WELCOME BACK, CARTER! JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon warns US economy faces an outcome worse than a recession. “The chief executive of the biggest bank in the US said this week ‘the worst income is stagflation,’ which he would not ‘take off the table.'”
Archive for 2024
September 13, 2024
HMM: Metformin found to reduce organ aging in male monkeys. “The research team found evidence of a slowdown in biological aging in many of the organs, including the kidneys, lungs and the skin. They also found that the organ that seemed to benefit the most was the brain.”
SKYNET SMILES: Inside Google’s 7-Year Mission to Give AI a Robot Body.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (CHINA EDITION):
One of the most striking charts this year:
China’s startup ecosystem has almost completely collapsed in the last 5 years. pic.twitter.com/Ynsf01tWbd
— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) September 12, 2024
Xi Jinping wanted to restore CCP control over the economy. This is what control looks like.
WHAT TIME IS LOVE? What time is it on the moon? NASA’s trying to figure that out.
DON’T GET COCKY: More Bad News for Kamala Out of Michigan. “A new Insider Poll out of Michigan reinforces Trump’s momentum.”
IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION WITH THESE PEOPLE: California Attorney General Rob Bonta joined a bipartisan coalition of 42 attorneys general in sending a letter to Congress supporting the United States Surgeon General’s recent call for Congress to require a surgeon general’s warning on social media platforms.
AYFKM?
TechCrunch asks the right question:
“Can we add a warning label to the First Amendment that says “Actually reading this can cause extreme embarrassment to grandstanding politicians”?
Step back and ask yourself, where do these people get off bleating about “saving our democracy” while at the same time undercutting the role a free press plays in democracy?
Justice Hugo Black got it right when he said:
“Whatever differences may exist about interpretations of the First Amendment, there is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of that Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs. This of course includes discussions of candidates, structures and forms of government, the manner in which government is operated or should be operated, and all such matters relating to political processes.”
If you are interested, you can go right to the source. John Stuart Mill wrote in 1859 that:
“If we censor expressions that are false, then our beliefs will be ‘held as a dead dogma[s], not living truth[s]’, i.e. we will not have a clear and lively understanding of the truth.”
CHANGE: Florida is disappearing from the national political map.
For the first time in recent political memory, the 2024 presidential race has left Florida as a comparative afterthought. Democrats here have tried to maintain momentum and voter intensity, but nearly every measurable factor indicates that Florida is not realistically in play for them in this year’s presidential contest.
“Are you happy we are a solid Republican state? It used to be …presidential elections, we would be on a razor’s edge about the state of Florida,” Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, told a crowd of the party faithful at a gathering last weekend at the Hard Rock Casino in South Florida. “Because if Republicans could not win the state of Florida, then you did not have a path to win the Electoral College.”
Florida has long been solidly red at the state level as Republicans built a now more than 1 million person voter registration advantage, and they remain firmly in control of nearly every lever of political power. But in the past, when huge sums of money flowed in during presidential races, the state was considered winnable for Democrats.
That money has almost completely dried up.
Florida’s airwaves are no longer saturated by political ads — yet another reason for residents to be thankful for Gov. Ron DeSantis.
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: No, 2024 Is Not Over Yet.
You would think that after a decade of Trump, official Washington would recognize that it understands politics differently than voters outside D.C. As a Beltway elite, junior class, I belong to the consensus that says Harris did a better job than Trump. That’s the view from the bubble. Reporting on undecided voters tells another story. The Times, Reuters, and the BBC found that voters leaned toward Trump after watching the debate. Why? Because Harris remains a cipher. Her economic message was vague, more “concepts of a plan,” as Trump might say, than a substantive program to restore price stability and raise incomes.
These voters have a point. For my sins, I read the transcript of the debate after watching it live. Harris didn’t answer a single question the moderators asked her, no matter the subject. Are Americans better off than four years ago? Why did the Biden-Harris administration wait three and a half years to address the border crisis? Why exactly has Harris junked her socialist policies from four years ago? Does she support a single restriction on abortion? OK, Trump asked the last one. The ABC anchors didn’t follow up.
Harris has had a remarkable run since President Biden withdrew from the Democratic nomination in late July. But she still hasn’t lapped Trump. She hasn’t overtaken him to such an extent that she’s the clear favorite. One reason is her distance from voters, her refusal to speak freely and concretely on subjects of major concern. Another is her current occupation. The vice president of an unpopular White House can’t escape the burdens of inflation, immigration, and failure and indecision abroad. Unless she makes a clean break from her boss. Harris hasn’t.
Also, 2024 Trump outpolls 2020 and 2016 Trump. And Harris under-polls 2020 Biden and 2016 Clinton.
Just don’t go getting cocky.
SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE WAS LAST SEEN EXITING THE REAR OF A 727 WITH A PARACHUTE AND A SATCHEL OF RANSOM MONEY: Haitian Voter Fraud Uncovered in Springfield, Ohio.
YEAH, THAT’S A REAL POSER: A Statistical Mystery: Why Does the FBI Under-Report Defensive Gun Uses?
MARK JUDGE: ‘They Want Government to Be God.’
I got to talk to [Scott] Baio about the new movie he’s in, God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust, which opens this weekend. The film stars David A. R. White as David Hill, a pastor who enters a congressional race after the sudden death of the incumbent. The favorite to assume the position is state senator Peter Kane, who at first has no serious competition. Kane is a secularist who touts the Enlightenment at every media stop and has deep antipathy towards Christians. Pastor Hill’s campaign inspires people who want more morality, honesty, and decency in American public life.
Baio plays Wesley, a sleazy opposition researcher who works for Senator Kane. Wesley tries to destroy Hill’s chances by planting false or exaggerated stories about him in the media. One of the minor characters is Martin, played by Paul Kwo, who has come to the U.S. from Communist China. A former atheist and now a Christian, Martin warns Hill about the Cultural Revolution in China and how it has spread to America. The Cultural Revolution was a period in China during the 1960s when people were tortured and killed if they dissented from the Marxist teachings of Mao Zedong. Hollywood loves to make movies about Joe McCarthy, but they are far more reluctant to address China’s Cultural Revolution, perhaps because it bears striking similarities with the past few years in America.
“I think you see it a lot with the persecution Christians,” Baio told me.
Read the whole thing.
INDESCRIBABLY STUPID:
How will the USAF resupply munitions once “dispersed across the pacific”
She does know that we can’t airlift enough bombs and missiles in, right?
She does know that SHE is cutting our prepositioning fleet, right?
She does know we don’t have enough tankers to refuel, right? https://t.co/gRmOuf3rQA
— John Ʌ Konrad V (@johnkonrad) September 13, 2024
The Army and Marines want to follow the same “dispersal” strategy, putting stresses we can afford on a logistics chain that isn’t up to the job.
Essentially, we’d be repeating the strategic mistakes Imperial Japan made in 1941-42 — and with the benefit of hindsight.
SURPRISING EXACTLY NO ONE: IDF Killed Hamas Terrorists. At Least 3 Jihadis Were UN Employees.
WOEING JUST CAN’T SEEM TO CATCH A BREAK: 33,000 Boeing Union Workers Go On Strike, First Major Walkout Since 2008. “IAM said 94.6% of union members rejected the contract offer from Boeing, which called the offer ‘historic’ and highlighted the 25% wage increase over four years as ‘the largest-ever general wage increase.’ About 96% of union members approved the strike, now unfolding at the planemaker’s Seattle factories that make the 737 Max.”
IT’S A NUMBERS GAME AND WE’RE BEHIND: I Have Seen the Future of Drone Warfare and It Is Frighteningly Beautiful.
THEY HATE BLACKS, JEWS, AND AMERICANS: UMich Black Student Union exits pro-Palestine coalition over ‘anti-Blackness.’
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Waterpik Cordless Pulse Rechargeable Portable Water Flosser. #CommissionEarned
WILL AI PUT US HUMANS OUT TO PASTURE? There are lots of folks, including most notably the ineffable Elon Musk, who are pretty sure Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to replace human intelligence in the not-so-distant future.
Not so fast, declares the Colson Center in its latest “What Would You Say” video on HillFaith. For one thing, AI is not even intelligence, at least as it is commonly understood these days. Of course, that could change ….
IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: Far-Left Smear Factory’s Union Votes by 90% to Oust President After Mass Layoffs.
The SPLC — a far-left smear factory notorious for demonizing conservatives and Christians as being as hateful as the KKK and for spreading woke dogma in schools — has its own labor union, and members of that union overwhelmingly cast a vote of “no confidence” in SPLC President and CEO Margaret Huang.
The vast majority of the SPLC Union’s voting members (141 of 156, or 90.4%) cast ballots urging the SPLC to find a new CEO. The union presented this demand to the SPLC Board of Directors on Aug. 30, and one week later, SPLC Board Chair Karen Baynes-Dunning denied the request.
According to a union press release, its members expressed a “lack of confidence in Margaret Huang and want SPLC to find a new CEO.”
The move comes two months after the SPLC Union broke the news of mass layoffs at the SPLC in June. The SPLC “gutted its staff by a quarter,” laying off more than 60 union members, including five union stewards and the union’s chair.
Say, maybe both sides can lose.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Seeing a Trump Speech In Person Was Just What the Doctor Ordered.
It’s nice to see that Coastal Media Bubble™ post-debate swooning over Kamala Harris may not be trickling down to regular American voters. That perked me up a little.
The universe was working in my favor this week, and Trump’s first scheduled speech after the debate was here in Tucson, my hometown and the bluest city in Arizona.
So I wore pants and left the house.
I hadn’t seen Trump in person since 2017, shortly after he was elected, and I was overdue.
Here are some impressions.
Much more at the link.
BLUE STATE HELL: In Newton Massachusetts, an anti-Israel troll wearing a Palestine flag pin exchanges words with pro-Israel protestors across the street. Troll charges across the street and tackles an older male guy, Scott Hayes, a Gulf War veteran, holding an Israeli flag. Victim pulls out a pistol [edit: it’s not 100% clear if he pulled out the pistol; it’s possible that there was a struggle over the pistol and it discharged] and shoots attacker in the stomach, then renders medical aid to the guy who attacked him. The county DA holds a press conference, and after noting that the investigation is in a very preliminary stage (and that Hayes was lawfully carrying), proceeds to charge Hayes with a variety of crimes. The only person who should be charged here based on rather incontrovertible video evidence is the attacker. There is a Go Fund Me campaign for Mr. Hayes’ legal defense.
UPDATE: And here’s why we hate the MSM, in this case the Boston Globe. Is this an accurate way of recounting that a guy rushed across the street and attacked a pro-Israel demonstrator?
