WELL, HE HASN’T GOTTEN ANY YOUNGER SINCE THE LAST POLL: Age Issue Still Serious for Biden, Voters Say. “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 72% of Likely U.S. Voters believe Biden’s age is a serious problem in terms of his chances of winning reelection in 2024, including 46% who think it’s a Very Serious problem. Twenty-five percent (25%) don’t consider Biden’s age a serious problem for next year’s election. These findings are essentially unchanged since May.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
October 18, 2023
IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: The Left Is Realizing That Its Plan to Prosecute Trump Out of the 2024 Running Is Failing.
October 17, 2023
THE SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED: Scientists propose sweeping new law of nature, expanding on evolution. “Titled the ‘law of increasing functional information,’ it holds that evolving systems, biological and non-biological, always form from numerous interacting building blocks like atoms or cells, and that processes exist – such as cellular mutation – that generate many different configurations. Evolution occurs, it holds, when these various configurations are subject to selection for useful functions.”
MARK ELLIS: The GOP’s Public Relations Problem.
When conservative commentators like Mark Levin and Dick Morris passionately share the opinion that the vacant Speakership debacle is a public relations disaster that threatens what looks like auspicious prospects for the GOP in 2024, there’s a real problem.
Most potential swing voters of any party affiliation who might pull the lever for the Republican Party next year don’t follow or necessarily care about Congressional inside baseball. They only see the rift, don’t fully grasp the difference between MAGA Republicans and candidates in more moderate districts who could lose their seats if their votes help award the speakership to an unapologetic Trumpian like Jim Jordan.
I’ve favored Jordan as prospective speaker since sometime during the middle of President Trump’s term in office, when the Ohio congressman rose to prominence giving the left Truman-esque hell on the House floor.
…
The axiom that Democrats unite and Republicans fight is in heavy rotation now, and the left is desperately spotlighting GOP division in hopes of diverting attention away from failures and complicities on everything from Covid to Afghanistan, to alleged Biden corruption, the alarming Iran deal, high crime, and a border crisis that even left-leaning pundits speculate might be the issue retrospectively cited as chief cause of 2024’s Democrat defeat.
The GOP has a fight over the Speaker but the Democrats have a nationwide intraparty civil war brewing over antisemitism — but the press plays up the former and does its best to ignore the latter.
BLUE ON BLUE: Anti-Israel Democrats Face Campaign Finance Woes and Primary Challenges.
Reps. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) and Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) are both spending money faster than they can raise it, according to the representatives’ most recent financial disclosure forms. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) has seen a precipitous drop in her fundraising each year since 2019 and only brought in $151,000 for the quarter ending Sept. 30. And Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) raised less than half of what she brought in during the same timeframe in 2019.
The Squad’s lackluster fundraising could pose a problem as its members fight to keep their seats in what could be a contentious election cycle. The progressive representatives have maintained their staunch criticism of Israel and support for terrorist-linked groups in the wake of Hamas’s attacks on the Jewish state, which have left more than 1,400 Israelis and at least 30 Americans dead. The Squad’s anti-Israel rhetoric has drawn criticism from the Biden White House and moderate Democrats, some of whom may bring primary challenges to the Squad members in 2024.
Omar, along with Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.) and Summer Lee (D., Pa.), could face primary challenges because of their anti-Israel positions, Jewish Insider reported Monday.
About time.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Encouraging Signs From Down Under: New Zealand and Australia Reject Elitism in Different Forms.
I THOUGHT IT WAS PRETTY CLEAR BACK WHEN I WAS ENJOYING THE FRUITS OF THEM: It’s Clear Now How Good Trump’s First Term Policies Were. “The work on the border wall, we didn’t like the messenger, so, we killed the message… Issuing long-term debt to refinance when rates were at zero. We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message… A structural peace deal in the Middle East. We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message.”
And then the Biden Cabal killed the policies.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Western Morality Is Weaponized Against Israel.
SURE, BUT DEI SUCCEEDS AT ITS ACTUAL MISSION OF CREATING MAKE-WORK JOBS FOR OTHERWISE UNEMPLOYABLE LEFTIES: ‘Diversity’ officials widen racial gaps, harm minority students.
UKRAINE WAR: Vladimir Putin Looks and Smiles.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH: Colorado’s 5.3% inflation rate outpaces national average of 3.7%.
I CAN’T STAND THE RAIN: A Tesla owner says his ‘heart missed a beat’ when he received a $21,000 bill after the battery was damaged by rain.
Johnny Bacigalupo and Rob Hussey told the Scottish news outlet Edinburgh Live they were billed £17,374, or about $21,000, to fix their Tesla after its battery was damaged by rain last week.
“I honestly can’t believe that this has happened. When I first got the call, I thought we would get a bill for £500 or £1,000,” Bacigalupo told Edinburgh Live. “When they said over 17 grand — it’s absolutely obscene. My heart missed a beat, honestly.”
J.D. Power quoted Elon Musk saying in 2019 that it could cost $5,000 to $10,000 to replace a Tesla battery but added that the figures were different in 2023. Recurrent, which reports on EV battery health, said battery replacement could cost anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000.
Bacigalupo and Hussey said that after being unable to start their vehicle and arranging to have it delivered to Tesla Edinburgh by a collection firm, they received a call Wednesday informing them that the battery was “damaged due to water ingress.”
They said they were told the eight-year warranty didn’t cover this and were asked whether they wanted to proceed with a repair costing about £17,500.
The story doesn’t say how the rain got into the battery compartment but it’s difficult to imagine how that wasn’t due to a manufacturing defect or a design flaw.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Another Trump Derangement Syndrome 2024 Election Interference Update. “Each assault by the Left on one of Trump’s freedoms is laying the groundwork for an assault the freedoms of anyone who disagrees with them. We know that. They know that we know that, but they feel unstoppable at the moment.”
IMF warning on China puts ‘Japanization’ risk in spotlight.
“What’s fast emerging is the risk of China slipping into deflation, or the ‘Japanization’ of its economy,” Bank of Japan (BOJ) board member Asahi Noguchi said on Thursday.
“It’s not clear yet whether China is heading toward a situation similar to Japan. But it’s true China’s real estate sector – the backbone of its economy – is slumping, youth job losses are rising and inflation is weakening,” he said in Japan.
In its World Economic Outlook, the IMF cut China’s growth forecast for this year to 5.0% from 5.2% in April, and warned that its property sector crisis could deepen with global spillovers. It projects growth to slow to 4.2% next year.
Data showed on Friday China’s consumer inflation was flat in September, missing forecasts for a 0.2% gain, highlighting the deflationary pressure China faces even as many other countries combat too-high inflation.
Back during its deflationary period from 1998 to 2013, Japan saw core consumer prices fall 0.2% on average, as slumping property prices hit bank balance sheets and cooled investment.
To be sure, there are differences between what is happening in China and the experience of Japan. For one, China’s balance sheet stress and debt overhang are contained to the real estate sector, notably among troubled developers and local provinces.
On the other hand, China doesn’t have nearly as much consumer spending to keep the economy churning — 38% of GDP in China, 54% in Japan, and 68% in the US — and Chinese park about 70% of their household wealth in that troubled real estate market. That seems to me perhaps ripe for an ugly contagion but, then again, Beijing has so far always found a way through these economic crises without a major meltdown.
Update: China tells banks to roll over local government debts as risks mount – sources. “China has told state-owned banks to roll over existing local government debt with longer-term loans at lower interest rates, two sources with knowledge of the matter said, as part of Beijing’s efforts to reduce debt risks in a faltering economy.”
A necessary restructuring or just adding state-owned banks to the risk pool?
October 16, 2023
DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS: D.C. Judge Strikes Out Against 2024 Frontrunner Donald Trump With a Gag Order.
ART HISTORY: After 500+ Years, X-Rays Have Revealed an Amazing Secret Inside the Mona Lisa. “We know Leonardo da Vinci as a famed Italian painter, but what about da Vinci as a chemist? New research into the Mona Lisa shows that da Vinci may very well have crafted a new type of paint mixture that then endured as the norm for centuries.”
AT THIS POINT IT SEEMS NOT ONLY POSSIBLE BUT LIKELY: Is Biden’s Classified Docs Scandal Connected to the Biden Family Business?
SPOILER: “FREER” WILL MEAN WHATEVER MADURO WANTS IT TO MEAN. U.S. to ease sanctions on Venezuelan oil for freer presidential election.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Finally, Some Jewish Space Lasers?