EVERGREEN ADVICE: Don’t Stick Your Dick In Commie. “Color me just a tad skeptical that the daughter of a high ranking Chinese communist official would find a life with Tim Walz an attractive option. The communist princesses and princelings, especially in the Deng Xiaoping/Jiang Zemin era, would have been groomed for important CCP positions or high-paying positions in the newly liberalized private sector. Now ordinary Chinese girls of the era would probably flock to the chance to escape China by marrying an American, because of all the poverty ($307 per capita GDP in 1989) and Communism, but a communist princess? I seriously doubt it.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
October 31, 2024
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: Trump Can’t Ditch the Income Tax for Tariffs, But Here’s What He Could Do.
Members asked for more long-form essays and I’ve been happy to oblige.
BITING THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA:
Bezos had the gall to call out the perception of bias within newsroom.
The activists reacted by publishing a hit piece aimed at their own owner, who is losing hundreds of millions each year subsidizing their salaries.
They share this as if it is evidence of their… pic.twitter.com/Vi5d32gRSy
— AG (@AGHamilton29) October 30, 2024
Firable offenses really ought to get one fired.
I DON’T LIKE GOOGLE EITHER, BUT…: Russian court fines Google $20 decillion.
A Russian court has ruled that Google owes Russian media stations around $20 decillion in fines for blocking their content, and the fines could get bigger.
To put that into perspective, the World Bank estimates global GDP as around $100 trillion, which is peanuts compared to the prospective fine. Google would therefore have to find more money than exists on Earth to pay Moscow – but on Tuesday fell a little short of that mark when it posted $88 billion quarterly revenue.
The bizarre amount has been calculated after a four-year court case that started after YouTube banned the ultra-nationalist Russian channel Tsargrad in 2020 in response to the US sanctions imposed against its owner. Following Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 more channels were added to the banned list and 17 stations are now suing the Chocolate Factory, including Zvezda (a TV channel owned by Putin’s Ministry of Defence), according to local media.
“Google was called by a Russian court to administrative liability under Art. 13.41 of the Administrative Offenses Code for removing channels on the YouTube platform. The court ordered the company to restore these channels,” lawyer Ivan Morozov told state media outlet TASS.
The court imposed a fine of 100 thousand rubles ($1,025) per day, with the total fine doubling every week.
That’s $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
THEY KEEP TELLING ME HOW CLEAN OUR ELECTIONS ARE: A Non-Citizen Cast a Ballot in Michigan. Officials Say They Have to Count It.
THAT’S HOW YOU CAN BE SURE IT WAS EFFECTIVE: Media Has a Meltdown Over Trump’s Garbage Truck Press Conference.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Is This Any Way to Treat a Legend? “Clint Eastwood gets kicked to the theatrical curb via ‘Juror #2’ rollout.”
Sad. The trailer looked excellent.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. This Race Is Close Only Because the Public Education Indoctrination Mill Has Succeeded. “If a person goes to a surgeon needing both a cancerous tumor removed and a knee replacement, the patient doesn’t opt for the knee replacement in the hope that the cancer will go away. Yes, things will be a lot better, but that tumor keeps on growing. At this point in American history, voter fraud is the bad knee and public education indoctrination is the cancer.”
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: The Biden Doctrine Goes Bust.
Not that defense is a Biden priority. He sent budget proposals to Congress that reduced defense spending, only to be overridden by sober-minded committees of jurisdiction. Under Biden, the U.S. government spends more on debt service than on defense. The armed forces struggle to meet recruitment goals. Threats multiply.
Blinken says that after economics, the administration’s second “pillar of renewal” is strengthening U.S. alliances. Biden deserves credit for welcoming Sweden and Finland into NATO; bolstering the Indo-Pacific “quad” of America, Australia, India, and Japan; and creating AUKUS, a trilateral partnership among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Skilled diplomacy was required to build out inherited institutions, he argues, and create new ones to balance China. For decades, presidents have said U.S. policy would turn toward East Asia. “The Biden administration,” writes Matthews, “made the pivot happen.”
Let’s not speak too soon. Biden’s diplomacy hasn’t lessened China’s belligerence. China’s intelligence and cyber warfare against the United States go on. The high-altitude surveillance balloon that transited north America in 2023 was a display of Chinese strength. China hasn’t relaxed its grip on Tibetans, Uighurs in Xinjiang, or Hongkongers. Its “no limits” partnership with Russia has deepened, providing Vladimir Putin an economic lifeline that sustains his war machine.
China’s own military buildup is extraordinary. Its harassment and encirclement of Taiwan are increasing. Its naval vessels assert primacy in the South China Sea by ramming Philippine ships. The Philippines is a treaty ally. The United States is pledged to the nation’s defense.
Read the whole thing.
PEOPLE DON’T LIKE BEING CALLED GARBAGE AND THEY PROBABLY LIKE EVEN LESS BEING LIED TO ABOUT IT: Now You Can REALLY See How Badly Biden Screwed Kamala Over With His ‘Garbage’ Comment. “Using Google Trends, we can see the interest in both stories over time. Google Trends numbers show search interest relative to the peak for a specific region and time. A score of 100 indicates peak popularity, 50 means half as popular, and 0 means there wasn’t enough data for the term. Here’s the Google Trends graph comparing searches for ‘Puerto Rico garbage’ and ‘Biden Trump supporters garbage.'”
HEH:
Sending the King of NAFTA to rust belt Michigan to yell at Arabs a week before the election is truly some Veep-level shit. https://t.co/06E3ymvQL5
— Tyler Austin Harper (@Tyler_A_Harper) October 31, 2024
I’m so old, I remember when Clinton could play his “I feel your pain” schtick well enough that people bought it.
BEEGE WELBORN GOES DUMPSTER DIVING INTO THE BIDEN-HARRIS FEUD: Who Doesn’t Love a Good Dumpster Fire Every Now and Then?
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER BUT THIS IS DANGEROUSLY LATE: DoD industrial base plan targets weak links in supply chains.
“Single sources of supply is a problem across the industrial base,” noted Laura Taylor-Kale, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy.
Zeppieri said risks tied to “single sources” and “fragile sources” of critical components in the defense supply chain are among the issues addressed in the newly released National Defense Industrial Strategy Implementation Plan.
The unclassified version of the plan highlights measures to strengthen domestic manufacturing for defense purposes and increase supply chain resilience against adversarial threats.
DoD anticipates an increasing need for resilience in the supply chain, including within the space sector. “We are very much aware and doing analysis on that,” Taylor-Kale said.
Details about specific vulnerabilities are reserved for the classified version of the report.
You can be sure Beijing and Moscow know exactly what they are.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: ‘Dark’ and ‘Scary’ Trump Sure Looks Like He’s Having Fun. “Donald Trump loves the American people. It’s always evident when he’s out campaigning. He’s the polar opposite of the alt-universe Trump who the Dems’ media lapdogs are always talking about.”
THAT’S ODD: NASA finds, but does not disclose, root cause of Orion heat shield erosion.
Asked about the status of the heat shield at an Oct. 28 meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) in Houston, Lori Glaze, acting deputy associate administrator in NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said those reviews had determined what caused the additional char loss.
“We have conclusive determination of what the root cause is of the issue,” she said. “We have been able to demonstrate and reproduce it in the arc jet facilities out at Ames.” The Arc Jet Complex at NASA’s Ames Research Center can reproduce the heating conditions seen on reentry.
However, she declined to identify what that root cause is. “I’m not going to share right now,” she said when asked about it. “When it comes out, it will all come out together.”
Another NASA official confirmed that in a panel discussion at the American Astronautical Society’s von Braun Space Exploration Symposium here later the same day.
“We have gotten to a root cause. We are having conversations within the agency to make sure we have we have a good understanding of what’s going on not only with the heat shield but also next steps in how that actually applies to Artemis 2,” said Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator in the Moon to Mars office. She also declined to identify the specific root cause.
My guess is that whatever the root cause is, the fix is going to be time-consuming and/or expensive. Or maybe Orion is good to go with the existing heat shield, although you’d think NASA would crow about that.
Whatever the case, secrecy isn’t a good look for a program as troubled as Artemis is.
DON’T GET COCKY:
The 2024 Pennsylvania Republican vs Democrat vote is now over 500k better than the same day in 2020, when Biden’s victory margin was only 80k!
Moreover, yesterday there were more Republican early votes than Democrat.
Pennsylvania will be a decisive Republican victory. pic.twitter.com/MQyvjc1exf
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2024
Bucks County has been ordered to extend early voting through Friday so if that’s where and how you’re voting, don’t let anyone send you home.
ICYMI: What the Hell Is Going on in Michigan? “‘Vote early and often’ is one of those election campaign jokes politicians like to indulge in, but one Michigan voter ID reportedly has voted 29 times so far — and one expert just found 164,568 little anomalies.”
Update: Lara Trump said on X that the RNC’s election integrity team investigated the matter and determined that a “glitch” was to blame. The duplicates will not be counted.
“Fast-moving RNC” isn’t a phrase anyone gets to use very often — but it’s nice to.
October 30, 2024
SHOWMANSHIP:
Here in Wisconsin, @realDonaldTrump climbs into a garbage truck to give remarks to the press! #BossMove pic.twitter.com/oR8D2v2REe
— Corey R. Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) October 30, 2024
Make campaigning fun again.
THERE’S NOTHING LIKE GETTING BACK TO NATURE: Alcohol consumption abundant in the natural world, study finds.
NOT A WHOLE LOT OF DOWN-BALLOT CONGRESSIONAL RACES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE: Holy Smokes! Bill Clinton to Campaign for Kamala in New Hampshire!
WELL, GOOD: Hezbollah has lost 80% of its rockets.
Previously: IDF strike cripples Iran’s missile production.