EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Retail sales tumbled 0.8% in January, much more than expected. “Federal Reserve officials have said they are satisfied enough with the prospects for both inflation falling and growth holding steady that the rate-hiking cycle begun in March 2022 is likely over. But they are watching the data closely, with most saying that they will need more evidence that inflation is on a sustainable path back to the central bank’s 2% goal before starting to cut.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
February 16, 2024
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Five Dirty, Career-Ending, Prison-Warranting Secrets Biden Wants You to Forget Before Election Day. “As of today, we are supposed to believe that Joe Biden plans on running for re-election, hoping to assail our battered nation with another term of Marxist codswallop. I’ll bet my Snagglepuss lunchbox that doesn’t happen. I think Biden is going to exit, stage left. And with good reason.”
February 15, 2024
KRUISER: Worst COVID Casualty Yet — Women’s Sex Drives “What I would really like to see are the numbers on the libidinous tendencies of the triple-vaxxed, quintuple-boosted women who still got COVID four times. I’d wager that they’re the real Debbie Downers in the bedroom. It’s just a hunch, but I think it’s a solid one.”
IS THERE ANYTHING TOO ABSURD FOR 2024? Manchin/Romney ’24? That’s the Ticket! “On November 9, Joe Manchin was asked to remove himself from consideration for reelection to the Senate. That request came from his voters. Deep down, he knew they were right, but he also knew that someday he would return to political office. With nowhere else to go, he looked across the aisle at his friend, Mitt Romney. Several weeks earlier, Romney’s voters had thrown HIM off the 2024 Senate ticket, requesting that HE never run again. Can two unloved politicians share a presidential ticket without driving the rest of us crazy?”
TOTALLY LEGIT: Nathan Wade Details the Trips He Took With Fani Willis.
THE LEFT HAS NO PROBLEM WITH SEXUAL VIOLENCE INFLICTED ON THE CORRECT PEOPLE: She Can’t Even Condemn Rape. “Yesterday, Rashida Tlaib took a clarifying vote in which she stood her ground alone, bravely, I am sure she thinks. She refused to condemn the rape of women by Hamas.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Armenia warns that Azerbaijan is planning a ‘full-scale war.’
IT’S OFFICIAL: Everybody Knows Biden’s Brain Is Pudding. “I probably shouldn’t use language better suited to an elementary school playground when discussing the mental fitness of The Most Powerful Man in the World™, but after four years of telling people exactly what they’re finally admitting, that kind of language is about all I have left.”
CHRISTIAN TOTO: The Left Slams Jon Stewart for Mocking ‘Elderly’ Joe Biden.
“The Daily Show” star retired from his faux anchor seat in 2015, a time before his party embraced too many extremes to tally. We can start with open borders and name check Defund the Police for a sampler of uncorked thinking.
That version of Stewart leaned to the Left, and hard, but he saved some energy for mocking his fellow Democrats.
Occasionally.
That’s no longer acceptable to the modern Left, and he learned that lesson the hard way.
Twice.
It’s different now because shut up, hater.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: This May Be the Stupidest Thing Barack Obama Ever Said.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: The brutal reality of plunging office values is here.
Across the country, deals are starting to pick up, revealing just how far real estate prices have fallen. That’s spurring widespread concern about losses that can ripple across the global financial system – as underscored by the recent turmoil unleashed by New York Community Bancorp, Japan’s Aozora Bank and Germany’s Deutsche Pfandbriefbank as they took steps to brace for bad loans.
In Manhattan, brokers have started to market debt backed by a Blackstone-owned office building at a roughly 50 per cent discount. A prime office tower in Los Angeles sold in December for about 45 per cent less than its purchase price a decade ago. Around the same time, the Federal Deposit Insurance took a 40 per cent discount on about US$15 billion in loans it sold backed by New York City apartment buildings.
It’s a turning point for the market as the Federal Reserve ends the fastest pace of interest-rate hikes in a generation – providing more clarity to real estate investors on where borrowing costs stand. Some property owners will have little choice but to sell as their debt come due: More than US$1 trillion in commercial real estate loans are set to mature by the end of next year, according to data firm Trepp.
A commenter over at VodkaPundit told me a while back that nobody knows the true value of any piece of commercial real estate until it’s been three times. It can be a painful discovery.
THAT’S BEEN BIDEN’S M.O. FOR THREE OR FOUR YEARS NOW: Biden’s Hissy Fit on Mayorkas Impeachment Is a Hilarious Self-Awareness Fail.
HOLIDAYS IN HELL: Fake Mexico tour agency accused of chopping people up with machetes. “The suspects operated a call center in which they offered sports equipment and tour packages to tourists, but then failed to deliver them. On the second floor they had a complex operation in which drug deals were allegedly made over the phone and delivered by motorcycle.”
THEY CUT TAXES AND REGULATION. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WAS AS NATURAL AS DAWN FOLLOWING NIGHT: Moving to Florida could save Jeff Bezos at least $600 million. How Florida became ‘nirvana’ for the superrich.
According to another filing with Securities and Exchange Commission, Bezos plans to sell 50 million Amazon shares total before Jan. 31, 2025, worth an estimated $8.5 billion (this initial sale was around 12 million shares). If all goes to plan—and assuming Amazon’s stock price stays the same—he will save around $600 million in taxes.
And that’s all short term. Bezos’s move to Florida also will save him significantly because the state doesn’t have an estate tax, says John Pantekidis, managing partner and general counsel at TwinFocus, which manages over $7 billion for ultrahigh-net-worth (UHNW) families. These benefits combined make the sunshine state an increasingly attractive place for high-net-worth and UHNW families to establish residence.
“For someone with that much wealth, just the estate tax savings alone can be $10 billion, never mind the income tax savings, which is ongoing,” Pantekidis says. “Florida is very, very favorable for someone like Jeff Bezos. They make it very cost effective for folks like Jeff to live down there. It’s ideal, it’s nirvana.”
It isn’t like any of this is a secret. Some states just choose to be stupid.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Super Cool That ‘Principled’ House GOP Majority Gave a Seat to the Dems. “People who disagree with me will no doubt say that George Santos’s wrongdoings were well beyond the level of foibles. Let’s just say that my definition foible when considering the behavior of people on my side will be greatly expanded during for the duration of this constitutional peril.”
21ST CENTURY DATING: Your AI Girlfriend Is a Data-Harvesting Horror Show.
“To be perfectly blunt, AI girlfriends and boyfriends are not your friends,” said Misha Rykov, a Mozilla Researcher, in a press statement. “Although they are marketed as something that will enhance your mental health and well-being, they specialize in delivering dependency, loneliness, and toxicity, all while prying as much data as possible from you.”
Mozilla dug into 11 different AI romance chatbots, including popular apps such as Replika, Chai, Romantic AI, EVA AI Chat Bot & Soulmate, and CrushOn.AI. Every single one earned the Privacy Not Included label, putting these chatbots among the worst categories of products Mozilla has ever reviewed. The apps mentioned in this story didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
You’ve heard stories about data problems before, but according to Mozilla, AI girlfriends violate your privacy in “disturbing new ways.” For example, CrushOn.AI collects details including information about sexual health, use of medication, and gender-affirming care. 90% of the apps may sell or share user data for targeted ads and other purposes, and more than half won’t let you delete the data they collect. Security was also a problem. Only one app, Genesia AI Friend & Partner, met Mozilla’s minimum security standards.
One of the more striking findings came when Mozilla counted the trackers in these apps, little bits of code that collect data and share them with other companies for advertising and other purposes. Mozilla found the AI girlfriend apps used an average of 2,663 trackers per minute, though that number was driven up by Romantic AI, which called a whopping 24,354 trackers in just one minute of using the app.
An online app knows everything you tell it — and can surmise much more — and once that data is out there, it’s out there.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: Meet the New Air Force, Same As the Old Air Force (Except Not Really). “The United States Air Force is about to fly into strange and uncharted territory with a bomber fleet that is part older than I am, part bleeding edge, more capable than ever — and still too small.”
BOOM: Musk Says SpaceX Has Moved State Of Incorporation To Texas Amid Feud With Delaware.
The company made a filing with the Texas Secretary of State earlier on Wednesday to request the move.
In a post on X later in the day, Musk said the rocket company has “moved its state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas,” and shared a screenshot of a certificate from the Secretary of State’s office acknowledging SpaceX’s filing.
Musk also took a shot at Delaware, telling those with a company incorporated in the state: “I recommend moving to another state as soon as possible.”
Musk later shared a fan-made animated graphic of the SpaceX logo with a Texas map.
A day earlier, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott reacted to news reports of SpaceX’s, saying on X: “Welcome Home!”
Delaware made a lot of money over the years being friendly to business. But it only took one hostile act to start changing that.
February 14, 2024
OOPS: Iran Gas Pipelines Explode in Act of Sabotage, Officials Say.
Iranian officials said two explosions struck natural-gas pipelines in the country early Wednesday, calling the blasts a terrorist attack, which comes amid heightened tensions in the Middle East over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Sabotage caused the blasts, which ruptured gas pipelines in the provinces of Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari and Fars, disrupting supply in parts of the country, according to the Iranian oil ministry’s official Shana news service. The pipelines are part of the country’s gas supply grid, taking gas from Asaluyeh, a hub for Iran’s offshore South Pars gas field.
No group has claimed responsibility for the explosions on Wednesday. Arab separatists in southwestern Iran have claimed attacks against oil pipelines in the past, but rarely in other areas. Accidents occur regularly in Iran’s industry, which is struggling from poor infrastructure and maintenance after decades of mismanagement and sanctions.
The damage on Wednesday was limited and supply disruptions were contained by diverting gas from other provinces to the affected areas, Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji said, according to state media. He said the supply was stable and the repair work would be completed soon.
A pity, if Owji’s claims are correct.
CHRIS QUEEN: A Lesson in Perseverance for Conservatives.
Anyone who has spent much time around Athens, Ga., has seen Michael Davenport at work. He sets up in various places around town with his easel and canvases and creates his art. A donation bucket sits nearby, and people stop to watch him work and drop money in the bucket.
What’s unusual about Davenport? He has no arms, and he “paints” with his mouth, using markers as his medium. When he was 13, Davenport lost his arms in an electrical accident, but instead of wallowing in his plight, he took art classes as a teenager and didn’t look back.
Living and working in a college town with a rabid fanbase, Davenport’s milieu is Georgia Bulldogs artwork. Most of his pieces portray the classic Georgia Bulldogs logo or Uga, the beloved English bulldog mascot, although his Instagram page shows Atlanta Falcons and (gasp!) Alabama Crimson Tide canvases.
Davenport has been homeless, and robbers have attacked him twice over the past several years. The community has rallied around him with donation campaigns, and adversity hasn’t dampened his spirit.
Read the whole thing.
UNHAPPY CUSTOMERS: Amazon Prime Video Ad Tier Sparks Class Action Lawsuit From Subscribers. “When Amazon altered its terms, users who had signed up for annual subscriptions were also impacted. They allege the change is deceptive.”