AT THE MOVIES: “Miss Virginia” tells the true story of Virginia Walden Ford, who fought for school vouchers — to save her son. “Vertical Entertainment has acquired the North America distribution rights to Miss Virginia, a drama inspired by a true story of a struggling inner-city mother who sacrifices everything to give her son a good education….Vertical Entertainment will be releasing the film in select theaters and on VOD October 18th.”
More like this, please.
CHANGE: Apple’s Loudest Supporters Turn Against the Company over Hong Kong.
Late Friday, Apple Insider writer Mikey Campbell revealed that “Apple told Apple TV+ content creators not to besmirch China.” The order apparently came from on high, “by Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue… and head of international content development Morgan Wandell.” If capitulation to Chinese demands is “a bad look” for Apple, what do you call it when the company preemptively capitulates?
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has long been known as an Apple blogger with great sources inside the company, and usually writes well-informed pieces about the company’s plans and processes. He noted that Greater China “is Apple’s largest market after the U.S.,” which is almost certainly why they “recently pulled the Taiwan flag emoji from some iPhones.” He says that moves underscores “the difficult balance the company must strike in supporting free speech while appeasing China.”
Except that it doesn’t appear to have been very difficult at all for Apple.
Read the whole thing, if you don’t mind me saying so myself.
THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE: No Power? Then Say Goodbye To Security, NorCal CRE Says.
In the throes of PG&E’s unprecedented Public Safety Power Shut-Off, office and multifamily experts say security was their primary concern until power could be restored.
The silver lining of this kind of outage, which commercial real estate fears may be the region’s new normal, compared to a natural disaster is the modicum of forewarning the bankrupt company can provide a few days ahead of time, but constantly changing weather forecasts rendered part of that seeming advantage useless.
“It seems really haphazard,” Transwestern Northern California Vice President of Asset Services Blake Peterson said of PG&E’s notifications and plans.
Indeed, PG&E CEO Bill Johnson admitted as much Thursday night during a press conference.
“Our website crashed several times. Our maps are inconsistent and maybe incorrect. Our call centers were overloaded,” Johnson said. “To put it simply, we were not adequately prepared to support the operational event.”
The result, according to multiple property management sources, was a scramble to provide darkened buildings the bare-essential services, like security and elevator power.
What could go wrong? Pretty much everything.
PUSHBACK AGAINST BEIJING: South Korea Considers Building Large Aircraft Carriers As Country Prepares To Buy More F-35s.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Make Columbus Day Great Again. “Due to a decided lack of saintliness, the explorer who kickstarted this hot mess of fun and freedom we now enjoy here in the Western Hemisphere became the whipping boy for progressives who want to rewrite history to fit a PC diversity narrative.”
I always assumed that anyone trying to erase the past which made their own present possible, had just found the widest possible outlet for expressing their self-loathing.
BAIT & SWITCH: AT&T raises prices 7% by making its customers pay AT&T’s property taxes.
Telecom companies like AT&T love creating new fees to tack on customer bills, and they really love raising those fees after customers sign contracts that are supposed to lock in a consistent price.
It’s a win-win for the company, but not the customer: AT&T gets to advertise a lower price than it actually charges and has a mechanism for raising customer bills whenever it wants to. Customers who are angry enough to cancel service would have to pay early termination fees.
This story about AT&T thus isn’t likely to surprise anyone, but it’s possible you haven’t heard about the particular fee we’ve been looking into this week. AT&T has been charging business Internet customers a “property tax” fee, claiming it needs to charge this to recover AT&T’s own property taxes. AT&T has been charging the fee for at least a couple of years and just hit customers in California with an increase that more doubled the fee.
If 5G really does have the power to break the “last mile” ISP monopolists, then it can’t come too soon.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG. CalPERS is Heavily Invested in Chinese Companies. “As NBA frets over PRoC, Yu Ben Meng bets big with dollars from America’s largest pension fund.”
California’s public employees should know that their retirement funds have invested in companies controlled by the Chinese military, which manufacture parts for the DF-41 missile, along with a range of aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, and airborne weapons.
For that matter, these pension funds not only invest in Chinese companies (and index funds, tracked by mutual funds, that are heavily weighted with Chinese companies) directly involved in manufacturing military equipment and surveillance equipment, they also invest in Chinese companies involved directly or indirectly in human rights, labor rights, and environmental protection violations all over the world.
California’s largest public employee pension fund, CalPERS, provides a case in point. Despite its quest for the elusive 7 percent annual return, CalPERS nonetheless foregoes investments in Iran, Sudan, assault rifles, tobacco products, and thermal coal. Yet CalPERS continues to invest in Chinese companies.
Read the whole thing.
LET THE SUNSHINE IN: Democrats ratchet up impeachment secrecy.
Friday’s interview of Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, marked a new point — a low point, as Republicans see it — in Democratic efforts to keep impeachment information out of public view.
In this way: The two previous impeachment interviews, with former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, were conducted in the format of what is known as a transcribed interview. Rep. Adam Schiff, who is running the Democratic impeachment effort, decreed that transcripts not be released to the public. At the same time, there were no heavily restrictive rules on what would happen should any member of Congress, acting from memory, reveal things that were said in the interview.
The Yovanovitch session was different. Democrats conducted the interview in the format of a deposition, which is different from a transcribed interview. One key difference is that there are serious penalties for lawmakers who reveal the contents of a deposition. Doing so would almost surely subject the offending member to a House ethics investigation.
Read the whole thing.
OH: HK leader ditches meeting Ted Cruz, says the U.S. senator.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam scrapped a meeting with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, the highest profile U.S. politician to visit the city since anti-government protests broke out more than four months ago, the senator said on Saturday.
Lam’s office had requested that the afternoon meeting be completely confidential and that Cruz refrain from speaking with the media about it, Cruz told journalists in Hong Kong.
“She seems to misunderstand how free speech operates, and also how freedom of the press operates,” said Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas and a vocal critic of China who was stopping in Hong Kong for two days as part of a regional tour.
I’ve always gotten a kick out of Cruz’s low-key wit.
GOOD: U.S. to Restrict Visas for Chinese Officials Linked to Abuse of Muslim Minorities.
The visa restrictions—which will limit the ability of affected Chinese officials to travel to the U.S.—come a day after the U.S. imposed export restrictions against more than two dozen Chinese firms for having a role in government policies toward minorities.
Both moves come as U.S.-China trade talks are slated to resume Thursday in Washington.
The State Department said the visa restrictions will apply to designated Chinese government and Communist Party officials, along with their families.
China has engaged in a crackdown on what it sees as a long-simmering separatist movement led by the region’s Muslim Uighur population.
Western scholars estimate more than one million Turkic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been arbitrarily detained in China’s Xinjiang region over the past few years.
Not just detained, but “re-educated” in fine Chinese Communist tradition.
LARRY ELDER: The Rise of Young Black Conservatives. “These young people did not think of themselves as victims. They recognized their good fortune as Americans living in a country of opportunity where their own future will be bright if they work hard. “
CAVITY TREATMENT: Doctors warn women not to use toothpaste to ‘tighten their vaginas.’
HE ISN’T WRONG: Trump: Biden Knew ‘How to Kiss Barack Obama’s A—.’
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Liz Warren, CNN Cheer the Abuse of 9-Year-Old Children Paraded as Transgender.
IF SO, THIS WAS PROBABLY TRUE EVEN BEFORE LEGALIZATION: Mayor says Manitou Springs, CO, is too reliant on cannabis money.
Manitou Springs has had that reputation for a long while.
CYBERSECURITY: Attackers exploit an iTunes zeroday to install ransomware.
This is the Windows version, and there’s a patch available — so patch away.
MEANWHILE, ON FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY: Crossdresser Robs Bank, Steals Cop Car.
Plus, the viral mugshot you don’t want to see.
HMM: If the Oceans Become Transparent. “Imagine a world in which the oceans hide nothing. Cheap sensors are deployed all across and below the water. Swarms of unmanned undersea, surface, and aerial vehicles rove in search of adversaries. Governments can see everything that happens. Nuclear-armed submarines that once hid in the vastness of the ocean would be revealed. What does this mean for the sea-based nuclear deterrence and second-strike reliability? And how should states respond?”
#RESISTWEMUCH: Survey Finds More People Would Support Impeachment If They Knew What Crime Trump Was Supposed To Have Committed.
That’s from the Babylon Bee, which used to be a satiric website, before morphing into America’s Newspaper of Record.
(Classical reference mashup in the headline.)
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Florida Sen. Rick Scott warns China is greatest threat to US.
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.