by Taiwanese voters. If anything, Beijing’s bombast bordered on triumphant. Seizing on the fragmented outcome, China dismissed Lai and the DPP as out of touch with “mainstream public opinion in Taiwan.” Beijing also insisted that the result did not alter the fundamental nature or trajectory of cross-Strait relations, suggesting Beijing views the opposition’s gains as validating its view that Taiwan’s population remains receptive to a reunification dialogue. Tellingly, China has not ordered new military drills encircling Taiwan since the election, likely because its months-long marathon of maneuvers already achieved their intended purpose of undermining popular support for the DPP.”
BE PREPARED: NOCO Boost X GBX45 1250A 12V UltraSafe Portable Lithium Jump Starter. #CommissionEarned
HOW IT STARTED:
Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
— Sen. Obama’s Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
—The London Daily Mail, yesterday.
As Neo wrote in 2015 in her look back at the 2004 speech by Joe’s boss:
Reading it now I could almost weep, because it is so deceptive, so unlike the Barack Obama we’ve come to know so well. If the guy portrayed in that speech had won an election, the result probably wouldn’t have been half bad. But that guy never existed; he was an actor reading his lines. 2004 was his first performance on the national stage, and he ought to have won an Oscar for it.
Even the actor himself later fessed up that he was giving a heck of a performance:
In the speech that made his name in 2004, Illinois state senator Barack Obama jubilantly told the Democratic National Convention in Boston, “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America, there’s the United States of America.” On April 24, 2017, reflecting on the earlier speech, Obama said, “That was aspirational,” to widespread laughs. He added, “Honestly it’s not true when it comes to our politics.”
—Kyle Smith, “Obama’s Book of Balderdash,” his review of We Are the Change We Seek: The Speeches of Barack Obama, edited by Obama sycophants E. J. Dionne Jr. and Joy-Ann Reid, National Review, June 12th 2017 issue. (Subscription required.)
BETTER THAN THE USUAL BORDER/IMMIGRATION EMERGENCY: Solar eclipse emergency: Texas county braces for fuel shortages, massive crowds.
SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS IN A MEDICALLY INDUCED COMA: Former Border Patrol Chief Reveals Biden, Harris ‘Never’ Talked to Him About Border Crisis.
LESS-THAN-SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Toddlers talk less with parents when fixated on screens.
ICYMI: ME ON THE SUPREME COURT RULING YESTERDAY: The Supreme Court Rules. Many Pundits Are Fools.
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FASTER, PLEASE: Border Patrol: 70 Percent Drop in Successful Evasions Since Title 42 Ended.
Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens confirmed last week that the number of known successful evasions of Border Patrol (“gotaways”) have fallen to just 800 per day in fiscal year 2024—down 70 percent from 2,671 the week before the Title 42 expulsion authority ended on May 11. A decline in gotaways this large and fast is unprecedented in Border Patrol’s history, and even as the administration faces unrelenting criticism, this stands as a major immigration win.
I have previously written about this phenomenon, using numbers leaked by Border Patrol to friendly journalists who report them without the context of the broader trend. But this update confirms that the low numbers continued into January and February. Figure 1 shows the monthly data using the chief’s update and media reporting for more recent numbers and a Freedom of Information Act for the older numbers. Gotaways fell from a high of 73,463 in April 2023 just before Title 42 ended to about 21,758 in February 2024. Ending Title 42 appears to have been the biggest single benefit to border security in its history.
Of course, that’s not the only way to goose the numbers lower: Biden Admin admits it secretly flew 320,000 “asylum seekers” into US (in 2023 alone) to reduce numbers at the border.
DON SURBER: Trump made America great again: Twice as many people now say he was better for them than Biden is. One of my friends, who is no Trump fan, was lamenting recently that 2019 was “the last good year.” Well . . .
BIDEN’S BANANA REPUBLIC IS NO LAUGHING MATTER: There’s Only One Terrifying Reason for a Woke Indoctrinated Military and This Is It.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: AOC Loses It When Protesters Accuse Her of Being Insufficiently Antisemitic*.
What’s more interesting about the confrontation at the movie theater is the response from AOC. She was genuinely upset that anyone would dare to approach her in public and criticize her. She told one of the protesters that she needed them to understand that their actions were “not ok.” She then accused them of lying and claimed (falsely) that she had “already said it.” Then she and her boyfriend fled the scene.
AOC is acting all put-upon here as if the idea that citizens might approach her in a public place and hurl accusations at her is simply beyond the pale**. But she and her progressive colleagues were the ones who trained these people to behave in this fashion. During the Trump administration, Democrats were cheering for and praising people who chased down members of the administration at restaurants and theaters, disrupting their meals and private time with their families. They actively encouraged the public to treat conservatives like pariahs who should not be allowed to go out in public. They also perfected the art of having gangs show up at the homes of public figures to protest and disrupt their lives.
It’s not so much fun when the shoe is on the other foot, is it, AOC? While I don’t agree with their actions, I would just like to point out that your supporters are unhinged and they are behaving the way you wanted them to behave. Ironically, they are coming after you despite the fact that you are already one of the most antisemitic members of Congress. But in this case, you’re still not antisemitic enough for the mob so they’re going to try to force you to pay a price for that.
Riots for thee, but not for me:
* To be fair, based on her past actions and the whirlwind of lunacy that surrounded her in 2019, I can see why the anti-Semitic left would be shocked that Sandy apparently isn’t fully onboard.
WEIMAR GERMANY, REDUX: Berlin rows back on daycare ‘sex rooms’ for toddlers to masturbate in privacy.
The U-turn was announced by State Secretary for Youth and Family Falko Liecke in a statement to Junge Freiheit on Monday.
“In Berlin daycare centers, there will expressly be no separate rooms for educational sexual explorations for children among themselves, nor any guided or free other sexual-educational concepts,” he told the news outlet.
“We are aware that the recommendations for action given to us from the scientific field represent a different perspective. However, we expressly do not share these views and will not include these recommendations in the Berlin educational program for daycare centers and daycare,” Liecke added.
In the draft of the new program, educational experts advising the local government had called for the establishment of sex rooms for three to six-year-olds to experience “feelings of pleasure” in privacy.
Several other states, including daycare centers in North Rhine-Westphalia, have already adopted the policy with at least two nurseries in the state entertaining the idea of safe spaces where young children can retreat to masturbate, or as one daycare center in Kerpen put it, “discover and satisfy themselves physically.”
How did kids ever figure this stuff out before they had creepy professional educators to help them along?
READER FAVORITE: Orange Ninja Knife Sharpeners for Kitchen. #CommissionEarned
GENERATIONAL THEFT: The U.S. national debt is rising by $1 trillion about every 100 days.
The nation’s debt permanently crossed over to $34 trillion on Jan. 4, after briefly crossing the mark on Dec. 29, according to data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It reached $33 trillion on Sept. 15, 2023, and $32 trillion on June 15, 2023, hitting this accelerated pace. Before that, the $1 trillion move higher from $31 trillion took about eight months.
U.S. debt, which is the amount of money the federal government borrows to cover operating expenses, now stands at nearly $34.4 billion, as of Wednesday. Bank of America investment strategist Michael Hartnett believes the 100-day pattern will remain intact with the move from $34 trillion to $35 trillion.
“Little wonder ‘debt debasement’ trades closing in on all-time highs, i.e. gold $2077/oz, bitcoin $67734,” he wrote in a note Thursday.
Anything that can’t go on forever will stop.
“DOMESTIC TERRORISM” IS A CODE FOR SLAMMING YOUR POLITICAL OPPONENTS: University of Maryland terrorism center database includes peaceful pro-lifers.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: NY Offers Huge Bribe to Get Illegals to Leave But There’s Just One Problem… “How would you like to live anywhere, rent-free, for an entire year? That’s the offer that New York City Mayor Eric Adams hopes the illegal aliens flooding his city can’t refuse. But, as it turns out, ‘anywhere’ looks a lot more like ‘nowhere.'”
WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF ANTISEMITISM AND HATE? Dept. of Ed investigates anti-Semitism at Swarthmore College.
THIS IS MUCH BIGGER THAN JUST BRUSSELS VS. CUPERTINO: Apple and the EU are now at war, as Spotify case results in $2 billion fine.
The Commission whacks Apple with a €1.84 billion fine for that streaming-subscriptions-information thing, of which only €40 million is the actual core fine—the maximum allowed by the EU’s existing antitrust law. EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager says the extra $1.8 billion is intended to “account for the non-monetary harm caused to consumers and to achieve deterrence,” both for Apple and other Big Tech firms. Apple also must remove the so-called anti-steering provisions at the heart of the case. Apple says it will appeal, and issues a statement attacking Spotify for “coordinating with the European Commission,” while also complaining that the Commission is trying to “enforce the DMA before the DMA becomes law.”
It’s not like Apple and Vestager haven’t clashed before—she’s still appealing against the reversal of an earlier decision that would have put Apple on the hook for over $14 billion in Irish back taxes. But as for what we’re now witnessing, yes, it’s war. So what happens next?
After the DMA takes effect on Thursday, the Commission will probably start paving the way for charges against Apple over its new “core technology fee.” I think there’s a strong likelihood of this given that the DMA demands “fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory general conditions of access” for businesses offering their services on iPhones, and some of the biggest names in tech are urging the Commission to reject Apple’s idea of DMA compliance. In her comments on today’s Spotify case decision, Vestager said her team would “carefully look” into the matter.
It isn’t that Apple is the good guy here because the bigger the company has gotten, the more it acts like a bully. But the EU is arguably much worse. Now that Brussels has legislated tech innovation nearly out of existence, the EU uses regulation to punish innovative tech firms from this side of the Atlantic.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: A Glorious Twofer — Unanimous SCOTUS Decision and Unanimous Dem Meltdown. “The meltdown on the Left over the decision was delicious. It was entirely avoidable for them, of course, but they are so blinded by hatred that they’re incapable of seeing the potential for their egregious judicial overreach to blow up in their faces.”
IT’S WORKING EXACTLY AS INTENDED BUT OPPOSITE FROM HOW IT WAS MARKETED: Is Bidenomics Working? Rhetoric vs. Reality.
What’s interesting here is that Americans for Prosperity managed to buy the Bidenomics.com domain because apparently the White House never bothered to.