MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: A Republic, If You Can Keep It.
VIP subscribers asked for more of these longer essays and I’ve been happy to oblige.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
December 5, 2024
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (ASSAD REGIME EDITION):
A disaster is taking place for Russia and the Assad Regime in Syria 🇸🇾
Hama was just lost by Assad/Russia a couple of hours ago. HTS quickly advanced 26km South toward Homs
If Homs is taken, Damascus is cut off from Latakia and Tartus, where Russia’s Air Base and Naval Base are pic.twitter.com/kD5ZZYTLjV
— Ukraine Battle Map (@ukraine_map) December 5, 2024
I didn’t believe the initial report from last weekend that Assad had fled to Moscow but the next report might very well be authentic.
Of course, anyone likely to replace Assad is also likely to be worse than Assad: There Ain’t No Good Guys, There Ain’t No [checks notes] Good Guys…
TEXAS: Paxton Takes Aim At Austin Homeless Industrial Complex. “It’s my working thesis that the Homeless Industrial complex is a way to not only rake off graft and corruption for the lest, but also launder money to donate directly to Democrats And what do you know? Search for Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center on Open Secrets yields 15 donations, all to Democrats, including Colin Allred and Kamala Harris this year.”
CHRIS QUEEN REPORTS ON The Kindness of Strangers: A Different Kind of Adventure in the Mountains.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA Shares Orion Heat Shield Findings, Updates Artemis Moon Missions. “Experts discussed results of NASA’s investigation into its Orion spacecraft heat shield after it experienced an unexpected loss of charred material during re-entry of the Artemis I uncrewed test flight. For the Artemis II crewed test flight, engineers will continue to prepare Orion with the heat shield already attached to the capsule. The agency also announced it is now targeting April 2026 for Artemis II and mid-2027 for Artemis III. The updated mission timelines also reflect time to address the Orion environmental control and life support systems.”
Yes, let’s please get those last two right.
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: U.S. math scores show ‘devastating’ decline.
The declines were “steep” and “devastating,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. While high achievers held their own, low-performing students lost the most, widening achievement gaps.
“One in five U.S. eighth graders scored below the low benchmark, meaning they lacked even basic proficiency,” Meltzer writes. That’s way up from earlier years.
The drop in science scores was less extreme, but U.S. fourth-graders now score worse in science than they did in 1995.
Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan topped the rankings. Poland, Sweden and Australia made the greatest gains, passing the U.S. “We have countries leapfrogging over us,” Carr said.
It’s not clear whether school closures, which lasted longer in the U.S. than in Europe or Asia, led to more learning loss. But one of the countries that raised achievement, Sweden, didn’t close elementary schools or mandate masks.
I’m not surprised.
IMAGINE THAT: Mexico makes record fentanyl bust days after Trump tariff threat. “Mexico’s top security official, Omar Garcia Harfuch, said the ‘historic’ bust was achieved in two raids spearheaded by the country’s navy and that two men were arrested and several weapons seized.”
Incentives work.
COLONIALISM, STRAIGHT UP:
Wow, England has changed!
The most popular boys’ name in England and Wales in 2023 is ‘Muhammad.’ pic.twitter.com/L5wGIZV0eV
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) December 5, 2024
WHY NOT BOTH? Ketanji Brown Jackson Vs. Sonia Sotomayor: Who’s Dumber?
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (RUSSIA EDITION): ‘It’s never been so bad.’ Russia is threatened with a record loss of winter crops. “Harvest problems have become one of the reasons for the acceleration of inflation, said Alexander Isakov, an economist for Russia at Bloomberg Economics. According to Rosstat, by the end of November, the growth rate of food prices reached 10.2% and became a record in almost two years, and some basic food products soared in price by tens of percent: potatoes – by 78%, cabbage – by 31%, beets – by 27%, butter – by 31%.”
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: China’s Flood of Cheap Goods Is Angering Its Allies, Too.
With President-elect Donald Trump saying he plans to significantly increase tariffs on China, Beijing is hoping to unload more of its excess factory production to developing-world countries, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Brazil.
But many of those countries are pushing back, as cut-price Chinese imports put pressure on their factories, killing jobs and blocking efforts to grow manufacturing at home. Many poorer countries have been counting on expanding manufacturing as the best way to propel their rise up the development ladder.
For China, the emerging backlash threatens to undermine its goal of being a leader of the developing world, whose support it has courted as a means of building its own alliances to counter the U.S.
Many developing countries now fear they will endure the same kind of “China Shock” that gutted U.S. industry starting a quarter-century ago. Economists estimate the U.S. lost more than two million jobs between 1999 and 2011 as makers of furniture, toys and clothes buckled under competition from Chinese imports.
China has a huge excess of industrial capacity, which isn’t the worst problem to have. But Xi can’t afford the political risk of economic restructuring, so those factories have to keep flooding foreign markets — even friendly ones.
“China is asshoe,” as they say.
PLEASE DON’T DO THIS: Is Baseball Really Going to Implement the Stupidest Rule in the History of Sports?
Well, maybe not the stupidest rule.
To Increase Excitement, MLB To Allow Each Team To Call In One Tactical Air Strike Per Game https://t.co/VGMkuDKfu0 pic.twitter.com/DpSB4z51R4
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 4, 2024
ANALYSIS: TRUE.
Peak progressive virtue signaling is tipping your delivery driver 10% while assuming your driver is illegal and complaining that if he’s deported you can’t keep paying him below a living wage. https://t.co/5pjvMpw5S7
— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) December 4, 2024
Also: “Trumpflation,” really?
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Team Trump 47 Is Working Like Its First 100 Days Have Already Started. “This is precisely the way to deal with Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media. The Dem governors and mayors who have been getting in front of cameras threatening to fight Trump were hoping to get no pushback until next year. The New Trump Order (I’m running with this for a while) doesn’t play that way. This crew doesn’t let the Democrats suck all of the oxygen out of every room while trying to create a perverse public relations advantage. It pushes back.”
OSINT analyst MT Anderson reported on December 2 that satellite imagery from November 30 and December 1 showed that the Russian Admiral Gorshkov and Admiral Golovko Gorskhov-class frigates, the Admiral Grigorovich Grigorovich-class frigate, the Novorossiysk Kilo-class submarine, the Yelnya Altay-class oiler, and the Vyazma Kaliningradneft-class oiler were at the Russian base in Tartus. Anderson then reported that satellite imagery from December 3 showed that Russia removed the three frigates, the submarine, and two unnamed auxiliary vessels (likely the Yelnya and Vyazma) from the base — amounting to all of the vessels that Russia had stationed at Tartus. Russia cannot redeploy these vessels to its Black Sea ports because Turkey is enforcing the Montreux Convention, which prevents Russian warships from passing through the Turkish Straits. Russia will likely therefore redeploy the vessels to its bases in northwestern Russia and Kaliningrad Oblast.
Russian power projection in the Med just took a big hit but it remains to be seen what that means for Bashar Assad.
Previously: It’s complicated.
I WATCHED IT SEVERAL TIMES: Charlamagne tha God Humiliated Whoopi Goldberg on ‘The View’ And It Was Awesome.
THE LAST GASPS OF BIDEN’S BANANA REPUBLIC ANTICS: Biden White House Is Discussing Preemptive Pardons for Those in Trump’s Crosshairs.
This is Politico so of course the report is framed exactly as the Biden White House would want. But there are still good tidbits in here:
Biden’s aides are deeply concerned about a range of current and former officials who could find themselves facing inquiries and even indictments, a sense of alarm which has only accelerated since Trump last weekend announced the appointment of Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Patel has publicly vowed to pursue Trump’s critics.
The White House officials, however, are carefully weighing the extraordinary step of handing out blanket pardons to those who’ve committed no crimes, both because it could suggest impropriety, only fueling Trump’s criticisms, and because those offered preemptive pardons may reject them.
The deliberations touch on pardoning those currently in office, elected and appointed, as well as former officials who’ve angered Trump and his loyalists.
Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel but include a range of other aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions yet, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
Related:
I cannot get enough of the Biden smile with “What I’ve Done” with the Michael Bay exit. 10/10 pic.twitter.com/gttXADq6tA
— Sean Southard (@SeanSouthardGOP) November 8, 2024
HE WAS CERTAINLY USED BY HIS OWN FATHER AT THE VERY LEAST: Was Hunter Biden a Tool of the CIA? “When congressional committees wanted to know what Hunter Biden’s new ‘sugar bro’ motive was in paying millions of the princeling’s back taxes, they were stiffed-armed, Heisman-like, from those in the Deep State intelligence community (IC) who told them to back off. The ‘or else’ was a given.”
IT’S COMPLICATED:
JUST IN🚨
Iraqi parliament voted to allow the Prime Minister to order deployment of the Iraqi military into Syria. Tens of thousands of Iraqi Army troops currently stationed on the Iraq-Syria border will enter the Deir Ez-Zor region of Syria tomorrow morning. This is going to be…
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) December 5, 2024
From the replies: “Imagine being an Iraqi soldier and being ordered to go die for the regime of the man who used to smuggle Al-Qaeda fighters into your country.”
As I said, it’s complicated.
December 4, 2024
COMMUNITY NOTES REMAIN UNDEFEATED:
This is false. We never prioritize brokers over fans. In fact, we have invested more than the rest of the industry combined in developing technology to block bad actors from stealing tickets from fans. https://t.co/I0T2gkVcGX
— Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) December 4, 2024
The replies are brutal, too.
BREAKING: French PM Michel Barnier ousted in no-confidence vote. “There’s now the prospect of months of turmoil in France – it took Emmanuel Macron two months to appoint Barnier, who only lasted a little longer in the role himself following his appointment in September.”