THE DEMO BOMB: Chinese Women Are Voting Against Communism With Their Uteri.

IT ISN’T EASY TO SUCKER A RECON PLANE: Ukrainian Crews Set A Complex Missile Trap For Russia’s Best Radar Plane.

Exactly how the Ukrainians shot down the four-engine A-50 with its top-mounted radar is unclear, but analyst Tom Cooper—who has written many books about Soviet and Russian warplanes—has a theory.

Ukrainian radar and missile crews lured the Russian crews into a trap.

If Cooper’s theory is correct, the Ukrainians set the trap on Saturday, when Ukrainian air force jets—presumably Sukhoi Su-24 bombers—struck Russian air force installations across the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. “A number of radars were knocked out,” Cooper reported.

The Saturday strikes, the latest in a long campaign of Ukrainian raids on Russian defenses in Crimea, suppressed the Russians’ ground-based radar coverage, leaving the surviving missile batteries on the peninsula partially blind—especially to the north, where the terrain could mask incoming Ukrainian planes, drones and missiles.

So Russian commanders did the obvious, but stupid, thing. They ordered one of their few remaining A-50U radar planes, which normally fly far to the south over the Sea of Azov, to push farther north in order to extend radar coverage over most of Crimea.

Clever, if true.

OH: ¿Dónde Estás, Car 54? Blue States Are Hiring Illegals as Police, Giving Them Guns.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Red Sea risk to oil ‘very real,’ prices could change rapidly if supply disrupted, Chevron CEO says.

The British oil major Shell has suspended shipments through the Red Sea, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal Tuesday. Shell declined to comment in response to a request from CNBC.

Shell’s decision to halt shipments through the crucial trade chokepoint comes about a month after BP paused transits through the Red Sea. Several major tanker companies, which transport petroleum products such as gasoline as well as crude oil, halted traffic toward the Red Sea on Friday.

Houthi militants, who are based in Yemen and allied with Iran, have repeatedly attacked commercial vessels in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s war in Gaza. The U.S. and Britain have launched airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen to secure shipping through the waterway.

The Houthis have continued to launch attacks despite the U.S.-led strikes. The militants on Tuesday launched an antiship ballistic missile that struck a Maltese-flagged bulk carrier in the Red Sea, according to U.S. Central Command. No injuries were reported and the vessel continued to transit the waterway, according to CENTCOM.

Just a reminder that the Houthis are armed and financed by Iran, which benefits from higher oil prices and from Biden’s relaxation of Trump’s sanctions.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Trump Triggering the Lefties Never Ceases to Amuse and Entertain. “Rachel Maddow would break out in hives if she ever uttered anything truthful on the air. She’s made a career of spewing angsty lies while furrowing her brow, which her low-info fan base believes makes her trustworthy.”

STILL NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME: It’s so cold, Teslas are struggling to charge in Chicago.

In some cases, tow trucks were called to move the cars, in scenes that were relayed by local TV news. The Tesla owners’ plight became an emblem of the misery extreme cold is inflicting on wide sections of the U.S.

“I’ve been here for over five hours at this point and I still have not gotten to charge my car,” Tesla driver Brandon Welbourne told CBS News Chicago, as car horns blared nearby. “A charge that should take 45 minutes is taking two hours.”

Other drivers spoke about how the cold seemed to drain their batteries more quickly than normal.

“Fill ‘er up” still takes five minutes or less.

DOG BITES MAN: Trump Prosecutor Fani Willis Caught in Another HUGE Lie.

CHANGE? New York Gov Hochul to travel to DC to plead for ‘stronger border,’ blaming federal government for crisis.

“Since day one, I have said this is ultimately the responsibility of the federal government to address this crisis,” Hochul said. “Congress, the House of Representatives in particular and the White House, must remain at the negotiating table until they restore the rule of law at our border, fix our asylum system, and provide relief to states like New York, who have been shouldering this burden for far too long.”

“But until we see a change in federal policy that slows the flow of new arrivals, we’re going to be swimming against the tide,” Hochul said.

Hochul also said that her proposal includes $2.4 billion that would go toward the massive influx of migrants going into New York, calling it the “right thing to do” for the migrants and New York City.

“We also know that companies won’t do business in New York if there are thousands of people sleeping on the streets, where the quality of life is dramatically impacted, because the city is forced to cut essential services,” Hochul said.

“We’re going to continue focusing on security work authorizations and put the migrants and asylum workers to work,” Hochul also said. “Put them to work, that’s exactly what they came here for.”

You can thank Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis for this latest blue-on-blue hit to whatever remains of Joe Biden’s reputation.

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN: Congress Announces Deal That Would Revive Trump Tax Breaks and Expand Child Tax Credit. “The $78 billion tax deal was announced by House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). The bill still needs to be written up and the votes secured to pass it, but the fact that both parties could reach any agreement at all is remarkable considering the toxicity in Washington.”

Or Democrats are so desperate to turn around the Biden economy before the election that they’ll adopt Trump policy to make it happen.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Bombshell J6 Footage Exposes Nancy Pelosi’s Security Guard’s Lies.

PAULA BOLYARD: Why DeSantis and Haley Need to Stay in the Race.

SNOWFLAKES: CNN and MSNBC Censor Trump’s Victory Speech in Iowa.

DON’T LET THIS BE THE FISH THAT GOT AWAY: A little fish at the Supreme Court could take a big bite out of regulatory power. “The 1984 decision in the case known colloquially as Chevron states that when laws aren’t crystal clear federal agencies should be allowed to fill in the details.”

Between Chevron and Wickard v. Filburn, Washington’s power is essentially limited to Washington’s discretion about using it — something in very short supply.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: If Trump Doesn’t Pick Vivek for PressSec Then He’s Dead to Me.

YOU DON’T SAY: China needs reforms to halt ‘significant’ growth declines, IMF chief says.

VEGAS DA: ‘I’m Not That Drunk,’ Before Falling Back Into Car.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX says propellant venting caused loss of second Starship.

On that Nov. 18 launch, the Starship upper stage, or ship, was nearing the end of its burn to place it on a long suborbital trajectory when contact was lost. Hosts of the SpaceX webcast said it appeared the automated flight termination system was activated, but did not give a reason why, and the company provided few details since.

At a recent event at SpaceX’s Starbase test site in Boca Chica, Texas, video of which SpaceX posted on social media Jan. 12, Musk said the failure was linked to venting liquid oxygen propellant near the end of the burn. That venting, he said, was needed only because the vehicle was not carrying any payload.

“Flight 2 actually almost made it to orbit,” he said. “If it had a payload, it would have made it to orbit because the reason that it actually didn’t quite make it to orbit was we vented the liquid oxygen, and the liquid oxygen ultimately led to a fire and an explosion.”

They won’t make the same mistake on the third launch attempt, tentatively set for next month.

STILL NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME: The Biggest Evidence for the Folly of the EV Push May Be Happening Right Now.

WOEING: What’s Gone Wrong at Boeing.

Harry Stonecipher, who had been CEO of McDonnell Douglas and was CEO of Boeing from 2003 to 2005, said: “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.”

Corporate culture can be a notoriously squishy topic—too readily subject to broad generalizations. And, of course, all big companies are interested in making money and boosting their stock price. But even if corporate cultures are hard to characterize accurately, they’re still real. As the management theorist Edgar Schein defined it, the essence of corporate culture is “the learned, shared, tacit assumptions on which people base their daily behavior.” In the old Boeing, the people who dictated those assumptions were the engineers. In the post-merger Boeing, the people who did so were more likely to be accountants.

For some businesses, a shift to a greater emphasis on bottom-line considerations might not have mattered that much. But manufacturing airliners in large numbers is not one of those businesses. That’s because making big aircraft is an unreasonably difficult thing to do. A plane like the 737 Max has, by some accounts, more than half a million parts. Boeing now outsources much of its production, leaving assembly as its main job, so those parts are made by at least 600 suppliers (many of which, in turn, rely on subcontractors). Supervising the reliability of the manufacturing and quality-control processes at all of those different suppliers, while ensuring the reliability of Boeing’s own assembly processes, requires a maniacal attention to detail, a willingness to spend freely on reliability and safety, and a culture that tolerates the reporting of mistakes and the investment of serious resources in fixing them.

That ethos is hard to instill using only financial incentives or the threat of firing. What’s really needed is a culture of perfectionism—and that’s what Boeing seems to have lost over the past 20 or so years.

One of Beoing’s problems is that it isn’t even run like a well-run business, much less like the engineering firm it used to be and ought to be.

LEFTISTS. NEXT QUESTION? First Plagiarism, Now Lying: What’s Happening to America’s Universities?

I’ve said for years that lefties will destroy any institution they can’t control, and discredit any institution they can’t control or destroy. But it isn’t like they do such a great job of running the institutions they do control.

CHICAGO VOTERS WENT 82%/16% FOR BIDEN OVER TRUMP SO THEY SHOULD KEEP GETTING IT GOOD AND HARD: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker begs for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to stop sending migrants – as new census figures show 4,500 more asylum seekers arrived in Chicago than previously reported.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Nikki Haley — From Juggernaut to Jugger-Naught in Iowa. “Before we get to the other stuff, can I just say that it really seems like this Trump guy is going places?”

NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE THE 21ST CENTURY I’D BEEN HOPING FOR: Japanese startup plans to vaporize space junk using ground lasers.

EX-Fusion stands apart because it is taking the ground-based approach, with the startup tapping its arsenal of laser technology initially developed in pursuit of fusion power. In October, EX-Fusion signed a memorandum of understanding with EOS Space Systems, an Australian contractor with technology for detecting space debris. EX-Fusion has announced its plans to install a powerful laser system at the EOS Space Observatory near Canberra.

The initial stage of this project will involve setting up laser technology to track space debris that measures less than 4 inches (10 cm). This size of debris has been traditionally challenging to target from the ground using lasers. During the second phase, EX-Fusion and EOS Space will use laser beams fired from the surface to remove space debris.

I bet they could remove a lot more than just debris.

LABOUR IMPORTED A LOT OF PEOPLE — VOTERS — FROM PLACES UNFRIENDLY TO JEWS (AND BRITONS, FOR THAT MATTER): Antisemitic Activist Gets Cheers in London After He Says, ‘We Must Normalize Massacres.’

DECOUPLING: After 17 Years, China Set To Lose ‘Top Spot’ As No. 1 Exporter To US; China-US Trade War Benefits Others.

China’s share of total US imports has plummeted to 13.9%, marking the lowest percentage since 2004. This decline is substantial compared to its peak of over 21% around 2017. US exports to China have shown minimal growth throughout the year.

Stepping into the void left by China, Mexico is positioned to become the leading exporter to the US for the entire year, a status it hasn’t held since 2000. US imports from Mexico are set to record a high in 2023, constituting over 15% of the total for the first 11 months of the year.

The European Union has also experienced a surge in exports to the US, reaching an all-time high during the same period.

This shift in US trade patterns is particularly evident in the diversification of sources for critical products, such as consumer electronics, which have traditionally relied heavily on China.

Notably, smartphone imports from China have seen a 10% decrease, while imports from India have surged fivefold. Similarly, laptop imports from China dropped by approximately 30%, but those from Vietnam quadrupled.

Chairman Xi has no one to blame but his own belligerence.