“IT’S WORSE THAN YOU KNOW”; “IT USUALLY IS”: New Court Documents Surrounding Laken Riley’s Murder Show How Insidious Our Border Crisis Is.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
March 8, 2024
DECOUPLING CUTS BOTH WAYS: China Intensifies Push to ‘Delete America’ From Its Technology.
The 2022 Chinese government directive expands a drive that is muscling U.S. technology out of the country—an effort some refer to as “Delete A,” for Delete America.
Document 79 was so sensitive that high-ranking officials and executives were only shown the order and weren’t allowed to make copies, people familiar with the matter said. It requires state-owned companies in finance, energy and other sectors to replace foreign software in their IT systems by 2027.
American tech giants had long thrived in China as they hot-wired the country’s meteoric industrial rise with computers, operating systems and software. Chinese leaders want to sever that relationship, driven by a push for self-sufficiency and concerns over the country’s long-term security.
The first targets were hardware makers. Dell, International Business Machines and Cisco Systems have gradually seen much of their equipment replaced by products from Chinese competitors.
Document 79, named for the numbering on the paper, targets companies that provide the software—enabling daily business operations from basic office tools to supply-chain management. The likes of Microsoft and Oracle are losing ground in the field, one of the last bastions of foreign tech profitability in the country.
I suppose the real test will be how many buyers outside of China will be willing to use CCP-approved software.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Biden’s Handlers Really Overshot His SOTU Uppers Dosage. “While it’s true that absurdism is integral to my brand of political opinion writing, I never wander far from the truth. Some people may think I’m talking about ‘uppers’ simply because I like to be merciless when writing about Joe Biden. I would remind everyone that I am an entertainer from the 1980s, so I have more than a passing familiarity with what people on high-end stimulants look and act like. POTUS was straight-up wired last night.”
THEY KEEP TELLING ME THE ECONOMY IS BOOMING BUT I KEEP FINDING STORIES LIKE THESE: Here’s how many Americans are having sex to save on heating bills amid surging utility costs. “Though electricity costs dropped more than 20% in 2023, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index, they’re still up 29% from January 2020. Northeastern households that use natural gas were expected to spend about $760 on heat this winter, according to the US Energy Information Center. That estimation rose to $1,700 for propane, $1,460 for electric heat and $1,850 for oil.”
That’s a pretty good excuse, if you and yours were looking for one.
SCENES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Blue Drag Queen Protests Missouri Law Banning Shows for Kids
IT’S A SCAM, A VERY WELL-PAID SCAM: University of Virginia Spends $20 Million On 235 DEI Employees, With Some Making $587,340 Per Year. “The University of Virginia (UVA) has at least 235 employees under its ‘diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)’ banner — including 82 students — whose total cost of employment is estimated at $20 million. That’s $15 million in cash compensation plus an additional 30-percent for the annual cost of their benefits.”
March 7, 2024
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS…?
Biden, whose speech ended 25 minutes ago, is currently wandering around the House chamber asking where he's supposed to go pic.twitter.com/MNX4P26peB
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 8, 2024
AND SO IT BEGINS: Drunkblogging the 2024 State of the Union Address.
THIS IDEA IS STUPID IN SO MANY WAYS: What Kind of Risks are Americans Facing in Building the Temporary Gaza Port?
CRINGEWORTHY:
Joe Biden seeks advice on how to fake it as President from people who pretended to be President.
Who at the real White House thought this was a good idea?!?! Yikes. https://t.co/tIo8yS1S3S
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) March 7, 2024
Even if this had been a good idea, like most SNL sketches it drags on longer than it should.
IMAGINE MY SURPRISE TO FIND A GOVERNMENT PROGRAM WITH AN EXPIRATION DATE: US ends free COVID test kit distribution — here’s the last day to place an order. “According to the ASPR, a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services, all orders placed on or before Friday will be fulfilled.”
IN WHICH BIDEN DOUBLES OR EVEN TRIPLES DOWN ON STUPID: What Fresh Foreign Policy Horror Is This?
MAYBE THAT EXPLAINS THE TINY ARMS: Tyrannosaurus Rex May Have Actually Been Three Separate Dinosaurs.
SO MANY REASONS, NOT ENOUGH DITCHING: Charles Barkley Explains Why Black Voters Are Ditching the Democrats.
COLD WAR II: China building new generation of mobile ICBMs.
Gen. Anthony Cotton, who took over Strategic Command in December, revealed details of the new mobile ICBM development in closed-door testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, The Washington Times has learned.
The four-star nuclear forces commander described the rapid deployment of Chinese strategic nuclear missiles, bombers and submarines as “breathtaking” – and was the second Strategic Command leader to testify to the alarming pace of nuclear expansion by Beijing.
The new missile was mentioned by Gen. Cotton in a little-noticed passage in his prepared testimony to the committee.
In outlining Chinese missile advancement, including that China now has more ICBM launchers than the United States, Gen. Cotton stated that the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force is “developing a new generation of mobile ICBMs.”
A Strategic Command spokesman declined to comment further on the new missile, citing a policy of not discussing classified information. The spokesman said the general stands by his testimony on the weapon.
The disclosure comes as the United States government is struggling to modernize its own aging nuclear forces, including 400 silo-based Minuteman III ICBMs that are nearing the end of their life cycle.
We’ve known about China’s “strategic breakout” for three years, at least: China Is Engaged in a Massive Nuclear Missile Buildup.
A QUICK PREVIEW OF TONIGHT’S DRUNKBLOG: Can Dr. Feelgood Save Biden’s State of the Union Address?
WILLIAM GALSTON: President Biden’s Fraying Coalition.
Broadly speaking, the coalition that gave Mr. Trump 47% of the vote in 2020 remains intact, while Mr. Biden’s winning coalition has frayed significantly. According to the New York Times/Siena poll, 97% of those who voted for Mr. Trump four years ago intend to do so again in 2024, compared with 83% for Mr. Biden. Ten percent of Mr. Biden’s former supporters say that they will switch to Mr. Trump. This helps explain the top-line numbers: Mr. Biden outpolled Mr. Trump in 2020 by nearly 4.5 points but now trails him by 2.1, a 6.6-point swing.
Key blocs in the Democratic coalition have eroded. In 2020 Mr. Biden won 18- to 29-year-old voters by 24 points; now his lead is half that. He won in the suburbs by 11 points but leads by only 2 now. His lead among black voters has fallen from 84 points to just 43, and it would be a historic shift if Mr. Trump comes anywhere near the 23% support the poll found. Mr. Biden prevailed among Hispanic voters by 21 points in 2020 but now trails by 6 in this expanding group.
This result for Hispanics may seem hard to believe, but it’s consistent with other findings. Only 16% of Hispanics say that economic conditions are excellent or good compared with 84% who rate them as fair or poor. Only 31% approve of Mr. Biden’s performance as president; 67% disapprove. A tougher approach to immigration is no deal-breaker: 45% of Hispanics favor making it harder to seek asylum at the southern border, nearly as many as the 47% who oppose it. Ideologically, Hispanics are to the right of the Democratic Party: Only 20% describe themselves as liberal, vs. 44% as moderate, and 30% as conservative.
The fraying of the Biden coalition is evident in the swing states as well.
What doesn’t show up in the polls is dirty tricks, so don’t get cocky.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: San Francisco Voters Pass Two Law-and-Order Ballot Measures.
I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN BIDEN PROMISED TO RESTORE AMERICAN UNITY: Goodbye America! A quarter of US adults want their state to secede – Texans, Californians, and New Yorkers are closest to the exit.
YOU CAN DO BETTER, COLORADO — AND GET ONE WHILE YOU STILL CAN: Concealed carry keeps growing in Colorado; over twenty-five thousand new permits in 2023. “While that number trails a permitting surge during Covid lock-downs and rioting related to the police killing of George Floyd (over 37,000 in 2020 and more than 41,000 in 2021), it’s still larger than the 23,250 permits issued in pre-pandemic 2019. In the five-year period from 2019-2023, just over 155,000 Coloradans obtained new permits, while just under 143,ooo existing permits were renewed (a Colorado CHP is valid for five years).”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Warts and All, It’s Time to Embrace Trump or Start Studying Mandarin. “I’m going to keep writing about this a lot until November, because it bears repeating: this is not the election to let one’s feelings get in the way. Or matter at all. We are voting for a president who will hopefully reverse some of the damage done by the commies who are running Joe Biden’s brain. We’re not looking for a significant other or a prom date.”
SOME PARTS OF AMERICA STILL WORK: SpaceX’s Satellite Internet Keeps Getting Better. “While new satellites, dish designs, and routers are on the horizon, my latest performance testing shows that Starlink’s service has improved markedly for most of its 1.3 million users in the US who use the standard Dish V2 equipment. In the last year, we’ve seen access to Starlink grow by leaps and bounds, all while Elon Musk’s satellite service has maintained excellent download speeds, increased upload speeds, and cut latency, according to our data. New hardware promises additional gains, but for now, the test results show that existing customers like me are already getting a better, more mature service than ever before. For rural users without access to cable or fiber, nothing even comes close.”
I’ve been very happy with my Starlink service even with access to cable and, as the story notes, service keeps improving. I’ve also never had to make a tech support call over some outage or frustration, which happened every month or two with Comcast.
WELL, JOE SCARBOROUGH: Joe Scarborough Goes Full Nutcase Defending Biden’s Mental Acuity.