HMM: Kamala Harris’s Trip to Vietnam Delayed Over ‘Anomalous Health Incident.’ “The State Department has frequently used the phrase ‘anomalous health incidents’ to describe so-called Havana syndrome, which has afflicted dozens of U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials who describe feeling ill and other unusual physical sensations after hearing strange sounds. The U.S. has not determined a cause for the affliction, and the White House on Tuesday declined to say if the individual’s symptoms were similar to those in other Havana Syndrome cases.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
August 25, 2021
DISPATCHES FROM THE AMERICA THAT WORKS: SpaceX Now Claims They Might Return Humans to The Moon Even Before 2024.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Return of the Mask Nazis Won’t Inspire People to Get Vaccinated. “Just as I predicted, the new governor in New York really isn’t much of an upgrade from the one who just unceremoniously skedaddled from office. Gov. Kathy Hochul wasted little time stepping into the role of petty tyrant.”
THE FBI MORPHED INTO THE DEMOCRATS’ PRAETORIAN GUARD SO QUICKLY IT MADE MY HEAD SPIN: FBI declines to do anything about Ilhan Omar marrying her brother to commit immigration fraud.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: California Man Found Passed Out in Car With 300 Unopened Recall Ballots and Forged Licenses.
August 24, 2021
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: DHS Braces for Terror Threat on Southern Border. “National security officials fear newly freed Afghan terrorists may exploit border crisis.”
THE UK DOING THE JOB BIDEN WON’T ALLOW OUR TROOPS TO DO: Washington Post reporter says British troops helped her escape Afghanistan. “The only reason I was able to get to the airport with my team was because there was a large British evacuation going on … and also because I was with my team. I am an American passport holder.”
Meanwhile: American woman stranded in Afghanistan pleads for help: ‘We are scared for our lives.’ “Please, Mr. President, please evacuate us. We need help. … I’ve given up on the hope of going to the airport because it’s just, it’s not possible to make it through all those people. People are getting shot left and right. The tear gas is being released on people. … It’s so devastating that I don’t even know … how to explain it. It’s a nightmare. I want to wake up. I want to wake up from this nightmare.”
But: Psaki claims there are no Americans stranded in Afghanistan.
GAVIN NEWSOM’S CALIFORNIA: 300 recall ballots, drugs, multiple driver’s licenses found in vehicle of passed out felon. “Investigators are trying to figure out how the election ballots ended up in the suspect’s vehicle and what their intent was in having them.”
WHY NOT? HE ALREADY TOOK A KNEE FOR THE TALIBAN: Biden Takes a Knee During Photo-Op With WNBA Champions.
JOANNE JACOBS: What works? Vax, ventilate but don’t mask kids. “Schools are safer when unvaccinated adults wear masks and everyone gets fresh air, writes David Zweig in New York magazine. Masking children, social distancing, hybrid schedules, plexiglass shields and HEPA filters have little or no effect on the spread of coronavirus.”
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Seattle Mayor Using Homeless Response Cops for Personal Protection.
Plus:
- Meet the new Axis, same as the old Axis
- Skyscrapers and A/C are racist
- About those Florida doctors who walked out “in protest” this week…
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL A BIGGER BLOG: Gavin Newsom Blames Everyone Else for His Recall. Here Are 100 Reasons That Might Jog His Memory.
JOHN KASS: The one thing keeping Biden in office.
What worries me in addition to his incompetence is his style, the way he presents the presidency to the world, with those watery and unfocused blue eyes, Biden babbling softly while reading his teleprompter in the White House.
Such is the President of the United States of America.
It was like watching some foreign film actor who can’t speak a word of English reciting his lines phonetically for Hollywood, issuing pleasant sounds devoid of meaning in place of cold, hard ideas and realities.
Bela Lugosi, the Hungarian refugee who became world-famous as “Dracula” knew no English when he arrived in America. According to his son, Lugosi memorized his lines phonetically in the Broadway play “The Red Poppy” to rave reviews.
And Yoko Shimada, the accomplished and lovely Japanese actress who starred in the old mini-series “Shogun” was another, making sounds without knowing exactly what they were saying. There have been other such actors speaking phonetically to their audience.
But none of these were President of the United States.
Read the whole thing.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: Biden’s Pointless Presidency. “If most Americans no longer see Biden as competent, then the entire point of Biden being president is gone.”
Victoria Taft: Is It Any Wonder Americans Mistrust the Intelligence Community When They Pull Stunts Like This? “Nothing says elitism more than a D.C. Beltway trough slogger who not only hates Trump but his voters too.”
Paula Bolyard: In Her Best Ministry of Truth Voice, Jen Psaki Shamelessly Lies About Americans Stranded in Afghanistan. “First of all, I think it’s irresponsible to say that Americans are stranded. They are not. We are committed to bringing Americans who want to come home, home.”
Yours Truly: The DoD Has a Top Secret Space Weapon. Here’s What We Know. “Nobody without the ‘If I Told You I’d Have to Kill You’ clearance that’s required to get briefed in on the SAP knows what it is. However, it’s a safe bet that the new weapon will be an improvement over the joint Air Force/Navy ‘Burnt Frost’ capability revealed in 2008.”
BLUE STATE BLUES: The Nine Worst Unemployment Rates In The Country Are In Areas Run By Democrats. “Nevada topped out the list with a 7.7 rate of unemployment for July and was closely followed by California (7.6 percent), New Mexico (7.6 percent), New York (7.6 percent), Connecticut (7.3 percent), Hawaii (7.3 percent), New Jersey (7.3 percent), Illinois (7.1 percent), and the District of Columbia (6.7 percent). All are Democrat-run. As tyrannical lockdowns are being lifted and businesses start to reopen, Democrat states are seeing some job growth but still have a long road to recovery.”
Knowledgeable observers argued a system like ours was far from feasible. After many false starts, we built a working prototype. But we encountered a glaring problem.
Our system could be easily repurposed for surveillance and censorship. The design wasn’t restricted to a specific category of content; a service could simply swap in any content-matching database, and the person using that service would be none the wiser.
A foreign government could, for example, compel a service to out people sharing disfavored political speech. That’s no hypothetical: WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app, already uses content matching to identify dissident material. India enacted rules this year that could require pre-screening content critical of government policy. Russia recently fined Google, Facebook and Twitter for not removing pro-democracy protest materials.
We spotted other shortcomings. The content-matching process could have false positives, and malicious users could game the system to subject innocent users to scrutiny.
Apple threw away years of carefully cultivated privacy reputation for this.
Background here.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Psaki Hack — Not the Communicator Biden Needs Right Now. “While watching the latest episode of American Horror Story: Joe Biden, I was struck by just how awful it is to have Jen Psaki dealing with the press. Lady Baghdad Bob had barely been on the job when it became painfully obvious that she was horrible at the job.”
THIS DOESN’T COME AS A HUGE SHOCK: Blue Origin Employees Are Jumping Ship. “Among the major names that departed Blue Origin were Nitin Arora—the lead engineer on Blue Origin’s lunar lander program—and Lauren Lyons, who announced earlier this month that she’d taken on a role as the Chief Operating Officer at Firefly Aerospace. Arora, meanwhile, said in a LinkedIn post last week that he’d taken a role at SpaceX. Fox Business confirmed that other prominent exits from the company included ex-NASA astronaut Jeff Ashby, along with Steve Bennet, who helped helm the New Shepard launch program.”